Mr. Mercedes

  Which is too close to what I'm doing, Hodges thinks.

  The last upstairs room is Brady's. The bed is unmade. The desk is piled helter-skelter with books, most of them science fiction. There's a Terminator poster on the wall, with Schwarzenegger wearing dark glasses and toting a futuristic elephant gun.

  I'll be back, Hodges thinks, looking at it.

  "Jerome? Checking in."

  "The guy from across the street is still scoping us. Holly thinks we should come inside."

  "Not yet."

  "When?"

  "When I'm sure this place is clear."

  Brady has his own bathroom. It's as neat as a GI's footlocker on inspection day. Hodges gives it a cursory glance, then goes back downstairs. There's a small alcove off the living room, with just enough space for a small desk. On it is a laptop. A purse hangs by its strap from the back of the chair. On the wall is a large framed photograph of the woman upstairs and a teenage version of Brady Hartsfield. They're standing on a beach somewhere with their arms around each other and their cheeks pressed together. They're wearing identical million-dollar smiles. It's more girlfriend-boyfriend than mother-son.

  Hodges looks with fascination upon Mr. Mercedes in his salad days. There's nothing in his face that suggests homicidal tendencies, but of course there almost never is. The resemblance between the two of them is faint, mostly in the shape of the noses and the color of the hair. She was a pretty woman, really just short of beautiful, but Hodges is willing to guess that Brady's father didn't have similar good looks. The boy in the photo seems . . . ordinary. A kid you'd pass on the street without a second glance.

  That's probably the way he likes it, Hodges thinks. The Invisible Man.

  He goes back into the kitchen and this time sees a door beside the stove. He opens it and looks at steep stairs descending into darkness. Aware that he makes a perfect silhouette for anyone who might be down there, Hodges moves to one side while he feels for the light switch. He finds it and steps into the doorway again with the gun leveled. He sees a worktable. Beyond it, a waist-high shelf runs the length of the room. On it is a line of computers. It makes him think of Mission Control at Cape Canaveral.

  "Jerome? Checking in."

  Without waiting for an answer, he goes down with the gun in one hand and his phone in the other, perfectly aware of what a grotesque perversion of all established police procedure this is. What if Brady is under the stairs with his own gun, ready to shoot Hodges's feet off at the ankles? Or suppose he's set up a boobytrap? He can do it; this Hodges now knows all too well.

  He strikes no tripwire, and the basement is empty. There's a storage closet, the door standing open, but nothing is stored there. He sees only empty shelves. In one corner is a litter of shoeboxes. They also appear to be empty.

  The message, Hodges thinks, is Brady either killed his mother or came home and found her dead. Either way, he then decamped. If he did have explosives, they were on those closet shelves (possibly in the shoeboxes) and he took them along.

  Hodges goes upstairs. It's time to bring in his new partners. He doesn't want to drag them in deeper than they already are, but there are those computers downstairs. He knows jack shit about computers. "Come around to the back," he says. "The kitchen door is open."

  14

  Holly steps in, sniffs, and says, "Oough. Is that Deborah Hartsfield?"

  "Yes. Try not to think about it. Come downstairs, you guys. I want you to look at something."

  In the basement, Jerome runs a hand over the worktable. "Whatever else he is, he's Mr. Awesomely Neat."

  "Are you going to call the police, Mr. Hodges?" Holly is biting her lips again. "You probably are and I can't stop you, but my mother is going to be so mad at me. Also, it doesn't seem fair, since we're the ones who found out who he is."

  "I haven't decided what I'm going to do," Hodges says, although she's right; it doesn't seem fair at all. "But I'd sure like to know what's on those computers. That might help me make up my mind."

  "He won't be like Olivia," Holly says. "He'll have a good password."

  Jerome picks one of the computers at random (it happens to be Brady's Number Six; not much on that one) and pushes the recessed button on the back of the monitor. It's a Mac, but there's no chime. Brady hates that cheery chime, and has turned it off on all his computers.

  Number Six flashes gray, and the boot-up worry-circle starts going round and round. After five seconds or so, gray turns to blue. This should be the password screen, even Hodges knows that, but instead a large 20 appears on the screen. Then 19, 18, and 17.

  He and Jerome stare at it in perplexity.

