Текст книги "Game"

Автор книги: Barry Lyga

Соавторы: Barry Lyga
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CHAPTER 29

Connie stared at her cell phone. A message. From Jazz. She couldn’t believe she had just let her boyfriend go to voice mail as she watched.

But she knew what would have happened if she’d answered. He would have known something was up, the way he always knew something was up. That bizarre, slightly creepy sixth sense he had. He could read your mind by reading between the lines. And she would have told him about the texts and then he would have warned her off—It’s too dangerous, Con! Call G. William!—and Connie wasn’t about to be waved off. Not this time.

I can do this. I can help. I saved Jazz from the Impressionist. I found the Ugly J clue in Brooklyn. I. Can. Do. This.

She would be careful. She would be more than careful; she would be super-careful. And she would let Howie in on it, so that someone knew what was going on, where she was headed…. That was the responsible way to handle it. Almost eighteen, almost a legal adult. Who could tell her not to handle this?

i kno something abt ur boyfriend

Simple as that. That made it Connie’s business to find out.

And maybe…

The little voice tickled at the back of her brain, right on the edge of her thoughts. She chased it away, but she knew what it wanted to say.

And maybe you get on TV doing this. It’s like a reality show, but better because it really is real. And maybe…

Stop it.

And maybe that’s how you get noticed and get famous.

The voice, having had its say, went silent, and Connie pretended she’d never heard it in the first place.

Convincing her parents to let her out of the house would be nearly impossible, Connie knew. But the mystery texter had given her her first instruction—go 2 where it all began—and Connie was damn sure that whatever “it” was, it hadn’t begun in her bedroom, where absolutely nothing remotely interesting or important had ever happened.

It was getting late, but Howie would most likely still be awake, so she called him. He answered on the fourth ring, just as she had resigned herself to being sent to voice mail.

“Sorta busy here, Connie,” he said brusquely.

She glanced at her clock. It was almost eleven at night. “Doing what? Masturbating?”

“Jeez!” he exploded. “No! Gross! I don’t do that. I’m saving myself for that special someone, and that special someone is not me.”

“Howie, you’d jerk it if you saw your mom’s bra in the dryer.”

“I would not. I so totally would not. My mom’s bras are like, like grandmother bras, okay? Strictly utilitarian. Functional. Not like that sexy lacy number you wore last week when we all went to Grasser’s for burgers.”

Connie felt herself blush. “Howie! You peeked!”

“If you wear a white shirt with a red bra underneath, you’re just asking for it. I’m sorry, but in this isolated instance, you really, really can’t blame me.”

Connie made a mental note to watch what she wore around Howie. She liked being sexy and looking good, but she didn’t want one of her best friends thinking about her bras. Ew.

“In any event,” Howie went on, “I’m busy, doing the exact opposite of playing with myself, for your information.”

“What’s the opposite of that?”

“Trying to get Jazz’s aunt into bed,” Howie said with a matter-of-factness that was both hilarious and horrifying.

“You’re doing what?”

“She’s hot,” Howie said. “Older-lady hot, you know? Cougar-y? MILF-y? Plus, Jazz doesn’t want this to happen, so she’s got that whole ‘forbidden fruit’ thing going for her, too. I just can’t resist that. I’m, like, a slave to my passions and stuff.”

Connie’s head spun. Howie… and Jazz’s aunt? Billy Dent’s sister? “How the hell did this happen?”

“Well, nothing has happened yet. But I’m over here helping her get the crazy racist lady to sleep and I’m using all my best moves. Trust me, this is happening. The ladies always eventually succumb to Howie Gersten.”

“When has anyone ever succumbed to you?”

“The succumbing part is strictly theoretical at this point,” he admitted. “But I have high hopes.”

“If you can stop thinking with the contents of your jock strap for a second, I need your help.”

“Yes,” Howie said solemnly, “I can teach you how to be more ‘street.’ ”

“For God’s sake…”

“Or is it ‘urban’? I can’t remember. Anyway, I can teach you, grasshopper. Or hip-hopper.”

“Be serious for just a minute. I need help in your area of expertise.” Before Howie could say “pleasing women of all ages,” she pressed on. “I need to sneak out of my house.”

“How do you get to the ripe old age of seventeen without knowing how to get out of the house?” Howie demanded. “Hell, your bedroom is on the first floor! You don’t even have to climb down a trellis or sneak down squeaky stairs.”

“But once I’m out, I’m screwed—I don’t have a car.”

