“Sort of. The ME reports show differences between the two. More bruising with Hat’s female victims. I think he actually raped them. As an aspect of control. He wants to possess them, and raping them is a way of establishing ownership. He enjoys it. Dog’s victims weren’t bruised. I don’t think rape excites him. I don’t think women excite him. I bet he used a sex toy to rape them, probably perimortem.”
“What about the paralysis?”
“A Hat innovation. He hates touching men. He didn’t want to kill men at all—he had to, in order to keep up the pretense of the game, that there was just one killer. In his own mind, he probably thinks of himself as the only man who matters, the only one who deserves to dominate women. Also, he was used to dealing with girls and women; it was probably easier for him to deal with men if they were incapacitated.”
Someone in a shirt and loosened tie—probably an FBI agent—opened the door and peered inside. “Oh. Didn’t know someone was—”
“Give us a minute,” Hughes said wearily.
The fed glanced at Jazz appraisingly and backed out, closing the door.
“This is all interesting—”
“Because it’s true. Look, there was only one non-white victim, right? One Asian. Gordon Cho, victim fourteen, killed by Dog right before you came to get me in the Nod. And what space did Dog land on, if you do the math?”
“Very interesting—”
“He landed on Oriental Avenue, Hughes.” Jazz shook the paper at him.
“—but it’s just that,” Hughes said. “Interesting. It’s not evidence. It’s not proof.” Hughes made a show of folding the paper in half and then in half again as he spoke. “Like my old man used to say: I ain’t sayin’ it is and I ain’t sayin’ it ain’t. I’m going to look into this. But I have to do it on my own and I have to be careful how I do it. You better actually hope you’re wrong about this, kid.”
“What? Why?”
Hughes stood and walked to the door. “Because,” he said, turning to Jazz, “if you’re right, we only know it because you broke the law to gather evidence while an official representative of the task force. Which means that piecing this all together in a legal way that will stand up in court and put Dog behind bars and lead us to Hat before he gets his next die roll…” He shook his head. “It’s all going to be ten times tougher than it would have been if you’d done this the right way. That’s why. Good enough answer for you?”
He didn’t wait for Jazz to respond, leaving Jazz alone in the office.
Jazz kept the office to himself for a few minutes after Hughes left, pondering. On one level, Hughes was right, of course. Jazz had “gone off the reservation,” as the cops put it. He’d gone rogue. Endangered the prosecution’s ability to put Belsamo and the still-anonymous Hat behind bars.
And yet… he knew he was right. He had taken the quickest, most direct route to Dog. Billy had rolled a nine for Dog, meaning that he would commit a crime that had something to do with Atlantic Avenue. Worst-case scenario, the cops knew where to wait for Dog when the time came to dump his body. One more victim would be his last.
No. No, that’s not cool. That’s Billy thinking. “One more victim” is one more too many. People are real. People matter.
Yes, Jazz had obtained evidence illegally, but that wouldn’t matter if they caught Dog in the act and snatched him up. All Hughes had to do was sit on Dog. Eventually, he would lead them to his next victim and the cops could swoop in and grab him. Make him tell them who and where Hat was. Maybe even…
Maybe even lead us to Dear Old Dad.
And Jazz wondered: Had that been his motive all along? Deep down, had he decided to forsake justice for Hat-Dog’s victims in order to hack out the quickest, most direct route to Billy? He could claim he’d simply been so excited at the thought of catching Dog that he’d ignored the law, but maybe there was a part of him that no longer cared about Hat’s and Dog’s victims, a part that wanted only one thing….
That final confrontation with Billy.
I don’t know.
He slipped out of the office. It was getting late, but the precinct still buzzed and bustled. Jazz suspected it was like this 24/7, with fresh agents and cops spelling each other at regular intervals. He knew that task forces worked around the clock, generating tens of thousands of pages of documents and evidence. It was a logistical nightmare, fueled by adrenaline, caffeine, and what G. William called “pure cussedness,” that human condition which makes it impossible to quit even when the odds are long and the hours longer.
