Mr. Mercedes

One year later, recently retired police detective K. William Hodges is watching daytime television with a can of beer and his father’s old .38 Victory Smith & Wesson M&P revolver—the one his father carried as a beat cop—on the table beside him.

Hodges is watching the kind of talk show that brings squabbling couples on stage, then brings in someone else, like the boyfriend’s other girlfriend, to provoke a dramatic fight on stage. As Hodges watches the show, he occasionally sticks the gun in his mouth just to see what it feels like.

That afternoon, Hodges finds an anonymous letter in the mail. The writer of the letter tells Hodges he has been watching Hodges since before his retirement. The writer confesses to being the Mercedes Killer (or “Mr. Mercedes”) and taunts Hodges for his inability to catch him before his retirement.

The killer concludes the letter with an expression of concern: He knows that retired “Knights of the Badge” (37) like Hodges have a high suicide rate. He wouldn’t want Hodges to start thinking about using his service revolver in that way—but he knows that Hodges is. He suggests that Hodges ought to get a hobby to take his mind off of his last case, the one he never solved.

In a postscript, the killer says he is sorry for the suicide of Mrs. Trelawney that occurred after the Mercedes murders and tells Hodges that if he wants to contact the “perk” (the writer doesn’t seem to realize the proper word is “perp”), he can send a message to a private chat room called Under Debbie’s Blue Umbrella.

From the details of the letter, Hodges realizes the writer has been close by, watching him. Looking out the window, he sees a few vehicles pass on the street, including an ice cream truck that has been working the neighborhood in the afternoons all summer. He regards it as an example of the kind of ridiculous paranoia that Mr. Mercedes is trying to provoke in him.

Hodges isn’t sure whether the Mr. Mercedes letter is real or fake; plenty of confession letters are obvious fantasy. He thinks of one in particular that might have been sent by “Turnpike Joe,” a serial killer he and his former partner Pete failed to catch before Hodges’s retirement. That night, Hodges unloads his father’s .38 and locks it in the safe with his old service Glock. Mr. Mercedes suggested in his letter that getting a hobby would give Hodges a reason to live; Hodges goes to bed wondering if the killer realizes he has just given Hodges the reason he needs to live.

The narrative switches to the point of view of Brady Hartsfield, who is the Mercedes killer. He is thinking about the game he is playing with Hodges. If the detective uses the Blue Umbrella link, Brady expects to be able to manipulate him into self-destruction the way he did with Olivia Trelawney—the owner of the Mercedes he used in the City Center job fair murders.

The narrative returns to Hodges, who is getting ready to meet his old partner, Pete; they used to call themselves the “Hounds of Heaven” (70). Hodges decides not to bring the .38. Instead, he brings the weapon he calls the “Happy Slapper”—a sock weighted with ball bearings. Joining Pete at the restaurant, he asks what is going on with the four major cases he left unfinished when he retired. Pete tells him one has been closed. In another case, they know the murderer’s identity; a man named Donnie Davis killed his wife, but they can’t find the body. They haven’t made any progress on the last two cases: Turnpike Joe, who is a serial killer, or Mr. Mercedes.

Pete receives a call that there has been a break in the Donnie Davis case. Pete hustles out of the restaurant, leaving Hodges to think about Olivia Trelawney, the woman whose stolen car was used to commit the Mercedes murders. Neither Hodges nor Pete had liked her. They had nagged her about how the killer had gotten the key to her Mercedes, saying she left the car unlocked. She disagreed, insisting that she had locked the car and had the key with her when the car was stolen.

Hodges and Pete had seen Olivia as a rich lady filled with self-pity refusing to take responsibility for her part in the crime (leaving her car unlocked so it could be stolen). Then, they learned that Olivia died by suicide a few months after the incident. As far as the cops were concerned, her suicide proved her guilt. Hodges had always held a shadow of doubt, and over time, that doubt has grown. He knows now that guilt isn’t the only reason someone might consider death by suicide.

Hodges remembers the discovery of the abandoned Mercedes; the car had been found covered with blood. They tracked the car back to the owner, Olivia Trelawney; she didn’t fit the profile for the killer, but all signs pointed to someone who had access to the key. They concluded that Olivia must have left the key in the ignition; the killer had simply walked up to the car, taken it, and when he was finished, he locked it with the same stolen smart key.

However, Olivia insisted, a little condescendingly, that of course she hadn’t left the key in the car. She even had the key in her purse. She had a number of small habitual gestures, like frequently touching her hair or face or straightening the neck of her shirt. Hodges and Pete found her tics irritating. They didn’t believe her protestations that she locked the car. The obvious solution, they think, is that she had left the car unlocked and the key in the ignition. The thief had taken the key with him, and Olivia, feeling guilty and ashamed, had shown them her spare key instead.

As Hodges leaves the restaurant, he spots three big guys hassling a kid under an overpass. Hodges intervenes and, pulling the Happy Slapper from his pocket, swings it at the first big guy, careful not to aim a killing blow. He deals with the next two just as expeditiously. When the three big guys take flight, Hodges tells the kid that he has done him a good turn and by the end of the day, he wants the kid to pay it forward. The kid doesn’t seem to absorb the idea, but that’s okay with Hodges. People would be surprised, he thinks, how often that really happens.

The narrative switches back to Brady Hartsfield. Brady’s shift as an IT specialist at Discount Electronix is over, and he is getting ready to start his afternoon job—hiding in plain sight as an ice cream truck driver trolling the streets in Detective Hodges’s neighborhood.

Passing the detective’s house, he waves to the African American teenager mowing Hodges’s lawn. He knows the kid’s name is Jerome Robinson: Brady knows a lot about everyone in Hodges’s life.