Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1)(37)

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*ck 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.

You are probably feeling guilt and remorse too, and I am sorry, especially because very soon you will find out how mean people can be. The TV news and the papers will talk about how your carelessness made my terrible act possible. Your friends will stop talking to you. The police will hound you. When you go to the supermarket, people will look at you and then whisper to each other. Some won’t be content with just whispering and will “get in your face.” I would not be surprised if there was vandalism to your home, so tell your security people (I’m sure you have them) to “watch out.”

I don’t suppose you would want to talk to me, would you? Oh, I don’t mean face to face, but there is a safe place, safe for both of us, where we could talk using our computers. It’s called Under Debbie’s Blue Umbrella. I even got you a username if you should want to do this. The username is “otrelaw19.”

I know what an ordinary person would do. An ordinary person would take this letter straight to the police, but let me ask a question. What have they done for you except hound you and cause you sleepless nights? Although here’s a thought, if you want me dead, giving this letter to the police is the way to do it, as surely as putting a gun to my head and pulling the trigger, because I will kill myself.

Crazy as it may seem, you are the only person keeping me alive. Because you are the only one I can talk to. The only one who understands what it is like to be in Hell.

Now I will wait.

Mrs. Trelawney, I am so so so SORRY.

Hodges puts the letter down on the coffee table and says, “Holy shit.”

Janey Patterson nods. “That was pretty much my reaction.”

“He invited her to get in touch with him—”

Janey gives him an incredulous look. “Invited her? Try blackmailed her. ‘Do it or I’ll kill myself.’”

“According to you, she took him up on it. Have you seen any of their communications? Were there maybe printouts along with this letter?”

She shakes her head. “Ollie told my mother that she’d been chatting with what she called ‘a very disturbed man’ and trying to get him to seek help because he’d done a terrible thing. My mother was alarmed. She assumed Ollie was talking with the very disturbed man face-to-face, like in the park or a coffee shop or something. You have to remember she’s in her late eighties now. She knows about computers, but she’s vague on their practical uses. Ollie explained about chat-rooms—or tried to—but I’m not sure how much Mom actually understood. What she remembers is that Ollie said she talked to the very disturbed man underneath a blue umbrella.”