Mr. Mercedes: A Novel (38 page)

I hope she left it to a fucking dog hospital, he thinks.

Hodges sits down with an out-of-breath grunt. Using one of the stairs as a makeshift desk, he lays out the sunglasses case and, from his wallet, a creased sheet of notepaper with two sets of numbers on it.

26

“Hello?” The voice is soft, tentative. “Hello, who is this?”

“My name’s Jerome Robinson, ma’am. I believe Bill Hodges said I might call you.”

Silence.

“Ma’am?” Jerome is sitting by his computer, holding his Android almost tightly enough to crack the casing. “Ms. Gibney?”

“I’m here.” It’s almost a sigh. “He said he wants to catch the person who killed my cousin. There was a terrible explosion.”

“I know,” Jerome says. Down the hall, Barb starts playing her new ’Round Here record for the thousandth time.
Kisses on the Midway
, it’s called. It hasn’t driven him crazy yet, but crazy gets closer with every play.

Meanwhile, the woman on the other end of the line has started to cry.

“Ma’am? Ms. Gibney? I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“I hardly knew her, but she was my cousin, and she was nice to me. So was Mr. Hodges. Do you know what he asked me?”

“No, uh-uh.”

“If I’d eaten breakfast. Wasn’t that considerate?”

“It sure was,” Jerome says. He still can’t believe the lively, vital lady he had dinner with is dead. He remembers how her eyes sparkled when she laughed and how she mocked Bill’s way of saying
yeah
. Now he’s on the phone with a woman he’s never met, a very odd woman, from the sound of her. Talking to her feels like defusing a bomb. “Ma’am, Bill asked me to come out there.”

“Will he come with you?”

“He can’t right now. He’s got other things he has to do.”

There’s more silence, and then, in a voice so low and timid he can barely hear it, Holly asks, “Are you safe? Because I worry about people, you know. I worry very much.”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m safe.”

“I want to help Mr. Hodges. I want to help catch the man who did it. He must be crazy, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Jerome says. Down the hall another song starts and two little girls—Barbara and her friend Hilda—emit joyous shrieks almost high enough to shatter glass. He thinks of three or four thousand Barbs and Hildas all shrieking in unison tomorrow night, and thanks God his mother is pulling
that
duty.

“You could come, but I don’t know how to let you in,” she says. “My uncle Henry set the burglar alarm when he went out, and I don’t know the code. I think he shut the gate, too.”

“I’ve got all that covered,” Jerome says.

“When will you come?”

“I can be there in half an hour.”

“If you talk to Mr. Hodges, will you tell him something for me?”

“Sure.”

“Tell him I’m sad, too.” She pauses. “And that I’m taking my Lexapro.”

27

Late that Wednesday afternoon, Brady checks in to a gigantic Motel 6 near the airport, using one of his Ralph Jones credit cards. He has a suitcase and a knapsack. In the knapsack is a single change of clothes, which is all he’ll need for the few dozen hours of life that still remain to him. In the suitcase is the ASS PARKING cushion, the Urinesta peebag, a framed picture, several homemade detonator switches (he only expects to need one, but you can never have enough backup), Thing Two, several Glad storage bags filled with ball bearings, and enough homemade explosive to blow both the motel and the adjacent parking lot sky-high. He goes back to his Subaru, pulls out a larger item (with some effort; it barely fits), carries it into his room, and leans it against the wall.

He lies down on his bed. His head feels strange against the pillow. Naked. And sort of sexy, somehow.

He thinks, I’ve had a run of bad luck, but I’ve ridden it out and I’m still standing.

He closes his eyes. Soon he’s snoring.

28

Jerome parks his Wrangler with the nose almost touching the closed gate at 729 Lilac Drive, gets out, and pushes the call button. He has a reason to be here if someone from the Sugar Heights security patrol should stop and query him, but it will only work if the woman inside confirms him, and he’s not sure he can count on that. His earlier conversation with the lady has suggested that she’s got one wheel on the road at most. In any case, he’s not challenged, and after a moment or two of standing there and trying to look as if he belongs—this is one of those occasions when he feels especially black—Holly answers.

“Yes? Who is it?”

“Jerome, Ms. Gibney. Bill Hodges’s friend?”

A pause so long he’s about to push the button again when she says, “You have the gate code?”

