Blood of My Blood (14 page)

The sketch didn’t matter. By now, she figured, Billy had changed his appearance yet again. Probably as soon as she had escaped. He wasn’t stupid. You didn’t kill more than a hundred people over a twenty-year period by being stupid. Billy Dent knew exactly what he was doing. He’d most likely worked out the details of a new disguise before Connie even got to New York. As soon as it was necessary, he would just pull it on like a snake in reverse, slipping into a new skin.

“… now being told that Dent may be converging on Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn,” the reporter said, holding a hand to her ear. “Rumor has it that Dent’s son, Jasper, is a patient there, and there is some speculation that Dent is perhaps trying to retrieve his son. The hospital has been placed on lockdown, with patients confined to rooms, and medical personnel…”

Connie’s throat locked, as though a metal claw had snapped shut around it. She couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t cough or even breathe.

Billy Dent. Billy Dent was headed this way. And maybe he was coming for Jazz, but would he even consider leaving without settling accounts with the girl who’d escaped him?

Temporarily escaped. No one ever really escaped Billy, she realized. Not his son. Not his wife. Certainly not Connie.

He’s coming back. He’s going to get me this time
.

Her father had gone down to the cafeteria for something to eat. She was stuck here, alone. Helpless. Shattered foot.
Broken leg. She cast about for any kind of weapon, something she could use to defend herself when Billy came through the door. There was nothing. Even the food tray was cheap plastic, and her utensils were gone, having been taken by an orderly.

Her phone buzzed. The NYPD had returned it to her in a plastic bag, grimy with fingerprint dust. A uniformed cop had handed it over with a shrug and mumbled, “Nothing on it,” without so much as a note of apology in his voice. She had left it on the nightstand, forgotten as she dozed in and out of a drug-aided sleep.

Now she tilted it out of the bag and wiped the screen with the edge of her pillowcase. It was a text from her dad.

Stuck in the caf. They’re going to bring me up with a police escort soon. Sit tight
.

A police escort. She was a target.

She wondered if there was still a cop positioned outside her door. There had been when she’d woken up, but that was almost a day ago now. How long would they keep an eye on her?

Still, if they were sending Dad back with cops, that meant they must assume she was in danger. How quickly could they get here? What if Billy got here first?

The other phone—the room’s landline—rang. Connie stared at it as though it had grown tentacles.

It rang again.

Half expecting the Auto-Tuned voice of Samantha Dent as Ugly J, she answered and nearly sobbed with relief when she heard Jazz’s voice.

“How did you…” Connie paused and looked around, even though she was alone in her room. She lowered her voice to a hoarse whisper. “How did you know this number?”

“I just asked the hospital operator for you. Easy. I figured they’re already tracking your phone, but I went through the switchboard to the landline, so that might buy us some time.”

“Jazz, your father is here. He’s—”

“No, he’s not.”

Connie looked over at the TV. She had muted it when she realized Jazz was on the phone, and now the screen showed what she assumed to be the exterior of the hospital she was in, swarming with NYPD SWAT units in full tactical gear. Fat snowflakes had just begun to drift into frame; in a nice, warm hospital, it was easy to forget that outside, the January cold lurked with Billy Dent.

“The police have the hospital totally surrounded. They’re probably on their way to your room right now to protect you.”

“Well, that’s nice of them, but I’m not there anymore.”

“Where did they take you?”

“Let’s just say I checked myself out.”

Connie could have sworn she heard—through the phone—something like a garbage truck or a big city bus. “Are you
outside
? Did you leave the hospital?”

“Yes, and yes.”

As Jazz related his tale, beginning with choking Hughes into unconsciousness, Connie felt the room begin to rotate around her, as though her bed had been mounted on a lazy
Susan spun by a bored child. It started slowly, but as Jazz’s story lengthened and turned more and more horrifying, the speed picked up until she had to shut her eyes against it. Even then, she still felt dizzy and nauseated with truth.

“Jazz, you have to turn yourself in.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening. Not until I’m done.”

“You’re not thinking straight.” Now that she was no longer petrified of Billy Dent slipping into her room with a grin and a knife, she could start to sort her thoughts into some kind of order, as opposed to heaping them into a single unruly pile of panic. Jazz’s refusal threatened to send the room into its own sick revolution again. For the sanity of them both, she needed to talk him down.

“You’ve been through hell,” she said. “Come back. You have to take care of yourself. You’ve been
shot
.”

“It’s not that bad. Well, okay, it’s actually pretty bad. But I’m getting around all right.”

