Mr. Mercedes (24 page)

“Ninety percent of that letter is white noise, but sure, sex is in it somewhere. Always is. Also anger, aggression, loneliness, feelings of inadequacy . . . but it doesn't do to get lost in stuff like that. It's not profiling, it's analysis. Which was way above my pay-grade even when I had a pay-grade.”

“Okay . . .”

“He's broken,” Hodges says simply. “And evil. Like an apple that looks okay on the outside, but when you cut it open, it's black and full of worms.”

“Evil,” she says, almost sighing the word. Then, to herself rather than him: “Of course he is. He battened on my sister like a vampire.”

“He could have some kind of job where he meets the public, because he's got a fair amount of surface charm. If so, it's probably a low-paying job. He never advances because he's unable to combine his above-average intelligence with long-term concentration. His actions suggest he's a creature of impulse and opportunity. The City Center killings are a perfect example. I think he had his eye on your sister's Mercedes, but I don't think he knew what he was actually going to do with it until just a few days before the job fair. Maybe only a few hours. I just wish I could figure out how he stole it.”

He pauses, thinking that thanks to Jerome, he has a good idea about half of it: the spare key was very likely in the glove compartment all along.

“I think ideas for murder flip through this guy's head as fast as cards in a good dealer's fast shuffle. He's probably thought of blowing up airliners, setting fires, shooting up schoolbuses, poisoning the water system, maybe assassinating the governor or the president.”

“Jesus, Bill!”

“Right now he's fixated on me, and that's good. It will make him easier to catch. It's good for another reason, too.”

“Which is?”

“I'd rather keep him thinking small. Keep him thinking one-on-one. The longer he keeps doing that, the longer it will be before he decides to try putting on another horror show like the one at City Center, maybe on an even grander scale. You know what creeps me out? He's probably already got a list of potential targets.”

“Didn't he say in his letter that he had no urge to do it again?”

He grins. It lights up his whole face. “Yeah, he did. And you know how you tell when guys like this are lying? Their lips are moving. Only in the case of Mr. Mercedes, he's writing letters.”

“Or communicating with his targets on the Blue Umbrella site. Like he did with Ollie.”

“Yeah.”

“If we assume he succeeded with her because she was psychologically fragile . . . forgive me, Bill, but does he have reason to believe he can succeed with you for the same reason?”

He looks at his glass of wine and sees it's empty. He starts to pour himself another half a glass, thinks what that might do to his chances of a successful return engagement in the bedroom, and settles for a small puddle in the bottom instead.

“Bill?”

“Maybe,” he says. “Since my retirement, I've been drifting. But I'm not as lost as your sister . . .” Not anymore, at least. “. . . and that's not the important thing. It's not the take-away from the letters, and from the Blue Umbrella communications.”

“Then what is?”

“
He's been watching
. That's the take-away. It makes him vulnerable. Unfortunately, it also makes him dangerous to my known associates. I don't think he knows I've been talking to you—”

“Quite a bit more than talking,” she says, giving her eyebrows a Groucho waggle.

“—but he knows Olivia had a sister, and we have to assume he knows you're in the city. You need to start being super-careful. Make sure your door is locked when you're here—”

“I always do.”

“—and don't believe what you hear on the lobby intercom. Anyone can say he's from a package service and needs a signature. Visually identify all comers before you open your door. Be aware of your surroundings when you go out.” He leans forward, the splash of wine untouched. He doesn't want it anymore. “Big thing here, Janey. When you
are
out, keep an eye on traffic. Not just driving but when you're on foot. Do you know the term BOLO?”

“Cop-speak for
be on the lookout
.”

“That's it. When you're out, you're going to BOLO any vehicles that seem to keep reappearing in your immediate vicinity.”

“Like that lady's black SUVs,” she says, smiling. “Mrs. Whozewhatsit.”

Mrs. Melbourne. Thinking of her tickles some obscure associational switch in the back of Hodges's mind, but it's gone before he can track it down, let alone scratch it.

Jerome's got to be on the lookout, too. If Mr. Mercedes is cruising Hodges's place, he'll have seen Jerome mowing the lawn, putting on the screens, cleaning out the gutters. Both Jerome and Janey are probably safe, but probably isn't good enough. Mr. Mercedes is a random bundle of homicide, and Hodges has set out on a course of deliberate provocation.

Janey reads his mind. “And yet you're . . . what did you call it? Winding him up.”

“Yeah. And very shortly I'm going to steal some time on your computer and wind him up a little more. I had a message all worked out, but I'm thinking of adding something. My partner got a big solve today, and there's a way I can use that.”

“What was it?”

There's no reason not to tell her; it will be in the papers tomorrow, Sunday at the latest. “Turnpike Joe.”

“The one who kills women at rest stops?” And when he nods: “Does he fit your profile of Mr. Mercedes?”

“Not at all. But there's no reason for our guy to know that.”

“What do you mean to do?”

Hodges tells her.

14

They don't have to wait for the morning paper; the news that Donald Davis, already under suspicion for the murder of his wife, has confessed to the Turnpike Joe killings leads the eleven
P.M.
news. Hodges and Janey watch it in bed. For Hodges, the return engagement has been strenuous but sublimely satisfactory. He's still out of breath, he's sweaty and in need of a shower, but it's been a long, long time since he felt this happy. This
complete
.

When the newscaster moves on to a puppy stuck in a drainpipe, Janey uses the remote to kill the TV. “Okay. It could work. But
God
, is it risky.”

He shrugs. “With no police resources to call on, I see it as my best way forward.” And it's fine with him, because it's the way he
wants
to go forward.

