Текст книги "Game"

Автор книги: Barry Lyga

Соавторы: Barry Lyga
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

CHAPTER 8

“Can’t say as I like this idea,” G. William told Jazz, settling with a sigh into the chair behind his desk. The chair wheezed and squeaked with complaint, and Jazz wondered—as he always did—if he would be there on that inevitable day when the chair gave up entirely and dumped its occupant to the floor. Today was not that day, apparently.

“Connie agrees with you,” Jazz told him. “She thinks I shouldn’t be going alone.”

“Then this is one of the few times I disagree with your girlfriend. Because I don’t think you should be going at all. You’re seventeen. You—”

“ ‘—should be thinking about college applications and getting into your girlfriend’s pants, not gallivantin’ all over God’s creation,’ ” Jazz quoted, finishing the riot act G. William read to him on a regular basis. “I know. I’ve heard it all before.”

“I’m not gonna deny you were a big help with Frederick Thurber”—the Impressionist’s real name, finally dug up after some intense detective work on G. William’s part—“but that was a special case. He was imitating your daddy. Someone whose methods and special blend of crazy you knew real well. What makes you think you got any special insight into this Hot Dog?”

“The Hat-Dog Killer,” Jazz corrected him.

“All crazy people don’t think the same,” G. William went on. “It’s hubris to think otherwise in your case.”

“Hubris? Been hitting the word-a-day calendar, G. William?”

The sheriff cracked a smile for the first time since Jazz had walked into the office and told him of his intention to go to New York with Hughes. “That trick doesn’t work on me. The one where you insult someone, try to get them off their game, rattled? File that away as one way you can’t manipulate ol’ G. William.”

“Look,” Jazz said, leaning forward urgently, as if he’d never even tried manipulating the sheriff, “you caught Billy, right? You figured out the connections between all of his victims and the ones here in Lobo’s Nod, and then you went out and caught him when no one else in the world could have. But if someone else—someone other than the Impressionist, someone not copying Billy—started stacking up bodies in the Nod again, it’s not like you would just throw your hands up in the air and say, ‘Oh, well—all crazy people don’t think the same. I guess I won’t even try to catch this new guy.’ Would you?”

The sheriff drew one of his impeccably laundered, monogrammed handkerchiefs from a pocket and snorted heartily into it. “Nah. All that tells me is that I oughtta be the one headed to New York, not you.”

Was that a joke? Sometimes Jazz couldn’t tell. The sheriff had sworn that catching Billy Dent had been one serial killer too many for him, but maybe G. William was jealous that Jazz was getting called up to the big leagues.

“I could put in a good word for you,” he said lightly.

G. William waved the very idea out of the air like a bad smell. “If I wanted to go to the city, I’d’ve taken up the FBI on their offer when I was a much younger man and could still make the pretty girls swoon. You want to go to New York and try to help these folks, that’s your business.”

“Well, yeah.”

“But”—and here G. William leaned across the desk, pointing a stubby finger—“you listen and listen good, Jasper Francis: No good will come of this. You think you’re gonna find something there in New York.”

“No kidding. A serial killer.”

“No. More than that. You think you’re gonna find your soul. Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve been thinkin’ that someday you’re gonna crack and end up like your daddy. And you’ve been looking for proof that you won’t. What you don’t realize is this: The looking is the proof. Trust me when I tell you that Billy Dent never had a moment’s doubt in his life about what he was and what he was doing. Your doubt is your soul, kid.”

It made all the sense in the world, and Jazz wished he could believe it. But he knew too much. He knew of too many serial killers who’d been horrified by their own actions, ones who’d acted on impulse and later didn’t understand that impulse. And, of course, the ones who’d acted on impulse and then discovered—to their delight—that they loved it, that the blood and the torture and the other things fulfilled them and assuaged their longings in ways that nothing else could.

“I’m just looking for a killer in New York. And I hear they have good bagels.”

G. William regarded him in silence for a moment, then sighed. “Bring me back a knish,” he said at last. “Haven’t had a decent one in ten years.”

