Mr. Mercedes Read online

  19

  Brady has parked up the street from the funeral parlor, his heart beating harder than ever. He's holding a cell phone. The number of the burner attached to the bomb in the Toyota's back seat is inked on his wrist.

  He watches the mourners stand around on the walk. The fat ex-cop is impossible to miss; in his black suit he looks as big as a house. Or a hearse. On his head is a ridiculously old-fashioned hat, the kind you saw cops wearing in black-and-white detective movies from the nineteen-fifties.

  People are starting around to the back, and after awhile, Hodges and the blond bitch head that way. Brady supposes the blond bitch will be with him when the car blows. Which will make it a clean sweep--the mother and both daughters. It has the elegance of an equation where all the variables have been solved.

  Cars start pulling out, all moving in his direction because that's the way you go if you're heading to Sugar Heights. The sun glares on the windshields, which isn't helpful, but there's no mistaking the fat ex-cop's Toyota when it appears at the head of the funeral home driveway, pauses briefly, then turns toward him.

  Brady doesn't even glance at Uncle Henry's rental Chevy when it passes him. All his attention is focused on the fat ex-cop's ride. When it goes by, he feels a moment's disappointment. The blond bitch must have gone with her relatives, because there's no one in the Toyota but the driver. Brady only gets a glimpse, but even with the sunglare, the fat ex-cop's stupid hat is unmistakable.

  Brady keys in a number. "I said you wouldn't see me coming. Didn't I say that, asshole?"

  He pushes SEND.

  20

  As Janey reaches to turn on the radio, a cell phone begins to ring. The last sound she makes on earth--everyone should be so lucky--is a laugh. Idiot, she thinks affectionately, you went and left it again. She reaches for the glove compartment. There's a second ring.

  That's not coming from the glove compartment, that's coming from behi--

  There's no sound, at least not that she hears, only the momentary sensation of a strong hand pushing the driver's seat. Then the world turns white.

  21

  Holly Gibney, also known as Holly the Mumbler, may have mental problems, but neither the psychotropic drugs she takes nor the cigarettes she smokes on the sneak have slowed her down physically. Uncle Henry slams on the brakes and she bolts from the rental Chevy while the explosion is still reverberating.

  Hodges is right behind her, running hard. There's a stab of pain in his chest and he thinks he might be having a heart attack. Part of him actually hopes for this, but the pain goes away. The pedestrians are behaving as they always do when an act of violence punches a hole in the world they have previously taken for granted. Some drop to the sidewalk and cover their heads. Others are frozen in place, like statues. A few cars stop; most speed up and exit the vicinity immediately. One of these is a mud-colored Subaru.

  As Hodges pounds after Janey's mentally unstable cousin, the last message from Mr. Mercedes beats in his head like a ceremonial drum: I'm going to kill you. You won't see me coming. I'm going to kill you. You won't see me coming. I'm going to kill you. You won't see me coming.

  He rounds the corner, skidding on the slick soles of his seldom-worn dress shoes, and almost runs into Holly, who has stopped dead with her shoulders slumped and her purse dangling from one hand. She's staring at what remains of Hodges's Toyota. Its body has been blown clean off the axles and is burning furiously in a litter of glass. The back seat lies on its side twenty feet away, its torn upholstery on fire. A man staggers drunkenly across the street, holding his bleeding head. A woman is sitting on the curb outside a card-and-gift shop with a smashed-in show window, and for one wild moment he thinks it's Janey, but this woman is wearing a green dress and she has gray hair and of course it isn't Janey, it can't be Janey.

  He thinks, This is my fault. If I'd used my father's gun two weeks ago, she'd be alive.

  There's still enough cop inside him to push the idea aside (although it doesn't go easily). A cold shocked clarity flows in to replace it. This is not his fault. It's the fault of the son of a bitch who planted the bomb. The same son of a bitch who drove a stolen car into a crowd of job-seekers at City Center.

  Hodges sees a single black high-heeled shoe lying in a pool of blood, he sees a severed arm in a smoldering sleeve lying in the gutter like someone's cast-off garbage, and his mind clicks into gear. Uncle Henry and Aunt Charlotte will be here shortly, and that means there isn't much time.

