Mr. Mercedes Read online

  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.

  "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 ope
n. 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.