Going to New York should have been as easy as packing a suitcase and heading to the airport, but Jazz didn’t even own a suitcase. The closest thing in the house was a dusty, mothball-reeking valise that Gramma had probably used on her honeymoon back in 1887. Or whenever she’d been young. The idea of accompanying an NYPD detective to New York with Gramma’s beaten, smelly brick of a suitcase was a nonstarter. So Jazz did what he always did when he needed help.

“This here,” Howie said, hefting a sleek black roller bag as if it contained purloined diamonds from some fantasy kingdom, “is the latest and greatest in travel technology. Guaranteed not to tip over. Mesh pocket for water bottle. Separate exterior compartment for laptop—”

“I don’t have a laptop.”

“—single-post handle construction for pushing or pulling,” Howie went on, undeterred. “Extra-lubricated ball bearings for smooth gliding action.” Howie waggled his eyebrows. “That’s what she said.”

Jazz took the roller bag from Howie, unzipped it, and peered inside. “Plenty of room, and I won’t be embarrassed with it in the airport. That’s all I care about.”

“ ‘Who’s going to watch your grandmother while you’re gone?’ he asked, knowing the answer already,” Howie said drily.

“Yeah, about that…”

Jazz had thought long and hard and then longer and harder about what to do with his grandmother for the next couple of days. He had actually considered bringing her to New York with him, but the thought of being in a confined space with her for the duration of the flight was enough to make him want to bail out of the plane without a parachute. And then there was the idea of Gramma on her own in the biggest, craziest city in the world while Jazz was off prospecting the prospector for the NYPD. There was a slight chance that Gramma’s crazy would complement New York’s just fine, but he wasn’t going to bank on it. Images of Gramma attacking tourists capered in before his mind’s eye, and he could almost hear her shrieking, “Tell that bitch to stop staring at me!” while pointing at the Statue of Liberty.

No, Gramma would have to stay in Lobo’s Nod. And he couldn’t rely on the usual suspects to take care of her—it was one thing to let Erickson sit with her for a couple of hours, but if he had anyone on G. William’s staff looking after her, it would take no time at all before the sheriff had Jazz’s case with Social Services expedited right up the priority list… and bounced Jazz into a foster home and Gramma into an assisted-living facility. He’d already dodged that bullet once when Billy—in a fit of parental protection like no other—had horrifically tortured and slaughtered Melissa Hoover and conveniently deleted the files she’d accumulated on Jazz’s situation. It would be months before the Social Services people reconstructed anything incriminating. Jazz hoped it would take until he turned eighteen, at which point it would become moot.

In the meantime, the cops—friendly to Jazz, but honor bound to report Gramma’s attenuating connection to planet earth—were out as babysitters. And Howie was willing but too weak. Gramma could cause some serious damage if she went on one of her crazed slapping and punching benders.

Jazz had had no choice but to call his aunt Samantha.

It felt strange to think of her as “Aunt Samantha.” He’d never met the woman in his life—Billy’s older sister had moved away from Lobo’s Nod right after graduating high school and never looked back. In the years since Billy’s ravages had become nighttime news fodder, she had done her level best to stay out of the limelight, avoiding the press at every turn. Her only comment had come at the end of a long day of being hunted by the media, stalked with the same precision and tenacity Billy evinced when prospecting. A reporter with a camera crew had finally pinned her down in a mall parking garage, where she struggled with a recalcitrant door while trying to balance her purse, a shopping bag, a precarious cup of coffee, and a plastic hanger sheath with a red dress within. As the reporter pestered her for a comment, Samantha gamely and repeatedly said, “I have nothing to say,” as though it were a protective mantra shielding her from a demon.

But then the door finally came open, jerking her back, and the beautiful new dress slid off the hanger onto the grimy parking garage floor, with the coffee landing on top of it. To prove that the universe loves synchronicity—whether good or ill—this happened at the exact moment that the reporter asked, “What do you think should happen to your brother?”

