Текст книги "Game"

Автор книги: Barry Lyga

Соавторы: Barry Lyga
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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

CHAPTER 45

Howie waited until the airline website on his smartphone told him that Connie’s flight was in the air before making a beeline for the Lobo’s Nod Sheriff’s Office. He spent most of the drive trying not to think about two things: the implications of the blank FATHER field on Jazz’s birth certificate, and whether or not Sam was just as nutso as her brother.

Man, if that’s the case, then I’m totally swearing off hitting on my friends’ relatives.

He pondered this at a stoplight for a moment.

Well, unless they’re smoking hot.

The sheriff’s office was quiet, and only one car lingered in the parking lot. Tiny town like the Nod, you didn’t expect a lot of action on a weekend night, as long as guys like the Impressionist were locked up. The only reason the place was open at all was because it also served as the basic nerve center for the entire county’s police force. Otherwise, it would be shut down like the rest of the Nod.

Howie sucked in a deep breath. He really hated the idea of sauntering into the office with a lockbox of evidence that had been obtained under less than entirely legal circumstances. Then again, the last time he’d been here, it had been to break and enter with Jazz. Followed by stealing and duplicating a medical examiner’s report, then opening a murder victim’s body bag. Was he really going to get into any more trouble for this?

“I’m totally tattooing ‘I Heart Howie’ on Jazz for all this nonsense,” he said aloud, then got out of the car before he could change his mind.

Inside, he found only his least-favorite member of the Lobo’s Nod sheriff’s department, Deputy Erickson, lingering at what was usually Lana’s desk, idly clicking away at the computer. Jazz had forgiven Erickson for all of the stuff that went down during the Impressionist hunt last year, but Howie still couldn’t get over the way Erickson had slapped cuffs on him, leaving bruises he’d had to cover for a week.

Now the deputy looked up as Howie approached. “Hey, Howie. What can I do for you?”

“Your friendly veneer doesn’t fool me.” Howie made a show of sniffing the air. “Is that bacon I smell? Or maybe scrapple?”

“Right, right, I’m a pig. You’re hilarious. Do you actually need to be served and protected or is this purely an antisocial call?”

Howie filed away the idea of an “antisocial call.” He liked it. “I need to see G. William,” he said as officiously as possible. “I have a matter for his eyes only.”

Erickson gestured to the empty office. “The boss is probably already fast asleep. What, you think he lives here? Even he gets a night off every now and then.”

Howie frowned at the way the universe constantly foiled his plans.

“Look, Howie, whatever it is, I’m sure I can—”

“Nope.”

“Honest to God, all of that stuff from October is water under the bridge. Jasper and I—”

“Nope.”

Lana’s chair creaked as Erickson leaned farther back than it was accustomed to. “You’re not going anywhere, are you?”

Howie chose to punctuate his point by planting his butt on the very same bench where he and Jazz had once been cuffed.

“When the big man locks you up for annoying the police, don’t come crying to me,” Erickson said, reaching for the phone.

“That’s not a real crime,” Howie said confidently.

Oh, crap. What if it is?

“Hey, G-Dub!” Howie called cheerfully a little while later. “What’s the happy-hap?”

G. William, it turns out, was not already asleep when Erickson called.

“I’ve got the last ten episodes of Letterman on my DVR,” he grumbled on his way into the office. He glared at Howie. “It took me a week to figure out how to record and play back on that stupid thing. This better be good.”

“It is,” Howie promised, raising the lockbox.

G. William nodded as if he’d been expecting this. “Would this have anything to do with the nine-one-one call that came in about the old Dent property?”

Howie managed to communicate volumes of distrust and distaste with a single glance in Erickson’s direction.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Erickson complained.

“My office,” G. William relented. “Double-time it, Howie. I love me some top-ten lists.”

Settled into G. William’s office, Howie clutched the lockbox to his chest.

“You have to give it to me at some point, Howie,” said the sheriff.