“Where are you?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere in Brooklyn.” He laughed at himself, and she could see the quirk of his lips, the dance in his eyes when he laughed like that. She loved him and hated him in that moment.

“I just wanted to call you because… because it’ll probably be a while before we talk again. I’m using Hughes’s phone, but I’ll have to ditch it soon. They can track it. Mine, too, now that I think of it. Battery’s almost dead, anyway.”

He sounded cold. She glanced at the TV again. The snowflakes weren’t any thicker in the air than before, but they weren’t thinning, either. It was literally freezing out there.

“What are you wearing?” she asked. “Are you warm enough?”

“There might a little charge left in there, though?” he said, ignoring her. “I don’t trust it. I’m going to have to ditch it. I can’t let them follow me.”

“Why? Where are you going?” But she knew before he answered.

“I’m going after Billy.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I need to do this.”

“Let the police—”

“The police can’t handle him. They’ve proven that. They had him in a maximum-security prison, and they couldn’t hold him.”

“You’re going to get yourself hurt—”

“Already did that. And it didn’t stop me. I’m going after him. He has my mom, Connie. I can’t let him hurt her.”

“Look, I get it. You’re in pain. A couple of different kinds. And you’ve had a bunch of shocks: the birth certificate. Finding out about your mom. But it’s over now. The cops know where he held me, and they’re tracking him, and they’ll get him and save your mom. It’s not all on you anymore. We can rest now. Let them do what they—”

“Connie! Listen to me!” It was the first time she could think of that he’d raised his voice to her. Once, months ago, when hunting the Impressionist, he’d tried to scare her with his creepy Billy skills. What she thought of—in her most private thoughts, not even for recording in her diary—as his “wannabe sociopath” persona. He’d thought he was doing it
for her own good, of course. She hadn’t bought it then, because she was always on guard for the sudden reappearance of those walls he could erect at a moment’s notice. She’d spent their first year together knocking them down, then scaling the ones she couldn’t bash through. She knew them intimately. Knew when he was acting out in order to push people away so that he could keep from hurting them. And she also knew that much of the time, his shields powered on not to protect someone else, but to protect himself
from
himself.

But this wasn’t typical Jazz. This wasn’t a ploy calculated to frighten her or shut her up. He was legitimately out of control. His emotions had finally smashed through those walls from the inside.

“The police can’t stop Billy,” he ranted, his voice hot. “The FBI can’t stop Billy. Cops and feds across the country had twenty years to hunt him, Connie. Do you get that? They had two
decades
. That’s longer than we’ve been alive. He hunted prospects, and he raped and murdered his way around America. And G. William got lucky. He’d be the first to tell you that. He got lucky and Billy got stupid, and the two things happened at the same time, and that’s the only reason Billy ended up in Wammaket.”

“Jazz—”

“No, I’m not finished yet. Listen. The only person who can stop Billy is Billy. And I’m the closest thing we’ve got. He spent my whole life trying to turn me into him. Well, now I get to turn that back around on him. He wants me to be a new version of him? Fine.”

“Stop it.” Connie squeezed her eyes shut even tighter, tears swelling against her lids, pressing at the corners. With her free hand, she gripped the edge of the bed, her world tilting and whirling until she felt that she could be hurled from the bed by the sheer force of their argument.

But he was relentless. Like his father. He couldn’t stop.

“And let me tell you something about that birth certificate: I owe you and Howie for finding that. For showing it to me. Because it made some things really, really clear to me.”

What things?
she wondered but did not ask. She knew he wouldn’t answer. “You’re right—you owe me. I’m calling in the debt, and what I want in return is for you to go to the first cop you see and turn yourself in. Come back to me.”

“If I turn myself in, I’ll never see you again. Your dad made that abundantly clear. And besides, I assaulted two NYPD cops and made a slew of them look like idiots. I’ll be lucky to get out of a squad room alive.”

“The police aren’t going to hurt you.” The irony of an African American defending the cops was not lost on her; it cut her to her heart. But she had to believe that the police wouldn’t hurt him too badly when they caught up to him. And certainly a lot less if he came in voluntarily than if they had to hunt him down. “Just turn yourself in. Pick a public place, if you want. I can help coordinate something with the press—”

“It’s not happening, Connie. I’m the only one who can do what needs to be done.”

What needs to be done
. Five simple words. Monosyllables. Nothing exceptional or special about them. But when
Jazz strung them together, polychromatic spatters erupted behind Connie’s closed eyelids.