  "No, no!" Holly nearly screams it. "Turn it off!"

  When neither of them moves immediately, she darts forward and pushes the power button behind the monitor again, holding it down until the screen goes dark. Then she lets out a breath and actually smiles.

  "Jeepers! That was a close one!"

  "What are you thinking?" Hodges asks. "That they're wired up to explode, or something?"

  "Maybe they only lock up," Holly says, "but I bet it's a suicide program. If the countdown gets to zero, that kind of program scrubs the data. All the data. Maybe just in the one that's on, but in all of them if they're wired together. Which they probably are."

  "So how do you stop it?" Jerome asks. "Keyboard command?"

  "Maybe that. Maybe voice-ac."

  "Voice-what?" Hodges asks.

  "Voice-activated command," Jerome tells him. "Brady says Milk Duds or underwear and the countdown stops."

  Holly giggles through her fingers, then gives Jerome a timid push on the shoulder. "You're silly," she says.

  15

  They sit at the kitchen table with the back door open to let in fresh air. Hodges has an elbow on one of the placemats and his brow cupped in his palm. Jerome and Holly keep quiet, letting him think it through. At last he raises his head.

  "I'm going to call it in. I don't want to, and if it was just between Hartsfield and me, I probably wouldn't. But I've got you two to consider--"

  "Don't do it on my account," Jerome says. "If you see a way to go on, I'll stick with you."

  Of course you will, Hodges thinks. You might think you know what you're risking, but you don't. When you're seventeen, the future is strictly theoretical.

  As for Holly . . . previously he would have said she was a kind of human movie screen, with every thought in her head projected large on her face, but at this moment she's inscrutable.

  "Thanks, Jerome, only . . ." Only this is hard. Letting go is hard, and this will be the second time he has to relinquish Mr. Mercedes.

  But.

  "It's not just us, see? He could have more explosive, and if he uses it on a crowd . . ." He looks directly at Holly. ". . . the way he used your cousin Olivia's Mercedes on a crowd, it would be on me. I won't take that chance."

  Speaking carefully, enunciating each word as if to make up for what has probably been a lifetime of mumbling, Holly says, "No one can catch him but you."

  "Thanks, but no," he says gently. "The police have resources. They'll start by putting a BOLO out on his car, complete with license plate number. I can't do that."

  It sounds good but he doesn't believe it is good. When he's not taking insane risks like the one he took at City Center, Brady's one of the smart ones. He will have stashed the car somewhere--maybe in a downtown parking lot, maybe in one of the airport parking lots, maybe in one of those endless mall parking lots. His ride is no Mercedes-Benz; it's an unobtrusive shit-colored Subaru, and it won't be found today or tomorrow. They might still be looking for it next week. And if they do find it, Brady won't be anywhere near it.

  "No one but you," she insists. "And only with us to help you."

  "Holly--"

  "How can you give up?" she cries at him. She balls one hand into a fist and strikes herself in the middle of the forehead with it, leaving a red mark. "How can you? Janey liked you! She was even sort of your girlfriend! Now she's de
ad! Like the woman upstairs! Both of them, dead!"

  She goes to hit herself again and Jerome takes her hand. "Don't," he says. "Please don't hit yourself. It makes me feel terrible."

  Holly starts to cry. Jerome hugs her clumsily. He's black and she's white, he's seventeen and she's in her forties, but to Hodges Jerome looks like a father comforting his daughter after she came home from school and said no one invited her to the Spring Dance.

  Hodges looks out at the small but neatly kept Hartsfield backyard. He also feels terrible, and not just on Janey's account, although that is bad enough. He feels terrible for the people at City Center. He feels terrible for Janey's sister, whom they refused to believe, who was reviled in the press, and who was then driven to suicide by the man who lived in this house. He even feels terrible about his failure to pay heed to Mrs. Melbourne. He knows that Pete Huntley would let him off the hook on that one, and that makes it worse. Why? Because Pete isn't as good at this job as he, Hodges, still is. Pete never will be, not even on his best day. A good enough guy, and a hard worker, but . . .

  But.

  But but but.