“First, I want immunity.” That’s what they always said on TV.

“Immunity from what?”

That was a good question. “Well, the death penalty, for starters.”

G. William actually thumped his forehead against his desk. “Howie, unless you’ve got a dirty bomb in that box, I doubt there’s anything in there that would lead to you getting the death penalty.”

“I’m just being careful.”

“Give me the damn box.”

Howie reluctantly handed it over. “I’m pretty sure you’re violating my civil rights.”

“You’re not under arrest. You came in here voluntarily.” G. William popped the lid. “If anything, you’re violating my rights to a peaceful evening at—” He broke off. “Ah, hell. Goddamn it all.”

As G. William methodically removed each item from the lockbox with a pair of tweezers and held it up to the light, Howie recounted how he and Connie had expertly and with much savoir faire followed the trail of mystery texts that led them to Billy Dent’s backyard.

“That place is a real eyesore now, by the way,” he added. “The town should do something about—”

“Howie!” Tanner yelled. “Stop bitching about the appearance of the crime scene!”

Howie jerked at the bellow. “Sheesh, G. William. It’s just a hole in the ground. It’s not really a crime scene.”

Tanner jabbed one thick, threatening finger in the air between them. “You disturbed evidence. That’s a crime, Howie. Then there’s trespassing—the guy who owns this land didn’t give you permission to go diggin’ it up.”

Oh. Right. That was all true. How inconvenient. Howie’s mom had never found out about his brief arrest at Erickson’s hands, but he was pretty sure if G. William cuffed him now, there’d be no way to avoid telling his parents.

“Sorry ’bout that, Sheriff. We were just—”

“And this.” Tanner lifted the birth certificate with the tweezers. “This could be explosive for Jazz, you know?”

“Do you think…” Howie started, then stopped.

Tanner shrugged as though he’d said what was on his mind, anyway. “I don’t know what to think,” he said. “But we’re gonna look into all of it.” He started talking as if Howie wasn’t even in the room. “Go to the phone company and try to trace the texts from there… Probably go back to a burner… Maybe track where it was bought… Might give us a lead.” He clucked his tongue. “Damn, boy. Wish you kids’d come to me right from the get-go.”

Howie suddenly felt very small and very young. G. William’s calm, measured disappointment somehow stung worse than his outbursts. “Yeah, I know. But it was for Jazz, you know?”

“Just… just get Connie in here right away so that we can get elimination prints from her. We’ll need them from you, too.”

“I didn’t touch anything,” Howie said. “Well, just the box, but I was wearing gloves. I’ve seen CSI. Plus, it’s cold out and my hands get all scratchy.”

“Fine.” G. William picked up the phone on his desk. “You call Connie, and I’m gonna call—”

“That might be tough. She’s out of touch right now.”

G. William paused with the receiver halfway to his ear. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Howie suddenly realized that it would be bad if he told Tanner where Connie was headed, but he didn’t have a lie prepared. Not for the first time in his life, he wished he had Jazz’s think-on-his-feet-edness.

“Um…”

“What are you not telling me, Howie?” Tanner asked, his voice quiet and serious. “Now’s the time. Remember: I can always decide to file charges later. Evidence tampering. Maybe obstruction. You’re a minor and it’s your first offense, but trust me when I say this: Going into the system is no fun.”

Well, hell, there’s something else Jazz and I would have in common—juvenile records.

“There’s nothing else, sir. I swear it.” His voice didn’t sound convincing even to himself. “Oh, wait! I almost forgot. There’s a chance Jazz’s aunt is also totally a psychopathic serial killer, too. I sort of have my fingers crossed against that one, though.”

“Stop trying to distract me with nonsense!” G. William thundered. “Tell me where Connie… Oh, Lord. She’s gone to New York, hasn’t she?” G. William’s eyes widened with horror. “Jesus God, Howie! How could you let her do that? How could her parents—”

“She didn’t really give them much of a choice.”

