Mr. Mercedes (Unnamed Trilogy #1)(53)
He waits until the back door shuts, then goes into the parlor to watch her accompany her world-class tits across the street. When she’s out of sight, he goes back to the office, crawls under her desk, and plugs in her computer. She must have yanked the plug so she could vacuum, then forgot to jack it back in.
Her password screen comes on. Idly, just killing time, he types PAULA, and her desktop, loaded with all her files, appears. God, people are so dumb.
He goes on Debbie’s Blue Umbrella to see if the fat ex-cop has posted anything new. He hasn’t, but Brady decides on the spur of the moment to send the Det-Ret a message after all. Why not?
He learned in high school that thinking too long about writing doesn’t work for him. Too many other ideas get into his head and start sliding all over each other. It’s better to just fire away. That was how he wrote to Olivia Trelawney—white heat, baby—and it’s also the way he wrote to Hodges, although he went over the message to the fat ex-cop a couple of times to make sure he was keeping his style consistent.
He writes in the same style now, only reminding himself to keep it short.
How did I know about the hairnet and bleach, Detective Hodges? THAT STUFF was withheld evidence because it was never in the paper or on TV. You say you are not stupid but IT SURE LOOKS THAT WAY TO ME. I think all that TV you watch has rotted your brain.
WHAT withheld evidence?
I DARE YOU TO ANSWER THIS.
Brady looks this over and makes one change: a hyphen in the middle of hairnet. He can’t believe he’ll ever become a person of interest, but he knows that if he ever does, they’ll ask him to provide a writing sample. He almost wishes he could give them one. He wore a mask when he drove into the crowd, and he wears another when he writes as the Mercedes Killer.
He hits SEND, then pulls down Mrs. Rollins’s Internet history. For a moment he stops, bemused, when he sees several entries for White Tie and Tails. He knows what that is from something Freddi Linklatter told him: a male escort service. Paula Rollins has a secret life, it seems.
But then, doesn’t everybody?
It’s no business of his. He deletes his visit to Under Debbie’s Blue Umbrella, then opens his boxy service crate and takes out a bunch of random crap: utility discs, a modem (broken, but she won’t know that), various thumb-drives, and a voltage regulator that has nothing whatsoever to do with computer repair but looks technological. He also takes out a Lee Child paperback that he reads until he hears his client come in the back door twenty minutes later.
When Mrs. Rollins pokes her head into the study, the paperback is out of sight and Brady is packing up the random shit. She favors him with an anxious smile. “Any luck?”
“At first it looked bad,” Brady says, “but I tracked down your problem. The trimmer switch was bad and that shut down your danus circuit. In a case like that, the computer’s programmed not to start up, because if it did, you might lose all your data.” He looks at her gravely. “The darn thing might even catch fire. It’s been known to happen.”
“Oh . . . my . . . dear . . . Jesus,” she says, packing each word with drama and placing one hand high on her chest. “Are you sure it’s okay?”
“Good as gold,” he says. “Check it out.”
He starts the computer and looks politely away while she types in her numbf*ck password. She opens a couple of files, then turns to him, smiling. “Brady, you are a gift from God.”
“My ma used to tell me the same thing until I got old enough to buy beer.”
She laughs as if this were the funniest thing she has heard in her whole life. Brady laughs with her, because he has a sudden vision: kneeling on her shoulders and driving a butcher knife from her own kitchen deep into her screaming mouth.
He can almost feel the gristle giving way.
4
Hodges has been checking the Blue Umbrella site frequently, and he’s reading the Mercedes Killer’s follow-up message only minutes after Brady hit SEND.
Hodges is grinning, a big one that smooths his skin and makes him almost handsome. Their relationship has been officially established: Hodges the fisherman, Mr. Mercedes the fish. But a wily fish, he reminds himself, one capable of making a sudden lunge and snapping the line. He will have to be played carefully, reeled toward the boat slowly. If Hodges is able to do that, if he’s patient, sooner or later Mr. Mercedes will agree to a meeting. Hodges is sure of it.
Because if he can’t nudge me into offing myself, that leaves just one alternative, and that’s murder.
The smart thing for Mr. Mercedes to do would be to just walk away; if he does that, the road ends. But he won’t. He’s pissed, but that’s only part of it, and the small part, at that. Hodges wonders if Mr. Mercedes knows just how crazy he is. And if he knows there’s one nugget of hard information here.
I think all that TV you watch has rotted your brain.
Up to this morning, Hodges has only suspected that Mr. Mercedes has been watching his house; now he knows. Motherf*cker has been on the street, and more than once.
He grabs his legal pad and starts jotting possible follow-up messages. It has to be good, because his fish feels the hook. The pain of it makes him angry even though he doesn’t yet know what it is. He needs to be a lot angrier before he figures it out, and that means taking a risk. Hodges must jerk the line to seat the hook deeper, despite the risk the line may break. What . . . ?