Mr. Mercedes

  "Gotcha," Brady says merrily.

  Goofy smiles to show yes, he's been gotten, but there's a red weal just above his Adam's apple and surprised tears swim in his eyes.

  Goofy and Not Quite So Goofy start away. Goofy looks back over his shoulder. His lower lip is pushed out and now he looks like a third-grader instead of just another preadolescent come-stain who'll be fucking up the halls of Beal Middle School come September.

  "That really hurt," he says, with a kind of wonder.

  Brady's mad at himself. A finger-flick hard enough to bring tears to the kid's eyes means he's telling the straight-up truth. It also means Goofy and Not Quite So Goofy will remember him. Brady can apologize, can even give them free cones to show his sincerity, but then they'll remember that. It's a small thing, but small things mount up and then maybe you have a big thing.

  "Sorry," he says, and means it. "I was just kidding around, son."

  Goofy gives him the finger, and Not Quite So Goofy adds his own middle digit to show solidarity. They go into the comics store, where--if Brady knows boys like these, and he does--they will be invited to either buy or leave after five minutes' browsing.

  They'll remember him. Goofy might even tell his parents, and his parents might lodge a complaint with Loeb's. It's unlikely but not impossible, and whose fault was it that he'd given Goofy Boy's unprotected neck a snap hard enough to leave a mark, instead of just the gentle flick he'd intended? The ex-cop has knocked Brady off-balance. He's making him screw things up, and Brady doesn't like that.

  He starts the ice cream truck's engine. The bells begin bonging a tune from the loudspeaker on the roof. Brady turns left on Hanover Street and resumes his daily round, selling cones and Happy Boys and Pola Bars, spreading sugar on the afternoon and obeying all speed limits.

  9

  Although there are plenty of parking spaces on Lake Avenue after seven P.M.--as Olivia Trelawney well knew--they are few and far between at five in the afternoon, when Hodges and Janey Patterson get back from Sunny Acres. Hodges spots one three or four buildings down, however, and although it's small (the car behind the empty spot has poached a little), he shoehorns the Toyota into it quickly and easily.

  "I'm impressed," Janey says. "I could never have done that. I flunked my driver's test on parallel parking the first two times I went."

  "You must have had a hardass."

  She smiles. "The third time I wore a short skirt, and that did the trick."

  Thinking about how much he'd like to see her in a short skirt--the shorter the better--Hodges says, "There's really no trick to it. If you back toward the curb at a forty-five-degree angle, you can't go wrong. Unless your car's too big, that is. A Toyota's perfect for city parking. Not like a--" He stops.

  "Not like a Mercedes," she finishes. "Come up and have coffee, Bill. I'll even feed the meter."

  "I'll feed it. In fact, I'll max it out. We've got a lot to talk about."

  "You learned some stuff from my mom, didn't you? That's why you were so quiet all the way back."

  "I did, and I'll fill you in, but that's not where the conversation starts." He's looking at her full in the face now, and it's an easy face to look into. Christ, he wishes he were fifteen years younger. Even ten. "I need to be straight with you. I think you're under the impression that I came looking for work, and that's not the case."

  "No," she says. "I think you came because you feel guilty about what happened to my sister. I simply took advantage of you. I'm not sorry, either. You were good with my mother. Kind. Very . . . very gentle."

  She's close, her eyes a darker blue in the afternoon light and very wide. Her lips open as if she has more to say, but he doesn't give her a chance. He kisses her before he can think about how stupid it is, how reckless, and is astounded when she kisses him back, even putting her right hand on the nape of his neck to make their contact a little firmer. It goes on for no more than five seconds, but it seems much longer to Hodges, who hasn't had a kiss like this one in quite awhile.

  She pulls back, brushes a hand through his hair, and says, "I've wanted to do that all afternoon. Now let's go upstairs. I'll make coffee and you make your report."

  But there's no report until much later, and no coffee at all.

  10

  He kisses her again in the elevator. This time her hands link behind his neck, and his travel down past the small of her back to the white pants, snug across her bottom. He is aware of his too-big stomach pressing against her trim one and thinks she must be revolted by it, but when the elevator opens, her cheeks are flushed, her eyes are bright, and she's showing small white teeth in a smile. She takes his hand and pulls him down the short hall between the elevator and the apartment door.