“Erickson!” G. William bellowed with all his considerable lungpower. The deputy appeared almost immediately in the doorway—Howie figured he’d been loitering nearby, listening in.

“Yeah, boss?”

“Get the state lab on the phone and tell ’em I’ve got evidence I need fingerprinted and run through the state database and IAFIS ASAP. Plus, sweep this thing”—he gestured to the lockbox—“for any possible DNA.” As Erickson moved to scoop up the lockbox, Tanner said, “But before you do that, call the Halls and tell them that we’re getting their little girl back safe and sound.”

“Yessir.” Erickson vanished as quickly as he had appeared.

“Which airport is she landing at?” Tanner asked Howie. Howie realized that he didn’t know, and also that he would never be able to convince Tanner of this. But before he could say anything, the sheriff waved him off. “Just get out of here, Howie. I don’t have time to deal with you now. I’ll track her through her credit card.” He started jabbing buttons on the phone.

As Howie made for the door, Tanner said, “And don’t leave town!” Howie nodded meekly, biting back the urge to say, “Did you really just say that?”

He slipped out of the sheriff’s office into the night. He stared up at the sky, the same sky being navigated by Connie’s plane on its way to New York.

Fumbling his smartphone from his pocket, he quickly tapped out a text to Connie:

go ghosty, girlfriend. 5-0 headed your way

CHAPTER 46

“If this is all true,” Hughes told Jazz, “and I’m not saying it is… then who ran things before Billy escaped?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the Impressionist. I haven’t figured that connection yet. But Billy was able to communicate from prison, somehow. So maybe he’s been running this all along.”

“Then who’s Hat?” Hughes still sounded skeptical, but at least he was asking the right questions.

“I don’t know. He could be anyone. The FBI profile might match him or it might not. You guys were profiling two killers at once without realizing it. One of them the woman-hating rapist with supreme organizational skills. That’s Hat. Then there’s Dog, Belsamo—women might as well not exist for him. He’s obsessed with men and their power, his own power and the power of other men. No wonder there were so many apparent contradictions—you were looking at a portrait painted simultaneously by two different artists.

“Belsamo’s the one who helped me figure it out,” Jazz went on. “It wasn’t just the game aspect—at first I thought he was playing a game with Billy, not being played with by Billy. But then I thought about him waving his dick at me in the interrogation room. Talking about his power.”

“And?”

“And I thought about how Hat-Dog performed penectomies, but only Dog ever took the penises with him. As trophies. Hat just tossed them aside. Chop and toss. He didn’t care. He was just doing it because Dog did it and it had to look like the same guy. He probably didn’t even know Dog was keeping the penises. Hat has contempt for maleness. Dog exults in it. He sees power in maleness and he takes it with him.”

“But they both raped women—”

“Sort of. The ME reports show differences between the two. More bruising with Hat’s female victims. I think he actually raped them. As an aspect of control. He wants to possess them, and raping them is a way of establishing ownership. He enjoys it. Dog’s victims weren’t bruised. I don’t think rape excites him. I don’t think women excite him. I bet he used a sex toy to rape them, probably perimortem.”

“What about the paralysis?”

“A Hat innovation. He hates touching men. He didn’t want to kill men at all—he had to, in order to keep up the pretense of the game, that there was just one killer. In his own mind, he probably thinks of himself as the only man who matters, the only one who deserves to dominate women. Also, he was used to dealing with girls and women; it was probably easier for him to deal with men if they were incapacitated.”

Someone in a shirt and loosened tie—probably an FBI agent—opened the door and peered inside. “Oh. Didn’t know someone was—”

“Give us a minute,” Hughes said wearily.

The fed glanced at Jazz appraisingly and backed out, closing the door.

“This is all interesting—”

“Because it’s true. Look, there was only one non-white victim, right? One Asian. Gordon Cho, victim fourteen, killed by Dog right before you came to get me in the Nod. And what space did Dog land on, if you do the math?”

