Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1)(80)

Died again.

“I never liked you anyway,” he says, looking toward the foot of the stairs. It is a strangely childish voice, high and treble, but Brady doesn’t notice. “And I had to.” He pauses. “We had to.”

He thinks of his mother, and how beautiful she was in those days.

Those old days.





5


Deborah Ann Hartsfield was one of those rare ex-cheerleaders who, even after bearing children, managed to hang on to the body that had danced and pranced its way along the sidelines under the Friday-night lights: tall, full-figured, honey-haired. During the early years of her marriage, she took no more than a glass of wine with dinner. Why drink to excess when life was good sober? She had her husband, she had her house on the North Side of the city—not exactly a palace, but what starter-home was?—and she had her two boys.

At the time his mother became a widow, Brady was eight and Frankie was three. Frankie was a plain child, and a bit on the slow side. Brady, on the other hand, had good looks and quick wits. Also, what a charmer! She doted on him, and Brady felt the same about her. They spent long Saturday afternoons cuddled together on the couch under a blanket, watching old movies and drinking hot chocolate while Norm puttered in the garage and Frankie crawled around on the carpet, playing with blocks or a little fire truck that he liked so well he had given it a name: Sammy.

Norm Hartsfield was a lineman for Central States Power. He made a good salary pole-climbing, but had his sights trained on bigger things. Perhaps it was those things he was eyeing instead of watching what he was doing that day beside Route 51, or maybe he just lost his balance a little and reached the wrong way in an effort to steady himself. No matter what the reason, the result was lethal. His partner was just reporting that they’d found the outage and repair was almost complete when he heard a crackling sound. That was twenty thousand volts of coal-fired CSP electricity pouring into Norm Hartsfield’s body. The partner looked up just in time to see Norm tumble out of the cherry-picker basket and plunge forty feet to the ground with his left hand melted and the sleeve of his uniform shirt on fire.

Addicted to credit cards, like most middle Americans as the end of the century approached, the Hartsfields had savings of less than two thousand dollars. That was pretty thin, but there was a good insurance policy, and CSP kicked in an additional seventy thousand, trading it for Deborah Ann’s signature on a paper absolving the company of all blame in the matter of Norman Hartsfield’s death. To Deborah Ann, that seemed like a huge bucketful of cash. She paid off the mortgage on the house and bought a new car. Never did it occur to her that some buckets fill but once.

She had been working as a hairdresser when she met Norm, and went back to that trade after his death. Six months or so into her widowhood, she began seeing a man she had met one day at the bank—only a junior executive, she told Brady, but he had what she called prospects. She brought him home. He ruffled Brady’s hair and called him champ. He ruffled Frankie’s hair and called him little champ. Brady didn’t like him (he had big teeth, like a vampire in a scary movie), but he didn’t show his dislike. He had already learned to wear a happy face and keep his feelings to himself.

One night, before taking Deborah Ann out to dinner, the boyfriend told Brady, Your mother’s a charmer and so are you. Brady smiled and said thank you and hoped the boyfriend would get in a car accident and die. As long as his mother wasn’t with him, that was. The boyfriend with the scary teeth had no right to take his father’s place.

That was Brady’s job.

Frankie choked on the apple during The Blues Brothers. It was supposed to be a funny movie. Brady didn’t see what was so funny about it, but his mother and Frankie laughed fit to split. His mother was happy and all dressed up because she was going out with her boyfriend. In a little while the sitter would come in. The sitter was a stupid greedyguts who always looked in the refrigerator to see what was good to eat as soon as Deborah Ann left, bending over so her fat ass stuck out.

There were two snack-bowls on the coffee table; one contained popcorn, the other apple slices dusted with cinnamon. In one part of the movie people sang in church and one of the Blues Brothers did flips all the way up the center aisle. Frankie was sitting on the floor and laughed hard when the fat Blues Brother did his flips. When he drew in breath to laugh some more, he sucked a piece of cinnamon-dusted apple slice down his throat. That made him stop laughing. He began to jerk around and claw at his neck instead.

Brady’s mother screamed and grabbed him in her arms. She squeezed him, trying to make the piece of apple come out. It didn’t. Frankie’s face went red. She reached into his mouth and down his throat, trying to get at the piece of apple. She couldn’t. Frankie started to lose the red color.

“Oh-my-dear-Jesus,” Deborah Ann cried, and ran for the phone. As she picked it up she shouted at Brady, “Don’t just sit there like an *! Pound him on the back!”

Brady didn’t like to be shouted at, and his mother had never called him an * before, but he pounded Frankie on the back. He pounded hard. The piece of apple slice did not come out. Now Frankie’s face was turning blue. Brady had an idea. He picked Frankie up by his ankles so Frankie’s head hung down and his hair brushed the rug. The apple slice did not come out.

“Stop being a brat, Frankie,” Brady said.

Frankie continued to breathe—sort of, he was making little breezy whistling noises, anyway—almost until the ambulance got there. Then he stopped. The ambulance men came in. They were wearing black clothes with yellow patches on the jackets. They made Brady go into the kitchen, so Brady didn’t see what they did, but his mother screamed and later he saw drops of blood on the carpet.