Mr. Mercedes

by Stephen King

  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."

  "Do you want me to come?"

  "Of course, but I don't know how I'd explain you to them. I can't very well introduce you as the man I hopped into bed with almost as soon as I met him, and if I tell them I hired you to investigate Ollie's death, it's apt to show up on one of Uncle Henry's kids' Facebook pages before midnight. When it comes to gossip, Uncle Henry's worse than Aunt Charlotte, but neither one of them is exactly a model of discretion. At least Holly's just weird." She takes a deep, watery breath. "God, I could sure use a friendly face right now. I haven't seen Charlotte and Henry in years, neither of them showed up at Ollie's funeral, and they sure haven't made any effort to keep up with my life."

  Hodges thinks it over and says, "I'm a friend, that's all. I used to work for the Vigilant security company in Sugar Heights. You met me when you came back to inventory your sister's things and take care of the will with the lawyer. Chum."

  "Schron." She takes a deep, watery breath. "That could work."

  It will. When it comes to spinning stories, no one can do it with a straighter face than a cop. "I'm on my way."

  "But . . . don't you have things to take care of in the city? To investigate?"

  "Nothing that won't wait. It'll take me an hour to get there. With Saturday traffic, maybe even less."

  "Thank you, Bill. With all my heart. If I'm not in the lobby--"

  "I'll find you, I'm a trained detective." He's slipping into his shoes.

  "I think if you're coming, you better bring a change of clothes. I've rented three rooms in the Holiday Inn down the street. I'll rent one for you as well. The advantages of having money. Not to mention an Amex Platinum Card."

  "Janey, it's an easy drive back to the city."

  "Sure, but she might die. If it happens today or tonight, I'm really going to need a friend. For the . . . you know, the . . ."

  Tears catch her and she can't finish. Hodges doesn't need her to, because he knows what she means. For the arrangements.

  Ten minutes later he's on the road, headed east toward Sunny Acres and Warsaw County Memorial. He expects to find Janey in the ICU waiting room, but she's outside, sitting on the bumper of a parked ambulance. She gets into his Toyota when he pulls up beside her, and one look at her drawn face and socketed eyes tells him everything he needs to know.

  She holds together until he parks in the visitors' lot, then breaks down. Hodges takes her in his arms. She tells him that Elizabeth Wharton passed from the world at quarter past three, central daylight time.

  About the same time I was putting on my shoes, Hodges thinks, and hugs her tighter.

  23

  Little League season is in full swing, and Brady spends that sunny Saturday afternoon at McGinnis Park, where a full slate of games is being played on three fields. The afternoon is warm and business is brisk. Lots of tweenybop girls have come to watch their little brothers do battle, and as they stand in line waiting for their ice cream, the only thing they seem to be talking about (the only thing Brady hears them talking about, anyway) is the upcoming 'Round Here concert at the MAC. It seem
s they are all going. Brady has decided that he will go, too. He just needs to dope out a way to get in wearing his special vest--the one loaded with the ball bearings and blocks of plastic explosive.

  My final bow, he thinks. A headline for the ages.

  The thought improves his mood. So does selling out his entire truckload of goodies--even the JuCee Stix are gone by four o'clock. Back at the ice cream factory, he hands the keys over to Shirley Orton (who never seems to leave) and asks if he can switch with Rudy Stanhope, who's down for the Sunday afternoon shift. Sundays--always assuming the weather cooperates--are busy days, with Loeb's three trucks working not just McGinnis but the city's other four large parks. He accompanies his request with the boyishly winning smile Shirley is a sucker for.

  "In other words," Shirley says, "you want two afternoons off in a row."

  "You got it." He explains that his mother wants to visit her brother, which means at least one overnight and possibly two. There is no brother, of course, and when it comes to trips, the only one his mother is interested in making these days is the scenic tour that takes her from the couch to the liquor cabinet and back to the couch.

  "I'm sure Rudy will say okay. Don't you want to call him yourself?"

  "If the request comes from you, it's a done deal."