“Yes.”

“All right. And if you’re a friend of Mr. Hodges, I guess you can call me Holly.”

He pushes the code and the gate opens. He drives through and watches it close behind him. So far, so good.

Holly is at the front door, peering at him through one of the side windows like a prisoner in a high-security visitation area. She’s wearing a housecoat over pajamas, and her hair is a mess. A brief nightmare scenario crosses Jerome’s mind: she pushes the panic button on the burglar alarm panel (almost certainly right next to where she’s standing), and when the security guys arrive, she accuses him of being a burglar. Or a would-be rapist with a flannel-pajama fetish.

The door is locked. He points to it. For a moment Holly just stands there like a robot with a dead battery. Then she turns the deadbolt. A shrill peeping sound commences when Jerome opens the door and she takes several steps backward, covering her mouth with both hands.

“Don’t let me get in trouble! I don’t want to get in trouble!”

She’s twice as nervous as he is, and this eases Jerome’s mind. He punches the code into the burglar alarm and hits ALL SECURE. The peeping stops.

Holly collapses into an ornately carved chair that looks like it might have cost enough to pay for a year at a good college (although maybe not Harvard), her hair hanging around her face in dank wings. “Oh, this has been the worst day of my life,” she says. “Poor Janey. Poor poor Janey.”

“I’m sorry.”

“But at least it’s not
my
fault.” She looks up at him with thin and pitiable defiance. “No one can say it was.
I
didn’t do anything.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Jerome says.

It comes out sounding stilted, but she smiles a little, so maybe it’s okay. “Is Mr. Hodges all right? He’s a very, very,
very
nice man. Even though my mother doesn’t like him.” She shrugs. “But who
does
she like?”

“He’s fine,” Jerome says, although he doubts if that’s true.

“You’re
black
,” she says, looking at him, wide-eyed.

Jerome looks down at his hands. “I am, aren’t I?”

She bursts into peals of shrill laughter. “I’m sorry. That was rude. It’s
fine
that you’re black.”

“Black is whack,” Jerome says.

“Of course it is. Totally whack.” She stands up, gnaws at her lower lip, then pistons out her hand with an obvious effort of will. “Put it there, Jerome.”

He shakes. Her hand is clammy. It’s like shaking the paw of a small and timid animal.

“We have to hurry. If my mother and Uncle Henry come back and catch you in here, I’m in trouble.”

You? Jerome thinks. What about the black kid?

“The woman who used to live here was also your cousin, right?”

“Yes. Olivia Trelawney. I haven’t seen her since I was in college. She and my mother never got along.” She looks at him solemnly. “I had to drop out of college. I had issues.”

Jerome bets she did. And does. Still, there’s something about her he likes. God knows what. It’s surely not that fingernails-on-a-blackboard laugh.

“Do you know where her computer is?”

“Yes. I’ll show you. Can you be quick?”

I better be, Jerome thinks.

29

The late Olivia Trelawney’s computer is password-protected, which is silly, because when he turns over the keyboard, he finds OTRELAW written there with a Sharpie.

Holly, standing in the doorway and flipping the collar of her housecoat nervously up and down, mutters something he doesn’t catch.

“Huh?”

“I asked what you’re looking for.”

“You’ll know it if I find it.” He opens the finder and types CRYING BABY into the search field. No result. He tries WEEPING INFANT. Nothing. He tries SCREAMING WOMAN. Nothing.

“It could be hidden.” This time he hears her clearly because her voice is right next to his ear. He jumps a little, but Holly doesn’t notice. She’s bent over with her hands on her housecoated knees, staring at Olivia’s monitor. “Try AUDIO FILE.”

That’s a pretty good idea, so he does. But there’s nothing.

“Okay,” she says, “go to SYSTEM PREFERENCES and look at SOUND.”

“Holly, all that does is control the input and output. Stuff like that.”

“Well
duh.
Try it anyway.” She’s stopped biting her lips.

Jerome does. Under output, the menu lists SOUND STICKS, HEADPHONES, and LOG ME IN SOUND DRIVER. Under input, there’s INTERNAL MICROPHONE and LINE IN. Nothing he didn’t expect.

“Any other ideas?” he asks her.

“Open SOUND EFFECTS. Over there on the left.”

He turns to her. “Hey, you know this stuff, don’t you?”