  He seizes Holly by the shoulders and turns her around. Her hair has come loose from its Princess Leia rolls and hangs against her cheeks. Her wide eyes look right through him. His mind--colder than ever--knows she's no good to him as she is now. He slaps first one cheek, then the other. Not hard slaps, but enough to make her eyelids flutter.

  People are screaming. Horns are honking, and a couple of car alarms are blatting. He can smell gasoline, burning rubber, melting plastic.

  "Holly. Holly. Listen to me."

  She's looking, but is she listening? He doesn't know, and there's no time.

  "I loved her, but you can't tell anyone. You can't tell anyone I loved her. Maybe later, but not now. Do you understand?"

  She nods.

  "I need your cell number. And I may need you." His cold mind hopes he won't, that the house in Sugar Heights will be empty this afternoon, but he doesn't think it will be. Holly's mother and uncle will have to leave, at least for awhile, but Charlotte won't want her daughter to go with them. Because Holly has mental problems. Holly is delicate. Hodges wonders just how many breakdowns she's had, and if there have been suicide attempts. These thoughts zip across his mind like shooting stars, there at one moment, gone the next. He has no time for Holly's delicate mental condition.

  "When your mother and uncle go to the police station, tell them you don't need anyone to stay with you. Tell them you're okay by yourself. Can you do that?"

  She nods, although she almost certainly has no idea what he's talking about.

  "Someone will call you. It might be me, or it might be a young man named Jerome. Jerome. Can you remember that name?"

  She nods, then opens her purse and takes out a glasses case.

  This is not working, Hodges thinks. The lights are on but nobody's home. Still, he has to try. He grasps her shoulders.

  "Holly, I want to catch the guy who did this. I want to make him pay. Will you help me?"

  She nods. There's no expression on her face.

  "Say it, then. Say you'll help me."

  She doesn't. She slips a pair of sunglasses from the case instead, and pops them on as if there weren't a car burning in the street and Janey's arm in the gutter. As if there weren't people screaming and already the sound of an approaching siren. As if this were a day at the beach.

  He shakes her lightly. "I need your cell phone number."

  She nods agreeably but says nothing. She snaps her purse closed and turns back to the burning car. The greatest despair he has ever known sweeps through Hodges, sickening his belly and scattering the thoughts that were, for the space of thirty or forty seconds, perfectly clear.

  Aunt Charlotte comes sidewheeling around the corner with her hair--mostly black but white at the roots--flying out behind her. Uncle Henry follows. His jowly face is pasty except for the clownish spots of red high on his cheeks.

  "Sharlie, stop!" Uncle Henry cries. "I think I'm having a heart attack!"

  His sister pays no attention. She grabs Holly's elbow, jerks her around, and hugs her fiercely, mashing Holly's not inconsiderable nose between her breasts. "DON'T LOOK!" Charlotte bellows, looking. "DON'T LOOK, SWEETHEART, DON'T LOOK AT IT!"

  "I can hardly breathe," Uncle Henry announces. He sits on the curb and hangs his head down. "God, I hope I'm not dying."

  More sirens have joined the first. People have begun to creep forward so they can get a closer look at the burning wreck in the street. A couple snap photos with their phones.

  Hodges thinks, Enough explosive to blow up
a car. How much more does he have?

  Aunt Charlotte still has Holly in a deathgrip, bawling at her not to look. Holly isn't struggling to get away, but she's got one hand behind her. There's something in it. Although he knows it's probably just wishful thinking, Hodges hopes it might be for him. He takes what she's holding out. It's the case her sunglasses were in. Her name and address are embossed on it in gold.

  There's also a phone number.

  22

  Hodges takes his Nokia from his inside suit coat pocket, aware as he flips it open that it would probably be so much melted plastic and fizzing wire in the glove compartment of his baked Toyota, if not for Janey's gentle chaffing.

  He hits Jerome on speed-dial, praying the kid will pick up, and he does.

  "Mr. Hodges? Bill? I think we just heard a big explo--"

  "Shut up, Jerome. Just listen." He's walking down the glass-littered sidewalk. The sirens are closer now, soon they'll be here, and all he has to go on is pure intuition. Unless, that is, his subconscious mind is already making the connections. It's happened before; he didn't get all those department commendations on Craigslist.

