Howie pulled a reversal of his clandestine extraction, drifting headlightless and engineless down the gentle slope toward her house.
“You’ll call me tomorrow, right?” he asked, and yawned.
“I’m about to jump out of a moving car and you’re yawning.”
“We’re going, like, a mile an hour.” He checked the speedometer, squinting. “Maybe a mile and a half.”
“I’ll call,” she said, and hopped out, jogging alongside the car until she had the door closed.
She felt very conspicuous, standing literally in the middle of the street. Howie had dropped her off (“inserted,” he insisted on saying, demanding they use spy lingo) three houses up from her own, just in case someone was awake and looking out the window in the Hall home. She moved to the side of the road and approached her house carefully. With the exception of the light near the front door, it was dark. And quiet.
She had a feeling, again, that someone was watching her. Not her dad or her mom. Not even Whiz. No, she had a sudden, foolish feeling that Billy was out there. Which was ridiculous, because the odds seemed to be that Billy was in New York. And even if he wasn’t, he wasn’t stupid enough to hang around Lobo’s Nod, the one place on the planet where almost every person would recognize him on sight.
But maybe he has magical powers and he can be in two places at once or can see across vast distances….
She shook herself and came just short of slapping her own cheek. She was exhausted. Thinking stupid things. Childish things.
As Howie had promised, her lubricated window opened easily and silently. With a small, nearly inaudible “Oof,” she hauled herself over the sill and into the quiet familiarity of her own bedroom. With the window closed, the room went warm and still. She enjoyed it for a moment.
If this had been a horror movie, she knew, there would be something here. Like, a clue. A note from the person who’d texted her, maybe.
Or a severed head. Or maybe a finger from the Impressionist. Or maybe…
She was suddenly completely convinced that her family was dead.
Isn’t that what would happen? she thought. Lure me out of the house and then—
She didn’t let herself think further. Paranoia pumped through her like blood and she struggled against it, stripping off her clothes and slipping into boy shorts and a T-shirt for bed.
No one is dead. No one is dead. Stuff like that only happens in movies and in books.
And in real life.
Even as she told herself that she wouldn’t do it, she sneaked out of her room. Just going to the bathroom, is all. That’s all. And the bathroom is next to Whiz’s room….
She put an ear to Whiz’s door. Heard nothing.
Cranked the door open a bit, wincing at the slight creak. Why was the creak absent during the day, present only when she needed to be absolutely quiet?
In the glow of a street lamp coming through the window, she saw a lump under the covers.
Doesn’t mean anything. Could still be dead. Might not even be him.
Stop it, Connie. Stop being so ridiculous.
It’s not ridiculous. Billy Dent has done worse, hasn’t he?
She didn’t want to, but she suddenly remembered something Billy had done as Satan’s Eye. Jazz wouldn’t talk about the things Billy had done—not to her, at least—but she’d done some research. She couldn’t help it. And she remembered how in one night, Billy had kidnapped two women, murdered them, and then put them into each other’s beds, where they were discovered the next day by a husband and a boyfriend.
I’m doing this.
She crept into Whiz’s room. The form in bed seemed not to move, but as she came closer, she was relieved to find that it was, in fact, moving—the rhythmic, soft up and down of sleep-breathing.
The street lamp picked out her younger brother’s face, so much less obnoxious and peaceful in repose. Connie sighed.
Whiz’s eyes snapped open so suddenly that Connie almost screamed. She gasped and took a step back in shock.
“What are you doing?” he whispered accusingly, as if he’d caught her emptying his piggy bank.
“I… thought I heard something.”
“You’re a freak,” Whiz shot back, then rolled over to face away from her. “Get out of here.”
I love my brother, and I’m glad he’s not dead, Connie told herself as she went back to her room. I love my brother, and I’m glad he’s not dead.
She intended to repeat it over and over in her head until she believed it, but she fell asleep first.