Jazz wondered: If he stood on a table and shouted out Dog’s name and address, how many of these fine, upstanding officers of the law would be tempted to go put a bullet in the guy’s head? How many of them would actually go and do it?
Ain’t all that much difference between them and us, Billy used to say. ’Cept we’re more honest about what it is we do. We admit it drives us, turns us on. They pretend they do it for the good of “the people,” whatever that means, but they really do it ’cause they like it. They like the authority. The power. The guns. Just like we do, Jasper.
Outside, the press had settled into a sort of languor. With no news and none forthcoming until Montgomery’s usual 9:30 press briefing (timed to let the local ten o’clock news run with it), they had nothing to do, but couldn’t just leave the scene of the biggest story in NYC.
I’ve got a scoop for you guys. The name and location of one half of the killing duo that has paralyzed Brooklyn.
Could he do that? Could he use the press to his advantage? Jazz had already pushed through them to the street but now paused and looked back. It could be done. There were ways to manipulate the media to the advantage of the good guys. Whoever Hat was, he would obsessively watch the news, read the papers, scan the websites for mention of the Hat-Dog Killer. Billy had done the same, at one point amassing a set of four huge scrapbooks filled with tales of his exploits. He’d burned them late one night when his inborn paranoia finally conquered his all-consuming pride.
The press was a powerful tool, but a dangerous one, too, as apt to blow up in your face as function properly. Jazz had been taught a healthy respect for the cops—along with hatred of them, of course—but he’d been raised to fear and shun the media. He had learned many things at the feet of William Cornelius Dent, and most of them fell into the category of “Bad Things,” but avoiding the media was something Jazz was pretty sure made sense.
It was too risky. Using the media to find Hat would be like playing with nitroglycerine.
On his way back to the hotel, he bought a slice of pizza from a shabby, run-down shack of a restaurant, certain that it would have roaches embedded alongside the mushrooms he’d requested. Instead, it was the best pizza he’d ever had in his life. Okay, New York, he thought. I’ll give you this one. I’ll never be able to eat that delivery stuff again.
Howie would have loved the pizza, he knew, wiping his greasy hands on his jeans as he entered his hotel room. Connie, too. Thinking of them made him suddenly, surprisingly homesick. He’d been too busy and too distracted to miss Lobo’s Nod or his best friend and girlfriend, but now a slice of pizza brought it all home to him. New York wasn’t the place for him. He needed the wide-open skies and narrow boulevards of his hometown. He could be anonymous in New York, he realized, unknown and unsuspected. Ever since Billy’s arrest, that’s what he’d fantasized—being somewhere (being someone) that no one knew or recognized. New York should have been his Shangri-la.
But now he realized that being anonymous was the worst possible future for him. Dog’s anonymity had allowed him to kill with impunity for months. That little studio apartment reeked of insanity, but how many people had ever set foot within?
Jazz needed to be surrounded by people. Yes. And they needed to be people who knew him, people who could see the signs. People who could tell if—when?—he was tipping into Billy territory.
Connie. Howie. G. William. Maybe even Aunt Samantha, if she could be persuaded to stay in th
e Nod.
Could this be his family? His support system? Jazz had always thought that his past was his own burden to bear, but could it be possible that he was meant to have people around him? Was this the true meaning of “People are real. People matter”? Not that they mattered in order to be safe from him… but to be safe for him?
The phone rang, so sudden and shrill into his thoughts that he jerked like a marionette, fumbling for his cell. He swiped at the screen, but nothing happened.
Another ring.
Oh. Not his phone.
The Billy phone.
“Hello?”
“Jasper!” Billy cried, sounding like a man who’s not seen his child in years. “M’boy! How are you? Still doin’ well, I hope? Not too disappointed that the bastard cops aren’t givin’ you much help, I hope?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you do. You were right in ol’ Doggy’s doghouse. Saw it all up close. Nosed around his food dish. Saw his chain, Jasper, m’boy. I know you—thinkin’ you’re some kinda… some kinda white knight, ridin’ to the rescue. White knight, Jasper. And then the cops do nothing. How do I know that? Well, I guess ’cause I just spoke to Doggy and he’s still breathing that sweet, cold, free air.” Here Billy inhaled deeply—a pot smoker’s hearty toke, a gourmet drinking in the contents of a roiling, aromatic kettle. “Ah! Yeah, he’s still out there. He’s prospecting, Jasper, and ain’t no one trying to stop him. Unless you have designs on that for yourself. Is that it? You thinkin’ you can take down ol’ Dog all on your own?”
