Mr. Mercedes: A Novel (18 page)

Such stylistic fingerprints wouldn’t be enough to convince a jury, but Hodges himself? Absolutely.

He sits back again, head tilted, eyes fixed on nothing. He isn’t aware of time passing; for Hodges, time, which has hung so heavy since his retirement, has been canceled. Then he lurches forward, office chair squalling an unheard protest, and writes in large capital letters:
HAS MR. MERCEDES BEEN WATCHING?

Hodges feels all but positive he has been. That it’s his MO.

He followed Mrs. Trelawney’s vilification in the newspapers, he watched her two or three appearances on the TV news (curt and unflattering, those appearances drove her already low approval ratings into the basement). He may have done drive-bys on her house as well. Hodges should talk to Radney Peeples again and find out if Peeples or any other Vigilant employees noted certain cars cruising Mrs. Trelawney’s Sugar Heights neighborhood in the weeks before she caught the bus. And someone sprayed KILLER CUNT on one of her gateposts. How long before her suicide was that? Maybe Mr. Mercedes did it himself. And of course, he could have gotten to know her better,
lots
better, if she took him up on his invitation to meet under the Blue Umbrella.

Then there’s me, he thinks, and looks at the way his own letter ends:
I wouldn’t want you to start thinking about your gun
followed by
But you
are
thinking of it, aren’t you?
Is Mr. Mercedes talking about his theoretical service weapon, or has he seen the .38 Hodges sometimes plays with? No way of telling, but . . .

But I think he has. He knows where I live, you can look right into my living room from the street, and I think he’s seen it.

The idea that he’s been watched fills Hodges with excitement rather than dread or embarrassment. If he could match some vehicle the Vigilant people have noticed with a vehicle spending an inordinate amount of time on Harper Road—

That’s when the telephone rings.

16

“Hi, Mr. H.”

“S’up, Jerome?”

“I’m under the Umbrella.”

Hodges puts his legal pad aside. The first four pages are now full of disjointed notes, the next three with a close-written case summary, just like in the old days. He rocks back in his chair.

“It didn’t eat your computer, I take it?”

“Nope. No worms, no viruses. And I’ve already got four offers to talk with new friends. One’s from Abilene, Texas. She says her name is Bernice, but I can call her Berni. With an
i
. She sounds cute as hell, and I won’t say I’m not tempted, but she’s probably a cross-dressing shoe salesman from Boston who lives with his mother. The Internet, dude—it’s a wonderbox.”

Hodges grins.

“First the background, which I partly got from poking around that selfsame Internet and mostly from a couple of Computer Science geeks at the university. You ready?”

Hodges grabs his legal pad again and turns to a fresh page. “Hit me.” Which is exactly what he used to say to Pete Huntley when Pete came in with fresh information on a case.

“Okay, but first . . . do you know what the most precious Internet commodity is?”

“Nope.” And, thinking of Janey Patterson: “I’m old school.”

Jerome laughs. “That you are, Mr. Hodges. It’s part of your charm.”

Dryly: “Thank you, Jerome.”

“The most precious commodity is privacy, and that’s what Debbie’s Blue Umbrella and sites like it deliver. They make Facebook look like a partyline back in the nineteen-fifties. Hundreds of privacy sites have sprung up since 9/11. That’s when the various first-world governments really started to get snoopy. The powers that be fear the Net, dude, and they’re right to fear it. Anyway, most of these EP sites—stands for
extreme privacy
—operate out of Central Europe. They are to Internet chat what Switzerland is to bank accounts. You with me?”

“Yeah.”

“The Blue Umbrella servers are in Olovo, a Bosnian ville that was mostly known for bullfights until 2005 or so. Encrypted servers. We’re talking NASA quality, okay? Traceback’s impossible, unless NSA or the Kang Sheng—that’s the Chinese version of the NSA—have got some super-secret software nobody knows about.”

And even if they do, Hodges thinks, they’d never put it to use in a case like the Mercedes Killer.

“Here’s another feature, especially handy in the age of sexting scandals. Mr. H., have you ever found something on the Net—like a picture or an article in a newspaper—that you wanted to print, and you couldn’t?”

“A few times, yeah. You hit print, and the Print Preview shows nothing but a blank page. It’s annoying.”

