Текст книги "Game"

Автор книги: Barry Lyga

Соавторы: Barry Lyga
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CHAPTER 31

Lips on his

(oh, yes)

down farther

Touch me

says the voice

again

His fingers

Oh

so warm

Oh

Jazz woke early. Not because he wanted to and not because he felt compelled to, but rather because Hughes shook him roughly by the shoulder and said, “Wake up,” in a commanding voice devoid of sympathy. The detective was already dressed.

Tangled in the sheets, clutching a pillow, Jazz blearily looked around the room. “What time is it?”

“Five of seven. First suspect is scheduled for interrogation at eight. And you still have his file to look at.”

Groaning, Jazz rolled over and pulled a pillow over his head. Hughes snatched away the pillow and tossed it over his shoulder.

Fifteen minutes later, Jazz was on his way to the precinct, flipping through the files on the dozen men suspected of being Hat-Dog. They all lived in Brooklyn, well within a specific computer-plotted jeopardy surface that contained most of the crime scenes thus far. The two extreme outliers were Coney Island and the S line in Midtown. “Why Coney Island?” Jazz asked. “Why Midtown? Why go outside his comfort zone?”

“Midtown, we’re thinking it’s a crime of opportunity. The girl lived nearby. We think maybe he works in Midtown, stays late at the office or something, sees the girl…”

“Hmm.” Jazz didn’t like that theory. Hat-Dog had been at this too long to go off half-cocked like that. He was too organized, too mature. But sometimes the impulses could scream and hoot and holler like monkeys in a cage, and the only way to shut them up…

I had to go and get me one, said Dear Old Dad.

That’s what Billy had said the night he’d returned from killing Cara Swinton. He had drummed into Jazz from an early age that “we don’t crap where we eat,” meaning “no prospecting in Lobo’s Nod.” And then one night, soon after Jazz’s thirteenth birthday, Billy went out and did exactly that, crapping right there where he ate, killing poor Cara.

The only explanation he ever offered: “I had to go and get me one.”

The compulsion. The urge. The need.

“… Coney Island,” Hughes was saying. “We’re thinking he might have been on vacation….”

“Any of these guys married?” Jazz asked, refocusing on the present and the suspects. “Kids?”

“Six married. Four divorced. Couple girlfriends. That’s the profile, right? Highly organized, probably married or in a relationship. Four of ’em have kids.”

“Start with those guys.”

“We plan to.”

“Do these guys know they’re suspects?”

“Nah. We’ve talked to all of them informally. They all had quote-unquote legitimate reasons for being around one or more of the crime scenes, so we’re pretending we just want to clear some things up. And then we get them nice and relaxed,” Hughes said grimly, “and we pounce.”

The precinct had transformed when they arrived. No longer chaotic, it now looked like something out of a movie or a TV show—two giant HDTVs showed crime-scene evidence in a sort of animated PowerPoint presentation. The men had shaved; the women had done their hair. Jazz felt the undercurrent of tension and chaos, but it was well-suppressed. The precinct had the air of a crisp, flawless operation. Evidence boxes were neatly stacked, and the whiteboard with the victimology chart had been redone to look so professional that it almost seemed to be selling something.

“This is good,” Jazz said. “Show the evidence against them. Are your people instructed how to act when the suspects come in?”

“They’ll get real quiet and murmur among themselves,” Montgomery said, walking over to him. “We know what we’re doing. A show of overwhelming evidence and force. Make these guys feel like we know everything, even the things we don’t know.”

“Billy would laugh at it.”

“Not every serial killer is your dad.” The captain put a hand on Jazz’s shoulder. “Let me show you our fine accommodations.”

He guided Jazz to a small observation room. Through a one-way mirror, Jazz could see into the interrogation room, a dingy, dull-walled box with a table and three chairs. There were more boxes stacked around here. For all Jazz knew, they were packed with old take-out menus and blank copier paper. But what mattered was that they were all labeled HAT-DOG. If Hat-Dog came into this room, especially after being walked through the “command center,” he would be overwhelmed by the mountains of evidence accumulated against him, possibly so shaken that he would confess. Or at the very least, drop some sort of clue.

That was the theory. Jazz wondered if it would actually work. Billy had once been interrogated by the police, in association with a Green Jack murder. They thought they had me fooled, he said, but all they did was show me how desperate they were.