“You can’t kill him.” She hated herself for saying it. Days ago, before she’d ever met the man, she had fantasized Billy Dent’s death. She lusted for it even more deeply now. But not at the expense of Jazz. Not with the risk of him spending the rest of his life in jail. It was selfish and self-absorbed of her, but even for the betterment of the world, she wasn’t willing to sacrifice Jazz. Let Hughes put a bullet in Billy. Let Jan break free and rip his throat out with her bare hands. It was the least she could do to make up for the years of jealous freedom she’d enjoyed while Jazz lived under the thumb and tutelage of a lunatic.

Anyone. Anyone but her Jazz.

“He won’t stop,” Jazz said. “He’ll never stop. Unless he is stopped.”

She had only one more card to play. It wasn’t an ace or a king—it was the meanest, most unpredictable card in the deck. She was dead serious as she threw down her trump card, the joker:

“I’m trying to understand, Jazz. I really am. I’m trying to get past it. But I need you. I need you in my life.”

“I need you in mine, too.”

“My father can’t keep us apart forever. But I can’t be with a killer. I can’t do that. If you go—if you kill him—we’re over.”

Silence. She longed to let it stretch out, to force him to respond, but she found that she couldn’t bear the mute emptiness from the other end of the line.

“Remember what I told you before? If you kill him, he wins.”

“And I told you: If I kill him, he’s dead.”

She was openly sobbing now, grief at war with rage, pissed at his stoicism, at his control. They were right at the cliff’s edge. They’d come this far, survived four different madmen to get to this very moment, and he couldn’t back down, couldn’t join her on the solid ground. He should be crying, too. He should be a wreck.

“He wants you to do this.” She sniffled and felt the heat rise within her. The anger. “You’re being stupid and selfish and blind. He wants you to lose yourself by killing him. Or by trying.”

“I know.” His voice was hushed. She imagined his breath at her ear. “I know, Connie. I’ve told myself the same thing over and over. It’s the only thing he wants from me. And I have to give it to him.”

And then he was gone, the connection severed. Connie didn’t even try to call him back.

Jazz needed clothes. Hustling past people on a cold night, he’d been lucky enough that no one noticed his bare ankles under Hughes’s overcoat, but the lightning of luck would fry him sooner or later. He also needed to give his leg some time to recover. Once out of the hospital, he’d run as best he could for several blocks, turning down alleyways, climbing over the occasional fence or low wall. If he didn’t have a destination in mind, then he figured the cops couldn’t predict his moves. Crazy thinking, he knew, but it was all he had.

Calling Connie had been equally crazy. He should have known she wouldn’t understand. She knew him better than almost anyone else, but life as Billy Dent’s son stretched the most elastic tolerance far beyond the breaking point. What would come next wasn’t a matter of intellect or reason or even mere emotion. It was as basic as biology. It was blood and sinew and brain matter. Raw.

He couldn’t turn himself in. Couldn’t give up the pursuit
of Billy. Any more than Howie could wish away his hemophilia.

He’d escaped the hospital. Now, escaping the cold was his top priority. Then he could figure out how to escape the city.

At this time of night, most places were closed. Light, warmth, and frivolity leaked out onto the street from a variety of restaurants, sorely tempting him. But restaurants were too well-lit. And wearing the overcoat at a table would make him dangerously conspicuous.

And there was the need for clothes.

A bar was a better bet. There was one at the end of the block, dark and noisy. Perfect for his purposes.

The bouncer at the door, a titanic mountain eroded and sculpted into human form, imprisoned by a black turtleneck three sizes too small, sneered at Jazz. “ID,” he grunted.

Jazz knew he looked older than seventeen, but it was too much to hope that he looked old enough not to be carded. In any event, his ID was in an evidence lockup somewhere, and he was pretty sure that even a bouncer with a neck as wide as his head wouldn’t believe it if Jazz showed him Hughes’s ID instead.

“Designated driver,” Jazz told him, and feigned a yawn, just to prove how unconcerned he was.

The bouncer paused, clearly caught off guard. He peered around.

“Assholes are always late,” Jazz complained, shivering a little. That much wasn’t faked. “And I had to park all the way over on Hoyt.” He jerked his thumb in that direction.
Always notice street names
, Billy had instructed.
Makes it seem like
you belong when you can rattle ’em off
. He stamped his feet for effect. “C’mon, man. I’m freezing my nuts off.”

The bouncer shrugged and gestured with a hand stamp. “Gotta stamp you so the bartender knows not to serve you.”

“No problem.” Jazz offered his left hand—the knuckles on the right one were scraped raw from when he’d punched the security guard.

