Billy chuckled. “You know what I love most about you, boy?” he asked as Jazz once again left Belsamo’s apartment. Jazz started a text to Hughes: I have billy on phone!!!!! and included the names of the street signs he finally spied across the way. “I’ll tell you. It’s this: You’re so goddamned smart, but even so, you’re only about half as smart as you think you are.”
“So educate me.” He watched the blue meter on the screen fill—slowly—as his text crawled through the ether to Hughes. He realized now that Belsamo would probably notice the missing disposable phone, but he wasn’t about to surrender this line of communication with Billy.
“It’s a game, but not the kind you think. There’s no court. And it’s not about you. Not at all.”
“Sure it is. I know all about Hat-Dog now.” Time for another knife lunge in the dark, bluffing: “I know about Ugly J.”
At that, Billy burst into raucous laughter. It wasn’t Billy’s usual laughter, the fake crap he used to catch people off guard. No, Jazz detected genuine amusement. Billy was laughing involuntarily because he thought something was truly funny.
“Glad to amuse you,” Jazz told him. His phone buzzed in his hand. From Hughes: WTF??? On my way.
“Oh, Jasper. You have no idea. About Ugly J. But I’m impressed you got far enough that you know the name.”
“I know more than the name,” Jazz lied. Fast. Smooth. Sure. Best lie he’d ever told. Hell, he believed it.
“You don’t. Because if you knew anything about Ugly J, trust me—you wouldn’t be on this call with me. You’d be curled up in a corner somewhere. Or you’d be sitting in a dark room with a knife and some pretty little girlie’s toes piled up next to you while she begged you not to cut anything else off.”
“You talk big, Billy, but I’m still working with the cops.”
“Not for long. You’ll come around. You’ll see how the crow flies.”
Just then, a bright light exploded around Jazz; his heart flopped madly in his chest, a strangling fish desperate for water. Billy had found him.
No. Not Billy. Headlights. Hughes, behind the wheel of an unmarked car. Jazz gestured frantically at him.
“What about crows?” Jazz asked. “Why is Belsamo obsessed with them?”
“He’s not,” Billy said, sounding hurt for the first time. “Don’t you remember the story I used to tell you? About the Crow King?”
The Crow King… the dove…
“Of course. That’s what this is all about?” Maybe Dear Old Dad was crazier than Jazz had imagined. “You’ve got this guy all twisted up over that old fairy tale?”
“Not a fairy tale,” Billy said angrily. Lecturing. “And not a fable. Those are magical BS. I told you folklore, Jasper. I told you myth.”
“And this myth is supposed to mean what, exactly?”
“If you ain’t figured that out yet, well… well, then maybe my parenting was a little subpar. I’ll take that. But maybe, just maybe, Jasper, you’re out of your depth here. Ever consider that? Think maybe you’re in over your head?”
Hughes had gotten out of the car and was rushing toward Jazz. Jazz froze, his attention split between Hughes and his father’s voice. He needed to keep Billy talking until… until… he wasn’t sure. Somehow he had imagined Hughes would know what to do when he got here.
“Into the car!” Hughes stage-whispered, gesticulating with wild, overblown motions. Playing the biggest, worst game of charades ever.
“I think we’re done for now,” Billy said.
“No!” Jazz said, headed for the car. Right. Get in the car. Get to the cops. Maybe they could trace—
“We’re done,” Billy said. “But keep this phone, Jasper. We’ll talk again. Soon.”
“Billy!” Jazz shouted even as Hughes flung open the passenger door.
But it was too late. His father was gone.
CHAPTER 40
For some period of time Jazz couldn’t determine, the two of them sat in the car as it idled along the sidewalk. Jazz had gone numb, and he didn’t know why.
Ever consider that? Think maybe you’re in over your head?
You’re the one in over your head, Dear Old Dad. You’re the one I’m closing in on.