Jazz realized his upper lip was damp. He wiped at the sweat. Montgomery was right—not every serial killer was Billy. Billy was the exception, not the rule.

Just as he settled into a chair for a day of watching interrogations, Morales came in. She was wearing a severe black pantsuit with a white blouse buttoned almost to the throat. Her hair was tied back in a bun.

“Any last-minute advice?” she asked Jazz. He was both flattered and relieved that a seasoned FBI agent was looking to him for help.

He gave her a quick up-and-down appraisal. The nearly sexless look was the right approach. Hat-Dog had serious sexual issues. Gender hang-ups. His rapes of women varied from violent and desperate to perfunctory and almost gentle. The penectomies of his male victims indicated either a fear or an exaltation of male sexual power and prowess. He was a messed-up dude, as Howie would say.

So going with a sexually neutral image to start was best for Morales. If she felt like the interview was headed in a certain direction where her feminine charms could be of assistance, it would be easy to remove the jacket, let down the hair, unbutton an extra button or two. Far more difficult to go from sexy to dowdy; that genie never goes back into the bottle quietly or easily.

“You know what you’re doing,” Jazz told her. “Is Hughes going in with you?”

“Yeah. He’s gonna be bad cop.”

“Good luck.”

Jazz settled back with Montgomery and a couple of other observers, including a civilian psychiatrist who was consulting on the case. “I would love to interview you sometime,” he whispered, slipping Jazz a business card. Jazz just sighed and put the card in his pocket, making a mental note to throw it away later.

The first suspect was a man named Duncan Hershey. He wore dirty jeans and a surprisingly clean black T-shirt. His winter coat was hung on a peg on the back of the door, well out of his reach. Hershey’s hair was long, unkempt in the manner of a man unfamiliar with long hair. He had been forgoing haircuts for a while. “Lost his job last summer,” Montgomery said, bringing everyone in the room up to speed. “About two weeks before the first murder. Could have been the inciting incident.”

Jazz had the particulars committed to memory already. Hershey was white, thirty-five years old. Married for six years with two children, a four-year-old and a six-year-old. Had been a construction foreman until last summer. Now he picked up piecemeal freelance work and handyman jobs.

He had especially been flagged by the NYPD because he worked in the building where Monica Allgood had been found, the building where the glass had been deliberately broken from the outside to screw up the cops.

Duncan didn’t look particularly tired as Morales and Hughes came into the room. The old cop trick of getting a guilty suspect to fall asleep in the interrogation room clearly hadn’t worked on this guy. Which could mean something or nothing, really.

He was hunched over a paper cup of water, which he’d drained almost immediately. If Hershey turned out to be the Hat-Dog Killer, he’d just made a rookie mistake. Never drink something the cops ask you to drink. For one thing, they can withhold bathroom privileges to stress you. For another—

“You done with that?” Morales asked, indicating the cup.

“Oh, yeah.” Hershey’s voice was higher than Jazz had expected.

“Need a refill?” she asked, sounding for all the world like a waitress. Hughes had said absolutely nothing since walking in, pausing to flip through a folder and sigh theatrically.

“Nah, I’m done,” Hershey said, glancing at Hughes.

“Let’s just get this out of the way, then….” Morales deftly guided the paper cup away from Hershey, pushing it down the table with the tip of a pen. It looked utterly natural, but Jazz knew she was avoiding touching it.

“He’s not the guy,” Jazz announced. “He just voluntarily gave you guys his fingerprints and his DNA on that cup. It’s not him.”

“People screw up,” Montgomery reminded him. “Don’t be so quick.”

“Not him,” Jazz said, and folded his arms over his chest. “He’s smarter than that.”

They watched the interrogation in all its mind-numbing details. Hershey had alibis for some of the murders, no alibis for others. His memory was neither particularly good nor particularly bad, which is to say he seemed like anyone else pulled into a police station and suddenly asked to account for their lives over the past several months. If the police had hauled Jazz into an interrogation room and said to him, “On Monday September second, where were you at or about ten PM?” Jazz was pretty sure he wouldn’t know, either.

Guilty people knew. They always knew. They lived in fear that they would be forced to account for their whereabouts during their crime, so they crafted their lies with great care and loving attention to detail.

