a hard and constant arch. Sometimes the spine actually snaps. When death comes—as a relief, Brady is sure—it’s as a result of asphyxiation. The neural pathways tasked with running air to the lungs from the outside world just give up.
Brady can hardly wait.
At least it won’t be a long wait, he tells himself as he shuts off his seven computers and climbs the stairs. The stuff should be waiting for him next week. The best way to get it into the dog, he thinks, would be in a ball of nice juicy hamburger. All dogs like hamburger, and Brady knows exactly how he’s going to deliver Odell’s treat.
Barbara Robinson, Jerome’s little sister, has a friend named Hilda. The two girls like to visit Zoney’s GoMart, the convenience store a couple of blocks from the Robinson house. They say it’s because they like the grape Icees, but what they really like is hanging out with their other little friends. They sit on the low stone wall at the back of the store’s four-car parking lot, half a dozen chickadees gossiping and giggling and trading treats. Brady has seen them often when he’s driving the Mr. Tastey truck. He waves to them and they wave back.
Everybody likes the ice cream man.
Mrs. Robinson allows Barbara to make these trips once or twice a week (Zoney’s isn’t a drug hangout, a thing she has probably investigated for herself), but she has put conditions on her approval that Brady has had no trouble deducing. Barbara can never go alone; she always must be back in an hour; she and her friend must always take Odell. No dogs are allowed in the GoMart, so Barbara tethers him to the doorhandle of the outside restroom while she and Hilda go inside to get their grape-flavored ice.
That’s when Brady—driving his personal car, a nondescript Subaru—will toss Odell the lethal burger-ball. The dog is big; he may last twenty-four hours. Brady hopes so. Grief has a transitive power which is nicely expressed by the axiom shit rolls downhill. The more pain Odell feels, the more pain the nigger girl and her big brother will feel. Jerome will pass his grief on to the fat ex-cop, aka Kermit William Hodges, and the fat ex-cop will understand the dog’s death is his fault, payback for sending Brady that infuriating and disrespectful message. When Odell dies, the fat ex-cop will know—
Halfway up to the second floor, listening to his mother snoring, Brady stops, eyes wide with dawning realization.
The fat ex-cop will know.
And that’s the trouble, isn’t it? Because actions have consequences. It’s the reason why Brady might daydream about poisoning a load of the ice cream he sells the kiddies, but wouldn’t actually do such a thing. Not as long as he wants to keep flying under the radar, that is, and for now he does.
So far Hodges hasn’t gone to his pals in the police department with the letter Brady sent. At first Brady believed it was because Hodges wanted to keep it between the two of them, maybe take a shot at tracking down the Mercedes Killer himself and getting a little post-retirement glory, but now he knows better. Why would the fucking Det-Ret want to track him down when he thinks Brady’s nothing but a crank?
Brady can’t understand how Hodges could come to that conclusion when he, Brady, knew about the bleach and the hairnet, details never released to the press, but somehow he has. If Brady poisons Odell, Hodges will call in his police pals. Starting with his old partner, Huntley.
Worse, it may give the man Brady hoped to goad into suicide a new reason to live, defeating the whole purpose of the artfully composed letter. That would be completely unfair. Pushing the Trelawney bitch over the edge had been the greatest thrill of his life, far greater (for reasons he doesn’t understand, or care to) than killing all those people with her car, and he wanted to do it again. To get the chief investigator in the case to kill himself—what a triumph that would be!
Brady is standing halfway up the stairs, thinking hard.
The fat bastard still might do it, he tells himself. Killing the dog might be the final push he needs.
Only he doesn’t really buy this, and his head gives a warning throb.
He feels a sudden urge to rush back down to the basement, go on the Blue Umbrella, and demand that the fat ex-cop tell him what bullshit “withheld evidence” he’s talking about so