Jazz said nothing. What was there to say?
G. William made the call. Jazz settled into a chair and watched the sheriff glad-hand the warden for a few minutes. When he hung up, he was smiling a grim little smile under his bushy mustache.
“Billy will see you. The warden’s arranging it for this afternoon. I’ll have a cruiser take you up to Wammaket with the siren going.”
“Not Erickson,” Jazz said, perhaps a little too quickly.
G. William pursed his lips, but didn’t ask any questions. He just nodded and then bellowed “HANSON!” at the top of his lungs.
“I need to stop by the hospital first,” Jazz said.
G. William nodded. “Yeah, you do what you need to do.”
Deputy Hanson poked his head into the office. “What’s up, chief?”
“First, how many times I gotta tell you? I’m a sheriff, not a chief. Second, take Jasper here to the hospital, then to Wammaket. Sirens all the way. This matters more than your momma and your little baby girl, Hanson.”
Hanson stared, mentally adding Jazz’s presence to Wammaket State Penitentiary and coming up with the only obvious solution. “Oh, wow,” he whispered.
“Save your oh, wow for your memoirs, Hanson. Get going.”
Jazz wanted to see Howie before he left for Wammaket. He couldn’t say why, just that it mattered that he see his best friend and know his condition.
Three surprises waited for him at the hospital. First, Howie’s parents were off getting lunch.
Second, Connie was in Howie’s room, keeping him company while his parents got a meal and some rest. Third, Howie was sitting up in bed, looking like a pale(r) version of himself—but at least looking like himself.
“The doctors say I can go home tonight,” he told Jazz. “I’ll have to take it easy, but when has that not been true?”
Jazz was genuinely glad to hear it. “That’s great, man.” He pulled up a chair. “Try to keep the blood on the inside from now on, okay?”
“Doing my best. You owe me some big-time tats.” Howie tilted his head, concerned. “What’s up with you guys, anyway?”
Jazz and Connie shared a brief glance. “What do you mean?” Connie asked.
“I’m a bleeder, not a moron,” Howie said. “And I think the drugs they’ve pumped into me have, like, sent me to a higher plane of consciousness. You guys are fighting.”
“No we’re not,” Connie said, surprising Jazz.
“We’re not?”
“Oh, this is gonna be good,” Howie said.
Ignoring Howie, Connie said, “No, you idiot.”
“But you left last night—”
“I was pissed. We weren’t getting anywhere. So yeah, I left. Not the end of the world. I told you last night: I love you. A little argument isn’t going to get in the way of that.”
Jazz didn’t know what to say. Fortunately, Howie filled in the gap: “Dude, get up off your butt and stick your tongue down her throat.”
They settled on a lingering kiss on the lips. Howie graded it an 8.5.
Now, holding Connie’s hand, Jazz suddenly felt stronger, able to reveal what he’d come here to tell. “Guys”—he drew in a deep breath—“I’m going to see my father.”
Connie’s eyes went wide, and she squeezed Jazz’s hand so hard it went numb. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
“Yo, dawg, you sure about that?” Howie asked in an accent that could have been street-talk, Irish, or something in between.
“Yeah. I’m going. Now. G. William set it up.”
Howie laughed weakly. “Tell your pops I said ‘hi.’”
“Seriously?”
“God, no! Are you nuts? Tell him I’m already dead. Tell him I’ve been dead.” Howie shivered.
They fist-bumped—gently—and then Connie joined Jazz in the hallway to say good-bye.
“Are you really doing this?” she asked.
“It’s the last thing I haven’t tried.”
“I thought you were afraid of letting him into your head.”
“Yeah, well, last night someone told me to figure out my crap and challenged me to be a little stronger than usual, and it turned out all right. So, y’know.” He grinned at her.
“I’m proud of you,” she said. “I’m serious.”
“You took a hell of a risk,” he told her. “Last night. Saying what you said.”
“I know. Paid off, too.” She flashed him a dazzling smile.
