The Crays, he thinks. They were the Crays. Janice and Patricia.

Janey hugs him. Her breath tickles his ear when she speaks, giving him goosebumps and half a hard-on. ‘I’m going back to California when this is finished. I can’t stay here. I think the world of you, Bill, and if I stayed here I could probably fall in love with you, but I’m not going to do that. I need to make a fresh start.’

‘I know.’ Hodges pulls away and holds her by the shoulders so he can look her in the face again. It’s a beautiful face, but today she’s looking her age. ‘It’s all right.’

She dives into her purse again, this time for Kleenex. After she’s dried her eyes, she says, ‘You made a conquest today.’

‘A …?’ Then he gets it. ‘Holly.’

‘She thinks you’re wonderful. She told me so.’

‘She reminds me of Olivia. Talking to her feels like a second chance.’

‘To do the right thing?’

‘Yeah.’

Janey wrinkles her nose at him and grins. ‘Yeah.’

14

Brady goes shopping that afternoon. He takes the late Deborah Ann Hartsfield’s Honda, because it’s a hatchback. Still, one of the items barely fits in the rear. He thinks of stopping at Speedy Postal on his way home and checking for the Gopher-Go he ordered under his Ralph Jones alias, but all that seems like a thousand years ago now, and really, what would be the point? That part of his life is over. Soon the rest will be, too, and what a relief.

He leans the largest of his purchases against the garage wall. Then he goes into the house, and after a brief pause in the kitchen to sniff at the air (no whiff of decay, at least not yet), he goes down to his control room. He speaks the magic word that powers up his row of computers, but only out of habit. He has no urge to slip beneath Debbie’s Blue Umbrella, because he has nothing more to say to the fat ex-cop. That part of his life is also over. He looks at his watch, sees that it’s three-thirty in the afternoon, and calculates that the fat ex-cop now has roughly twenty hours to live.

If you really are fucking her, Detective Hodges, Brady thinks, you better get your end wet while you’ve still got an end.

He unlocks the padlock on the closet door and steps into the dry and faintly oily odor of homemade plastique. He regards the shoeboxes full of explosive and chooses the one that held the Mephisto walking shoes he’s now wearing – a Christmas present from his mother just last year. From the next shelf up he grabs the shoebox filled with cell phones. He takes one of them and the box of boom-clay over to the table in the middle of the room and goes to work, putting the phone in the box and rigging it to a simple detonator powered by double-A batteries. He turns the phone on to make sure it works, then turns it off again. The chance of someone dialing this disposable’s number by mistake and blowing his control room sky-high is small, but why risk it? The chances of his mother finding that poisoned meat and cooking it for her lunch were also small, and look how that turned out.

No, this baby is going to stay off until ten-twenty tomorrow morning. That’s when Brady will stroll into the parking lot behind the Soames Funeral Home. If there’s anyone back there, Brady will say he thought he could cut through the lot to the next street over, where there’s a bus stop (which happens to be true; he checked it on MapQuest). But he doesn’t expect anyone. They’ll all be inside at the memorial serice, bawling up a storm.

He’ll use Thing Two to unlock the fat ex-cop’s car and put the shoebox on the floor behind the driver’s seat. He’ll lock the Toyota again and return to his own car. To wait. To watch him go past. To let him reach the next intersection, where Brady can be sure that he, Brady, will be relatively safe from flying debris. Then …

‘Ka-pow,’ Brady says. ‘They’ll need another shoebox to bury him in.’

That’s pretty funny, and he’s laughing as he goes back to the closet to get his suicide vest. He’ll spend the rest of the afternoon disassembling it. Brady doesn’t need the vest anymore.

He has a better idea.

15

Wednesday, June 2, 2010, is warm and cloudless. It may still be spring according to the calendar, and the local schools may still be in session, but those things don’t change the fact that this is a perfect summer day in the heartland of America.

Bill Hodges, suited up but as yet blessedly tieless, is in his study, going over a list of car burglaries Marlo Everett sent him by fax. He has printed out a map of the city, and puts a red dot at each burglary location. He sees shoeleather in his future, maybe a lot of it if Olivia’s computer doesn’t pan out, but it’s just possible that some of the burglary victims will mention seeing a similar vehicle. Because Mr Mercedes had to watch the owners of his target vehicles. Hodges is sure of it. He had to make sure they were gone before he used his gadget to unlock their cars.

He watched them the way he was watching me, Hodges thinks.

This kicks something over in his mind – a brief spark of association that’s bright but gone before he can see what it’s illuminating. That’s okay; if there’s really something there, it will come back. In the meantime, he keeps on checking addresses and making red dots. He has twenty minutes before he has to noose on his tie and go after Janey.

Brady Hartsfield is in his control room. No headache today, and his thoughts, so often muddled, are as clear as the various Wild Bunch screensavers on his computers. He has removed the blocks of plastic explosive from his suicide vest, disconnecting them carefully from the detonator wires. Some of the blocks have gone into a bright red seat cushion printed with the saucy slogan ASS PARKING. He has slipped two more, re-molded into cylinders with detonator wires attached, down the throat of a bright blue Urinesta peebag. With that accomplished, he carefully attaches a stick-on decal to the peebag. He bought it, along with a souvenir tee-shirt, in the MAC gift shop yesterday. The sticker says ’ROUND HERE FANBOY #1. He checks his watch. Almost nine. The fat ex-cop now has an hour and a half to live. Maybe a little less.

Hodges’s old partner Pete Huntley is in one of the interrogation rooms, not because he has anyone to question but because it’s away from the morning hustle and flow of the squadroom. He has notes to go over. He’s holding a press conference at ten, to talk about the latest dark revelations Donald Davis has made, and he doesn’t want to screw anything up. The City Center killer – Mr Mercedes – is the furthest thing from his mind.

In Lowtown, behind a certain pawnshop, guns are being bought and sold by people who believe they are not being watched.

Jerome Robinson is at his computer, listening to audio clips available at a website called Sounds Good to Me. He listens to a woman laughing hysterically. He listens to a man whistling ‘Danny Boy.’ He listens to a man gargling and a woman apparently in the throes of an orgasm. Eventually he finds the clip he wants. The title is simple: CRYING BABY.

On the floor below, Jerome’s sister Barbara comes bursting into the kitchen, closely followed by Odell. Barbara is wearing a spangly skirt, clunky blue clogs, and a tee-shirt that shows a foxy teenage boy. Below his brilliant smile and careful coif is the legend I LUV CAM 4EVER! She asks her mother if this outfit looks too babyish to wear to the concert. Her mother (perhaps remembering what she wore to her own first concert) smiles and says it’s perfect. Barbara asks if she can wear her mother’s dangly peace-sign earrings. Yes, of course. Lipstick? Well … okay. Eye-shadow? No, sorry. Barbara gives a no-harm-in-trying laugh and hugs her mother extravagantly. ‘I can’t wait until tomorrow night,’ she says.

Holly Gibney is in the bathroom of the house in Sugar Heights, wishing she could skip the memorial service, knowing her mother will never let her. If she protests that she doesn’t feel well, her mother’s return serve will be one that goes all the way back to Holly’s childhood: What will people think. And if Holly should protest that it doesn’t matter what people think, they are never going to see any of these people (with the exception of Janey) again in their lives? Her mother would look at her as if Holly were speaking a foreign language. She takes her Lexapro, but her insides knot while she’s brushing her teeth and she vomits it back up. Charlotte calls to ask if she’s almost ready. Holly calls back that she almost is. She flushes the toilet and thinks, At least Janey’s boyfriend will be there. Bill. He’s nice.