“What if it’s a combination lock, smart-ass?”
“I’m not bad with them, either.”
Moot point.
As they came within sight, they saw that the lock was already unfastened, hanging loose in the open hasp of the door to unit 83F.
CHAPTER 54
Howie stood at the front door to the Dent house. The stars still hid beyond the blanket of clouds. He tried not to take that as an ill omen, but it wasn’t easy.
Just go on and do it, he told himself. And who knows? Maybe a hundred years from now, some dumb futuristic hemophiliac kid’s dumb futuristic parents will be all like, “Buck up! Did you know that the famous Howie Gersten also had hemophilia?” Beats the living hell out of Genghis Khan, right?
He had a key, of course, so he let himself in. The house was quiet. Too quiet, some idiot in a movie would say, then go in anyway.
Howie shrugged and went in anyway. He knew something that random movie idiots didn’t know—where the shotgun was. He recovered it from behind the big grandfather clock. The barrels were plugged and Jazz had removed the firing pins, but Sam and Gramma didn’t know that.
I’m going to cut the knot and figure this out one way or the other, he thought. And then, resolute, he stepped into the living room, where Sam lay on the sofa, watching TV.
“Howie?” she asked, startled. “What are you—” She broke off as she realized he was pointing the gun at her. “Howie!” Her voice cracked. “What the hell? Are you nuts?”
“That’s exactly what I was gonna ask you!” he said, astonished. “Wow. We’re totally on the same wavelength. Please don’t be a crazy serial-killer person.”
“What are you talking about?” She drew her legs up onto the sofa, hugging her knees as though she could shrink into a space where a shotgun blast couldn’t find her. “What are you doing? Point that thing somewhere else.”
“In a sec. I need to know if you’re a crazy serial killer like Billy. Are you Ugly J?”
“What’s Ugly J? Put that gun down!” Her voice went high and panicked. Too panicked to be fake, Howie thought. Would a serial killer be afraid of harmless Howie, even packing heat? He didn’t think so. The terror in Sam’s eyes seemed real. Howie didn’t think Billy had ever been afraid of anything in his life.
“Playtime!” a voice said from behind him. “Friends are here!” it singsonged, and Howie turned without thinking. Gramma had pranced in from the hallway, clapping her hands, but when she saw the shotgun pointed at her, she screamed.
“Whoa. Calm—”
“KILLER!” she yelled. “KILLER IN THE HOUSE!” So loud he thought her vocal cords would have to explode.
“It’s okay!” he told her, but she screamed again—this scream high and wordless, a nonsense syllable of terror—and clenched tight, old fists.
From behind him, he heard Sam cry out, and then she was on him from behind, tackling him, and he thought, That’s gonna leave a bruise, as he involuntarily pulled both triggers to the shotgun.
Boom. Not the sound of gunfire. No, the shotgun made only twin dry clicks as the hammers fell on empty space instead of firing pins. The boom rattled in Howie’s skull as he crashed to the floor, Sam on top of him, screaming, and then a new sound, a cry of fear, and Howie looked up in time to see Gramma, hands grasping at her own throat as she choked out a hollow gasp and collapsed to the floor, her head cracking solidly on the hardwood right in front of Howie.
“Oh, Jesus!” he blurted out, not sure if he meant for Mrs. Dent or for himself and the damage done to his body by his own fall. Maybe both.
Sam clambered off him, snatching the shotgun from his now-nerveless fingers. She tore skin away and Howie went swoony at the too-familiar sight of his own bright blood spurting onto the floor.
“Mom!” Sam was up, pushing past him, the shotgun cradled expertly in her arms. Howie tried to push off the floor; his palm slipped on his own blood. Sam caught his movement out of the corner of her eye and scowled murder at him, hoisting the gun threateningly. It couldn’t fire, but beating Howie to death would be the easiest thing in the world.
“I didn’t mean—” Howie started, and Sam dropped to her knees next to her mother.
She shook her.
Gramma Dent lay silent and loose, a skeleton in a bag of skin.
