Radney Peeples

Radney Peeples is a Vigilant Guard Service employee whose work in Sugar Heights puts him within reach of K. William Hodges’s investigation into Mr. Mercedes. The novel reveals little about Peeples beyond this professional role, but his position makes him a practical lead: Hodges believes that what Peeples knows may help identify the killer, and later has Jerome Robinson approach him under a false identity to obtain information tied to Olivia Trelawney’s computer.

Identity and Introduction

Hodges first considers Peeples in connection with the security work he encountered in Sugar Heights. He circles the man’s name in his notes and reasons that, if Peeples is doing his job, he may hold a key to Mr. Mercedes. The lead is complicated by recognition: Peeples has already met Hodges, who asked to see his company identification and questioned him. Hodges expects that Peeples will remember him, particularly now that Hodges has become prominent in the news, so he delays contacting Vigilant Guard Service and plans for any inquiry to look like routine business.

Peeples is thus introduced less through private history than through the problem his job creates for the investigation. He may possess useful knowledge, but a direct approach risks alerting him to Hodges’s interest. This turns a security employee’s ordinary professional connection to a wealthy client’s neighborhood into a line of inquiry Hodges must handle indirectly.

The Approach Through Jerome

To make that indirect approach, Hodges has Jerome call Vigilant Guard Service while pretending to be Martin Lounsbury, a paralegal at the fictitious firm of Canton, Silver, Makepeace, and Jackson. Jerome says he is working with a junior partner on unfinished matters relating to the estate of the late Olivia Trelawney, including locating the information-technology specialist who worked on her computer. He asks the receptionist for help finding someone in the Sugar Heights area who might know the specialist.

Hodges silently coaches the call, making a circle with his thumb and forefinger to signal that Jerome is doing well before passing him a note. Jerome uses the name Mrs. Helen Wilcox as a supposed neighbor who mentioned Peeples, then asks that Peeples call him. He provides both his own cell number and Hodges’s landline, adding a complaint about a demanding boss to make the invented role sound plausible. When Jerome worries that the receptionist might check whether the law firm exists, Hodges’s reassurance that he did fine does not remove the risk of the deception being exposed.

The Call and Information Shared

At ten minutes to ten, Jerome’s cell rings to the sound of AC/DC’s “Hells Bells.” The caller ID says the call is blocked. Hodges tells Jerome to answer and remember who he is; Jerome takes the call as Martin Lounsbury and greets Peeples. He repeats the cover story, invoking the slow settlement of an estate and a fictional client waiting on a large inheritance, then narrows his request to the name of the person who worked on Trelawney’s computer.

Peeples initially appears unwilling or unable to provide the name. As he continues speaking, however, Jerome begins writing down information, sustaining the invented conversation with acknowledgments and questions. The scene does not disclose the specialist’s name in the account provided, but it establishes that Peeples gives Jerome useful information. The call also ranges beyond the computer inquiry: Peeples wants to discuss what happened the previous day and says Vigilant stands ready to help Janey’s relatives in any way it can.

Role in the Investigation

Peeples’s importance lies in the contrast between Hodges’s suspicion of his potential knowledge and his eventual cooperation with Jerome’s disguised request. Hodges does not approach him openly, because their earlier encounter could make a direct inquiry conspicuous; instead, the false estate assignment supplies a plausible reason to ask about Trelawney’s computer. Peeples’s response advances the search through information about the person who serviced it, while his offer to assist Janey’s family places the security company in a supportive role after the violence.

The available evidence does not establish Peeples as an accomplice, identify the computer specialist, or reveal the full extent of what he knows. His function is narrower but consequential: he is a professional contact whose ordinary access to people and information in Sugar Heights gives Hodges a lead, and whose return call turns that lead into a source of actionable information.