Mr. Mercedes (Unnamed Trilogy #1)(122)

Hodges turns to see how Holly is taking this, but Holly has left the room. She’s back in the kitchen, sitting in front of Deborah Hartsfield’s laptop and staring at the password screen. Her shoulders are slumped. In the saucer beside her, a cigarette has smoldered down to the filter, leaving a neat roll of ash.

This time he risks touching her. “It’s okay, Holly. The password doesn’t matter because now we’ve got the location. I’m going to get with my old partner in a couple of hours, when this Lowtown thing’s had a chance to settle a bit, and tell him everything. They’ll put out a BOLO on Hartsfield and his car. If they don’t get him before Saturday morning, they’ll get him as he approaches the job fair.”

“Isn’t there anything we can do tonight?”

“I’m thinking about that.” There is one thing, although it’s such a long shot it’s practically a no-shot.

Holly says, “What if you’re wrong about it being the career-day? What if he plans to blow up a movie theater tonight?”

Jerome comes into the room. “It’s Thursday, Hol, and still too early for the big summer pictures. Most screens won’t be playing to even a dozen people.”

“The concert, then,” she says. “Maybe he doesn’t know it’ll be all girls.”

“He’ll know,” Hodges says. “He’s a creature of improvisation, but that doesn’t make him stupid. He’ll have done at least some advance planning.”

“Can I have just a little more time to try and crack her password? Please?”

Hodges glances at his watch. Ten after four. “Sure. Until four-thirty, how’s that?”

A bargaining glint comes into her eyes. “Quarter to five?”

Hodges shakes his head.

Holly sighs. “I’m out of cigarettes, too.”

“Those things will kill you,” Jerome says.

She gives him a flat look. “Yes! That’s part of their charm.”

23

Hodges and Jerome drive down to the little shopping center at the intersection of Harper and Hanover to buy Holly a pack of cigarettes and give her the privacy she clearly wants.

Back in the gray Mercedes, Jerome tosses the Winstons from hand to hand and says, “This car gives me the creeps.”

“Me too,” Hodges admits. “But it didn’t seem to bother Holly, did it? Sensitive as she is.”

“Do you think she’ll be all right? After this is over, I mean.”

A week ago, maybe even two days, Hodges would have said something vague and politically correct, but he and Jerome have been through a lot since then. “For awhile,” he says. “Then . . . no.”

Jerome sighs the way people do when their own dim view of things has been confirmed. “Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“So what now?”

“Now we go back, give Holly her coffin nails, and let her smoke one. Then we pack up the stuff she filched from the Hartsfield house. I drive you two back to the Birch Hill Mall. You return Holly to Sugar Heights in your Wrangler, then go home yourself.”

“And just let Mom and Barb and her friends go to that show.”

Hodges blows out a breath. “If it’ll make you feel easier, tell your mother to pull the plug.”

“If I do that, it all comes out.” Still tossing the cigarettes back and forth. “Everything we’ve been doing today.”

Jerome is a bright boy and Hodges doesn’t need to confirm this. Or remind him that eventually it’s all going to come out anyway.

“What will you do, Bill?”

“Go back to the North Side. Park the Mercedes a block or two away from the Hartsfield place, just to be safe. I’ll return Mrs. Hartsfield’s laptop and billfold, then stake out the house. In case he decides to come back.”

Jerome looks doubtful. “That basement room looked like he made a pretty clean sweep. What are the chances?”

“Slim and none, but it’s all I’ve got. Until I turn this thing over to Pete.”

“You really wanted to make the collar, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Hodges says, and sighs. “Yes I did.”

24

When they come back, Holly’s head is down on the table and hidden in her arms. The deconstructed contents of Deborah Hartsfield’s wallet are an asteroid belt around her. The laptop is still on and still showing the stubborn password screen. According to the clock on the wall, it’s twenty to five.

Hodges is afraid she’ll protest his plan to return her home, but Holly only sits up, opens the fresh pack of cigarettes, and slowly removes one. She’s not crying, but she looks tired and dispirited.

“You did your best,” Jerome says.

“I always do my best, Jerome. And it’s never good enough.”

Hodges picks up the red wallet and starts returning the credit cards to the slots. They’re probably not in the same order Mrs. Hartsfield had them in, but who’s going to notice? Not her.

There are photos in an accordion of transparent envelopes, and he flips through them idly. Here’s Mrs. Hartsfield standing arm-in-arm with a broad-shouldered, burly guy in a blue work coverall—the absent Mr. Hartsfield, perhaps. Here’s Mrs. Hartsfield standing with a bunch of laughing ladies in what appears to be a beauty salon. Here’s one of a chubby little boy holding a fire truck—Brady at age three or four, probably. And one more, a wallet-sized version of the picture in Mrs. Hartsfield’s alcove office: Brady and his mom with their cheeks pressed together.