“Same thing on Debbie’s Blue Umbrella.” Jerome doesn’t sound annoyed; he sounds admiring. “I had a little back-and-forth with my new friend Berni—you know, how’s the weather there, what’re your favorite groups, that kind of thing—and when I tried to print our conversation, I got a pair of lips with a finger across them and a message that says SHHH.” Jerome spells this out, just to be sure Hodges gets it. “You
can
make a record of the conversation . . .”

You bet, Hodges thinks, looking fondly down at the jotted notes on his legal pad.

“. . . but you’d have to take screen-shots or something, which is a pain in the ass. You see what I mean about the privacy, right? These guys are serious about it.”

Hodges does see. He flips back to the first page of his legal pad and circles one of his earliest notes: COMPUTER SAVVY (UNDER 50?).

“When you click in, you get the usual choice—ENTER USERNAME or REGISTER NOW. Since I didn’t have a username, I clicked REGISTER NOW and got one. If you want to talk with me under the Blue Umbrella, I’m tyrone40. Next, there’s a questionnaire you fill out—age, sex, interests, things like that—and then you have to punch in your credit card number. It’s thirty bucks a month. I did it because I have faith in your powers of reimbursement.”

“Your faith will be rewarded, my son.”

“The computer thinks it over for ninety seconds or so—the Blue Umbrella spins and the screen says SORTING. Then you get a list of people with interests similar to yours. You just bang on a few and pretty soon you’re chatting up a storm.”

“Could people use this to exchange porn? I know the descriptor says you can’t, but—”

“You could use it to exchange
fantasies
, but no pix. Although I could see how weirdos—child abusers, crush freaks, that kind of thing—could use the Blue Umbrella to direct like-minded friends to sites where outlaw images
are
available.”

Hodges starts to ask what crush freaks are, then decides he doesn’t want to know.

“Mostly just innocent chat, then.”

“Well . . .”

“Well what?”

“I can see how crazies might use it to exchange badass info. Like how to build bombs and stuff.”

“Let’s say I already have a username. What happens then?”

“Do you?” The excitement is back in Jerome’s voice.

“Let’s say I do.”

“That would depend on whether you just made it up or if you got it from someone who wants to chat with you. Like he gave it to you on the phone or in an email.”

Hodges grins. Jerome, a true child of his times, has never considered the possibility that information could be conveyed by such a nineteenth-century vehicle as a letter.

“Say you got it from someone else,” Jerome goes on. “Like from the guy who stole that lady’s car. Like maybe he wants to talk to you about what he did.”

He waits. Hodges says nothing, but he is all admiration.

After a few seconds of silence, Jerome says, “Can’t blame a guy for trying. Anyway, you go on and enter the username.”

“When do I pay my thirty bucks?”

“You don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because someone’s already paid it for you.” Jerome sounds sober now. Dead serious. “Probably don’t need to tell you to be careful, but I will, anyway. Because if you already have a username, this guy’s waiting for you.”

17

Brady stops on his way home to get them supper (subs from Little Chef tonight), but his mother is gorked out on the couch. The TV is showing another of those reality things, a program that pimps a bunch of good-looking young women to a hunky bachelor who looks like he might have the IQ of a floor lamp. Brady sees Ma has already eaten—sort of. On the coffee table is a half-empty bottle of Smirnoff’s and two cans of NutraSlim. High tea in hell, he thinks, but at least she’s dressed: jeans and a City College sweatshirt.

On the off-chance, he unwraps her sandwich and wafts it back and forth beneath her nose, but she only snorts and turns her head away. He decides to eat that one himself and put the other one in his private fridge. When he comes back from the garage, the hunky bachelor is asking one of his potential fuck-toys (a blonde, of course) if she likes to cook breakfast. The blonde’s simpering reply: “Do you like something hot in the morning?”

Holding the plate with his sandwich on it, he regards his mother. He knows it’s possible he’ll come home some evening and find her dead. He could even help her along, just pick up one of the throw pillows and settle it over her face. It wouldn’t be the first time murder was committed in this house. If he did that, would his life be better or worse?

His fear—unarticulated by his conscious mind but swimming around beneath—is that
nothing
would change.

