Mr. Mercedes

‘Open it,’ Hodges says.

He does, but the file is empty. There’s nothing unsent, and as they now know, all old correspondence on Debbie’s Blue Umbrella goes straight to data heaven.

Jerome sits down at Number Three. ‘This must be his go-to glowbox, Hols. Almost got to be.’

She joins him. ‘I think the other ones are mostly for show – so he can pretend he’s on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise or something.’

Hodges points to a file marked 2009. ‘Let’s look at that one.’

A mouse-click discloses a subfile titled CITY CENTER. Jerome opens it and they stare at a long list of stories about what happened there in April of 2009.

‘The asshole’s press clippings,’ Hodges says.

‘Go through everything on this one,’ Holly tells Jerome. ‘Start with the hard drive.’

Jerome opens it. ‘Oh man, look at this shit.’ He points to a file titled EXPLOSIVES.

‘Open it!’ Holly says, shaking his shoulder. ‘Open it, open it, open it!’

Jerome does, and reveals another loaded subfile. Drawers within drawers, Hodges thinks. A computer’s really nothing but a Victorian rolltop desk, complete with secret compartments.

Holly says, ‘Hey guys, look at this.’ She points. ‘He downloaded the whole Anarchist Cookbook from BitTorrent. That’s illegal!’

‘Duh,’ Jerome says, and she punches him in the arm.

The pain in Hodges’s shoulder is worse. He walks back to the stairs and sits heavily. Jerome and Holly, huddled over Number Three, don’t notice him go. He puts his hands on his thighs (My overweight thighs, he thinks, my badly overweight thighs) and begins taking long slow breaths. The only thing that can make this evening worse would be having a heart attack in a house he’s illegally entered with a minor and a woman who is at least a mile from right in the head. A house where a bullshit-crazy killer’s pinup girl is lying dead upstairs.

Please God, no heart attack. Please.

He takes more long breaths. He stifles a belch and the pain begins to ease.

With his head lowered, he finds himself looking between the stairs. Something glints there in the light of the overhead fluorescents. Hodges drops to his knees and crawls underneath to see what it is. It turns out to be a stainless steel ball bearing, bigger than the ones in the Happy Slapper, heavy in his palm. He looks at the distorted reflection of his face in its curved side, and an idea starts to grow. Only it doesn’t exactly grow; it surfaces, like the bloated body of something drowned.

Farther beneath the stairs is a green garbage bag. Hodges crawls to it with the ball bearing clutched in one hand, feeling the cobwebs that dangle from the undersides of the steps caress his receding hair and growing forehead. Jerome and Holly are chattering excitedly, but he pays no attention.

He grabs the garbage bag with his free hand and begins to back out from beneath the stairs. A drop of sweat runs into his left eye, stinging, and he blinks it away. He sits down on the steps again.

‘Open his email,’ Holly says.

‘God, you’re bossy,’ Jerome says.

‘Open it, open it, open it!’

Right you are, Hodges thinks, and opens the garbage bag. There are snippets of wire inside, and what appears to be a busted circuit board. They are lying on top of a khaki-colored garment that looks like a shirt. He brushes the bits of wire aside, pulls the garment out, holds it up. Not a shirt but a hiker’s vest, the kind with lots of pockets. The lining has been slashed in half a dozen places. He reaches into one of these cuts, feels around, and pulls out two more ball bearings. It’s not a hiker’s vest, at least not anymore. It’s been customized.

Now it’s a suicide vest.

Or was. Brady unloaded it for some reason. Because his plans changed to the Careers Day thing on Saturday? That has to be it. The explosives are probably in his car, unless he’s stolen another one already. He—

‘No!’ Jerome cries. Then he screams it. ‘No! No, no, OH GOD NO!’

‘Please don’t let it be,’ Holly whimpers. ‘Don’t let it be that.’

Hodges drops the vest and hurries across to the bank of computers to see what they’re looking at. It’s an email from a site called FanTastic, thanking Mr Brady Hartsfield for his order.

You may download your printable ticket at once. No bags or backpacks will be allowed at this event. Thank you for ordering from FanTastic, where all the best seats to all the biggest shows are only a click away.

Below this: ‘ROUND HERE MINGO AUDITORIUM MIDWEST CULTURE AND ARTS COMPLEX JUNE 3, 2010 7 PM.

Hodges closes his eyes. It’s the fucking concert after all. We made an understandable mistake … but not a forgivable one. Please God, don’t let him get inside. Please God, let Romper-Stomper’s guys catch him at the door.

But even that could be a nightmare, because Larry Windom is under the impression that he’s looking for a child molester, not a mad bomber. If he spots Brady and tries to collar him with his usual heavy-handed lack of grace—

‘It’s quarter of seven,’ Holly says, pointing to the digital readout on Brady’s Number Three. ‘He might still be waiting in line, but he’s probably inside already.’

Hodges knows she’s right. With that many kids going, seating will have started no later than six-thirty.

‘Jerome,’ he says.

The boy doesn’t reply. He’s staring at the ticket receipt on the computer screen, and when Hodges puts his hand on Jerome’s shoulder, it’s like touching a stone.

‘Jerome.’

Slowly, Jerome turns around. His eyes are huge. ‘We been so stupid,’ he whispers.

‘Call your moms.’ Hodges’s voice remains calm, and it’s not even that much of an effort, because he’s in deep shock. He keeps seeing the ball bearing. And the slashed vest. ‘Do it now. Tell her to grab Barbara and the other kids she brought and beat feet out of there.’

Jerome pulls his phone from the clip on his belt and speed-dials his mother. Holly stares at him with her arms crossed tightly over her breasts and her chewed lips pulled down in a grimace.

Jerome waits, mutters a curse, then says: ‘You have to get out of there, Mom. Just take the girls and go. Don’t call me back and ask questions, just go. Don’t run. But get out!’

He ends the call and tells them what they already know. ‘Voicemail. It rang plenty of times, so she’s not talking on it and it’s not shut off. I don’t get it.’

‘What about your sister?’ Hodges says. ‘She must have a phone.’

Jerome is hitting speed-dial again before he can finish. He listens for what seems to Hodges like an age, although he knows it can only be ten or fifteen seconds. Then he says, ‘Barb! Why in hell aren’t you picking up? You and Mom and the other girls have to get out of there!’ He ends the call. ‘I don’t get this. She always carries it, that thing is practically grafted to her, and she should at least feel it vibra—’

Holly says, ‘Oh shit and piss.’ But that’s not enough for her. ‘Oh, fuck!’

They turn to her.

‘How big is the concert place? How many people can fit inside?’

Hodges tries to retrieve what he knows about the Mingo Auditorium. ‘Seats four thousand. I don’t know if they allow standees or not, I can’t remember that part of the fire code.’

‘And for this show, almost all of them are girls,’ she says. ‘Girls with cell phones practically grafted to them. Most of them gabbing away while they wait for the show to start. Or texting.’ Her eyes are huge with dismay. ‘It’s the circuits. They’re overloaded. You have to keep trying, Jerome. You have to keep trying until you get through.’

He nods numbly, but he’s looking at Hodges. ‘You should call your friend. The one in the security department.’

‘Yeah, but not from here. In the car.’ Hodges looks at his watch again. Ten of seven. ‘We’re going to the MAC.’