Mr. Mercedes: A Novel (39 page)

“There must be, like, a zillion I-T guys in this city,” she says.

Nowhere near that many, but a lot. He knows it and Hodges knows it, too, because it was Jerome who told him.

30

Hodges listens carefully to everything Jerome has to say. He’s pleased by Jerome’s praise of Holly (and hopes Holly will be pleased, too, if she’s listening), but bitterly disappointed that there’s no link to the Computer Jack who worked on Olivia’s machine. Jerome thinks it must be because Janey threw Computer Jack’s business card away. Hodges, who has a mind trained to be suspicious, thinks Mr. Mercedes might have made damned sure Olivia didn’t
have
a card. Only that doesn’t track. Wouldn’t you
ask
for one, if the guy did good work? And keep it handy? Unless, that is . . .

He asks Jerome to put Holly on.

“Hello?” So faint he has to strain to hear her.

“Holly, is there an address book on Olivia’s computer?”

“Just a minute.” He hears faint clicking. When she comes back, her voice is puzzled. “No.”

“Does that strike you as weird?”

“Kinda, yeah.”

“Could the guy who planted the spook sounds have deleted her address book?”

“Oh, sure. Easy. I’m taking my Lexapro, Mr. Hodges.”

“That’s great, Holly. Can you tell how much Olivia used her computer?”

“Sure.”

“Let me talk to Jerome while you look.”

Jerome comes on and says he’s sorry they haven’t been able to find more.

“No, no, you’ve done great. When you tossed her desk, you didn’t find a
physical
address book?”

“Uh-uh, but lots of people don’t bother with them anymore—they keep all their contacts on their computers and phones. You know that, right?”

Hodges supposes he
should
know it, but the world is moving too fast for him these days. He doesn’t even know how to program his DVR.

“Hang on, Holly wants to talk to you again.”

“You and Holly are getting along pretty well, huh?”

“We’re cool. Here she is.”

“Olivia had all kinds of programs and website faves,” Holly says. “She was big on Hulu and Huffpo. And her search history . . . it looks to me like she spent even more time browsing than I do, and I’m online a
lot
.”

“Holly, why would a person who really depends on her computer not have a service card handy?”

“Because the guy snuck in and took it after she was dead,” Holly says promptly.

“Maybe, but think of the risk—especially with the neighborhood security service keeping an eye on things. He’d have to know the gate code, the burglar alarm code . . . and even then he’d need a housekey . . .” He trails off.

“Mr. Hodges? Are you still there?”

“Yes. And go ahead and call me Bill.”

But she won’t. Maybe she can’t. “Mr. Hodges, is he a master criminal? Like in James Bond?”

“I think just crazy.” And
because
he’s crazy, the risk might not matter to him. Look at the risk he took at City Center, plowing into that crowd of people.

It still doesn’t ring right.

“Give me Jerome again, will you?”

She does, and Hodges tells him it’s time to get out before Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Henry come back and catch him computer-canoodling with Holly.

“What are you going to do, Bill?”

He looks out at the street, where twilight has started to deepen the colors of the day. It’s close to seven o’clock. “Sleep on it,” he says.

31

Before going to bed, Hodges spends four hours in front of the TV, watching shows that go in his eyes just fine but disintegrate before reaching his brain. He tries to think about nothing, because that’s how you open the door so the right idea can come in. The right idea always arrives as a result of the right connection, and there
is
a connection waiting to be made; he feels it. Maybe more than one. He will not let Janey into his thoughts. Later, yes, but for now all she can do is jam his gears.

Olivia Trelawney’s computer is the crux of the matter. It was rigged with spook sounds, and the most likely suspect is her I-T guy. So why didn’t she have his card? He could delete her computer address book at long distance—and Hodges is betting he did—but did he break into her house to steal a fucking
business card
after she was dead?

He gets a call from a newspaper reporter. Then from a Channel Six guy. After the third call from someone in the media, Hodges shuts his phone down. He doesn’t know who spilled his cell number, but he hopes the person was well paid for the info.

Something else keeps coming into his mind, something that has nothing to do with anything:
She thinks they walk among us
.

A refresher glance through his notes allows him to put his finger on who said that to him: Mr. Bowfinger, the greeting-card writer. He and Bowfinger were sitting in lawn chairs, and Hodges remembers being grateful for the shade. This was while he was doing his canvass, looking for anyone who might have seen a suspicious vehicle cruising the street.

She thinks they walk among us
.

Bowfinger was talking about Mrs. Melbourne across the street. Mrs. Melbourne who belongs to an organization of UFO nuts called NICAP, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena.