  All that changes nothing. He needs to call it in, even if it feels like dying. When you shove everything else aside, there's just one thing left: Kermit William Hodges is at a dead end. Brady Hartsfield is in the wind. There might be a lead in the computers--something to indicate where he is now, what his plans might be, or both--but Hodges can't access them. Nor can he justify continuing to withhold the name and description of the man who perpetrated the City Center Massacre. Maybe Holly's right, maybe Brady Hartsfield will elude capture and commit some new atrocity, but kermitfrog19 is out of options. The only thing left for him to do is to protect Jerome and Holly if he can. At this point, he may not even be able to manage that. The nosyparker across the street has seen them, after all.

  He steps out on the stoop and opens his Nokia, which he has used more today than in all the time since he retired.

  He thinks Doesn't this just suck, and speed-dials Pete Huntley.

  16

  Pete picks up on the second ring. "Partner!" he shouts exuberantly. There's a babble of voices in the background, and Hodges's first thought is that Pete's in a bar somewhere, half-shot and on his way to totally smashed.

  "Pete, I need to talk to you about--"

  "Yeah, yeah, I'll eat all the crow you want, just not right now. Who called you? Izzy?"

  "Huntley!" someone shouts. "Chief's here in five! With press! Where's the goddam PIO?"

  PIO, Public Information Officer. Pete's not in a bar and not drunk, Hodges thinks. He's just over-the-moon fucking happy.

  "No one called me, Pete. What's going on?"

  "You don't know?" Pete laughs. "Just the biggest armaments bust in this city's history. Maybe the biggest in the history of the USA. Hundreds of M2 and HK91 machine guns, rocket launchers, fucking laser cannons, crates of Lahti L-35s in mint condition, Russian AN-9s still in grease . . . there's enough stuff here to stock two dozen East European militias. And the ammo! Christ! It's stacked two stories high! If the fucking pawnshop had caught on fire, all of Lowtown would have gone up!"

  Sirens. He hears sirens. More shouts. Someone is bawling for someone else to get those sawhorses up.

  "What pawnshop?"

  "King Virtue Pawn & Loan, south of MLK. You know the place?"

  "Yeah . . ."

  "And guess who owns it?" But Pete is far too excited to give him a chance to guess. "Alonzo Moretti! Get it?"

  Hodges doesn't.

  "Moretti is Fabrizio Abbascia's grandson, Bill! Fabby the Nose! Is it starting to come into focus now?"

  At first it still doesn't, because when Pete and Isabelle questioned him, Hodges simply plucked Abbascia's name out of his mental file of old cases where someone might bear him animus . . . and there have been several hundred of those over the years.

  "Pete, King Virtue's black-owned. All the businesses down there are."

  "The fuck it is. Bertonne Lawrence's name is on the sign, but the shop's a lease, Lawrence is a front, and he's spilling his guts. You know the best part? We own part of the bust, because a couple of patrol cops kicked it off a week or so before the ATF was gonna roll these guys up. Every detective in the department is down here. The Chief's on his way, and he's got a press caravan bigger than the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with him. No way are the feds gonna hog this one! No way!" This time his laugh is positively loonlike.

  Every detective in the department, Hodges thinks. Which leaves what for Mr. Mercedes? Bupkes is what.

  "Bill, I gotta go. This . . . man, this is amazing."

  "Sure, but first tell me what it has to do with me."

  "What you said. The car-bomb was revenge. Moretti trying to pay off his grandfather's blood debt. In addition to the rifles, machine guns, grenades, pistols, and other assorted hardware, there's at least four dozen crates of Hendricks Chemicals Detasheet. Do you know what that is?"

  "Rubberized explosive." Now it's coming into focus.

  "Yeah. You set it off with lead azide detonators, and we know already that was the kind that was used to blow the stuff in your car. We haven't got a chem analysis on the explosive itself, but when we do, it'll turn out to be Detasheet. You can count on it. You're one lucky old sonofabitch, Bill."

  "That's right," Hodges says. "I am."

  He can picture the scene outside King Virtue: cops and ATF agents everywhere (probably arguing over jurisdiction already), and more coming all the time. Lowbriar closed off, probably MLK Avenue, too. Crowds of lookie-loos gathering. The Chief of Police and other assorted big boys on their way. The mayor won't miss the chance to make a speech. Plus all those reporters, TV crews, and live broadcast vans. Pete is bullshit with excitement, and is Hodges going to launch into a long and complicated story about the City Center Massacre, and a computer chat-room called Debbie's Blue Umbrella, and a dead mommy who probably drank herself to death, and a fugitive computer repairman?

