Mr. Mercedes

The next morning, Hodges takes his father’s old gun out of the safe and puts the Happy Slapper in his pocket. Hodges, Jerome, and Holly set out to track down the IT Specialist who worked on Olivia Trelawney’s computer. Peeples, the security guard, tells them the Cyber Patrol run by Discount Electronix has been in the neighborhood several times. The IT team at Discount Electronix is comprised of only three people. One of them is Brady Hartsfield, who matches Hodges’s profile of the Mercedes killer.

Jerome and Hodges find Holly already sitting on the curb in front of Discount Electronix. She found emails from Discount Electronix on Olivia’s computer and drove herself to the store in the Mercedes. Inside the store, Brady’s coworker Freddi Linklatter gives Hodges Brady’s address.

Waiting on the sidewalk for Hodges, Holly asks Jerome whether, if Hodges doesn’t find Brady in the store, they might go across the street to the frozen yogurt shop. The question triggers Jerome’s memory, and he realizes Brady was the driver of the ice cream truck.

When Hodges learns Brady has been prowling his neighborhood selling ice cream, he remembers his neighbor Mrs. Melbourne telling him the ice cream man looked suspicious. Hodges had dismissed her as a crank the same way he and Pete had dismissed Olivia as an oblivious rich lady. If he had paid attention to them both, Olivia and Janey might still be alive.

Holly drives Hodges and Jerome to Brady’s house. Leaving Holly and Jerome in the car, Hodges enters through the back door. He follows the smell of decomposition to the master bedroom, where he finds Brady’s mother’s body. In the basement, Hodges, Jerome, and Holly check out Brady’s control center. They turn on one of the computers, and the countdown appears. Luckily, Holly turns the computers off before they count down to zero. Holly theorizes that the computers probably respond to a voice command.

Hodges is finally ready to call the real cops, and Holly upbraids him for letting down all the people Brady killed. Hodges suspects Holly might be right; he feels terrible about all the people he has let down in the past. Turning over the case feels like a death to him, but they are at a dead end. They can’t risk any more lives and need the resources of the police.

Hodges calls Pete, but he and the rest of the police department are excited about a big firearms bust with the ATF. There is no way Hodges will be able to get anyone to focus on his long, weird story. Returning to Holly and Jerome, he finds Holly yelling at her mother, telling her she was entitled to take Olivia’s car and entitled to go out with friends. Holly sets to work trying to figure out the password to the computer. Meanwhile, Jerome finds that Brady has left a message for Hodges on the Blue Umbrella site: “So long, SUCKER. PS: Enjoy your Weekend, I know I will” (362).

Assuming that Brady is planning something for the weekend, Hodges thinks they have two days to find him. Jerome goes online and finds every big gathering scheduled for the weekend. He finds a job fair planned for Saturday downtown, and Hodges thinks it must be the target. Brady started with a job fair, so he’ll end with one.

In Brady’s mother’s laptop, Holly finds a file titled HONEYBOY. In the file, she finds a list of words starting with: “Control = lights,” followed by “chaos” and “darkness.” Holly deduces that the codes to get into Brady’s control room are voice controlled.

Brady arrives at the concert in his explosive-rigged wheelchair an hour before the doors open. He plans to wait until the band sings their signature song; then, he will set off his bomb.

Holly, Jerome, and Hodges use the voice codes for the control room to access Brady’s computers. Meanwhile, Hodges has been feeling a pain growing in his left shoulder. As they work, he sees something under the basement stairs. Investigating, Hodges finds ball bearings, snippets of wire and broken circuit boards, and Brady’s flak jacket. He realizes that whatever Brady has planned, it’s going to involve a bomb.

At the same time, Holly and Jerome find an email from a ticket vendor confirming Brady’s ticket for the ‘Round Here concert. It is almost seven o’clock, and the audience has almost certainly started seating. Brady is probably already inside with his bomb.

Hodges, Holly, and Jerome arrive at the concert hall as the music starts. If Brady had been caught with the explosives on him, the concert would have been shut down and the building evacuated. Hodges’s arm is hurting again, and he’s having trouble breathing. He now knows that he is having a heart attack and isn’t going to be able to stop Brady himself.

Under pressure but with the possibility of action ahead of her, Holly is thinking faster and more clearly than either Hodges or Jerome. She has figured out how Brady got in without being stopped; he must have pretended to have a physical disability. She knows he will be in the handicapped section, and she is the only one who might be able to get close to him without being recognized. Hodges hands over his Happy Slapper to Holly, and she and Jerome enter the concert hall while Hodges resigns himself to dying.

Brady has turned in his seat to look back at Jerome’s sister, who has a seat within his view. Holly recognizes him. Envisioning him as one of the many people who bullied and tormented her as a child, she hits him in the head with the Happy Slapper, crushing a section of his skull. She finds the remote control for the bomb, removes the batteries, then disarms the bomb.

Outside, Hodges is still trying to hang onto life until he receives a vision of Janey walking toward him with his fedora tipped rakishly over one eye. Her appearance allows him to let go and die. As he collapses, the roadies surrounding him begin CPR.

Hodges wakes up in a hospital room and finds Pete at his bedside.