So far Hodges hasn’t gone to his pals in the police department with the letter Brady sent. At first Brady believed it was because Hodges wanted to keep it between the two of them, maybe take a shot at tracking down the Mercedes Killer himself and getting a little post-retirement glory, but now he knows better. Why would the fucking Det-Ret want to track him down when he thinks Brady’s nothing but a crank?

Brady can’t understand how Hodges could come to that conclusion when he, Brady, knew about the bleach and the hairnet, details never released to the press, but somehow he has. If Brady poisons Odell, Hodges will call in his police pals. Starting with his old partner, Huntley.

Worse, it may give the man Brady hoped to goad into suicide a new reason to live, defeating the whole purpose of the artfully composed letter. That would be completely unfair. Pushing the Trelawney bitch over the edge had been the greatest thrill of his life, far greater (for reasons he doesn’t understand, or care to) than killing all those people with her car, and he wanted to do it again. To get the chief investigator in the case to kill himself – what a triumph that would be!

Brady is standing halfway up the stairs, thinking hard.

The fat bastard still might do it, he tells himself. Killing the dog might be the final push he needs.

Only he doesn’t really buy this, and his head gives a warning throb.

He feels a sudden urge to rush back down to the basement, go on the Blue Umbrella, and demand that the fat ex-cop tell him what bullshit ‘withheld evidence’ he’s talking about so he, Brady, can knock it down. But to do that would be a bad mistake. It would look needy, maybe even desperate.

Withheld evidence.

Fuck off, asshole.

But I did it! I risked my freedom, I risked my life, and I did it! You can’t take away the credit! It’s not fair!

His head throbs again.

You stupid cocksucker, he thinks. One way or the other, you’re going to pay, but not until after the dog dies. Maybe your nigger friend will die, too. Maybe that whole nigger family will die. And after them, maybe a whole lot of other people. Enough to make what happened at City Center look like a picnic.

He goes up to his room and lies down on his bed in his underwear. His head is banging again, his arms are trembling (it’s as if he has ingested strychnine). He’ll lie here in agony until morning, unless—

He gets up and goes back down the hall. He stands outside his mother’s open door for almost four minutes, then gives up and goes inside. He gets into bed with her and his headache begins to recede almost at once. Maybe it’s the warmth. Maybe it’s the smell of her – shampoo, body lotion, booze. Probably it’s both.

She turns over. Her eyes are wide in the dark. ‘Oh, honeyboy. Are you having one of those nights?’

‘Yes.’ He feels the warmth of tears in his eyes.

‘Little Witch?’

‘Big Witch this time.’

‘Want me to help you?’ She already knows the answer; it’s throbbing against her stomach. ‘You do so much for me,’ she says tenderly. ‘Let me do this for you.’

He closes his eyes. The smell of the booze on her breath is very strong. He doesn’t mind, although ordinarily he hates it. ‘Okay.’

She takes care of him swiftly and expertly. It doesn’t take long. It never does.

‘There,’ she says. ‘Go to sleep now, honeyboy.’

He does, almost at once.

When he wakes in the early morning light she’s snoring again, a lock of hair spit-stuck to the corner of her mouth. He gets out of bed and goes back to his own room. His mind is clear. The strychnine-laced gopher poison is on its way. When it arrives, he’ll poison the dog, and damn the consequences. God damn the consequences. As for those suburban niggers with the white-people names? They don’t matter. The fat ex-cop goes next, after he’s had a chance to fully experience Jerome Robinson’s pain and Barbara Robinson’s sorrow, and who cares if it’s suicide? The important thing is that he go. And after that …

‘Something big,’ he says as he pulls on a pair of jeans and a plain white tee. ‘A blaze of glory.’ Just what the blaze will be he doesn’t know yet, but that’s okay. He has time, and he needs to do something first. He needs to demolish Hodges’s so-called ‘withheld evidence’ and convince him that he, Brady, is indeed the Mercedes Killer, the monster Hodges failed to catch. He needs to rub it in until it hurts. He also needs it because if Hodges believes in this bogus ‘withheld evidence,’ the other cops – the real cops – must believe it, too. That is unacceptable. He needs …

‘Credibility!’ Brady exclaims to the empty kitchen. ‘I need credibility!’

He sets about making breakfast: bacon and eggs. The smell may waft upstairs to Ma and tempt her. If not, no big deal. He’ll eat her share. He’s pretty hungry.

2

This time it works, although when Deborah Ann appears, she’s still belting her robe and barely awake. Her eyes are red-rimmed, her cheeks are pale, and her hair flies out every whichway. She no longer suffers hangovers, exactly, her brain and body have gotten too used to the booze for that, but she spends her mornings in a state of soft focus, watching game shows and popping Tums. Around two in the afternoon, when the world starts to sharpen up for her, she pours the day’s first drink.

If she remembers what happened last night, she doesn’t mention it. But then, she never does. Neither of them do.

We never talk about Frankie, either, Brady thinks. And if we did, what would we say? Gosh, too bad about that fall he took?

‘Smells good,’ she says. ‘Some for me?’

‘All you want. Coffee?’

‘Please. Lots of sugar.’ She sits down at the table and stares at the television on the counter. It isn’t on, but she stares at it anyway. For all Brady knows, maybe she thinks it is on.

‘You’re not wearing your uniform,’ she says – meaning the blue button-up shirt with DISCOUNT ELECTRONIX on the pocket. He has three hanging in his closet. He irons them himself. Like vacuuming the floors and washing their clothes, ironing isn’t in Ma’s repertoire.

‘Don’t need to go in until ten,’ he says, and as if the words are a magic incantation, his phone wakes up and starts buzzing across the kitchen counter. He catches it just before it can fall off onto the floor.

‘Don’t answer it, honeyboy. Pretend we went out for breakfast.’

It’s tempting, but Brady is as incapable of letting a phone ring as he is of giving up his muddled and ever-changing plans for some grand act of destruction. He looks at the caller ID and isn’t surprised to see TONES in the window. Anthony ‘Tones’ Frobisher, the grand high panjandrum of Discount Electronix (Birch Hill Mall branch).

He picks up the phone and says, ‘It’s my late day, Tones.’

‘I know, but I need you to make a service call. I really, really do.’ Tones can’t make Brady take a call on his late day, hence the wheedling tone. ‘Plus it’s Mrs Rollins, and you know she tips.’

Of course she does, she lives in Sugar Heights. The Cyber Patrol makes lots of service calls in Sugar Heights, and one of their customers – one of Brady’s customers – was the late Olivia Trelawney. He was in her house twice on calls after he began conversing with her beneath Debbie’s Blue Umbrella, and what a kick that was. Seeing how much weight she’d lost. Seeing how her hands had started to tremble. Also, having access to her computer had opened all sorts of possibilities.

‘I don’t know, Tones …’ But of course he’ll go, and not only because Mrs Rollins tips. It’s fun to go rolling past 729 Lilac Drive, thinking: I’m responsible for those closed gates. All I had to do to give her the final push was add one little program to her Mac.

Computers are wonderful.

‘Listen, Brady, if you take this call, you don’t have to work the store at all today, how’s that? Just return the Beetle and then hang out wherever until it’s time to fire up your stupid ice cream wagon.’