Mr. Mercedes: A Novel (20 page)

“Oh . . . Brady! Thank God!”

She sounds like a woman being rescued from a desert island after three days without food or water, but he hears the little pause before she says his name and sees her eyes flick down to read it off his shirt, even though he’s been here half a dozen times. (So has Freddi, for that matter; Paula Rollins is a serial computer abuser.) He doesn’t mind that she doesn’t remember him. Brady likes being forgettable.

“It just . . . I don’t know what’s
wrong
!”

As if the dimwitted twat ever does. Last time he was here, six weeks ago, it was a kernel panic, and she was convinced a computer virus had gobbled up all her files. Brady shooed her gently from the office and promised (not sounding too hopeful) to do what he could. Then he sat down, re-started the computer, and surfed for awhile before calling her in and telling her he had been able to fix the problem just in time. Another half hour, he said, and her files really
would
have been gone. She had tipped him eighty dollars. He and Ma had gone out to dinner that night, and split a not-bad bottle of champagne.

“Tell me what happened,” Brady says, grave as a neurosurgeon.

“I didn’t do
anything
,” she wails. She always wails. Many of his service call customers do. Not just the women, either. Nothing can unman a top-shelf executive more rapidly than the possibility that everything on his MacBook just went to data heaven.

She pulls him through the parlor (it’s as long as an Amtrak dining car) and into her office.

“I cleaned up myself, I never let the housekeeper in here—washed the windows, vacuumed the floor—and when I sat down to do my email, the damn computer wouldn’t even
turn on
!”

“Huh. Weird.” Brady knows Mrs. Rollins has a spic maid to do the household chores, but apparently the maid isn’t allowed in the office. Which is a good thing for her, because Brady has already spotted the problem, and if the maid had been responsible for it, she probably would have been fired.

“Can you fix it, Brady?” Thanks to the tears swimming in them, Mrs. Rollins’s big blue eyes are bigger than ever. Brady suddenly flashes on Betty Boop in those old cartoons you can look at on YouTube, thinks
Poop-poop-pe-doop!
, and has to restrain a laugh.

“I’ll sure try,” he says gallantly.

“I have to run across the street to Helen Wilcox’s,” she says, “but I’ll only be a few minutes. There’s fresh coffee in the kitchen, if you want it.”

So saying, she leaves him alone in her big expensive house, with fuck knows how many valuable pieces of jewelry scattered around upstairs. She’s safe, though. Brady would never steal from a service client. He might be caught in the act. Even if he weren’t, who would be the logical suspect? Duh. He didn’t get away with mowing down those job-seeking idiots at City Center only to be arrested for stealing a pair of diamond earrings he wouldn’t have any idea how to get rid of.

He waits until the back door shuts, then goes into the parlor to watch her accompany her world-class tits across the street. When she’s out of sight, he goes back to the office, crawls under her desk, and plugs in her computer. She must have yanked the plug so she could vacuum, then forgot to jack it back in.

Her password screen comes on. Idly, just killing time, he types PAULA, and her desktop, loaded with all her files, appears. God, people are so dumb.

He goes on Debbie’s Blue Umbrella to see if the fat ex-cop has posted anything new. He hasn’t, but Brady decides on the spur of the moment to send the Det-Ret a message after all. Why not?

He learned in high school that thinking too long about writing doesn’t work for him. Too many other ideas get into his head and start sliding all over each other. It’s better to just fire away. That was how he wrote to Olivia Trelawney—white heat, baby—and it’s also the way he wrote to Hodges, although he went over the message to the fat ex-cop a couple of times to make sure he was keeping his style consistent.

He writes in the same style now, only reminding himself to keep it short.

How did I know about the hairnet and bleach, Detective Hodges? THAT STUFF was withheld evidence because it was never in the paper or on TV. You say you are not stupid but IT SURE LOOKS THAT WAY TO ME. I think all that TV you watch has rotted your brain.

WHAT withheld evidence?

I DARE YOU TO ANSWER THIS.

Brady looks this over and makes one change: a hyphen in the middle of
hairnet
. He can’t believe he’ll ever become a person of interest, but he knows that if he ever does, they’ll ask him to provide a writing sample. He almost wishes he could give them one. He wore a mask when he drove into the crowd, and he wears another when he writes as the Mercedes Killer.