CHAPTER 31
Lips on his
(oh, yes)
down farther
Touch me
says the voice
again
His fingers
Oh
so warm
Oh
Jazz woke early. Not because he wanted to and not because he felt compelled to, but rather because Hughes shook him roughly by the shoulder and said, “Wake up,” in a commanding voice devoid of sympathy. The detective was already dressed.
Tangled in the sheets, clutching a pillow, Jazz blearily looked around the room. “What time is it?”
“Five of seven. First suspect is scheduled for interrogation at eight. And you still have his file to look at.”
Groaning, Jazz rolled over and pulled a pillow over his head. Hughes snatched away the pillow and tossed it over his shoulder.
Fifteen minutes later, Jazz was on his way to the precinct, flipping through the files on the dozen men suspected of being Hat-Dog. They all lived in Brooklyn, well within a specific computer-plotted jeopardy surface that contained most of the crime scenes thus far. The two extreme outliers were Coney Island and the S line in Midtown. “Why Coney Island?” Jazz asked. “Why Midtown? Why go outside his comfort zone?”
“Midtown, we’re thinking it’s a crime of opportunity. The girl lived nearby. We think maybe he works in Midtown, stays late at the office or something, sees the girl…”
“Hmm.” Jazz didn’t like that theory. Hat-Dog had been at this too long to go off half-cocked like that. He was too organized, too mature. But sometimes the impulses could scream and hoot and holler like monkeys in a cage, and the only way to shut them up…
I had to go and get me one, said Dear Old Dad.
That’s what Billy had said the night he’d returned from killing Cara Swinton. He had drummed into Jazz from an early age that “we don’t crap where we eat,” meaning “no prospecting in Lobo’s Nod.” And then one night, soon after Jazz’s thirteenth birthday, Billy went out and did exactly that, crapping right there where he ate, killing poor Cara.
The only explanation he ever offered: “I had to go and get me one.”
The compulsion. The urge. The need.
“… Coney Island,” Hughes was saying. “We’re thinking he might have been on vacation….”
“Any of these guys married?” Jazz asked, refocusing on the present and the suspects. “Kids?”
“Six married. Four divorced. Couple girlfriends. That’s the profile, right? Highly organized, probably married or in a relationship. Four of ’em have kids.”
“Start with those guys.”
“We plan to.”
“Do these guys know they’re suspects?”
“Nah. We’ve talked to all of them informally. They all had quote-unquote legitimate reasons for being around one or more of the crime scenes, so we’re pretending we just want to clear some things up. And then we get them nice and relaxed,” Hughes said grimly, “and we pounce.”
The precinct had transformed when they arrived. No longer chaotic, it now looked like something out of a movie or a TV show—two giant HDTVs showed crime-scene evidence in a sort of animated PowerPoint presentation. The men had shaved; the women had done their hair. Jazz felt the undercurrent of tension and chaos, but it was well-suppressed. The precinct had the air of a crisp, flawless operation. Evidence boxes were neatly stacked, and the whiteboard with the victimology chart had b
een redone to look so professional that it almost seemed to be selling something.
“This is good,” Jazz said. “Show the evidence against them. Are your people instructed how to act when the suspects come in?”
“They’ll get real quiet and murmur among themselves,” Montgomery said, walking over to him. “We know what we’re doing. A show of overwhelming evidence and force. Make these guys feel like we know everything, even the things we don’t know.”
“Billy would laugh at it.”
“Not every serial killer is your dad.” The captain put a hand on Jazz’s shoulder. “Let me show you our fine accommodations.”
He guided Jazz to a small observation room. Through a one-way mirror, Jazz could see into the interrogation room, a dingy, dull-walled box with a table and three chairs. There were more boxes stacked around here. For all Jazz knew, they were packed with old take-out menus and blank copier paper. But what mattered was that they were all labeled HAT-DOG. If Hat-Dog came into this room, especially after being walked through the “command center,” he would be overwhelmed by the mountains of evidence accumulated against him, possibly so shaken that he would confess. Or at the very least, drop some sort of clue.
