Mr. Mercedes (Unnamed Trilogy #1)(91)
15
Wednesday, June 2, 2010, is warm and cloudless. It may still be spring according to the calendar, and the local schools may still be in session, but those things don’t change the fact that this is a perfect summer day in the heartland of America.
Bill Hodges, suited up but as yet blessedly tieless, is in his study, going over a list of car burglaries Marlo Everett sent him by fax. He has printed out a map of the city, and puts a red dot at each burglary location. He sees shoeleather in his future, maybe a lot of it if Olivia’s computer doesn’t pan out, but it’s just possible that some of the burglary victims will mention seeing a similar vehicle. Because Mr. Mercedes had to watch the owners of his target vehicles. Hodges is sure of it. He had to make sure they were gone before he used his gadget to unlock their cars.
He watched them the way he was watching me, Hodges thinks.
This kicks something over in his mind—a brief spark of association that’s bright but gone before he can see what it’s illuminating. That’s okay; if there’s really something there, it will come back. In the meantime, he keeps on checking addresses and making red dots. He has twenty minutes before he has to noose on his tie and go after Janey.
Brady Hartsfield is in his control room. No headache today, and his thoughts, so often muddled, are as clear as the various Wild Bunch screensavers on his computers. He has removed the blocks of plastic explosive from his suicide vest, disconnecting them carefully from the detonator wires. Some of the blocks have gone into a bright red seat cushion printed with the saucy slogan ASS PARKING. He has slipped two more, re-molded into cylinders with detonator wires attached, down the throat of a bright blue Urinesta peebag. With that accomplished, he carefully attaches a stick-on decal to the peebag. He bought it, along with a souvenir tee-shirt, in the MAC gift shop yesterday. The sticker says ’ROUND HERE FANBOY #1. He checks his watch. Almost nine. The fat ex-cop now has an hour and a half to live. Maybe a little less.
Hodges’s old partner Pete Huntley is in one of the interrogation rooms, not because he has anyone to question but because it’s away from the morning hustle and flow of the squadroom. He has notes to go over. He’s holding a press conference at ten, to talk about the latest dark revelations Donald Davis has made, and he doesn’t want to screw anything up. The City Center killer—Mr. Mercedes—is the furthest thing from his mind.
In Lowtown, behind a certain pawnshop, guns are being bought and sold by people who believe they are not being watched.
Jerome Robinson is at his computer, listening to audio clips available at a website called Sounds Good to Me. He listens to a woman laughing hysterically. He listens to a man whistling “Danny Boy.” He listens to a man gargling and a woman apparently in the throes of an orgasm. Eventually he finds the clip he wants. The title is simple: CRYING BABY.
On the floor below, Jerome’s sister Barbara comes bursting into the kitchen, closely followed by Odell. Barbara is wearing a spangly skirt, clunky blue clogs, and a tee-shirt that shows a foxy teenage boy. Below his brilliant smile and careful coif is the legend I LUV CAM 4EVER! She asks her mother if this outfit looks too babyish to wear to the concert. Her mother (perhaps remembering what she wore to her own first concert) smiles and says it’s perfect. Barbara asks if she can wear her mother’s dangly peace-sign earrings. Yes, of course. Lipstick? Well . . . okay. Eye shadow? No, sorry. Barbara gives a no-harm-in-trying laugh and hugs her mother extravagantly. “I can’t wait until tomorrow night,” she says.
Holly Gibney is in the bathroom of the house in Sugar Heights, wishing she could skip the memorial service, knowing her mother will never let her. If she protests that she doesn’t feel well, her mother’s return serve will be one that goes all the way back to Holly’s childhood: What will people think. And if Holly should protest that it doesn’t matter what people think, they are never going to see any of these people (with the exception of Janey) again in their lives? Her mother would look at her as if Holly were speaking a foreign language. She takes her Lexapro, but her insides knot while she’s brushing her teeth and she vomits it back up. Charlotte calls to ask if she’s almost ready. Holly calls back that she almost is. She flushes the toilet and thinks, At least Janey’s boyfriend will be there. Bill. He’s nice.
Janey Patterson is dressing carefully in her late mother’s condominium apartment: dark hose, black skirt, black jacket over a blouse of deepest midnight blue. She’s thinking of how she told Bill she’d probably fall in love with him if she stayed here. That was a bodacious shading of the truth, because she’s already in love with him. She’s sure a shrink would smile and say it was a daddy thing. If so, Janey would smile right back and tell him that was a load of Freudian bullshit. Her father was a bald accountant who was barely there even when he was there. And one thing you can say about Bill Hodges is that he’s there. It’s what she likes about him. She also likes the hat she bought him. That Philip Marlowe fedora. She checks her watch and sees it’s quarter past nine. He’d better be here soon.
If he’s late, she’ll kill him.
16
He’s not late, and he’s wearing the hat. Janey tells him he looks nice. He tells her she looks better than that. She smiles and kisses him.
“Let’s get this done,” he says.
Janey wrinkles her nose and says, “Yeah.”
They drive to the funeral parlor, where they are once more the first to arrive. Hodges escorts her into the Eternal Rest parlor. She looks around and nods her approval. Programs for the service have been laid out on the seats of the folding chairs. The coffin is gone, replaced by a vaguely altarish table with sprays of spring flowers on it. Brahms, turned down almost too low to hear, is playing through the parlor’s sound system.