“Very interesting—”

“He landed on Oriental Avenue, Hughes.” Jazz shook the paper at him.

“—but it’s just that,” Hughes said. “Interesting. It’s not evidence. It’s not proof.” Hughes made a show of folding the paper in half and then in half again as he spoke. “Like my old man used to say: I ain’t sayin’ it is and I ain’t sayin’ it ain’t. I’m going to look into this. But I have to do it on my own and I have to be careful how I do it. You better actually hope you’re wrong about this, kid.”

“What? Why?”

Hughes stood and walked to the door. “Because,” he said, turning to Jazz, “if you’re right, we only know it because you broke the law to gather evidence while an official representative of the task force. Which means that piecing this all together in a legal way that will stand up in court and put Dog behind bars and lead us to Hat before he gets his next die roll…” He shook his head. “It’s all going to be ten times tougher than it would have been if you’d done this the right way. That’s why. Good enough answer for you?”

He didn’t wait for Jazz to respond, leaving Jazz alone in the office.

Jazz kept the office to himself for a few minutes after Hughes left, pondering. On one level, Hughes was right, of course. Jazz had “gone off the reservation,” as the cops put it. He’d gone rogue. Endangered the prosecution’s ability to put Belsamo and the still-anonymous Hat behind bars.

And yet… he knew he was right. He had taken the quickest, most direct route to Dog. Billy had rolled a nine for Dog, meaning that he would commit a crime that had something to do with Atlantic Avenue. Worst-case scenario, the cops knew where to wait for Dog when the time came to dump his body. One more victim would be his last.

No. No, that’s not cool. That’s Billy thinking. “One more victim” is one more too many. People are real. People matter.

Yes, Jazz had obtained evidence illegally, but that wouldn’t matter if they caught Dog in the act and snatched him up. All Hughes had to do was sit on Dog. Eventually, he would lead them to his next victim and the cops could swoop in and grab him. Make him tell them who and where Hat was. Maybe even…

Maybe even lead us to Dear Old Dad.

And Jazz wondered: Had that been his motive all along? Deep down, had he decided to forsake justice for Hat-Dog’s victims in order to hack out the quickest, most direct route to Billy? He could claim he’d simply been so excited at the thought of catching Dog that he’d ignored the law, but maybe there was a part of him that no longer cared about Hat’s and Dog’s victims, a part that wanted only one thing….

That final confrontation with Billy.

I don’t know.

He slipped out of the office. It was getting late, but the precinct still buzzed and bustled. Jazz suspected it was like this 24/7, with fresh agents and cops spelling each other at regular intervals. He knew that task forces worked around the clock, generating tens of thousands of pages of documents and evidence. It was a logistical nightmare, fueled by adrenaline, caffeine, and what G. William called “pure cussedness,” that human condition which makes it impossible to quit even when the odds are long and the hours longer.

Jazz wondered: If he stood on a table and shouted out Dog’s name and address, how many of these fine, upstanding officers of the law would be tempted to go put a bullet in the guy’s head? How many of them would actually go and do it?

Ain’t all that much difference between them and us, Billy used to say. ’Cept we’re more honest about what it is we do. We admit it drives us, turns us on. They pretend they do it for the good of “the people,” whatever that means, but they really do it ’cause they like it. They like the authority. The power. The guns. Just like we do, Jasper.

Outside, the press had settled into a sort of languor. With no news and none forthcoming until Montgomery’s usual 9:30 press briefing (timed to let the local ten o’clock news run with it), they had nothing to do, but couldn’t just leave the scene of the biggest story in NYC.

I’ve got a scoop for you guys. The name and location of one half of the killing duo that has paralyzed Brooklyn.

Could he do that? Could he use the press to his advantage? Jazz had already pushed through them to the street but now paused and looked back. It could be done. There were ways to manipulate the media to the advantage of the good guys. Whoever Hat was, he would obsessively watch the news, read the papers, scan the websites for mention of the Hat-Dog Killer. Billy had done the same, at one point amassing a set of four huge scrapbooks filled with tales of his exploits. He’d burned them late one night when his inborn paranoia finally conquered his all-consuming pride.