But he knew it wasn’t true. Not even remotely. He hadn’t really been close to catching Billy just now. The disposable cell phone he’d swiped from Belsamo’s was disposable for a reason: so that it could be tossed and never traced. Billy would have one just like it, and the instant he hung up on Jazz, he’d probably tossed it into the… the…
“What’s the name of that river again?” he asked Hughes, his voice somewhat subdued.
“Which river?” Hughes asked.
“The one we drove over. To get to Manhattan.”
“The East River.”
Jazz nodded. He could easily imagine Billy’s disposable cell phone sinking into the East River, bound for the Atlantic Ocean and its endless anonymity.
“You kept him on the phone as long as you could,” Hughes said, soothing, proving that if the cop thing didn’t pan out, he could always fall back on being a phony psychic. “We probably couldn’t have traced the call. Maybe gotten a ping off a cell tower, but Billy’s smart—he would have been long gone by the time we—”
“He said for me to hold on to this phone,” Jazz said. “Said we’d talk again.”
Hughes pursed his lips and nodded. “Okay, then. We’ll take it to the TARU kids. They can clone it so that the next time he calls, you can talk to him and they can be tracking him at the same time. We’ll get him, Jasper. He’s playing with the big boys now. The NYPD doesn’t mess around.”
Jazz snorted laughter, then stopped himself immediately. He didn’t mean to sound disrespectful, but this was Billy they were talking about. Billy didn’t mess around, either. Billy had gotten the local and state police forces of sixteen separate states, to say nothing of the FBI itself, all tangled up in knots. A career that spanned more than two decades. The NYPD could not “mess around” all it wanted.
This was Billy Dent.
The snort hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“We have every terrorist in the world gunning for this city ever since Nine-Eleven,” Hughes said coldly. “You want to know how many of them have succeeded? I’ll give you a hint: It starts with z and ends with a fucking zero, that’s how many. Your dad is just another terrorist with a string of hits behind him and an NYPD badge ready to take him out in front of him. Bank on it, Jasper. Bank on it.”
For a moment, Jazz believed him. It was quite possibly the best moment of his life.
And then reality set in.
Billy was reality and reality was Billy, the two intertwined into an interlocked set of chains that wrapped around Jazz and sent out steely tendrils to anyone and anything close to him.
“So how’d he get the phone to you?” Hughes asked. “And what are you doing over here all by yourself? Lucky no one recognized you.”
Jazz gulped. He had no choice—he had to tell Hughes the truth.
As he told Hughes everything—everything—the detective’s eyes grew wider, his expression more and more incredulous. Every time Jazz thought he’d told Hughes the worst possible thing about the evening, he would get to the next part of the story—So then I went through his mail, oh, and here’s a photo of the envelope—and the cop’s face would assume an even more tortured aspect.
“Oh, sweet Christ,” Hughes said, visibly ill. “I can’t even tell you how many laws you broke.”
“I think nine,” Jazz said helpfully, hoping to get Hughes to crack a grin.
No such luck. “More like a dozen. To start. What possessed you to—No, no, never mind. Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me….”
“Now we have an alias for him. C. D. Williams. We have confirmation that he’s tied to Billy.”
“We have jack. You broke—”
“I’m not a cop,” Jazz pointed out. “You can use everything I found in there. There’s no prosecutorial conflict. No violation of hi
s Fourth Amendment rights. Go ahead and arrest me for breaking and entering and whatever else I did when I went in there. I poked at his mail and took a burner phone. Probably not even fifty bucks’ worth. I’ll plead guilty. It’s my first offense—I bet I walk or get probation. In the meantime, you can use the evidence against Belsamo.”
“Are you some kind of special idiot they grow down South?” Hughes erupted. “Do they fry you up with grits and whatever the hell else they deep-fry down there? No judge worth his robe is gonna let Billy Dent’s kid walk on a first offense, no matter what that offense is. No prosecutor who likes his job—and believe me, Jasper, they love their jobs—would let you plead out to anything but the top count on the indictment. You will go to jail. That’s a guarantee.”
