Mr. Mercedes

by Stephen King

  When he was promoted to detective, his mentor was a guy named Frank Sledge. Hodges thought of him as an old guy, but back then Sledge was fifteen years younger than Hodges is now. Don't you ever let me hear you call them the vics, Sledge told him. That shit's strictly for assholes and burnouts. Remember their names. Call them by their names.

  The Crays, he thinks. They were the Crays. Janice and Patricia.

  Janey hugs him. Her breath tickles his ear when she speaks, giving him goosebumps and half a hardon. "I'm going back to California when this is finished. I can't stay here. I think the world of you, Bill, and if I stayed here I could probably fall in love with you, but I'm not going to do that. I need to make a fresh start."

  "I know." Hodges pulls away and holds her by the shoulders so he can look her in the face again. It's a beautiful face, but today she's looking her age. "It's all right."

  She dives into her purse again, this time for Kleenex. After she's dried her eyes, she says, "You made a conquest today."

  "A . . . ?" Then he gets it. "Holly."

  "She thinks you're wonderful. She told me so."

  "She reminds me of Olivia. Talking to her feels like a second chance."

  "To do the right thing?"

  "Yeah."

  Janey wrinkles her nose at him and grins. "Yeah."

  14

  Brady goes shopping that afternoon. He takes the late Deborah Ann Hartsfield's Honda, because it's a hatchback. Still, one of the items barely fits in the rear. He thinks of stopping at Speedy Postal on his way home and checking for the Gopher-Go he ordered under his Ralph Jones alias, but all that seems like a thousand years ago now, and really, what would be the point? That part of his life is over. Soon the rest will be, too, and what a relief.

  He leans the largest of his purchases against the garage wall. Then he goes into the house, and after a brief pause in the kitchen to sniff at the air (no whiff of decay, at least not yet), he goes down to his control room. He speaks the magic word that powers up his row of computers, but only out of habit. He has no urge to slip beneath Debbie's Blue Umbrella, because he has nothing more to say to the fat ex-cop. That part of his life is also over. He looks at his watch, sees that it's three-thirty in the afternoon, and calculates that the fat ex-cop now has roughly twenty hours to live.

  If you really are fucking her, Detective Hodges, Brady thinks, you better get your end wet while you've still got an end.

  He unlocks the padlock on the closet door and steps into the dry and faintly oily odor of homemade plastique. He regards the shoeboxes full of explosive and chooses the one that held the Mephisto walking shoes he's now wearing--a Christmas present from his mother just last year. From the next shelf up he grabs the shoebox filled with cell phones. He takes one of them and the box of boom-clay over to the table in the middle of the room and goes to work, putting the phone in the box and rigging it to a simple detonator powered by double-A batteries. He turns the phone on to make sure it works, then turns it off again. The chance of someone dialing this disposable's number by mistake and blowing his control room sky-high is small, but why risk it? The chances of his mother finding that poisoned meat and cooking it for her lunch were also small, and look how that turned out.

  No, this baby is going to stay off until ten-twenty tomorrow morning. That's when Brady will stroll into the parking lot behind the Soames Funeral Home. If there's anyone back there, Brady will say he thought he could cut through the lot to the next street over, where there's a bus stop (which happens to be true; he checked it on MapQuest). But he doesn't expect anyone. They'll all be inside at the memorial service, bawling up a storm.

  He'll use Thing Two to unlock the fat ex-cop's car and put the shoebox on the floor behind the driver's seat. He'll lock the Toyota again and return to his own car. To wait. To watch him go past. To let him reach the next intersection, where Brady can be sure that he, Brady, will be relatively safe from flying debris. Then . . .

  "Ka-pow," Brady says. "They'll need another shoebox to bury him in."

  That's pretty funny, and he's laughing as he goes back to the closet to get his suicide vest. He'll spend the rest of the afternoon disassembling it. Brady doesn't need the vest anymore.

  He has a better idea.

  15

  Wednesday, June 2, 2010, is warm and cloudless. It may still be spring according to the calendar, and the local schools may still be in session, but those things don't change the fact that this is a perfect summer day in the heartland of America.