“I took a computer course. From home. On Skype. It was interesting. Go on, look at SOUND EFFECTS.”

Jerome does, and blinks at what he sees. In addition to FROG, GLASS, PING, POP, and PURR—the usual suspects—there’s an item listed as SPOOKS.

“Never seen that one before.”

“Me, either.” She still won’t look directly at his face, but her affect has changed remarkably otherwise. She pulls up a chair and sits beside him, tucking her lank hair behind her ears. “And I know Mac programs inside and out.”

“Go with your bad self,” Jerome says, and holds up a hand.

Still looking at the screen, Holly slaps him five. “Play it, Sam.”

He grins.
“Casablanca.”

“Yes. I’ve seen that movie seventy-three times. I have a Movie Book. I write down everything I see. My mother says that’s OCD.”

“
Life
is OCD,” Jerome says.

Unsmiling, Holly replies, “Go with your bad self.”

Jerome highlights SPOOKS and bangs the return key. From the stereo sound sticks on either side of Olivia’s computer, a baby begins to wail. Holly is okay with that; she doesn’t clutch Jerome’s shoulder until the woman shrieks,
“Why did you let him murder my baby?”

“Fuck!” Jerome cries, and grabs Holly’s hand. He doesn’t even think about it, and she doesn’t draw away. They stare at the computer as if it has grown teeth and bitten them.

There’s a moment of silence, then the baby starts crying again. The woman screams again. The program cycles a third time, then stops.

Holly finally looks directly at him, her eyes so wide they seem in danger of falling out of her head. “Did you know that was going to happen?”

“Jesus,
no
.” Maybe something, or Bill wouldn’t have sent him here, but
that
? “Can you find out anything about the program, Holly? Like when it was installed? If you can’t, that’s all ri—”

“Push over.”

Jerome is good with computers, but Holly plays the keyboard like a Steinway. After a few minutes of hunting around, she says, “Looks like it was installed on July first of last year. A whole bunch of stuff was installed that day.”

“It could have been programmed to play at certain times, right? Cycle three times and then quit?”

She gives him an impatient glance. “Of course.”

“Then how come it’s not
still
playing? I mean, you guys have been staying here. You would have heard it.”

She clicks the mouse like crazy and shows him something else. “I saw this already. It’s a slave program, hidden in her Mail Contacts. I bet Olivia didn’t know it was here. It’s called Looking Glass. You can’t use it to turn on a computer—at least I don’t think so—but if it
is
on, you can run everything from your own computer. Open files, read emails, look at search histories . . . or deactivate programs.”

“Like after she was dead,” Jerome says.

“Oough.” Holly grimaces.

“Why would the guy who installed this leave it? Why not erase it completely?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he just forgot. I forget stuff all the time. My mother says I’d forget my own head if it wasn’t attached to my neck.”

“Yeah, mine says that, too. But who’s
he
? Who are we talking about?”

She thinks it over. They both do. And after perhaps five seconds, they speak at the same time.

“Her I-T guy,” Jerome says, just as Holly says, “Her geek freak.”

Jerome starts going through the drawers of Olivia’s computer station, looking for a computer-service invoice, a bill stamped PAID, or a business card. There ought to be at least one of those, but there’s nothing. He gets on his knees and crawls into the kneehole under the desk. Nothing there, either.

“Look on the fridge,” he says. “Sometimes people put shit there, under little magnets.”

“There are plenty of magnets,” Holly says, “but nothing on the fridge except for a real estate agent’s card and one from the Vigilant security company. I think Janey must have taken down everything else. Probably threw it away.”

“Is there a safe?”

“Probably, but why would my cousin put her I-T guy’s business card in her safe? It’s not like it’s worth
money
, or anything.”

“True-dat,” Jerome says.

“If it was here, it would be by her computer. She wouldn’t
hide
it. I mean, she wrote her password right under her goshdarn
keyboard.
”

“Pretty dumb,” Jerome says.

“Totally.” Holly suddenly seems to realize how close they are. She gets up and goes back to the doorway. She starts flipping the collar of her housecoat again. “What are you going to do now?”

“I guess I better call Bill.”

He takes out his cell phone, but before he can make the call, she says his name. Jerome looks at her, standing there in the doorway, looking lost in her flappy comfort-clothes.