Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1)(63)
“Our guy is a hybrid, but he has certain things in common with younger men who kill. He’s more like Lee Malvo—one of the Beltway Snipers—than Rader. Malvo and his partner planned to kill six white people a day. Just random killings. Whoever had the bad luck to walk into their gunsights went down. Sex and age didn’t matter. They ended up getting ten, not a bad score for a couple of homicidal maniacs. The stated motive was racial, and with John Allen Muhammad—he was Malvo’s partner, much older, a kind of father figure—that might have been true, or partially true. I think Malvo’s motivation was a lot more complex, a whole stew of things he didn’t understand himself. Look closely and you’d probably find sexual confusion and upbringing were major players. I think the same is true with our guy. He’s young. He’s bright. He’s good at fitting in, so good that a lot of his associates don’t realize he’s basically a loner. When he’s caught, they’ll all say, ‘I can’t believe it was so-and-so, he was always so nice.’”
“Like Dexter Morgan on that TV show.”
Hodges knows the one she’s talking about and shakes his head emphatically. Not just because the show is fantasyland bullshit, either.
“Dexter knows why he’s doing what he’s doing. Our guy doesn’t. He’s almost certainly unmarried. He doesn’t date. He may be impotent. There’s a good chance he’s still living at home. If so, it’s probably with a single parent. If it’s Father, the relationship is cold and distant—ships passing in the night. If it’s Mother, there’s a good chance Mr. Mercedes is her surrogate husband.” He sees her start to speak and raises his hand. “That doesn’t mean they’re having a sexual relationship.”
“Maybe not, but I’ll tell you something, Bill. You don’t have to sleep with a guy to be having a sexual relationship with him. Sometimes it’s in the eye contact, or the clothes you wear when you know he’s going to be around, or what you do with your hands—touching, patting, caressing, hugging. Sex has got to be in this somewhere. I mean, that letter he sent you . . . the stuff about wearing a condom while he did it . . .” She shivers in her white robe.
“Ninety percent of that letter is white noise, but sure, sex is in it somewhere. Always is. Also anger, aggression, loneliness, feelings of inadequacy . . . but it doesn’t do to get lost in stuff like that. It’s not profiling, it’s analysis. Which was way above my pay-grade even when I had a pay-grade.”
“Okay . . .”
“He’s broken,” Hodges says simply. “And evil. Like an apple that looks okay on the outside, but when you cut it open, it’s black and full of worms.”
“Evil,” she says, almost sighing the word. Then, to herself rather than him: “Of course he is. He battened on my sister like a vampire.”
“He could have some kind of job where he meets the public, because he’s got a fair amount of surface charm. If so, it’s probably a low-paying job. He never advances because he’s unable to combine his above-average intelligence with long-term concentration. His actions suggest he’s a creature of impulse and opportunity. The City Center killings are a perfect example. I think he had his eye on your sister’s Mercedes, but I don’t think he knew what he was actually going to do with it until just a few days before the job fair. Maybe only a few hours. I just wish I could figure out how he stole it.”
He pauses, thinking that thanks to Jerome, he has a good idea about half of it: the spare key was very likely in the glove compartment all along.
“I think ideas for murder flip through this guy’s head as fast as cards in a good dealer’s fast shuffle. He’s probably thought of blowing up airliners, setting fires, shooting up schoolbuses, poisoning the water system, maybe assassinating the governor or the president.”
“Jesus, Bill!”
“Right now he’s fixated on me, and that’s good. It will make him easier to catch. It’s good for another reason, too.”
“Which is?”
“I’d rather keep him thinking small. Keep him thinking one-on-one. The longer he keeps doing that, the longer it will be before he decides to try putting on another horror show like the one at City Center, maybe on an even grander scale. You know what creeps me out? He’s probably already got a list of potential targets.”
“Didn’t he say in his letter that he had no urge to do it again?”
He grins. It lights up his whole face. “Yeah, he did. And you know how you tell when guys like this are lying? Their lips are moving. Only in the case of Mr. Mercedes, he’s writing letters.”
“Or communicating with his targets on the Blue Umbrella site. Like he did with Ollie.”
“Yeah.”
“If we assume he succeeded with her because she was psychologically fragile . . . forgive me, Bill, but does he have reason to believe he can succeed with you for the same reason?”
He looks at his glass of wine and sees it’s empty. He starts to pour himself another half a glass, thinks what that might do to his chances of a successful return engagement in the bedroom, and settles for a small puddle in the bottom instead.
“Bill?”
“Maybe,” he says. “Since my retirement, I’ve been drifting. But I’m not as lost as your sister . . .” Not anymore, at least. “. . . and that’s not the important thing. It’s not the take-away from the letters, and from the Blue Umbrella communications.”