Mr. Mercedes

by Stephen King

  "One slice. No butter, just a little jam. What are you going to do today?"

  "Not sure yet." Although he's thinking he'd like to check in with Radney Peeples out in Sugar Heights if Radney's on duty and being Vigilant. And he needs to talk to Jerome about computers. Endless vistas there.

  "Have you checked the Blue Umbrella?"

  "Wanted to make you breakfast first. And me." It's true. He woke up actually wanting to feed his body rather than trying to plug some empty hole in his head. "Also, I don't know your password."

  "It's Janey."

  "My advice? Change it. Actually it's the advice of the kid who works for me."

  "Jerome, right?"

  "That's the one."

  He has scrambled half a dozen eggs and they eat them all, split right down the middle. It has crossed his mind to ask if she had any regrets about last night, but decides the way she's going through her breakfast answers the question.

  With the dishes in the sink, they go on her computer and sit silently for nearly four minutes, reading and re-reading the latest message from merckill.

  "Holy cow," she says at last. "You wanted to wind him up, and I'd say he's fully wound. Do you see all the mistakes?" She points out complartment and uynlocked. "Is that part of his--what did you call it?--stylistic masking?"

  "I don't think so." Hodges is looking at wouldn'tr and smiling. He can't help smiling. The fish is feeling the hook, and it's sunk deep. It hurts. It burns. "I think that's the kind of typing you do when you're mad as hell. The last thing he expected was that he'd have a credibility problem. It's making him crazy."

  "Er," she says.

  "Huh?"

  "Crazier. Send him another message, Bill. Poke him harder. He deserves it."

  "All right." He thinks, then types.

  17

  When he's dressed, she walks down the hall with him and treats him to a lingering kiss at the elevator.

  "I still can't believe last night happened," he tells her.

  "Oh, it did. And if you play your cards right, it might happen again." She searches his face with those blue eyes of hers. "But no promises or long-term commitments, okay? We take it as it comes. A day at a time."

  "At my age, I take everything that way." The elevator doors open. He steps in.

  "Stay in touch, cowboy."

  "I will." The elevator doors start to close. He stops them with his hand. "And remember to BOLO, cowgirl."

  She nods solemnly, but he doesn't miss the twinkle in her eye. "Janey will BOLO her ass off."

  "Keep your cell phone handy, and it might be wise to program nine-one-one on your speed dial."

  He drops his hand. She blows him a kiss. The doors roll shut before he can blow one back.

  His car is where he left it, but the meter must have run out before the free parking kicked in, because there's a ticket stuck under the windshield wiper. He opens the glove compartment, stuffs the ticket inside, and fishes out his phone. He's good at giving Janey advice that he doesn't take himself--since he pulled the pin, he's always forgetting the damned Nokia, which is pretty prehistoric, as cell phones go. These days hardly anyone calls him anyway, but this morning he has three messages, all from Jerome. Numbers two and three--one at nine-forty last night, the other at ten-forty-five--are impatient inquiries about where he is and why he doesn't call. They are in Jerome's normal voice. The original message, left at six-thirty yesterday evening, begins in his exuberant Tyrone Feelgood Delight voice.

  "Massah Hodges, where you at? Ah needs to jaw to y'all!" Then he becomes Jerome again. "I think I know how he did it. How he stole the car. Call me."

  Hodges checks his watch and decides Jerome probably won't be up quite yet, not on Saturday morning. He decides to drive over there, with a stop at his house first to pick up his notes. He turns on the radio, gets Bob Seger singing "Old Time Rock and Roll," and bellows along: take those old records off the shelf.

  18

  Once upon a simpler time, before apps, iPads, Samsung Galaxies, and the world of blazing-fast 4G, weekends were the busiest days of the week at Discount Electronix. Now the kids who used to come in to buy CDs are downloading Vampire Weekend from iTunes, while their elders are surfing eBay or watching the TV shows they missed on Hulu.

  This Saturday morning the Birch Hill Mall DE is a wasteland.

