Stephen King - Mr. Mercedes

“I’m just trying to find her diddly-dang password! Her purse was hanging over the back of her office chair, and her billfold was right there on top, so I put it in my pocket. Because sometimes people keep their passwords in their billfolds. Women especially. I didn’t want her money , Mr. Hodges. I have my own money . I get an allowance .”

An allowance, Hodges thinks. Oh, Holly.

Her eyes are brimming with tears and she’s biting her lips again. “I’d never steal .”

“Okay,” he says. He thinks of patting her hand and decides it might be a bad idea just now. “I understand.”

And Jesus-God, what’s the BFD? On top of all the shit he’s pulled since that goddam letter dropped through his mail slot, lifting a dead woman’s wallet is chump-change. When all this comes out—as it surely will—Hodges will say he took it himself.

Holly, meanwhile, is not finished.

“I have my own credit card, and I have money. I even have a checking account. I buy video games and apps for my iPad. I buy clothes. Also earrings, which I like. I have fifty-six pairs. And I buy my own cigarettes, although they’re very expensive now. It might interest you to know that in New York City, a pack of cigarettes now costs eleven dollars . I try not to be a burden because I can’t work and she says I’m not but I know I am —”

“Holly, stop. You need to save that stuff for your shrink, if you have one.”

“Of course I have one.” She flashes a grim grin at the stubborn password screen of Mrs. Hartsfield’s laptop. “I’m fucked up, didn’t you notice?”

Hodges chooses to ignore this.

“I was looking for a slip of paper with the password on it,” she says, “but there wasn’t one. So I tried her Social Security number, first forwards and then backwards. Same deal with her credit cards. I even tried the credit card security codes.”

“Any other ideas?”

“A couple. Leave me alone.” As he leaves the room, she calls: “I’m sorry about the smoke, but it really does help me think.”

With Holly crunching in the kitchen and Jerome doing likewise in his study, Hodges settles into the living room La-Z-Boy, staring at the blank TV. It’s a bad place to be, maybe the worst place. The logical part of his mind understands that everything which has happened is Brady Hartsfield’s fault, but sitting in the La-Z-Boy where he spent so many vapid, TV-soaked afternoons, feeling useless and out of touch with the essential self he took for granted during his working life, logic loses its power. What creeps in to take its place is a terrifying idea: he, Kermit William Hodges, has committed the crime of shoddy police work, and has aided and abetted Mr. Mercedes by so doing. They are the stars of a reality TV show called Bill and Brady Kill Some Ladies . Because when Hodges looks back, so many of the victims seem to be women: Janey, Olivia Trelawney, Janice Cray and her daughter Patricia… plus Deborah Hartsfield, who might have been poisoned instead of poisoning herself. And, he thinks, I haven’t even added Holly, who’ll likely come out of this even more grandly fucked up than she was going in, if she can’t find that password… or if she does find it and there’s nothing on Mom’s computer that can help us to find Sonny Boy. And really, how likely is that?

Sitting here in this chair—knowing he should get up but as yet unable to move—Hodges thinks his own destructive record with women stretches back even further. His ex-wife is his ex for a reason. Years of near-alcoholic drinking were part of it, but for Corinne (who liked a drink or three herself and probably still does), not the major part. It was the coldness that first stole through the cracks in the marriage and finally froze it solid. It was how he shut her out, telling himself it was for her own good, because so much of what he did was nasty and depressing. How he made it clear in a dozen ways—some large, some small—that in a race between her and the job, Corinne Hodges always came in second. As for his daughter… well. Jeez. Allie never misses sending him birthday and Christmas cards (although the Valentine’s Day cards stopped about ten years ago), and she hardly ever misses the Saturday-evening duty-call, but she hasn’t been to see him in a couple of years. Which really says all that needs saying about how he bitched up that relationship.

His mind drifts to how beautiful she was as a kid, with those freckles and that mop of red hair—his little carrot-top. She’d pelt down the hall to him when he came home and jump fearlessly, knowing he’d drop whatever he was holding and catch her. Janey mentioned being crazy about the Bay City Rollers, and Allie’d had her own faves, her own bubble-gum boy-toys. She bought their records with her own allowance, little ones with the big hole in the center. Who was on them? He can’t remember, only that one of the songs went on and on about every move you make and every step you take. Was that Bananarama or the Thompson Twins? He doesn’t know, but he does know he never took her to a concert, although Corrie might have taken her to see Cyndi Lauper.

Thinking about Allie and her love of pop music rings in a new thought, one that makes him sit up straight, eyes wide, hands clutching the La-Z-Boy’s padded arms.

Would he have let Allie go to that concert tonight?

The answer is absolutely not. No way.

Hodges checks his watch and sees it’s closing in on four o’clock. He gets up, meaning to go into the study and tell Jerome to call his moms and tell her to keep those girls away from the MAC no matter how much they piss and moan. He’s called Larry Windom and taken precautions, but precautions be damned. He would never have put Allie’s life in Romper-Stomper’s hands. Never .

Before he can get two steps toward the study, Jerome calls out: “Bill! Holly! Come here! I think I found something!”

They stand behind Jerome, Hodges looking over his left shoulder and Holly over his right. On the screen of Hodges’s computer is a press release.

SYNERGY CORP., CITIBANK, 3 RESTAURANT CHAINS TO PUT ON MIDWEST’S BIGGEST SUMMER CAREERS DAY AT EMBASSY SUITES

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. Career businesspeople and military veterans are encouraged to attend the biggest Careers Day of the year on Saturday, June 5th, 2010. This recession-busting event will be held at the downtown Embassy Suites, 1 Synergy Square. Prior registration is encouraged but not necessary. You will discover hundreds of exciting and high-paying jobs at the Citibank website, at your local McDonald’s, Burger King, and Chicken Coop, or at www.synergy.com. Jobs available include customer service, retail, security, plumbing, electrical, accounting, financial analysts, telemarketing, cashiers. You will find trained and helpful Job Guides and useful seminars in all conference rooms. There is no charge . Doors open at 8 AM. Bring your resume and dress for success. Remember that prior registration will speed the process and improve your chances of finding that job you’ve been looking for.

TOGETHER WE WILL BEAT THIS RECESSION!

“What do you think?” Jerome asks.

“I think you nailed it.” An enormous wave of relief sweeps through Hodges. Not the concert tonight, or a crowded downtown dance club, or the Groundhogs-Mudhens minor league baseball game tomorrow night. It’s this thing at Embassy Suites. Got to be, it’s too perfectly rounded to be anything else. There’s method in Brady Hartsfield’s madness; to him, alpha equals omega. Hartsfield means to finish his career as a mass murderer the same way he started it, by killing the city’s jobless.