“The police know all about him,” Jazz said with conviction. It wasn’t even really a lie—Hughes knew everything Jazz knew at this point. By now, the detective may have come clean to Montgomery. By now, the police could… “They’re probably loading up SWAT and ready to roll on him any minute now.”
Billy blubbered laughter. “I would like to see that! I truly, truly would. You know, I would like to be there when they knock down his door with their battering ram—”
“I’d like you to be there, too,” Jazz said savagely.
“Ha! Good one! Nice! But if I could be a blowfly and buzz around, I would get a hell of a chuckle, Jasper. You’ve been there. Tell me—what evidence are those good ol’ boys gonna find in his place?”
Nothing, Jazz knew, and didn’t say.
“And girls,” Billy amended. “Good ol’ boys and girls. They got lady cops and they got that cutie FBI agent, Morales, don’t they? It’s a hell of a diverse task force, ain’t it? Got Morales and they got that big ol’ Negro Hughes, don’t they? Is it okay to say ‘Negro,’ Jasper? I’m wonderin’, ’cause it sounds a lot like that other word that people get so het up about. I gotta ask you, you bein’ my expert on such things on account of sticking it to that pretty little kinky-haired girl.”
“You bastard,” Jazz seethed. “You just keep talking and talking and talking, don’t you? Talking in circles and spirals and trying to keep everyone on their toes, babbling nonsense to cover up the fact that you’ve killed and tortured so many. People died when you escaped. You made me complicit in that. People died.”
“Were they important?” Billy asked blandly. The voice of a man asking for vanilla ice cream.
“They mattered!”
“Why? Because they were alive? Because they were people? Is that all it takes? If everyone’s special, ain’t no one special, Jasper.”
Jazz realized he’d dropped to his knees at some point during the call, the weight of Billy’s voice, the sheer mass of his psychic venom dragging Jazz down, down, down. He had trouble breathing. Billy’s voice was relentless, eternal, and it brought back every half memory and barely recalled figment from his childhood. Jazz was a boy again, not a man. He was a toddler, waddling around the house, following a mother who would soon be gone, reaching chubby arms out to a father glowing with the satisfaction of having slaughtered—at that point—dozens.
“You still with me, Jasper?” Billy said, not pausing, not giving him a chance to recover. “Hate to think I could be talkin’ to a dead line, you know? Hate to think of this fatherly advice bein’ wasted.”
“We’re tracking this call,” Jazz said, hoarse. A pathetic lie, obviously told. Jazz didn’t expect his father to buy it, and sure enough, Billy didn’t even acknowledge it, just kept on talking:
“I still have so much to teach you. There are days when I sit here, when I sit here and I think, There’s so much I still haven’t taught him. So much I need to give him. We lost time, Jasper. Lost four good years, four important years. And that’s on me. That’s my fault, y’hear me? I take that blame and I carry it on my shoulders every day and it makes me stooped and weak, to think that I let my needs and my urges come between us. I’d’a been able to control myself better, those two sunny, silly bitches’d still be alive and I’d be home and we’d be doing just fine, learning together.”
Jazz fumbled with his cell, flicking to where the pictures were stored, tapping and swiping until he found the one he was looking for: a scan of the picture of his mother. The only thing left of her.
And what about Mom? Jazz wanted to ask. Would we be one big happy family? But there was no point. Billy had killed Mom—had erased her—years before he killed in Lobo’s Nod, years before he’d been captured by G. William.
“You don’t have anything to teach me,” Jazz managed. “You taught me enough.”
“It’s never enough. When you have your own kids, you’ll understand. You’ll be fifty, and you’ll still be my boy, Jasper, and I’ll still wish I could take you and put my arm around you and teach you what you need to know in this ugly, evil world.”