  Tones is down front, trying to sell an old lady an HDTV that's already an antique. Freddi Linklatter is out back, chain-smoking Marlboro Reds and probably rehearsing her latest gay rights rant. Brady is sitting at one of the computers in the back row, an ancient Vizio that he's rigged to leave no keystroke tracks, let alone a history. He's staring at Hodges's latest message. One eye, his left, has picked up a rapid, irregular tic.

  Quit dumping on my mother, okay? Not her fault you got caught in a bunch of stupid lies. Got a key out of the glove compartment, did you? That's pretty good, since Olivia Trelawney had both of them. The one missing was the valet key. She kept it in a small magnetic box under the rear bumper. The REAL Mercedes Killer must have scoped it.

  I think I'm done writing to you, dickwad. Your Fun Quotient is currently hovering around zero, and I have it on good authority that Donald Davis is going to cop to the City Center killings. Which leaves you where? Just living your shitty little unexciting life, I guess. One other thing before I close this charming correspondence. You threatened to kill me. That's a felony offense, but guess what? I don't care. Buddy, you are just another chickenshit asshole. The Internet is full of them. Want to come to my house (I know you know where I live) and make that threat in person? No? I thought not. Let me close with two words so simple even a thud like you should be able to understand them.

  Go away.

  Brady's rage is so great he feels frozen in place. Yet he's also still burning. He thinks he will stay this way, hunched over the piece-of-shit Vizio ridiculously sale-priced at eighty-seven dollars and eighty-seven cents, until he either dies of frostbite or goes up in flames or somehow does both at the same time.

  But when a shadow rises on the wall, Brady finds he can move after all. He clicks away from the fat ex-cop's message just before Freddi bends over to peer at the screen. "What you looking at, Brades? You moved awful fast to hide it, whatever it was."

  "A National Geographic documentary. It's called When Lesbians Attack."

  "Your humor," she says, "might be exceeded by your sperm count, but I tend to doubt it."

  Tones Frobisher joins them. "Got a service call over on Edgemont," he says. "Which one of you wants it?"

  Freddi says, "Given a choice between a service call in Hillbilly Heaven and having a wild weasel stuck up my ass, I'd have to pick the weasel."

  "I'll take it," Brady says. He's decided he has an errand to run. One that can't wait.

  19

  Jerome's little sis and a couple of her friends are jumping rope in the Robinson driveway when Hodges arrives. All of them are wearing sparkly tees with silkscreens of some boy band on them. He cuts across the lawn, his case-folder in one hand. Barbara comes over long enough to give him a high-five and a dap, then hurries back to grab her end of the rope. Jerome, dressed in shorts and a City College tee-shirt with the sleeves torn off, is sitting on the porch steps and drinking orange juice. Odell is by his side. He tells Hodges his folks are off Krogering, and he's got babysitting duty until they get back.

  "Not that she really needs a sitter anymore. She's a lot hipper than our parents think."

  Hodges sits down beside him. "You don't want to take that for granted. Trust me on this, Jerome."

  "Meaning what, exactly?"

  "Tell me what you came up with first."

  Instead of answering, Jerome points to Hodges's car, parked at the curb so as not to interfere with the girls' game. "What year is that?"

  "Oh-four. No show-stopper, but it gets good mileage. Want to buy it?"

  "I'll pass. Did you lock it?"

  "Yeah." Even though this is a good neighborhood and he's sitting right here looking
at it. Force of habit.

  "Give me your keys."

  Hodges digs in his pocket and hands them over. Jerome examines the fob and nods. "PKE," he says. "Started to come into use during the nineteen-nineties, first as an accessory but pretty much standard equipment since the turn of the century. Do you know what it stands for?"

  As lead detective on the City Center Massacre (and frequent interviewer of Olivia Trelawney), Hodges certainly does. "Passive keyless entry."

  "Right." Jerome pushes one of the two buttons on the fob. At the curb, the parking lights of Hodges's Toyota flash briefly. "Now it's open." He pushes the other button. The lights flash again. "Now it's locked. And you've got the key." He puts it in Hodges's palm. "All safe and sound, right?"

  "Based on this discussion, maybe not."

  "I know some guys from the college who have a computer club. I'm not going to tell you their names, so don't ask."

  "Wouldn't think of it."