“Ever been to Coney Island?” Hughes asked more gruffly than the question demanded. “Down the boardwalk?”

Hershey wasn’t intimidated. “What, are you kidding me? Who hasn’t been to Coney Island?”

“You go this past November, maybe?” Hughes leaned across the table as though he would beat the answer out of Hershey, who pulled back a bit in his chair.

“Settle down,” Morales said, putting a calming hand on her partner’s shoulder. “Can you just think back, Mr. Hershey, and tell us if you remember going to Coney Island? I kind of like it there in the off-season. Not as many tourists. I went myself in October. Can you remember?”

Hershey shrugged. “Hell if I can remember exactly. Probably, though. Usually get down that way a couple, three times a month, you know? My wife’s mom lives in Bay Ridge.”

“Of course,” said Morales, smiling.

After about an hour of back-and-forth softball and hardball with Morales and Hughes, Hershey seemed annoyed and frustrated. Which is exactly how Jazz expected an innocent man to act.

“It could be a con job,” Montgomery reminded him. “These guys are good at wearing masks.”

Yeah, Jazz knew that. He was pretty good at wearing masks himself, and he prided himself on being able to see through them.

Then again, there was Jeff Fulton/Frederick Thurber/the Impressionist. That had been a mask made out of lead. Not even Jazz’s X-ray vision had been able to see through it.

Just then, Hughes made a show of standing up and stretching, as though trying to work out a kink in his neck. That was the sign that they were done with this guy.

“Not the guy,” someone in the observation room said. One of the FBI guys.

Told you, Jazz didn’t say.

He didn’t need to. Montgomery looked over at him and lifted an eyebrow that seemed to say, Well, yeah, okay.

“What were the odds it would be the first one?” Montgomery said.

What are the odds it’ll be any of them? Jazz wondered. How many people live in Brooklyn? In the whole of New York City? The profile was good; the task force had done a tremendous job. But they were still looking for a chameleon in heavy weeds.

“Next victim,” someone deadpanned.

“Anyone need coffee?”

Jazz sighed.

The sun shone brightly overhead when Connie started digging in what had once been the backyard of Billy Dent’s house. She quickly became overheated and should have taken a break, but instead she just peeled off layers and kept digging, sweat streaming down her face even though it was freezing outside.

A persistent beeping noise began, repeating over and over—three quick beeps, followed by a pause, then three again. She ignored it and kept digging.

CHAKK

Her shovel hit something, and as she peered down into the hole she’d dug, she was horrified to see a flap of hair and flesh pared away from gleaming white bone by the tooth of her shovel.

Beep-beep-beep.

“Don’t go chasing…”

Someone was buried here. She had found a body.

Don’t.

Go.

Cha-

-sing…

Swallowing, she kept digging, trying not to strike the body again. The police would want it intact, wouldn’t they?

Beep-beep-beep.

She cleared more dirt away from the head and bit back a scream of absolute terror.

Beep-beep-beep.

It was Jazz.

She’d found Jazz buried in his own backyard. She would know that face anywhere. Recognize that nose, those lips…

But how? How could Jazz be buried here? And oh, God, if he was down here, then who—what?—had she been dating and kissing and almost sleeping with all these months?

Connie took a step back, dropping the shovel, and a hand came around her from behind and she tried to scream and then she opened her eyes and almost without thinking reached out to slap her alarm clock, silencing it halfway through a sequence of Beep-beep-beep.

Oh, God, she thought, and touched her chest, feeling her heart race exactly as it had just now in the dream. Oh, thank God.

“Look who’s joining us for breakfast on a Saturday,” Mom said, pleased, when Connie appeared in the kitchen. The rest of the family was already there at the table, Dad wearing a tie, which meant he had to go into the office even though it was a weekend. Ugh. The only work Connie ever wanted to do on a weekend was a Sunday matinee performance on Broadway.

“You’re quiet this morning,” said Dad as she poured milk over her cereal.

“She’s tired from sneaking around the house all night,” Whiz said helpfully. Connie shot him a dirty look.

“What’s this?” Dad asked, clearing his throat and suddenly taking tremendous interest in his daughter. “Sneaking?”