  "Come on," she says. "Come on, we're going to do this, so come on, before one of us gets cold feet."

  It won't be me, Hodges thinks. Every part of him is warm.

  At first she can't open the door because the hand holding the key is shaking too badly. It makes her laugh. He closes his fingers over hers, and together they push the Schlage into the slot.

  The apartment where he first met this woman's sister and mother is shadowy, because the sun has traveled around to the other side of the building. The lake has darkened to a cobalt so deep it's almost purple. There are no sailboats, but he can see a freighter--

  "Come on," she says again. "Come on, Bill, don't quit on me now."

  Then they're in one of the bedrooms. He doesn't know if it's Janey's or the one Olivia used on her Thursday-night stays, and he doesn't care. The life of the last few months--the afternoon TV, the microwave dinners, his father's Smith & Wesson revolver--seems so distant that it might have belonged to a fictional character in a boring foreign movie.

  She tries to pull the striped sailor shirt over her head and it gets caught on the clip in her hair. She gives a frustrated, muffled laugh. "Help me with this damn thing, would you please--"

  He runs his hands up her smooth sides--she gives a tiny jump at his initial touch--and beneath the inside-out shirt. He stretches the fabric and lifts. Her head pops free. She's laughing in little out-of-breath gasps. Her bra is plain white cotton. He holds her by the waist and kisses between her breasts as she unbuckles his belt and pops the button on his slacks. He thinks, If I'd known this could happen at this stage of my life, I would have gotten back to the gym.

  "Why--" he begins.

  "Oh, shut up." She slides a hand down the front of him, pushing the zipper with her palm. His pants fall around his shoes in a jingle of change. "Save the talk for later." She grabs the hardness of him through his underpants and wiggles it like a gearshift, making him gasp. "That's a good start. Don't go limp on me, Bill, don't you dare."

  They fall onto the bed, Hodges still in his boxer shorts, Janey in cotton panties as plain as her bra. He tries to roll her onto her back, but she resists.

  "You're not getting on top of me," she says. "If you have a heart attack while we're screwing, you'll crush me."

  "If I have a heart attack while we're screwing, I'll be the most disappointed man to ever leave this world."

  "Stay still. Just stay still."

  She hooks her thumbs into the sides of his boxers. He cups her hanging breasts as she does it.

  "Now lift your legs. And keep busy. Use your thumbs a little, I like that."

  He's able to obey both of these commands with no trouble; he's always been a multitasker.

  A moment later she's looking down at him, a lock of her hair tumbled over one of her eyes. She sticks out her lower lip and blows it back. "Keep still. Let me do the work. And stay with me. I don't mean to be bossy, but I haven't had sex in two years, and the last I did have sucked. I want to enjoy this. I deserve it."

  The clinging, slippery warmth of her encloses him in a warm hug, and he can't help raising his hips.

  "Stay still, I said. Next time you can move all you want, but this is mine."

  It's difficult, but he does as she says.

  Her hair tumbl
es into her eyes again, and this time she can't use her lower lip to blow it back because she's gnawing at it in little bites he thinks she'll feel later. She spreads both hands and rubs them roughly through the graying hair on his chest, then down to the embarrassing swell of his gut.

  "I need . . . to lose some weight," he gasps.

  "You need to shut up," she says, then moves--just a little--and closes her eyes. "Oh God, that's deep. And nice. You can worry about your diet program later, okay?" She begins to move again, pauses once to readjust the angle, then settles into a rhythm.

  "I don't know how long I can . . ."

  "You better." Her eyes are still closed. "You just better hold out, Detective Hodges. Count prime numbers. Think of the books you liked when you were a kid. Spell xylophone backwards. Just stay with me. I won't need long."

  He stays with her just long enough.

  11

  Sometimes when he's feeling upset, Brady Hartsfield retraces the route of his greatest triumph. It soothes him. On this Friday night he doesn't go home after turning in the ice cream truck and making the obligatory joke or two with Shirley Orton in the front office. He drives his clunker downtown instead, not liking the front-end shimmy or the too-loud blat of the engine. Soon he will have to balance off the cost of a new car (a new used car) against the cost of repairs. And his mother's Honda needs work even more desperately than his Subaru does. Not that she drives the Honda very often these days, and that's good, considering how much of her time she spends in the bag.

