Mr. Mercedes

  Janelle Patterson is waiting for him at the door, just as her sister was on the day of the City Center Massacre, when Hodges and Pete Huntley came to interview her the first time. The resemblance between the two women is enough to give Hodges a powerful sense of deja vu. But as he makes his way down the short hall from the elevator to the apartment doorway (trying to walk rather than lumber), he sees that the differences outweigh the similarities. Patterson has the same light blue eyes and high cheekbones, but where Olivia Trelawney's mouth was tight and pinched, the lips often white with a combination of strain and irritation, Janelle Patterson's seem, even in repose, ready to smile. Or to bestow a kiss. Her lips are shiny with wet-look gloss; they look good enough to eat. And no boatneck tops for this lady. She's wearing a snug turtleneck that cradles a pair of perfectly round breasts. They are not big, those breasts, but as Hodges's dear old father used to say, more than a handful is wasted. Is he looking at the work of good foundation garments or a post-divorce enhancement? Enhancement seems more likely to Hodges. Thanks to her sister, she can afford all the bodywork she wants.

  She extends her hand and gives him a good no-nonsense shake. "Thank you for coming." As if it had been at her request.

  "Glad you could see me," he says, following her in.

  That same kick-ass view of the lake smacks him in the face. He remembers it well, although they had only the one interview with Mrs. T. here; all the others were either at the big house in Sugar Heights or at the station. She had gone into hysterics during one of those station visits, he remembers. Everybody is blaming me, she said. The suicide had come not much later, only a matter of weeks.

  "Would you like coffee, Detective? It's Jamaican. Very tasty, I think."

  Hodges makes it a habit not to drink coffee in the middle of the morning, because doing so usually gives him savage acid reflux in spite of his Zantac. But he agrees.

  He sits in one of the sling chairs by the wide living room window while he waits for her to come back from the kitchen. The day is warm and clear; on the lake, sailboats are zipping and curving like skaters. When she returns he stands up to take the silver tray she's carrying, but Janelle smiles, shakes her head no, and sets it on the low coffee table with a graceful dip of her knees. Almost a curtsey.

  Hodges has considered every possible twist and turn their conversation might take, but his forethought turns out to be irrelevant. It is as if, after carefully planning a seduction, the object of his desire has met him at the door in a shortie nightgown and fuck-me shoes.

  "I want to find out who drove my sister to suicide," she says as she pours their coffee into stout china mugs, "but I didn't know how I should proceed. Your call was like a message from God. After our conversation, I think you're the man for the job."

  Hodges is too dumbfounded to speak.

  She offers him a mug. "If you want cream, you'll have to pour it yourself. When it comes to additives, I take no responsibility."

  "Black is fine."

  She smiles. Her teeth are either perfect or perfectly capped. "A man after my own heart."

  He sips, mostly to buy time, but the coffee is delicious. He clears his throat and says, "As I told you when we talked last night, Mrs. Patterson, I'm no longer a police detective. On November twentieth of last year, I became just another private citizen. We need to have that up front."

  She regards him over the rim of her cup. Hodges wonders if the moist gloss on her lips leaves an imprint, or if lipstick technology has rendered that sort of thing obsolete. It's a crazy thing to be wondering, but she's a pretty lady. Also, he doesn't get out much these days.

  "As far as I'm concerned," Janelle Patterson says, "there are only two words that matter in what you just said. One is private and the other is detective. I want to know who meddled with her, who toyed with her until she killed herself, and nobody in the police department cares. They'd like to catch the man who used her car to kill those people, oh yes, but about my sister--may I be vulgar?--they don't give a shit."

  Hodges may be retired, but he still has his loyalties. "That isn't necessarily true."

  "I understand why you'd say that, Detective--"

  "Mister, please. Just Mr. Hodges. Or Bill, if you like."

  "Bill, then. And it is true. There's a connection between those murders and my sister's suicide, because the man who used the car is also the man who wrote the letter. And those other things. Those Blue Umbrella things."

  Easy, Hodges cautions himself. Don't blow it.