Hodges decides it’s just one of those echoes, like a snatch of pop music, that can start resounding in an overstressed brain. He gets undressed and goes to bed and Janey comes, Janey wrinkling her nose and saying
yeah
, and for the first time since childhood, he actually cries himself to sleep.

He wakes up in the small hours of Thursday morning, takes a leak, starts back to bed, and stops, eyes widening. What he’s been looking for—the connection—is suddenly there, big as life.

You didn’t bother keeping a business card if you didn’t
need
one.

Say the guy wasn’t an independent, running a little business out of his house, but someone who worked for a
company
. If that was the case, you could call the company number any time you needed him, because it would be something easy to remember, like 555-9999, or whatever the numbers were that spelled out COMPUTE.

If he worked for a company, he’d make his repair calls in a company car.

Hodges goes back to bed, sure that sleep will elude him this time, but it doesn’t.

He thinks,
If he had enough explosive to blow up my car, he must have more
.

Then he’s under again.

He dreams about Janey.

KISSES ON THE MIDWAY

1

Hodges is up at six
A.M.
on Thursday morning and makes himself a big breakfast: two eggs, four slices of bacon, four slices of toast. He doesn’t want it, but he forces himself to eat every bite, telling himself it’s body gasoline. He might get a chance to eat again today, but he might not. Both in the shower and as he chews his way resolutely through his big breakfast (no one to watch his weight for now), a thought keeps recurring to him, the same one he went to sleep with the night before. It’s like a haunting.

Just how much explosive?

This leads to other unpleasant considerations. Like how the guy—the
perk
—means to use it. And when.

He comes to a decision: today is the last day. He wants to track Mr. Mercedes down himself, and confront him. Kill him? No, not that (
probably
not that), but beating the shit out of him would be
excellent
. For Olivia. For Janey. For Janice and Patricia Cray. For all the other people Mr. Mercedes killed and maimed at City Center the year before. People so desperate for jobs they got up in the middle of the night and stood waiting in a dank fog for the doors to open. Lost lives. Lost hopes. Lost
souls
.

So yes, he wants the sonofabitch. But if he can’t nail him today, he’ll turn the whole thing over to Pete Huntley and Izzy Jaynes and take the consequences . . . which, he knows, may well lead to some jail time. It doesn’t matter. He’s got plenty on his conscience already, but he guesses it can bear a little more weight. Not another mass killing, though. That would destroy what little of him there is left.

He decides to give himself until eight o’clock tonight; that’s the line in the sand. He can do as much in those thirteen hours as Pete and Izzy. Probably more, because he’s not constrained by routine or procedure. Today he will carry his father’s M&P .38. And the Happy Slapper—that, too.

The Slapper goes in the right front pocket of his sportcoat, the revolver under his left arm. In his study, he grabs his Mr. Mercedes file—it’s quite fat now—and takes it back to the kitchen. While he reads through it again, he uses the remote to fire up the TV on the counter and tunes in
Morning at Seven
on Channel Six. He’s almost relieved to see that a crane has toppled over down by the lakeshore, half-sinking a barge filled with chemicals. He doesn’t want the lake any more polluted than it already is (assuming that’s possible), but the spill has pushed the car-bomb story back to second place. That’s the good news. The bad is that he’s identified as the detective, now retired, who was the lead investigator of the City Center Massacre task force, and the woman killed in the car-bombing is identified as Olivia Trelawney’s sister. There’s a still photo of him and Janey standing outside the Soames Funeral Home, taken by God knows who.

“Police are not saying if there’s a connection to last year’s mass killing at City Center,” the newscaster says gravely, “but it’s worth noting that the perpetrator of that crime has as yet not been caught. In other crime news, Donald Davis is expected to be arraigned . . .”

Hodges no longer gives Shit One about Donald Davis. He kills the TV and returns to the notes on his yellow legal pad. He’s still going through them when his phone rings—not the cell (although today he’s carrying it), but the one on the wall. It’s Pete Huntley.

“You’re up with the birdies,” Pete says.

“Good detective work. How can I help you?”

“We had an interesting interview yesterday with Henry Sirois and Charlotte Gibney. You know, Janelle Patterson’s aunt and uncle?”

Hodges waits for it.

“The aunt was especially fascinating. She thinks Izzy was right, and you and Patterson were a lot more than just acquaintances. She thinks you were very good friends.”

“Say what you mean, Pete.”

