Mr. Mercedes

  "No sex," she says. "I never felt less sexy in my life. Basically, I just don't want to be alone."

  That's okay with Hodges. He doubts if he would be capable of getting up to dickens, anyway. His stomach and leg muscles are still sore from last night . . . and, he reminds himself, last night she did almost all the work. Once they're beneath the coverlet, she snuggles up to him. He can hardly believe the warmth and firmness of her. The thereness of her. It's true he feels no desire at the moment, but he's glad the old lady had the courtesy to stroke out after he got his ashes hauled rather than before. Not very nice, but there it is. Corinne, his ex, used to say that men were born with a shitty-bone.

  She pillows her head on his shoulder. "I'm so glad you came."

  "Me too." It's the absolute truth.

  "Do you think they know we're in bed together?"

  Hodges considers. "Aunt Charlotte knows, but she'd know even if we weren't."

  "And you can be sure of that because you're a trained--"

  "Right. Go to sleep, Janey."

  She does, but when he wakes up in the early hours of the morning, needing to use the toilet, she's sitting by the window, looking out at the parking lot and crying. He puts a hand on her shoulder.

  She looks up. "I woke you. I'm sorry."

  "Nah, this is my usual three A.M. pee-muster. Are you all right?"

  "Yes. Yeah." She smiles, then wipes at her eyes with her fisted hands, like a child. "Just hating on myself for shipping Mom off to Sunny Acres."

  "But she wanted to go, you said."

  "Yes. She did. It doesn't seem to change how I feel." Janey looks at him, eyes bleak and shining with tears. "Also hating on myself for letting Olivia do all the heavy lifting while I stayed in California."

  "As a trained detective, I deduce you were trying to save your marriage."

  She gives him a wan smile. "You're a good guy, Bill. Go on and use the bathroom."

  When he comes back, she's curled up in bed again. He puts his arms around her and they sleep spoons the rest of the night.

  25

  Early on Sunday morning, before taking her shower, Janey shows him how to use her iPad. Hodges ducks beneath Debbie's Blue Umbrella and finds a new message from Mr. Mercedes. It's short and to the point: I'm going to fuck you up, Grampa.

  "Yeah, but tell me how you really feel," he says, and surprises himself by laughing.

  Janey comes out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, steam billowing around her like a Hollywood special effect. She asks him what he's laughing about. Hodges shows her the message. She doesn't find it so funny.

  "I hope you know what you're doing."

  Hodges hopes so, too. Of one thing he's sure: when he gets back home, he'll take the Glock .40 he carried on the job out of his bedroom safe and start carrying it again. The Happy Slapper is no longer enough.

  The phone next to the double bed warbles. Janey answers, converses briefly, hangs up. "That was Aunt Charlotte. She suggests the Fun Crew meet for breakfast in twenty minutes. I think she's anxious to get to Sugar Heights and start checking the silverware."

  "Okay."

  "She also shared that the bed was much too hard and she had to take an allergy pill because of the foam pillows."

  "Uh-huh. Janey, is Olivia's computer still at the Sugar Heights house?"

  "Sure. In the room she used for her study."

  "Can you lock that room so they can't get in there?"

  She pauses in the act of hooking her bra, for a moment frozen in that pose, elbows back, a female archetype. "Hell with that, I'll just tell them to keep out. I am not going to be intimidated by that woman. And what about Holly? Can you understand anything she says?"

  "I thought she ordered a sneezebagel for dinner," Hodges admits.

  Janey collapses into the chair he awoke to find her crying in last night, only now she's laughing. "Sweetie, you're one bad detective. Which in this sense means good."

  "Once the funeral stuff is over and they're gone--"

  "Thursday at the latest," she says. "If they stay longer, I'll have to kill them."

  "And no jury on earth would convict you. Once they're gone, I want to bring my friend Jerome in to look at that computer. I'd bring him in sooner, but--"

  "They'd be all over him. And me."

  Hodges, thinking of Aunt Charlotte's bright and inquisitive eyes, agrees.

  "Won't the Blue Umbrella stuff be gone? I thought it disappeared every time you left the site."

  "It's not Debbie's Blue Umbrella I'm interested in. It's the ghosts your sister heard in the night."