“Look,” he told her, “I don’t know if I’m crazy or what, but I need you to promise me that you’ll stay away from Doug Weathers while I’m gone.”
Connie blinked in surprise. “Why on earth would I even go near that bottom-feeder in the first place?”
“And stay away from that new deputy, Erickson. If you need to call the cops, call G. William direct, okay? And don’t let him send Erickson.”
She touched his cheek. “Is something going on? Do you think Erickson or Weathers—”
“I don’t know what I think,” he admitted. “It could all be coincidence. And I’m probably wrong, but better safe than sorry.”
“You think one of them is…?” She didn’t want to voice it.
“Maybe. That’s my best guess.” He paused. “Or maybe both of them. Together.”
Connie gasped. “Oh my God.”
“I’m sure I’m wrong. I mean, like I said before, there’s no reason the killer should be someone I know. It’s not like there are rules. But just be safe, okay? I’ll be back soon enough.”
“Are you sure about seeing your dad?” she asked again as they enfolded each other in a hug.
“You’re the one who said I should do this. Remember? Back when this all started.”
“I was talking about you getting closure from him, not opening up old wounds.”
“There’s no such thing as closure when it comes to Dear Old Dad. But maybe I can learn something, or get some kind of information out of him. Something that will save the next victim. Something to stop the Impressionist.”
“Do you really think so?”
He hated to smash her hope to bits, but he had to be honest. “No, not really. But I have to at least try.”
CHAPTER 30
Wammaket State Penitentiary rose against the horizon like a cement factory from hell. Two concentric fences ten feet high surrounded the property, topped by razor-sharp loops of concertina wire that sparkled prettily and dangerously in the sunlight. A year earlier, some prisoners on an outdoor work detail had started a brushfire, and the building’s exterior still bore streaks and leaping shadows charred into its surface, giving it a mottled, medieval appearance.
Even with the siren going and Hanson ignoring every speed limit to indulge his inner Andretti, it had taken them almost two hours to get to Wammaket from Lobo’s Nod. There were no closer prisons that could handle an inmate of Billy Dent’s caliber.
Billy had cut several deals with the prosecutors. Most of them had to do with keeping the state or federal government from injecting a lethal dose of chemicals into his bloodstream as due punishment for his crimes. But his last deal had guaranteed that he would serve his time—and die behind bars of old age—at Wammaket, the closest penitentiary to Lobo’s Nod. “So my boy can visit,” he’d told the lawyers.
Jazz hadn’t bothered. And now…
“So,” Hanson said, speaking for the first time since they’d left G. William’s office. Wammaket loomed ahead of them, growing larger. “So. Uh.”
Jazz was in no mood for small talk. “Want to join me?” he asked Hanson.
“Jesus, no!” the deputy blurted out. Then he recovered and said, “Uh, I mean, that’s probably not a good idea.”
Outside the penitentiary, a group of three people—two women and a man—stood together, hoisting protest signs and stomping their feet rhythmically. As Hanson pulled the cruiser closer, Jazz realized that the signs and the trio’s matching T-shirts all said the same thing:
FREE BILLY DENT!
> So. Here were the lunatics who thought Billy had been framed, his confessions coerced. Jazz had read about them on the Internet, but he’d never actually seen any of them. It was a nationwide movement, apparently. Jazz was grateful they could only muster three morons at a time.
“Idiots,” Hanson muttered under his breath.
A corrections officer waved them through the two fences and guided them to a small parking lot against a cinder-block wall that still bore a peaked tattoo from last year’s fire. Another corrections officer met them at the entrance and pointed out a lounge to Hanson. Jazz was escorted directly to the warden’s office.
“You’re sure about this?” the warden asked. He had a tall, thick build that made Jazz think, for some reason, of a rhinoceros. He seemed like he was clenching all of his muscles, all the time. Constantly on alert.
