Game (47 page)

The first thing she saw was the gun.

Her heart jumped a beat into the future, even as her hand—as though remote-controlled—reached in to pull out the gun. It was a pistol—a revolver, to be precise—and as soon as she touched it, her entire body relaxed. It was plastic. An old, scuffed toy pistol, she saw, withdrawing it.

Ha, ha. Very funny. What am I supposed to make of this?

There was something else in the bag—an envelope. More family photos?

She opened the envelope and withdrew and unfolded a piece of paper. A second piece of paper fell out and into the bag, but she was focused on the one she held, which was typed with a generic font:

It was, of course, unsigned.

It doesn’t
sound
like something Billy Dent would write. And come to think of it, Mr. Auto-Tune didn’t really sound like him, either. Not the words he used. Not the way he talked. Is this Hat-Dog? Could that really be it?

Two clues, the letter said. There was the gun, of course. Add that to the bell and it meant absolutely nothing.

The second piece of paper in the bag was a clipping from a magazine of some sort—a picture of the actor Kevin Costner.

What. The. Hell.

She had a bell, a gun… and Kevin Costner? This was supposed to help her somehow? These were clues to Mr. Auto-Tune’s identity?

Is Kevin Costner a serial killer? Yeah, right.

She inspected the bag, even turned it inside out, but found nothing else. Nothing but the note and the gun and the clipping. Remembering how the bell clue had actually been a part of the lockbox, she scrutinized the bag for markings of any sort, but found nothing out of the ordinary.

What about the note itself, though? She thought of the note that the Impressionist had carried in his pocket, how there had been a simple acrostic
UGLY J
encoded into it. She studied the note, but found nothing of the sort. The opening letters of each paragraph, of each word, of each sentence, spelled nothing sensical. Which wasn’t to say that there wasn’t
some
sort of clue embedded in the note itself, only that she couldn’t figure it out. But didn’t the FBI have, like, a whole division of people who did stuff like this? Codebreaking? Deciphering experts? Cryptographers?

Maybe she could get Jazz to give the note to the FBI agent he knew. Maybe…

She sighed and stuffed the gun and the note and the clipping back into the bag, then left JFK, following signs that directed her to a taxi stand. The driver, a Sikh with a Bluetooth earpiece, nodded and smiled at her, shrugging with one shoulder when she said, “Brooklyn,” and the address of Jazz’s hotel.

“How you want me to go?” he asked.

Connie had no idea. She didn’t think he would appreciate if she said, “Maybe with a car? On the road?”

“Whatever’s fastest,” she said.

“BQE?” he asked.

“Sure.”

The cab took off. Connie laid her head back, letting lamppost light wash over her in staccato waves as they pulled away from JFK and onto a highway.

It started to rain, a cold, ugly rain that made Connie shiver just from the sound of it on the roof of the cab, the silver slash of it in the headlights.

Connie thought that she couldn’t have summoned by most ancient witchcraft a more perfect and more hideous night for what she had to do.

Before they went any deeper into the storage facility, Morales popped the trunk of her car and hauled out a bulletproof vest. She strapped it on and then pulled her blazer on over it. She looked almost comically top heavy and squarish.

“I have another one,” she said, indicating the trunk. “It’s a little small, but it’ll probably fit you.”

“These guys don’t shoot people,” Jazz said.

Morales shrugged. “Protocol.”

I like how it’s so important to you to follow protocol while breaking the law with me
, Jazz thought, but did not say.

With Jazz in the lead to scout out the cameras and guide Morales—now suited up and armed again—around them, they made their way to unit 83F. It was deep within a maze of tight, narrow corridors lit sporadically by overhead fluorescent tubes that seemed to spasm on and off of their own accord. The unit was on the second floor of what seemed to be a ten-story building, a concrete-and-metal bunker housing
endless identical doors, differentiated only by the varying locks and the fading numbers etched onto their faces.

As they rounded a corner that would reveal 83F to them, Morales paused to draw her backup weapon. Her poise with the smaller Glock 26 was plenty intimidating—Jazz could only imagine how she would look with the bigger 22 in her grasp.

“What are you doing?” Jazz asked.

“You should have bought bolt-cutters at the damn hardware store. Now I’m gonna have to shoot off the lock,” she said. “This ought to do it.”

Jazz groaned. “Put that thing away,” he said. “I can pick the lock.”

“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.

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.

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.