3
Paula Rollins is a full-figured blonde who lives in a sixteen-room faux Tudor mansion three blocks from the late Mrs. T.’s pile. She has all those rooms to herself. Brady doesn’t know exactly what her deal is, but guesses she’s some rich guy’s second or third ex–trophy wife, and that she did very well for herself in the settlement. Maybe the guy was too entranced by her knockers to bother with the prenup. Brady doesn’t care much, he only knows she has enough to tip well and she’s never tried to slap the make on him. That’s good. He has no interest in Mrs. Rollins’s full figure.
She does grab his hand and just about pull him through the door, though.
“Oh . . . Brady! Thank God!”
She sounds like a woman being rescued from a desert island after three days without food or water, but he hears the little pause before she says his name and sees her eyes flick down to read it off his shirt, even though he’s been here half a dozen times. (So has Freddi, for that matter; Paula Rollins is a serial computer abuser.) He doesn’t mind that she doesn’t remember him. Brady likes being forgettable.
“It just . . . I don’t know what’s wrong!”
As if the dimwitted twat ever does. Last time he was here, six weeks ago, it was a kernel panic, and she was convinced a computer virus had gobbled up all her files. Brady shooed her gently from the office and promised (not sounding too hopeful) to do what he could. Then he sat down, re-started the computer, and surfed for awhile before calling her in and telling her he had been able to fix the problem just in time. Another half hour, he said, and her files really would have been gone. She had tipped him eighty dollars. He and Ma had gone out to dinner that night, and split a not-bad bottle of champagne.
“Tell me what happened,” Brady says, grave as a neurosurgeon.
“I didn’t do anything,” she wails. She always wails. Many of his service call customers do. Not just the women, either. Nothing can unman a top-shelf executive more rapidly than the possibility that everything on his MacBook just went to data heaven.
She pulls him through the parlor (it’s as long as an Amtrak dining car) and into her office.
“I cleaned up myself, I never let the housekeeper in here—washed the windows, vacuumed the floor—and when I sat down to do my email, the damn computer wouldn’t even turn on!”
“Huh. Weird.” Brady knows Mrs. Rollins has a spic maid to do the household chores, but apparently the maid isn’t allowed in the office. Which is a good thing for her, because Brady has already spotted the problem, and if the maid had been responsible for it, she probably would have been fired.
“Can you fix it, Brady?” Thanks to the tears swimming in them, Mrs. Rollins’s big blue eyes are bigger than ever. Brady suddenly flashes on Betty Boop in those old cartoons you can look at on YouTube, thinks Poop-poop-pe-doop!, and has to restrain a laugh.
“I’ll sure try,” he says gallantly.
“I have to run across the street to Helen Wilcox’s,” she says, “but I’ll only be a few minutes. There’s fresh coffee in the kitchen, if you want it.”
So saying, she leaves him alone in her big expensive house, with fuck knows how many valuable pieces of jewelry scattered around upstairs. She’s safe, though. Brady would never steal from a service client. He might be caught in the act. Even if he weren’t, who would be the logical suspect? Duh. He didn’t get away with mowing down those job-seeking idiots at City Center only to be arrested for stealing a pair of diamond earrings he wouldn’t have any idea how to get rid of.
He waits until the back door shuts, then goes into the parlor to watch her accompany her world-class tits across the street. When she’s out of sight, he goes back to the office, crawls under her desk, and plugs in her computer. She must have yanked the plug so she could vacuum, then forgot to jack it back in.
Her password screen comes on. Idly, just killing time, he types PAULA, and her desktop, loaded with all her files, appears. God, people are so dumb.
He goes on Debbie’s Blue Umbrella to see if the fat ex-cop has posted anything new. He hasn’t, but Brady decides on the spur of the moment to send the Det-Ret a message after all. Why not?
He learned in high school that thinking too long about writing doesn’t work for him. Too many other ideas get into his head and start sliding all over each other. It’s better to just fire away. That was how he wrote to Olivia Trelawney—white heat, baby—and it’s also the way he wrote to Hodges, although he went over the message to the fat ex-cop a couple of times to make sure he was keeping his style consistent.
He writes in the same style now, only reminding himself to keep it short.
How did I know about the hairnet and bleach, Detective Hodges? THAT STUFF was withheld evidence because it was never in the paper or on TV. You say you are not stupid but IT SURE LOOKS THAT WAY TO ME. I think all that TV you watch has rotted your brain.
WHAT withheld evidence?
I DARE YOU TO ANSWER THIS.