And poor Samantha had had enough. Enough of her brother. Enough of the reporters. Enough of the damn dress it had taken her all day to find. She’d kicked the car door and screamed, “There isn’t a hell in the universe hot enough for my [bleep]damned brother! If they wanted to kill him, I’d flip the [bleep]ing switch myself!”

The bleeps, of course, were courtesy of network censors. Obviously, they found her justifiable “mature language” too offensive and shocking for the delicate sensibilities of the same viewers who regularly tuned in to hear details of Billy’s extensive career of raping, torturing, and murdering mostly young women.

“I’ve got some coverage,” Jazz told Howie, “but I need you to backstop.”

“So that Social Services doesn’t go medieval on you,” Howie said, with what he thought was the air of some Far Eastern mystic. “You could solve all of this, you know, with some paperwork….”

Jazz groaned. He didn’t want to have this conversation again. Howie had been bugging him recently about filing the paperwork to become an emancipated minor. It would mean no more looking over his shoulder for Social Services and would give him more latitude in taking care of his grandmother.

“No. We’ve been through this before—”

“You’ve dismissed it before. Not the same thing, bro.”

“You sound like an idiot when you say ‘bro.’ And it’s too complicated. The background checks and interviews alone would have them swooping down on the house. She’d end up in adult care somewhere, and I’d spend my last few months before I hit eighteen in a foster home while the freakin’ emancipation paperwork was still being processed. No, Howie. Forget it. It’s easier just to lay low until I’m eighteen.”

“Well, first of all,” Howie said, ticking off points on his fingers, “I totally sound like Ice-T when I say ‘bro.’ Second of all, it’s still your best move. You can’t keep this up forever.” He gestured to the house, encompassing with that one motion the entire complexity of Jazz’s life.

“I don’t have to. I just have to hold on a little longer. And all you have to do is spell me for a couple of days. Gramma likes you.”

“Usually she likes me,” Howie said darkly. “Sometimes she thinks I’m some kind of giant skeleton come to eat her soul.”

“Sometimes you look like a giant skeleton,” Jazz reminded him.

“Yeah, but the soul-eating part is tough to get over. Very well, then. I will be your Sancho Panza once more.”

“I don’t think that exactly means what you—”

“But there is, of course, the small matter of my babysitting fee to discuss….”

“For God’s sake, Howie! How many more tattoos can you put on me? I’m running out of space!”

“Au contraire, mein freund. You have your legs and your forearms, for example.”

“I’m gonna look like a complete freak by the time you’re done with me. Can you at least make it something cool?”

“A flaming basketball is cool!” Howie protested.

“No. It isn’t. A flaming basketball is cool to a ten-year-old. And Yosemite Sam is only cool in comparison to SpongeBob SquarePants. So, please—think carefully. Something cool.”

Howie folded his unending arms over his sunken chest. “Your words hurt, Jazz. They hurt like cotton balls thrown in my direction. But I’ll consider your request, and by the time you get back from New York, I will be prepared with the kick-assingest of the kick-ass to adorn your form.”

“I can hardly wait.” Maybe, Jazz thought, he should just stay in New York. “Look, it won’t all be on you. My aunt Samantha will be here.”

Howie actually gasped, just like a character in one of those Victorian romance movies, hand to his chest and everything. All he needed to do was say, “Oh, my soul!” to complete the image.

“Samantha? The legendary un-crazy Dent, told of in myth and fables? The only teenage girl to see Billy Dent’s tallywhacker and live to tell the tale? That Samantha?”

Jazz sighed. Not only had he never met her, he’d never spoken to her. He’d found her phone number in Gramma’s address book. Actually, he’d found ten phone numbers, crossed out and written over. The only legible one seemed relatively recent, and the area code was in Indiana, where that reporter had waylaid her. Jazz took a gamble that Gramma had managed to get the phone number right and called.

“Hello?” a tentative female voice had said.

“Is this Samantha Dennis?” She hadn’t married, but she’d changed her name legally years ago.