He goes downstairs, voice-commanding the lights and computers. He sits in front of Number Three and goes on Debbie’s Blue Umbrella, sure that by now the fat ex-cop will have taken the bait.

There’s nothing.

He smacks his fist into his palm, feeling a dull throb at his temples that is the sure harbinger of a headache, a migraine that’s apt to keep him awake half the night. Aspirin doesn’t touch those headaches when they come. He calls them the Little Witches, only sometimes the Little Witches are big. He knows there are pills that are supposed to relieve headaches like that—he’s researched them on the Net—but you can’t get them without a prescription, and Brady is terrified of doctors. What if one of them discovered he was suffering from a brain tumor? A glioblastoma, which Wikipedia says is the worst? What if that’s why he killed the people at the job fair?

Don’t be stupid, a glio would have killed you months ago.

Okay, but suppose the doctor said his migraines were a sign of mental illness? Paranoid schizophrenia, something like that? Brady accepts that he
is
mentally ill, of course he is, normal people don’t drive into crowds of people or consider taking out the President of the United States in a suicide attack. Normal people don’t kill their little brothers. Normal men don’t pause outside their mothers’ doors, wondering if they’re naked.

But abnormal men don’t like other people to
know
they’re abnormal.

He shuts off his computer and wanders aimlessly around his control room. He picks up Thing Two, then puts it down again. Even this isn’t original, he’s discovered; car thieves have been using gadgets like this for years. He hasn’t dared to use it since the last time he used it on Mrs. Trelawney’s Mercedes, but maybe it’s time to bring good old Thing Two out of retirement—it’s amazing what people leave in their cars. Using Thing Two is a little dangerous, but not very. Not if he’s careful, and Brady can be very careful.

Fucking ex-cop, why hasn’t he taken the bait?

Brady rubs his temples.

18

Hodges hasn’t taken the bait because he understands the stakes: pot limit. If he writes the wrong message, he’ll never hear from Mr. Mercedes again. On the other hand, if he does what he’s sure Mr. Mercedes expects—coy and clumsy efforts to discover who the guy is—the conniving sonofabitch will run rings around him.

The question to be answered before he starts is simple: who is going to be the fish in this relationship, and who is going to be the fisherman?

He has to write something, because the Blue Umbrella is all he has. He can call on none of his old police resources. The letters Mr. Mercedes wrote to Olivia Trelawney and Hodges himself are worthless without a suspect. Besides, a letter is just a letter, while computer chat is . . .

“A dialogue,” he says.

Only he needs a lure. The tastiest lure imaginable. He can pretend he’s suicidal, it wouldn’t be hard, because until very recently he has been. He’s sure that meditations on the attractiveness of death would keep Mr. Mercedes talking for awhile, but for how long before the guy realized he was being played? This is no hopped-up moke who believes the police really are going to give him a million dollars and a 747 that will fly him to El Salvador. Mr. Mercedes is a very intelligent person who happens to be crazy.

Hodges draws his legal pad onto his lap and turns to a fresh page. Halfway down he writes half a dozen words in large capitals:

I HAVE TO WIND HIM UP.

He puts a box around this, places the legal pad in the case file he has started, and closes the thickening folder. He sits a moment longer, looking at the screensaver photo of his daughter, who is no longer five and no longer thinks he’s God.

“Good night, Allie.”

He turns off his computer and goes to bed. He doesn’t expect to sleep, but he does.

19

He wakes up at 2:19
A.M.
by the bedside clock with the answer as bright in his mind as a neon bar sign. It’s risky but right, the kind of thing you do without hesitation or you don’t do at all. He goes into his office, a large pale ghost in boxer shorts. He powers up his computer. He goes to Debbie’s Blue Umbrella and clicks GET STARTED NOW!

A new image appears. This time the young couple is on what looks like a magic carpet floating over an endless sea. The silver rain is falling, but they are safe and dry beneath the blue umbrella. There are two buttons below the carpet, REGISTER NOW on the left and ENTER PASSWORD on the right. Hodges clicks ENTER PASSWORD, and in the box that appears he types
kermitfrog19
. He hits return and a new screen appears. On it is this message:

merckill wants to chat with you!

Do you want to chat with merckill?

Y N