Mr. Mercedes (48 page)

16. 15. 14.

“Darkness.”

“I think you're too low again,” Hodges says, trying not to sound as nervous as he feels.

12. 11.

Jerome wipes his mouth. “D-darkness.”

“Mushmouth,” Holly observes. Perhaps not helpfully.

8. 7. 6.

“Darkness.”

5.

The countdown disappears. Jerome lets out a gusty sigh of relief. What replaces the numbers is a series of color photographs of men in old-timey Western clothes, shooting and being shot. One has been frozen as he and his horse crash through a plate glass window.

“What kind of screensavers are those?” Jerome asks.

Hodges points at Brady's Number Five. “That's William Holden, so I guess they must be scenes from a movie.”

“The Wild Bunch,”
Holly says. “Directed by Sam Peckinpah. I only watched it once. It gave me nightmares.”

Scenes from a movie, Hodges thinks, looking at the grimaces and gunfire. Also scenes from inside Brady Hartsfield's head. “Now what?”

Jerome says, “Holly, you start at the first one. I'll start at the last one. We'll meet in the middle.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Holly says. “Mr. Hodges, can I smoke in here?”

“Why the hell not?” he says, and goes over to the cellar stairs to sit and watch them work. As he does, he rubs absently at the hollow just below his left collarbone. That annoying pain is back. He must have pulled a muscle running down the street after his car exploded.

29

The air conditioning in the MAC's lobby strikes Brady like a slap, causing his sweaty neck and arms to break out in gooseflesh. The main part of the corridor is empty, because they haven't let in the regular concertgoers yet, but the right side, where there are velvet ropes and a sign reading HANDICAPPED ACCESS, is lined with wheelchairs that are moving slowly toward the checkpoint and the auditorium beyond.

Brady doesn't like how this is playing out.

He had assumed that everyone would smoosh in at the same time, as they had at the Cleveland Indians game he'd gone to when he was eighteen, and the security guys would be overwhelmed, just giving everyone a cursory look and then passing them on. The concert staff letting in the crips and gooniebirds first is something he should have forseen, but didn't.

There are at least a dozen men and women in blue uniforms with brown patches on their shoulders reading MAC SECURITY, and for the time being they have nothing to do but check out the handicapped folks rolling slowly past them. Brady notes with growing coldness that although they're not checking the storage pockets on
all
the wheelchairs, they are indeed checking the pockets on some of them—every third or fourth, and sometimes two in a row. When the crips clear security, ushers dressed in 'Round Here tee-shirts are directing them toward the auditorium's handicapped section.

He always knew he might be stopped at the security checkpoint, but had believed he could still take plenty of 'Round Here's young fans with him if that happened. Another bad assumption. Flying glass might kill a few of those closest to the doors, but their bodies would also serve as a blast-shield.

Shit, he thinks. Still—I only got eight at City Center. I'm bound to do better than that.

He rolls forward, the picture of Frankie in his lap. The edge of the frame rests against the toggle-switch. The minute one of those security goons bends to look into the pockets on the sides of the wheelchair, Brady will press a hand down on the picture, the yellow lamp will turn green, and electricity will flow to the lead azide detonators nestled in the homemade explosive.

There are only a dozen wheelchairs ahead of him. Chilled air blows down on his hot skin. He thinks of City Center, and how the Trelawney bitch's heavy car jounced and rocked as it ran over the people after he hit them and knocked them down. As if it were having an orgasm. He remembers the rubbery air inside the mask, and how he screamed with delight and triumph. Screamed until he was so hoarse he could hardly speak at all and had to tell his mother and Tones Frobisher at DE that he had come down with laryngitis.

Now there's just ten wheelchairs between him and the checkpoint. One of the guards—probably the head honcho, since he's the oldest and the only one wearing a hat—takes a backpack from a young girl who's as bald as Brady himself. He explains something to her, and gives her a claim-check.

They're going to catch me, Brady thinks coldly. They are, so get ready to die.

He
is
ready. Has been for some time now.

Eight wheelchairs between him and the checkpoint. Seven. Six. It's like the countdown on his computers.

