All in all, she thought, it wasn’t a bad deal. Sneak off to New York, have a lusty bout of almost-sex with your hot boyfriend, get grounded. There were worse things to get grounded for. And fortunately her parents hadn’t decided to take away her phone. It rang now, TLC’s “Waterfalls” blaring out too loud. Connie’s mom loved that old song, sang it around the house all the time, until it was ingrained in Connie’s brain. She wasn’t sure if she loved the song or not, but she was obsessed with it just from hearing it all the time.
“Don’t go chasing…”
She turned down the volume on her phone. It would suck if her parents heard the ringtone and thought, Oh, yeah, we should confiscate her phone, too.
Caller ID said BLOCKED.
“Don’t go chasing…”
Connie answered. It was Jazz.
“I’m calling from the sheriff’s office,” he explained when she asked why the number was blocked. “You’re not going to believe what just happened.”
In rushed, run-on sentences, he told her all of it: the possible connection between her Ugly J discovery and the Impressionist, then about the phone call from Morales, followed by the photo.
“… so I’m headed back to New York, and this time it’s official. I’m going to help them nail the Hat-Dog Killer to the wall.”
“But, Jazz…” Connie protested. “This isn’t just about Hat-Dog anymore. If the Ugly J stuff is connected—”
“I know,” he said. “There’s a chance this all ties into the Impressionist somehow.”
“More than that. It ties into the guy behind the Impressionist. Your dad.”
Jazz went silent for a moment. “Yeah. I know.”
“What if your dad is Hat-Dog? What if he’s doing all of this to draw you out? So that he can”—torture maim kill—“hurt you?”
Jazz chuckled without mirth. “He can’t be Hat-Dog. He was in Wammaket when those killings started. And if Billy wanted to hurt me, he wouldn’t have to go through all this trouble. He could just come at me. He knows where I live.”
“And he knows there are a million FBI agents watching your house on a regular basis.” It wasn’t a million, but Connie didn’t feel like being accurate right now. Her boyfriend was talking about walking into the lion’s den while wearing raw-steak underwear.
“So he’s not the Hat-Dog Killer. But maybe they know each other. Or knew each other.”
“What, did they meet at a serial killer convention or something?” Connie stretched out on her bed, staring at the ceiling.
“No, Miss Sarcasm. But Billy traveled a lot. And I’ve been thinking—it wouldn’t be too much of a coincidence if he’d met someone like him along the way. And sometimes serial killers take on partners or allies. It doesn’t happen a lot and it doesn’t last for long, but what if Hat-Dog is someone out there who owes Billy a favor? Or who just thinks it’s funny to do stuff for Billy? Hat-Dog could be the one who sent the Impressionist to Lobo’s Nod. The one who arranged Billy’s escape from Wammaket.” Jazz’s words came faster and faster. “This could be the linchpin to everything Billy’s been up to, to everything he’s planning as he goes forward. I have to go to New York, Con. I have to find this guy and make him talk. He could be the only way I have to get to Billy.”
“And what will you do then?” she asked quietly. “What do you do when you finally see him face-to-face, on the outside? With no prison guards?”
“I’ll figure that out when the time comes,” he said, and she wished he’d said it with some kind of passion or heat. Some rage or violence in his voice. Those were all things she could deal with, things she could say something about.
But Jazz’s voice in that moment had gone cold and dead. She hated when he did that. Hated when he reached for the knob in his soul that read COMPASSION and dialed it all the way down to zero. She could handle anger. Soullessness? That was beyond her comprehension.
She rolled over and flipped open her laptop, which lay on her bedside table. The desktop image was of her and Jazz in one of their rare scenes together in last year’s production of The Crucible. Reverend Hale takes Tituba’s hands and implores her to give up the names of the devil’s children in Salem. Powerful scene—man of God begs slave woman to do evil in the name of good. She hated it, all of a sudden.
“If you kill him, he wins.”
