6
Once his breakfast dishes are in the dishwasher, he goes into the study to tear the letter down. This is a thing he’s done at least two dozen times before, but never on his own; as a detective he always had Pete Huntley to help him, and before Pete, two previous partners. Most of the letters were threatening communications from ex-husbands (and an ex-wife or two). Not much challenge in those. Some were extortion demands. Some were blackmail—really just another form of extortion. One was from a kidnapper demanding a paltry and unimaginative ransom. And three—four, counting the one from Mr. Mercedes—were from self-confessed murderers. Two of those were clearly fantasy. One might or might not have been from the serial killer they called Turnpike Joe.
What about this one? True or false? Real or fantasy?
Hodges opens his desk drawer, takes out a yellow legal pad, tears off the week-old grocery list on the top. Then he plucks one of the Uni-Ball pens from the cup beside his computer. He considers the detail about the condom first. If the guy really was wearing one, he took it with him . . . but that makes sense, doesn’t it? Condoms can hold fingerprints as well as jizz. Hodges considers other details: how the seatbelt locked when the guy plowed into the crowd, the way the Mercedes bounced when it went over the bodies. Stuff that wouldn’t have been in any of the newspapers, but also stuff he could have made up. He even said . . .
Hodges scans the letter, and here it is: My imagination is very powerful.
But there were two details he could not have made up. Two details that had been withheld from the news media.
On his legal pad, below IS IT REAL?, Hodges writes: HAIRNET. BLEACH.
Mr. Mercedes had taken the net with him just as he had taken the condom (probably still hanging off his dick, assuming it had been there at all), but Gibson in Forensics had been positive there was one, because Mr. Mercedes had left the clown mask and there had been no hairs stuck to the rubber. About the swimming-pool smell of DNA-killing bleach there had been no doubt. He must have used a lot.
But it isn’t just those things; it’s everything. The assuredness. There’s nothing tentative here.
He hesitates, then prints: THIS IS THE GUY.
Hesitates again. Scribbles out GUY and prints BASTARD.