  "They're not bad guys, but they know all the bad tricks--hacking, cloning, info-jacking, stuff like that. They tell me that PKE systems are pretty much a license to steal. When you push the button to lock or unlock your car, the fob emits a low-frequency radio signal. A code. If you could hear it, it would sound like the boops and beeps you get when you speed-dial a fax number. With me?"

  "So far, yeah."

  In the driveway the girls chant Sally-in-the-alley while Barbara Robinson darts deftly in and out of the loop, her sturdy brown legs flashing and her pigtails bouncing.

  "My guys tell me that it's easy to capture that code, if you have the right gadget. You can modify a garage door opener or a TV remote to do it, only with something like that, you have to be really close. Say within twenty yards. But you can also build one that's more powerful. All the components are available at your friendly neighborhood electronics store. Total cost, about a hundred bucks. Range up to a hundred yards. You watch for the driver to exit the target vehicle. When she pushes the button to lock her car, you push your button. Your gadget captures the signal and stores it. She walks away, and when she's gone, you push your button again. The car unlocks, and you're in."

  Hodges looks at his key, then at Jerome. "This works?"

  "Yes indeed. My friends say it's tougher now--the manufacturers have modified the system so that the signal changes every time you push the button--but not impossible. Any system created by the mind of man can be hacked by the mind of man. You feel me?"

  Hodges hardly hears him, let alone feels him. He's thinking about Mr. Mercedes before he became Mr. Mercedes. He might have purchased one of the gadgets Jerome has just told him about, but it's just as likely he built it himself. And was Mrs. Trelawney's Mercedes the first car he ever used it on? Unlikely.

  I have to check on car robberies downtown, he thinks. Starting in . . . let's say 2007 and going right through until early spring of 2009.

  He has a friend in records, Marlo Everett, who owes him one. Hodges is confident Marlo will run an unofficial check for him without a lot of questions. And if she comes up with a bunch of reports where the investigating officer concludes that "complainant may have forgotten to lock his vehicle," he'll know.

  In his heart he knows already.

  "Mr. Hodges?" Jerome is looking at him a little uncertainly.

  "What is it, Jerome?"

  "When you were working on the City Center case, didn't you check out this PKE thing with the cops who handle auto theft? I mean, they have to know about it. It's not new. My friends say it's even got a name: stealing the peek."

  "We talked to the head mechanic from the Mercedes dealership, and he told us a key was used," Hodges says. To his own ears, the reply sounds weak and defensive. Worse: incompetent. What the head mechanic did--what they all did--was assume a key had been used. One left in the ignition by a ditzy lady none of them liked.

  Jerome offers a cynical smile that looks odd and out of place on his young face. "There's stuff that people who work at car dealerships don't talk about, Mr. Hodges. They don't lie, exactly, they just banish it from their minds. Like how airbag deployment can save your life but also drive your glasses into your eyes and blind you. The high rollover rate of some SUVs. Or how easy it is to steal a PKE signal. But the auto theft guys must be hip, right? I mean, they must."

  The dirty truth is Hodges doesn't know. He should, but he doesn't. He and Pete were in the field almost constantly, working double shifts and getting maybe five hours of sleep a night. The paperwork piled up. If there was a memo from auto theft, it will probably be in the case files somewhere. He doesn't dare ask his old partner about it, but realizes he may have to tell Pete everything soon. If he can't work it out for himself, that is.

  In the meantime, Jerome needs to know everything. Because the guy Hodges is dicking with is crazy.

  Barbara comes running up, sweaty and out of breath. "Jay, can me n Hilda n Tonya watch Regular Show?"

  "Go for it," Jerome says.

  She throws her arms around him and presses her cheek to his. "Will you make us pancakes, my darling brother?"

  "No."

  She quits hugging and stands back. "You're bad. Also lazy."

  "Why don't you go down to Zoney's and get some Eggos?"

  "No money is why."

  Jerome digs into his pocket and hands her a five. This earns him another hug.

  "Am I still bad?"

  "No, you're good! Best brother ever!"

  "You can't go without your homegirls," Jerome says.

  "And take Odell," Hodges says.