“No, Connie. If I kill him, he’s dead.”
“Don’t go chasing…”
She closed her eyes. “Just promise me you’ll be careful in New York, okay?”
“Please stick to the rivers…”
“When am I ever not careful?” he teased, suddenly a Real Boy again.
“You mean other than letting an NYPD detective lie you into going to New York? And other than letting a serial killer into your house? Do you need more examples?”
He laughed. “I guess not. Don’t worry, Con. It’s all good. I’m going to be surrounded by FBI agents and cops. I’ll be the safest guy in New York.”
“If anything happens to you, I’ll kick your ass so hard you’ll poop from the front,” she threatened.
“That sounds like something Howie would say.”
“I think he did once.”
“Okay. I have to go pack. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
No sooner had she put the phone down than a mocking chortle assailed her. Twisting around, she saw that Whiz had quietly opened her door at some point and was now laughing at her. “I love you,” he mimicked, and made smooching noises.
“Stop spying on me, Wisdom!” she shouted, and threw a pillow at him.
He ducked. “I’m gonna tell Mom and Dad that you’re talking to your boyfriend.” He drew out the word boyfriend into something almost salacious. Connie couldn’t believe how her brother could—in the same day, in a matter of hours—go from sweet and concerned to mega-brat. Had she been such a shapeshifting creep at his age?
“And I’m gonna tell them that you’re spying on me in my underwear,” she said.
“You’re not in your underwear,” Whiz countered.
“I will be in my version of the story,” Connie said, utterly convincingly. Whiz blanched and ducked out of the room, closing the door behind him as he went.
Connie sighed. Great. Jazz was off fighting the good fight and she was trapped here in the Nod, engaged in a battle of wits with her witless younger brother. Life wasn’t fair.
She spent some time online, poking around again for information about Ugly J, but still found nothing helpful. Then she started looking into the Impressionist’s history. Since his capture and the revelation of his true identity, there had been a small avalanche of historical information revealed about the Impressionist—where he’d grown up, how his parents had died (in a word: gruesomely), and more. Connie figured that maybe there would be a clue either to Ugly J or to how the Impressionist had hooked up with Billy Dent. But she could find nothing. Cross-referencing Billy’s “career path” as a serial killer to the Impressionist’s travels netted exactly zilch.
Her parents would probably freak if they walked in on her doing this. This is exactly what we’re trying to protect you from! they would protest. You shouldn’t even be thinking about these things!
Whatever. There was death and horror in the world. Her parents could try all they wanted to shield her from it, but Connie knew it was there. She wasn’t going to close her eyes and wish it away. Especially not when she happened to be in a position—maybe—to shed a little light on that darkness.
After hours staring at the screen, Connie finally took a break, stretching and rubbing her eyes. Was she chasing waterfalls? Or did Billy Dent and the Impressionist count as the rivers and the lakes she was used to?
Speaking of her phone… she had silenced the ringer a little while back so that it wouldn’t go off if Jazz called or texted late at night. But maybe she’d missed something. She checked the phone for messages. There was a single text that had come in.
BLOCKED.
Connie s
wiped at it to read it, then realized: Jazz couldn’t text her from the sheriff’s department’s landline.
Then who—?
It said: r u game?
CHAPTER 25
One of his remaining disposable cell phones rang, and the killer answered.
“Eleven,” said the voice. “Eleven. Six and five.” There was a lilt to it, a joy, a buoyancy that was lost on the killer, who could not sense such things. The sounds and the nuances of human beings meant as much as did color to the blind.
The killer repeated “eleven” in his mind, fixing it there, and stared at the laptop screen before him. Eleven. Eleven meant…
The killer gaped and gawped and stared for moments protracted and elongated by the shock of unknowability.
“I,” he said, “don’t understand.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what,” said the voice. “I’ll tell you what. We’re gonna have some fun, okay?”