“Making the beast with two backs. Laying some pipe. Slicing the cake. Hiding the salami. Doing the horizontal b—”

“I think I get it. Let me tell you something about Aunt Charlotte, okay? If she saw a photo of Justin Bieber talking to Queen Elizabeth, she’d tell you the Beeb was tapping her. ‘Just look at their eyes,’ she’d say.”

“So you weren’t.”

“No.”

“I’ll take that on a try-out basis—mostly for old times’ sake—but I still want to know what you’re hiding. Because this stinks.”

“Read my lips: not . . . hiding . . .
anything
.”

Silence from the other end. Pete is waiting for Hodges to grow uncomfortable and break it, for the moment forgetting who taught him that trick.

At last he gives up. “I think you’re digging yourself a hole, Billy. My advice is to drop the shovel before you’re in too deep to climb out.”

“Thanks, partner. Always good to get life-lessons at quarter past seven in the morning.”

“I want to interview you again this afternoon. And this time I may have to read you the words.”

The Miranda warning is what he means.

“Happy to make that work. Call me on my cell.”

“Really? Since you retired, you never carry it.”

“I’m carrying it today.” Yes indeed. Because for the next twelve or fourteen hours, he’s totally unretired.

He ends the call and goes back to his notes, wetting the tip of his index finger each time he turns a page. He circles a name: Radney Peeples. The Vigilant Guard Service guy he talked to out in Sugar Heights. If Peeples is even halfway doing his job, he may hold the key to Mr. Mercedes. But there’s no chance he won’t remember Hodges, not after Hodges first braced him for his company ID and then questioned him. And he’ll know that today Hodges is big news. There’s time to think about how to solve the problem; Hodges doesn’t want to call Vigilant until regular business hours. Because the call has to look like ordinary routine.

The next call he receives—on his cell this time—is from Aunt Charlotte. Hodges isn’t surprised to hear from her, but that doesn’t mean he’s pleased.

“I don’t know what to do!” she cries. “You have to help me, Mr. Hodges!”

“Don’t know what to do about what?”

“The
body
! Janelle’s
body
! I don’t even know where it
is
!”

Hodges gets a beep and checks the incoming number.

“Mrs. Gibney, I have another call and I have to take it.”

“I don’t see why you can’t—”

“Janey’s not going anywhere, so just stand by. I’ll call you back.”

He cuts her off in the middle of a protesting squawk and goes to Jerome.

“I thought you might need a chauffeur today,” Jerome says. “Considering your current situation.”

For a moment Hodges doesn’t know what the kid is talking about, then remembers that his Toyota has been reduced to charred fragments. What remains of it is now in the custody of the PD’s Forensics Department, where later today men in white coats will be going over it to determine what kind of explosive was used to blow it up. He got home last night in a taxi. He
will
need a ride. And, he realizes, Jerome may be useful in another way.

“That would be good,” he says, “but what about school?”

“I’m carrying a 3.9 average,” Jerome says patiently. “I’m also working for Citizens United and team-teaching a computer class for disadvantaged kids. I can afford to skip a day. And I already cleared it with my mom and dad. They just asked me to ask you if anyone else was going to try to blow you up.”

“Actually, that’s not out of the question.”

“Hang on a second.” Faintly, Hodges hears Jerome calling: “He says no one will.”

In spite of everything, Hodges has to smile.

“I’ll be there double-quick,” Jerome says.

“Don’t break any speed laws. Nine o’clock will be fine. Use the time to practice your thespian skills.”

“Really? What role am I thesping?”

“Law office paralegal,” Hodges says. “And thanks, Jerome.”

He breaks the connection, goes into his study, boots up his computer, and searches for a local lawyer named Schron. It’s an unusual name and he finds it with no trouble. He notes down the firm and Schron’s first name, which happens to be George. Then he returns to the kitchen and calls Aunt Charlotte.

“Hodges,” he says. “Back atcha.”

“I don’t appreciate being hung up on, Mr. Hodges.”

“No more than I appreciate you telling my old partner that I was fucking your niece.”

He hears a shocked gasp, followed by silence. He almost hopes she’ll hang up. When she doesn’t, he tells her what she needs to know.

“Janey’s remains will be at the Huron County Morgue. You won’t be able to take possession today. Probably not tomorrow, either. There’ll have to be an autopsy, which is absurd given the cause of death, but it’s protocol.”

“You don’t understand! I have
plane
reservations!”

Hodges looks out his kitchen window and counts slowly to five.

“Mr. Hodges? Are you still there?”

“As I see it, you have two choices, Mrs. Gibney. One is to stay here and do the right thing. The other is to use your reservation, fly home, and let the city do it.”

