Mr. Mercedes: A Novel (8 page)

Mrs. T.’s elderly mother, Elizabeth Wharton, lived in an apartment—a very nice one, with rooms as big as a political candidate’s promises—in an upscale condo cluster on Lake Avenue. The crib had space enough for a live-in housekeeper, and a private nurse came three days a week. Mrs. Wharton had advanced scoliosis, and it was her Oxycontin that her daughter had filched from the apartment’s medicine cabinet when she decided to step out.

Suicide proves guilt. He remembers Lieutenant Morrissey saying that, but Hodges himself has always had his doubts, and lately those doubts have been stronger than ever. What he knows now is that guilt isn’t the only reason people commit suicide.

Sometimes you can just get bored with afternoon TV.

14

Two motor patrol cops found the Mercedes an hour after the killings. It was behind one of the warehouses that cluttered the lakeshore.

The huge paved yard was filled with rusty container boxes that stood around like Easter Island monoliths. The gray Mercedes was parked carelessly askew between two of them. By the time Hodges and Huntley arrived, five police cars were parked in the yard, two drawn up nose-to-nose behind the car’s back bumper, as if the cops expected the big gray sedan to start up by itself, like that old Plymouth in the horror movie, and make a run for it. The fog had thickened into a light rain. The patrol car roofracks lit the droplets in conflicting pulses of blue light.

Hodges and Huntley approached the cluster of motor patrolmen. Pete Huntley spoke with the two who had discovered the car while Hodges did a walk-around. The front end of the SL500 was only slightly crumpled—that famous German engineering—but the hood and the windshield were spattered with gore. A shirtsleeve, now stiffening with blood, was snagged in the grille. This would later be traced to August Odenkirk, one of the victims. There was something else, too. Something that gleamed even in that morning’s pale light. Hodges dropped to one knee for a closer look. He was still in that position when Huntley joined him.

“What the hell is that?” Pete asked.

“I think a wedding ring,” Hodges said.

So it proved. The plain gold band belonged to Francine Reis, thirty-nine, of Squirrel Ridge Road, and was eventually returned to her family. She had to be buried with it on the third finger of her right hand, because the first three fingers of the left had been torn off. The ME guessed this was because she raised it in an instinctive warding-off gesture as the Mercedes came down on her. Two of those fingers were found at the scene of the crime shortly before noon on April tenth. The index finger was never found. Hodges thought that a seagull—one of the big boys that patrolled the lakeshore—might have seized it and carried it away. He preferred that idea to the grisly alternative: that an unhurt City Center survivor had taken it as a souvenir.

Hodges stood up and motioned one of the motor patrolmen over. “We’ve got to get a tarp over this before the rain washes away any—”

“Already on its way,” the cop said, and cocked a thumb at Pete. “First thing he told us.”

“Well aren’t
you
special,” Hodges said in a not-too-bad Church Lady voice, but his partner’s answering smile was as pale as the day. Pete was looking at the blunt, blood-spattered snout of the Mercedes, and at the ring caught in the chrome.

Another cop came over, notebook in hand, open to a page already curling with moisture. His name-tag ID’d him as F. SHAMMINGTON. “Car’s registered to a Mrs. Olivia Ann Trelawney, 729 Lilac Drive. That’s Sugar Heights.”

“Where most good Mercedeses go to sleep when their long day’s work is done,” Hodges said. “Find out if she’s at home, Officer Shammington. If she’s not, see if you can track her down. Can you do that?”

“Yes, sir, absolutely.”

“Just routine, right? A stolen-car inquiry.”

“You got it.”

Hodges turned to Pete. “Front of the cabin. Notice anything?”

“No airbag deployment. He disabled them. Speaks to premeditation.”

“Also speaks to him knowing how to do it. What do you make of the mask?”

Pete peered through the droplets of rain on the driver’s side window, not touching the glass. Lying on the leather driver’s seat was a rubber mask, the kind you pulled over your head. Tufts of orange Bozo-ish hair stuck up above the temples like horns. The nose was a red rubber bulb. Without a head to stretch it, the red-lipped smile had become a sneer.

“Creepy as hell. You ever see that TV movie about the clown in the sewer?”