He hits SEND, then pulls down Mrs. Rollins’s Internet history. For a moment he stops, bemused, when he sees several entries for White Tie and Tails. He knows what that is from something Freddi Linklatter told him: a male escort service. Paula Rollins has a secret life, it seems.

But then, doesn’t everybody?

It’s no business of his. He deletes his visit to Under Debbie’s Blue Umbrella, then opens his boxy service crate and takes out a bunch of random crap: utility discs, a modem (broken, but she won’t know that), various thumb-drives, and a voltage regulator that has nothing whatsoever to do with computer repair but looks technological. He also takes out a Lee Child paperback that he reads until he hears his client come in the back door twenty minutes later.

When Mrs. Rollins pokes her head into the study, the paperback is out of sight and Brady is packing up the random shit. She favors him with an anxious smile. “Any luck?”

“At first it looked bad,” Brady says, “but I tracked down your problem. The trimmer switch was bad and that shut down your danus circuit. In a case like that, the computer’s programmed not to start up, because if it did, you might lose all your data.” He looks at her gravely. “The darn thing might even catch fire. It’s been known to happen.”

“Oh . . . my . . . dear . . .
Jesus
,” she says, packing each word with drama and placing one hand high on her chest. “Are you sure it’s okay?”

“Good as gold,” he says. “Check it out.”

He starts the computer and looks politely away while she types in her numbfuck password. She opens a couple of files, then turns to him, smiling. “Brady, you are a gift from God.”

“My ma used to tell me the same thing until I got old enough to buy beer.”

She laughs as if this were the funniest thing she has heard in her whole life. Brady laughs with her, because he has a sudden vision: kneeling on her shoulders and driving a butcher knife from her own kitchen deep into her screaming mouth.

He can almost feel the gristle giving way.

4

Hodges has been checking the Blue Umbrella site frequently, and he’s reading the Mercedes Killer’s follow-up message only minutes after Brady hit SEND.

Hodges is grinning, a big one that smooths his skin and makes him almost handsome. Their relationship has been officially established: Hodges the fisherman, Mr. Mercedes the fish. But a
wily
fish, he reminds himself, one capable of making a sudden lunge and snapping the line. He will have to be played carefully, reeled toward the boat slowly. If Hodges is able to do that, if he’s patient, sooner or later Mr. Mercedes will agree to a meeting. Hodges is sure of it.

Because if he can’t nudge me into offing myself, that leaves just one alternative, and that’s murder.

The smart thing for Mr. Mercedes to do would be to just walk away; if he does that, the road ends. But he won’t. He’s pissed, but that’s only part of it, and the small part, at that. Hodges wonders if Mr. Mercedes knows just how crazy he is. And if he knows there’s one nugget of hard information here.

I think all that TV you watch has rotted your brain.

Up to this morning, Hodges has only suspected that Mr. Mercedes has been watching his house; now he knows. Motherfucker has been on the street, and more than once.

He grabs his legal pad and starts jotting possible follow-up messages. It has to be good, because his fish feels the hook. The pain of it makes him angry even though he doesn’t yet know what it is. He needs to be a lot angrier before he figures it out, and that means taking a risk. Hodges must jerk the line to seat the hook deeper, despite the risk the line may break. What . . . ?

He remembers something Pete Huntley said at lunch, just a remark in passing, and the answer comes to him. Hodges writes on his pad, then rewrites, then polishes. He reads the finished message over and decides it will do. It’s short and mean. There’s something you forgot, sucka. Something a false confessor couldn’t know. Or a real confessor, for that matter . . . unless Mr. Mercedes checked out his rolling murder weapon from stem to stern before climbing in, and Hodges is betting the guy didn’t.

If he’s wrong, the line snaps and the fish swims away. But there’s an old saying: no risk, no reward.

He wants to send the message right away, but knows it’s a bad idea. Let the fish swim around in circles a little longer with that bad old hook in his mouth. The question is what to do in the meantime. TV never had less appeal for him.

