I Hunt Killers (17 page)

This last because Howie had fished his cell phone out of his pocket. “Calling the sheriff, man. This is his department. Like, literally.”

Jazz risked taking one hand off the wheel long enough to snatch away the phone. “Hey!” Howie complained.

“You call G. William and one of two things will happen. One, he won’t believe us and we’re right back at square one. Two, he’ll totally believe us and he’ll send a million squad cars over, and that’ll scare this guy off.”

“Isn’t scaring the guy off a
good
thing?” Howie asked, reaching for the phone, but Jazz dropped it between his legs on the seat.

“No. We want to stay one step ahead of him, but he has to stay on the same path. Get it?”

“So if he thinks we don’t know about Ginny…”

“We get there. We ask her if she’s noticed anything weird lately. Like some guy following her around. If she has,
then
we tell G. William what we think, and he can put some undercover guys on her or something. If not, we can still ask her about any other actresses with her initials in town. Faster than breaking in to school to check the records.”

“Ah, and now the reason you brought me instead of Connie becomes clear,” Howie grumbled. “Whenever it’s illegal, there’s good ol’ Howie.”

Jazz threw him a grin. “Your life would be so boring without me, and you know it.”

“Yeah, well, if you don’t want to scare this guy off, you should probably slow down. If we careen into Ms. Davis’s parking lot like a bat outta hell, he’s going to think something’s up.”

Good point. Jazz tapped the brakes, and by the time they’d gotten to Ginny’s, the Jeep was moseying along like any other lazy car.

Right after casting for
The Crucible
had been finalized, Ginny had invited the whole cast and crew to her apartment for an informal read-through and getting-to-know-one-another session. Jazz had lurked around the kitchen, uncomfortable being crammed into the tiny apartment with so many other kids. He’d watched Connie as she effortlessly flitted from one small cluster to another, and by the end of the night he’d figured out how to mimic that behavior well enough to fit in. So the night had been a win for him, and now it was a double-win because he knew exactly where she lived: a small three-story apartment building inserted like a mismatched LEGO block between a dry cleaner and a car wash.

He pulled in to the parking lot and pointed through the windshield. “Her car,” he told Howie. “She’s home.” He parked. Scanned the area quickly. Nothing weird in the parking lot that he could see. No cars with out-of-state plates. No big vans or sedans that would make it easy to sneak a body away.

“Let’s get this done and over with,” Howie said with a nervousness that made Jazz want to laugh.

Jazz handed Howie’s cell over and killed the Jeep’s engine. “Let’s go.”

Ginny lived on the third floor. There was no elevator; Howie beat Jazz by virtue of his ridiculously long legs, which ate up stairs three at a time.

“I win!” he chortled, knocking on the door.

“What exactly did you win?”

“Bragging rights.”

Jazz let it go. They waited for Ginny to come to the door. Nothing.

“She probably didn’t hear you,” Jazz said. “Knock harder.”

“I bruise easy,” Howie said, as if Jazz needed reminding.

Jazz gently pushed Howie out of the way and knocked on the door—three quick, hard raps that couldn’t be missed from inside.

“Maybe she’s not home.”

“Her car’s in the parking lot. She— Wait.”

Jazz put his ear to the door.

“What?”

“Shh!” He waved Howie into silence, concentrating. From within the apartment, he heard…something. “I hear—”

“Is she coming?”

Jazz backed up and his gaze drifted down. To the keyhole. His stomach twisted. Was that a glimmer of reflected light he spotted?

He leaned over and sniffed the doorknob, ignoring Howie, who wanted to know just what the hell he was doing.

Glue. Filled with superglue.

You need some alone time?
Billy’s voice whispered from the past.
You need some special, uninterrupted time? Well, then you gotta make sure you can’t be interrupted in the first place, you know what I mean? Block the doors. Block the windows. Make it so no one else can get in. And hey—bonus! When the cops come, they have to break in, and that makes a mess, and a mess is our friend, Jasper. Evidence gets lost in a mess. People get confused by messes.

Jazz’s heart raced. A high-pitched whine filled his ears.