Jazz began to protest, but Hughes cut him off with a threatening gesture. “Beyond that,” the detective went on, “is the fact that you’ve been working with the NYPD and the task force in an official capacity. Approved by Montgomery and everything. Any defense attorney in the world, even the most overworked public defender in the friggin’ Bronx, could convince the deafest, dumbest judge in the city that you needed a search warrant to go into that apartment. None of this evidence is admissible. It’s useless. It’s worse than useless because it’s also going to get you arrested and thrown in jail, where you won’t be able to help us nail this guy and where you’ll get raped and shived to death five minutes after you hit gen-pop.”
“They wouldn’t put me in with the general population,” Jazz said with some confidence.
Hughes glared at him wearily. “Then you get stuck in solitary like your old man. That sound good to you?”
Jazz forced a grin. “Well, he broke out….”
Hughes slammed the steering wheel with his fist. “Don’t joke about that! People died when your dad got out!”
“I know that!” Jazz screamed back at him, and even though he had sworn to himself that he would never break in front of anyone, that he would never show weakness, he couldn’t help himself. It was as though he’d been lugging a net full of boulders for weeks in stoic silence and could bear it—and them—no longer. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t know everything that weighs on my conscience? Those guards are dead because of me! And Helen Myerson and Ginny Davis and Irene Heller are dead because I didn’t figure out who the Impressionist was quickly enough. And all the people Billy killed from the time I was around ten—when I could have reported him or killed him myself—those forty-seven people are dead because of me. And Melissa Hoover,” he remembered. “You can add her to my tally, too, Hughes! And let’s put my mom on the list, too, because I should have been able to save her. So you add that up. Go ahead. It’s more than fifty people on my list. I’m like Speck and Bundy and Dahmer combined. I’m one of the greatest murderers in U.S. history!” He kicked at the dashboard in frustration, in rage, leaving a broad scuff.
You’re a killer. You just ain’t killed no one yet.
Billy was right. He was right all along. Billy was always right.
I am Ugly J.
“You gonna cry now?” Hughes asked, somewhat softly.
Was Hughes poking at him again? Trying to prod a reaction out of him? Or was he actually concerned?
Didn’t matter. Jazz struggled to regain control of his emotions, grappling with them like a greased wrestler until he’d subdued them. Like always.
“That wasn’t for show,” he said evenly, “but I could. Do you want me to?”
Hughes sighed and stared out through the windshield. “No. I guess not.” He started the engine. “Damn it, Jasper. Look at this spot you’ve put me in.”
“You risked things to bring me here. This is—”
“This is different.” Hughes pulled away from the curb and they headed north. “That was a calculated risk on my part. Low risk, high reward. No laws broken. And it was my decision. You understand that, Jasper? It was my decision. I made it. You forced this one on me.”
“I’m sorry.” It was an automatic reaction. Programmed. When people were upset with you, you apologized. It usually worked.
“I know you are.” Hughes shrugged. “I guess you are. In any event, this is between us for now. You don’t tell your girlfriend or your grandmother, even. You sure as hell don’t tell anyone on the task force. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“I’ll take you to the hotel. You’re not coming in tomorrow. I’ll sling a line of bull at Montgomery and Morales. In the meantime, I’ll figure out a way to get some unis to sit on Belsamo without raising suspicions.”
“So you believe me?”
“What choice do I have? Unfortunately, now I have to do this the hard way. E-mail that picture to me. Now. I’ll see what I can find out about the storage place.”
Jazz remained silent as Hughes turned east and then south, piloting them back to the hotel. “Thanks,” he said when the detective pulled up to the hotel.
“Don’t thank me for this,” Hughes said, and drove away.
CHAPTER 41
Early the next morning, Connie packed a duffel bag and went to her parents; she didn’t even give them time to speak before saying, “This is how it’s going to be….” She had spent the night trying to think of ways to trick or cajole them into letting her return to New York, but in the end decided that a blitz attack was best, so she just walked into the family room and announced that she was headed back to New York.