And he regarded Jazz with suspicion. Did he think Jazz was Billy’s conspirator in the Impressionist’s crimes? Or was it just a matter of suspicion-as-survival, surrounded as he was daily by some of the most dangerous men in the state?
“I’m sure,” Jazz said.
The warden shook his head. “Billy hasn’t agreed to see anyone in the four years we’ve had him. Last person he saw was one of his lawyers. I didn’t think he would agree to see even you, but he surprised me. I can’t stop you from seeing him, but I can do everything possible to warn you.”
“Billy won’t hurt me,” Jazz said with more confidence than he actually felt. He didn’t know what Billy might do, truthfully. And besides, Billy had ways of hurting that went beyond the physical. He could cause pain without a touch.
“You need to be careful around this guy,” the warden said. “He’s a master manipulator, and one of the best liars I’ve ever seen. A real PhD in slinging high-grade horse manure, you catch me?”
If Jazz had been in a better mood, he might have appreciated the comedy in the very thought of the warden warning him, of all people, of the dangers of Billy Dent.
“If Billy Dent told me so much as his name,” the warden went on, “I’d check his birth certificate to be sure.”
He gazed at Jazz for an amount of time that would have intimidated or spooked most people. But Jazz wasn’t “most people.” He just stared back. He admitted a grudging respect for the fact that the warden didn’t back down. He’d been taught his stare by Dear Old Dad, and very few people could stand it for long without becoming flustered at the very least.
“I’ll ask again: You sure you want to do this, kid?”
Jazz shrugged lazily. Inside, he had swallowed a potent cocktail of terror and thrill—the thought of seeing his father again scared the hell out of him, but also made him feel somehow more alive. He supposed this was what skydivers felt just before they pulled the rip cord. But he wasn’t about to let anyone, least of all the warden, know that.
The warden snorted. “Fine. Let’s do ’er.”
Moments later, Jazz found himself with the warden and a couple of corrections officers in a small gray room, sitting at a metal table that was bolted to the concrete floor. The chairs, he noticed, were also bolted down. The walls were made of unpainted cinder blocks. Jazz remembered reading about a prison where they had painted the walls in pastels, thinking the colors would calm the inmates.
Instead, the inmates had peeled the paint off the walls. And eaten it.
There were two doors, dull metal affairs set into perpendicular walls. Jazz had come through one, and he knew what would be coming through the other.
A single, narrow, barred window would have let in sunlight from up near the ceiling had the day not been overcast and gray. Instead, the only light came from a naked bulb dangling from the high ceiling. Jazz calculated quickly—if he stood on the table, he could probably snatch the bulb. Could he break it into a serviceable weapon before anyone could stop him?
He thought he could.
He was pretty damn sure he could.
Jazz tightened his grip on the edge of the table until the blood drained from his fingers. You don’t need a weapon, he told himself. You don’t need—
—wakey, wakey—
—do it!
“Don’t be nervous, kid,” the warden said, mistaking Jazz’s white knuckles for nerves, not restraint. “My men’ll make sure you’re safe.”
“I’m fine,” he replied. “You always accompany your prisoners’ guests?”
The warden burst out laughing—for such a big, impressive man, he had a surprisingly high and trembly laugh. Jazz found himself wanting to rip out the man’s larynx. Kill that girlie laugh.
Instead, he smiled his best, most polite smile and pretended that he didn’t want to kill the guy.
A buzzer sounded. Through a barred slot at eye level in the second door, Jazz saw a CO’s face. “Prisoner!” the man barked.
The warden nodded and one of the COs in the room opened that door. The barking CO entered the room and stepped aside.
Jazz laid his eyes on his father, in the flesh, for the first time in four years.
Billy Dent looked…
He looked happy.
His mouth was twisted in a wry grin, his eyes wide and alight with what some people—none of them in this room—might mistake for an impish glee. He carried himself with a loose swagger, as if he expected music to strike up at any moment and he was trying to decide if he would dance or not. He wore bright orange prison-issue pants and a matching shirt, unbuttoned, with a clean white T-shirt underneath.