  "What letter are we talking about, Mrs. Patterson?"

  "Janey. If you're Bill, I'm Janey. Wait here. I'll show you."

  She gets up and leaves the room. Hodges's heart is beating hard--much harder than when he took on the trolls beneath the underpass--but he still appreciates that the view of Janey Patterson going away is as good as the one from the front.

  Easy, boy, he tells himself again, and sips more coffee. Philip Marlowe you ain't. His mug is already half empty, and no acid. Not a trace of it. Miracle coffee, he thinks.

  She comes back holding two pieces of paper by the corners and with an expression of distaste. "I found it when I was going through the papers in Ollie's desk. Her lawyer, Mr. Schron, was with me--she named him the executor of her will, so he had to be--but he was in the kitchen, getting himself a glass of water. He never saw this. I hid it." She says it matter-of-factly, with no shame or defiance. "I knew what it was right away. Because of that. The guy left one on the steering wheel of her car. I guess you could call it his calling-card."

  She taps the sunglasses-wearing smile-face partway down the first page of the letter. Hodges has already noted it. He has also noted the letter's font, which he has identified from his own word processing program as American Typewriter.

  "When did you find it?"

  She thinks back, calculating the passage of time. "I came for the funeral, which was near the end of November. I discovered that I was Ollie's sole beneficiary when the will was read. That would have been the first week of December. I asked Mr. Schron if we could put off the inventory of Ollie's assets and possessions until January, because I had some business to take care of back in L.A. He agreed." She looks at Hodges, a level stare from blue eyes with a bright sparkle in them. "The business I had to take care of was divorcing my husband, who was--may I be vulgar again?--a philandering, coke-snorting asshole."

  Hodges has no desire to go down this sidetrack. "You returned to Sugar Heights in January?"

  "Yes."

  "And found the letter then?"

  "Yes."

  "Have the police seen it?" He knows the answer, January was over four months ago, but the question has to be asked.

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "I already told you! Because I don't trust them!" That bright sparkle in her eyes overspills as she begins to cry.

  8

  She asks if he will excuse her. Hodges tells her of course. She disappears, presumably to get control of herself and repair her face. Hodges picks up the letter and reads it, taking small sips of coffee as he does so. The coffee really is delicious. Now, if he just had a cookie or two to go with it . . .

  Dear Olivia Trelawney,

  I hope you will read this letter all the way to the end before throwing it away or burning it up. I know I don't deserve your consideration, but I am begging for it just the same. You see, I am the man who stole your Mercedes and drove it into those people. Now I am burning like you might burn my letter, only with shame and remorse and sorrow.

  Please, please, please give me a chance to explain! I can never have your forgiveness, that's another thing I know, and I don't expect it, but if I can only get you to understand, that would be enough. Will you give me that chance? Please? To the public I am a monster, to the TV news I am just another bloody story to sell commercials, to the police I am just another perk they want to catch and put in jail, but I am also a human being, just as you are. Here is my story.

  I grew up in a physically and sexually abu
sive household. My stepfather was the first, and do you know what happened when my mother found out? She joined the fun! Have you stopped reading yet? I wouldn't blame you, it's disgusting, but I hope you have not, because I have to get this off my chest. I may not be "in the land of the living" much longer, you see, but I cannot end my life without someone knowing WHY I did what I did. Not that I understand it completely myself, but perhaps you, as an "outsider," will.

  Here was Mr. Smiley-Face.

  The sexual abuse went on until my stepfather died of a heart attack when I was 12. My mother said if I ever told, I would be blamed. She said if I showed the healed cigarette burns on my arms and legs and privates, she would tell people I did it myself. I was just a kid and I thought she was telling the truth. She also told me that if people did believe me, she would have to go to jail and I would be put in an orphan home (which was probably true).

  I kept my mouth shut. Sometimes "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't!"

  I never grew very much and I was very thin because I was too nervous to eat and when I did I often threw up (bulimia). Hence and because of this, I was bullied at school. I also developed a bunch of nervous tics, such as picking at my clothes and pulling at my hair (sometimes pulling it out in bunches). This caused me to be laughed at, not just by the other kids but by teachers too.