Hodges shook his head. Later—only weeks before his retirement—he bought a DVD copy of the film, and Pete was right. The mask-face was very close to the face of Pennywise, the clown in the movie.

The two of them walked around the car again, this time noting blood on the tires and rocker panels. A lot of it was going to wash off before the tarp and the techs arrived; it was still forty minutes shy of seven
A.M
.

“Officers!” Hodges called, and when they gathered: “Who’s got a cell phone with a camera?”

They all did. Hodges directed them into a circle around what he was already thinking of as the deathcar—one word, deathcar, just like that—and they began snapping pictures.

Officer Shammington was standing a little apart, talking on his cell phone. Pete beckoned him over. “Do you have an age on the Trelawney woman?”

Shammington consulted his notebook. “DOB on her driver’s license is February third, 1957. Which makes her . . . uh . . .”

“Fifty-two,” Hodges said. He and Pete Huntley had been working together for a dozen years, and by now a lot of things didn’t have to be spoken aloud. Olivia Trelawney was the right sex and age for the Park Rapist, but totally wrong for the role of spree killer. They knew there had been cases of people losing control of their vehicles and accidentally driving into groups of people—only five years ago, in this very city, a man in his eighties, borderline senile, had plowed his Buick Electra into a sidewalk café, killing one and injuring half a dozen others—but Olivia Trelawney didn’t fit that profile, either. Too young.

Plus, there was the mask.

But . . .

But
.

15

The bill comes on a silver tray. Hodges lays his plastic on top of it and sips his coffee while he waits for it to come back. He’s comfortably full, and in the middle of the day that condition usually leaves him ready for a two-hour nap. Not this afternoon. This afternoon he has never felt more awake.

The
but
had been so apparent that neither of them had to say it out loud—not to the motor patrolmen (more arriving all the time, although the goddam tarp never got there until quarter past seven) and not to each other. The doors of the SL500 were locked and the ignition slot was empty. There was no sign of tampering that either detective could see, and later that day the head mechanic from the city’s Mercedes dealership confirmed that.

“How hard would it be for someone to slim-jim a window?” Hodges had asked the mechanic. “Pop the lock that way?”

“All but impossible,” the mechanic had said. “These Mercs are
built
. If someone did manage to do it, it would leave signs.” He had tilted his cap back on his head. “What happened is plain and simple, Officers. She left the key in the ignition and ignored the reminder chime when she got out. Her mind was probably on something else. The thief saw the key and took the car. I mean, he
must
have had the key. How else could he lock the car when he left it?”

“You keep saying
she
,” Pete said. They hadn’t mentioned the owner’s name.

“Hey, come on.” The mechanic smiling a little now. “This is Mrs. Trelawney’s Mercedes. Olivia Trelawney. She bought it at our dealership and we service it every four months, like clockwork. We only service a few twelve-cylinders, and I know them all.” And then, speaking nothing but the utter grisly truth: “This baby’s a tank.”

The killer drove the Benz in between the two container boxes, killed the engine, pulled off his mask, doused it with bleach, and exited the car (the gloves and hairnet probably tucked inside his jacket). Then a final fuck-you as he walked away into the fog: he locked the car with Olivia Ann Trelawney’s smart key.

There was your
but
.

16

She warned us to be quiet because her mother was sleeping, Hodges remembers. Then she gave us coffee and cookies. Sitting in DeMasio’s, he sips the last of his current cup while he waits for his credit card to be returned. He thinks about the living room in that whopper of a condo apartment, with its kick-ass view of the lake.

Along with coffee and cookies, she had given them the wide-eyed
of-course-I-didn’t
look, the one that is the exclusive property of solid citizens who have never been in trouble with the police. Who can’t imagine such a thing. She even said it out loud, when Pete asked if it was possible she had left her ignition key in her car when she parked it on Lake Avenue just a few doors down from her mother’s building.

“Of course I didn’t.” The words had come through a cramped little smile that said
I find your idea silly and more than a bit insulting
.

The waiter returns at last. He puts down the little silver tray, and Hodges slips a ten and a five into his hand before he can straighten up. At DeMasio’s the waiters split tips, a practice of which Hodges strongly disapproves. If that makes him old school, so be it.

“Thank you, sir, and
buon pomeriggio
.”

