Mr. Mercedes (Unnamed Trilogy #1)(114)

“Breaking and entering.”

13

Hodges steps into the Hartsfield kitchen. The smell hits him at once. It’s faint, but it’s there. Holding his cell phone in his left hand and his father’s .38 in the right, Hodges follows his nose first into the living room—empty, although the TV remote and scattering of catalogs on the coffee table makes him think that the couch is Mrs. Hartsfield’s downstairs nest—and then up the stairs. The smell gets stronger as he goes. It’s not a stench yet, but it’s headed in that direction.

There’s a short upstairs hall with one door on the right and two on the left. He clears the righthand room first. It’s guest quarters where no guests have stayed for a long time. It’s as sterile as an operating theater.

He checks in with Jerome again before opening the first door on the left. This is where the smell is coming from. He takes a deep breath and enters fast, crouching until he’s assured himself there’s no one behind the door. He opens the closet—this door is the kind that folds on a center hinge—and shoves back the clothes. No one.

“Jerome? Checking in.”

“Is anyone there?”

Well . . . sort of. The coverlet of the double bed has been pulled up over an unmistakable shape.

“Wait one.”

He looks under the bed and sees nothing but a pair of slippers, a pair of pink sneakers, a single white ankle sock, and a few dust kitties. He pulls the coverlet back and there’s Brady Hartsfield’s mother. Her skin is waxy-pale, with a faint green undertint. Her mouth hangs ajar. Her eyes, dusty and glazed, have settled in their sockets. He lifts an arm, flexes it slightly, lets it drop. Rigor has come and gone.

“Listen, Jerome. I’ve found Mrs. Hartsfield. She’s dead.”

“Oh my God.” Jerome’s usually adult voice cracks on the last word. “What are you—”

“Wait one.”

“You already said that.”

Hodges puts his phone on the night table and draws the coverlet down to Mrs. Hartsfield’s feet. She’s wearing blue silk pajamas. The shirt is stained with what appears to be vomit and some blood, but there’s no visible bullet hole or stab wound. Her face is swollen, yet there are no ligature marks or bruises on her neck. The swelling is just the slow death-march of decomposition. He pulls up her pajama top enough so he can see her belly. Like her face, it’s slightly swollen, but he’s betting that’s gas. He leans close to her mouth, looks inside, and sees what he expected: clotted goop on her tongue and in the gutters between her gums and her cheeks. He’s guessing she got drunk, sicked up her last meal, and went out like a rock star. The blood could be from her throat. Or an aggravated stomach ulcer.

He picks up the phone and says, “He might have poisoned her, but it’s more likely she did it to herself.”

“Booze?”

“Probably. Without a postmortem, there’s no way to tell.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“Sit tight.”

“We still don’t call the police?”

“Not yet.”

“Holly wants to talk to you.”

There’s a moment of dead air, then she’s on the line, and clear as a bell. She sounds calm. Calmer than Jerome, actually.

“Her name is Deborah Hartsfield. The kind of Deborah that ends in an H.”

“Good job. Give the phone back to Jerome.”

A second later Jerome says, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

I don’t, he thinks as he checks the bathroom. I’ve lost my mind and the only way to get it back is to let go of this. You know that.

But he thinks of Janey giving him his new hat—his snappy private eye fedora—and knows he can’t. Won’t.

The bathroom is clean . . . or almost. There’s some hair in the sink. Hodges sees it but doesn’t take note of it. He’s thinking of the crucial difference between accidental death and murder. Murder would be bad, because killing close family members is all too often how a serious nutcase starts his final run. If it was an accident or suicide, there might still be time. Brady could be hunkered down somewhere, trying to decide what to do next.

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.