  Bill Hodges, suited up but as yet blessedly tieless, is in his study, going over a list of car burglaries Marlo Everett sent him by fax. He has printed out a map of the city, and puts a red dot at each burglary location. He sees shoeleather in his future, maybe a lot of it if Olivia's computer doesn't pan out, but it's just possible that some of the burglary victims will mention seeing a similar vehicle. Because Mr. Mercedes had to watch the owners of his target vehicles. Hodges is sure of it. He had to make sure they were gone before he used his gadget to unlock their cars.

  He watched them the way he was watching me, Hodges thinks.

  This kicks something over in his mind--a brief spark of association that's bright but gone before he can see what it's illuminating. That's okay; if there's really something there, it will come back. In the meantime, he keeps on checking addresses and making red dots. He has twenty minutes before he has to noose on his tie and go after Janey.

  Brady Hartsfield is in his control room. No headache today, and his thoughts, so often muddled, are as clear as the various Wild Bunch screensavers on his computers. He has removed the blocks of plastic explosive from his suicide vest, disconnecting them carefully from the detonator wires. Some of the blocks have gone into a bright red seat cushion printed with the saucy slogan ASS PARKING. He has slipped two more, re-molded into cylinders with detonator wires attached, down the throat of a bright blue Urinesta peebag. With that accomplished, he carefully attaches a stick-on decal to the peebag. He bought it, along with a souvenir tee-shirt, in the MAC gift shop yesterday. The sticker says 'ROUND HERE FANBOY #1. He checks his watch. Almost nine. The fat ex-cop now has an hour and a half to live. Maybe a little less.

  Hodges's old partner Pete Huntley is in one of the interrogation rooms, not because he has anyone to question but because it's away from the morning hustle and flow of the squadroom. He has notes to go over. He's holding a press conference at ten, to talk about the latest dark revelations Donald Davis has made, and he doesn't want to screw anything up. The City Center killer--Mr. Mercedes--is the furthest thing from his mind.

  In Lowtown, behind a certain pawnshop, guns are being bought and sold by people who believe they are not being watched.

  Jerome Robinson is at his computer, listening to audio clips available at a website called Sounds Good to Me. He listens to a woman laughing hysterically. He listens to a man whistling "Danny Boy." He listens to a man gargling and a woman apparently in the throes of an orgasm. Eventually he finds the clip he wants. The title is simple: CRYING BABY.

  On the floor below, Jerome's sister Barbara comes bursting into the kitchen, closely followed by Odell. Barbara is wearing a spangly skirt, clunky blue clogs, and a tee-shirt that shows a foxy teenage boy. Below his brilliant smile and careful coif is the legend I LUV CAM 4EVER! She asks her mother if this outfit looks too babyish to wear to the concert. Her mother (perhaps remembering what she wore to her own first concert) smiles and says it's perfect. Barbara asks if she can wear her mother's dangly peace-sign earrings. Yes, of course. Lipstick? Well . . . okay. Eye shadow? No, sorry. Barbara gives a no-harm-in-trying laugh and hugs her mother extravagantly. "I can't wait until tomorrow night," she says.

  Holly Gibney is in the bathroom of the house in Sugar Heights, wishing she could skip the memorial service, knowing her mother will never let her. If she protests that she doesn't feel well, her mother's return serve will be one that goes all the way back to Holly's childhood: What will people think. And if Holly should protest that i
t doesn't matter what people think, they are never going to see any of these people (with the exception of Janey) again in their lives? Her mother would look at her as if Holly were speaking a foreign language. She takes her Lexapro, but her insides knot while she's brushing her teeth and she vomits it back up. Charlotte calls to ask if she's almost ready. Holly calls back that she almost is. She flushes the toilet and thinks, At least Janey's boyfriend will be there. Bill. He's nice.

  Janey Patterson is dressing carefully in her late mother's condominium apartment: dark hose, black skirt, black jacket over a blouse of deepest midnight blue. She's thinking of how she told Bill she'd probably fall in love with him if she stayed here. That was a bodacious shading of the truth, because she's already in love with him. She's sure a shrink would smile and say it was a daddy thing. If so, Janey would smile right back and tell him that was a load of Freudian bullshit. Her father was a bald accountant who was barely there even when he was there. And one thing you can say about Bill Hodges is that he's there. It's what she likes about him. She also likes the hat she bought him. That Philip Marlowe fedora. She checks her watch and sees it's quarter past nine. He'd better be here soon.

