Blood of My Blood (5 page)

“Why didn’t you teach me
this
?” Jazz managed to ask. “Something useful?”

“Never had the chance,” Billy said with real regret. “I was planning on starting this stuff soon, but then I got taken away from you.” He paused for a moment. “This is probably gonna hurt like hell, by the by.”

And then, without another word, he drove the hooked needle into Jazz’s thigh. Earlier, Jazz’d imagined the pain as fiery threads; now he saw just how impoverished his imagination had been.
This
was fire. This was white-hot cables of sheer agony unspooling from the wound site, racing up and down his leg, filling even his lungs with pain.

Billy flipped his wrist, spinning the hook under the skin, popping it out on the other side of the cut. Jazz screamed.

Hardly taking his eyes off the suturing before him, Billy used his free hand to find and then shove Jazz’s belt at him. Jazz took it and stuck it between his teeth, biting down in groaning torment. Against his own will, he sat up partially and thrashed, trying to escape the awful bite of Billy’s needle, but his father simply sat on Jazz’s lower leg, holding him in place.

“Rest your damn head on the floor!” Billy snapped. “If you pass out, I don’t want you splittin’ your skull open. I ain’t got the equipment for that.”

Somehow, through the endless stabbing at and in his thigh, he understood and managed to lie back.

“It’s for your own good,” Billy said with casual kindness as he executed the sutures quickly, with no regard for the
pain. He made six individual sutures, each one knotted neatly and precisely, the knots pulled to one side. “So it won’t irritate the injury,” Billy explained.

When it was over, Jazz lay exhausted on the floor, his forehead shiny with sweat, his body soaked in it. He was wrung out, spent, drained even of thought.

“That’ll hold you, keep the blood loss down,” Billy said. “I used a simple interrupted suture. There’s gonna be infection, so this way they can just pop one of ’em to drain it. Soon as I’m clear of this place and somewhere safe, I’m calling an ambulance for you, boy.”

“Look who’s bucking for Father of the Year,” Jazz whispered.

Billy chuckled. “You know what most parents don’t get, Jasper?”

“Enlighten me.”

“Most parents, they’re all—what do you call it—narcissists. Is that the right word? I think it is. Parents get all focused on themselves, and then they see their little babies start walkin’ and talkin’, and since they kinda look like them and sound like them, they start thinkin’ of those little babies as extensions of themselves. And so they do everything in the world for them, Jasper. Everything.” Here, Billy rocked back on his heels, pensive. “And then somethin’ funny happens. Those babies grow up to be kids and teenagers and grown-ups in their own right. And they stop bein’ little extensions of the parents, but the parents can’t let go of that. They can’t deal with it, because it’s like a part of their body—like a leg or an
arm—just up and decided to act on its own. So everything the kids do, everything, is a betrayal. It’s a mark of ingratitude, Jasper. That’s how those parents see it.”

Billy began wrapping a clean bandage around Jazz’s leg.

“But not Dear Old Dad, Jasper. No way, no how. I ain’t like that. Father of the Year? Maybe not. But a damn sight better than most.”

“You’re crazier than the shrinks say if you believe that crap,” Jazz managed. “You’ve spent your whole life trying to turn me into you.”

Billy pursed his lips and regarded Jazz with a look that was pure wounded puppy. Jazz wouldn’t countenance it; sociopaths didn’t have real emotions.

Still. If anyone could hurt Billy, it would be his son, right?

“Now, that hurts, Jasper. It hurts like, well, like a bullet. Truly. I ain’t never treated you as nothin’ but your own person. Never made you do anything you didn’t want to do. Let you find your own path. Didn’t tell you who to kill or how or why or when. Left that up to you. Even now, you see me takin’ advantage of your situation to make you do anything you don’t want to do?” He shrugged. “I just want you to be true to yourself, boy. Be who you’re destined to be.”