  The bitch giggles, which puts acres of flesh in rather disturbing motion. She makes the call while Brady's changing into his street clothes. Rudy is happy to give up his Sunday shift and take Brady's on Tuesday. This gives Brady two free afternoons to stake out Zoney's GoMart, and two should be enough. If the girl doesn't show up with the dog on either day, he'll call in sick on Wednesday. If he has to, but he doesn't think it will take that long.

  After leaving Loeb's, Brady does a little Krogering of his own. He picks up half a dozen items they need--staples like eggs, milk, butter, and Cocoa Puffs--then swings by the meat counter and picks up a pound of hamburger. Ninety percent lean. Nothing but the best for Odell's last meal.

  At home, he opens the garage and unloads everything he bought at Garden World, being careful to put the canisters of Gopher-Go on a high shelf. His mother rarely comes out here, but it doesn't do to take chances. There's a mini-fridge under the worktable; Brady got it at a yard sale for seven bucks, a total steal. It's where he keeps his soft drinks. He stows the package of hamburger behind the Cokes and Mountain Dews, then totes the rest of the groceries inside. What he finds in the kitchen is delightful: his mother shaking paprika over a tuna salad that actually looks tasty.

  She catches his look and laughs. "I wanted to make up for the lasagna. I'm sorry about that, but I was just so tired."

  So drunk is what you were, he thinks, but at least she hasn't given up entirely.

  She pouts her lips, freshly dressed in lipstick. "Give Mommy a kiss, honeyboy."

  Honeyboy puts his arms around her and gives her a lingering kiss. Her lipstick tastes of something sweet. Then she slaps him briskly on the ass and tells him to go down and play with his computers until dinner's ready.

  Brady leaves the cop a brief one-sentence message--I'm going to fuck you up, Grampa. Then he plays Resident Evil until his mother calls him to dinner. The tuna salad is great, and he has two helpings. She actually can cook when she wants, and he says nothing as she pours the first drink of the evening, an extra-big one to make up for the two or three smaller ones she denied herself that afternoon. By nine o'clock, she's snoring on the couch again.

  Brady uses the opportunity to go online and learn all about the upcoming 'Round Here concert. He watches a YouTube video where a giggle of girls discusses which of the five boys is the hottest. The consensus is Cam, who sings lead on "Look Me in My Eyes," a piece of audio vomit Brady vaguely recalls hearing on the radio last year. He imagines those laughing faces torn apart by ball bearings, those identical Guess jeans in burning tatters.

  Later, after he's helped his mother up to bed and he's sure she's totally conked, he gets the hamburger, puts it in a bowl, and mixes in two cups of Gopher-Go. If that isn't enough to kill Odell, he'll run the goddam mutt over with the ice cream truck.

  This thought makes him snicker.

  He puts the poisoned hamburger in a Baggie and stows it back in the mini-fridge, taking care to hide it behind the cans of soda again. He also takes care to wash both his hands and the mixing bowl in plenty of hot, soapy water.

  That night, Brady sleeps well. There are no headaches and no dreams about his dead brother.

  24

  Hodges and Janey are loaned a phone-friendly room down the hall from the hospital lobby, and there they split up the deathwork.

  He's the one who gets in touch with the funeral home (Soames, the same one that handled Olivia Trelawney's exit rites) and makes sure the hospital is prepared to release the body when the hearse arrives. Janey, using her iPad with a casual efficiency Hodges envies, downloads an obituary form from the city paper. She fills it out quickly, speaking occasionally under her breath as she does so; once Hodges hears her murmur the phrase in lieu of flowers. When the obit's emailed back, she produces her mother's address book from her purse and begins making calls to the old lady's few remaining friends. She's warm with them, and calm, but also quick. Her voice wavers only once, while she's talking to Althea Greene, her mother's nurse and closest companion for almost ten years.

  By six o'clock--roughly the same time Brady Hartsfield arrives home to find his mother putting the finishing touches on her tuna salad--most of the t's have been crossed and the i's dotted. At ten to seven, a white Cadillac hearse pulls into the hospital drive and rolls around back. The guys inside know where to go; they've been here plenty of times.