  If he's late, she'll kill him.

  16

  He's not late, and he's wearing the hat. Janey tells him he looks nice. He tells her she looks better than that. She smiles and kisses him.

  "Let's get this done," he says.

  Janey wrinkles her nose and says, "Yeah."

  They drive to the funeral parlor, where they are once more the first to arrive. Hodges escorts her into the Eternal Rest parlor. She looks around and nods her approval. Programs for the service have been laid out on the seats of the folding chairs. The coffin is gone, replaced by a vaguely altarish table with sprays of spring flowers on it. Brahms, turned down almost too low to hear, is playing through the parlor's sound system.

  "Okay?" Hodges asks.

  "It'll do." She takes a deep breath and repeats what he said twenty minutes before: "Let's get this done."

  It's basically the same bunch as yesterday. Janey meets them at the door. While she shakes hands and gives hugs and says all the right things, Hodges stands nearby, scanning the passing traffic. He sees nothing that raises a red flag, including a certain mud-colored Subaru that trundles by without slowing.

  A rental Chevy with a Hertz sticker on the side of the windshield swings around back to the parking lot. Soon Uncle Henry appears, preceded by his gently swinging executive belly. Aunt Charlotte and Holly follow him, Charlotte with one white-gloved hand clamped just above her daughter's elbow. To Hodges, Auntie C looks like a matron escorting a prisoner--probably a drug addict--into county lockup. Holly is even paler than she was yesterday, if that is possible. She's wearing the same shapeless brown gunnysack, and has already bitten off most of her lipstick.

  She gives Hodges a tremulous smile. Hodges offers his hand, and she seizes it with panicky tightness until Charlotte pulls her into the Hall of the Dead.

  A young clergyman, from the church Mrs. Wharton attended until she was too unwell to go out on Sundays, serves as master of ceremonies. He reads the predictable passage from Proverbs, the one about the virtuous woman. Hodges is willing to stipulate that the deceased may have been worth more than rubies, but has his doubts about whether she spent any time working with wool and flax. Still, it's poetical, and tears are flowing by the time the clergyman is finished. The guy may be young, but he's smart enough not to try eulogizing someone he hardly knew. Instead of that, he invites those with "precious memories" of the late Elizabeth to come forward. Several do, beginning with Althea Greene, the nurse, and ending with the surviving daughter. Janey is calm and brief and simple.

  "I wish we'd had more time," she finishes.

  17

  Brady parks around the corner at five past ten and is careful to feed the meter until the green flag with MAX on it pops up. After all, it just took a parking ticket to catch Son of Sam in the end. From the back seat he takes a cloth carry-bag. Printed on the side is KROGER and REUSE ME! SAVE A TREE! Inside is Thing Two, resting on top of the Mephisto shoebox.

  He turns the corner and strides briskly past the Soames Funeral Home, just some citizen on a morning errand. His face is calm, but his heart is hammering like a steam-drill. He sees no one outside the funeral parlor, and the doors are shut, but there's still a possibility the fat ex-cop isn't with the other mourners. He could be in a back room, watching for suspicious characters. Watching for him, in other words. Brady knows this.

  No risk, no reward, honeyboy, his mother murmurs. It's true. Also, he judges that the risk is minimal. If Hodges is pronging the blond bitch (or hoping to), he won't leave her side.

  Brady does an about-face at the far corner, strolls back, and turns in to the funeral home drive without hesitation. He can hear faint music, some kind of classical shit. He spots Hodges's Toyota parked against the rear fence, nose-out for a quick getaway once the festivities are over. The old Det-Ret's last ride, Brady thinks. It's going to be a short one, pal.

  He walks behind the larger of the two hearses, and once it blocks him from the view of anyone looking out the rear windows of the funeral parlor, he takes Thing Two out of the shopping bag and pulls up the antenna. His heart is driving harder than ever. There were times--only a few--when his gadget didn't work. The green light would flash, but the car's locks wouldn't pop. Some random glitch in the program or the microchip.

  If it doesn't work, just slide the shoebox under the car, his mother advises him.

  Of course. That would work just as well, or almost as well, but it wouldn't be so elegant.