With a bright blue
DD
stamped on his hand, Jazz stepped inside. The place was crowded, which was good. Made it easier to disappear. He fought through the crowd and found an open spot at the bar. He needed to sit for a moment. Rest his leg. Gather his thoughts.

“Just water,” he told the bartender when she looked his way. She sighed, then noticed his stamp and nodded.

Sipping the water, he considered his options. A part of him wanted to follow Connie’s advice—turn around and walk out of the bar, straight to the closest cop he could find. Turn himself in and get the cops to rescue Mom. They were cops—that’s what they did, right?

But he couldn’t rely on the police now. They weren’t his allies anymore. He didn’t necessarily blame Hughes for pinning Morales’s death on him. If he’d kept his nose out of the investigation and let Hughes take things at his own pace, Dog would have been caught nonetheless. Morales would still be alive.

But Dog probably would have killed someone else in the meantime. And Hat would probably still be out there
.

Another thought occurred to him, chilling him colder than the frigid January night air could ever hope to:
If I
didn’t get shot in that storage unit, Billy wouldn’t have come to help me. And Connie never could have escaped
.

He would deal with the police another day. Right now, what mattered was rescuing Mom. No one else could do it. Like it or not, he was a fugitive. He hadn’t killed Dog or Morales, but now he could add multiple counts of assault (on police officers, no less) to his future rap sheet, along with the initial breaking-and-entering and theft charges from his inspection of Belsamo’s apartment. The NYPD wouldn’t listen to him. They had their dragnet, their moves, their rule book, and they were going to chase Billy their way.

What they refused to understand was that “their way” had failed spectacularly and gruesomely for twenty years as Billy crisscrossed America, writing his name in the history books in the blood of one hundred and twenty-three innocents. “Their way” wouldn’t work. He was willing to bet that Billy was already out of New York, already on the way to his next safe house.

Somewhere, there would be a Crow willing to help him. Because that, Jazz knew now, was what Crows did. They were the Billy fanatics, the Dent worshippers, the ones who’d congregated to protest his imprisonment, wrote the fan letters, the people like the Impressionist. Anything Billy needed, they would provide, and getting Billy out of New York would be just one more favor.

Jazz scanned the crowd with a practiced eye. Billy’s advice over the years had most often slanted in the direction of plucking from a group the most vulnerable woman, isolating her effectively, and then removing her from the world. A
woman was no good to Jazz right at the moment. He needed clothes, which meant he needed a man. Fortunately, Billy’s lessons were adaptable.

Look for the one who’s alone in the crowd. The one not fully engaged. The one moving from group to group or person to person. It’ll take longer for that one to be missed
.

Altered states are good, too
, Billy went on.
You get yourself a drunk or a little girlie on X, and you’re halfway home
.

Someone distracted. And distractible
.

Most important of all: Just like a carpenter, you measure twice and cut once. You don’t get do-overs. You don’t get to rewind the clock and start from scratch. Once you commit, you’re in. You do it. So make damn sure the one you pick is the right one. See yourself taking her in your mind over and over. Watch the angles. Figure the possibilities. Do it all with precision until you know you can do it. Then wander it in your mind again, just to be sure
.

There was a drunk guy who was about the right size, in a cluster of people at the other end of the bar. The guy kept forcibly inserting himself into conversations, clearly a beat or two behind the thread. The indulgent shoulder shrugs and occasional eye rolls of those around him made it obvious he didn’t belong with the group, but that no one was willing to confront him. Which meant no one would ever miss him. Perfect.

Jazz lingered, nursing his water. Sitting at the bar took the weight off his leg; the relief was almost as palpable as the pain.

This would be a waiting game. Jazz kept tabs on the guy he’d begun to think of as Ryan. He didn’t know why Ryan. But he knew that he had to give the guy a name. Thinking of
him as
Drunk Guy
was one step removed from thinking of him as
Victim #1
. Which was one step from thinking of him as something less than human.

People matter. People are real. Even Ryan
.

He ordered a Coke when the bartender raised her eyebrow at him, managing to indicate both his near-empty water glass and the actual paying customers who would kill for his spot at the bar. The last thing he needed was to be kicked loose. Or to have her paying attention to him. Better to buy something. Fortunately, there was a sheaf of bills in Hughes’s wallet. As she sprayed the Coke into a fresh glass, he tipped her noticeably, but not extravagantly. He didn’t want to be memorable.

In the next instant, he had no choice but to be memorable. His picture was on the TV over the bar.

