Mr. Mercedes (Unnamed Trilogy #1)(36)
Hodges has no desire to go down this sidetrack. “You returned to Sugar Heights in January?”
“Yes.”
“And found the letter then?”
“Yes.”
“Have the police seen it?” He knows the answer, January was over four months ago, but the question has to be asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I already told you! Because I don’t trust them!” That bright sparkle in her eyes overspills as she begins to cry.
8
She asks if he will excuse her. Hodges tells her of course. She disappears, presumably to get control of herself and repair her face. Hodges picks up the letter and reads it, taking small sips of coffee as he does so. The coffee really is delicious. Now, if he just had a cookie or two to go with it . . .
Dear Olivia Trelawney,
I hope you will read this letter all the way to the end before throwing it away or burning it up. I know I don’t deserve your consideration, but I am begging for it just the same. You see, I am the man who stole your Mercedes and drove it into those people. Now I am burning like you might burn my letter, only with shame and remorse and sorrow.
Please, please, please give me a chance to explain! I can never have your forgiveness, that’s another thing I know, and I don’t expect it, but if I can only get you to understand, that would be enough. Will you give me that chance? Please? To the public I am a monster, to the TV news I am just another bloody story to sell commercials, to the police I am just another perk they want to catch and put in jail, but I am also a human being, just as you are. Here is my story.
I grew up in a physically and sexually abusive household. My stepfather was the first, and do you know what happened when my mother found out? She joined the fun! Have you stopped reading yet? I wouldn’t blame you, it’s disgusting, but I hope you have not, because I have to get this off my chest. I may not be “in the land of the living” much longer, you see, but I cannot end my life without someone knowing WHY I did what I did. Not that I understand it completely myself, but perhaps you, as an “outsider,” will.
Here was Mr. Smiley-Face.
The sexual abuse went on until my stepfather died of a heart attack when I was 12. My mother said if I ever told, I would be blamed. She said if I showed the healed cigarette burns on my arms and legs and privates, she would tell people I did it myself. I was just a kid and I thought she was telling the truth. She also told me that if people did believe me, she would have to go to jail and I would be put in an orphan home (which was probably true).
I kept my mouth shut. Sometimes “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t!”
I never grew very much and I was very thin because I was too nervous to eat and when I did I often threw up (bulimia). Hence and because of this, I was bullied at school. I also developed a bunch of nervous tics, such as picking at my clothes and pulling at my hair (sometimes pulling it out in bunches). This caused me to be laughed at, not just by the other kids but by teachers too.
Janey Patterson has returned and is once again sitting opposite him, drinking her coffee, but for the moment Hodges barely notices her. He’s thinking back to the four or five interviews he and Pete conducted with Mrs. T. He’s remembering how she was always straightening the boatneck tops. Or tugging down her skirt. Or touching the corners of her pinched mouth, as if to remove a crumb of lipstick. Or winding a curl of hair around her finger and tugging at it. That too.
He goes back to the letter.
I was never a mean kid, Mrs. Trelawney. I swear to you. I never tortured animals or beat up kids that were even smaller than I was. I was just a scurrying little mouse of a kid, trying to get through my childhood without being laughed at or humiliated, but at that I did not succeed.
I wanted to go to college, but I never did. You see, I ended up taking care of the woman who abused me! It’s almost funny, isn’t it? Ma had a stroke, possibly because of her drinking. Yes, she is also an alcoholic, or was when she could get to the store to buy her bottles. She can walk a little, but really not much. I have to help her to the toilet and clean her up after she “does her business.” I work all day at a low-paying job (probably lucky to have a job at all in this economy, I know) and then come home and take care of her, because having a woman come in for a few hours on week-days is all I can afford. It is a bad and stupid life. I have no friends and no possibility of advancement where I work. If Society is a bee-hive, then I am just another drone.
Finally I began to get angry. I wanted to make someone pay. I wanted to strike back at the world and make the world know I was alive. Can you understand that? Have you ever felt like that? Most likely not as you are wealthy and probably have the best friends money can buy.
Following this zinger, there’s another of those sunglasses-wearing smile-faces, as if to say Just kidding.
One day it all got to be too much and I did what I did. I didn’t plan ahead . . .
The f**k you didn’t, Hodges thinks.
. . . and I thought the chances were at least 50-50 that I would get caught. I didn’t care. And I SURE didn’t know how it would haunt me afterward. I still relive the thuds that resulted from hitting them, and I still hear their screams. Then when I saw the news and found out I had even killed a baby, it really came home to me what a terrible thing I had done. I don’t know how I live with myself.
Mrs. Trelawney, why oh why oh why did you leave your key in your ignition? If I had not seen that, walking one early morning because I could not sleep, none of this would have happened. If you hadn’t left your key in your ignition, that little baby and her mother would still be alive. I am not blaming you, I’m sure your mind was full of your own problems and anxieties, but I wish things had turned out different and if you had remembered to take your key they would have. I would not be burning in this hell of guilt and remorse.