  He pushes the toggle. The green light flashes. So do the Toyota's headlights. Success!

  He goes to the fat ex-cop's car as if he has every right to be there. He opens the rear door, takes the shoebox out of the carry-bag, turns on the phone, and puts the box on the floor behind the driver's seat. He closes the door and starts for the street, forcing himself to walk slowly and steadily.

  As he's rounding the corner of the building, Deborah Ann Hartsfield speaks again. Didn't you forget something, honeyboy?

  He stops. Thinks it over. Then goes back to the corner of the building and points Thing Two's stub of an antenna at Hodges's car.

  The lights flash as the locks re-engage.

  18

  After the remembrances and a moment of silent reflection ("to use as you wish"), the clergyman asks the Lord to bless them and keep them and give them peace. Clothes rustle; programs are stowed in purses and jacket pockets. Holly seems fine until she's halfway up the aisle, but then her knees buckle. Hodges darts forward with surprising speed for a big man and catches her beneath her arms before she can go down. Her eyes roll up and for a moment she's on the verge of a full-fledged swoon. Then they come back into place and into focus. She sees Hodges and smiles weakly.

  "Holly, stop that!" her mother says sternly, as if her daughter has uttered some jocose and inappropriate profanity instead of almost fainting. Hodges thinks what a pleasure it would be to backhand Auntie C right across her thickly powdered chops. Might wake her up, he thinks.

  "I'm okay, Mother," Holly says. Then, to Hodges: "Thank you."

  He says, "Did you eat any breakfast, Holly?"

  "She had oatmeal," Aunt Charlotte announces. "With butter and brown sugar. I made it myself. You're quite the attention-getter sometimes, aren't you, Holly?" She turns to Janey. "Please don't linger, dear. Henry's useless at things like this, and I can't hostess all these people on my own."

  Janey takes Hodges's arm. "I'd never expect you to."

  Aunt Charlotte gives her a pinched smile. Janey's smile in return is brilliant, and Hodges decides that her decision to turn over half of her inherited loot is equally brilliant. Once that happens, she will never have to see this unpleasant woman again. She won't even have to take her calls.

  The mourners emerge into the sunshine. On the front walk there's chatter of the wasn't-it-a-lovely-service sort, and then peopl
e begin walking around to the parking lot in back. Uncle Henry and Aunt Charlotte do so with Holly between them. Hodges and Janey follow along. As they reach the back of the mortuary, Holly suddenly slips free of her minders and wheels around to Hodges and Janey.

  "Let me ride with you. I want to ride with you."

  Aunt Charlotte, lips thinned almost to nothing, looms up behind her daughter. "I've had just about enough of your gasps and vapors for one day, miss."

  Holly ignores her. She seizes one of Hodges's hands in a grip that's icy. "Please. Please."

  "It's fine with me," Hodges says, "if Janey doesn't m--"

  Aunt Charlotte begins to sob. The sound is unlovely, the hoarse cries of a crow in a cornfield. Hodges remembers her bending over Mrs. Wharton, kissing her cold lips, and a sudden unpleasant possibility comes to him. He misjudged Olivia; he may have misjudged Charlotte Gibney as well. There's more to people than their surfaces, after all.

  "Holly, you don't even know this man!"

  Janey puts a much warmer hand on Hodges's wrist. "Why don't you go with Charlotte and Henry, Bill? There's plenty of room. You can ride in back with Holly." She shifts her attention to her cousin. "Would that be all right?"

  "Yes!" Holly is still gripping Hodges's hand. "That would be good!"

  Janey turns to her uncle. "Okay with you?"

  "Sure." He gives Holly a jovial pat on the shoulder. "The more the merrier."

  "That's right, give her plenty of attention," Aunt Charlotte says. "It's what she likes. Isn't it, Holly?" She starts for the parking lot without waiting for a reply, heels clacking a Morse code message of outrage.

  Hodges looks at Janey. "What about my car?"

  "I'll drive it. Hand over the keys." And when he does: "There's just one other thing I need."

  "Yeah?"

  She plucks the fedora from his head, puts it on her own, and gives it the correct insouciant dip over her left eyebrow. She wrinkles her nose at him and says, "Yeah."