Game (40 page)

And how she might be voluntarily winging her way to her own.

By five that evening, Jazz’s hotel room looked like an evidence locker had exploded inside a math classroom.

But he had the answer. It all worked out.

He stared at the new app on his phone, then shifted over to the sheet of paper covered with his most recent scribbles. Yeah. Yeah, it all made sense.

Crazy sense. But sense nonetheless. Somehow, it was fitting that Billy and G. William had said the things that made it all click for him.

Hughes had warned him away from the precinct, but this was too big.

He gathered up a few critical pieces of paper, double-checked his phone, then grabbed Belsamo’s disposable cell before heading out the door.

The 76th Precinct was still mobbed by press. Jazz gnawed on his bottom lip, watching from half a block away. He had no choice but to plunge right in.

For a disguise, he turned up the collar of his coat and pulled his hat down low over his forehead, then slipped on his cheap sunglasses. He pushed into the throng, eyes down, jostling reporters out of the way. Two NYPD uniforms stood at the front door, keeping it clear for civilians, and they ushered him into the precinct without realizing who he was.

Morales stood just inside the front door, leaning against the wall as she swapped a high-heeled shoe for a sturdier sneaker. She recognized Jazz as he whipped off the hat and glasses. “Feeling better?” she asked, only slightly surprised to see him.

“What? Oh, yeah. Much better.” He scanned the entryway. “Got a minute?”

“Headed out,” she said, putting on the other sneaker and
dropping her heels into a bag. “Field office wants a report in person, and you don’t keep the field office waiting. First rule of the FBI.”

“But—”

“First rule,” she said again, and breezed out the door.

Jazz ground his teeth together. Should he follow her? She was the one he should convince now, because there was no way Hughes would listen—

“Dent!”

Speaking of Hughes…

Jazz grinned apologetically in Hughes’s direction as the detective bulled through the lobby toward him. “Sorry! I was just leaving.” Yeah, he’d go after Morales and—

“You’re not going anywhere.” To prove it, Hughes clamped a powerful grip on Jazz’s wrist. Jazz tamped down his first reaction, to break the grip in the most painful way possible. Crippling an NYPD detective wouldn’t solve this case any sooner.

“I can go,” Jazz whispered. “Let me—”

“I
told
you to stay away from here.” Hughes dragged Jazz unwillingly into a smallish office. “Everyone thinks you have food poisoning. And I still haven’t figured out what to do about you after last night.”

Jazz calculated the odds of being able to persuade Hughes that he’d figured out the Hat-Dog Killer before the pissed-off cop tossed him out of the precinct.
Hit him with something he won’t expect.

“Belsamo’s on Atlantic,” Jazz said, and Hughes released him
immediately. He was in control right now, whether Hughes liked it or not. “There’s an Atlantic Avenue around here, right?”

If Hughes’s reaction weren’t so predictable, it would have been fascinating to watch as he visibly deflated, his face realigning from righteous anger to incredulous shock. “How do you
do
that?” It was as close to a whine as Jazz could imagine coming from the detective. “He’s been walking up and down Atlantic Avenue all day. Not doing anything illegal. Just walking from the river to over by Flatbush, over and over. Like he’s casing the whole avenue.”

“Not the whole avenue,” Jazz said. “He’s looking for his next dump site.”

It was raw, bloody meat to a starving wolf, and Hughes could do nothing but bite into it. “So it’s him? He’s definitely the Hat-Dog Killer?”

Jazz considered taking mercy on Hughes and just spilling it all at once. But… nah. Where was the fun in that?

“He’s not the Hat-Dog Killer,” Jazz said with authority, and watched the shock return to Hughes’s face, along with a soul-crushing distress.

Jazz gave it a couple of seconds to sink in, then said, “He’s the
Dog
Killer.”

“There
can’t
be two of them,” Hughes said. “We’ve been through this already. We considered that months ago and had to discard it. We’ve got DNA from various scenes and it’s all a match. It’s one guy.”

“You found that DNA because they
wanted
you to find it,” Jazz explained. “They planted it. To make it look like one guy was doing this. This is a game and there are two players: Hat and Dog. You have Dog’s DNA. So even if you catch him, Hat is still free and clear.”

Jazz could imagine it perfectly, as though he’d been eavesdropping on the phone call. It must have been a panicked call, from Dog to Billy, the games master.

“There’s a problem.” Dog would have done his best to cover his worry with calm and reserve. Because that was how Billy would have taught him to act.

“I don’t like problems.” Jazz imagined Billy saying it jovially, with a slight lilt to his voice. A dad ruffling his kid’s hair after a tough Little League at bat. “Why don’t you fill me in and we’ll see what we can do.”

“I didn’t realize. Until I came home. But… he scratched me.”

“What?”

“I have a scratch. On my hand.”

“Didn’t you wear gloves?”

“Yes. The scratch is high up on the hand. Over the wrist. He must have clawed down the glove. I didn’t expect it. He fought like a bitch, not a man. I didn’t realize until just now….”

And Billy would sigh, resigned to working with amateurs. “Okay. Okay, let me think. Let me think.”

“They have my DNA now.”

“I know. That’s not actually a problem. Evidence is only good when you have something to compare it to.”

“So we make sure they never have anything to compare it to?”

And Jazz could hear the familiar chuckle emanating deep within Billy’s chest, low and rumbly. “No. Are you kidding me? That’s what they expect. No. We want to make
sure
they have something to compare it to….”