  His trip down Memory Lane begins on Lake Avenue, just past the bright lights of downtown, where Mrs. Trelawney always parked her Mercedes on Thursday nights, and wends up Marlborough Street to City Center. Only this evening he gets no farther than the condo. He brakes so suddenly that the car behind almost rear-ends him. The driver hits his horn in a long, outraged blast, but Brady pays no attention. It might as well have been a foghorn on the other side of the lake.

  The driver pulls around him, buzzing down his passenger-side window to yell Asshole at the top of his lungs. Brady pays no attention to that, either.

  There must be thousands of Toyota Corollas in the city, and hundreds of blue Toyota Corollas, but how many blue Toyota Corollas with bumper stickers reading SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL POLICE? Brady is betting there's just one, and what the hell is the fat ex-cop doing in the old lady's condominium apartment? Why is he visiting Mrs. Trelawney's sister, who now lives there?

  The answer seems obvious: Detective Hodges (Ret.) is hunting.

  Brady is no longer interested in reliving last year's triumph. He pulls an illegal (and completely out-of-character) U-turn, now heading for the North Side. Heading for home with a single thought in his head, blinking on and off like a neon sign.

  You bastard. You bastard. You bastard.

  Things are not going the way they are supposed to. Things are slipping out of his control. It's not right.

  Something needs to be done.

  12

  As the stars come out over the lake, Hodges and Janey Patterson sit in the kitchen nook, gobbling takeout Chinese and drinking oolong tea. Janey is wearing a fluffy white bathrobe. Hodges is in his boxers and tee-shirt. When he used the bathroom after making love (she was curled in the middle of the bed, dozing), he got on her scale and was delighted to see he's four pounds lighter than the last time he weighed himself. It's a start.

  "Why me?" Hodges says now. "Don't get me wrong, I feel incredibly lucky--even blessed--but I'm sixty-two and overweight."

  She sips tea. "Well, let's think about that, shall we? In one of the old detective movies Ollie and I used to watch on TV when we were kids, I'd be the greedy vixen, maybe a nightclub cigarette girl, who tries to charm the crusty and cynical private detective with her fair white body. Only I'm not the greedy type--nor do I have to be, considering the fact that I recently inherited several million dollars--and my fair white body has started to sag in several vital places. As you may have noticed."

  He hasn't. What he has noticed is that she hasn't answered his question. So he waits.

  "Not good enough?"

  "Nope."

  Janey rolls her eyes. "I wish I could think of a way to answer you that's gentler than 'Men are very stupid' or more elegant than 'I was horny and wanted to brush away the cobwebs.' I'm not coming up with much, so let's go with those. Plus, I was attracted to you. It's been thirty years since I was a dewy debutante and much too long since I got laid. I'm forty-four, and that allows me to reach for what I want. I don't always get it, but I'm allowed to reach."

  He stares at her, honestly amazed. Forty-four?

  She bursts into laughter. "You know what? That look's the nicest compliment I've had in a long, long time. And the most honest one. Just that stare. So I'm going to push it a little. How old did you think I was?"

  "Maybe forty. At the outside. Which would make me a cradle-robber."

  "Oh, bullshit. If you were the one with the money instead of me, everyone would take the younger-woman thing for granted. In that case, people would take it for granted if you were sleeping with a twenty-five-year-old." She pauses. "Although that would be cradle-robbing, in my humble opinion."

  "Still--"

  "You're old, but not that old, and you're on the heavyweight side, but not that heavy. Although you will be if you keep on the way you're going." She points her fork at him. "That's the kind of honesty a woman can only afford after she's slept with a man and still likes him well enough to eat dinner with him. I said I haven't had sex in two years. That's true, but do you know when I last had sex with a man I actually liked?"

  He shakes his head.

  "Try junior college. And he wasn't a man, he was a second-string tackle with a big red pimple on the end of his nose. He was very sweet, though. Clumsy and far too quick, but sweet. He actually cried on my shoulder afterward."

