Mr. Mercedes

Brady Hartsfield is cruising the streets in his ice cream truck. On his last circuit, he drives past Jerome Robinson’s house. Jerome stops him to buy an ice cream for his kid sister, Barbara. It offends Brady that Jerome and his sister have “white” names; only their dog, Odell, has what Brady considers a “Black” name. By having white names, he feels that Jerome and his sister are violating the natural order. The scene is full of racial slurs and anti-Black stereotypes.

The narrative returns to Hodges as he parks across the street from Olivia’s former home, wondering who inherited her estate after her death. A local security guard stops to ask him what he is doing there. The security guard, Peeples, gives Hodges a different perspective on Olivia. Peeples admits that no one really liked her, but she wasn’t a bad person; she was generous with Christmas gifts for the neighborhood service people, and he thinks it’s a shame that she was harassed and blamed for the murders.

The guard tells Hodges that Olivia’s sister, Janelle Patterson, is in town. Hodges wonders if Olivia’s sister might have kept her papers and if, among those papers, there might be a letter or letters from the killer who sent the letter to Hodges.

Upon returning home, Hodges finds a note from Jerome. The note is written in the style of Jerome’s alter ego, Tyrone Feelgood Deelite, which is a minstrel-like parody of anti-Black stereotypes. Shaking his head over Jerome’s tasteless parody, Hodges lets himself into his house and goes to his computer. He searches and finds Under Debbie’s Blue Umbrella, the anonymous chat room where the Mercedes killer has told Hodges he might be able to make contact. Hodges telephones Jerome and asks him to come over the next day and help him out.

Brady returns home to find his mother in the living room, only moderately drunk. She is dressed only in a silk robe that exposes her thighs, and Brady is aroused. He knows he shouldn’t be, and he hates that he is. His attraction to his mother is the reason Brady doesn’t have much interest in girls.

Brady goes to his basement control room. He turns on the lights with the word “control.” At the foot of the stairs, he thinks of his brother, Frankie, who died on that same spot. He sits down in front of his array of seven laptops and says, “chaos.” The computers wake up, and a countdown begins on the screens. If he allows it to count down from 20 to 0, the hard drives will be scrubbed. He pronounces the final codeword, “darkness,” and the countdown stops.

Brady is a mediocre inventor: His best invention so far is a device that can change traffic lights. He used it to get away after the City Center attack. The second invention is a device that allows him to unlock a car door by capturing the radio signal from a remote key fob. He used it to break into several cars before using it to steal Olivia Trelawney’s car. The closet in Brady’s control room contains nine pounds of homemade plastic explosives and five cell phones modified to detonate the explosive. There’s also a suicide vest packed with ball bearings, which he imagines using at a rock concert or a street fair.

The next day, Hodges meets Janey Patterson at her condo. Janey is prettier and more likable than her sister. She surprises Hodges by telling him she wants him to find out who drove her sister to die by suicide and says the person responsible for Olivia’s death is the man who stole her car and wrote the letter and Blue Umbrella messages.

Hodges asks what letter she’s talking about, and Janey shows him a letter she found in her sister’s papers. Hodges sees immediately that it was written by the same person who sent the letter to him, but the letter to Olivia has a wheedling tone. The writer begs her to forgive him, claiming that he is eaten up by remorse. He manipulates her by mirroring her own weaknesses; he tells her that the abuse he experienced as a child affected him so that he developed nervous tics, like picking at his clothes and pulling out his own hair. From a young age, he had to take care of his mother after she had a stroke. He tells her she probably can’t understand his pain because she is wealthy, and he has always had to struggle just to get by. He tells her that if only she hadn’t left her key in her ignition, all those people would still be alive, including the baby.

He finishes by reminding Olivia that the police are blaming her for enabling his killings and telling her that she is the only one he can talk to and the only thing keeping him alive. Finally, he sets up the Under Debbie’s Blue Umbrella account so they can communicate directly.

Janey tells Hodges that Olivia had told their mother, Elizabeth Wharton, that she was talking to a “disturbed” man under a blue umbrella; he had done a terrible thing, and she was trying to get him to seek help because she felt she had an obligation to save him. Mrs. Wharton lives in a place called Sunny Acres, and her memory for recent events isn’t good. She has good days and bad ones, and Hodges asks Janey to call him the next time her mother has a good day so they can talk about Olivia.

Janey offers to hire Hodges to find the man who manipulated her sister into killing herself. Hodges agrees, and Janey tells him about Olivia. She was always very sensitive and easily stressed. She had a lot of nervous tics and obsessive-compulsive behaviors. She stopped taking her medication after the City Center incident, which made her state of mind more vulnerable.

Later in the day, Hodges is back home with Jerome, looking at the Blue Umbrella website. Jerome promises to check the site for security threats. Hodges needs someone to bounce ideas off of, and he and Jerome walk down to the nearby market with Jerome’s dog, Odell. Jerome remarks that they might see the Mr. Tastey truck on the way and grab an ice cream. They hear the Mr. Tastey truck in the distance, but it doesn’t pass them.

Hodges asks Jerome how someone might get into a locked car with no key and with no sign of forced entry, and Jerome deduces Hodges is talking about the Mr. Mercedes killer. He asks if he can help investigate, and Hodges tells them his job is just to check out the Blue Umbrella chatroom. Then, they stop at the neighborhood market for ice cream. On the way home, they see the Mr. Tastey truck. Jerome waves, but they can’t see if the driver waves back. That evening, Jerome checks out the Blue Umbrella chatroom and assures Hodges it is safe to use. Hodges sends a message to the killer.

Brady did see Jerome wave, and he did wave back. He thinks how broken up Jerome and his little sister Barbara would be if something happened to their dog. He resolves to do some research on poison.

When Brady returns home after his shift, he finds a message from Hodges on the Blue Umbrella chatroom. The message infuriates him. Hodges tells Mr. Mercedes that his letter was obviously a false confession: Withheld evidence proves the writer is lying. He tells Brady to get lost. Infuriated and determined to punish Hodges, Brady starts researching poison. The best way to hurt Hodges is to hurt Jerome, and the best way to hurt Jerome is by killing his dog.