Then the singing starts outside, muffled at first.

“The sun, baby, the sun shines when you look at me . . . The moon, baby . . .”

When they hit the chorus, the sound swells to that of a cathedral choir: girls singing at the top of their lungs.

“I WANT TO LOVE YOU MY WAY . . . WE'LL DRIVE THE BEACHSIDE HIGHWAY . . .”

At that moment, the main doors swing open. Some girls cheer; most continue singing, and louder than ever.

“IT'S GONNA BE A NEW DAY . . . I'LL GIVE YOU KISSES ON THE MIDWAY!”

Chicks wearing 'Round Here tops and their first makeup pour in, their parents (mostly mommies) struggling to keep up and stay connected to their brats. The velvet rope between the main part of the corridor and the handicapped zone is knocked over and trampled underfoot. A beefy twelve- or thirteen-year-old with an ass the size of Iowa is shoved into the wheelchair ahead of Brady's, and the girl inside it, who has a cheerfully pretty face and sticks for legs, is almost knocked over.

“Hey, watch it!” the wheelchair-girl's mother shouts, but the fat bitch in the double-wide jeans is already gone, waving a 'Round Here pennant in one hand and her ticket in the other. Someone thumps into Brady's chair, the picture shifts in his lap, and for one cold second he thinks they're all going to go up in a white flash and a hail of steel bearings. When they don't, he raises the picture enough to peer underneath, and sees the ready-lamp is still glowing yellow.

Close one, Brady thinks, and grins.

It's happy confusion in the hallway, and all but one of the security guards who were checking the handicapped concertgoers move to do what they can with this new influx of crazed singing teens and preteens. The one guard who remains on the handicapped side of the corridor is a young woman, and she's waving the wheelchairs through with barely a glance. As Brady approaches her he spots the guy in charge, Hat Honcho, standing on the far side of the corridor almost directly opposite. At six-three or so, he's easy to see, because he towers over the girls, and his eyes never stop moving. In one hand he holds a piece of paper, which he glances down at every now and again.

“Show me your tickets and go,” the security woman says to the pretty wheelchair-girl and her mother. “Righthand door.”

Brady sees something interesting. The tall security guy in the hat grabs a guy of twenty or so who looks to be on his own and pulls him out of the scrum.

“Next!” the security woman calls to him. “Don't hold up the line!”

Brady rolls forward, ready to push Frankie's picture against the toggle-switch on Thing Two if she shows even a passing interest in the pockets of his wheelchair. The corridor is now wall to wall with pushing, singing girls, and his score will be a lot higher than thirty. If the corridor has to do, that will be fine.

The security woman points at the picture. “Who's that, hon?”

“My little boy,” Brady says with a game smile. “He was killed in an accident last year. The same one that left me . . .” He indicates the chair. “He loved 'Round Here, but he never got to hear their new album. Now he will.”

She's harried, but not too harried for sympathy; her eyes soften. “I'm so sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you, ma'am,” Brady says, thinking: You stupid cunt.

“Go straight ahead, sir, then bear to the right. You'll find the two handicapped aisles halfway down the auditorium. Great views. If you need help getting down the ramp—it's pretty steep—look for one of the ushers wearing the yellow armbands.”

“I'll be okay,” Brady says, smiling at her. “Great brakes on this baby.”

“Good for you. Enjoy the show.”

“Thank you, ma'am, I sure will. Frankie will, too.”

Brady rolls toward the main entrance. Back at the security checkpoint, Larry Windom—known to his police colleagues as Romper-Stomper—releases the young man who decided on the spur of the moment to use his kid sister's ticket when she came down with mono. He looks nothing like the creep in the photo Bill Hodges sent him.

The auditorium features stadium seating, which delights Brady. The bowl shape will concentrate the explosion. He can imagine the packets of ball bearings taped under his seat fanning out. If he's lucky, he thinks, he'll get the band as well as half the audience.

Pop music plays from the overhead speakers, but the girls who are filling the seats and choking the aisles drown it out with their own young and fervent voices. Spotlights swing back and forth over the crowd. Frisbees fly. A couple of oversized beachballs bounce around. The only thing that surprises Brady is that there's no sign of the Ferris wheel and all that midway shit onstage. Why did they haul it all in, if they weren't going to use it?