Sam spun around, now wielding the shotgun like a club, a crazed glint in her eye. And despite that, Howie suddenly was worried not for himself at all. He could only think:
Oh, no. Oh, God. I just killed Jazz’s grandmother.
CHAPTER 55
Jazz and Morales exchanged a quick look. And then Jazz knew the meaning of telepathy because in that instant, he knew exactly what Morales was thinking. She was thinking the exact same thing he was thinking, the thought stretched and shared between them like taffy:
Doggy needs a bone. But first, Doggy needs to play with his toys.
Belsamo. One half of the Hat-Dog Killer. He was in unit 83F right now. Gathering his tools for his next murder. They had thought they would beat him here, but he’d managed to get here first.
Before Jazz could say anything or signal, Morales single-handed her gun—good thing she was using the backup, Jazz thought—then grabbed the handle of the door down near the floor and flung it up. It rumbled and stuttered, but rolled almost entirely into the ceiling, revealing a ten-by-ten space within, lit by a portable battery-powered lantern.
Morales shifted her grip to two hands, her feet planted.
“Freeze!” she shouted. “Don’t even twitch!”
The room was divided into halves by a strip of bright tape that ran down the center of the floor. Both sides had what looked like a makeshift workbench, each piled high with tools and boxes. On the right-hand side, Jazz noticed a bottle of clear liquid with a pair of eyes floating in it.
On the other side, the workbench held multiple small jars, filled with cloudy liquid and tight, curled shadows that Jazz knew would turn out to be five excised penises.
Oliver Belsamo stood in front of the left-hand workbench, half-turned to Morales, his expression one of complete shock. He had a small laptop shoulder bag on the workbench before him, partly filled from the look of it.
In his hand, now frozen, he held a wicked-looking scalpel, halfway to the bag.
“Drop the knife,” Morales said, teeth clenched. “Drop it now or I drop you.”
Jazz wondered if she would actually shoot him. Dog was her best—only—pathway to Billy. Would she really kill him?
“You…” Belsamo’s voice. It was Jazz’s first time hearing it since the interrogation room, when he’d cawed and played madman. It still had that off-kilter timbre to it, that lunatic’s cadence. Belsamo was a man only marginally in control of himself.
His apartment. All the hoarding and OCD crap. That’s how he tries to stay in control of himself. By complete control of his environment.
“You went into my house!” Belsamo whined, gripping the scalpel more tightly. He didn’t even look at Morales—he seemed to have eyes only for Jazz. “You took my phone!” As if that crime somehow outweighed all his own.
“You do not want to mess with me!” Morales yelled. “Put! It! Down!”
She probably wouldn’t kill him. But he could easily see her shooting him in the leg.
“Better listen to her,” Jazz said. He took a step toward Belsamo. “Drop the scalpel and step away from the workbench and you’ll live, man. That’s what it’s all about, right?”
Above all else, serial killers did not want to die. They cherished their lives more than anything else.
Because you can’t kill people if you’re dead.
“Drop it!”
“Really, man. Drop it,” Jazz said, and took another step. The strong, overwhelming scents of formaldehyde and bleach and metal from the storage unit curled his nose hairs and made his nostrils want to slam shut. “Dude, it’s not worth dying.”
“Get back,” Morales said tightly. “Get out of there, Jasper. Now.”
Jazz looked down. He hadn’t realized it, but he had stepped into 83F. He had started to back up when he caught—out of the corner of his eye—Belsamo moving. His heart thrummed a quick, panicked beat.
But it was just Dog dropping the scalpel. It hit the workbench with a clatter.
“Good boy,” Morales said in a voice loaded with irony and relief.
And then Jazz jerked as though awakened by a nightmare as a flat cracking sound echoed in the claustrophobic confines of the storage hallway, followed by another one before the first could fade away.
In the time it took to blink, the entire world spun and shifted away from him, a dizzying amusement park ride gone horribly awry. For some reason he couldn’t understand, he was suddenly staring up at the ceiling of unit 83F, and his heartbeat roared loud in his ears, drowning out everything else. In that single, nigh-imperceptible instant, something—and everything—had changed.