  Janey Patterson has returned and is once again sitting opposite him, drinking her coffee, but for the moment Hodges barely notices her. He's thinking back to the four or five interviews he and Pete conducted with Mrs. T. He's remembering how she was always straightening the boatneck tops. Or tugging down her skirt. Or touching the corners of her pinched mouth, as if to remove a crumb of lipstick. Or winding a curl of hair around her finger and tugging at it. That too.

  He goes back to the letter.

  I was never a mean kid, Mrs. Trelawney. I swear to you. I never tortured animals or beat up kids that were even smaller than I was. I was just a scurrying little mouse of a kid, trying to get through my childhood without being laughed at or humiliated, but at that I did not succeed.

  I wanted to go to college, but I never did. You see, I ended up taking care of the woman who abused me! It's almost funny, isn't it? Ma had a stroke, possibly because of her drinking. Yes, she is also an alcoholic, or was when she could get to the store to buy her bottles. She can walk a little, but really not much. I have to help her to the toilet and clean her up after she "does her business." I work all day at a low-paying job (probably lucky to have a job at all in this economy, I know) and then come home and take care of her, because having a woman come in for a few hours on weekdays is all I can afford. It is a bad and stupid life. I have no friends and no possibility of advancement where I work. If Society is a beehive, then I am just another drone.

  Finally I began to get angry. I wanted to make someone pay. I wanted to strike back at the world and make the world know I was alive. Can you understand that? Have you ever felt like that? Most likely not as you are wealthy and probably have the best friends money can buy.

  Following this zinger, there's another of those sunglasses-wearing smile-faces, as if to say Just kidding.

  One day it all got to be too much and I did what I did. I didn't plan ahead . . .

  The fuck you didn't, Hodges thinks.

  . . . and I thought the chances were at least 50-50 that I would get caught. I didn't care. And I SURE didn't know how it would haunt me afterward. I still relive the thuds that resulted from hitting them, and I still hear their screams. Then when I saw the news and found out I had even killed a baby, it really came home to me what a terrible thing I had done. I don't know how I live with myself.

  Mrs. Trelawney, why oh why oh why did you leave your key in your ignition? If I had not seen that, walking one early morning because I could not sleep, none of this would have happened. If you hadn't left your key in your ignition, that little baby and her mother would still be alive. I am not blaming you, I'm sure your mind was full of your own problems and anxieties, but I wish things had turned out different and if you had remembered to take your key they would have. I would not be burning in this hell of guilt and remorse.

  You are probably feeling guilt and remorse too, and I am sorry, especially because very soon you will find out how mean people can be. The TV news and the papers will talk about how your carelessness made my terrible act possible. Your friends will stop talking to you. The police will hound you. When you go to the supermarket, people will look at you and then whisper to each other. Some won't be content with just whispering and will "get in your face." I would not be surprised if there was vandalism to your home, so tell your security people (I'm sure you have them) to "watch out."

  I don't suppose you would want to talk to me, would you? Oh, I don't mean face to face, but there is a safe place, safe for both of us, where we could talk using our computers. It's called Under Debbie's Blue Umbrella. I even got you a username if you should want to do this. The username is "otrelaw19."

  I know what an ordinary person would do. An ordinary person would take this letter straight to the police, but let me ask a question. What have they done for you except hound you and cause you sleepless nights? Although here's a thought, if you want me dead, giving this letter to the police is the way to do it, as surely as putting a gun to my head and pulling the trigger, because I will kill myself.

  Crazy as it may seem, you are the only person keeping me alive. Because you are the only one I can talk to. The only one who understands what it is like to be in Hell.

  Now I will wait.

  Mrs. Trelawney, I am so so so SORRY.

  Hodges puts the letter down on the coffee table and says, "Holy shit."

  Janey Patterson nods. "That was pretty much my reaction."