The press was a powerful tool, but a dangerous one, too, as apt to blow up in your face as function properly. Jazz had been taught a healthy respect for the cops—along with hatred of them, of course—but he’d been raised to fear and shun the media. He had learned many things at the feet of William Cornelius Dent, and most of them fell into the category of “Bad Things,” but avoiding the media was something Jazz was pretty sure made sense.

It was too risky. Using the media to find Hat would be like playing with nitroglycerine.

On his way back to the hotel, he bought a slice of pizza from a shabby, run-down shack of a restaurant, certain that it would have roaches embedded alongside the mushrooms he’d requested. Instead, it was the best pizza he’d ever had in his life. Okay, New York, he thought. I’ll give you this one. I’ll never be able to eat that delivery stuff again.

Howie would have loved the pizza, he knew, wiping his greasy hands on his jeans as he entered his hotel room. Connie, too. Thinking of them made him suddenly, surprisingly homesick. He’d been too busy and too distracted to miss Lobo’s Nod or his best friend and girlfriend, but now a slice of pizza brought it all home to him. New York wasn’t the place for him. He needed the wide-open skies and narrow boulevards of his hometown. He could be anonymous in New York, he realized, unknown and unsuspected. Ever since Billy’s arrest, that’s what he’d fantasized—being somewhere (being someone) that no one knew or recognized. New York should have been his Shangri-la.

But now he realized that being anonymous was the worst possible future for him. Dog’s anonymity had allowed him to kill with impunity for months. That little studio apartment reeked of insanity, but how many people had ever set foot within?

Jazz needed to be surrounded by people. Yes. And they needed to be people who knew him, people who could see the signs. People who could tell if—when?—he was tipping into Billy territory.

Connie. Howie. G. William. Maybe even Aunt Samantha, if she could be persuaded to stay in the Nod.

Could this be his family? His support system? Jazz had always thought that his past was his own burden to bear, but could it be possible that he was meant to have people around him? Was this the true meaning of “People are real. People matter”? Not that they mattered in order to be safe from him… but to be safe for him?

The phone rang, so sudden and shrill into his thoughts that he jerked like a marionette, fumbling for his cell. He swiped at the screen, but nothing happened.

Another ring.

Oh. Not his phone.

The Billy phone.

“Hello?”

“Jasper!” Billy cried, sounding like a man who’s not seen his child in years. “M’boy! How are you? Still doin’ well, I hope? Not too disappointed that the bastard cops aren’t givin’ you much help, I hope?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you do. You were right in ol’ Doggy’s doghouse. Saw it all up close. Nosed around his food dish. Saw his chain, Jasper, m’boy. I know you—thinkin’ you’re some kinda… some kinda white knight, ridin’ to the rescue. White knight, Jasper. And then the cops do nothing. How do I know that? Well, I guess ’cause I just spoke to Doggy and he’s still breathing that sweet, cold, free air.” Here Billy inhaled deeply—a pot smoker’s hearty toke, a gourmet drinking in the contents of a roiling, aromatic kettle. “Ah! Yeah, he’s still out there. He’s prospecting, Jasper, and ain’t no one trying to stop him. Unless you have designs on that for yourself. Is that it? You thinkin’ you can take down ol’ Dog all on your own?”

“The police know all about him,” Jazz said with conviction. It wasn’t even really a lie—Hughes knew everything Jazz knew at this point. By now, the detective may have come clean to Montgomery. By now, the police could… “They’re probably loading up SWAT and ready to roll on him any minute now.”

Billy blubbered laughter. “I would like to see that! I truly, truly would. You know, I would like to be there when they knock down his door with their battering ram—”

“I’d like you to be there, too,” Jazz said savagely.