  26

  As they walk down to the elevator, he asks Janey something that's been troubling him ever since she called yesterday afternoon. "Do you think the questions about Olivia brought on your mother's stroke?"

  She shrugs, looking unhappy. "There's no way to tell. She was very old--at least seven years older than Aunt Charlotte, I think--and the constant pain beat her up pretty badly." Then, reluctantly: "It could have played a part."

  Hodges runs a hand through his hastily combed hair, mussing it again. "Ah, Jesus."

  The elevator dings. They step in. She turns to him and grabs both of his hands. Her voice is swift and urgent. "I'll tell you something, though. If I had to do it over again, I still would. Mom had a long life. Ollie, on the other hand, deserved a few more years. She wasn't terribly happy, but she was doing okay until that bastard got to her. That . . . that cuckoo bird. Stealing her car and using it to kill eight people and hurt I don't know how many more wasn't enough for him, was it? Oh, no. He had to steal her mind."

  "So we push forward."

  "Goddam right we do." Her hands tighten on his. "This is ours, Bill. Do you get that? This is ours."

  He wouldn't have stopped anyway, the bit is in his teeth, but the vehemence of her reply is good to hear.

  The elevator doors open. Holly, Aunt Charlotte, and Uncle Henry are waiting in the lobby. Aunt Charlotte regards them with her inquisitive crow's eyes, probably prospecting for what Hodges's old partner used to call the freshly fucked look. She asks what took them so long, then, without waiting for an answer, tells them that the breakfast buffet looks very thin. If they were hoping for an omelet to order, they're out of luck.

  Hodges thinks that Janey Patterson is in for several very long days.

  27

  Like the day before, Sunday is brilliant and summery. Like the day before, Brady sells out by four, at least two hours before dinnertime approaches and the parks begin emptying. He thinks about calling home and finding out what his mom wants for supper, then decides to grab takeout from Long John Silver's and surprise her. She loves the Langostino Lobster Bites.

  As it turns out, Brady is the one surprised.

  He comes into the house from the garage, and his greeting--Hey, Mom, I'm home!--dies on his lips. This time she's remembered to turn off the stove, but the smell of the meat she charred for her lunch hangs in the air. From the living room there comes a muffled drumming sound and a strange gurgling cry.

  There's a skillet on one of the front burners. He peers into it and sees crumbles of burnt hamburger rising like small volcanic islands from a film of congealed grease. On the counter is a half-empty bottle of Stoli and a jar of mayonnaise, which is all she ever uses to dress her hamburgers.

  The grease-spotted takeout bags drop from his hands. Brady doesn't even notice.

  No, he thinks. It can't be.

  It is, though. He throws open the kitchen refrigerator and there, on the top shelf, is the Baggie of poisoned meat. Only now half of it is gone.

  He stares at it stupidly, thinking, She never checks the mini-fridge in the garage. Never. That's mine.

  This is followed by another thought: How do you know what she checks when you're not here? For all you know she's been through all your drawers and looked under your mattress.

  That gurgling cry comes again. Brady runs for the living room, kicking one of the Long John Silver's bags under the kitchen table and
leaving the refrigerator door open. His mother is sitting bolt upright on the couch. She's in her blue silk lounging pajamas. The shirt is covered with a bib of blood-streaked vomit. Her belly protrudes, straining the buttons; it's the belly of a woman who is seven months pregnant. Her hair stands out from her parchment-pale face in a mad spray. Her nostrils are clotted with blood. Her eyes bulge. She's not seeing him, or so he thinks at first, but then she holds out her hands.

  "Mom! Mom!"

  His initial idea is to thump her on the back, but he looks at the mostly eaten hamburger on the coffee table next to the remains of what must have been a perfectly enormous screwdriver, and knows back-thumps will do no good. The stuff's not lodged in her throat. If only it were.

  The drumming sound he heard when he came in recommences as her feet begin to piston up and down. It's as if she's marching in place. Her back arches. Her arms fly straight up. Now she's simultaneously marching and signaling that the field goal is good. One foot shoots out and kicks the coffee table. Her screwdriver glass falls over.

  "Mom!"