It took only another moment for him to realize what and how. In the space of that new moment, the pain hit him. The pain and the dampness of his own blood soaking through his clothes.
She shot me, he thought. Morales shot me.
CHAPTER 56
Connie’s cabbie said nothing until they pulled onto the highway.
“Good thing not a little colder,” he said abruptly. “All this be snow.” He gestured through the windshield.
Connie nodded. That would suck. Being stuck out here by the airport, waiting for plows. Ugh.
She vaguely remembered that when Hughes had driven them to Brooklyn, it had taken almost an hour, so she knew she had some time. She dug into the laptop bag and produced the Costner picture, staring at it. Costner wore a three-piece suit and pointed a gun right at her. Was that the clue? A gun in the bag and then another gun in a picture…? Both fake guns, of course… Was the Costner picture because Mr. Auto-Tune knew that Connie wanted to be an actor? And if so, what was the message? This whole scavenger hunt seemed handcrafted specifically for her, so what did two fake guns and a picture of an actor mean?
Two guns…
When in doubt, check the Internet. She Googled two guns, but got nothing helpful. Some kind of band, an Old West feature in Arizona, and a comic book character called “The Two-Gun Kid.” Really helpful.
Then she punched Costner into Google. She tapped on some of the links, skimmed his Wikipedia entry. Then, for the hell of it, she tried Costner serial killer.
A movie called Mr. Brooks came up. Connie’s eyes widened as she read the description. In the movie, Costner played a sociopath. A Billy Dent type, who went around killing people and even mentored a wannabe serial killer.
That makes some kind of sense. Is Mr. Auto-Tune the Hat-Dog Killer? Is it Billy’s new protégé?
But according to Jazz, Billy had always said that Jazz was his protégé.
Wait. Maybe it’s not Costner. Maybe it’s the role he’s playing in this picture. She compared the image on her phone for Mr. Brooks to the clipping. Costner looked much younger in the clipping, at least ten or twenty years, so she went back to Wikipedia and started looking at older movies.
“Okay to take Atlantic?” the cabbie asked suddenly.
She looked up. They were stuck in traffic and had barely moved since the last time she’d paid attention, almost a half hour ago. At this rate, she would get to the hotel sometime tomorrow morning.
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Connie said, returning her attention to her phone. And then she found it. The clipping of Costner had been cut from a printout of the poster for the movie The Untouchables.
Kevin Costner had played an FBI agent. Eliot Ness.
This was it. It had to be. It was a clue with multiple levels, designed to lead Connie to this moment, to this name. Eliot Ness. First, the image of Costner led her to Mr. Brooks, assuring her that she was on the right path. Then to Eliot Ness. Was there a further step? Was there something in Ness’s history? Or was Ness himself the clue?
She switched over to Google Maps and punched in Ness. Maybe it was a street name in New York or—
A pin dropped onto the map, spearing an intersection in Brooklyn. Ness Paper Manufacturing, it said.
Connie slid the map around and realized that the glowing blue dot representing her position wasn’t far from the Ness Paper pin. “Hey!” she said to the cabbie. “Can you take me to…” She glanced back down at the phone and read off the intersection.
The cabbie did another one-shoulder shrug and blurted something in Hindi. Probably telling whoever was at the other end of the Bluetooth headset that the crazy girl was changing her mind.
Shortly, the cab pulled up to the intersection. “Where?” the driver asked, and Connie realized he wanted to know which corner to drop her off at.
“Doesn’t matter. Here is fine.” She shoved some money through the little slot in the plastic shield between her and the driver, then hauled her bags out into the cold, relentless rain. Gross.
“Hey, can you stick around for, like, two minutes?” she asked, but the driver—with that inscrutable single-shoulder shrug—just took off into the night. “Oh, terrific.”
Some people milled about under umbrellas, but the streets were almost completely empty. Connie held the laptop bag over her head and stared up at the façade of the Ness Paper building. It looked like every other random building. Nothing exotic or strange about it. There were two large truck bays, closed off with corrugated garage doors, and a flight of steps leading up to a single door illuminated by a bright cone of light from a security lamp. The place was clearly closed.