“Something woke me up,” she lied. “I thought I heard something, so I went to check on Whiz.” She glared at him. “I should have let the boogeyman take him.”

“I’ll show you boogies!” Whiz cried, and went for his nose with one finger.

“Wisdom!” Mom said sharply. “If you stick that finger in your nose, you will lose it, do you hear me?”

Whiz shrugged and dove back into his scrambled eggs. He insisted on eating them topped with a nauseating concoction of ketchup, mustard, and soy sauce.

“What did you think you heard?” Dad wouldn’t let it go.

Connie made a show of being exasperated, even though the direction of the conversation petrified her. Did Dad know she’d sneaked out the previous night? “I don’t know. Something. It was probably a dream. Or the house settling. Or the wind.”

Dad hmphed and checked his watch. That would be one parent out of the way. Mom worked at the Tynan Ridge branch of the state university, and they never called her in on weekends. Connie had to get her and Whiz out of the house so that she could escape. Howie had tormented her earlier this morning with a text that said Ready?, accompanied by a picture of himself standing in overalls, propping up a long-handled shovel like the farmer in Grant Wood’s American Gothic.

After Dad was gone, Connie slipped into Whiz’s bedroom, where he busily slaughtered something vaguely dragonish on his Xbox.

“I need a favor,” she said.

Whiz ignored her. He was good at that when he wanted to be.

She tried again. “I need your help. I need you to get Mom to take you to the mall.” The nearest mall was a half-hour drive away. Connie would prefer that Mom be gone all day, giving her a chance to get out, dig, and come back before being missed. But if Mom just dropped Whiz off and came home, it would still give her plenty of time to get out of the house, cover her tracks, and contemplate the punishment her father would eventually visit upon her.

“I don’t want to go to the mall,” Whiz said, aiming and swiping his on-screen sword with scary precision. Connie idly wondered if Billy Dent had ever owned an Xbox.

“Sure you do. There’s that new movie—”

“Already saw it.”

“And you want to see it again.”

Whiz hit Pause and assessed his sister craftily. “What do you want?”

“I just told you—I want you and Mom out of the house.”

“So that Jazz can come over and you guys can do the nasty?”

Jeez, even my kid brother thinks we’re ready, Jazz! “No. Jazz isn’t even in town. I just need to do some stuff. And I can’t have you guys around.”

“What’s in it for me?” Whiz said, his tone clearly conveying that he knew she had nothing to offer him for such a favor.

Connie drew in a deep breath and played her best card.

“I’ll show you the code to unlock the parental controls on the satellite box,” she said.

Whiz’s eyes grew wide with something akin to worship.

CHAPTER 32

There were two interrogation rooms, one on either side of the observation room. While one suspect was being questioned, the next one would wait in the other room. The observers could look in on either one, and as the day crawled along, Jazz started to feel dizzy as he rotated between the two.

As the morning dragged into a cigarette-stale afternoon, Hughes and Morales ran their good cop/bad cop on four more suspects, all of whom fit the profile in various ways. It was a parade of white guys in their mid-thirties, all of them leading lives of depressingly similar dissatisfaction, all of them as empty as overpumped wells.

It took its toll on the people in the observation room, who’d begun the day with verve and excitement and a sense that New York’s months-long nightmare was one confession away from ending. But as the day wore on, observers drifted out, replaced by others who watched for a little while, then left again as it became obvious to everyone that the guy in the box wasn’t The Guy. Only Jazz and Montgomery stayed the whole time, the captain settling into a chair next to Jazz and leaning forward, elbows on knees, looking for all the world like a baseball manager trying to wish his team into the playoffs.

Jazz’s phone rang in the middle of one interrogation, earning him a nasty glare from just about everyone in the room. He could have sworn he heard one of the loaner FBI agents mutter, “What makes him so special?” to another agent. The caller ID showed Connie’s face, but Jazz fumbled to turn off the ringer, failing miserably. Finally, after what seemed like hours of that damn phone ringing, a cop grabbed it from him, pressed a few times, and shoved it back in his hands, silent and dark.

“Next up,” Montgomery announced, reading off a sheet of paper like it was a scorecard, “is Mikel Angelico. That’s M-I-K-E-L for those of you playing at home. White male—”

“Go figure,” a cop said, to general laughter.