Aunt Charlotte begins to snivel. “I saw the way you were looking at her, and the way she was looking at you. All I did was answer the woman cop’s questions.”

“And with great alacrity, I have no doubt.”

“With
what
?”

He sighs. “Let’s drop it. I suggest you and your brother visit the County Morgue in person. Don’t call ahead, let them see your faces. Talk to Dr. Galworthy. If Galworthy’s not there, talk to Dr. Patel. If you ask them in person to expedite matters—and if you can manage to be nice about it—they’ll give you as much help as they can. Use my name. I go back to the early nineties with both of them.”

“We’d have to leave Holly again,” Aunt Charlotte says. “She’s locked herself in her room. She’s clicking away on her laptop and won’t come out.”

Hodges discovers he’s pulling his hair and makes himself stop. “How old is your daughter?”

A long pause. “Forty-five.”

“Then you can probably get away with not hiring a sitter.” He tries to suppress what comes next, and can’t quite manage it. “Think of the money you’ll save.”

“I can hardly expect you to understand Holly’s situation, Mr. Hodges. As well as being mentally unstable, my daughter is very sensitive.”

Hodges thinks: That must make you especially difficult for her. This time he manages not to say it.

“Mr. Hodges?”

“Still here.”

“You don’t happen to know if Janelle left a will, do you?”

He hangs up.

2

Brady spends a long time in the motel shower with the lights off. He likes the womblike warmth and the steady drumming sound. He also likes the darkness, and it’s good that he does because soon he’ll have all he ever wanted. He’d like to believe there’s going to be a tender mother-and-child reunion—perhaps even one of the mother-and-lover type—but in his heart he doesn’t. He can pretend, but . . . no.

Just darkness.

He’s not worried about God, or about spending eternity being slow-roasted for his crimes. There’s no heaven and no hell. Anyone with half a brain knows those things don’t exist. How cruel would a supreme being have to be to make a world as fucked-up as this one? Even if the vengeful God of the televangelists and child-molesting blackrobes
did
exist, how could that thunderbolt-thrower possibly blame Brady for the things he’s done? Did Brady Hartsfield grab his father’s hand and wrap it around the live power line that electrocuted him? No. Did he shove that apple slice down Frankie’s throat? No. Was he the one who talked on and on about how the money was going to run out and they’d end up living in a homeless shelter? No. Did he cook up a poisoned hamburger and say,
Eat this, Ma, it’s delicious?

Can he be blamed for striking out at the world that has made him what he is?

Brady thinks not.

He muses on the terrorists who brought down the World Trade Center (he muses on them often). Those clowns actually thought they were going to paradise, where they’d live in a kind of eternal luxury hotel being serviced by gorgeous young virgins. Pretty funny, and the best part? The joke was on them . . . not that they knew it. What they got was a momentary view of all those windows and a final flash of light. After that, they and their thousands of victims were just gone. Poof. Seeya later, alligator. Off you go, killers and killed alike, off you go into the universal null set that surrounds one lonely blue planet and all its mindlessly bustling denizens. Every religion lies. Every moral precept is a delusion. Even the stars are a mirage. The truth is darkness, and the only thing that matters is making a statement before one enters it. Cutting the skin of the world and leaving a scar. That’s all history is, after all: scar tissue.

3

Brady dresses and drives to a twenty-four-hour drugstore near the airport. He’s seen in the bathroom mirror that his mother’s electric razor left a lot to be desired; his skull needs more maintenance. He gets disposable razors and shaving cream. He grabs more batteries, because you can never have enough. He also picks up a pair of clear glass spectacles from a spinner rack. He chooses hornrims because they give him a studently look. Or so it seems to him.

On his way to the checkout, he stops at a cardboard stand-up display featuring the four clean-cut boys in ’Round Here. The copy reads GET YOUR GEAR ON FOR THE BIG SHOW JUNE 3
RD
! Only someone has crossed out JUNE 3
RD
and written 2NITE below it.

Although Brady usually takes an M tee-shirt—he’s always been slim—he picks out an XL and adds it to the rest of his swag. No need to stand in line; this early he’s the only customer.

“Going to the show tonight?” the checkout girl asks.

Brady gives her a big grin. “I sure am.”

On his way back to the motel, Brady starts to think about his car. To
worry
about his car. The Ralph Jones alias is all very fine, but the Subaru is registered to Brady Hartsfield. If the Det-Ret discovers his name and tells five-oh, that could be a problem. The motel is safe enough—they no longer ask for plate numbers, just a driver’s license—but the car is not.