The killer didn’t quite understand “fun,” but he said nothing and simply listened.
“Saw on the news today,” the voice went on, “that the bastard cops say they have an eyewitness. Just came forward, they said. They tried to sound real convincing, and I bet they think they were, but they’re not. They’re bluffing. That’s okay, though. That’s okay.”
And then the voice began to explain things. To describe things. And the killer did not understand, but the killer did not need to understand.
The killer needed only to obey.
To accede.
To win.
To ascend.
CHAPTER 26
“Dude!” Howie exclaimed, throwing his absurdly huge hands into the air. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me again!”
“I have to go to New York.” Jazz threw clothes into his borrowed suitcase. He’d barely had time to unpack. “I need you to help watch Gramma. I’ll let you tattoo my freakin’ ass, okay?”
“I am totally sleeping with your aunt. I don’t care what you say. I know she doesn’t seem interested right now, but trust me: She will succumb to my wit and charm, and I will know her. In the biblical sense.”
“Right.”
“You do realize that means I’m going to bone her. In the biblical sense.”
“I’m aware.”
Howie noticed the shadow of a grin on Jazz’s face and crossed his arms across his chest in defiance. “I’m totally serious here! Not only will I sleep with her, but I will knock her up, too. I’m gonna be the daddy to your cousins. So there.”
“Sounds great, Uncle Howie.” Jazz went to clap Howie on the shoulder, thought of the bruise it would cause, and settled for a handshake.
“Your cousins will be tall and handsome and have bigger dicks than you do,” Howie said very solemnly.
“I’m sure. Thanks, man.”
“Have you forgotten that school starts again on Monday?”
“With any luck, I’ll just miss a day or two. I’ll help them narrow the profile, look over the new crime scene for stuff they might have missed… get them pointed in the right direction. Boom. Done. Home.”
“And I’m still gonna tattoo your ass!” Howie shouted after him as he left.
On the plane, Jazz didn’t even have time to enjoy or dread his flight. He was busy pondering the message left for him at the latest crime scene. Morales had e-mailed him all of the preliminary information, including crime-scene photos.
“We’re bringing you in,” Morales had told him on the phone. “I don’t care if I have to go over Montgomery’s head to the governor. This guy has called you out. So you’re in.”
Less than a half hour later, it was official, and Jazz was on his way back to the airport after a call to Connie to let her know what was going on. Aunt Samantha was good to watch Gramma for a little while. Jazz truly regretted leaving her so soon. He felt like they had much more to talk about.
When he’d told Aunt Samantha that he had to go back to New York, he’d only had time for a quick talk. The topic had been Howie. “I’m sorry to leave you with him. I know how he is, but he’s actually a good guy—”
“You act like I’ve never been around a horny boy in my life,” she’d said. “I think I can handle him. I would actually find it sort of flattering if I didn’t know for sure that he does this to everyone.”
“Not everyone. Just, like, ninety percent. Maybe ninety-five.”
“I’ll humor him. It’s no big deal. Go do what you have to do.”
During the flight, he flicked through the screen of his phone, looking at the crime-scene photos Morales had sent. This one was different. For one thing, the body wasn’t even in Brooklyn. It had been found on subway tracks in Manhattan, on something that at first he’d read as the Sline—which sounded strange even for New York—but then realized was actually the S line. Jazz didn’t know what that was and he didn’t particularly care, but Morales had helpfully annotated one of the photos: S line: shuttle between Grand Central and Times Square along 42nd St. Jazz had no idea how far apart Grand Central and Times Square were, so that told him nothing. Still, it was nice to see that Morales was thinking of him and his general ignorance of all things Big Apple.
One thing he did know, even with his limited experience with New York geography: This part of New York—this part of Manhattan—was even farther from Hat-Dog’s jeopardy surface than Coney Island had been.
