Game (42 page)

“Yessir.” Erickson vanished as quickly as he had appeared.

“Which airport is she landing at?” Tanner asked Howie. Howie realized that he didn’t know, and also that he would never be able to convince Tanner of this. But before he
could say anything, the sheriff waved him off. “Just get out of here, Howie. I don’t have time to deal with you now. I’ll track her through her credit card.” He started jabbing buttons on the phone.

As Howie made for the door, Tanner said, “And don’t leave town!” Howie nodded meekly, biting back the urge to say, “Did you really just
say
that?”

He slipped out of the sheriff’s office into the night. He stared up at the sky, the same sky being navigated by Connie’s plane on its way to New York.

Fumbling his smartphone from his pocket, he quickly tapped out a text to Connie:

go ghosty, girlfriend. 5-0 headed your way

“If this is all true,” Hughes told Jazz, “and I’m not saying it is… then who ran things before Billy escaped?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the Impressionist. I haven’t figured that connection yet. But Billy was able to communicate from prison, somehow. So maybe he’s been running this all along.”

“Then who’s Hat?” Hughes still sounded skeptical, but at least he was asking the right questions.

“I don’t know. He could be anyone. The FBI profile might match him or it might not. You guys were profiling two killers at once without realizing it. One of them the woman-hating rapist with supreme organizational skills. That’s Hat. Then there’s Dog, Belsamo—women might as well not exist for him. He’s obsessed with men and their power, his own power and the power of other men. No wonder there were so many apparent contradictions—you were looking at a portrait painted simultaneously by two different artists.

“Belsamo’s the one who helped me figure it out,” Jazz went on. “It wasn’t just the game aspect—at first I thought he
was playing a game
with
Billy, not being played with
by
Billy. But then I thought about him waving his dick at me in the interrogation room. Talking about his power.”

“And?”

“And I thought about how Hat-Dog performed penectomies, but only Dog ever
took
the penises with him. As trophies. Hat just tossed them aside. Chop and toss. He didn’t care. He was just doing it because Dog did it and it had to look like the same guy. He probably didn’t even know Dog was keeping the penises. Hat has contempt for maleness. Dog exults in it. He sees power in maleness and he takes it with him.”

“But they both raped women—”

“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 some
one
) 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 the 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.