Mr. Mercedes (Unnamed Trilogy #1)(118)

“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.

He eats slowly, thinking of all the times he brought home takeout from the Chicken Coop, and how his mother always asked for a Clucker with double slaw. He has ordered her meal without even thinking about it. This brings tears, and he wipes them away with a paper napkin. Poor Mom!

Sunshine is nice, but its benefits are ephemeral. Brady considers the more lasting benefits darkness will provide. No more listening to Freddi Linklatter’s lesbo-feminist rants. No more listening to Tones Frobisher explain why he can’t go out on service calls because of his RESPONSIBILITY TO THE STORE, when it’s really because he wouldn’t know a hard drive crash if it bit him on the dick. No more feeling his kidneys turning to ice as he drives around in the Mr. Tastey truck in August with the freezers on high. No more whapping the Subaru’s dashboard when the radio cuts out. No more thinking about his mother’s lacy panties and long, long thighs. No more fury at being ignored and taken for granted. No more headaches. And no more sleepless nights, because after today it will be all sleep, all the time.

With no dreams.

When he’s finished his meal (he eats every bite), Brady buses his table, wipes up a splatter of gravy with another napkin, and dumps his trash. The girl at the counter asks him if everything was all right. Brady says it was, wondering how much of the chicken and gravy and biscuits and coleslaw will have a chance to digest before the explosion rips his stomach open and sprays what’s left everywhere.

They’ll remember me, he thinks as he stands at the edge of the highway, waiting for a break in traffic so he can go back to the motel. Highest score ever. I’ll go down in history. He’s glad now that he didn’t kill the fat ex-cop. Hodges should be alive for what’s coming tonight. He should have to remember. He should have to live with it.

Back in the room, he looks at the wheelchair and the explosives-stuffed urine bag lying on the explosives-stuffed ASS PARKING cushion. He wants to get to the MAC early (but not too early; the last thing he wants is to stand out more than he will just by being male and older than thirteen), but there’s still a little time. He’s brought his laptop, not for any particular reason but just out of habit, and now he’s glad. He opens it, connects to the motel’s WiFi, and goes to Debbie’s Blue Umbrella. There he leaves one final message—a kind of insurance policy.

With that attended to, he walks back to the airport’s long-term parking lot and retrieves his Subaru.

19

Hodges and his two apprentice detectives arrive on Harper Road shortly before three-thirty. Holly shoots a cursory glance around, then totes the late Mrs. Hartsfield’s laptop into the kitchen and powers it up. Jerome and Hodges stand by, both hoping there will be no password screen . . . but there is.

“Try her name,” Jerome says.

Holly does. The Mac shakes its screen: no.

“Okay, try Debbie,” Jerome says. “Both the –ie one and the one that ends with an i.”

Holly brushes a clump of mouse-brown hair out of her eyes so he can see her annoyance clearly. “Find something to do, Jerome, okay? I don’t want you looking over my shoulder. I hate that.” She shifts her attention to Hodges. “Can I smoke in here? I hope I can. It helps me think. Cigarettes help me think.”

Hodges gets her a saucer. “Smoking lamp’s lit. Jerome and I will be in my study. Give a holler if you find something.”

Small chance of that, he thinks. Small chance of anything, really.

Holly pays no attention. She’s lighting up. She’s left the revival-preacher voice behind and returned to mumbling. “Hope she left a hint. I have hint-hope. Hint-hope is what Holly has.”