“Good job, Conscience,” she muttered. The rain chilled down to her bones and then dug deeper.
She turned, looking up and down both streets at the intersection. Cars whizzed by, but no cabs that she could see. She was just about to dig out her phone and look for the nearest subway station when she noticed it, right across the street from the Ness building.
It was just another Brooklyn tenement, notable only due to its severely ramshackle appearance. It was the sort of building they showed in movies to communicate to the audience that you were in a bad part of town, though as near as Connie could tell, this part of Brooklyn wasn’t particularly scary. The building was almost out of place here, its face scarred and pitted, then made up garishly with layers of graffiti.
Only one graffito had caught her attention, though. New, she could tell, or at least newer than the rest because it overlaid them:
Almost as though she couldn’t help herself, Connie stepped off the curb and walked across the street, stepping carefully over a puddle as she went.
CHAPTER 57
Jazz couldn’t move. Harsh static buzzed in his ears. A lake of blood spread along his left flank, and that entire side of his body flamed with pain. He couldn’t even tell where he’d been shot—it could have been anywhere inside the creeping red stain that stretched from his waist to mid-thigh.
Why? he asked no one in the confines of his head. Why?
And then another of the flat cracks dragged Jazz’s attention away from his own pain. Morales was down on the floor, still. A man crouched over her, slightly winded, and Jazz realized—they’d struggled. For the gun. The man had come up behind them. Morales hadn’t shot him. Not on purpose, at least.
“Good,” said Belsamo. “Nicely done.”
“Shut up!” the other man said, pointing Morales’s gun at him. “Shut your mouth!”
Now Dog looked just as confused as Jazz felt. The scene swam before Jazz’s vision, watery, indistinct. He wondered if he was going to pass out and was surprised by how cleanly and clinically he could examine himself right now. Pulse racing. Skin a little cold and clammy. Am I going into shock? Don’t go into shock, Jazz. You’re no good to anyone then.
Thank God Morales had had her backup weapon out. It was a light caliber—a nine-millimeter—not the full .40-caliber load her service weapon held. He knew he had a decent chance at surviving this gunshot wound without too much permanent damage. In most shootings, the victim did hims
elf as much harm as the bullet, if not more: Thrashing around when shot only made you bleed more. And the shock of being shot often sent victims into cardiac arrest or caused further bleeding from an accelerated heart rate.
So when you get shot, Jazz, just fall down, nice and calm. Just keep cool.
Yeah, right.
He forced himself to draw in a long breath and then let it out slowly. Connie had once tried to teach him yoga breathing, which he’d found annoying and unnatural, but right about now, he was up for whatever would keep him alive.
Morales wasn’t moving. There was a hole in her blazer, but no blood that Jazz could see. He was pretty sure the FBI vest could stop such a small caliber even at such close range. She would have had the wind knocked out of her and would have a hell of a bruise. He’d heard of people going into cardiac arrest just from the impact, though, even with a bulletproof vest on, but Morales seemed to be breathing normally. Knocked out when she hit the floor?
A surging wave of agony suddenly crashed upward from his leg and Jazz hissed in a breath. Forget Morales for now. He was shot.
He tuned back into the rest of the world for a moment and realized that Belsamo and the newcomer were arguing, going back and forth as though there weren’t two wounded people and a growing puddle of blood on the floor between them. Dog’s voice was flat and affectless, as though everything outside of his own skin was merely a curiosity. The newcomer spoke with heat, anger. Passion.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Belsamo said with an almost autistic precision. “The rules clearly state that unless told to, we are not to be here at the same—”
“Shut up!” the other man shouted. “Just shut up about the rules! Do you have any idea what’s happening here? Do you? You just had to be sloppy, didn’t you? Had to leave your tributes to Ugly J everywhere. Idiot.”
Jazz’s vision began to clear, just a bit. He was almost directly between the two men, still inside unit 83F. Morales was inside, too, having been knocked into it during her tussle.