  She throws herself back against the sofa cushions, then forward. Her agonized eyes stare at him. She gurgles a muffled something that might or might not be his name.

  What do you do for poisoning victims? Was it raw eggs? Or Coca-Cola? No, Coke's for upset stomachs, and she's gone far beyond that.

  Have to stick my fingers down her throat, he thinks. Make her gag it up.

  But then her teeth begin doing their own march and he pulls his tentatively extended hand back, pressing the palm over his mouth instead. He sees that she has already bitten her lower lip almost to tatters; that's where the blood on her shirt has come from. Some of it, anyway.

  "Brayvie!" She draws in a hitching breath. What follows is guttural but understandable. "Caw . . . nie . . . wha . . . whan!"

  Call 911.

  He goes to the phone and picks it up before realizing he really can't do that. Think of the unanswerable questions that would ensue. He puts it back down and whirls to her.

  "Why did you go snooping out there, Mom? Why?"

  "Brayvie! Nie-wha-whan!"

  "When did you eat it? How long has it been?"

  Instead of answering, she begins to march again. Her head snaps up and her bulging eyes regard the ceiling for a second or two before her head snaps forward again. Her back doesn't move at all; it's as if her head is mounted on bearings. The gurgling sounds return--the sound of water trying to go down a partially clogged drain. Her mouth yawns and she belches vomit. It lands in her lap with a wet splat, and oh God, it's half blood.

  He thinks of all the times he's wished her dead. But I never wanted it to be like this, he thinks. Never like this.

  An idea lights up his mind like a single bright flare over a stormy ocean. He can find out how to treat her online. Everything's online.

  "I'm going to take care of it," he says, "but I have to go downstairs for a few minutes. You just . . . you hang in there, Mom. Try . . ."

  He almost says Try to relax.

  He runs into the kitchen, toward the door that leads to his control room. Down there he'll find out how to save her. And even if he can't, he won't have to watch her die.

  28

  The word to turn on the lights is control, but although he speaks it three times, the basement remains in darkness. Brady realizes the voice-recognition program isn't working because he doesn't sound like himself, and is it any wonder? Any fucking wonder at all?

  He uses the switch instead and goes down, first shutting the door--and the beastly sounds coming from the living room--behind him.

  He doesn't even try to voice-ac his bank of computers, just turns on his Number Three with the button behind the monitor. The countdown to Total Erasure appears and he stops it by typing in his password. But he doesn't seek out poison antidotes; it's far too late for that, and now that he's sitting here in his safe place, he allows himself to know it.

  He also knows how this happened. She was good yesterday, staying sober long enough to make a nice supper for them, so she rewarded herself today. Got schnockered, then decided she'd better eat a little something to soak up the booze before her honeyboy got home. Didn't find anything in the pantry or the refrigerator that tickled her fancy. Oh but say, what about the mini-fridge in the garage? Soft drinks wouldn't interest her, but perhaps there were snacks. Only what she found was even better, a Baggie filled with nice fresh hamburger.

  It makes Brady think of an old saying--whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. Is that the Peter Principle? He goes online to find out. After some investigation he discovers it's not the Peter Principle but Murphy's Law. Named after a man named Edward Murphy. The guy made aircraft parts. Who knew?

  He surfs a few other sites--actually quite a few--and plays a few hands of solitaire. When there's a particularly loud thump from upstairs, he decides to listen to a few tunes on his iPod. Something cheery. The Staple Singers, maybe.

  And as "Respect Yourself" plays in the middle of his head, he goes on Debbie's Blue Umbrella to see if there's a message from the fat ex-cop.

  29

  When he can put it off no longer, Brady creeps upstairs. Twilight has come. The smell of seared hamburger is almost gone, but the smell of puke is still strong. He goes into the living room. His mother is on the floor next to the coffee table, which is now overturned. Her eyes glare up at the ceiling. Her lips are pulled back in a great big grin. Her hands are claws. She's dead.

  Brady thinks, Why did you have to go out in the garage when you got hungry? Oh Mom, Mommy, what in God's name possessed you?

  Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, he thinks, and then, looking at the mess she's made, he wonders if they have any carpet cleaner.