Jazz swiped his mother’s picture aside. A new photo: him with Connie and Howie, all grinning for the camera. The shot was bittersweet—he enjoyed seeing the honest smile on his own face, the camaraderie with his closest friends, but the picture had been snapped by Ginny Davis one day after school. Poor, dead Ginny, her death caused by the Impressionist—and, therefore, by Billy—and not prevented by Jazz himself.
“You think you can come after me, don’t you?” Billy asked. “That’s why no one’s tracing this call. That’s why you’re not screaming your head off for help. Because you want me all to yourself. Just like a crow.”
A crow… Jazz slid his phone away and used his free hand to steady himself on the floor. The fog in his brain began to clear, just a little, and through the parting clouds he saw a black bird, its wings wide and all-encompassing. “A crow,” he said. “Crows. Belsamo—Dog—had a crow on his laptop. He made noises like a crow. And the Impressionist said something about—”
“You been thinkin’ about that story, Jasper?”
“The one you told me. About the Crow King. I looked it up once. Tried to find it in a book or on the Web. But it doesn’t exist. No one knows it.”
“Yeah. That’s the one. That was your favorite when you were a kid.”
“No.”
“Well, seemed to me like you liked it! Always got a chuckle out of it. Anyway, like I said before—it’s not just a story. It ain’t just somethin’ made up. It’s got some real in it, you see?”
“No. I don’t get it.”
“You will.” Billy chuckled. “Or you won’t! Hey, who knows, right? Crazy ol’ world we live in. Anything’s possible, I guess. But my money’s on you, Jasper. Always has been. I raised you right, boy. Raised you strong and proud and tough. Last four years or so been hard on you, I know. Been hard without your Dear Old Dad around.”
“I’ve been fine.” He forced himself up to a crouch, looking around the room for a weapon. Anything that could cause pain. He would march out of this room and keep Billy talking for days, if that’s what it took, but he would follow his father’s trail of crazy right to his hideaway and then he would do what he should have done years ago.
“You’ve been foundering,” Billy said confidently. “You keep goin’ back and forth: ‘Am I fit for other people?’ ‘Am I a monster?’ ‘Can
I touch this pretty little colored girl?’ Sorry—African American girl? Or… woman? Does she make you call her a woman, not a girl?”
Jazz decided on the chair. It was heavy and sturdy. He tilted it so that the back of it rested on the floor, then kicked at one of the legs, which splintered and cracked into a good length of wood, hefty and solid with a wickedly jagged point.
“What’s that I hear in the background?” Billy asked. “Almost sounded like snapping an arm, but I know that ain’t it. You tearing up the furniture? You ready to hunt vampires, boy?”
Somehow, the solidity of a weapon in his hand cut through the morass of confusion, a blazing trail of bloodlust leading to sparkling clarity. “You get off on this crap, don’t you?” Jazz asked, the question as obvious as its answer, but his voice no longer weak. “Not just trying to mess with my head. Not just killing people. But the rest of it, too: puppetmastering these guys. You love telling them who to kill as much as you love killing yourself.”
“Not really,” Billy mused. “Ain’t true. Not at all. And you got it wrong—I don’t dictate to them. I just watch the clock and keep the rules. They decide how to play the game.”
“But you started it. You inspired it.”
“I did?” Billy sounded genuinely surprised at the notion. “You really think that? See, like I said before, I still got a lot to teach you. Like this: Wasn’t my idea to set these boys playin’ against each other. I just stepped in to help adjudicate.”
“Yeah?” Jazz recovered his cell phone and dropped it in his pocket, still clutching the stake he’d made. He paced the hotel room like that, powerful and impotent all at once, a wolf on a leash. “How’s it work? How do you pick the winner? Or do you just play until someone gets caught?”
“We play until they can’t play anymore,” Billy said.
“Oh? What does the winner get? Bragging rights? A signed Billy Dent trading card?”
“Oh, no, Jasper. Better than that. Much better, I promise. Why, you may even get it yourself one day.”
“I don’t want anything you have to offer,” Jazz snarled. “I won’t be one of your puppets. One of your pawns. I won’t be a party to any more dying.”