“Yes.” A note of suspicion. “Who is this? How did you get this number?”

For Jazz, it was a moment of liquid reality, as though the world had begun to melt in places where it usually remained solid. He was speaking to the only flesh and blood he had on the entire planet that wasn’t completely insane. He had no idea how to act. How did people talk to their relatives when their relatives weren’t sociopaths or extreme-level seniles?

“My name is…” He stopped. It seemed too formal. “This is Jazz,” he said. “Jasper, I mean. Your nephew.”

The silence from the other end of the connection burrowed into his brain and seemed to hollow him out from within.

“Jasper,” she said at last, her voice so carefully neutral that even Jazz’s skilled ear couldn’t tell what she was thinking or feeling.

“It took some persuading,” Jazz told Howie, “but she’s arriving tomorrow morning and she’ll stay until school starts again. I just need you to come over and help her out in the afternoon and evening. That’s Gramma’s worst time. She’s okay most of the morning.”

“So I get to help out during the Bad Hours. Great. Should have let the Impressionist kill you,” Howie grumbled.

“He wasn’t going to kill me.”

“That’s just because he didn’t really, really know you.”

A few hours later, after Gramma was tucked safely in bed and Howie had wheedled permission to order dirty movies on pay-per-view while on duty, Jazz wheeled his borrowed suitcase down his driveway to Hughes’s rental car. He had called Connie to say good-bye to her, but she hadn’t answered. Maybe she was angry that he was going to New York without her. Well, he couldn’t worry about that right now.

“Let’s do this,” he said, and climbed in.

They said nothing for most of the ride to the airport. Jazz had thought the fast-talking New York detective would start right in with information about the Hat-Dog Killer, but Hughes seemed content to focus on the back roads that, to him, were unfamiliar. When they pulled onto the highway, Jazz couldn’t help turning to look off to one side. He could just barely make out the edge of the Harrison property, where Fiona Goodling’s body had been found, kicking off Jazz’s hunt for the Impressionist.

“Don’t be surprised or overwhelmed by the city,” Hughes said suddenly.

“What?”

“You were just looking a little homesick already. I’m just telling you to prepare yourself, is all. The city can be overwhelming your first time.”

Homesick? Jazz snorted. “I’ve seen New York on TV. I think I can handle it. It can’t be worse than growing up with Billy.”

“Oh?” Hughes shrugged. “It’s pretty big.”

“So what?”

“It can be confusing.”

“Don’t care. I’ll be with you.”

“Whole lotta people who don’t look like you.”

Jazz bristled. “Just because my grandmother is—” He stopped himself and started over. “I’m not like her. I’m not a racist. Dude, my girlfriend is black.”

“Hey, yeah? Good for you. So’s mine.”

Jazz threw his hands up. “Fine. I lose. You win. Whatever.”

Hughes grinned, and Jazz suddenly realized what was really going on. The detective was poking and prodding, looking for weaknesses. Trying to find Jazz’s pressure points. And Jazz had given him one. Cops and crooks, Billy whispered to him, always usin’ each other’s tools.

All right, then. Lesson learned. Hughes liked to pick around in other people’s heads. Well, Jazz was no slouch at that, and he’d done a decent job keeping Billy out of his head back at Wammaket. It was tough to catch Jazz with the same trick twice. He adapted easily. A sociopath’s best trick—adaptation—and one that Jazz couldn’t help being damn good at.

“Kid,” Hughes said, his tone friendly now, “you gotta stop taking everything so seriously. Otherwise high blood pressure’ll kill you before your pops ever gets a chance.”

Ah, high blood pressure. What a way to go. Somehow a heart attack or a stroke sounded positively peaceful and bucolic compared to what Jazz knew Billy to be capable of. Still, Jazz didn’t fear his father. Or, more accurately, he had no personal fear of his father. Billy was convinced that Jazz would someday take up the family business and be the serial killer that other serial killers looked up to. Jazz knew his father would never jeopardize that by harming his only son. Billy had too much of himself—his ego, his madness, his genius—invested in Jazz to risk killing him.