“He’s here,” he whispered.

“What?” Howie goggled at Jazz like a kid stuck on the Ferris wheel.

Jazz grabbed Howie by the neck and pulled his friend’s ear to his lips. “He’s. Here.”

“Holy crap.”

“Run, Howie. Get outside. Call the cops. Watch for him by the fire escape out in the alley, in case he tries to get away.”

Howie stared straight ahead, fear and shock flickering in his eyes. Jazz pushed him, hard. “Go!” he whispered as loudly as he dared. “Now!”

Howie ran like hell for the stairs.

Jazz didn’t think. He didn’t
allow
himself to think. He’d heard the killer in there, he was sure. Maybe they weren’t too late.

His heart no longer raced. His breath came slow and easy, and the world seemed doused in syrup—everything moving lethargically. He had all the time in the world.

In that strange, sudden fugue state, he backed up against the opposite side of the narrow corridor and lunged forward, kicking out with his right foot, catching the door at doorknob height, just the way Billy had taught him. The door trembled. A shock wave of pain vibrated up to Jazz’s groin. It felt like he’d pounded a sledgehammer against his thigh, and all he had to show for it was a little bowing around the doorknob.

And the unmistakable sound of rapid footfalls from within, as time returned to its normal flow, Jazz’s heart thrumming like a timpani played by a spastic, his breath a harsh and hot wind in his throat.

“Don’t you dare run!” Jazz yelled. “The cops are already surrounding the place!” And then he pushed through the throbbing pain in his leg and lashed out again; he was surprised when the door burst inward, the knob and lock clanging to the floor.

He ran, limping, as fast as he could, exploding into Ginny’s entryway. The apartment was dark, but a rectangle of light spilled onto the floor halfway down a short hall. The living room, he remembered.

Jazz made for it, spinning into the open archway that led to the living room. He barely had time to adjust to the light before the scene assaulted his eyes: the sofa he’d sat on with Connie, holding hands, now pushed against the wall under the window, tilted crazily askew from the rest of the room, a figure climbing atop it. Another, slight figure lying on a white-and-red patterned throw rug.

The man on the sofa turned back. He wore a black ski mask, but that left the eyes open. Jazz’s gaze met his for a bare second. Blue eyes. Crazy eyes.

And then the killer turned away as though blasted with sunlight, one arm coming up to protect his face as he darted out the window.

Jazz scrambled to the sofa, stopping when he felt the carpet squishing under his feet. The throw rug didn’t have a white-and-red pattern. It was just white.

He froze for a moment. He could still go through the window, maybe grab the killer, hold him until the police arrived.…

But Ginny.

She was trembling on the throw rug, shaking as the fibers soaked up her blood, which jetted from the five clinical, almost surgical, stumps on her right hand. Her eyes had rolled back in her head.

He couldn’t move. He was paralyzed. Staring at her.

This was it. This was the moment he’d heard so much about. The moment Billy had apotheosized.

People say there’s a light goes out in their eyes when someone dies
, Billy whispered in Jazz’s mind, in his memory.
But that ain’t all. There’s a sound, Jasper. A sound that goes quiet. It’s beautiful and it’s peaceful and it’s sacred an’ holy. You gotta get close to hear it go.

The telltale pinprick on her neck told the story, as if he needed the help. Like Myerson had been and like the next two victims would be, she’d been injected with drain cleaner, which had wreaked havoc on the muscles of her heart. As if the shock trauma of her fingers being cut off weren’t enough, she was also in incredible pain, and suffering a massive heart attack.

Jazz prayed that Howie had called 911. He shook himself from his stupor and dropped to his knees next to Ginny. The sight and smell of the blood, the feel of it seeping through his jeans, made him dizzy. There was so much of it; you chop off five fingers while the victim’s alive and struggling, and most likely you open up an artery or two.
First time I cut an artery
, Billy said,
I couldn’t believe how much—

Jazz stopped the voice. He felt the blood. He wanted more of it. He wanted to run his hands through the carpet. He wanted none of it. He wanted to run.

No! You can’t run! Help her! You have to help her!

Did she recognize him? Or was she too far gone? He couldn’t tell. Her expression was one of sheer panic, a terror that absorbed into every pore and every inch of flesh. If she did recognize him, what was she thinking? Was she thinking,
Oh, thank God, it’s Jasper!

Or
Oh, God, no—anyone but Jasper!

He felt like he should say something to her, but he didn’t trust his voice. He didn’t trust anything about himself. All he wanted at that moment was to lean over, take her throat in his hands.…

God! Goddamn it! Goddamn Billy Dent and goddamn his son, too. Tears sprang to Jazz’s eyes. She was dying. Dying right in front of him, and he didn’t trust himself to help her because he didn’t trust his hands not to finish the job instead.

“Just do it!” he yelled to himself, his voice raw and bleak in the close quarters of the apartment. “Save her, you useless piece of—”

He didn’t finish. As he watched, she hitched a breath, then gasped, then stopped breathing. She was in the full throes of cardiac arrest.

Jazz didn’t think. He didn’t torture himself. He tilted her head back and listened for breathing. Nothing. A moment of intense pleasure washed over him, followed by a revulsion so sickening that he almost threw himself headlong out the window.

Not yet. She’s not dead yet.

With her head still tilted back, he pinched her nose shut and sealed his mouth over hers, exhaling hard into her until her chest rose. Then again.

She lay there, still.

His fingers probed her chest until he found the xiphoid process. He started chest compressions, pumping thirty times, then rocking back on his heels. Nothing. He blew into her mouth again, her chest rising and falling for him, but then going still again when he switched back to compressions.

“Don’t do this, Ginny,” he said to her. “Don’t give him this. Don’t give
me
this.” Tears streamed down his face. He didn’t know why. He didn’t know if he was desperate to save her or just angry at himself for even trying. A voice in his head—it wasn’t Billy’s; Jazz was afraid it was his own—whispered that if she died, at least he would be here for it. At least he would witness it.

Breath-breath. And compressions. Breath-breath. And compressions. It felt like it went on forever. It felt like he’d aged years, grown old while trying to keep her alive, his arms and shoulders burning, his lips chapped and raw. The flow of blood from her fingers slowed and stopped. Clotting already? Or because the heart no longer beat to drive blood anywhere? He couldn’t decide which. Didn’t want to know which.

Finally, he rocked back on his heels, still kneeling in her blood. She was gone. There was nothing he could do. She’d probably been dead for entire minutes now.

And he felt…

He didn’t know. He didn’t know what he felt. A part of him had dreaded this day, this moment when he would encounter his first fresh kill. He’d been afraid it would awaken something that slumbered fitfully within him. But he’d also anticipated it, yearned for it. It would, he knew, answer the question one way or another: Did he lust for death like his father before him?

And yet here he was. Here he knelt, with a shattered, drained life before him. And nothing.

He had tried to save her, hadn’t he? Did that mean anything? But she wasn’t
his
victim. Maybe he’d only tried because he’d had no hand in her death. Or maybe he’d truly wanted her to live. He didn’t know.

He’d tried and failed. Had he tried hard enough? Had some part of him held back? Had he only done it so that he could touch her as she died? Everything he’d done seemed so loaded now, the motions of CPR taking on a tawdry, lurid tenor in his mind—his lips on hers, his hands on her chest, between those same breasts that had been compressed against him so recently.…

The silence was overpowering. Billy had been right. When she’d gone, some sound had gone with her. One moment, there’d been something
of
her, something along with his own hissing breath and his own grunts as he pounded at her still chest. In the next, that something was gone, dead, quiet. He listened to the silence. The emotions running through him made no sense: fear, hope, grief, joy, lust. They weren’t Billy Dent’s feelings, but they weren’t a normal person’s, either.

What the hell am I?

The silence ended as suddenly as it had begun—in the distance, sirens wailed, closing in. Howie had called 911 after all.

How much time had passed since he’d sent Howie rushing outside? The killer had gotten out the window, but how far had he gone? Could he still be caught?

Jazz leapt to his feet and scrambled over the sofa to the window. He looked down as the sirens grew louder.

Down in the alley, a long, thin figure lay in a pool of widening blood, illuminated by the lights from the car wash.

Howie!

Jazz didn’t think; he hurled himself through the window and clambered down the fire escape like a monkey on crystal meth, dropping the last six feet to the dirty alley pavement the way the killer must have. How long had it been? How long had he struggled with Ginny?

No sooner had his feet touched the ground than one of the sirens moaned to a halt, an ambulance jerking to a sudden stop right in front of him. Two paramedics practically fell out of the ambo, one carrying a black bag.

Jazz got to Howie before they did; he was still breathing, lying facedown on the asphalt. Where was all the blood coming from? He didn’t want to move Howie and make it worse, but he had to know. In the background, he could still hear another siren—the police, pulling into the parking lot. Ginny lived—
had
lived, he reminded himself—closer to the hospital than to the police station.

“Howie, can you hear me? Howie? Come on, man. Howie?”

“Jumper?” the first paramedic said, running over and checking the distance from the roof at the same time. “What the hell? Call said third floor, but—”

“There’s no time,” Jazz said, taking control. “He’s a type-A hemophiliac—”

“Hold on, kid,” the second paramedic said. “Our call said third floor. Is this the same—”

“The woman on three is dead already,” Jazz said, as composed as he could make himself. Which was, actually, very,
very
composed. “This one here is a type-A hemophiliac. He needs—”

“No bracelet,” said the first one, already down on one knee next to Howie. The paramedic touched his neck. “Pulse is thready.”

“He needs clotting factor VIII,” Jazz said. He felt awash in blood—Ginny’s, now Howie’s. The second paramedic, standing doubtfully aside, pointed to Jazz’s pants.

“Is that
your
blood? What’s going on here?”

“Please.” Howie had already lost a lot of blood, and he would lose more if these yahoos didn’t get their acts together. Ten pints. Ten pints was all he had, and it gushed from him like a water cannon. As if to complicate things, a Lobo’s Nod deputy came into the alleyway, barking into his shoulder mic, clearly communicating with another cop in the building. A moment later, another man followed—it was Deputy Erickson, out of uniform, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Great. Where the hell had
he
come from?

Jazz shook it off. Howie was all that mattered. “Please, just administer a dose of—”

“Kid, this guy’s got no medical bracelet, and I’m not about to give him—”

“He forgets it all the time,” Jazz told them. By now the second paramedic had decided that Jazz needed medical attention, too, and was preparing to wrap a blood-pressure cuff around his arm. Jazz shook him off. “He forgets the bracelet. Trust me; he’s gonna bleed out if you don’t—”

“We know our jobs. Who the hell do you think you are, kid?”

And Jazz snapped.

He didn’t snap the way a normal person might snap. A normal person would fling his arms around and stomp his feet and rant at the top of his lungs, bellowing to the sky. There might be tears, from a normal person.

Jazz went quiet. He darted out one hand and grabbed the wrist of the paramedic who had been trying to cuff him and pulled the man close, holding his gaze.

In a moment, he channeled every last drop of Billy Dent.

“Who am I? I’ll tell you. I’m the local psychopath, and if you don’t save my best friend’s life, I will hunt down everyone you’ve ever cared about in your life and make you watch while I do things to them that will have you begging me to kill them.
That’s
who I am.”

It was ridiculous. It was absurd. And yet…It was utterly believable. He left no doubt in the man’s mind that Jazz could—and would—do exactly as he’d promised. Moreover, he left no doubt that Jazz would enjoy every last second of it.

“You, uh”—the EMT swallowed—“you said type-A?”

“Yes.”

“We don’t have, uh, clotting factor VIII on the bus, but we can give him DDAVP to hold him until we get to the hospital.”

“Then do it,” Jazz ordered, shoving the paramedic away from him. Erickson, who had watched the whole thing, stood stunned for a moment, then approached Jazz and, without preamble, slapped handcuffs on him.