“Oh?” Her father’s voice and expression both teetered on a precipice between amusement and anger. “You’re going to tell us how it’s going to be?” He sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. If he could have snorted a burst of fire, he would have. “This should be interesting.”
“It’s not really interesting at all,” she said. “It just is. I’m seventeen—”
“You live under my roof,” Dad interrupted. “And you—”
“Let her finish,” Mom said quietly.
“Are you on her side?” Dad turned to Mom. “What’s going on here?”
“There’s no ‘her side’ here, honey. We’re a family. There’s one side—our side—and we share it.”
“I’m seventeen,” Connie pressed, “and in a few months, I’ll be an adult. Like, officially. But I’ve always been responsible. I’ve always been good. My grades have always been excellent, and I’ve never been in trouble.”
“Until—”
“Until recently, I know,” Connie said, jumping in before her dad could go off on a rant. “And that should tell you something. If I went all this time without doing something wrong, doesn’t it tell you that I must have had a good reason?”
“You’re our child, Conscience.” He was mellower than she’d expected. Maybe he thought she could be reasoned out of this, rather than bludgeoned with parental wrath. Under normal circumstances, he might have been right. But Connie was convinced that this was a matter of life or death, if not for Jazz, then certainly for more innocents in New York. “Until you’re eighteen, it’s our job to take care of you. And we take that pretty seriously. When it comes to this boy”—she hated how he avoided saying Jazz’s name—“you don’t always think clearly.”
Mom picked at the edge of her sleeve. “Honey, this isn’t about whether or not you get to spend time with your boyfriend—”
“I know.”
“—it’s about the fact there are dangerous people—”
“There is a serial killer loose in New York,” her father interrupted. “And your boyfriend is directly tied into, caught up in it all. How on earth can you think of getting yourself wrapped up in that? And what in the world makes you think we would be okay with you doing that?”
“There was a serial killer right here in the Nod,” Connie said quietly. “Jazz was involved in that, too. And it worked out fine.”
“Connie!” Mom exploded, her veneer of reserve finally breaking down. “Just because you survived this once doesn’t mean you should go looking for trouble! That’s like drinking and d
riving over and over just because you didn’t kill yourself the first time!”
“People are dying,” her dad added. “More than a dozen of them. You want to stand in the middle of that? Really?”
She thought of the lockbox. She thought of those quiet, tense moments when she and Howie had sneaked through the Dent house, looking for Jazz. A dead cop in a cruiser out in the driveway. Howie cradling the useless shotgun, as if it could help. Silent for the first time since she’d met him. Both of them knowing that it was entirely possible Jazz was already dead at the hands of the Impressionist.
And then, kicking down the bedroom door… Her boyfriend, bloodied but alive… The rush of her own blood and adrenaline as they got the drop on the man who’d killed Ginny Davis…
“I hear you, Daddy. I get it. But you can’t look after me forever. In a few months, I’ll be eighteen. What’s going to change in those few months? I’m already the person I’ll be at eighteen. The calendar just hasn’t caught up yet.” She took a deep breath. “I need to go back to New York. I need to do it now,” she said in a rush, before her parents could interrupt. But she needn’t have worried. They said nothing. Her mother stared down at her hands, and her father simply shook his head worriedly.
“And I’m going to go,” Connie went on. “I’m going to go. The only way you can stop me is physically. That’s just a fact. And I know you won’t lay a hand on me, Daddy.” Her father said nothing; his face remained impassive, but his eyes told the tale—he could not bring himself to harm his child, even if he thought it would save her. “So the only way you can stop me is if you call the police and have them stop me at the airport or on my way. And you can do that. I know you can. But you have to understand something: If you do, then I’ll know that you love me and want to protect me, but that you don’t trust me. And if you don’t trust me now, if you don’t trust me after seventeen years of being a good daughter, then that means that you’ve never really trusted me.” She took a deep breath. “And that means you never will.”