That was the theory. Jazz wondered if it would actually work. Billy had once been interrogated by the police, in association with a Green Jack murder. They thought they had me fooled, he said, but all they did was show me how desperate they were.
Jazz realized his upper lip was damp. He wiped at the sweat. Montgomery was right—not every serial killer was Billy. Billy was the exception, not the rule.
Just as he settled into a chair for a day of watching interrogations, Morales came in. She was wearing a severe black pantsuit with a white blouse buttoned almost to the throat. Her hair was tied back in a bun.
“Any last-minute advice?” she asked Jazz. He was both flattered and relieved that a seasoned FBI agent was looking to him for help.
He gave her a quick up-and-down appraisal. The nearly sexless look was the right approach. Hat-Dog had serious sexual issues. Gender hang-ups. His rapes of women varied from violent and desperate to perfunctory and almost gentle. The penectomies of his male victims indicated either a fear or an exaltation of male sexual power and prowess. He was a messed-up dude, as Howie would say.
So going with a sexually neutral image to start was best for Morales. If she felt like the interview was headed in a certain direction where her feminine charms could be of assistance, it would be easy to remove the jacket, let down the hair, unbutton an extra button or two. Far more difficult to go from sexy to dowdy; that genie never goes back into the bottle quietly or easily.
“You know what you’re doing,” Jazz told her. “Is Hughes going in with you?”
“Yeah. He’s gonna be bad cop.”
“Good luck.”
Jazz settled back with Montgomery and a couple of other observers, including a civilian psychiatrist who was consulting on the case. “I would love to interview you sometime,” he whispered, slipping Jazz a business card. Jazz just sighed and put the card in his pocket, making a mental note to throw it away later.
The first suspect was a man named Duncan Hershey. He wore dirty jeans and a surprisingly clean black T-shirt. His winter coat was hung on a peg on the back of the door, well out of his reach. Hershey’s hair was long, unkempt in the manner of a man unfamiliar with long hair. He had been forgoing haircuts for a while. “Lost his job last summer,” Montgomery said, bringing everyone in the room up to speed. “About two weeks before the first murder. Could have been the inciting incident.”
Jazz had the particulars committed to memory already. Hershey was white, thirty-five years old. Married for six years with two children, a four-year-old and a six-year-old. Had been a construction foreman until last summer. Now he picked up piecemeal freelance work and handyman jobs.
He had especially been flagged by the NYPD because he worked in the building where Monica Allgood had been found, the building where the glass had been deliberately broken from the outside to screw up the cops.
Duncan didn’t look particularly tired as Morales and Hughes came into the room. The old cop trick of getting a guilty suspect to fall asleep in the interrogation room clearly hadn’t worked on this guy. Which could mean something or nothing, really.
He was hunched over a paper cup of water, which he’d drained almost immediately. If Hershey turned out to be the Hat-Dog Killer, he’d just made a rookie mistake. Never drink something the cops ask you to drink. For one thing, they can withhold bathroom privileges to stress you. For another—
“You done with that?” Morales asked, indicating the cup.
“Oh, yeah.” Hershey’s voice was higher than Jazz had expected.
“Need a refill?” she asked, sounding for all the world like a waitress. Hughes had said absolutely nothing since walking in, pausing to flip through a folder and sigh theatrically.
“Nah, I’m done,” Hershey said, glancing at Hughes.
“Let’s just get this out of the way, then….” Morales deftly guided the paper cup away from Hershey, pushing it down the table with the tip of a pen. It looked utterly natural, but Jazz knew she was avoiding touching it.
“He’s not the guy,” Jazz announced. “He just voluntarily gave you guys his fingerprints and his DNA on that cup. It’s not him.”
“People screw up,” Montgomery reminded him. “Don’t be so quick.”
“Not him,” Jazz said, and folded his arms over his chest. “He’s smarter than that.”
