Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1)(70)
He thinks, Maybe I should have worn sunglasses. It’s not like I’d stand out, half the men in here are wearing them.
Too late now. He left his Ray-Bans back at Birch Hill, in his Subaru. All he can do is stand here in the checkout line and tell himself not to sweat. Which is like telling someone not to think of a blue polar bear.
I was noticing him because he was having the sweat, the greaseball checkout girl (a relative of Batool the Baker, for all Brady knows) will tell the police. Also because he was buying the gopher poison. The kind having the strychnine.
For a moment he almost flees, but now there are people behind him as well as ahead of him, and if he breaks from the line, won’t people notice that? Won’t they wonder—
A nudge from behind him. “You’re up, buddy.”
Out of options, Brady rolls his cart forward. The cans of Gopher-Go are a screaming yellow in the bottom of his shopping cart; to Brady they seem the very color of insanity, and that’s just as it should be. Being here is insane.
Then a comforting thought comes to him, one that’s as soothing as a cool hand on a fevered brow: Driving into those people at City Center was even more insane . . . but I got away with it, didn’t I?
Yes, and he gets away with this. The greaseball runs his purchases under the scanner without so much as a glance at him. Nor does she look up when she asks him if it will be cash or credit.
Brady pays cash.
He’s not that insane.
Back in the VW (he’s parked it between two trucks, where its fluorescent green hardly shows at all), he sits behind the wheel, taking deep breaths until his heartbeat is steady again. He thinks about the immediate road ahead, and that calms him even more.
First, Odell. The mutt will die a miserable death, and the fat ex-cop will know it’s his own fault, even if the Robinsons do not. (From a purely scientific standpoint, Brady will be interested to see if the Det-Ret owns up. He thinks Hodges won’t.) Second, the man himself. Brady will give him a few days to marinate in his guilt, and who knows? He may opt for suicide after all. Probably not, though. So Brady will kill him, method yet to be determined. And third . . .
A grand gesture. Something that will be remembered for a hundred years. The question is, what might that grand gesture be?
Brady keys the ignition and tunes the Beetle’s shitty radio to BAM-100, where every weekend is a rock-block weekend. He catches the end of a ZZ Top block and is about to punch the button for KISS-92 when his hand freezes. Instead of switching the station, he turns the volume up. Fate is speaking to him.
The deejay informs Brady that the hottest boy band in the country is coming to town for one gig only—that’s right, ’Round Here will be playing the MAC next Thursday. “The show’s already almost sold out, children, but the BAM-100 Good Guys are holding on to a dozen tickets, and we’ll be giving em out in pairs starting on Monday, so listen for the cue to call in and—”
Brady switches the radio off. His eyes are distant, hazy, contemplative. The MAC is what people in the city call the Midwest Culture and Arts Complex. It takes up a whole city block and has a gigantic auditorium.
He thinks, What a way to go out. Oh my God, what a way that would be.
He wonders what exactly the capacity of the MAC’s Mingo Auditorium might be. Three thousand? Maybe four? He’ll go online tonight and check it out.
22
Hodges grabs lunch at a nearby deli (a salad instead of the loaded burger his stomach is rooting for) and goes home. His pleasant exertions of the previous night have caught up with him, and although he owes Janey a call—they have business at the late Mrs. Trelawney’s Sugar Heights home, it seems—he decides that his next move in the investigation will be a short nap. He checks the answering machine in the living room, but the MESSAGE WAITING window shows zero. He peeks beneath Debbie’s Blue Umbrella and finds nothing new from Mr. Mercedes. He lies down and sets his internal alarm for an hour. His last thought before closing his eyes is that he left his cell phone in the glove compartment of his Toyota again.
Ought to go get that, he thinks. I gave her both numbers, but she’s new school instead of old school, and that’s the one she’d call first if she needed me.
Then he’s asleep.
It’s the old school phone that wakes him, and when he rolls over to grab it, he sees that his internal alarm, which never let him down during his years as a cop, has apparently decided it is also retired. He’s slept for almost three hours.
“Hello?”
“Do you never check your messages, Bill?” Janey.
It crosses his mind to tell her the battery in his cell phone died, but lying is no way to start a relationship, even one of the day-at-a-time variety. And that’s not the important thing. Her voice is blurry and hoarse, as if she’s been shouting. Or crying.
He sits up. “What’s wrong?”
“My mother had a stroke this morning. I’m at Warsaw County Memorial Hospital. That’s the one closest to Sunny Acres.”
He swings his feet out onto the floor. “Christ, Janey. How bad is it?”
“Bad. I’ve called my aunt Charlotte in Cincinnati and uncle Henry in Tampa. They’re both coming. Aunt Charlotte will undoubtedly drag my cousin Holly along.” She laughs, but the sound has no humor in it. “Of course they’re coming—it’s that old saying about following the money.”