Game (45 page)

Jazz fumed. He didn’t know what next.

“We could sit on his apartment,” she said, “but he might kill someone in the meantime and then we’ve just been sitting on our thumbs while—”

“Doggy needs a bone!” Jazz snapped his fingers, lurching toward her excitedly.

“What?” She took a step back, as if Jazz had threatened her.

“I can’t believe I totally forgot this in all the craziness. But that’s what Billy said to me. One of the
last
things he said: ‘Doggy needs a bone. But first, Doggy needs to play with his toys.’ The storage unit!”

“You think he’s gone there?”

Jazz nodded. “He needs a bone. I bet that means he’s picked out his victim. He needs his murder kit. But I checked his apartment thoroughly. There was no murder kit and nowhere to hide one. So I bet he’s got his tools at his storage unit.” Another thought occurred to him. “I bet that’s where he keeps his trophies, too.”

Morales held out her hand. “You have the envelope, right? Or at least the address.”

Jazz grinned. “Of course I do.”

Morales fist-pumped. “Yes! Let’s get going. I have a car downstairs.” She grabbed her shoulder holster from the chair and wriggled into it, her shapeless shirt becoming suddenly quite shapely in a way Jazz neither could nor wanted to ignore. As she turned to pluck a blazer from the desk, Jazz noticed a second, smaller gun tucked into the small of her back. A Glock 26 from the looks of it—nine-millimeter rounds.

But she hadn’t done anything since coming out of the bathroom, which meant that…

“Did you think I would leave you—or
anyone
—out here with my gun without knowing I had a backup in the john?” she asked, flashing him a knowing smile that reminded him of Connie in all the right ways. “Let’s go.”

Billy Dent was not alone. He had company in his small room. He looked over and thought about discussing what was on his mind….

But no. There was no point.

Oh, Jasper. Poor Jasper. Seeing only a part of the game. Didn’t he know that there were many different kinds of games, games for all kinds of players?

Sure, there was the game Hat and Dog played. A game with specific rules and a very special prize. But then there was the game
above
that game. The game Billy played. The game with rules he himself had written. The best part of that game was that none of the pieces knew they were a part of it. It was a game with many sides, but only one player: William Cornelius Dent.

This is the way it was meant to be, of course. In a world filled with so many pieces of plastic, so many things—human beings, they called themselves in a great, self-perpetuating delusion—that thought they mattered, that thought they
thought
, there could be no more appropriate game than what amounted to solitaire. Billy Dent, playing alone.

Billy used one of his burner phones. When the ringing stopped, he said, “Hey there. Havin’ a good evening? It’s about to get better.”

He didn’t wait for a response, just continued on: “How’d you like to win this whole thing once and for all? Tonight?”

And, yeah,
that
got a response.

After leaving the lockbox with G. William and making his oh-so-stealthy getaway from the sheriff’s office, Howie drove the Nod aimlessly. His parents had expected him home hours ago, but he had texted to say that he was helping out with Jazz’s grandmother again. In reality, he was just wasting gas money and contributing to global warming as he tried to think of a path around it all, a way through the thickets that did not involve confronting Sam.

The idea that Sam was Ugly J… the idea that she was just as crazy as Billy…

It can’t be. For one thing, she really seems to hate the guy. For another thing, I think she’s hot. And if I think she’s hot and it turns out she’s a psychopath, then what does that say about me? I’m totally not ready for that kind of therapy.

It’s not that he was in
love
with Jazz’s aunt. Puh-lease. Howie Gersten was horny and desperate and more than slightly clueless, but he wasn’t
stupid
. He had the hots for her
and he figured that the fact that she knew this and hadn’t called him gross or a perv meant that maybe something could happen. Which would be great for Howie because he was a total virgin and sick of it to the tune of jerking off so much that he was worried he was going to cause some kind of penile trauma. Hemophilia extended to his entire body, after all—he’d bruised Li’l Howie plenty of times, which sucked. If sex was gonna hurt, he’d rather have someone else causing the pain.