“My dad would never hurt me. Not physically, at least.”

“So, no spankings when you were a kid?” Hughes said it with a lightness so deft and so false that even Jazz thought for a moment that it was just curious conversation. But it wasn’t. This was a skilled detective, a trained interrogator, digging for information. Jazz was impressed—he was tough to fool, and Hughes had come close.

“Nope. Not once.” It was harmless enough information to give to Hughes. It was also true. Billy had never laid a hand on Jazz as a child.

“So where do you think your dad is these days?”

Now Jazz shot him his best I-don’t-talk-about-my-dad look. Hughes was visibly rocked by it.

“Sorry.” He recovered nicely; they made ’em tough in NYC. He refocused on the road ahead. “Just making conversation.”

“You make conversation like the Inquisition.”

Hughes laughed. “Occupational hazard. Could be worse—I dated an ADA once and she couldn’t ask what you wanted for dinner without it feeling like a cross-examination. You’ve got a hell of a glare, kid. But I guess that’s to be expected.”

Jazz shrugged and looked out the window.

“Look, I’m not pumping you for info or anything. I’m not trying to find your dad. But I’m a homicide cop. It’s like if I had A-Rod’s batting coach in the car; how am I not supposed to ask questions? And I know the fibbies have already bugged you about him. I’m just curious. Not putting together a case or anything.”

Jazz blew out a sigh. “I’ll tell you what I told them: He’s nowhere they expect. He’s not near the Nod, watching over me or Gramma. He’s not in any of the places he used to prospect. He’s got to go somewhere where he can become invisible. A city.”

“New York?”

Jazz shrugged. “Could be. Heck, if the murders hadn’t started before he broke out of jail, I’d say maybe he was even Hat-Dog.”

“Nope. I can guarantee that’s not the case. We have consistent DNA from multiple scenes that doesn’t match Billy’s. Our unsub isn’t Billy Dent.”

Jazz snorted. Unsub. It was short, he knew, for “unknown subject,” the shorthand law enforcement used to describe their quarry. “You guys and your jargon. Makes you think you know something. Makes you think you can catch, define, and calculate the invisible world.”

He expected it to rattle Hughes, but the cop merely drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “I’ve read The Crucible, too, kid. This isn’t a witch hunt. It’s real.”

On that, they both fell silent for the remainder of the drive. At the airport, Jazz watched closely as Hughes negotiated security so that he could carry his service weapon on the plane. Jazz had never flown before; he’d heard that airport security was stronger than it had once been, but if that was true, then he could only imagine that it had once been possible to carry automatic rifles openly onto planes. He lingered, watching, and made a decision.

Once his belongings were on the conveyor belt to the X-ray machine, Jazz waited until a TSA agent motioned him through the scanner. Jazz hesitated. “I’m not going through that thing,” he said. “My girlfriend told me that those full-body scanners were never fully medically tested.”

Clearly exasperated, the TSA agent said, “I assure you, they’re totally safe.”

“Right. And you’re a doctor and you can guarantee me that I let that thing scan my nads and I don’t end up sterile? Or having kids with six fingers someday?”

“So you’re opting out?”

“Yes.”

“Male opt-out!” the TSA agent called out to the universe in general.

Jazz was shunted aside to another spot. Hughes, already through security, gathered up his own stuff as well as Jazz’s and waited, frowning. Jazz didn’t react. He just lingered until a second TSA agent came over, this one wearing latex gloves.

“You’re opting out?” the agent asked.

“Yes,” Jazz said, his voice nasal and clogged. Part of it was a put-on. Part of it, though, was the little bit of shampoo he’d shot up his nose before getting into line. “Opting out.” And then he coughed—a really convincing, wet-sounding hack that made the TSA agent wince and turn away slightly.

The TSA agent talked Jazz through exactly what he was about to do and where he would be touching him. When he asked, “Do you have anything in your pockets?” Jazz said, “Just a Kleenex,” and then proceeded to produce it and blow his nose noisily into it. He left it open just long enough for the TSA agent to see the disgusting yellowish shampoo goop before folding it up.