The ME’s preliminary examination of the body at the scene indicated that the murder had taken place several hours earlier, elsewhere. The victim’s intestines had been removed and were not with the body. Paralyzed, as usual. Eyelids cut off, like the others. White female, between twenty-five and thirty. Five-four. Maybe one hundred twenty pounds (when all those innards had been in their proper places).
And because it wouldn’t be the Hat-Dog Killer without some kind of escalation: The eyes were missing. Jazz sighed. He knew from Billy’s stories over the years what was involved in that. Eyes were actually pretty easy to scoop out, assuming you had your victim conveniently unconscious or dead. Just some tendons and nerves holding the eyes in; nothing you couldn’t cut easily with whatever was lying around the house. He wondered if they’d been removed pre-or postmortem? He supposed the autopsy would tell them.
So, he killed her and gutted her and de-… eyed her somewhere else. De-eyed? Un-eyed. Anyway. Then hauled her to the S line and dumped her.
A hat was carved into her sternum, between her breasts. Above was written the message to Jazz.
WELCOME TO THE GAME, JASPER.
Game.
It’s not a game, you sick lunatic.
The best estimates as to the death were that the victim had died in the early morning hours. So that meant she’d been killed before the New York press had glommed on to Jazz’s presence in the city and (unofficial) involvement in the Hat-Dog case.
“So there’s no way to know,” Morales had told him, “if this guy left the message for you before the press reported you were in town or after. If before, then that means he saw the story Weathers did on the Lobo’s Nod website. If after, then he’s still calling you out. Either way, he’s obsessed with you.”
WELCOME TO THE GAME, JASPER.
It almost—almost—sounded like something Billy would say. If not for that word—game. Billy never thought of what he did as a game. It was fun, yes, but the sort of fun to be taken deadly serious. There was a reason he referred to it as “prospecting.” The prospectors of olden times had been involved in life-or-death stakes for the most part, and when they succeeded, they celebrated.
Jazz could remember Billy returning from prospecting trips, flush with excitement and success. He would dump out of his suitcase a mélange of clothes, trophies, newspaper clippings of his exploits, and the occasional body part, then collapse in the big easy chair in the living room to obsessively watch TV coverage of his “adventures” while eating take-out Chinese food and drinking bottle after bottle of cream soda (one of Billy’s other obsessions).
Jazz would innocently play wit
h the contents of Dear Old Dad’s suitcase, then arrange the trophies carefully in the rumpus room.
When the plane landed, Jazz was surprised to find Hughes standing there at the gate, waiting for him.
“Didn’t bring the girlfriend this time?” the detective asked.
“Thought for sure you’d be on suspension after the reaming out your captain gave you.”
“I’m too valuable,” Hughes joked. “But, yeah, sorry about that,” he went on as they walked to his car, which was parked obnoxiously in a no-parking zone, watched over by a TSA agent. “I didn’t mean to lie to you. But I’d been banging my head against this case for months and getting nowhere and I wanted to bring you, but Montgomery—”
“I get it,” Jazz said, climbing in. “It’s not like I’ve never broken the rules before.”
Hughes nodded and gunned the engine. “So, I understand you’ve met our FBI liaison?”
Jazz wondered briefly if he should mention Morales’s offer to help kill Billy. But no. Hughes might be maverick-y, but he didn’t think the detective would countenance outright murder. “Yeah. She tried some mind-screwing on me, but changed her tune pretty quick.”
“She likes doing that. Messing with guys. She’s a dyke, you know.”
Jazz squirmed at the word. “Didn’t know that,” he said casually, wondering how Hughes would feel if he went all Gramma and dropped the N-bomb.
“It’s statistically proven that of all the law enforcement agencies in the country, the FBI has the largest percentage of lesbians. Isn’t that interesting?”
That actually was interesting. “Really?”
Hughes guffawed. “No. I made that up. But it sounds like it could be true, doesn’t it?”
Dyke. Invented FBI stats. Hughes had his psychological guard up again. Jazz didn’t blame him.