“I know Mom’s alive,” Jazz said, struggling into a sitting position. Maybe it was just psychological, but with the sewing of his wound and the stanching of the bleeding, he felt a little stronger. Probably all in his head.

Billy nodded distractedly as he wound the bandage. Every time he lifted Jazz’s leg to get under it, a little burst of pain raced up Jazz’s left side.

“Nothing to say about that?” Jazz asked.

“What’s there to say?”

“What are you going to do to her? Now that you’ve found her?”

Billy shrugged. “I guess that’ll be up to her.”

Jazz lay back down again. Billy would happily talk all day without actually saying anything. He tried another tack:

“What’s the deal with the Crows, Billy?”

“The Crows? Same as the deal’s always been, I suspect.”

“Don’t play me for a fool. There’s something, isn’t there? I always knew you had fans out there, but I didn’t think they would actually kill for you. Is that what your idiot followers call themselves? Crows? Because of that fairy tale you told me as a kid?”

Billy frowned. “Weren’t no fairy tale, Jasper. It was allegory, you see? And the Crows ain’t followin’
me
; they’re followin’ a dream. Pursuin’ it, you might say. Tell you what: Next time we meet face-to-face like this, when I ain’t all concerned about some bastard cop wanderin’ in on us, I’ll sit you down and tell you all about the Crows. Deal?”

“I expect nothing less from the Crow King.”

Billy chortled. “The Crow King? Me?”

“New name for yourself, right? Green Jack, Hand-in-Glove, the Artist, Satan’s Eye. And now, the Crow King.”

Billy didn’t so much smile as he seemed to suffer some kind of lip spasm. The delight crossed his face so quickly that it was gone in the same instant that Jazz noticed it.

“You flatter me, boy.”

“Will you give a straight answer? Just once in your life?”

Billy sighed and sat back, eyes lifted to the ceiling as though thinking,
Lord, give me strength
. It was a pose and an expression familiar to any parent of a teenager, and seeing it on Billy Dent’s face was one more reminder of how good a job Billy did blending in with human beings.

“Ain’t got too much time, Jasper. Can’t really spend it chitchatting with you about your mom and the Crows and whatever else pops into your head.”

“Are you trying to convince me that you’re not the Crow King?”

“I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I’m
not
the Crow King, and that’s the plain truth. Whether you believe it is up to you.” He started packing his satchel.

“I—”

“Here’s the thing, Jasper.” Billy leaned in close, his eyes shining. “Here’s the thing: Once upon a time, we were
all
kings. You understand? Once upon a time, the commoners were there for us, for our pleasure.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ll be happy to explain it to you when the time comes. When we ain’t in such… constrained circumstances. In the meantime, think about, oh, let’s say Caligula. Think about Gilles de Rais. You know more than you think. You’ve got the beginnings of it, boy. Told you as much back at Wammaket. Told you where it started. The genesis of it. ‘And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord.’ ”

Jazz’s head spun. Billy hadn’t said anything at all about the Crows at Wammaket.

Before he could say anything, though, Billy finished packing up his things. He left out the lantern.

“Now, here. Take this.” He held out two pills: one pink, one white.

“What is it? Are they, I mean.”

“A little painkiller and something to knock down the fever you’re buildin’. Nothing too strong. Want you awake enough to tell the EMTs what happened to you when they get here.”

Reluctantly, Jazz took the pills from Billy’s outstretched hand. As he did so, he noticed something on his father’s wrist. Like a bracelet, almost, but tied, like one of those braided—

Wait.

There was a bead at one end of it. A shiny red bead. Just like the beads—

“That’s Connie’s,” he whispered, staring at it. He knew it. Knew that braid.

Sick terror and rage swelled in his gut. He choked back the urge to vomit.

“That’s from
Connie
,” he said, finally tearing his gaze away from Billy’s wrist and looking up at Billy’s face.

In the bright white light of the lantern, Billy’s eyes danced merrily.