“Ah.” Howie chuckled. “You’ve come to the right place, ma’am.”

An hour later, Connie slipped silently out her window into a frigid January midnight. She willed her teeth to stop chattering. At Howie’s suggestion, she’d lubed the tracks of the window with some hand lotion (good stuff, too—fifteen bucks a bottle) so that it would open and close quickly and quietly as she came and went. Howie was a goofball of the first order, but a lifetime of parental fascism had inculcated in him some truly spectacular sneaking skills.

She darted to the cover of a cluster of firs at the end of the driveway and waited. Soon Howie’s old car drifted into view, its headlights and engine both off. Connie wasn’t sure how necessary this next part was, but Howie insisted.

As the car passed, coasting down the hill, Connie emerged from cover and then, jogging alongside, wrenched open the passenger-side door and threw herself in.

“Close the door!” Howie said. “Close it!”

Connie managed to slam the door. “This is ridiculous,” she panted, catching her breath. “You just wanted to be able to say you pulled this off.”

“You want your parents to see or hear a car driving by this time of night?”

“My parents are asleep.”

“People wake up.”

Once they were out of sight of Connie’s house, Howie gunned the engine and flicked on the headlights. “Where to, Miss Daisy?”

“I think you have a couple of things reversed,” she told him drily. “And I’m not sure where we’re headed yet.”

In short, clipped sentences, she told him about the Ugly J discovery at the dump site, as well as the note in the Impressionist’s pocket, followed by the mystery texts. In the dim light of Lobo’s Nod’s ill-spaced lampposts, Howie’s face became more and more pale as she went on.

“Are you nuts?” he asked. “Is Jazz’s kind of crazy an STD or something? This isn’t something for you to mess with. It’s for the cops. This is G. William territory.”

According to Jazz, Howie always balked at first but invariably caved in the end. She hoped she could be as persuasive as Jazz.

“I’m just going to do some preliminary investigating.” She liked the way that sounded. Very official. Very safe. “Then I can point G. William in the right direction.”

“Some crazy person—probably a serial killer—is texting you and you want to get the cops started? Not sane, Connie. Not sane at all. This is Jazz-level idiocy.”

“You broke into a morgue with him. I’m not asking you to do anything illegal.”

“Jazz is my bro.”

“I respect that. But maybe a little of his bro-hood rubbed off on me.” She regretted it as soon as she said it. Howie’s eyes widened and he started to speak, but she said, “Can we just stipulate that you made a killer double entendre with ‘rubbed off’ and then move on?”

“I guess.” Howie’s shoulders slumped in disappointment and Connie almost felt sorry for him. Howie lived for innuendoes. He signaled and took a right turn out of Connie’s neighborhood, onto the main road that cut directly through the center of the Nod.

“This is for Jazz,” she reminded him. “It’s about him, at least.”

“ ‘I know something about your boyfriend,’ ” Howie quoted. “That could be anything. That could be someone who knows where he buys his underwear. Or it could be that jackhole Weathers trying to lure you into an interview. Cell number was blocked, so it could be coming from somewhere around here for all we know. Probably is.”

Connie hadn’t considered that. Doug Weathers was just the sort of devious, bottom-feeding scumsucker who would plant a string of clues to pique her curiosity and try to trap her into some kind of compromising position that he could splash across a newspaper: BILLY DENT’S SON’S GIRLFRIEND IN CONTROVERSY! Or maybe just lure her into an interview. “If that’s what it is,” she said with measured cool, “then all he’s gonna get is a pissed-off sister all up in his grill.”

“I love when you go all hard-ass.” Howie shot her a pleased smile.

She returned it. “So does that mean you’ll stick around and see this through?”

“Well… I mean, if you’re gonna do something stupid, I guess I should stick around. That seems to be my function. And besides, Sam went to bed already.”

“Sam? Is that what she goes by?”

“It’s what I call her. If you give a girl a nickname, it’s endearing and forges a bond between the two of you.” He glanced over at her. “I read that on the Internet.”

Connie melted. Howie was so desperately pathetic in so many ways that she could never stay angry or disgusted for long. She reached out to pat his shoulder, but he flinched and said, “Whoa! Careful.”

“I’m going to be gentle,” she assured him, and then stroked his shoulder so lightly that even his hemophiliac blood vessels didn’t rupture. “You’re a good guy, Howie.”

“Will you tell Sam that? I also read that women trust other women more than men.”

