Mr. Mercedes (Unnamed Trilogy #1)(56)
“Is it about the man who took her car?” Janey’s excited. As I should be, Hodges tells himself.
“That’s what I need to find out. Can I call you back?”
“Absolutely. You have my cell number?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah,” she says, gently mocking. It makes him smile, in spite of his nerves. “Call me as soon as you can.”
“I will.”
He breaks the connection, and the phone rings while it’s still in his hand. This time it’s Pete, and he’s more excited than ever.
“Billy! I gotta go back, we’ve got him in an interview room—IR4, as a matter of fact, remember how you always used to say that was your lucky one?—but I had to call you. We got him, partner, we f**king got him!”
“Got who?” Hodges asks, keeping his voice steady. His heartbeat is steady now, too, but the beats are hard enough to feel in his temples: whomp and whomp and whomp.
“Fucking Davis!” Pete shouts. “Who else?”
Davis. Not Mr. Mercedes but Donnie Davis, the camera-friendly wife murderer. Bill Hodges closes his eyes in relief. It’s the wrong emotion to feel, but he feels it nevertheless.
He says, “So the body that game warden found near his cabin turned out to be Sheila Davis’s? You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Who’d you blow to get the DNA results so fast?” When Hodges was on the force, they were lucky to get DNA results within a calendar month of sample submission, and six weeks was the average.
“We don’t need DNA! For the trial, sure, but—”
“What do you mean, you don’t—”
“Shut up and listen, okay? He just walked in off the street and copped to it. No lawyer, no bullshit justifications. Listened to the Miranda and said he didn’t want a lawyer, only wanted to get it off his chest.”
“Jesus. As smooth as he was in all the interviews we had with him? Are you sure he’s not f**king with you? Playing some sort of long game?”
Thinking it’s the kind of thing Mr. Mercedes would try to do if they nailed him. Not just a game but a long game. Isn’t that why he tries to create alternate writing styles in his poison-pen letters?
“Billy, it’s not just his wife. You remember those dollies he had on the side? Girls with big hair and inflated tits and names like Bobbi Sue?”
“Sure. What about them?”
“When this breaks, those young ladies are going to get on their knees and thank God they’re still alive.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Turnpike Joe, Billy! Five women raped and killed at various Interstate rest stops between here and Pennsylvania, starting back in ninety-four and ending in oh-eight! Donnie Davis says it’s him! Davis is Turnpike Joe! He’s giving us times and places and descriptions. It all fits. This . . . it blows my mind!”
“Mine, too,” Hodges says, and he absolutely means it. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks, but I didn’t do anything except show up this morning.” Pete laughs wildly. “I feel like I won the Megabucks.”
Hodges doesn’t feel like that, but at least he hasn’t lost the Megabucks. He still has a case to work.
“I gotta get back in there, Billy, before he changes his mind.”
“Yeah, yeah, but Pete? Before you go?”
“What?”
“Get him a court-appointed.”
“Ah, Billy—”
“I’m serious. Interrogate the shit out of him, but before you start, announce—for the record—that you’re getting him lawyered up. You can wring him dry before anyone shows up at Murrow, but you have to get this right. Are you hearing me?”
“Yeah, okay. That’s a good call. I’ll have Izzy do it.”
“Great. Now get back in there. Nail him down.”
Pete actually crows. Hodges has read about people doing that, but hasn’t ever heard it done—except by roosters—until now. “Turnpike Joe, Billy! Fucking Turnpike Joe! Do you believe it?”
He hangs up before his ex-partner can reply. Hodges sits where he is for almost five minutes, waiting until a belated case of the shakes subsides. Then he calls Janey Patterson.
“It wasn’t about the man we’re looking for?”
“Sorry, no. Another case.”
“Oh. Too bad.”
“Yeah. You’ll still come with me to the nursing home?”
“You bet. I’ll be waiting on the sidewalk.”
Before leaving, he checks the Blue Umbrella site one last time. Nothing there, and he has no intention of sending his own carefully crafted message today. Tonight will be soon enough. Let the fish feel the hook awhile longer.
He leaves his house with no premonition that he won’t be back.
7
Sunny Acres is ritzy. Elizabeth Wharton is not.
She’s in a wheelchair, hunched over in a posture that reminds Hodges of Rodin’s Thinker. Afternoon sunlight slants in through the window, turning her hair into a silver cloud so fine it’s a halo. Outside the window, on a rolling and perfectly manicured lawn, a few golden oldies are playing a slow-motion game of croquet. Mrs. Wharton’s croquet days are over. As are her days of standing up. When Hodges last saw her—with Pete Huntley beside him and Olivia Trelawney sitting next to her—she was bent. Now she’s broken.