Blood of My Blood (21 page)

Some indeterminate time later, Jazz awoke, feeling eyes on him. Bleary-eyed and groggy, he looked over and realized Marta was staring at him from the sleeping berth. She had a laptop back there, its lid open, and a small antenna jutting out of one end. No Wi-Fi, of course, but she must have had a cellular modem in there.

Jazz figured he was pretty unavoidable on the Internet right about now.

He lunged for the gun a microsecond before she did, her shock and realization paralyzing her for that crucial instant. His leg screamed at the lurching movement, but he ignored it, focused on nothing but the feel of the gun in his hand.

Credit to Marta: It wasn’t a tiny little thing. She had a nice, big Desert Eagle, with a modified grip. He lay there, across the divide between the front seat and the berth, and made a point of aiming the gun at the ceiling.

“Let’s not do anything crazy,” he said. “We can both come out of this just fine.”

Her eyes darted back and forth, from the gun to Jazz’s eyes to his leg and back again. She was trying to figure out if she could smash his leg, use the pain there to make him lose the gun.

“Think about it, Marta: Is my leg really hurt? Or is that just something I told you to play on your sympathy?”

The notion itself wasn’t all that persuasive, but the fact that he’d so obviously and easily read her intent made her think twice. She shrugged and said nothing—just glared at him.

“What are they saying about me? If they’re telling the truth, then you know I haven’t killed anyone. Did I hurt some people? Yeah, I did. I’m being honest with you. None of them permanently. Or even badly. I did what I had to do. My father has my mother. Hostage. I’m the only one who can help her.”

“The cops—”

“The cops took twenty years to catch Billy last time. My mother doesn’t have the luxury of that kind of time.”

“Where are you headed?”

He couldn’t tell her the truth. He mimicked her shrug. “Just a little farther down the road. And then you’re done with me.”

Something had to break the tension or else they’d be here all day. Jazz popped the ammo clip from the gun and ejected the round in the chamber. He tucked the clip and the stray round into his pocket and then, without fanfare, reversed the gun and handed it to Marta by the handle.

She took it without hesitation and with overt disgust. “Useless.”

“Well, now neither one of us can use it.”

“Get out of my rig.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that. I need you to take me farther. I promise not to try anything or to hurt you. Honest.”

“And what’s that worth to me?”

“Think about it: I’ve only hurt people in my way. You’re not in my way.”

She snorted. Jazz hauled himself back over the divide into the passenger seat. His leg protested, but he tamped down the pain, not allowing his expression to betray him.

Marta crawled out into the driver’s seat, the gun jammed into her waistband. She settled her hands on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead.

“You seemed like such a nice kid,” she said at last.

“I am a nice kid. Usually. Or I try, at least.”

She gunned the engine. “How long?”

“Few more hours. I’ll pick a spot to get out.”

They drove in silence for a long time. Jazz figured they were probably well suited to that. Marta had to be used to hours of quiet from her long hauls, and Jazz had been trained by Billy to sit without making a sound for hours at a time. Stalking, after all, was by and large a noiseless activity.

At one point, a police car pulled up beside them. No lights. No siren. It was just pacing them.

Not necessarily a problem. Could just be a coincidence.

But when Marta noticed the cruiser, her eyes visibly widened and Jazz imagined the sparks in her brain right now, most of them screaming
RESCUE
.

“Don’t do it,” he told her. “Keep driving, and let me out when I say, and you’ll be fine. I don’t want to have to take you hostage. That doesn’t end well for anyone.”

“Tough to take me hostage with just bullets.”

“You think I can’t take away that gun from you?” In truth, he wasn’t one hundred percent sure he could. His leg had been throbbing terribly for the past hour or so, and it required most of his concentration not to let that show. But he didn’t have to tell the truth—he only had to sound like he was telling the truth. And in this case, the harsher the truth, the better.

“Maybe you think you can get the drop on me,” he went on. “Maybe you’re willing to risk me getting the gun. I get that. I do. But here’s the thing, Marta. I know your license plate numbers. I know the DOT number on your rig. When we stopped for gas, I went through the glove box and learned what I could from that stuff. I just escaped an entire city of cops looking for me. You turn me in now, and I’ll just escape again.

“But listen closely, Marta—if you turn me in, when I escape, I promise you one thing: I won’t kill you. I’ll leave you alive. You have my word on that. But everyone you love? Everyone you care for?
Them
, I’ll kill. Horribly. Slowly. And I’ll be sure to record their final moments, as they curse you with their last breaths because I’ll make sure they know that
you
are the reason why they’re dying. So make your decision, Marta. Make it now. Be sure about it.”

He meant it. Until he’d spoken the words, he didn’t realize how far he was willing to go to rescue his mother. But the
endless crashing waves of pain from his leg and the lack of more than a few hours’ sleep had sent him into a sweaty, desperate zone of near hysteria. It took all he had in him to keep from exploding at Marta, from yelling,
For God’s sake, just drive the goddamn truck and get me home so I can kill my father! I don’t want to kill you! I want
him
dead, but if I have to kill you to get to him, I will!