An usher with a yellow armband has just finished placing the pretty girl with the stick legs, and comes up to assist Brady, but Brady waves him off. The usher gives him a grin and a pat on the shoulder as he goes by to help someone else. Brady rolls down to the first of the two sections reserved for the handicapped. He parks next to the pretty girl with the stick legs.

She turns to him with a smile. “Isn't this exciting?”

Brady smiles back, thinking, You don't know the half of it, you crippled bitch.

30

Tanya Robinson is looking at the stage and thinking of the first concert she ever went to—it was the Temps—and how Bobby Wilson kissed her right in the middle of “My Girl.” Very romantic.

She's roused from these thoughts by her daughter, who's shaking her arm. “Look, Mom, there's the crippled man. Over there with the other wheelchair-people.” Barbara points to the left and down a couple of rows. Here the seats have been removed to make room for two ranks of wheelchairs.

“I see him, Barb, but it's not polite to stare.”

“I hope he has a good time, don't you?”

Tanya smiles at her daughter. “I sure do, honey.”

“Can we have our phones back? We need them for the start of the show.”

To take pictures with is what Tanya Robinson assumes . . . because it's been a long time since she's been to a rock show. She opens her purse and doles out the candy-colored phones. For a wonder, the girls just hold them. For the time being, they're too busy goggling around to call or text. Tanya puts a quick kiss on top of Barb's head and then sits back, lost in the past, thinking of Bobby Wilson's kiss. Not quite the first, but the first good one.

She hopes that when the time comes, Barb will be as lucky.

31

“Oh my happy clapping Jesus,” Holly says, and hits her forehead with the heel of her hand. She's finished with Brady's Number One—nothing much there—and has moved on to Number Two.

Jerome looks up from Number Five, which seems to have been exclusively dedicated to video games, most of the
Grand Theft Auto
and
Call of Duty
sort. “What?”

“It's just that every now and then I run across someone even more screwed in the head than me,” she says. “It cheers me up. That's terrible, I know it is, but I can't help it.”

Hodges gets up from the stairs with a grunt and comes over to look. The screen is filled with small photos. They appear to be harmless cheesecake, not much different from the kind he and his friends used to moon over in
Adam
and
Spicy Leg Art
back in the late fifties. Holly enlarges three of them and arranges them in a row. Here is Deborah Hartsfield wearing a filmy robe. And Deborah Hartsfield wearing babydoll pajamas. And Deborah Hartsfield in a frilly pink bra-and-panty set.

“My God, it's his
mother
,” Jerome says. His face is a study in revulsion, amazement, and fascination. “And it looks like she
posed
.”

It looks that way to Hodges, too.

“Yup,” Holly says. “Paging Dr. Freud. Why do you keep rubbing your shoulder, Mr. Hodges?”

“Pulled a muscle,” he says. But he's starting to wonder about that.

Jerome glances at the desktop screen of Number Three, starts to check out the photos of Brady Hartsfield's mother again, then does a double-take. “Whoa,” he says. “Look at this, Bill.”

Sitting in the lower lefthand corner of Number Three's desktop is a Blue Umbrella icon.

“Open it,” Hodges says.

He does, but the file is empty. There's nothing unsent, and as they now know, all old correspondence on Debbie's Blue Umbrella goes straight to data heaven.

Jerome sits down at Number Three. “This must be his go-to glowbox, Hols. Almost got to be.”

She joins him. “I think the other ones are mostly for show—so he can pretend he's on the bridge of the Starship
Enterprise
or something.”

Hodges points to a file marked
2009
. “Let's look at that one.”

A mouse-click discloses a subfile titled CITY CENTER. Jerome opens it and they stare at a long list of stories about what happened there in April of 2009.

“The asshole's press clippings,” Hodges says.

“Go through everything on this one,” Holly tells Jerome. “Start with the hard drive.”

Jerome opens it. “Oh man, look at this shit.” He points to a file titled EXPLOSIVES.