  No, he decides, I am not.

  What he does is wish Pete good luck and push END.

  17

  When he comes back into the kitchen, Holly is no longer there, but he can hear her. Holly the Mumbler has turned into Holly the Revival Preacher, it seems. Certainly her voice has that special good-God-a'mighty cadence, at least for the moment.

  "I'm with Mr. Hodges and his friend Jerome," she's saying. "They're my friends, Momma. We had a nice lunch together. Now we're seeing some of the sights, and this evening we're going to have a nice supper together. We're talking about Janey. I can do that if I want."

  Even in his confusion over their current situation and his continuing sadness about Janey, Hodges is cheered by the sound of Holly standing up to Aunt Charlotte. He can't be sure it's for the first time, but by the living God, it might be.

  "Who called who?" he asks Jerome, nodding toward her voice.

  "Holly made the call, but it was my idea. She had her phone turned off so her mother couldn't call her. She wouldn't do it until I said her mother might call the cops."

  "So what if I did," Holly is saying now. "It was Olivia's car and it's not like I stole it. I'll be back tonight, Momma. Until then, leave me alone!"

  She comes back into the room looking flushed, defiant, years younger, and actually pretty.

  "You rock, Holly," Jerome says, and holds his hand up for a high-five.

  She ignores this. Her eyes--still snapping--are fixed on Hodges. "If you call the police and I get in trouble, I don't care. But unless you already did, you shouldn't. They can't find him. We can. I know we can."

  Hodges realizes that if catching Mr. Mercedes is more important to anyone on earth than it is to him, that person is Holly Gibney. Maybe for the first time in her life she's doing something that matters. And doing it with others who like and respect her.

  "I'm going to hold on to it a little longer. Mostly because the cops are otherwise occupied this afternoon. The funny part--or maybe I mean the ironic part--is that they think i
t has to do with me."

  "What are you talking about?" Jerome asks.

  Hodges glances at his watch and sees it's twenty past two. They have been here long enough. "Let's go back to my place. I can tell you on the way, and then we can kick this around one more time. If we don't come up with anything, I'll have to call my partner back. I'm not risking another horror show."

  Although the risk is already there, and he can see by their faces that Jerome and Holly know it as well as he does.

  "I went in that little study beside the living room to call my mother," Holly says. "Mrs. Hartsfield's got a laptop. If we're going to your house, I want to bring it."

  "Why?"

  "I may be able to find out how to get into his computers. She might have written down the keyboard prompts or voice-ac password."

  "Holly, that doesn't seem likely. Mentally ill guys like Brady go to great lengths to hide what they are from everyone."

  "I know that," Holly says. "Of course I do. Because I'm mentally ill, and I try to hide it."

  "Hey, Hol, come on." Jerome tries to take her hand. She won't let him. She takes her cigarettes from her pocket instead.

  "I am and I know I am. My mother knows, too, and she keeps an eye on me. She snoops on me. Because she wants to protect me. Mrs. Hartsfield will have been the same. He was her son, after all."

  "If the Linklatter woman at Discount Electronix was right," Hodges says, "Mrs. Hartsfield would have been drunk on her ass a good deal of the time."

  Holly replies, "She could have been a high-functioning drunk. Have you got a better idea?"

  Hodges gives up. "Okay, take the laptop. What the hell."

  "Not yet," she says. "In five minutes. I want to smoke a cigarette. I'll go out on the stoop."

  She goes out. She sits down. She lights up.

  Through the screen door, Hodges calls: "When did you become so assertive, Holly?"

  She doesn't turn around to answer. "I guess when I saw pieces of my cousin burning in the street."

  18

  At quarter to three that afternoon, Brady leaves his Motel 6 room for a breath of fresh air and spies a Chicken Coop on the other side of the highway. He crosses and orders his last meal: a Clucker Delight with extra gravy and coleslaw. The restaurant section is almost deserted, and he takes his tray to a table by the windows so he can sit in the sunshine. Soon there will be no more of that for him, so he might as well enjoy a little while he still can.