Such displays of emotion, though, were counterproductive.
You go screamin’ and they start screamin’. Only natural. Stay nice and calm, icy, and they listen real good. They believe you
.

Marta clenched her jaw and eased off the gas slightly. The rig fell back a bit and the cop kept on his course.

Jazz exhaled slowly through his nose so that she couldn’t tell, his gaze rigidly fixed straight ahead, masking the terror that blazed through him.

That last voice in his head.

It hadn’t been Billy’s.

It was his own.

Dr. Cullins had not appreciated the announcement that Connie would be checking out of the Blood-n-Bones Hotel and had registered her disapproval with clipped, no-nonsense medicalese, delivered in that unidentifiable accent of hers. Connie put her acting chops to good use, gazing levelly at the doctor, pretending to listen and absorb everything she said.

“Thanks for your concern,” she said when Dr. Cullins paused for breath. “But I’m really ready to go home.”

“We’ll make sure she follows up with our family doctor,” her dad added, a comforting parental insert that elicited only an eye roll from Cullins.

And now Dad was off organizing things, something he excelled at, and Connie was staggering around her hospital room, practicing with her new crutches. She made her way to the bathroom, where she allowed herself to sit down and pee like a human being for the first time since being
admitted to the hospital. The catheter had been removed (and
that
was a sensation she had precisely zero desire to relive), and she felt like she’d recovered some of her dignity. Such a simple thing. Then again, for a while there, she’d thought she would never get to do even the simplest things ever again.

She thought of Jazz’s mom, still in Billy’s clutches. Jazz was convinced that his mother had to be alive, that Billy’s pathology wouldn’t allow him to kill her because he wanted to save that dark honor for his son. Connie wasn’t so sure. She wasn’t deluded enough to think that she knew Billy Dent better than Jazz did, but she thought she had a pretty good handle on the lunatic. Certainly better than most of his victims, at least, none of whom could report in on their observations, being dead and all.

Maybe Jan was still alive. Connie certainly hoped so. But Billy could keep her alive and still make her life hell. Psychologically, emotionally, and physically, his torments could make Jan beg for death.

That could even be Billy’s plan. She closed her eyes, and she saw a battered, bloody, part amputee on a dirty floor in some anonymous wreck of a building somewhere: Jazz’s mother, begging her son to kill her.

Yes. That tracked. That made perfect Billy-sense, and Connie’s gorge rose and swelled at the knowledge that she could think like Billy now. How had Jazz lived his whole life like this?

Back out in the room, she turned on the TV and slumped in
a chair. More local news about Jazz and Billy. People calling for the head of the captain Jazz had met—Montgomery—as well as the commissioner’s and the mayor’s.

There was nothing she could do from her chair, and even changing the scenery from a Brooklyn hospital room to her own bedroom in the Nod would accomplish little. She was sidelined, down for the count. As Dr. Cullins had said, it would be months before she was truly mobile again. In the meantime, all she had to offer was her brain. And maybe that could help.

She called Howie, surprised when he answered immediately. In the time since her escape from Billy, winter break had ended and school had started again in the Nod. According to texts from Mom, there was talk of temporarily closing it down again if the FBI confirmed rumors that Billy Dent was headed back to town. Connie wasn’t sure where she would feel safer—at school, surrounded by a thousand kids, where an unfamiliar adult would stick out, or at home, with her parents and absolutely no weapons.

“Playing hooky?” she asked Howie.

“I was injured in the line of duty. Parents want me home. How you doing?” Howie’s voice was clipped, lacking its usual bounce. No joviality. No faux urban patois. No lurid, inappropriate comments.

Something was up.

“Jazz and Billy are all over the TV here. What about down there?” she asked.

“The usual.”

“The cops here think Billy is headed back to Lobo’s Nod. Jazz, too.”

“Oh, really?”

There was no such thing as a “poker voice,” but if there had been, Howie would have the absolute worst in the world.

“What are you up to, Howie?”

“These days? About six seven, six eight. Depends on the state of my hair erection.”

That
was the Howie she knew. But there was a worried tone to his joking; he couldn’t hide it.

“Howie, tell me what’s going on. Have you heard from Jazz?”

“From Jazz?” Stalling. God, the boy was so obvious. “From
Jazz
?”

She heard something
thump
/
thunk
. A car trunk closing? Probably.

“Tell me what’s going on. Right now. If you’ve heard from Jazz, then we need to talk. Remember what we said at Billy’s house? That we can’t stop Billy, but we can ruin him?”

“I really have to go.”

“Howie! We agreed! We can save Jazz and that destroys Billy. Don’t shut me out now. We’re supposed to be a team.”

“Sorry, Connie. I’m about to get in the car, and you know my parents hate it when I talk and drive.”

“You have Bluetooth! Don’t pull that crap on me!”

“Gotta go now,” Howie said. “I bet you’re sexy as hell with your leg in a cast. See ya.”

She stabbed at his number on her phone, fuming. But he
sent her to voice mail, no matter how many times she called and re-called.

you are an idiot and I’m onto you!!!
she texted, knowing she would receive nothing in response.

