I Hunt Killers (28 page)

By the time Jazz got to the sheriff’s office later that day, it was nearly dinnertime. Jazz was disoriented—he’d missed a big part of the day—but determined.

He bulled his way through the remains of the Impressionist task force and into G. William’s office, where he utterly demeaned himself, begging,
imploring
G. William to allow him just five minutes. “No more,” he promised. “Five minutes down to the second. I swear.”

Eventually G. William relented, but only after a thorough search of Jazz’s body that included one meaty hand uncomfortably close to the family jewels. Jazz bore it stoically. He needed these five minutes.

G. William unlocked the door and let Jazz into the holding area. There were three cells in the Lobo’s Nod Municipal Police Building, two of them empty. The Impressionist was in the third, calmly lounging on the bunk, staring at the ceiling. He looked up as Jazz entered the holding area and swung his feet to the floor.

“Five minutes,” G. William said. “And don’t put your hands or anything else through the bars. Either of you.”

Then he left.

Jazz stared at the Impressionist. The killer stared back. Jazz became aware that he was staring not at a person, but at something pretending to be a person. It was a look he’d seen on Billy’s face for years, but he had forgotten its power and intensity once it was gone, the way one can remember that a food is spicy, but cannot relive the heat of it without eating it again.

“Hello, Jasper,” the Impressionist said. “Or…wait. You prefer ‘Jazz,’ don’t you? And now you’ll tell me, ‘Only my friends call me Jazz.’ But we’re much closer than friends, you and I. I’ve broken all the rules for you. I cut my own strings. Became my own puppet.”

What in the world was he talking about?

“You’re a blank,” Jazz told him. “A nothing. Clay to be imprinted, and Billy imprinted you. You’re like every other sociopath living; there’s nothing inside.”

Nothing except, perhaps, information.

The Impressionist chuckled an empty chuckle. “You’d like to think that. I
defied
for you. All to make you better. I could have gone on killing. I could have been as successful as your father. But I deviated from my path. Because I saw promise in you. I still do.” He leaned closer. “I’ll tell you nothing. Nothing but this: Embrace your destiny. I did, and I have no regrets. Even though I ended up here.”

Enough of the faux psychological crap. “You had a letter,” Jazz said. “In your pocket. The police found it when they searched you.”

He held out a photocopy of the note, which listed each victim’s profile. It also said, at the very end:

The Impressionist shrugged.

“It’s not in your handwriting, and it’s not in Billy’s. Someone else is out there. I know my father has his sick groupies. Tell me who was working with you. Who helped him escape? How many of you are there? How many of you sick bastards are out there doing his work?”

Nothing.

Jazz heard his father’s voice, as he always did:
You won’t even know you’ve crossed the line until it’s way back in your rearview mirror.

Maybe so.

“Do you have a way to contact my father?” Jazz asked. “No, wait, never mind. Don’t answer. You’d only lie.”

Still nothing. A true believer. A true freak. The Impressionist would die before he would betray Billy Dent.

“Listen to me,” Jazz said, leaning against the bars, his heart skipping a thrilled beat when the Impressionist pulled back in sudden fear. “Listen closely. If you
can
contact my father, I want you to send him a message for me. I want you to tell him that I’m on to him. That I’m hunting him. Tell him that I’m using every trick he ever taught me, that I won’t rest until I’ve run him to ground. And tell him this, too: He once said that I was already a killer, I just hadn’t killed anyone yet.

“Well, tell him that once I catch him…I
will
.”

ONE WEEK LATER

“When do I get mine?” Howie whined.

“Later,” Jazz told him, settling in. “Okay, you can start.”

“You sure about this, man?” the tattoo artist asked.

“Yeah.”

“But no one’s gonna be able to read it. Unless they hold a mirror up to you.”

“It’s not for anyone else,” Jazz said. “It’s for me. To remind me.”

The tattoo artist shot a look at Howie and Connie, as if he needed approval from them. Howie folded his arms over his chest and looked away. Connie just sighed and gave a resigned nod.

The artist bent to his work. Jazz hissed in a breath and held it as long as he could as the man inked him.

Later, it was done. A total of twelve letters, in two-inch-high black Gothic script, inked along the broad V of his clavicle. The letters were flipped, but when Jazz looked in the mirror, he could read them just fine:

FIVE WEEKS LATER

Just before Thanksgiving—after the headlines about Billy Dent’s escape and the Impressionist’s arrest had faded—the community of Lobo’s Nod gathered at the high school in what would someday be christened the Virginia F. Davis Memorial Performing Auditorium. They gathered for the first and last performance of
The Crucible
, directed and stage-produced by the students themselves at Jazz’s suggestion, dedicated to her memory and performed in her honor.

In the very back of the auditorium, a figure in a trench coat and cap stood in a convenient intersection of shadows, watching, hands thrust deep into the coat’s pockets.

Toward the play’s culmination, Reverend Hale screamed to the rafters as the figure in the rear watched: “There is blood on my head! Can you not see the blood on my head!!”

And there was.

Oh, and there would be so much more.…

As always, a big thank-you to my agent, Kathy Anderson, for dealing with the stuff I can’t (or won’t) wrap my brain around.

Thanks to the gang at Little, Brown for welcoming this sordid, bloody tale and making it fun, especially Alvina Ling, Megan Tingley, Jennifer Hunt, Connie Hsu, Andrew Smith, Victoria Stapleton, Alison Impey, and JoAnna Kremer. And a special shout-out to Bethany Strout, Amy Habayeb, and Allison Moore.

My early readers deserve extra-special thanks: Eric Lyga, Mary Kole, Lisa McMann, and the mighty, mighty Libba Bray.

Last but not least, thanks to Dr. Deborah Mogelof, who answered my questions about emergency room medicine and hemophilia. Please do not hold her responsible for any literary license I may have invoked.