  "He invited her to get in touch with him--"

  Janey gives him an incredulous look. "Invited her? Try blackmailed her. 'Do it or I'll kill myself.'"

  "According to you, she took him up on it. Have you seen any of their communications? Were there maybe printouts along with this letter?"

  She shakes her head. "Ollie told my mother that she'd been chatting with what she called 'a very disturbed man' and trying to get him to seek help because he'd done a terrible thing. My mother was alarmed. She assumed Ollie was talking with the very disturbed man face-to-face, like in the park or a coffee shop or something. You have to remember she's in her late eighties now. She knows about computers, but she's vague on their practical uses. Ollie explained about chat-rooms--or tried to--but I'm not sure how much Mom actually understood. What she remembers is that Ollie said she talked to the very disturbed man underneath a blue umbrella."

  "Did your mother connect the man to the stolen Mercedes and the killings at City Center?"

  "She never said anything that would make me believe so. Her short-term memory's gotten very foggy. If you ask her about the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor, she can tell you exactly when she heard the news on the radio, and probably who the newscaster was. Ask her what she had for breakfast, or even where she is . . ." Janey shrugged. "She might be able to tell you, she might not."

  "And where is she, exactly?"

  "A place called Sunny Acres, about thirty miles from here." She laughs, a rueful sound with no joy in it. "Whenever I hear the name, I think of those old melodramas you see on Turner Classic Movies, where the heroine is declared insane and socked away in some awful drafty madhouse."

  She turns to look out at the lake. Her face has taken on an expression Hodges finds interesting: a bit pensive and a bit defensive. The more he looks at her, the more he likes her looks. The fine lines around her eyes suggest that she's a woman who likes to laugh.

  "I know who I'd be in one of those old movies," she says, still looking out at the boats playing on the water. "The conniving sister who inherits the care of an elderly parent along with a pile of money. The cruel sister who keeps the money but ships the Aged P off to a creepy mansion where the old people get Alpo for dinner and are left to lie
in their own urine all night. But Sunny's not like that. It's actually very nice. Not cheap, either. And Mom asked to go."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah," she says, mocking him with a little wrinkle of her nose. "Do you happen to remember her nurse? Mrs. Greene. Althea Greene."

  Hodges catches himself reaching into his jacket to consult a case notebook that's no longer there. But after a moment's thought he recalls the nurse without it. A tall and stately woman in white who seemed to glide rather than walk. With a mass of marcelled gray hair that made her look a bit like Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein. He and Pete had asked if she'd noticed Mrs. Trelawney's Mercedes parked at the curb when she left on that Thursday night. She had replied she was quite sure she had, which to the team of Hodges and Huntley meant she wasn't sure at all.

  "Yeah, I remember her."

  "She announced her retirement almost as soon as I moved back from Los Angeles. She said that at sixty-four she no longer felt able to deal competently with a patient suffering from such serious disabilities, and she stuck to her guns even after I offered to bring in a nurse's aide--two, if she wanted. I think she was appalled by the publicity that resulted from the City Center Massacre, but if it had been only that, she might have stayed."

  "Your sister's suicide was the final straw?"

  "I'm pretty sure it was. I won't say Althea and Ollie were bosom buddies or anything, but they got on, and they saw eye to eye about Mom's care. Now Sunny's the best thing for her, and Mom's relieved to be there. On her good days, at least. So am I. For one thing, they manage her pain better."

  "If I were to go out and talk to her . . ."

  "She might remember a few things, or she might not." She turns from the lake to look at him directly. "Will you take the job? I checked private detective rates online, and I'm prepared to do considerably better. Five thousand dollars a week, plus expenses. An eight-week minimum."

  Forty thousand for eight weeks' work, Hodges marvels. Maybe he could be Philip Marlowe after all. He imagines himself in a ratty two-room office that gives on the third-floor hallway of a cheap office building. Hiring a va-voom receptionist with a name like Lola or Velma. A tough-talking blonde, of course. He'd wear a trenchcoat and a brown fedora on rainy days, the hat pulled down to one eyebrow.