“Ha! Good one! Nice! But if I could be a blowfly and buzz around, I would get a hell of a chuckle, Jasper. You’ve been there. Tell me—what evidence are those good ol’ boys gonna find in his place?”

Nothing, Jazz knew, and didn’t say.

“And girls,” Billy amended. “Good ol’ boys and girls. They got lady cops and they got that cutie FBI agent, Morales, don’t they? It’s a hell of a diverse task force, ain’t it? Got Morales and they got that big ol’ Negro Hughes, don’t they? Is it okay to say ‘Negro,’ Jasper? I’m wonderin’, ’cause it sounds a lot like that other word that people get so het up about. I gotta ask you, you bein’ my expert on such things on account of sticking it to that pretty little kinky-haired girl.”

“You bastard,” Jazz seethed. “You just keep talking and talking and talking, don’t you? Talking in circles and spirals and trying to keep everyone on their toes, babbling nonsense to cover up the fact that you’ve killed and tortured so many. People died when you escaped. You made me complicit in that. People died.”

“Were they important?” Billy asked blandly. The voice of a man asking for vanilla ice cream.

“They mattered!”

“Why? Because they were alive? Because they were people? Is that all it takes? If everyone’s special, ain’t no one special, Jasper.”

Jazz realized he’d dropped to his knees at some point during the call, the weight of Billy’s voice, the sheer mass of his psychic venom dragging Jazz down, down, down. He had trouble breathing. Billy’s voice was relentless, eternal, and it brought back every half memory and barely recalled figment from his childhood. Jazz was a boy again, not a man. He was a toddler, waddling around the house, following a mother who would soon be gone, reaching chubby arms out to a father glowing with the satisfaction of having slaughtered—at that point—dozens.

“You still with me, Jasper?” Billy said, not pausing, not giving him a chance to recover. “Hate to think I could be talkin’ to a dead line, you know? Hate to think of this fatherly advice bein’ wasted.”

“We’re tracking this call,” Jazz said, hoarse. A pathetic lie, obviously told. Jazz didn’t expect his father to buy it, and sure enough, Billy didn’t even acknowledge it, just kept on talking:

“I still have so much to teach you. There are days when I sit here, when I sit here and I think, There’s so much I still haven’t taught him. So much I need to give him. We lost time, Jasper. Lost four good years, four important years. And that’s on me. That’s my fault, y’hear me? I take that blame and I carry it on my shoulders every day and it makes me stooped and weak, to think that I let my needs and my urges come between us. I’d’a been able to control myself better, those two sunny, silly bitches’d still be alive and I’d be home and we’d be doing just fine, learning together.”

Jazz fumbled with his cell, flicking to where the pictures were stored, tapping and swiping until he found the one he was looking for: a scan of the picture of his mother. The only thing left of her.

And what about Mom? Jazz wanted to ask. Would we be one big happy family? But there was no point. Billy had killed Mom—had erased her—years before he killed in Lobo’s Nod, years before he’d been captured by G. William.

“You don’t have anything to teach me,” Jazz managed. “You taught me enough.”

“It’s never enough. When you have your own kids, you’ll understand. You’ll be fifty, and you’ll still be my boy, Jasper, and I’ll still wish I could take you and put my arm around you and teach you what you need to know in this ugly, evil world.”

Jazz swiped his mother’s picture aside. A new photo: him with Connie and Howie, all grinning for the camera. The shot was bittersweet—he enjoyed seeing the honest smile on his own face, the camaraderie with his closest friends, but the picture had been snapped by Ginny Davis one day after school. Poor, dead Ginny, her death caused by the Impressionist—and, therefore, by Billy—and not prevented by Jazz himself.

“You think you can come after me, don’t you?” Billy asked. “That’s why no one’s tracing this call. That’s why you’re not screaming your head off for help. Because you want me all to yourself. Just like a crow.”