  "Listening," Jerome says.

  "You know nothing about the City Center case. You know nothing about Olivia Trelawney or Janey Patterson." Of course the three of them had dinner together at DeMasio's, but he doesn't think the cops will get that far for awhile, if ever.

  "I know squat," Jerome says. There's no distrust or hesitance in his voice. "Who'll be asking? The police?"

  "Maybe later. First it'll be your parents. Because that explosion you heard was my car. Janey was driving. We swapped at the last minute. She's . . . gone."

  "Christ, Bill, you have to tell five-oh! Your old partner!"

  Hodges thinks of her saying He's ours. We still see eye to eye on that, right?

  Right, he thinks. Still eye to eye on that, Janey.

  "Not yet. Right now I'm going to roll on this, and I need you to help me. The scumbucket killed her, I want his ass, and I mean to have it. Will you help?"

  "Yes." Not How much trouble could I get in. Not This could totally screw me up for Harvard. Not Leave me out of it. Just Yes. God bless Jerome Robinson.

  "You have to go on Debbie's Blue Umbrella as me and send the guy who did this a message. Do you remember my username?"

  "Yeah. Kermitfrog19. Let me get some pa--"

  "No time. Just remember the gist of it. And don't post for at least an hour. He has to know I didn't send it before the explosion. He has to know I'm still alive."

  Jerome says, "Give it."

  Hodges gives it and breaks the connection without saying goodbye. He slips the phone into his pants pocket, along with Holly's sunglasses case.

  A fire truck comes swaying around the corner, followed by two police cars. They speed past the Soames Funeral Home, where the mortician and the minister from Elizabeth Wharton's service are now standing on the sidewalk, shading their eyes against the glare of the sun and the burning car.

  Hodges has a lot of talking to do, but there's something more important to do first. He strips off his suit coat, kneels down, and covers the arm in the gutter. He feels tears pricking at his eyes and forces them back. He can cry later. Right now tears don't fit the story he has to tell.

  The cops, two young guys riding solo, are getting out of their cars. Hodges doesn't know them. "Officers," he says.

  "Got to ask you to clear the area, sir," one of them says, "but if you witnessed that--" He points to the burning remains of the Toyota. "--I need you to stay close so someone can interview you."

  "I not only saw it, I should have been in it." Hodges takes out his wallet and flips it open to show the police ID card with RETIRED stamped across it in red. "Until last fall, my partner was Pete Huntley. You should call him ASAP."

  One of the other cops says, "It was your car, sir?"

  "Yeah."

  The first cop says, "Then who was driving it?"

  23

  Brady arrives home well before noon with all his problems solved. Old Mr. Beeson from across the street is standing on his lawn. "Didja hear it?"

  "Hear what?"

  "Big explosion somewheres downtown. There was a lot of smoke, but it's gone now."

  "I was playing the radio pretty loud," Brady says.

  "I think that old paint fact'ry exploded, that's what I think. I knocked on your mother's door, but I guess she must be sleepun." His eyes twinkle with what's unsaid: Sleepun it off.

  "I guess she must be," Brady says. He doesn't like the idea that the nosy old cock-knocker did that. Brady Hartsfield's idea of great neighbors would be no neighbors. "Got to go, Mr. Beeson."

  "Tell your mum I said hello."

  He unlocks the door, steps in, and locks it behind him. Scents the air. Nothing. Or . . . maybe not quite nothing. Maybe the tiniest whiff of unpleasantness, like the smell of a chicken carcass that got left a few days too long in the trash under the sink.

  Brady goes up to her room. He turns down the coverlet, exposing her pale face and glaring eyes. He doesn't mind them so much now, and so what if Mr. Beeson's a neb-nose? Brady only needs to keep things together for another few days, so fuck Mr. Beeson. Fuck her glaring eyes, too. He didn't kill her; she killed herself. The way the fat ex-cop was supposed to kill himself, and so what if he didn't? He's gone now, so fuck the fat ex-cop. The Det is definitely Ret. Ret in peace, Detective Hodges.

  "I did it, Mom," he says. "I pulled it off. And you helped. Only in my head, but . . ." Only he's not completely sure of that. Maybe it really was Mom who reminded him to lock the fat ex-cop's car doors again. He wasn't thinking about that at all.