She sighed. “Help me out tonight and, yeah, I’ll put in a good word for you.” Not that it would help. She couldn’t imagine a woman Samantha’s age hooking up with Howie. Although stranger things had certainly happened in the world.

“Score!” Howie fist-pumped. “What did the text say again?”

“It said ‘go 2 where it all began.’ ”

Howie frowned. “Where is that? Where what began?”

“That’s what I’ve been wondering. But it first said that this was about Jazz. So I’ve been thinking about Jazz’s past. Where it all began for him.”

“Hospital where he was born?” Howie asked.

“Too literal. I think it’s his house.”

“I just came from—ah. Oh, right.” Howie nodded grimly. “Got it.”

He flipped a uey and gunned the engine.

According to the dashboard clock in Howie’s car, it was three in the afternoon. Connie mentally subtracted the fourteen-plus hours by which the clock was always wrong (thirteen-plus during the summer) and decided that it was twenty of one in the morning when they pulled up to what had once been the Dent house. Not the house where Jazz lived now, the house Billy had grown up in—that was Jazz’s grandmother’s. The short gravel drive Howie’s wheels now crunched led to the house owned by Billy Dent himself.

“Don’t go chasing…”

Billy Dent, Connie mentally substituted. The rhythm still worked. Don’t go chasing Billy Dent. Please stick to the normal and the sane that you’re used to….

Denuded tree branches seemed to clutch at the car as they drove along, almost as though the spirit of William Cornelius Dent possessed them.

Stop thinking like that, Connie.

“How long do we have?” she asked Howie. Anything to break the silence.

Howie shrugged. “My parents think I’m spending the night at Jazz’s grandmother’s house.”

“Your parents? Your overprotective parents?”

“They know Jazz is out of town. They figure it’s safe.”

“Yeah, but… with his aunt?” Connie was shocked. Howie’s parents, letting their son (try to) shack up with an older woman?

“Oh, that. They think she’s an ugly old crone.” He shrugged. “This might be because I told them she was an ugly old crone. I’m not entirely sure. Man, it’s been a while since I’ve been here….”

The spot where Jazz’s childhood home used to be was marked out by a series of stakes with caution tape strung between them. A sign read NO TRESPASSING! Another read PRIVATE PROPERTY.

Finally, one read: THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED.

Condemned. Yeah, in so many ways, really…

Where the house had once stood there was now a blank, a blighted sore on the face of the earth. A wealthy father of one of Billy Dent’s victims had bought the house at auction after Billy went to prison. Then, to great fanfare and with the press in attendance, he’d had the house bulldozed and the wreckage burned to ash in a controlled fire. Connie hadn’t lived in Lobo’s Nod at the time, but Jazz had told her about it. He’d watched his home go up in smoke on the evening news.

“It was like a party,” Howie said, his voice a mixture of memory and rage as he gazed through the windshield. “Watched it on TV with Jazz. People treated it like a Memorial Day barbecue. Brought hot dogs and marshmallows and roasted them over the flames. Kegs. It was nuts. Like burning the guy’s house brought any of them back.”

Connie reached for Howie again. This time he didn’t flinch and she briefly massaged the back of his neck, wary of his fragility. “You’re a good friend,” she said.

Howie snorted. “I know. Why do people keep telling me that?”

To that, she had nothing to say.

Howie parked with the headlights glaring at the bare, burned earth and the hole that had once been Jazz’s basement.

“What do you expect to find here?”

“I don’t know.” She got out of the car. In every direction, there were trees and hedges. To the east and west, she could just barely make out houses. Billy Dent’s neighbors.

They planted all that stuff to block off that lot after he went to jail, Connie remembered Jazz saying. Like they could erase what he’d done if they didn’t have to look at where he’d lived.

Howie joined her by the foundation of the house. A few broken, burned cinder blocks littered the hole. In the glow of the headlights, they could see empty beer and soda bottles, as well as snack-chip bags and what looked like used condoms.

“People come out here for privacy, I guess,” Howie said. “Figure no one else would, right?” He inhaled deeply. “Still smells kinda burny. Even three years later.”

Connie squatted down near the edge. Howie suddenly grabbed at her, but she brushed him away. “I’m okay. I’m not gonna fall.”

“I’m more worried about the ground giving way.”

“It’s pretty frozen.” Her breath painted the air misty white. “Don’t worry.”

“Yeah, right.” Howie shivered and hugged himself. “Picked the wrong place to say that. I don’t believe in ghosts or demons, but if they existed anywhere, it would be here.”

Connie grinned. “I’ll protect you, big guy.”

