Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1)(95)

People are screaming. Horns are honking, and a couple of car alarms are blatting. He can smell gasoline, burning rubber, melting plastic.

“Holly. Holly. Listen to me.”

She’s looking, but is she listening? He doesn’t know, and there’s no time.

“I loved her, but you can’t tell anyone. You can’t tell anyone I loved her. Maybe later, but not now. Do you understand?”

She nods.

“I need your cell number. And I may need you.” His cold mind hopes he won’t, that the house in Sugar Heights will be empty this afternoon, but he doesn’t think it will be. Holly’s mother and uncle will have to leave, at least for awhile, but Charlotte won’t want her daughter to go with them. Because Holly has mental problems. Holly is delicate. Hodges wonders just how many breakdowns she’s had, and if there have been suicide attempts. These thoughts zip across his mind like shooting stars, there at one moment, gone the next. He has no time for Holly’s delicate mental condition.

“When your mother and uncle go to the police station, tell them you don’t need anyone to stay with you. Tell them you’re okay by yourself. Can you do that?”

She nods, although she almost certainly has no idea what he’s talking about.

“Someone will call you. It might be me, or it might be a young man named Jerome. Jerome. Can you remember that name?”

She nods, then opens her purse and takes out a glasses case.

This is not working, Hodges thinks. The lights are on but nobody’s home. Still, he has to try. He grasps her shoulders.

“Holly, I want to catch the guy who did this. I want to make him pay. Will you help me?”

She nods. There’s no expression on her face.

“Say it, then. Say you’ll help me.”

She doesn’t. She slips a pair of sunglasses from the case instead, and pops them on as if there weren’t a car burning in the street and Janey’s arm in the gutter. As if there weren’t people screaming and already the sound of an approaching siren. As if this were a day at the beach.

He shakes her lightly. “I need your cell phone number.”

She nods agreeably but says nothing. She snaps her purse closed and turns back to the burning car. The greatest despair he has ever known sweeps through Hodges, sickening his belly and scattering the thoughts that were, for the space of thirty or forty seconds, perfectly clear.

Aunt Charlotte comes sidewheeling around the corner with her hair—mostly black but white at the roots—flying out behind her. Uncle Henry follows. His jowly face is pasty except for the clownish spots of red high on his cheeks.

“Sharlie, stop!” Uncle Henry cries. “I think I’m having a heart attack!”

His sister pays no attention. She grabs Holly’s elbow, jerks her around, and hugs her fiercely, mashing Holly’s not inconsiderable nose between her breasts. “DON’T LOOK!” Charlotte bellows, looking. “DON’T LOOK, SWEETHEART, DON’T LOOK AT IT!”

“I can hardly breathe,” Uncle Henry announces. He sits on the curb and hangs his head down. “God, I hope I’m not dying.”

More sirens have joined the first. People have begun to creep forward so they can get a closer look at the burning wreck in the street. A couple snap photos with their phones.

Hodges thinks, Enough explosive to blow up a car. How much more does he have?

Aunt Charlotte still has Holly in a deathgrip, bawling at her not to look. Holly isn’t struggling to get away, but she’s got one hand behind her. There’s something in it. Although he knows it’s probably just wishful thinking, Hodges hopes it might be for him. He takes what she’s holding out. It’s the case her sunglasses were in. Her name and address are embossed on it in gold.

There’s also a phone number.





22


Hodges takes his Nokia from his inside suit coat pocket, aware as he flips it open that it would probably be so much melted plastic and fizzing wire in the glove compartment of his baked Toyota, if not for Janey’s gentle chaffing.

He hits Jerome on speed-dial, praying the kid will pick up, and he does.

“Mr. Hodges? Bill? I think we just heard a big explo—”

“Shut up, Jerome. Just listen.” He’s walking down the glass-littered sidewalk. The sirens are closer now, soon they’ll be here, and all he has to go on is pure intuition. Unless, that is, his subconscious mind is already making the connections. It’s happened before; he didn’t get all those department commendations on Craigslist.

“Listening,” Jerome says.

“You know nothing about the City Center case. You know nothing about Olivia Trelawney or Janey Patterson.” Of course the three of them had dinner together at DeMasio’s, but he doesn’t think the cops will get that far for awhile, if ever.

“I know squat,” Jerome says. There’s no distrust or hesitance in his voice. “Who’ll be asking? The police?”

“Maybe later. First it’ll be your parents. Because that explosion you heard was my car. Janey was driving. We swapped at the last minute. She’s . . . gone.”

“Christ, Bill, you have to tell five-oh! Your old partner!”

Hodges thinks of her saying He’s ours. We still see eye to eye on that, right?

Right, he thinks. Still eye to eye on that, Janey.