Mr. Mercedes (Unnamed Trilogy #1)(96)

He unlocks the door, steps in, and locks it behind him. Scents the air. Nothing. Or . . . maybe not quite nothing. Maybe the tiniest whiff of unpleasantness, like the smell of a chicken carcass that got left a few days too long in the trash under the sink.

Brady goes up to her room. He turns down the coverlet, exposing her pale face and glaring eyes. He doesn’t mind them so much now, and so what if Mr. Beeson’s a neb-nose? Brady only needs to keep things together for another few days, so f**k Mr. Beeson. Fuck her glaring eyes, too. He didn’t kill her; she killed herself. The way the fat ex-cop was supposed to kill himself, and so what if he didn’t? He’s gone now, so f**k the fat ex-cop. The Det is definitely Ret. Ret in peace, Detective Hodges.

“I did it, Mom,” he says. “I pulled it off. And you helped. Only in my head, but . . .” Only he’s not completely sure of that. Maybe it really was Mom who reminded him to lock the fat ex-cop’s car doors again. He wasn’t thinking about that at all.

“Anyway, thanks,” he finishes lamely. “Thanks for whatever. And I’m sorry you’re dead.”

The eyes glare up at him.

He reaches for her—tentatively—and uses the tips of his fingers to close her eyes the way people sometimes do in movies. It works for a few seconds, then they roll up like tired old windowshades and the glare resumes. The you-killed-me-honeyboy glare.

It’s a major buzzkill and Brady pulls the coverlet back over her face. He goes downstairs and turns on the TV, thinking at least one of the local stations will be broadcasting from the scene, but none of them are. It’s very annoying. Don’t they know a car-bomb when one explodes in their faces? Apparently not. Apparently Rachael Ray making her favorite f**king meatloaf is more important.

He turns off the idiot box and hurries to the control room, saying chaos to light up his computers and darkness to kill the suicide program. He does a shuffling little dance, shaking his fists over his head and singing what he remembers of “Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead,” only changing witch to cop. He thinks it will make him feel better, but it doesn’t. Between Mr. Beeson’s long nose and his mother’s glaring eyes, his good feeling—the feeling he worked for, the feeling he deserved—is slipping away.

Never mind. There’s a concert coming up, and he has to be ready for it. He sits at the long worktable. The ball bearings that used to be in his suicide vest are now in three mayonnaise jars. Next to them is a box of Glad food-storage bags, the gallon size. He begins filling them (but not overfilling them) with the steel bearings. The work soothes him, and his good feelings start to come back. Then, just as he’s finishing up, a steamboat whistle toots.

Brady looks up, frowning. That’s a special cue he programmed into his Number Three. It sounds when he’s got a message on the Blue Umbrella site, but that’s impossible. The only person he’s been communicating with via the Blue Umbrella is Kermit William Hodges, aka the fat ex-cop, aka the permanently Ret Det.

He rolls over in his office chair, paddling his feet, and stares at Number Three. The Blue Umbrella icon is now sporting a 1 in a little red circle. He clicks on it. He stares, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, at the message on his screen.

kermitfrog19 wants to chat with you!

Do you want to chat with kermitfrog19?

Y N

Brady would like to believe this message was sent last night or this morning before Hodges and the blond bimbo left his house, but he can’t. He just heard it come in.

Summoning his courage—because this is much scarier than looking into his dead mother’s eyes—he clicks Y and reads.

Missed me.

And here’s something to remember, ass**le: I’m like your side mirror. You know, OBJECTS ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR.

I know how you got into her Mercedes, and it wasn’t the valet key. But you believed me about that, didn’t you? Sure you did. Because you’re an ass**le.

I’ve got a list of all the other cars you burglarized between 2007 and 2009.

I’ve got other info I don’t want to share right now, but here’s something I WILL share: it’s PERP, not PERK.

Why am I telling you this? Because I’m no longer going to catch you and turn you in to the cops. Why should I? I’m not a cop anymore.

I’m going to kill you.

See you soon, mama’s boy.

Even in his shock and disbelief, it’s that last line that Brady’s eyes keep returning to.

He walks to his closet on legs that feel like stilts. Once inside with the door closed, he screams and beats his fists on the shelves. Instead of the nigger family’s dog, he managed to kill his own mother. That was bad. Now he’s managed to kill someone else instead of the cop, and that’s worse. Probably it was the blond bitch. The blond bitch wearing the Det-Ret’s hat for some weirdo reason only another blonde could understand.

One thing he is sure of: this house is no longer safe. Hodges is probably gaming him about being close, but he might not be. He knows about Thing Two. He knows about the car burglaries. He says he knows other stuff, too. And—

See you soon, mama’s boy.

He has to get out of here. Soon. Something to do first, though.

Brady goes back upstairs and into his mother’s bedroom, barely glancing at the shape under the coverlet. He goes into her bathroom and rummages in the drawers of her vanity until he finds her Lady Schick. Then he goes to work.