Mr. Mercedes (Unnamed Trilogy #1)(115)

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.