  Barbara giggles. "We always take Odell."

  Hodges watches the girls bop down the sidewalk in their matching tees (talking a mile a minute and trading Odell's leash back and forth), with a feeling of deep disquiet. He can hardly put the Robinson family in lockdown, but those three girls look so little.

  "Jerome? If somebody tried to mess with them, would Odell--?"

  "Protect them?" Jerome is grave now. "With his life, Mr. H. With his life. What's on your mind?"

  "Can I continue to count on your discretion?"

  "Yassuh!"

  "Okay, I'm going to put a lot on you. But in return, you have to promise to call me Bill from now on."

  Jerome considers. "It'll take some getting used to, but okay."

  Hodges tells him almost everything (he omits where he spent the night), occasionally referring to the notes on his legal pad. By the time he finishes, Barbara and her friends are returning from the GoMart, tossing a box of Eggos back and forth and laughing. They go inside to eat their mid-morning treat in front of the television.

  Hodges and Jerome sit on the porch steps and talk about ghosts.

  20

  Edgemont Avenue looks like a war zone, but being south of Lowbriar, at least it's a mostly white war zone, populated by the descendants of the Kentucky and Tennessee hillfolk who migrated here to work in the factories after World War II. Now the factories are closed, and a large part of the population consists of drug addicts who switched to brown-tar heroin when Oxy got too expensive. Edgemont is lined with bars, pawnshops, and check-cashing joints, all of them shut up tight on this Saturday morning. The only two stores open for business are a Zoney's and the site of Brady's service call, Batool's Bakery.

  Brady parks in front, where he can see anybody trying to break into his Cyber Patrol Beetle, and totes his case inside to the good smells. The greaseball behind the counter is arguing with a Visa-waving customer and pointing to a cardboard sign reading CASH ONLY TIL COMPUTER FIX.

  Paki Boy's computer is suffering the dreaded screen freeze. While continuing to monitor his Beetle at thirty-second intervals, Brady plays the Screen Freeze Boogie, which consists of pushing alt, ctrl, and del at the same time. This brings up the machine's Task Manager, and Brady sees at once that the Explorer program is currently listed as non-responsive.

  "Bad?" Paki Boy asks anxiously. "Please tell me not bad."

  On another day, Brady would string this out, not because guys like Batool tip--they
don't--but to see him sweat a few extra drops of Crisco. Not today. This is just his excuse to get off the floor and go to the mall, and he wants to finish as soon as possible.

  "Nah, gotcha covered, Mr. Batool," he says. He highlights END TASK and reboots Paki Boy's PC. A moment later the cash register function is back up, complete with all four credit card icons.

  "You genius!" Batool cries. For one awful moment, Brady is afraid the perfume-smelling sonofabitch is going to hug him.

  21

  Brady leaves Hillbilly Heaven and drives north toward the airport. There's a Home Depot in the Birch Hill Mall where he could almost certainly get what he wants, but he makes the Skyway Shopping Complex his destination instead. What he's doing is risky, reckless, and unnecessary. He won't make matters worse by doing it in a store only one corridor over from DE. You don't shit where you eat.

  Brady does his business at Skyway's Garden World and sees at once that he's made the right choice. The store is huge, and on this midday late-spring Saturday, it's crammed with shoppers. In the pesticide aisle, Brady adds two cans of Gopher-Go to a shopping cart already loaded with camouflage items: fertilizer, mulch, seeds, and a short-handled gardening claw. He knows it's madness to be buying poison in person when he's already ordered some which will come to his safe mail-drop in another few days, but he can't wait. Absolutely cannot. He probably won't be able to actually poison the nigger family's dog until Monday--and it might even be Tuesday or Wednesday--but he has to be doing something. He needs to feel he's . . . how did Shakespeare put it? Taking arms against a sea of troubles.

  He stands in line with his shopping cart, telling himself that if the checkout girl (another greaseball, the city is drowning in them) says anything about the Gopher-Go, even something completely innocuous like This stuff really works, he'll drop the whole thing. Too great a chance of being remembered and identified: Oh yes, he was being the nervous young man with the garden claw and the gopher poison.

  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.