Brady looks this over and makes one change: a hyphen in the middle of hairnet. He can’t believe he’ll ever become a person of interest, but he knows that if he ever does, they’ll ask him to provide a writing sample. He almost wishes he could give them one. He wore a mask when he drove into the crowd, and he wears another when he writes as the Mercedes Killer.
He hits SEND, then pulls down Mrs. Rollins’s Internet history. For a moment he stops, bemused, when he sees several entries for White Tie and Tails. He knows what that is from something Freddi Linklatter told him: a male escort service. Paula Rollins has a secret life, it seems.
But then, doesn’t everybody?
It’s no business of his. He deletes his visit to Under Debbie’s Blue Umbrella, then opens his boxy service crate and takes out a bunch of random crap: utility discs, a modem (broken, but she won’t know that), various thumb-drives, and a voltage regulator that has nothing whatsoever to do with computer repair but looks technological. He also takes out a Lee Child paperback that he reads until he hears his client come in the back door twenty minutes later.
When Mrs. Rollins pokes her head into the study, the paperback is out of sight and Brady is packing up the random shit. She favors him with an anxious smile. “Any luck?”
“At first it looked bad,” Brady says, “but I tracked down your problem. The trimmer switch was bad and that shut down your danus circuit. In a case like that, the computer’s programmed not to start up, because if it did, you might lose all your data.” He looks at her gravely. “The darn thing might even catch fire. It’s been known to happen.”
“Oh . . . my . . . dear . . . Jesus,” she says, packing each word with drama and placing one hand high on her chest. “Are you sure it’s okay?”
“Good as gold,” he says. “Check it out.”
He starts the computer and looks politely away while she types in her numbfuck password. She opens a couple of files, then turns to him, smiling. “Brady, you are a gift from God.”
“My ma used to tell me the same thing until I got old enough to buy beer.”
She laughs as if this were the funniest thing she has heard in her whole life. Brady laughs with her, because he has a sudden vision: kneeling on her shoulders and driving a butcher knife from her own kitchen deep into her screaming mouth.
He can almost feel the gristle giving way.
4
Hodges has been checking the Blue Umbrella site frequently, and he’s reading the Mercedes Killer’s follow-up message only minutes after Brady hit SEND.
Hodges is grinning, a big one that smooths his skin and makes him almost handsome. Their relationship has been officially established: Hodges the fisherman, Mr. Mercedes the fish. But a wily fish, he reminds himself, one capable of making a sudden lunge and snapping the line. He will have to be played carefully, reeled toward the boat slowly. If Hodges is able to do that, if he’s patient, sooner or later Mr. Mercedes will agree to a meeting. Hodges is sure of it.
Because if he can’t nudge me into offing myself, that leaves just one alternative, and that’s murder.
The smart thing for Mr. Mercedes to do would be to just walk away; if he does that, the road ends. But he won’t. He’s pissed, but that’s only part of it, and the small part, at that. Hodges wonders if Mr. Mercedes knows just how crazy he is. And if he knows there’s one nugget of hard information here.
I think all that TV you watch has rotted your brain.
Up to this morning, Hodges has only suspected that Mr. Mercedes has been watching his house; now he knows. Motherfucker has been on the street, and more than once.
He grabs his legal pad and starts jotting possible follow-up messages. It has to be good, because his fish feels the hook. The pain of it makes him angry even though he doesn’t yet know what it is. He needs to be a lot angrier before he figures it out, and that means taking a risk. Hodges must jerk the line to seat the hook deeper, despite the risk the line may break. What . . . ?
He remembers something Pete Huntley said at lunch, just a remark in passing, and the answer comes to him. Hodges writes on his pad, then rewrites, then polishes. He reads the finished message over and decides it will do. It’s short and mean. There’s something you forgot, sucka. Something a false confessor couldn’t know. Or a real confessor, for that matter . . . unless Mr. Mercedes checked out his rolling murder weapon from stem to stern before climbing in, and Hodges is betting the guy didn’t.
If he’s wrong, the line snaps and the fish swims away. But there’s an old saying: no risk, no reward.
He wants to send the message right away, but knows it’s a bad idea. Let the fish swim around in circles a little longer with that bad old hook in his mouth. The question is what to do in the meantime. TV never had less appeal for him.
He gets an idea—they’re coming in bunches this morning—and pulls out the bottom drawer of his desk. Here is a box filled with the small flip-up pads he used to carry with him when he and Pete were doing street interviews. He never expected to need one of these again, but he takes one now and stows it in the back pocket of his chinos.
It fits just right.