They watched the interrogation in all its mind-numbing details. Hershey had alibis for some of the murders, no alibis for others. His memory was neither particularly good nor particularly bad, which is to say he seemed like anyone else pulled into a police station and suddenly asked to account for their lives over the past several months. If the police had hauled Jazz into an interrogation room and said to him, “On Monday September second, where were you at or about ten PM?” Jazz was pretty sure he wouldn’t know, either.
Guilty people knew. They always knew. They lived in fear that they would be forced to account for their whereabouts during their crime, so they crafted their lies with great care and loving attention to detail.
“Ever been to Coney Island?” Hughes asked more gruffly than the question demanded. “Down the boardwalk?”
Hershey wasn’t intimidated. “What, are you kidding me? Who hasn’t been to Coney Island?”
“You go this past November, maybe?” Hughes leaned across the table as though he would beat the answer out of Hershey, who pulled back a bit in his chair.
“Settle down,” Morales said, putting a calming hand on her partner’s shoulder. “Can you just think back, Mr. Hershey, and tell us if you remember going to Coney Island? I kind of like it there in the off-season. Not as many tourists. I went myself in October. Can you remember?”
Hershey shrugged. “Hell if I can remember exactly. Probably, though. Usually get down that way a couple, three times a month, you know? My wife’s mom lives in Bay Ridge.”
“Of course,” said Morales, smiling.
After about an hour of back-and-forth softball and hardball with Morales and Hughes, Hershey seemed annoyed and frustrated. Which is exactly how Jazz expected an innocent man to act.
“It could be a con job,” Montgomery reminded him. “These guys are good at wearing masks.”
Yeah, Jazz knew that. He was pretty good at wearing masks himself, and he prided himself on being able to see through them.
Then again, there was Jeff Fulton/Frederick Thurber/the Impressionist. That had been a mask made out of lead. Not even Jazz’s X-ray vision had been able to see through it.
Just then, Hughes made a show of standing up and stretching, as though trying to work out a kink in his neck. That was the sign that they were done with this guy.
“Not the guy,” someone in the observation room said. One of the FBI guys.
Told you, Jazz didn’t say.
He didn’t
need to. Montgomery looked over at him and lifted an eyebrow that seemed to say, Well, yeah, okay.
“What were the odds it would be the first one?” Montgomery said.
What are the odds it’ll be any of them? Jazz wondered. How many people live in Brooklyn? In the whole of New York City? The profile was good; the task force had done a tremendous job. But they were still looking for a chameleon in heavy weeds.
“Next victim,” someone deadpanned.
“Anyone need coffee?”
Jazz sighed.
The sun shone brightly overhead when Connie started digging in what had once been the backyard of Billy Dent’s house. She quickly became overheated and should have taken a break, but instead she just peeled off layers and kept digging, sweat streaming down her face even though it was freezing outside.
A persistent beeping noise began, repeating over and over—three quick beeps, followed by a pause, then three again. She ignored it and kept digging.
CHAKK
Her shovel hit something, and as she peered down into the hole she’d dug, she was horrified to see a flap of hair and flesh pared away from gleaming white bone by the tooth of her shovel.
Beep-beep-beep.
“Don’t go chasing…”
Someone was buried here. She had found a body.
Don’t.
Go.
Cha-
-sing…
Swallowing, she kept digging, trying not to strike the body again. The police would want it intact, wouldn’t they?
Beep-beep-beep.
She cleared more dirt away from the head and bit back a scream of absolute terror.
Beep-beep-beep.
It was Jazz.
She’d found Jazz buried in his own backyard. She would know that face anywhere. Recognize that nose, those lips…
But how? How could Jazz be buried here? And oh, God, if he was down here, then who—what?—had she been dating and kissing and almost sleeping with all these months?
Connie took a step back, dropping the shovel, and a hand came around her from behind and she tried to scream and then she opened her eyes and almost without thinking reached out to slap her alarm clock, silencing it halfway through a sequence of Beep-beep-beep.