He gets an idea—they’re coming in bunches this morning—and pulls out the bottom drawer of his desk. Here is a box filled with the small flip-up pads he used to carry with him when he and Pete were doing street interviews. He never expected to need one of these again, but he takes one now and stows it in the back pocket of his chinos.

It fits just right.

5

Hodges walks halfway down Harper Road, then starts knocking on doors, just like in the old days. Crossing and re-crossing the street, missing no one, working his way back. It’s a weekday, but a surprising number of people answer his knock or ring. Some are stay-at-home moms, but many are retirees like himself, fortunate enough to have paid for their homes before the bottom fell out of the economy, but in less than great shape otherwise. Not living day-to-day or even week-to-week, maybe, but having to balance out the cost of food against the cost of all those old-folks medicines as the end of the month nears.

His story is simple, because simple is always best. He says there have been break-ins a few blocks over—kids, probably—and he’s checking to see if anyone in his own neighborhood has noticed any vehicles that seem out of place, and have shown up more than once. They’d probably be cruising even slower than the twenty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit, he says. He doesn’t have to say any more; they all watch the cop shows and know what “casing the joint” means.

He shows them his ID, which has RETIRED stamped in red across the name and vitals below his photo. He’s careful to say that no, he hasn’t been asked by the police to do this canvassing (the last thing in the world he wants is one of his neighbors calling the Murrow Building downtown to check up on him), it was his own idea. He lives in the neighborhood, too, after all, and has a personal stake in its security.

Mrs. Melbourne, the widow whose flowers so fascinated Odell, invites him in for coffee and cookies. Hodges takes her up on it because she seems lonely. It’s his first real conversation with her, and he quickly realizes she’s eccentric at best, downright bonkers at worst. Articulate, though. He has to give her that. She explains about the black SUVs she’s observed (“With tinted windows you can’t see through, just like on
24
”), and tells him about their special antennas. Whippers, she calls them, waving her hand back and forth to demonstrate.

“Uh-huh,” Hodges says. “Let me make a note of that.” He turns a page in his pad and jots
I have to get out of here
on the new one.

“That’s a good idea,” she says, bright-eyed. “I’ve just got to tell you how sorry I was when your wife left you, Detective Hodges. She did, didn’t she?”

“We agreed to disagree,” Hodges says with an amiability he doesn’t feel.

“It’s so nice to meet you in person and know you’re keeping an eye out. Have another cookie.”

Hodges glances at his watch, snaps his pad closed, and gets up. “I’d love to, but I’d better roll. Got a noon appointment.”

She scans his bulk and says, “Doctor?”

“Chiropractor.”

She frowns, transforming her face into a walnut shell with eyes. “Think that over, Detective Hodges. Back-crackers are dangerous. There are people who have lain down on those tables and never walked again.”

She sees him to the door. As he steps onto the porch, she says, “I’d check on that ice cream man, too. This spring it seems like he’s
always
around. Do you suppose Loeb’s Ice Cream checks out the people they hire to drive those little trucks? I hope so, because that one looks suspicious. He might be a peedaroast.”

“I’m sure their drivers have references, but I’ll look into it.”

“Another good idea!” she exclaims.

Hodges wonders what he’d do if she produced a long hook, like in the old-time vaudeville shows, and tried to yank him back inside. A childhood memory comes to him: the witch in
Hansel and Gretel
.

“Also—I just thought of this—I’ve seen several vans lately. They
look
like delivery vans—they have business names on them—but anyone can make up a business name, don’t you think?”

“It’s always possible,” Hodges says, descending the steps.

“You should call in to number seventeen, too.” She points down the hill. “It’s almost all the way down to Hanover Street. They have people who come late, and play loud music.” She sways forward in the doorway, almost bowing. “It could be a dope den. One of those crack houses.”

Hodges thanks her for the tip and trudges across the street. Black SUVs and the Mr. Tastey guy, he thinks. Plus the delivery vans filled with Al Qaeda terrorists.

Across the street he finds a stay-at-home dad, Alan Bowfinger by name. “Just don’t confuse me with Goldfinger,” he says, and invites Hodges to sit in one of the lawn chairs on the left side of his house, where there’s shade. Hodges is happy to take him up on this.