“Much appreciated. What’d the next text say?”

“Next text and last text.” She showed it to Howie.

cherry. sunrise. jasper. down

CHAPTER 30

“What the hell does that mean?” Howie’s earlier fear had been replaced with exasperation. He bit down on his lower lip—lightly—but even so, Connie saw a bruise begin there. He turned in circles, taking in the surroundings. “It was crazy to come here without telling anyone. I hate puzzles. And codes. And mysteries. And riddles. And—”

“It’s not tough,” Connie told him. She scanned her surroundings as best she could in the dark, with only the headlights to pierce the night. “I bet there’s a cherry tree around here. We go to it.”

“And then wait until sunrise? No way. I gotta get some beauty sleep.”

Ignoring Howie, Connie peered through the middle-of-the-night murk of the Dent property, searching out a cherry tree. With her luck, she realized, there would be more than one.

Wait a sec, she thought. Wait. What—

“What does a cherry tree even look like?” Howie whined, voicing her inner thought.

A look of sheepish guilt/stupidity passed between them and then they both went for their cell phones.

Connie’s Google-fu was better and faster than Howie’s. “Here,” she said, holding up a photo on her phone. “A cherry tree.” She scowled. “But it talks about the leaves and…” She gestured around the winter landscape, the frost-rimed ground, the trees with their naked branches.

“No worries,” Howie said, grinning. “I remember. Over there.” He pointed to a large, many-limbed tree not far from the hole in the ground that had once been the Dent house. “That’s it. Right there. I remember what it looked like back then. It used to be in the backyard. Y’know, when there was a house here to be in back of.”

Together they made their way to the cherry tree. Howie stared up into its branches, lost in thought and memory. “We wanted to build a fort up there,” he said, his voice quiet, as though he were murmuring in church. “We were like eleven, I guess. Right up there.” He pointed with a shaky hand. “And I remember his dad was all for it. He said…” Howie suddenly turned away, savagely. “Damn! I can’t believe… I can’t believe I was such—”

“Howie.” She put her hands on his shoulders, a bit firmly, trusting the padding in his winter coat to keep him from bruising. “Howie, it’s okay. You were just a kid. You couldn’t have known.”

“That bastard.” Howie bit through the word like bitter citrus peel. Connie had never heard him so distraught. “You know what he said? He gave that big crap-eating grin of his and he said, ‘Ain’t a bad idea, Jasper. A boy should have a private place all his own. Just him and his secrets.’ ”

Connie thought she could feel the memory, reliving it through the shudder of Howie’s shoulders.

“I thought that sounded so cool,” Howie said. “Goddamn… I thought Billy was the coolest dad in the world. What was wrong with me? Everything normal and good in Jazz’s life, Billy made it evil and disgusting.” He shook off her hands, spinning around, looking not at Connie but up into the tree instead. “We lost interest because, hell, we were eleven. But I bet Billy was picturing Jazz dragging cats and stray dogs up there and cutting them open.” He snorted. “Maybe even me. Figured I’d go missing one day and no one would know what happened, but Billy would know. That was Billy’s dream, right? His fantasy? For Jazz to turn into him?”

“Still is,” Connie said quietly.

Howie nodded once, firmly. “You know what, Connie?”

“What, Howie?”

“We can’t stop Billy Dent. Not the two of us.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“But we can ruin him. We can piss him off and take away the thing he wants more than anything in the world. Can’t we? Can’t we do that?”

Connie thought of kissing Jazz. Of her hands on him, of his on her. Of their hesitant first kiss and of the passionate ones that followed.

“Yeah. We can take away his dream, Howie. We can keep Jazz from becoming Billy.” Mostly, she knew, because Jazz would do the heavy lifting. He would have to—the danger signs and the tools were all locked up in his head, and no one else had the key.

“We can make it easier for him,” Howie said. “That’s what we do, right? We make it easier for Jazz to be normal.”

“Yep.”

She took his hand in her own. It was almost comical, the two of them wearing gloves so heavy that their fingers couldn’t entwine. But that was okay. It wasn’t about the contact. It was about the solidarity.

“So that’s the cherry tree,” she said after a while.

“Sure is. Sunrise.”

“I think that means we face east.”

Howie nodded and released her hand after a brief squeeze. At the cherry tree, they used the compasses on their phones to find east. “Now what?” Howie asked. “The next clue is ‘Jasper.’ ”

“I think we’re supposed to walk. And the last clue is ‘down,’ so we’re supposed to dig.”