“—twenty-eight years old. Currently unemployed—”

“Say it ain’t so, Cap’n!” someone called out.

Montgomery sighed like a father with newborn triplets who all needed fresh diapers at the same time. “No one’s making you stand here, Wizniewski. There’s boxes of documents need stacking over in the copy room.”

“Sciatica, Cap,” Wizniewski said.

“Christ,” Montgomery muttered. Jazz had just opened his mouth to shoot down Wizniewski—he was tired, the cop was an ass, why not?—when the door to the observation room burst open and a youngish uniformed cop said, “Captain! Captain! You’re not gonna believe this!”

What they wouldn’t believe was Oliver Belsamo.

“And he just walked into the precinct?” Montgomery clarified.

The cop who had burst in—Amelio, his nameplate read—nodded. “Yessir. Walked in, ignored all the stuff out there, sat on the bench. He was waiting for a while. Noticed him right away, but he didn’t say anything, just sat there, kinda twitchy, so I kept an eye on him and then—just now—he finally came right up to the front desk and said, ‘I saw that story in the paper. I need to talk to someone about all the dead people.’ ”

Montgomery raised an eyebrow as he glanced at Jazz.

“You ran the fake-witness sting, didn’t you?” Jazz asked. The expression on Montgomery’s face was enough of an answer. “Awesome. And now this guy is coming in—”

“Doesn’t mean he did it,” the captain cautioned, trying to calm not just Jazz but also the half-dozen cops, FBI agents, and shrinks in the room with them. “Could just be a nutbar. Could be looking for publicity.”

“What should I do with him?” Amelio asked.

Montgomery shared another look with Jazz. Jazz tried to dial down his excitement but was afraid it came through anyway, his best efforts to the contrary. Yeah, it was true that this “Belsamo” guy probably had nothing to do with the murders. Probably thought he saw something or was just looking for attention. Happened all the time. And thank God for it, Billy crowed. More chaff in the radar! More fog in the air!

“I say we at least talk to him,” Jazz said, fully aware that at least half the room didn’t care what he thought.

Montgomery nodded as though that had only confirmed his own feelings. “Set him up in room two, and get Hughes and Morales over there.”

Hughes and Morales soldiered on. Jazz was impressed with their stamina. Hughes had been playing the pissed-off, barely-in-control black guy all day long, but still managed to drop in a joke or two between suspects. Morales had had to pretend to keep her partner in check and had taken her hair down and put it back up so many times that she didn’t even glance over in the mirror now as she once again bunned up in preparation for the next suspect.

“Here’s what Amelio got on intake,” Montgomery said, and read off a blurt of stats on the walk-in: Belsamo, Oliver M. Thirty-two. White. Divorced. No kids. Currently unemployed.

They all clustered at the appropriate window for their first look at Belsamo, who was unshaven and dressed in a ratty old denim jacket. His fingernails were dirty; his eyes shifted around the room. The guy looked homeless.

He looks too crazy to be Hat-Dog. Hat-Dog would pass for normal. This guy can’t.

Then again… then again, maybe he knows that’s what we think, and he’s playing us….

Being in a serial killer’s mind was like navigating a maze made out of mirrors.

Hughes and Morales strode into the interrogation room as though they’d just come from an hour’s beauty sleep. Hughes did his growly thing. Morales did her “Can I get you some water?” thing. Belsamo declined. They settled in.

“What can we do for you today, Mr. Belsamo?” Morales asked politely. Going with the good cop first.

He shrugged.

“We can’t really help with shrugs,” she said, putting some joviality into it.

“Saw the paper. Said there was a witness.”

“That’s right,” Morales said, as Hughes did his best seething-with-rage act. “Someone saw the man who killed Lucy Donato. Do you know something about that?”

Belsamo shrugged again. Morales pressed some more, gently, not about Donato specifically. Harmless questions. He answered in mumbles and whispers. He kept looking around the room, startled, as though ghosts tapped his shoulders.

“You really think this guy could have planned and executed those murders?” Jazz asked. He regretted saying it as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Masks.

“I don’t know,” Montgomery admitted. “Could be playing us.”

“Think he’s on something?”

“Maybe.”

“… Elana Gibbs,” Morales said gently, bringing the subject back to the murders. “Did you know her?”

Belsamo said nothing.