“Back atcha,” Hodges says. He tucks away his receipt and his Amex, but doesn’t rise immediately. There are some crumbs left on his dessert plate, and he uses his fork to snare them, just as he used to do with his mother’s cakes when he was a little boy. To him those last few crumbs, sucked slowly onto the tongue from between the tines of the fork, always seemed like the sweetest part of the slice.

17

That crucial first interview, only hours after the crime. Coffee and cookies while the mangled bodies of the dead were still being identified. Somewhere relatives were weeping and rending their garments.

Mrs. Trelawney walking into the condo’s front hall, where her handbag sat on an occasional table. She brought the bag back, rummaging, starting to frown, still rummaging, starting to be a little worried. Then smiling. “Here it is,” she said, and handed it over.

The detectives looked at the smart key, Hodges thinking how ordinary it was for something that went with such an expensive car. It was basically a black plastic stick with a lump on the end of it. The lump was stamped with the Mercedes logo on one side. On the other were three buttons. One showed a padlock with its shackle down. On the button beside it, the padlock’s shackle was up. The third button was labeled PANIC. Presumably if a mugger attacked you as you were unlocking your car, you could push that one and the car would start screaming for help.

“I can see why you had a little trouble locating it in your purse,” Pete remarked in his best just-passing-the-time-of-day voice. “Most people put a fob on their keys. My wife has hers on a big plastic daisy.” He smiled fondly as if Maureen were still his wife, and as if that perfectly turned-out fashion plate would ever have been caught dead hauling a plastic daisy out of her purse.

“How nice for her,” Mrs. Trelawney said. “When may I have my car back?”

“That’s not up to us, ma’am,” Hodges said.

She sighed and straightened the boatneck top of her dress. It was the first of dozens of times they saw her do it. “I’ll have to sell it, of course. I’d never be able to drive it after this. It’s so upsetting. To think
my
car . . .” Now that she had her purse in hand, she prospected again and brought out a wad of pastel Kleenex. She dabbed at her eyes with them. “It’s
very
upsetting.”

“I’d like you to take us through it one more time,” Pete said.

She rolled her eyes, which were red-rimmed and bloodshot. “Is that really necessary? I’m exhausted. I was up most of the night with my mother. She couldn’t go to sleep until four. She’s in such pain. I’d like a nap before Mrs. Greene comes in. She’s the nurse.”

Hodges thought, Your car was just used to kill eight people, and only eight if all the others live, and you want a nap. Later he would not be sure if that was when he started to dislike Mrs. Trelawney, but it probably was. When some people were in distress, you wanted to enfold them and say
there-there
as you patted them on the back. With others you wanted to slap them a hard one across the chops and tell them to man up. Or, in Mrs. T.’s case, to woman up.

“We’ll be as quick as we can,” Pete promised. He didn’t tell her that this would be the first of many interviews. By the time they were done with her, she would hear herself telling her story in her sleep.

“Oh, very well, then. I arrived here at my mother’s shortly after seven o’clock on Thursday evening . . .”

She visited at least four times a week, she said, but Thursdays were her night to stay over. She always stopped at B’hai, a very nice vegetarian restaurant located in Birch Hill Mall, and got their dinners, which she warmed up in the oven. (“Although Mother eats very little now, of course. Because of the pain.”) She told them she always scheduled her Thursday trips so she arrived after seven, because that was when the all-night parking began, and most of the streetside spaces were empty. “I won’t parallel park. I simply can’t do it.”

“What about the garage down the block?” Hodges asked.

She looked at him as though he were crazy. “It costs sixteen dollars to park there overnight. The streetside spaces are
free
.”

Pete was still holding the key, although he hadn’t yet told Mrs. Trelawney they would be taking it with them. “You stopped at Birch Hill and ordered takeout for you and your mother at—” He consulted his notebook. “B’hai.”

“No, I ordered ahead. From my house on Lilac Drive. They are always glad to hear from me. I am an old and valued customer. Last night it was kookoo sabzi for Mother—that’s an herbal omelet with spinach and cilantro—and gheymeh for me. Gheymeh is a lovely stew with peas, potatoes, and mushrooms. Very easy on the stomach.” She straightened her boatneck. “I’ve had terrible acid reflux ever since I was in my teens. One learns to live with it.”