  "Anyway, thanks," he finishes lamely. "Thanks for whatever. And I'm sorry you're dead."

  The eyes glare up at him.

  He reaches for her--tentatively--and uses the tips of his fingers to close her eyes the way people sometimes do in movies. It works for a few seconds, then they roll up like tired old windowshades and the glare resumes. The you-killed-me-honeyboy glare.

  It's a major buzzkill and Brady pulls the coverlet back over her face. He goes downstairs and turns on the TV, thinking at least one of the local stations will be broadcasting from the scene, but none of them are. It's very annoying. Don't they know a car-bomb when one explodes in their faces? Apparently not. Apparently Rachael Ray making her favorite fucking meatloaf is more important.

  He turns off the idiot box and hurries to the control room, saying chaos to light up his computers and darkness to kill the suicide program. He does a shuffling little dance, shaking his fists over his head and singing what he remembers of "Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead," only changing witch to cop. He thinks it will make him feel better, but it doesn't. Between Mr. Beeson's long nose and his mother's glaring eyes, his good feeling--the feeling he worked for, the feeling he deserved--is slipping away.

  Never mind. There's a concert coming up, and he has to be ready for it. He sits at the long worktable. The ball bearings that used to be in his suicide vest are now in three mayonnaise jars. Next to them is a box of Glad food-storage bags, the gallon size. He begins filling them (but not overfilling them) with the steel bearings. The work soothes him, and his good feelings start to come back. Then, just as he's finishing up, a steamboat whistle toots.

  Brady looks up, frowning. That's a special cue he programmed into his Number Three. It sounds when he's got a message on the Blue Umbrella site, but that's impossible. The only person he's been communicating with via the Blue Umbrella is Kermit William Hodges, aka the fat ex-cop, aka the permanently Ret Det.

  He rolls over in his office chair, paddling his feet, and stares at Number Three. The Blue Umbrella icon is now sporting a 1 in a little red circle. He clicks on it. He stares, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, at the message on his screen.

  kermitfrog19 wants to chat with you!

  Do you want to chat with kermitfrog19?

  Y N

  Brady would like to believe this message was sent last night or this mornin
g before Hodges and the blond bimbo left his house, but he can't. He just heard it come in.

  Summoning his courage--because this is much scarier than looking into his dead mother's eyes--he clicks Y and reads.

  Missed me.

  And here's something to remember, asshole: I'm like your side mirror. You know, OBJECTS ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR.

  I know how you got into her Mercedes, and it wasn't the valet key. But you believed me about that, didn't you? Sure you did. Because you're an asshole.

  I've got a list of all the other cars you burglarized between 2007 and 2009.

  I've got other info I don't want to share right now, but here's something I WILL share: it's PERP, not PERK.

  Why am I telling you this? Because I'm no longer going to catch you and turn you in to the cops. Why should I? I'm not a cop anymore.

  I'm going to kill you.

  See you soon, mama's boy.

  Even in his shock and disbelief, it's that last line that Brady's eyes keep returning to.

  He walks to his closet on legs that feel like stilts. Once inside with the door closed, he screams and beats his fists on the shelves. Instead of the nigger family's dog, he managed to kill his own mother. That was bad. Now he's managed to kill someone else instead of the cop, and that's worse. Probably it was the blond bitch. The blond bitch wearing the Det-Ret's hat for some weirdo reason only another blonde could understand.

  One thing he is sure of: this house is no longer safe. Hodges is probably gaming him about being close, but he might not be. He knows about Thing Two. He knows about the car burglaries. He says he knows other stuff, too. And--

  See you soon, mama's boy.

  He has to get out of here. Soon. Something to do first, though.

  Brady goes back upstairs and into his mother's bedroom, barely glancing at the shape under the coverlet. He goes into her bathroom and rummages in the drawers of her vanity until he finds her Lady Schick. Then he goes to work.

  24

  Hodges is in Interrogation Room 4 again--IR4, his lucky room--but this time he's on the wrong side of the table, facing Pete Huntley and Pete's new partner, a stunner with long red hair and eyes of misty gray. The interrogation is collegial, but that doesn't change the basic facts: his car has been blown up and a woman has been killed. Another fact is that an interrogation is an interrogation.