A crow… Jazz slid his phone away and used his free hand to steady himself on the floor. The fog in his brain began to clear, just a little, and through the parting clouds he saw a black bird, its wings wide and all-encompassing. “A crow,” he said. “Crows. Belsamo—Dog—had a crow on his laptop. He made noises like a crow. And the Impressionist said something about—”

“You been thinkin’ about that story, Jasper?”

“The one you told me. About the Crow King. I looked it up once. Tried to find it in a book or on the Web. But it doesn’t exist. No one knows it.”

“Yeah. That’s the one. That was your favorite when you were a kid.”

“No.”

“Well, seemed to me like you liked it! Always got a chuckle out of it. Anyway, like I said before—it’s not just a story. It ain’t just somethin’ made up. It’s got some real in it, you see?”

“No. I don’t get it.”

“You will.” Billy chuckled. “Or you won’t! Hey, who knows, right? Crazy ol’ world we live in. Anything’s possible, I guess. But my money’s on you, Jasper. Always has been. I raised you right, boy. Raised you strong and proud and tough. Last four years or so been hard on you, I know. Been hard without your Dear Old Dad around.”

“I’ve been fine.” He forced himself up to a crouch, looking around the room for a weapon. Anything that could cause pain. He would march out of this room and keep Billy talking for days, if that’s what it took, but he would follow his father’s trail of crazy right to his hideaway and then he would do what he should have done years ago.

“You’ve been foundering,” Billy said confidently. “You keep goin’ back and forth: ‘Am I fit for other people?’ ‘Am I a monster?’ ‘Can I touch this pretty little colored girl?’ Sorry—African American girl? Or… woman? Does she make you call her a woman, not a girl?”

Jazz decided on the chair. It was heavy and sturdy. He tilted it so that the back of it rested on the floor, then kicked at one of the legs, which splintered and cracked into a good length of wood, hefty and solid with a wickedly jagged point.

“What’s that I hear in the background?” Billy asked. “Almost sounded like snapping an arm, but I know that ain’t it. You tearing up the furniture? You ready to hunt vampires, boy?”

Somehow, the solidity of a weapon in his hand cut through the morass of confusion, a blazing trail of bloodlust leading to sparkling clarity. “You get off on this crap, don’t you?” Jazz asked, the question as obvious as its answer, but his voice no longer weak. “Not just trying to mess with my head. Not just killing people. But the rest of it, too: puppetmastering these guys. You love telling them who to kill as much as you love killing yourself.”

“Not really,” Billy mused. “Ain’t true. Not at all. And you got it wrong—I don’t dictate to them. I just watch the clock and keep the rules. They decide how to play the game.”

“But you started it. You inspired it.”

“I did?” Billy sounded genuinely surprised at the notion. “You really think that? See, like I said before, I still got a lot to teach you. Like this: Wasn’t my idea to set these boys playin’ against each other. I just stepped in to help adjudicate.”

“Yeah?” Jazz recovered his cell phone and dropped it in his pocket, still clutching the stake he’d made. He paced the hotel room like that, powerful and impotent all at once, a wolf on a leash. “How’s it work? How do you pick the winner? Or do you just play until someone gets caught?”

“We play until they can’t play anymore,” Billy said.

“Oh? What does the winner get? Bragging rights? A signed Billy Dent trading card?”

“Oh, no, Jasper. Better than that. Much better, I promise. Why, you may even get it yourself one day.”

“I don’t want anything you have to offer,” Jazz snarled. “I won’t be one of your puppets. One of your pawns. I won’t be a party to any more dying.”

“You’re gonna be the death of that FBI agent, Jasper. I promise you that. You’ll watch her die.”

“Bull. I’m not killing anyone.” Except you.

“It’s all in your hands, m’boy. She can die pretty or she can die ugly. Now, if it was me, I’d start with those lips, so full and… generous, I guess, is the word I’m looking for. I would start with them. And I sure am curious to see those goodies she hides under those FBI blazers. Those shapeless blazers they wear. Not shapeless enough for her, eh? Bet you wonder, too, don’tcha?”