Didn’t even shrug this time.

“Hey!” Hughes shouted suddenly. “Hey, you need to talk to us, you understand?” It was a flat-out lie. Belsamo wasn’t under arrest. And even if he had been, he could have pled the Fifth and clammed up.

“I don’t want to,” Belsamo mumbled. “I don’t want to talk about that girl.”

An electric spark ricocheted around Jazz’s heart. Holy…

“Why not?” Morales asked pleasantly. “She was a pretty girl.” She slid a photo of Gibbs across the table, taken from some online dating site. “We can talk about her. It’s okay.”

Belsamo’s eyes flicked at the picture, then flicked away.

“Holy crap,” breathed Montgomery, now leaning forward so much that he was almost a street urchin at a bakery window.

Despite himself, Jazz leaned forward, too. Belsamo didn’t seem the type, but still… he’d reacted—a small reaction, true, but a reaction nonetheless—to the picture. Now Hughes should—

“How about this picture?” Hughes asked belligerently, sliding another photo over. “You prefer this one?”

It was a crime-scene photo. Elana Gibbs lay in repose, slit from pubis to breast, her abdomen an open, empty wound.

Belsamo reacted. He swallowed and shook his head, looking away. “Don’t show me that. I didn’t want that.”

Didn’t want that? “That’s a confession!” Jazz whispered excitedly. “Right?”

“No,” said Montgomery. “He could always claim he just meant he didn’t want to see the picture. But it means we’re on the right path.”

“Why didn’t you want it?” Morales asked calmly. “You mean you didn’t want to hurt her?”

“Or maybe she’s just an it to you,” Hughes snarled. “Maybe you mean you got tired of it, so you threw it away like trash. Is that it?”

Belsamo shook his head violently. “Stop it. Stop talking to me.”

“We’re just talking,” Morales soothed. “It’s just talk.”

“If you talk to me, I have to talk to you, and I don’t want to talk to you!” Belsamo yelled. For an instant, Jazz thought the man would snap, would make a move. But he calmed as quickly as he’d flared, slumping in his seat again. He started picking at the dirt under his fingernails.

A glance between Hughes and Morales. Morales nodded a minute nod. She took over.

“Why don’t you want to talk to us, Oliver?” She slid her chair a little closer, her voice pitched low and comforting. She did everything but take his hand in hers. “Are you afraid of what you might tell us?”

Belsamo shrugged.

“I’ve heard a lot of things, Oliver.” Using his first name. Familiar. Comforting. “I’ve heard a lot. I can handle it. You can tell me whatever you want. This is a safe space. I know you have something to tell me. This is the place. This is the time.”

“Please stop asking,” Belsamo whispered. Montgomery turned up the volume on the speaker from the interrogation room.

“Why? Because you’ll tell me?”

Another shrug.

“You’ll tell me, won’t you, Oliver? You’ll tell me, and you’ll tell me the truth, right? Because you wouldn’t lie to me.”

“I don’t lie,” Belsamo said, with something like pride.

“That’s good. Because you know what’ll happen if you lie to us, don’t you? If you tell us something that’s not true?”

Belsamo contemplated this for a moment, still picking at his fingernails. “I know what will happen,” he said in a low, barely audible voice. “I’ll go to jail.” Then, more strongly: “I’ll go directly to jail.”

“Well, maybe not directly. It might take a little while. But, yeah, you’ll go to jail if you don’t tell the truth.”

“It’s time to open up,” Hughes said in a kind tone, sensing the moment. He pushed the two pictures a little closer. “It’s time to tell us.”

Belsamo sighed, his entire body crumpling and deflating like yesterday’s balloon. “Yeah. I know.” He cleared his throat and pointed to the pictures. “I did it. I killed her.”

Jazz’s heart pounded. Montgomery swore softly under his breath.

“You killed her,” Morales said, her voice controlled and soft. “Just her?”

For a moment, it seemed as though Belsamo did not understand the question. Struggle writhed his features, twisted his lips, and crunched his eyebrows together. But finally he shook his head.

“How many?” Hughes asked. Flat. No expression on his face. No judgment. No excitement. How many?

“A bunch of them,” Belsamo went on. Pause. Then, as if helpless to stop himself, gathering steam: “I killed them all.”