  Janey looks at Hodges, her face pale, her mouth trembling. "I'm not sure I can--"

  "I'll take care of it."

  The transaction is like any other, really; he gives the mortician and his assistant a signed death certificate, they give him a receipt. He thinks, I could be buying a car. When he comes back to the hospital lobby, he spies Janey outside, once more sitting on the bumper of the ambulance. He sits down next to her and takes her hand. She squeezes his fingers hard. They watch the white hearse until it's out of sight. Then he leads her back to his car and they drive the two blocks to the Holiday Inn.

  Henry Sirois, a fat man with a moist handshake, shows up at eight. Charlotte Gibney appears an hour later, herding an overloaded bellman ahead of her and complaining about the terrible service on her flight. And the crying babies, she says--you don't want to know. They don't, but she tells them anyway. She's as skinny as her brother is fat, and regards Hodges with a watery, suspicious eye. Lurking by Aunt Charlotte's side is her daughter Holly, a spinster roughly Janey's age but with none of Janey's looks. Holly Gibney never speaks above a mutter and seems to have a problem making eye contact.

  "I want to see Betty," Aunt Charlotte announces after a brief dry embrace with her niece. It's as if she thinks Mrs. Wharton might be laid out in the motel lobby, lilies at her head and carnations at her feet.

  Janey explains that the body has already been transported to Soames Funeral Home in the city, where Elizabeth Wharton's earthly remains will be cremated on Wednesday afternoon, after a viewing on Tuesday and a brief nondenominational service on Wednesday morning.

  "Cremation is barbaric," Uncle Henry announces. Everything these two say seems to be an announcement.

  "It's what she wanted." Janey speaks quietly, politely, but Hodges observes the color rising in her cheeks.

  He thinks there may be trouble, perhaps a demand to see a written document specifying cremation over burial, but they hold their peace. Perhaps they're remembering all those millions Janey inherited from her sister--money that is Janey's to share. Or not. Uncle Henry and Aunt Charlotte might even be considering all the visits they did not make to their elderly sister during her final suffering years. The visits Mrs. Wharton got during those years were made by Olivia, whom Aunt Charlotte does not mention by name, only calling her "the one with the problems." And of course
it was Janey, still hurting from her abusive marriage and rancorous divorce, who was there at the end.

  The five of them have a late dinner in the almost deserted Holiday Inn dining room. From the speakers overhead, Herb Alpert toots his horn. Aunt Charlotte has a salad and complains about the dressing, which she has specified should come on the side. "They can put it in a little pitcher, but bottled from the supermarket is still bottled from the supermarket," she announces.

  Her muttering daughter orders something that sounds like sneezebagel hellbun. It turns out to be a cheeseburger, well done. Uncle Henry opts for fettuccini alfredo and sucks it down with the efficiency of a high-powered Rinse N Vac, fine droplets of perspiration appearing on his forehead as he approaches the finish line. He sops up the remains of the sauce with a chunk of buttered bread.

  Hodges does most of the talking, recounting stories from his days with Vigilant Guard Service. The job is fictional, but the stories are mostly true, adapted from his years as a cop. He tells them about the burglar who got caught trying to squirm through a basement window and lost his pants in his efforts to wriggle free (this earns a small smile from Holly); the twelve-year-old boy who stood behind his bedroom door and cold-cocked a home invader with his baseball bat; the housekeeper who stole several pieces of her employer's jewelry only to have them drop out of her underwear while she served dinner. There are darker stories, many of them, that he keeps to himself.

  Over dessert (which Hodges skips, Uncle Henry's unapologetic gluttony serving as a minatory power of example), Janey invites the new arrivals to stay at the house in Sugar Heights starting tomorrow, and the three of them toddle off to their prepaid rooms. Charlotte and Henry seem cheered by the prospect of inspecting at first hand just how the other half lives. As for Holly . . . who knows?

  The newcomers' rooms are on the first floor. Janey and Hodges are on the third. As they reach the side-by-side doors, she asks if he will sleep with her.