Jazz had somehow expected Billy to be grimy. Filthy. Covered with soot and cinder and dust. Instead, he was disappointed to see that Billy looked like he’d just come from a shower to a wardrobe of fresh laundry. His sandy-blond hair, no longer shaved and a bit longer than Jazz had ever seen it, was clean and combed back.
“Welcome, Billy,” the warden said with a sneer. “This here’s the visitors’ room. Figure I need to introduce it to you, since you haven’t had any use for it.”
Billy shuffled in. He was shackled, hand and foot. He had roughly three inches of play between his wrists, maybe five inches between his ankles. A longer chain ran between the ones binding his limbs, just short enough that he had to stoop an inch. He jangled and clanked. Another CO stood behind him. So, two had come in with him, two were already here, and there was the warden. Five men between Billy and Jazz, and Jazz still felt like Billy was in control of the room. His father stared straight at him, that smile still twisting his lips, that light in his eyes never dimming.
“Read him the riot act,” the warden said to the lead CO, and then he left the room.
“Now it’s fun-time, Billy,” the CO said, his voice no-nonsense. “I’m only gonna tell you this once, so y’all listen careful, okay? Here’s how it’s gonna be. You’re gonna sit in this here seat. I’m gonna shackle you to the table. Me and my men’ll be on the other side of that there door.”
He pointed. Jazz watched his father’s eyes. They didn’t move at all; Billy was still staring at him. It was as though Jazz were the only other person in the room.
“The door ain’t gonna be locked. I want you to pretend there’s an invisible fence halfway down that table. Right smack in the middle. You touch that fence, you lean forward too much, and we’re gonna come through that door and we’re gonna hurt you, Billy. Now, I don’t mean we’re gonna hit you with the clubs or give you the Taser. It’s gonna be a big hurt, Billy. A bad hurt. It’s gonna go on a long time. Your boy here will be home in bed and it’ll still be going on, see? I’m trying to impress upon y’all how serious this hurtin’ is gonna be. Do we understand each other?”
Without removing his gaze from Jazz, Billy Dent nodded once.
The lead guard looked over at Jazz again. “You sure about this, kid?”
Jazz didn’t trust his voice all of a sudden. He nodded exactly like his father had, realized what he was doing, nodded a second time just to be different, then cursed himself for showing weakness to Dear Old Dad.
The guards sat Billy down and locked his w
rist chain to the table. Billy folded his hands in front of him.
And then Jazz was alone with his father, the two of them staring at each other across the table, separated by no more than two feet of empty air and an imaginary fence.
“Is it Father’s Day already?” Billy asked jovially, as if no time at all had passed, as if it hadn’t been four years.
Jazz weighed his words carefully. Billy Dent came across like some sort of bumpkin or redneck idiot, but nothing could be further from the truth. His IQ had tested off the charts; he had driven two psychiatrists (one with the FBI, one with a victims’ rights group) to quit their profession. He was pure brilliance and pure evil in one package, and woe be to anyone who forgot this when talking to him.
“So this is funny to you?” Jazz asked, keeping his tone even, bland. “You’re amused?”
Billy craned his neck left, then right, producing an audible crack. “Life amuses me, Jasper. Until it don’t no more.” He grinned. “When you’re a happy guy, you find amusement in all kinds of places. Even in here.”
“There was a shrink on TV once,” Jazz said evenly. “Said you would probably kill yourself in prison.”
Billy chuckled. “Kill myself? And destroy all of this?” He couldn’t gesture well with his shackled hands, so he nodded his head around the room. The state. The universe.
“Still, I’m surprised you’re in one piece. I thought there was a pecking order in prison.”
“There sure is!” Billy leaned back and guffawed. “Oh, there’s one hell of a pecking order! And your dear old daddy sits right up around the top. You got triple digits next to your name, they sorta king you in here. Like in checkers, you follow?”