He thinks briefly of the makeshift but very effective weapon he keeps in his dresser drawer, the argyle sock filled with ball bearings. He imagines how satisfying it would be to use the Happy Slapper on the sonofabitch who ran one of the world's heaviest passenger sedans into a crowd of defenseless people. That probably won't happen, but it's possible. In this best (and worst) of all worlds, most things are.

“What did you make of what my mother said at the end? About Olivia hearing ghosts?”

“I need to think about that a little more,” Hodges says, but he's already thought about it, and if he's right, he might have another path to Mr. Mercedes. Given his druthers, he wouldn't involve Jerome Robinson any more than he already has, but if he's going to follow up on old Mrs. Wharton's parting shot, he may have to. He knows half a dozen cops with Jerome's computer savvy and can't call on a single one of them.

Ghosts, he thinks. Ghosts in the machine.

He sits up and swings his feet out onto the floor. “If I'm still invited to stay over, what I need right now is a shower.”

“You are.” She leans over and sniffs at the side of his neck, her hand lightly clamped on his upper arm giving him a pleasurable shiver. “And you certainly do.”

When he's showered and back in his boxers, he asks her to power up her computer. Then, with her sitting beside him and looking on attentively, he slips under Debbie's Blue Umbrella and leaves a message for
merckill
. Fifteen minutes later, and with Janey Patterson nestled next to him, he sleeps . . . and never so well since childhood.

15

When Brady gets home after several hours of aimless cruising, it's late and there's a note on the back door:
Where you been, honeyboy? There's homemade lasagna in the oven.
He only has to look at the unsteady, downslanting script to know she was seriously loaded when she wrote it. He untacks the note and lets himself in.

Usually he checks on her first thing, but he smells smoke and hustles to the kitchen, where a blue haze hangs in the air. Thank God the smoke detector in here is dead (he keeps meaning to replace it and keeps forgetting, too many other fish to fry). Thanks are also due for the powerful stove fan, which has sucked up just enough smoke to keep the rest of the detectors from going off, although they soon will if he can't air the place out. The oven is set at three-fifty. He turns it off. He opens the windows over the sink, then the back door. There's a floor fan in the utility closet where they keep the cleaning supplies. He sets it up facing the runaway stove, and turns it on at the highest setting.

With that done he finally goes into the living room and checks on his mother. She's crashed out on the couch, wearing a housedress that's open up top and rucked to her thighs below, snoring so loudly and steadily she sounds like an idling chainsaw. He averts his eyes and goes back into the kitchen, muttering
fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck
under his breath.

He sits at the table with his head bent, his palms cupping his temples, and his fingers plunged deep into his hair. Why is it that when things go wrong, they have to
keep on
going wrong? He finds himself thinking of the Morton Salt motto: “When it rains it pours.”

After five minutes of airing-out, he risks opening the oven. As he regards the black and smoking lump within, any faint hunger pangs he might have felt when he got home pass away. Washing will not clean that pan; an hour of scouring and a whole box of Brillo pads will not clean that pan; an industrial laser probably wouldn't clean that pan. That pan is a gone goose. It's only luck that he didn't get home to find the fucking fire department here and his mother offering them vodka collinses.

He shuts the oven—he doesn't want to look at that nuclear meltdown—and goes back to look at his mother instead. Even as his eyes are running up and down her bare legs, he's thinking, It would be better if she
did
die. Better for her and better for me.

He goes downstairs, using his voice commands to turn on the lights and his bank of computers. He goes to Number Three, centers the cursor on the Blue Umbrella icon . . . and hesitates. Not because he's afraid there won't be a message from the fat ex-cop but because he's afraid there will be. If so, it won't be anything he wants to read. Not the way things are going. His head is fucked up already, so why fuck it up more?

Except there might be an answer to what the cop was doing at the Lake Avenue condo. Has he been questioning Olivia Trelawney's sister? Probably. At sixty-two, he's surely not boffing her.

Brady clicks the mouse, and sure enough:

kermitfrog19 wants to chat with you!

Do you want to chat with kermitfrog19?

Y N

Brady settles the cursor on
N
and circles the curved back of his mouse with the pad of his index finger. Daring himself to push it and end this thing right here and right now. It's obvious he won't be able to nudge the fat ex-cop into suicide the way he did Mrs. Trelawney, so why not? Isn't that the smart thing?

But he has to know.

More importantly, the Det-Ret doesn't get to win.

He moves the cursor to
Y
, clicks, and the message—quite a long one this time—flashes onto the screen.

If it isn't my false-confessing friend again. I shouldn't even respond, guys like you are a dime a dozen, but as you point out, I'm retired and even talking to a nut is better than Dr. Phil and all those late-night infomercials. One more 30-­minute OxiClean ad and I'll be as crazy as you are, HAHAHA. Also, I owe you thanks for introducing me to this site, which I otherwise would not have found. I have already made 3 new (and non-crazy) friends. One is a lady with a delightfully dirty mouth!!! So OK, my “friend,” let me clue you in.

First, anyone who watches CSI could figure out that the Mercedes Killer was wearing a hairnet and used bleach on the clown mask. I mean, DUH.

Second, if you were really the guy who stole Mrs. Trelawney's Mercedes, you would have mentioned the valet key. That's something you couldn't have figured out from watching CSI. So, at the risk of repeating myself, DUH.

Third (I hope you're taking notes), I got a call from my old partner today. He caught a bad guy, one who specializes in TRUE confessions. Check the news, my friend, and then guess what else this guy's going to confess to in the next week or so.