JASPER DENT ON THE RUN!
exploded from the screen like fireworks to Jazz’s dark-adjusted sight, along with a gigantic logo reading
SPECIAL REPORT
. They had pulled his driver’s license photo, which—sadly—was an extremely good likeness. He’d sweet-talked Lana, the sheriff’s office assistant who also handled the local DMV, into retaking the picture until he had one that didn’t look as though he’d just woken up from a bad dream. If he could, he would kick Past Jazz in the nuts. The damn photo was perfect. He felt eyes on him, vision crawling over his body like spiders. Everyone in the bar was looking at him.

Stop it. No one’s looking at you. No one is even paying attention to the TV. The sound is off, so no one can hear what I’m sure are blaring trumpets announcing the manhunt for yours truly
.

No one at the bar had looked at him, so he kept his head down, sipping his Coke. He just had to wait for the report to end. The bar had been playing some kind of soccer match before. Not the kind of channel to linger overlong on a local crime issue. Soon enough, they’d wrap up their socially conscientious reportage and get back to men in knee socks preventing one another from scoring.

He risked a glimpse at the TV, only to realize that the bartender was staring at him.

Don’t react. That was the most important thing. He couldn’t let her know that he’d noticed her looking at him. The recognition in her eyes presaged an imminent cry of
Holy crap! It’s the guy on TV!
There was only one way to preempt that moment, and he acted instantly:

“Holy crap!” he said in a self-consciously loud voice. “That guy looks just like me!” And pointed to himself on TV.

The guy next to him, deep in a mug of beer, goggled at him and then at the TV. The bartender blinked and turned from Jazz to the TV, then back again, and back once more.

“Isn’t that crazy?” Jazz punched the shoulder of the man next to him and adopted a tone of bemused disbelief. “Just like me! Can you believe it?”

The drunk shrugged. “Lotta people look alike,” he mumbled.

The bartender approached him. “You
do
look like him,” she said.

“Like?” Jazz sneered. “That guy could be my twin! That’s creepy as hell!” He shuddered in deep revulsion at the depredations scrolling on the screen under his own name. His New York accent—liberally borrowed from the cops he’d been around over the past few days—seemed to be working. “I wouldn’t want to be whoever the hell tonight, that’s for sure! I better stick around here until they catch him, huh?”

The bartender considered, then nodded. “That might not be a bad idea,” she said, and topped off Jazz’s Coke with her beverage gun. Jazz nodded his thanks and reached for Hughes’s wallet, but she shook her head. “On the house. I do it for all the fugitives.” She grinned at him.

Jazz flashed his most winning smile. His megawatt Charmer. The bartender was the only person in the room. The only woman in the world. She actually blushed, barely visible under the bar’s red-black lighting.

“I get off at three,” she mentioned.

Jazz nodded. “Like I said—I’m not going anywhere tonight.”

He watched her as she walked away, an alternate plan forming. If Ryan never went to the bathroom, he would need another way to get some clothes and get out of Brooklyn. Maybe it made sense to stick around and let the bartender—he decided her name was Doreen—take him home. The police wouldn’t look twice at a couple walking home together, hunting as they were for the desperate loner known as Jasper Francis Dent.

That could work
.…

Just then, though, Ryan broke away from his cluster of sort-of friends and made an unsteady, weaving, lurching path for the bathroom. Jazz casually slid out of his position at the bar and pushed through the crowd, timing his arrival just after Ryan’s. Ryan stopped, hand on the knob, sensing Jazz there. With the goggle-eyed, jelly-necked courtesy of the abjectly drunk, he essayed a little bow and gestured to Jazz, offering him the first use of the john.

Jazz declined, and Ryan, with a shrug, went into the bathroom.

Once you get her alone, Jasper, you got any number of ways to make her yours. Quick and quiet’s best. Most women, you show ’em a weapon or even just your intent, they’ll clam up real quick. They know they’re weaker. They all been taught: Give him what he wants and he’ll let you live. So you let ’em think it’s a robbery or such, and by the time they realize what they’re really in for, you’ve already got her trussed up or gagged or both
.

Course, if she looks like she’ll put up a fight, you just blitz her. Overwhelming strength. Overpower her right away. Shock and awe. Shocking and awesome
.

Ryan was drunk, but he was Jazz’s size and he was a man. Jazz decided on blitz attack.

Before Ryan had the chance to lock the bathroom door behind him, Jazz shoved it open and stepped inside, shutting it quickly. The bathroom was tiny, barely big enough for a toilet and a sink, lit with the same hell-on-the-eyes crimson bulbs as the bar. Ryan moved as though in slo-mo, lidded
eyes registering Jazz’s presence, even as his brain attempted to process that same presence. His fly was already down.