She struggled up from the chair, leaning on her crutches, her armpits already chafing. Howie knew something. He’d been in touch with Jazz. She was certain of it.

The only question now was: Would she tell anyone?

Howie knew that his parents would totally, completely lose their fecal matter when they realized he’d sneaked out of the house. Again. While injured. Again. He thought there was a good chance of them taking his car away from him this time. They threatened it often enough, on the slimmest of pretexts and for the slightest of crimes against parental sensibility.

On his way out of town, he drove past the Coff-E-Shop. Which naturally made him think of poor Helen Myerson. She’d been their usual waitress and had good-naturedly whipped up any number of outright bizarre concoctions Howie demanded. And then the Impressionist had killed her, and that was the end of Helen, and now that Howie thought about it, he hadn’t been back to the Coff-E-Shop since.

I am way too young
, he thought,
to have so many dead people in my life
.

He drove along the main road through the Nod until he was outside town, then gunned it when the speed limit jumped. His phone’s maps app showed him the way.

In the trunk was a brand-new pickax and shovel. Connie had lost his slightly-less-than-brand-new ones when she punked out and ran from an irate neighbor after digging up Billy Dent’s backyard. She still owed him twenty bucks.

“All we do is dig around here,” Howie muttered, one eye on the road and one on the phone’s screen. “You’d think it could wait until the ground
isn’t
frozen.”

He caught an entrance ramp to the highway and drove east. In a small bag on the passenger seat, prescription bottles clicked against one another and pills rattled within. Soon he’d arrived at his destination, a run-down gas station near the state line. Total number of ignored calls from Connie during his drive: four. Plus a text. She’d left him three short voice mails, none of which he bothered to listen to. If this wasn’t bros-before-hos territory, then there was no such thing. Times like this, crises like these, forged the bonds of best-friend-dom or broke them irrevocably. An old joke says that a good friend won’t tell anyone if you show up with a dead body in your trunk, but a
best
friend will help you bury the body.

He thought of the pickax and shovel. He really, really hoped there wasn’t a body to bury.

He parked away from the pumps and let the car idle for a bit, reluctant to get out. The cold had the heartbreaking ability to reach inside his injuries and make them pulsate with new life. The warm interior of the car was much better.

He turned off the car. Hours passed. He began to worry that his parents would be getting home from work soon and find Howie convalescing in absentia, which, to their minds, didn’t really count. He occasionally fired up the engine long enough to heat the car a bit, then killed it again.

And he waited.

And waited.

He decided to see how Gramma was doing, so he called the hospital and asked for the nurses’ station on her floor. But when he asked if there had been any change in Gramma’s condition, the nurse paused, said, “Hold on,” and then clicked him over to a Muzak version of Justin Bieber, which was sort of like adding Tabasco to a bullet. After several moments, the line opened again, this time with a gruff voice saying, “Who is this?”

“G. William!” Howie cried. “We meet again, telephonically speaking! Are you part-timing it at the hospital these days? Does the sheriffing gig not—”

“Shut up, Howie.” G. William sounded weary, annoyed, and relieved all at once. Howie made the connection instantly—the cops were monitoring calls to Gramma. Of course. They thought it might be Jazz. Or maybe even Billy. “Don’t have the time to humor you. Did Jazz put you up to making this call?”

“Hells to the
N-O
, G-Dub. You forget—I’m a regular at Casa de Crazy. Just wanted to see how the old lady’s doing. She’s missing most of the cards in her deck, but there are times she can remember how to make a mean snickerdoodle. You don’t just give up on that shizz, Sheriff.”

Tanner’s sigh wound through the phone connection and filled the car. “Howie, I might as well… We’ve been holding this back, but the hospital’s about to make an announcement, so I might as well tell you: Mrs. Dent passed away a little while ago.”

Somehow, from the moment of G. William’s sigh, Howie had known what was coming, but even prepared, the news struck him like a semi running down roadkill. A clot blocked his throat, and he struggled to swallow past it.

It was his fault. All his fault. She’d be alive if he hadn’t gone stomping into her house with that damn useless shotgun, Bruce Willis-ing up the place in an effort to figure out whether or not Sam was Ugly J. He should have just brought a real gun and pulled the trigger on her; it would have been faster and more humane.

“Howie? You still there?”

Speaking past the clot: “Uh-huh.”

“I don’t want you blamin’ yourself, you hear me, son? She was an old woman. Her health was not good, not at all. It was her time, okay?”

“Sure, Sheriff.”

“I mean it, Howie. Anything—absolutely anything—could have startled her like that.”

I killed my best friend’s grandmother. I can’t believe it
. “I gotta go, G-Dub,” he said with forced brightness. “My Xbox isn’t gonna play itself, you know, and someone has to save the universe. Might as well be me.”

Once he broke the connection, he stared at the phone in
his hand, resisting the urge to hurl it as far as he could. Or to smash it against the dashboard.

Dead. She’s dead. Oh, man. Oh, man, Jazz is gonna kill me. Or, hell, Billy is gonna
really
kill me. Like, for a long, long time
.

He wiped tears from his cheeks.
Damn it. Damn it. Damn. It
.