“Just, uh, hold on to that,” the agent said, and proceeded to give Jazz the quickest, most perfunctory pat-down in the history of pat-downs. Jazz noted three spots on his body where he could have easily concealed some sort of contraband.

By the time he rejoined Hughes, the cop was shaking his head in amusement. “You are Homeland Security’s worst nightmare,” he said as they made their way to their gate.

“You could have intervened.”

“Yeah, but I know you’re harmless.”

Jazz shrugged. “You know how you said before that you have a black girlfriend, too? That was a lie. You don’t. And you never dated an ADA, either. You’re just trying to keep me out of your head because you know where I come from. You know just enough to know that I’m anything but harmless. So you make jokes and you drop in what seems like personal stuff to keep me off guard.” Jazz grinned the grin he used when he wanted to put people at ease. “You’re pretty good at it. But I’m better.”

Hughes gaped at him.

Jazz let the grin linger for another moment, then said, “I’m gonna hit the bathroom before we board,” leaving Hughes alone with his thoughts.

Later, in the cramped space of the plane, he surprised himself by falling asleep almost immediately. He didn’t even wake up when the plane took off.

He dreamed.

Touch me

says the voice

again

His fingers

Oh, the flesh

So warm

So smooth

Touch me like that

His skin on hers.

Hers.

He knows her flesh.

like that

So warm

like that

it’s all right

it’s not all right

it’s right

no, it’s wrong

but the wrong makes it right

and the right makes it wrong

and

Jazz woke up as the plane landed and groggily grabbed his bag from the overhead. They had an hour-long layover before their next flight; Hughes tried to strike up a conversation, but Jazz withdrew. He was off-kilter, slightly airsick, and definitely dreamsick.

Who was it in his dream? What was he doing? Why did this dream keep recurring? He actually preferred the old dream, the one where he’d cut someone, maybe even killed someone. At least it was familiar. He had become accustomed to its specific nauseating qualities. The new dream kept knocking him down every time he tried to get up.

What did it mean? What was lurking back there in the cold, dark recesses of his memory? What secrets were hidden in his past? Jazz felt as though his own life was a minefield, one he’d lost the map for. One wrong step and he’d lose a foot or a leg.

Or his mind.

When Jazz awoke from the cutting dream, he felt confused. Guilty. A bit sick. When he woke from the sex dream, though, he felt a tiny bit of guilt, sure. But otherwise just… aroused. And he hated himself for it. Other guys his age could have dreams like that, sure. That was okay for them. But not for Jazz.

Because… This is how it starts, he thought. Dreams. Fantasies. Seems harmless at first. But then the dreams and the fantasies aren’t enough. And the next thing you know, you’re Jeffrey Dahmer, drilling holes in the heads of corpses in an attempt to make sex zombies, and the crazy thing isn’t that you’re drilling the heads to make sex zombies—the crazy thing is that doing so seems completely and utterly normal and necessary.

“You’re awful quiet,” Hughes said, edging back into conversation after they’d not spoken for hours. Jazz respected that the detective could recover from being busted before, but he had more important things on his mind. When he didn’t respond, Hughes gave up and left him alone.

They boarded the second plane, and this time Jazz stayed awake, peering out the window, feeling the sudden lurching rush as the plane ramped up and left the ground. It made him slightly dizzy, and it felt like waking up from the dream all over again. He closed his eyes and gripped the armrests and told himself that it would be over soon.

He didn’t mind the landing as much. At first, it seemed almost gentle, but then stabbing pains started in his ears from the change in air pressure and the plane touched down, the cabin roaring with the sudden speed. The violence of it was almost soothing. Distracting.

They gathered up their bags again and emerged into the terminal at JFK. As soon as they walked through security, Jazz froze, unable to believe his eyes.

“What?” Hughes asked. “What’s wrong?”

Grinning, Connie said to them, “What took you guys so long?”