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what?
    “Expansive,” he says to the empty room, but it’s more than that. “ Outward . This guy writes outward. He learned with others. And wrote for others.”
    A shaky deduction, but it’s supported by certain flourishes—those FANCY PHRASES. Must begin by congratulating you , he writes. Literally hundreds of cases, he writes. And—twice— Was I on your mind . Hodges logged As in his high school English classes, Bs in college, and he remembers what that sort of thing is called: incremental repetition. Does Mr. Mercedes imagine his letter being published in the newspaper, circulated on the Internet, quoted (with a certain reluctant respect) on Channel Four News at Six ?
    “Sure you do,” Hodges says. “Once upon a time you read your themes in class. You liked it, too. Liked being in the spotlight. Didn’t you? When I find you— if I find you—I’ll find that you did as well in your English classes as I did.” Probably better. Hodges can’t remember ever using incremental repetition, unless it was by accident.
    Only there are four public high schools in the city and God knows how many private ones. Not to mention prep schools, junior colleges, City College, and St. Jude’s Catholic University. Plenty of haystacks for a poisoned needle to hide in. If he even went to school here at all, and not in Miami or Phoenix.
    Plus, he’s a sly dog. The letter is full of false fingerprints—the capitalized phrases like Lead Boots and Note of Concern , the phrases in quotation marks, the extravagant use of exclamation points, the punchy one-sentence paragraphs. If asked to provide a writing sample, Mr. Mercedes would include none of those stylistic devices. Hodges knows that as well as he knows his own unfortunate first name: Kermit, as in kermitfrog19 .
    But.
    This asshole isn’t quite as smart as he thinks. The letter almost certainly contains two real fingerprints, one smudged and one crystal clear.
    The smudged print is his persistent use of numbers instead of the words for numbers: 27, not twenty-seven; 40 instead of forty. Det. 1st Grade instead of Det. First Grade. There are a few exceptions (he has written one regret instead of 1 regret ), but Hodges thinks they are the ones that prove the general rule. The numbers might only be more camouflage, he knows that, but the chances are good Mr. Mercedes is genuinely unaware of it.
    If I could get him in IR4 and tell him to write Forty thieves stole eighty wedding rings  . . . ?
    Only K. William Hodges is never going to be in an interview room again, including IR4, which had been his favorite—his lucky IR, he always thought it. Unless he gets caught fooling with this shit, that is, and then he’s apt to be on the wrong side of the metal table.
    All right, then. Pete gets the guy in an IR. Pete or Isabelle or both of them. They get him to write 40 thieves stole 80 wedding rings . What then?
    Then they ask him to write The cops caught the perp hiding in the alley. Only they’d want to slur the perp part. Because, for all his writing skill, Mr. Mercedes thinks the word for a criminal doer is perk . Maybe he also thinks the word for a special privilege is a perp , as in Traveling 1st class was one of the CEO’s perps .
    Hodges wouldn’t be surprised. Until college, he himself had thought that the fellow who threw the ball in a baseball game, the thing you poured water out of, and the framed objects you hung on the wall to decorate your apartment were all spelled the same. He had seen the word picture in all sorts of books, but his mind somehow refused to record it. His mother said straighten that pitcher, Kerm, it’s crooked , his father sometimes gave him money for the pitcher show , and it had simply stuck in his head.
    I’ll know you when I find you, honeybunch, Hodges thinks. He prints the word and circles it again and again, hemming it in. You’ll be the asshole who calls a perp a perk.
    8
    He takes a walk around the block to clear his head, saying hello