What were the odds that Sam was involved in Billy’s craziness? That she was Ugly J? Most serial killers were men. So many that it was just the first natural assumption to make in any serial killer case. So, yeah, it just made sense to assume that Ugly J was a guy.

But what if Ugly J wasn’t necessarily a serial killer? What if Ugly J was just, like, an apprentice? An assistant? Howie didn’t think there was a career path planned out for sociopaths like Billy Dent, but Jazz’s dad had broken a lot of the typical “rules” for serial killers. Maybe it wasn’t all that crazy to think that he’d turned his sister into his helper.

Maybe he had even…

Ugh. Gross. Don’t think that, Howie.

Too late.

Great, now every time you want to fantasize about Sam, you’re gonna think about Billy Dent doing his own sister. Jeez.

Incest is best, put your sister to the test
…. Some old bit of middle school vulgarity, hopping and skipping back from his memory.
Double gross.

He pulled over to the side of the road and killed the engine. Craned his neck to look up at the stars. But the stars weren’t there. The night sky was almost perfectly smooth with clouds, the stars and the moon hidden as though they could not bear to see what came next. Howie couldn’t bear it, either.

It wasn’t that he was a coward. He didn’t like to
think
of himself as a coward, at least. But a lifetime of overprotective parents who had every reason to be overprotective… well, that had a way of worming into a guy’s consciousness. Most teenagers, Howie knew, thought they were indestructible. Howie desperately and devoutly wished he could believe that, but every damn time he woke up with a new bruise on his arm from rolling over in his sleep and bumping the nightstand… every time he went to the doctor for his latest desmopressin shot…

Every time he relived the night the Impressionist had nearly killed him with a swipe of a knife, a swipe that anyone else could have shaken off…

Every time he thought of these things, he reminded himself:
It’s not cowardice, Howie. It’s just common sense.

But those words had started ringing hollow a long time ago. His best friend was in the biggest, scariest city in the country, hunting a lunatic with more than a dozen murders to his name. And maybe, just maybe, his own father. And Connie? She was on a plane—or maybe she’d landed by now—to that same place, determined to do whatever she could to help.

How can I do any less? How can I not handle this one
damn thing? Just figure out if Sam is a bad guy or not. That’s all. Do it, you coward. Do it, you stupid, joking, horny, useless
bleeder.

He stared at his cell phone for what felt like an eternity, flicking to Jazz’s number over and over. He desperately wanted to call his best friend, to get his advice on this. But Connie was right—Jazz was in deep enough already. The last thing he needed was Howie calling for advice on how to deal with Sam.

And besides… shouldn’t Howie be able to figure this out for himself? Being a hemophiliac didn’t mean his
brain
stopped working. Just his clotting factor.

When Howie had been younger and his parents had first explained his disease to him, they had done that typical thing all parents do: They’d tried to put the best possible face on it. “Abraham Lincoln was a hemophiliac,” they’d explained to him, “and look at what
he
accomplished. And Mother Teresa. And Richard Burton, the actor.”

Years later, when he was old enough and curious enough, Howie had investigated these claims. Turns out the actor dude was the only one confirmed to have hemophilia. Mother Teresa was just a rumor, and an unlikely one—women carried the gene for hemophilia, but rarely had the disease. And Lincoln? No one could prove it one way or the other.

Like with Genghis Khan, another historical figure rumored to be in the Howie Hemo Club. Whenever people tried to find a connection to historical figures, funny how they always managed to skip over guys like Genghis Khan.

During this same bout of research, Howie had discovered
one other fact about his particular disease: Hemophiliacs tended to die young.

Which meant, maybe, that he should accomplish as much as possible while he still counted among the breathing.

Just cut the Gordian knot
, Howie thought. It was one of his favorite bits of ancient history: Alexander the Great comes across this gigantic, complicated knot of rope and is told that whoever can untie it will rule the world. But no one has ever even come close because the knot is so friggin’ big and complex.

So Alexander just pulls out his sword and cuts the knot in half. Ta-da. No more knot.

