Mr. Mercedes (Unnamed Trilogy #1)(110)

Hodges doesn’t want any of them, but he sees two of the three he does want. Anthony Frobisher, he of the John Lennon specs, is talking to a customer who has a shopping basket full of discounted DVDs in one hand and a clutch of coupons in the other. Frobisher’s tie suggests that he might be the store manager as well as a Cyber Patrolman. The narrow-faced girl with the dirty-blond hair is at the back of the store, seated at a computer. There’s a cigarette parked behind one ear.

Hodges strolls up the center aisle of the DVD BLOWOUT. Frobisher looks at him and raises a finger to say Be with you soon. Hodges smiles and gives him a little I’m okay wave. Frobisher returns to the customer with the coupons. No recognition there. Hodges walks on to the back of the store.

The dirty blond looks up at him, then back at the screen of the computer she’s using. No recognition from her, either. She’s not wearing a Discount Electronix shirt; hers says WHEN I WANT MY OPINION, I’LL GIVE IT TO YOU. He sees she’s playing an updated version of Pitfall!, a cruder version of which fascinated his daughter Alison a quarter of a century before. Everything that goes around comes around, Hodges thinks. A Zen concept for sure.

“Unless you’ve got a computer question, talk to Tones,” she says. “I only do crunchers.”

“Tones would be Anthony Frobisher?”

“Yeah. Mr. Spiffy in the tie.”

“You’d be Freddi Linklatter. Of the Cyber Patrol.”

“Yeah.” She pauses Pitfall Harry in mid-jump over a coiled snake in order to give him a closer inspection. What she sees is Hodges’s police ID, with his thumb strategically placed to hide its year of expiration.

“Oooh,” she says, and holds out her hands with the twig-thin wrists together. “I’m a bad, bad girl and handcuffs are what I deserve. Whip me, beat me, make me write bad checks.”

Hodges gives a brief smile and tucks his ID away. “Isn’t Brady Hartsfield the third member of your happy band? I don’t see him.”

“Out with the flu. He says. Want my best guess?”

“Hit me.”

“I think maybe he finally had to put dear old Mom in rehab. He says she drinks and he has to take care of her most of the time. Which is probably why he’s never had a gee-eff. You know what that is, right?”

“I’m pretty sure, yeah.”

She examines him with bright and mordant interest. “Is Brady in trouble? I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s a little on the, you know, peekee-yoolier side.”

“I just need to speak to him.”

Anthony Frobisher—Tones—joins them. “May I help you, sir?”

“It’s five-oh,” Freddi says. She gives Frobisher a wide smile that exposes small teeth badly in need of cleaning. “He found out about the meth lab in the back.”

“Can it, Freddi.”

She makes an extravagant lip-zipping gesture, finishing with the twist of an invisible key, but doesn’t go back to her game.

In Hodges’s pocket, his cell phone rings. He silences it with his thumb.

“I’m Detective Bill Hodges, Mr. Frobisher. I have a few questions for Brady Hartsfield.”

“He’s out with the flu. What did he do?”

“Tones is a poet and don’t know it,” Freddi Linklatter observes. “Although his feet show it, because they’re Longfel—”

“Shut up, Freddi. For the last time.”

“Can I have his address, please?”

“Of course. I’ll get it for you.”

“Can I un-shut for a minute?” Freddi asks.

Hodges nods. She punches a key on her computer. Pitfall Harry is replaced by a spread-sheet headed STORE PERSONNEL.

“Presto,” she says. “Forty-nine Elm Street. That’s on the—”

“North Side, yeah,” Hodges says. “Thank you both. You’ve been very helpful.”

As he leaves, Freddi Linklatter calls after him, “It’s something with his mom, betcha anything. He’s freaky about her.”

9

Hodges has no more than stepped out into the bright sunshine when Jerome almost tackles him. Holly lurks just behind. She’s stopped biting her lips and gone to her fingernails, which look badly abused. “I called you,” Jerome says. “Why didn’t you pick up?”

“I was asking questions. What’s got you all white-eyed?”

“Is Hartsfield in there?”

Hodges is too surprised to reply.

“Oh, it’s him,” Jerome says. “Got to be. You were right about him watching you, and I know how. It’s like that Hawthorne story about the purloined letter. Hide in plain sight.”

Holly stops munching her fingernails long enough to say, “Poe wrote that story. Don’t they teach you kids anything?”

Hodges says, “Slow down, Jerome.”

Jerome takes a deep breath. “He’s got two jobs, Bill. Two. He must only work here until mid-afternoon or something. After that he works for Loeb’s.”

“Loeb’s? Is that the—”

“Yeah, the ice cream company. He drives the Mr. Tastey truck. The one with the bells. I’ve bought stuff from him, my sister has, too. All the kids do. He’s on our side of town a lot. Brady Hartsfield is the ice cream man!”