Mr. Mercedes

Holly throws herself into his arms and gives him a hug. Hodges hugs her back and kisses her cheek. With her short hair and her face fully revealed – for the first time since her childhood, although he doesn’t know this – he can see her resemblance to Janey. This hurts and feels fine at the same time.

Jerome feels moved to call on Tyrone Feelgood Delight. ‘Massa Hodges, you free at last! Free at last! Great God A’mighty, you is free at last!’

‘Stop talking like that, Jerome,’ Holly says. ‘It’s juvenile.’ She takes the bottle of champagne from the picnic basket, along with a trio of plastic glasses.

‘The district attorney escorted me into the chambers of Judge Daniel Silver, a guy who heard my testimony a great many times in my cop days,’ Hodges says. ‘He gave me a ten-minute tongue-lashing and told me that my reckless behavior had put four thousand lives at risk.’

Jerome is indignant. ‘That’s outrageous! You’re the reason those people are still alive.’

‘No,’ Hodges says quietly. ‘You and Holly are the reason for that.’

‘If Hartsfield hadn’t gotten in touch with you in the first place, the cops still wouldn’t know him from Adam. And those people would be dead.’

This may or may not be true, but in his own mind, Hodges is okay with how things turned out at the Mingo. What he’s not okay with – and will never be – is Janey. Silver accused him of playing ‘a pivotal role’ in her death, and he thinks that might be so. But he has no doubt that Hartsfield would have gone on to kill more, if not at the concert or the Careers Day at Embassy Suites, then somewhere else. He’d gotten a taste for it. So there’s a rough equation here: Janey’s life in exchange for the lives of all those hypothetical others. And if it had been the concert in that alternate (but very possible) reality, two of the victims would have been Jerome’s mother and sister.

‘What did you say back?’ Holly asks. ‘What did you say back to him?’

‘Nothing. When you’re taken to the woodshed, the best thing you can do is wait out the whipping and shut up.’

‘That’s why you weren’t with us to get a medal, isn’t it?’ she asks. ‘And why you weren’t on the proclamation. Those poops were punishing you.’

‘I imagine,’ Hodges says, although if the powers that be thought that was a punishment, they were wrong. The last thing in the world he wanted was to have a medal hung over his neck and to be presented with a key to the city. He was a cop for forty years. That’s his key to the city.

‘A shame,’ Jerome says. ‘You’ll never get to ride the bus free.’

‘How are things on Lake Avenue, Holly? Settling down?’

‘Better,’ Holly says. She’s easing the cork out of the champagne bottle with all the delicacy of a surgeon. ‘I’m sleeping through the night again. Also seeing Dr Leibowitz twice a week. She’s helping a lot.’

‘And how are things with your mother?’ This, he knows, is a touchy subject, but he feels he has to touch, just this once. ‘She still calling you five times a day, begging you to come back to Cinci

‘She’s down to twice a day,’ Holly says. ‘First thing in the morning, last thing at night. She’s lonely. And I think more afraid for herself than she is for me. It’s hard to change your life when you’re old.’

Tell me about it, Hodges thinks. ‘That’s a very important insight, Holly.’

‘Dr Leibowitz says habits are hard to break. It’s hard for me to give up smoking, and it’s hard for Mom to get used to living alone. Also to realize I don’t have to be that fourteen-year-old-girl curled up in the bathtub for the rest of my life.’

They’re silent for a while. A crow takes possession of the pitcher’s rubber on Little League Field 3 and caws triumphantly.

Holly’s partition from her mother was made possible by Janelle Patterson’s will. The bulk of her estate – which came to Janey courtesy of another of Brady Hartsfield’s victims – went to Uncle Henry Sirois and Aunt Charlotte Gibney, but Janey also left half a million dollars to Holly. It was in a trust fund to be administered by Mr George Schron, the lawyer Janey had inherited from Olivia. Hodges has no idea when Janey did it. Or why she did it. He doesn’t believe in premonitions, but …

But.

Charlotte had been dead set against Holly moving, claiming her daughter was not ready to live on her own. Given that Holly was closing in on fifty, that was tantamount to saying she would never be ready. Holly believed she was, and with Hodges’s help, she had convinced Schron that she would be fine.

Being a heroine who had been interviewed on all the major networks no doubt helped with Schron. It didn’t with her mother; in some ways it was Holly’s status as heroine that dismayed that lady the most. Charlotte would never be entirely able to accept the idea that her precariously balanced daughter had played a crucial role (maybe the crucial role) in preventing a mass slaughter of the i

By the terms of Janey’s will, the condo apartment with its fabulous lake view is now owned jointly by Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Henry. When Holly asked if she could live there, at least to start with, Charlotte had refused instantly and adamantly. Her brother could not convince her to change her mind. It was Holly herself who had done that, saying she intended to stay in the city, and if her mother would not give in on the apartment, she’d find one in Lowtown.

‘In the very worst part of Lowtown,’ she said. ‘Where I’ll buy everything with cash. Which I will flash around ostentatiously.’

That did it.

Holly’s time in the city – the first extended period she has ever spent away from her mother – hasn’t been easy, but her shrink gives her plenty of support, and Hodges visits her frequently. Far more important, Jerome visits frequently, and Holly is an even more frequent guest at the Robinson home on Teaberry Lane. Hodges believes that’s where the real healing is taking place, not on Dr Leibowitz’s couch. Barbara has taken to calling her Aunt Holly.

‘What about you, Bill?’ Jerome asks. ‘Any plans?’

‘Well,’ he says, smiling, ‘I was offered a job with Vigilant Guard Service, how about that?’

Holly clasps her hands together and bounces up and down on the picnic bench like a child. ‘Are you going to take it?’

‘Can’t,’ Hodges says.

‘Heart?’ Jerome asks.

‘Nope. You have to be bonded, and Judge Silver shared with me this morning that my chances of being bonded and the chances of the Jews and Palestinians uniting to build the first interfaith space station are roughly equal. My dreams of getting a private investigator’s license are equally kaput. However, a bail bondsman I’ve known for years has offered me a part-time job as a skip-tracer, and for that I don’t need to be bonded. I can do it mostly from home, on my computer.’

‘I could help you,’ Holly says. ‘With the computer part, that is. I don’t want to actually chase anybody. Once was enough.’

‘What about Hartsfield?’ Jerome asks. ‘Anything new, or just the same?’

‘Just the same,’ Hodges says.

‘I don’t care,’ Holly says. She sounds defiant, but for the first time since arriving at McGi

Hodges takes one of those fists and soothes it open. Jerome does the same with the other.

‘Of course you would,’ Hodges says. ‘That’s why the mayor gave you a medal.’

‘Not to mention free bus rides and trips to the museum,’ Jerome adds.

She relaxes, a little at a time. ‘Why should I ride the bus, Jerome? I have lots of money in trust, and I have Cousin Olivia’s Mercedes. It’s a wonderful car. And such low mileage!’

‘No ghosts?’ Hodges asks. He’s not joking about this; he’s honestly curious.

For a long time she doesn’t reply, just looks up at the big German sedan parked beside Hodges’s tidy Japanese import. At least she’s stopped biting her lips.