“Sure, that makes sense. But walk how far? His age? Seventeen steps?” Without waiting for an answer, Howie immediately loped off to the east, counting out until he hit seventeen.

Shaking her head, Connie caught up to him as he looked around. “The ground doesn’t look disturbed at all.”

“Whatever was buried was buried a long time ago, I bet.”

“Why do you say that?”

Connie wasn’t sure why she said that—it just made sense. It was the kind of thing Jazz would say with complete confidence, and when someone questioned him, he would rattle off an explanation that was duh-worthy.

Channeling her inner Jazz with all her might, she said, “Well…” and then it hit her.

“Look,” she said, speaking rapidly, before the idea could flit out of her mind as quickly as it had flown in, like a bug sucked into and out of an open car window. “We don’t know for sure who’s leading us on this wild-goose chase, but odds are it’s Billy or someone connected to Billy, right? So the first thing that happened after Billy broke out of prison was the FBI and the cops landed on Lobo’s Nod like it was D-day. They covered this place for weeks. So no one would be able to get here, of all places, to bury something. Which means that whatever we’re looking for here was buried at least before Billy went to jail.”

Howie nodded. “Yeah. All right, that tracks.” He stomped the ground with his huge foot. “And, yeah, if anything’s buried here, it had to be long enough ago that all the ground settled.”

Glancing back at the cherry tree—seventeen Howie-steps to the west—Connie shook her head. “It’s not right here. It can’t be.”

“Jazz is seventeen,” Howie protested. “I took seventeen steps—”

“Right. But first of all, we’re assuming seventeen is the right number. Think about it—if whatever it was was buried a long time ago, there’s no way the burier could know when we would come looking for it. Unless whoever it is specifically planned on doing something when Jazz was seventeen. But that’s ridiculous because—”

“—because what if something made it so that this ‘game’ had to be triggered earlier?” Howie finished. “I get it. So maybe it’s Jazz’s age when the thing was buried?” Howie groaned. “How are we supposed to know that?” He turned away from her, morose.

“Come on, Howie. Don’t punk out on me. Whoever’s doing this wants us to play the game. We can figure this out.” She hoped. What if this wasn’t a game, but a joke? What if this was a setup, designed to get Jazz’s girlfriend and best friend out here where something could—

“The cherry tree…” Howie spun around. “We were eleven!”

Before Connie could stop him, he counted back toward the cherry tree, taking six steps. He jumped up and down at the new spot, excited.

“This is it! Eleven steps away from the tree! This is the spot!” He stomped hard, then winced. “Oh, man, that’s gonna bruise!”

He was so happy that it broke Connie’s heart to tell him he was wrong. “This isn’t the spot,” she said, walking over to him.

“But we were eleven when we wanted to build the tree house. That’s why Billy or whoever chose the cherry tree as the starting—”

“Yeah, and I believe that you’re right that eleven is the answer to the ‘Jasper’ clue. But eleven what?”

“Eleven steps,” Howie said, frustrated. “It’s always ‘take three paces this way and ten paces that way.’ Jesus, Connie, haven’t you ever seen a pirate movie?”

“But whose steps, Howie? Billy’s? Jazz’s? Yours? Look at your NBA-length legs, man.” Howie looked down. “When I walk next to you, I have to take, like, a step and a half for every step you take.”

Howie blew out an annoyed breath, clouding the air for a moment. “Jeez. You’re kidding me. So, what? We have to figure out Billy Dent’s shoe size? Is that what’s next?”

“I bet he’d choose something simple to remember. I bet it’s just feet. Not, like, his feet. Real feet. Twelve inches.”

“Then we’re in luck,” Howie said, and rushed back to the tree. By the time Connie got there, catching up to his long strides, he had already lined up his back at the tree and started walking east, carefully placing one foot directly in front of the other like a tightrope walker. “My feet are size fourteen, which is pretty much exactly twelve inches.”

“And you know this because…?”

“Because you know what they say about guys with big feet.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Anyway, this should get us close, right?”

“Yeah.”

Howie counted eleven. “Okay. Then this should do it. Bring me that stick.”

Casting about in the dark, Connie caught sight of the stick he was referring to, a large branch that had fallen off a tree, perhaps even the cherry tree itself. She walked it over to him and watched as he fruitlessly and with much comical grunting tried to spear it into the frozen ground.

“This—uh—marks the spot—uh—or at least within a few inches—uh—so we can come back with a shovel—uh—damn it!” He wiped cold sweat from his forehead.