“It’s a game,” Jazz told Hughes. “And Billy’s playing, but he’s not on any one side or another. There are three players, but only two sides, you see? But there’s a game on top of the game—Hat and Dog are playing each other with Billy watching them, but at the same time, Billy’s playing with us. Four players. Three sides.”

Hughes wiped down his face with both hands. “Jasper, our forensic people are really good. Every criminal makes a mistake, and when they do, we find them.”

“Exactly! Don’t you get it? That’s what Billy was
counting
on. Look.” He held up a sheet of paper on which he’d plotted the evidence found at the various crime scenes. “You had no DNA evidence at all until the fourth victim, the guy found at the subway station on, what was it, Pennsylvania and Liberty Avenues, right? That’s when you found some blood and skin cells under the victim’s fingernails.”

“Right. And then we found semen at the sixth crime scene—”

“But not the fifth! That was a Hat crime. The sixth victim was Dog’s first woman. Raped because he had to make it look like one guy, not two. Hat rapes and Dog doesn’t, but for you guys not to catch on, they occasionally had to mimic each other. Dog raped the sixth victim and was so
disgusted with himself that he had to reduce her to something less than human—that’s why he disemboweled her. Then Hat had to keep it up. Every time one of them added something to the signature, the other one had to pick it up and run with it.”

“That’s crazy. He deliberately left evidence—”

“It’s so crazy that it worked. Dog was giving DNA to Hat—hairs, semen samples—and letting him plant them so that you guys would think there was one guy, the Hat-Dog Killer, not two, Hat and Dog.”

“If they’re playing a game, what kind of game is it? And why would Belsamo voluntarily walk into—” He broke off at the enormity of Jazz’s grin. Jazz silently lifted his cell phone and held it up to Hughes. A bright Monopoly board filled the screen.

“Jasper, no!” Hughes groaned. “Park Place… that’s just a name. It’s not—”

“I’ve got it on my phone. I bet Belsamo has it on his laptop, in the folder titled
Game
. They’re playing Monopoly,” Jazz insisted, now shoving another paper at Hughes. “Hat and Dog. Two of the player pieces in the game. They carve their symbol into the victims to prove they did it. First two victims, remember? Found behind some place called Connecticut Bagel. Well, both killers started at Go and rolled nines. Bang. Connecticut Avenue. Third victim, in an empty parking space. Free Parking. That’s a Hat. They take turns. Fourth victim, first DNA: a rail stop on Pennsylvania Avenue. That’s the Pennsylvania Railroad, man.”

Hughes scanned the paper, but Jazz could tell he was
being humored, not believed. “They don’t always alternate. There are two hats in a row.”

“Right. He rolled doubles, so he got to go again.”

Hughes uttered a single syllable of laughter, without mirth or joy. “So let me get this straight: You think your dad has got these guys playing a game of murder Monopoly, killing people or dumping them based on where they land on the Monopoly board?”

“Follow them. Each murder matches a spot on the board in some way. I did the math—every murder is reachable by a roll of the dice from the one before it…
if
you assume there’s two players. Look—Park Place,” Jazz said, jabbing a finger at the paper. “A murder at the Coney Island
boardwalk
.”

“I told you—those are just coincidences. Do you know what apophenia is?” Hughes asked, somewhat paternally.

“Yes.” Apophenia was a form of insanity that made people see patterns where there were none, or imbue meaningless patterns with great import. Like crazy conspiracy theorists. “I know what it is. But this isn’t—”

“Finding these ridiculous patterns… stretching this to fit a
board game
, of all things… I’m worried about you. Maybe we pushed you too—”

“It’s not apophenia if the pattern’s real,” Jazz protested. “Look, it’s not important that it’s Monopoly. It could have been anything. All that matters is that they have some kind of structure. It could have been checkers or chess, but Billy would find that too simple. Cliché. Everyone does chess, he would say.” Hughes shivered, and Jazz realized that—without
intending to—he had once again done his dead-on Billy impression. “This is more like… like
reverse
apophenia.”

“Oh, really?” Hughes folded his arms over his chest.

“Yeah. It’s not seeing a pattern where there is none—it’s
hiding
a pattern where there doesn’t have to be one. These guys don’t need a Monopoly board to kill people. They would do it anyway. He’s just making them dance.”

In the face of Hughes’s obvious skepticism, Jazz pressed on. “Two murders with the guts left in KFC buckets? Kentucky Avenue. Dog did one, rolling a six to get there. Later, Hat rolled a five and landed on the same spot. One of the other cops even mentioned it. You were there: The nearest KFC was a mile away. Why bring the bucket and do it twice? Hell of a lot easier than transporting the body all the way to the nearest KFC, right? They only move bodies when they have to, in order to comply with the rules of the game.” Hughes said nothing, so Jazz kept going. “He left that body on the S line in Manhattan because—”

“—it’s the shortest line,” Hughes mumbled. “Short Line Railroad.” The detective’s finger skipped down the page. “Saint James… the church. Right…”

“And look at where Belsamo landed right before coming into the precinct.”

Hughes skimmed the list and looked up, puzzled. “Community Chest?”

“He drew the Get out of Jail Free card.” Jazz grinned triumphantly.

“But he wasn’t in—”

“Right. So Billy had to
send
him in. He had to put him right in the precinct. Remember what he told you guys in the interrogation room? That if he lied he knew he would go
directly
to jail? It’s right out of the game, a direct quote. Billy sent him in so that he could play the Get out of Jail Free card and keep playing the game.”