  "So this wasn't just . . . I don't know . . ."

  "A thank-you fuck? A mercy-fuck? Give me a little credit. And here's a promise." She leans forward, the robe gaping to show the shadowed valley between her breasts. "Lose twenty pounds and I'll risk you on top."

  He can't help laughing.

  "It was great, Bill. I have no regrets, and I have a thing for big guys. The tackle with the pimple on his nose went about two-forty. My ex was a beanpole, and I should have known no good could come of it the first time I saw him. Can we leave it at that?"

  "Yeah."

  "Yeah," she says, smiling, and stands up. "Come on in the living room. It's time for you to make your report."

  13

  He tells her everything except for his long afternoons watching bad TV and flirting with his father's old service revolver. She listens gravely, not interrupting, her eyes seldom leaving his face. When he's done, she gets a bottle of wine out of the fridge and pours them each a glass. They are big glasses, and he looks at his doubtfully.

  "Don't know if I should, Janey. I'm driving."

  "Not tonight you're not. You're staying here. Unless you've got a dog or a cat?"

  Hodges shakes his head.

  "Not even a parrot? In one of those old movies, you'd at least have a parrot in your office that would say rude things to prospective clients."

  "Sure. And you'd be my receptionist. Lola instead of Janey."

  "Or Velma."

  He grins. There's a wavelength, and they're on it.

  She leans forward, once again creating that enticing view. "Profile this guy for me."

  "That was never my job. We had guys who specialized in that. One on the force and two on call from the psych department at the state university."

  "Do it anyway. I Googled you, you know, and it looks to me like you were just about the best the police department had. Commendations up the wazoo."

  "I got lucky a few times."

  It comes out sounding falsely modest, but luck really is a big part of it. Luck, and being ready. Woody Allen was right: eighty percent of success is just showing up.

  "Take a shot, okay? If you d
o a good job, maybe we'll revisit the bedroom." She wrinkles her nose at him. "Unless you're too old for twosies."

  The way he feels right now, he might not be too old for threesies. There have been a lot of celibate nights, which gives him an account to draw on. Or so he hopes. Part of him--a large part--still can't believe this isn't an incredibly detailed dream.

  He sips his wine, rolling it around in his mouth, giving himself time to think. The top of her robe is closed again, which helps him concentrate.

  "Okay. He's probably young, that's the first thing. I'm guessing between twenty and thirty-five. That's partly because of his computer savvy, but not entirely. When an older guy murders a bunch of people, the ones he mostly goes after are family, co-workers, or both. Then he finishes by putting the gun to his own head. You look, you find a reason. A motive. Wife kicked him out, then got a restraining order. Boss downsized him, then humiliated him by having a couple of security guys stand by while he cleaned out his office. Loans overdue. Credit cards maxed out. House underwater. Car repo'd."

  "But what about serial killers? Wasn't that guy in Kansas a middle-aged man?"

  "Dennis Rader, yeah. And he was middle-aged when they bagged him, but only thirty or so when he started. Also, those were sex killings. Mr. Mercedes isn't a sex-killer, and he's not a serial killer in the traditional sense. He started with a bunch, but since then he's settled on individuals--first your sister, now me. And he didn't come after either of us with a gun or a stolen car, did he?"

  "Not yet, anyway," Janey says.

  "Our guy is a hybrid, but he has certain things in common with younger men who kill. He's more like Lee Malvo--one of the Beltway Snipers--than Rader. Malvo and his partner planned to kill six white people a day. Just random killings. Whoever had the bad luck to walk into their gunsights went down. Sex and age didn't matter. They ended up getting ten, not a bad score for a couple of homicidal maniacs. The stated motive was racial, and with John Allen Muhammad--he was Malvo's partner, much older, a kind of father figure--that might have been true, or partially true. I think Malvo's motivation was a lot more complex, a whole stew of things he didn't understand himself. Look closely and you'd probably find sexual confusion and upbringing were major players. I think the same is true with our guy. He's young. He's bright. He's good at fitting in, so good that a lot of his associates don't realize he's basically a loner. When he's caught, they'll all say, 'I can't believe it was so-and-so, he was always so nice.'"