Connie sighed theatrically and took the branch from him, then crouched down, gripping the end of the branch near the ground. Twisting and pushing at the same time, she was able to drive it a few inches into the ground, though it winded her.

“I was about to try that,” Howie explained.

“Right.”

“You grabbed it from me before I could.”

“Right.”

“You’ll never know!” he called after her, following her back to the car now. “I was just about to try that!”

“Sure.” But she wasn’t paying attention anymore. She was thinking of coming back with a shovel, when it was light out. When the ground would be a little warmer and less solid in the light of the sun. Thinking of digging.

Wondering what she might find.

Howie pulled a reversal of his clandestine extraction, drifting headlightless and engineless down the gentle slope toward her house.

“You’ll call me tomorrow, right?” he asked, and yawned.

“I’m about to jump out of a moving car and you’re yawning.”

“We’re going, like, a mile an hour.” He checked the speedometer, squinting. “Maybe a mile and a half.”

“I’ll call,” she said, and hopped out, jogging alongside the car until she had the door closed.

She felt very conspicuous, standing literally in the middle of the street. Howie had dropped her off (“inserted,” he insisted on saying, demanding they use spy lingo) three houses up from her own, just in case someone was awake and looking out the window in the Hall home. She moved to the side of the road and approached her house carefully. With the exception of the light near the front door, it was dark. And quiet.

She had a feeling, again, that someone was watching her. Not her dad or her mom. Not even Whiz. No, she had a sudden, foolish feeling that Billy was out there. Which was ridiculous, because the odds seemed to be that Billy was in New York. And even if he wasn’t, he wasn’t stupid enough to hang around Lobo’s Nod, the one place on the planet where almost every person would recognize him on sight.

But maybe he has magical powers and he can be in two places at once or can see across vast distances….

She shook herself and came just short of slapping her own cheek. She was exhausted. Thinking stupid things. Childish things.

As Howie had promised, her lubricated window opened easily and silently. With a small, nearly inaudible “Oof,” she hauled herself over the sill and into the quiet familiarity of her own bedroom. With the window closed, the room went warm and still. She enjoyed it for a moment.

If this had been a horror movie, she knew, there would be something here. Like, a clue. A note from the person who’d texted her, maybe.

Or a severed head. Or maybe a finger from the Impressionist. Or maybe…

She was suddenly completely convinced that her family was dead.

Isn’t that what would happen? she thought. Lure me out of the house and then—

She didn’t let herself think further. Paranoia pumped through her like blood and she struggled against it, stripping off her clothes and slipping into boy shorts and a T-shirt for bed.

No one is dead. No one is dead. Stuff like that only happens in movies and in books.

And in real life.

Even as she told herself that she wouldn’t do it, she sneaked out of her room. Just going to the bathroom, is all. That’s all. And the bathroom is next to Whiz’s room….

She put an ear to Whiz’s door. Heard nothing.

Cranked the door open a bit, wincing at the slight creak. Why was the creak absent during the day, present only when she needed to be absolutely quiet?

In the glow of a street lamp coming through the window, she saw a lump under the covers.

Doesn’t mean anything. Could still be dead. Might not even be him.

Stop it, Connie. Stop being so ridiculous.

It’s not ridiculous. Billy Dent has done worse, hasn’t he?

She didn’t want to, but she suddenly remembered something Billy had done as Satan’s Eye. Jazz wouldn’t talk about the things Billy had done—not to her, at least—but she’d done some research. She couldn’t help it. And she remembered how in one night, Billy had kidnapped two women, murdered them, and then put them into each other’s beds, where they were discovered the next day by a husband and a boyfriend.

I’m doing this.

She crept into Whiz’s room. The form in bed seemed not to move, but as she came closer, she was relieved to find that it was, in fact, moving—the rhythmic, soft up and down of sleep-breathing.

The street lamp picked out her younger brother’s face, so much less obnoxious and peaceful in repose. Connie sighed.

Whiz’s eyes snapped open so suddenly that Connie almost screamed. She gasped and took a step back in shock.

“What are you doing?” he whispered accusingly, as if he’d caught her emptying his piggy bank.

“I… thought I heard something.”

“You’re a freak,” Whiz shot back, then rolled over to face away from her. “Get out of here.”

I love my brother, and I’m glad he’s not dead, Connie told herself as she went back to her room. I love my brother, and I’m glad he’s not dead.

She intended to repeat it over and over in her head until she believed it, but she fell asleep first.