Yeah, that works
, he thought, and cranked the engine.

It started raining as soon as they headed to the car.

It was a simple matter to find directions to U-STORE-IT-ALL online. They weren’t terribly far, but Morales refused to speed because if they were stopped, she would have to show her ID and then there would be a record of the two of them out to commit some sort of late-night skulduggery. Jazz champed at the bit in the passenger seat, strumming his fingers against the window.

“Calm down,” she told him. “At this time of night, the traffic’s on our side. GPS says we have clear roads all the way there.
He’s
got to take the subway and wait for a transfer. Plus, in this weather, I guarantee he’ll take a bus instead of walking from the subway, so he’ll have to wait for that, too.”

“We don’t know
when
he gave the cops the slip. He could be there already.”

“Being pissy with me won’t change that.”

“We need to stop off at a hardware store for a sec.”

“I thought you were in a hurry.”

“Just a little contingency planning.”

She pulled over for him to run into the first such store they saw and then they were back on the road right away. Soon Jazz saw a flickering sign for U-STORE-IT-ALL in the distance. He leaned forward as though he could add to the car’s momentum.

“I can’t flash my badge to get us in,” Morales told him. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah.” Again, there could be no record of what they did here tonight. “Let me get us in.”

She arched an eyebrow. “You gonna break in?” The word
again
was unnecessary and unsaid.

“Not if I can help it. I’m going to try something else. Cut the lights and park on the street so that the guy in the booth can’t see you.”

The “guy” he referred to was a rent-a-cop sitting in a dimly lit booth framed out in what had to be bulletproof glass. Morales dutifully killed her lights and glided the car to a stop along the curb of the road. Ahead, a short driveway ran perpendicular to the street into a smallish parking lot jammed with rental vans, shielding them from the view of the booth. Beyond lay a chain-link fence ten feet tall with a sliding gate and a keypad. But Jazz only had eyes for the booth and the rent-a-cop.

Never break and enter when you can just plain ol’ enter, Jasper
, Billy had said once.

“Do you have some paper? Anything will do.”

“Glove compartment.”

Jazz found a little notebook in there. He tore out a sheet of paper, wrote on it, then folded it and put it in his pocket.

“I think you scare the hell out of me,” Morales said. He shrugged and she called out “Good luck” as he slipped out of the car.

Jazz hmphed. Luck. Who needed it?

It was still raining, though it had tapered off a bit as he approached the gate and stood there, hesitant, for just a beat too long, just long enough to appear awkward, confused, out of place. Without checking, he knew that the security guard had noticed him. Peering from the gate to the keypad, he feigned exasperation with little bits of body language—a shrug, a tossed-out hand.

Then he turned as though to go… and pretended to catch sight of the guard for the first time. Even though he was sure the guard couldn’t see the finer details of his expression from this far away, he went ahead and widened his eyes, anyway.

Always keep the performance honest, even when no one’s watching
, Billy used to say.

Jazz headed to the guard. By now he could see the man leaning forward already, in anticipation.
Good.
That movement told him something in advance.

The bulletproof shell in which the guard lived had a speaker grille set into it, as well as a small slot through which one could probably slip keys or a receipt or a credit card, but angled such that a gun would fire its payload down into the desk. Jazz stood as though he thought he had to speak directly into the grille.

“Hello? Sir? I need—”

“I can’t let you in unless you have a passcode or an account number,” the guard said gruffly.

Interrupting. Good.
The man’s posture was vaguely aggressive. He was fat and resented getting up from his chair to speak. He wanted Jazz gone, and quickly.

People like that were actually easier to manipulate. They were focused on the end result of the conversation, not on the conversation itself. This guy was already imagining himself settled back in his chair, watching what appeared to be a reality-TV show in which scantily clad women lay out next to a pool for some reason.

He was also probably already anticipating Jazz’s next statement, figuring on something like “But please!” or “I lost my passcode” and readying his rote “I can’t let you in.”

So Jazz did the one thing the guard would not have prepared himself for: