I Hunt Killers (23 page)

And to his son…

To his son, he had been a god. A war god, a god of love, the two of them intertwined in a sick hybrid. Billy Dent excelled at alternating brute force with tender love, then blending the two together until Jazz thought that being forced to mop up blood spatter was just a natural way to show love to his dad. Watching Rusty die was just something his father needed him to see, is all.

Just like cutting chicken.

But it hadn’t been Rusty in the dream. He’d cut a person in the dream. Human flesh. Human blood. At Billy’s command. And yet still Jazz had loved his father. Somehow.

It was natural for sons to worship their fathers, anyway. And when the father in question was a charismatic dragon who taught his child that society’s rules did not apply to him, that other people were either chattel or prey, that the world had been made for the two of them and no one else…

That was the worst sort of control. A sort of brainwashing that Jazz had only managed to throw off when Billy’s arrest approached. It was as though he’d been helpless to rebel against his upbringing, until the world itself put the lie to Billy’s promise that the world’s laws didn’t matter. And then, slowly—so damn slowly—Jazz came to realize that his father was a devil, not a god.

“He made me what I am,” Jazz said. “Bad and good alike. You can’t deny that, Con.”

“And my parents made me what I am. So what? We get stuff from our parents, but we also get stuff from the world around us. From the people around us. And at the end of the day, we’re us.” She leaned up on her elbows and loomed over him, her braids dangling. “Sons aren’t their fathers. Not the good, not the bad. Sons get second chances. You don’t have to be what your dad is.” She stared into his eyes for so long that Jazz thought he’d somehow hypnotized her with his gaze. “You told me you hated his eyes. Ice blue. Like your grandmother’s. But they’re not yours. You don’t have his eyes, and you don’t have to have his life.” She suddenly stiffened in his arms. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“A sound.” She was on alert. “Someone’s out there.”

“Raccoon,” he said. “They’re always scavenging out there.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ll protect you from the big, bad rodents,” Jazz told her.

She chuckled and snuggled into him. “You will, won’t you?”

“Yeah. Even from me.”

“I don’t need protection from you.” She giggled.

“Don’t say that.”

A poke to his ribs. “I’m not afraid of you. I know you.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered.

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know that. You can’t.”

“I do.”

That makes one of us.
Jazz closed his eyes tight. He didn’t want to say what was in his head, but he couldn’t stop himself. He owed it to Connie. He owed her this honesty.

“You know I could kill you, right?” he said quietly, his voice measured and calm. “I could do it right now. Right now. And there’s nothing you could do to stop me. Even though I’ve told you.”

She went still against him. “But you won’t.”

He exploded. “How do you know that?” He pushed her away. “How? Tell me! Jesus!” Tears came from nowhere, shocking him as they streamed down his cheeks. He didn’t know what the hell these fresh tears were for, and he didn’t care; he swiped at them with his palms, pressing them into flesh gone suddenly hot. “Why aren’t you running? Why aren’t you terrified? How do you know, Connie?” he whispered. “Even I don’t know that I won’t kill you. How the hell can
you
know?”

All his strength left him and he collapsed against her. Without hesitation, her arms went around him, drawing him in, his head nestled against her breasts as sobs wracked his body.

“I know because—”

“Damn it!” He scrambled away, escaping her grasp. “Damn it, Connie! Don’t fall for this crap! I’m trying to help you!” He paced the Hideout, his body vibrating with anger, with fear. Words spilled out of him, stumbling over one another like people running in an earthquake. “This is how we do it. We lure you in, sucker you, rely on your compassion, your empathy. And if you’re lucky, you’re dead before you realize it. And we…We—”

He ran out of words. He stood in the darkness, his breath heaving, staring down at her as she huddled against the wall under the space blanket, which now appeared alien and too bright in the close confines of the Hideout. It was a chunk of the modern world that did not belong there, where he could only speak of ancient impulses, biblical rage, medieval torment. The natural, original state of man: savagery.

She would get up. She would leave. She would be on her cell phone to G. William before she even got into the car, and every fiber of Jazz cried out to delve into his bag of sociopath’s tricks, to cozen and coddle her, persuade her not to go. Because once she left and told G. William what he’d said, it was all over. G. William would accept no more help with the Impressionist, and the Impressionist would just keep on killing, and Jazz would end up in an institution somewhere, looking for the last scraps of his soul in a padded cell.

But some part of him…

Some part of him
yearned
for her to go. To flee him.

And that was when Jazz realized that he was in love with Connie. Because for the first time in his life, there was someone more important than himself.

She stood.

She stared at him.

“So do it,” she said with a quiet, confident intensity that almost—almost—frightened him. “I’m so sick of this,” she went on, urgency and heat gathering like friction in her voice. “So sick of this constant pity party you throw for yourself. I
love
you, you moron. I try to be understanding and supportive, but you keep acting like I don’t get you. And you keep trying to scare me, or push me away.”

“Con—”

“Shut up! It’s my turn. If you want me to stop talking, then you’ll have to kill me, which you
claim
you could do. And I’ll say it again: Do it. Stop threatening it and stop whining about it and just do it. But if you don’t, then shut the hell up about it and let me be there for you and let me help you. Because if you don’t, then your crazy father really has won, and
my
crazy father gets his wish and I stop dating the white guy. But either way, figure out your crap and stop dumping it on me!”

Jazz stared at her. Did she have any idea what she was saying? What she was
provoking
? “I—”

“Ah!” She raised a hand to stop him. “Think carefully here, Jazz. What are you going to say? Because if it’s more of this ‘I’m too dangerous for you’ BS, I might just kill myself to get away from it. And then where would you be?”

He threw his hands in the air, wanting desperately to hit something, to hit some
one
, wanting and needing to bring pain, to feel pain. But only Connie stood before him, and while a part of him—a big part, he could tell—knew exactly what to do to her, exactly how to do it, some other part (small, but strong) wrestled with him and with the voice of his father that lived inside him.

With a cry of anger and frustration, he pushed past her and barged outside, running to the edge of the clearing, where he dropped to his knees in a pile of leaves and scattered grasses, his mind whirling with images of Connie blended with the Impressionist’s victims—Connie in the field, Connie in the Heller shower, Connie on Ginny’s once-white carpet, her blood and her life running out as Jazz put his lips to hers, only this time he sucked out her last breaths, inhaled her very soul.

Is this what I am? Is this what I have to be? Or is it like Connie says? Is it all just drama? And how do I tell? How do I figure it out?

He knelt there on the cold ground, the images battering at his mind, until he heard the door to the Hideout open, heard the crunch of her tread on dried leaves.

He waited for her to come up behind him, to touch his shoulder. For the slightly sweet scent of chemical detangler that followed her.

And waited.

Until he heard Howie’s car start.

Yes. He hung his head. Exactly what he deserved.

He stayed in that position for a long time. He thought that maybe he could stay there forever.

If not for the image of Irene Heller, suddenly before him.

Of her eyelids, closed by the Impressionist, as though he was worried about getting shampoo in her eyes.

But he knew what was under those eyelids. He knew the blank stare of the dead.

He’d seen it in his father’s victims. In Fiona Goodling.

In Ginny Davis.

It was something he could never forget.

No one would hold Irene Heller tonight.

No one would hold Irene, and somewhere someone was missing the holding.

Connie was right. This wasn’t about him and his problems, his past. It was about Irene and Fiona and Carla and poor, poor Ginny. He had to do everything in his power to avenge them.

And there was one more thing he could do.

He stood and stared up at the night sky. Took in a deep breath and then blew it out in a long, lazy cloud.

And then he said it out loud, to the night, to himself. To make it real.

“I have to see my father.”

Connie didn’t call that night or the next morning. Not that Jazz really expected her to. He wanted desperately to call her, but every time his hand strayed to the phone, he snatched it back. What would he say to her?

Gramma was in a shrieking state of high dudgeon as reporters clustered down the driveway at the very boundary where the public road abutted her private property. She didn’t see them as the press—she was convinced they were an army of enemy warriors, come to pillage and burn the house, then rape her and make her give birth to a new generation of soldiers. The presence of several black and Hispanic reporters among the throng did nothing to assuage her fears.

Melissa Hoover would have an absolute field day with her report if she could see Gramma now.

“You’d probably be better off pillaged than with reporters,” Jazz muttered, watching them through a peeled-back curtain. He resented the press for the way it had turned his life into a spectacle. “At least then it’d be over quickly.”

“They’re coming! Oh, they’re coming!” Gramma was belly-crawling across the kitchen floor, a long, sharp barbecue fork in one hand and a deadly gleam in her eye. If she hadn’t reminded him so much of his father in that moment, Jazz might have laughed.

“I think they’re hanging back for now,” he reported.

Predictably, Doug Weathers was at the head of the crowd. He’d been the first to arrive, in fact, beating the TV crew out of Tynan Ridge by a good half hour. Right now everyone was focused on the house, but Jazz knew that soon enough they would get bored with waiting. And that’s when the media would start doing that crazy thing where they interviewed one another about the story that they didn’t have any facts on. Weathers would be in his glory.

G. William had promised to send a couple of deputies to help the poor cop stuck in the driveway and keep the press in line. So far, no one had crossed onto private property, but it was just a matter of time. Serial killer in Lobo’s Nod? Again? A bonus to the first sleazebag to get a picture of the son of the local sociopath!

“They’re gonna rape mongrel babies into me! Mongrel babies to kill white folks! And they’re gonna give me the AIDS to kill me off!” Gramma ranted.

Jazz sighed and rested his forehead against the window. He had to get out of here.

Gramma had a prescription for a powerful tranquilizer. Jazz hated to use it—it was really strong stuff, and while Gramma had a lot of hate and crazy to keep her going, she was still a frail old woman—but in this case he didn’t have much choice. He couldn’t leave her here while he visited Billy. Not with the press outside like that. She would probably charge them with the useless shotgun at some point, racing down the driveway, screaming, her nightgown flapping around her like bat wings.…

So he’d dropped one of the tranqs into her morning oatmeal twenty minutes earlier. He didn’t know how long he’d be gone, and with the press outside, he didn’t want to rely on the Benadryl. He wanted her
out
.

After a few more minutes of ranting and raving, she drifted off to sleep on the floor, still clutching the barbecue fork. Jazz pried it from her fingers and put it on top of the TV, then gathered her up in his arms and struggled up the stairs. He made sure all the blinds and curtains in her room were closed and left her tucked safely in bed. She would be out for most of the day.

I have to see my father
, he’d said the night before. The light of day hadn’t changed the necessity of it at all.

Too bad.

He put on his darkest sunglasses and most nondescript clothing, then walked straight out the front door and marched to the Jeep without looking in any direction other than right in front of him. The press vultures went nuts.

“Hey, Jasper!”

“—look over here—”

“—kid, you can’t—”

“Jasper!”

“—comment?”

“Mr. Dent!”

“—think your father’s—”

“—right here at the camera, okay?”

“You need to give a—”

“—
gotta
have a comment!”

“—says you’re not a suspect, but—”

“—over
here
!”

He hopped into the Jeep, gunned the engine, and pulled out of the driveway. The lone cop did his best to move the reporters away from the road; Jazz’s threatening revving of the engine did the rest. Reporters pressed against the Jeep as he oozed through them. Cameras flashed. Videotape rolled. At some point, someone would make the connection that Billy Dent’s kid was driving the vehicle the monster himself had driven when murdering people, and that tape loop would play endlessly on cable channels and the Internet.

Jazz resisted the urge to flip them all the bird, to roll down the window and yell at them. He didn’t allow himself to even look at them. Though he yearned to find Doug Weathers, he didn’t trust himself not to run the guy over. He just pushed through the crowd and zoomed off before anyone could gather the presence of mind to hop in a car and follow him.

The scene was nearly identical at his destination: The sheriff’s office was surrounded four deep by reporters and news crews. Jazz slyly parked next door at the funeral home and slipped in through the connecting corridor before anyone realized who he was.

Inside, G. William’s homey little police station looked like a madcap scene from a Wall Street trading floor. Suited strangers—FBI, Jazz wagered—barked orders at one another and into telephones. More deputies and staties than Jazz had ever seen gathered in one place shared cramped desk space and argued over the placement of large whiteboards. Lana did her best to prevent sheer chaos, but it was like wrestling a Teflon-coated tiger. The acrid smell of burned, stale coffee hung over the room, intermingled with body odor and gun oil. Telephones rang constantly, overlapping so that the individual rings blended into a single blare of sound.

No one noticed Jazz. Except for Deputy Erickson. Who stood—alone, of course—in a corner, flipping through a thick binder. He followed Jazz with his eyes, his expression unreadable. Unreadable even to Jazz, who could read anyone.

Jazz did his best to ignore Erickson as he pushed through the helter-skelter of cops.
’Scuse me
, he thought.
Pardon me. Serial killer’s kid coming through.

G. William’s office was an oasis of normalcy in the desert of lunacy. The only change to it was a new corkboard mounted behind the desk, pinned with photos from the Impressionist’s various crime scenes.

“How d’you like our circus?” the sheriff asked coolly when Jazz came in and closed the door.

“Needs more clowns.”

“Clowns we got plenty of. Want to hear the latest?”

“Sure.”

“Toxicology on Helen Myerson came back—takes time, you know.” Lobo’s Nod was too small to have its own full-scale crime lab, so most tests had to be done elsewhere. Which took time. It wasn’t like on TV, where test results were available in a matter of hours. “Checked blood and liver, just to be sure. Confirms drain cleaner, not that that’s a big surprise. Crime-scene guys vacuumed some good hairs at Heller’s place that don’t match her or the kids or the hubby. Could be our guy, but—”

“But they’re meaningless without something to compare them to.”

“If we ever get a suspect, we’ll at least be able to place him at Heller’s house, but that’s about it. Still, it’s the first time he’s left us anything at all. That’s something. At least, that’s what I tell myself.”

Unspoken between them was the fact that they had even less evidence because Jazz’s behavior at Ginny’s apartment had made it nearly impossible to collect anything worthwhile. He’d walked in her blood and spread it around, ruined any possible footprints on the carpet, touched the body and the window and other surfaces the killer had touched.…

G. William smiled sadly and rubbed his eyes. “To what do I owe this visit? What can I do you for, Jazz?”

He expected G. William to fight him on the idea of seeing Billy, but the sheriff instead nodded thoughtfully, tilted his head to stare at the ceiling, and made a popping sound with his lips as he considered it. Then G. William snatched up the phone on his desk.

“I can get the warden on the line and have you in to see Billy this afternoon,” he said.

Jazz did a double take. “Aren’t you the guy who’s been telling me for four years to forget about him, not to have anything to do with him, to pretend he’s dead?”

G. William pointed with the phone receiver. “Hey. Jazz. If this was just about you and your well-being, I wouldn’t be pullin’ no strings for you, okay? Your biggest problem these days oughtta be figuring out where you want to go to college and scraping together the money for your car insurance. But this is bigger than you or me or what we want. We got a lunatic killing people. If he follows your dad’s pattern perfectly, he’ll kill one more in Lobo’s Nod, then disappear for three months and pop up somewhere else with a totally different MO and signature. We’ll never catch him. We got this one chance. We know everything about his next victim except for who it is. I got descriptions and warnings out. I got a task force out there taking panicky calls from every blond secretary in a fifty-mile radius. So, yeah, if you talking to your daddy even
might
get us something we can use, I’m all for it.”

Jazz said nothing. What was there to say?

G. William made the call. Jazz settled into a chair and watched the sheriff glad-hand the warden for a few minutes. When he hung up, he was smiling a grim little smile under his bushy mustache.

“Billy will see you. The warden’s arranging it for this afternoon. I’ll have a cruiser take you up to Wammaket with the siren going.”

“Not Erickson,” Jazz said, perhaps a little too quickly.

G. William pursed his lips, but didn’t ask any questions. He just nodded and then bellowed “HANSON!” at the top of his lungs.

“I need to stop by the hospital first,” Jazz said.

G. William nodded. “Yeah, you do what you need to do.”

Deputy Hanson poked his head into the office. “What’s up, chief?”

“First, how many times I gotta tell you? I’m a sheriff, not a chief. Second, take Jasper here to the hospital, then to Wammaket. Sirens all the way. This matters more than your momma and your little baby girl, Hanson.”

Hanson stared, mentally adding Jazz’s presence to Wammaket State Penitentiary and coming up with the only obvious solution. “Oh, wow,” he whispered.

“Save your
oh, wow
for your memoirs, Hanson. Get going.”

Jazz wanted to see Howie before he left for Wammaket. He couldn’t say why, just that it mattered that he see his best friend and know his condition.

Three surprises waited for him at the hospital. First, Howie’s parents were off getting lunch.

Second, Connie was in Howie’s room, keeping him company while his parents got a meal and some rest. Third, Howie was sitting up in bed, looking like a pale(r) version of himself—but at least looking like himself.

“The doctors say I can go home tonight,” he told Jazz. “I’ll have to take it easy, but when has
that
not been true?”

Jazz was genuinely glad to hear it. “That’s great, man.” He pulled up a chair. “Try to keep the blood on the inside from now on, okay?”

“Doing my best. You owe me some big-time tats.” Howie tilted his head, concerned. “What’s up with you guys, anyway?”

Jazz and Connie shared a brief glance. “What do you mean?” Connie asked.

“I’m a bleeder, not a moron,” Howie said. “And I think the drugs they’ve pumped into me have, like, sent me to a higher plane of consciousness. You guys are fighting.”

“No we’re not,” Connie said, surprising Jazz.

“We’re not?”

“Oh, this is gonna be good,” Howie said.

Ignoring Howie, Connie said, “No, you idiot.”

“But you left last night—”

“I was pissed. We weren’t getting anywhere. So yeah, I left. Not the end of the world. I told you last night: I love you. A little argument isn’t going to get in the way of that.”

Jazz didn’t know what to say. Fortunately, Howie filled in the gap: “Dude, get up off your butt and stick your tongue down her throat.”

They settled on a lingering kiss on the lips. Howie graded it an 8.5.