  This is Hodges's fault. It all leads back to him.

  He'll deal with the old Det-Ret, and soon. Right now, though, he has a more pressing problem. He sits down to consider it, taking the chair he uses on the occasions when he watches TV with her. He realizes she'll never watch another reality show. It's sad . . . but it does have its funny side. He imagines Jeff Probst sending flowers with a card reading From all your Survivor pals, and he just has to chuckle.

  What is he to do with her? The neighbors won't miss her because she never ever had anything to do with them, called them stuck-up. She has no friends, either, not even of the barfly type, because she did all her drinking at home. Once, in a rare moment of self-appraisal, she told him she didn't go out to the bars because they were full of drunks just like her.

  "That's why you didn't taste that shit and stop, isn't it?" he asks the corpse. "You were too fucking loaded."

  He wishes they had a freezer case. If they did, he'd cram her body into it. He saw that in a movie once. He doesn't dare put her in the garage; that seems a little too public, somehow. He supposes he could wrap her in a rug and take her down to the basement, she'd certainly fit under the stairs, but how would he get any work done, knowing she was there? Knowing that, even inside a roll of rug, her eyes were glaring?

  Besides, the basement's his place. His control room.

  In the end he realizes there's only one thing to do. He grabs her under the arms and drags her toward the stairs. By the time he gets her there, her pajama pants have slid down, revealing what she sometimes calls (called, he reminds himself) her winky. Once, when he was in bed with her and she was giving him relief for a particularly bad headache, he tried to touch her winky and she slapped his hand away. Hard. Don't you ever, she had said. That's where you came from.

  Brady pulls her up the stairs, a riser at a time. The pajama pants work down to her ankles and puddle there. He remembers how she did a sit-down march on the couch in her last extremity. How awful. But, like the thing about Jeff Probst sending flowers, it had its funny side, although it wasn't the kind of joke you could explain to people. It was kind of Zen.

  Down the hall. Into her bedroom. He straightens up, wincing at the pain in his lower back. God, she's so heavy. It's as if death has stuffed her wi
th some dense mystery meat.

  Never mind. Get it done.

  He yanks up her pants, making her decent again--as decent as a corpse in vomit-soaked pj's can be--and lifts her onto her bed, groaning as fresh pain settles into his back. When he straightens up this time, he can feel his spine crackling. He thinks about taking off her nightclothes and replacing them with something clean--one of the XL tee-shirts she sometimes wears to bed, maybe--but that would mean more lifting and manipulation of what is now just pounds of silent flesh hanging from bone coathangers. What if he threw his back out?

  He could at least take off her top, that caught most of the mess, but then he'd have to look at her boobs. Those she did let him touch, but only once in awhile. My handsome boy, she'd say on these occasions. Running her fingers through his hair or massaging his neck where the headaches settled, crouched and snarling. My handsome honeyboy.

  In the end he just pulls the bedspread up, covering her entirely. Especially those staring, glaring eyes.

  "Sorry, Mom," he says, looking down at the white shape. "Not your fault."

  No. It's the fat ex-cop's fault. Brady bought the Gopher-Go to poison the dog, true, but only as a way of getting to Hodges and messing with his head. Now it's Brady's head that's a mess. Not to mention the living room. He's got a lot of work to do down there, but he has something else to do first.

  30

  He's got control of himself again and this time his voice commands work. He doesn't waste time, just sits down in front of his Number Three and logs on to Debbie's Blue Umbrella. His message to Hodges is brief and to the point.

  I'm going to kill you.

  You won't see me coming.

  CALL FOR THE DEAD

  1

  On Monday, two days after Elizabeth Wharton's death, Hodges is once more seated in DeMasio's Italian Ristorante. The last time he was here, it was for lunch with his old partner. This time it's dinner. His companions are Jerome Robinson and Janelle Patterson.

  Janey compliments him on his suit, which already fits better even though he's only lost a few pounds (and the Glock he's wearing on his hip hardly shows at all). It's the new hat Jerome likes, a brown fedora Janey bought Hodges on impulse that very day, and presented to him with some ceremony. Because he's a private detective now, she said, and every private dick should have a fedora he can pull down to one eyebrow.