“Was wonderin’ how long it’d be before you noticed.”

From Connie. It was from
Connie
. It was her
hair
. Billy had been knife-close to her and oh my God oh my
God
.

With a choking cry, Jazz rolled onto his side, ignoring the flare from his thigh, and reached out for Billy’s throat with
both hands. Billy nimbly fell back just far enough to avoid Jazz’s grasp.

“What have you done?” Jazz demanded. “Tell me what you did!”

“Is this the part where you threaten me? Where you tell me I better not touch a hair on her head?” He held up his wrist, Connie’s braid loosely draped around it. “Oops.”

“I’ll kill you,” Jazz told him through clenched teeth. He clawed at the concrete floor, and if rage meant strength, he would have torn great gray chunks from it. “If she’s hurt, I will
kill
you.”

“Well now, like I said last time we talked: You go on and do that.”

Billy picked up his satchel and then snagged a knife from Dog’s workbench. He tossed the knife on the floor near Jazz, who immediately snatched it up and lunged for his father’s leg.

Billy laughed and took a step back, then another, letting Jazz get a little closer, then evading him easily as Jazz flopped and struggled to move close enough to cut him. They played their father-and-son, cat-and-mouse game for as long as it took for Billy to back to the door.

Jazz lay in an exhausted pool of sweat as Billy raised the door and stepped into the corridor.

“Thing I can’t decide,” Billy said pensively, “is whether I’m gonna kill her or I’m gonna watch you kill her. Can’t make up my mind about that one.”

“You’re a dead man!” Jazz thrashed on the floor, helpless and enraged and too full of anger to do anything but scream. “I will make you feel every last thing you do to her! I will rip
your body to shreds and feed you to the rats! Do you hear me?”

“Of course I hear you,” Billy said quietly, and lowered the door.

“I! Will! Kill! You!” Jazz raged with the last of his energy, and collapsed in a heap.

Connie averted her eyes immediately after flipping the light switch, but she needn’t have bothered; the overhead light was weak, forty watts at best, and even her dark-adjusted eyes could handle it.

She had managed to serpentine her way over to the bed, where her fellow captive had—after many failed attempts—untied one hand. Then, using her free arm to pull herself along and with the guidance of the other prisoner, she’d gotten to the proper wall, braced herself, levered herself upright, and found the light switch, nestled in a cutout rectangle of the soundproofing material.

There had been many—
many
—failed attempts there, too. Connie’s entire body ached and throbbed with her efforts. But at least now there was light.

She wondered if the light was visible under the doorway from the other room. Connie tried not to envision what Billy would do if he walked in at that moment, but her imagination wasn’t taking orders. The grisly tableau unspooled in
her head over and over, until finally, as a distraction, she forced herself to examine the room instead.

Not much to examine. The room was just as she remembered it from her panicked look around: small, soundproofed with rubbery egg crates on the walls.

And there was the bed, of course. The blankets had been kicked off, and Connie could finally see her fellow prisoner, who was handcuffed to the bedpost by her right wrist. Otherwise, she was unshackled, but that one chain was enough to keep her imprisoned. With a bit of struggle, the woman managed to sit up on the edge of the bed. She pushed her brownish, gray-threaded hair back from her face. She looked younger than the gray would indicate, with an unlined forehead and only a few subtle wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Her eyes—a shade of hazel Connie knew well—were familiar.

Her whole
face
was familiar.

“Oh my God,” Connie breathed, forgetting Billy’s imminent return for a moment. “You’re Jazz’s mother!”

The woman on the bed blinked at her. “Who’s Jazz?” she asked.

“Your son. Jasper. We call him Jazz.”

Jazz’s mother stared at her for a long, long moment. Then a tear spilled from her eye and rolled down her cheek. “You know Jasper?” she asked in a whisper laden with disbelief. She strained to the utmost limit of her chain, lunging at Connie with a ferocity Connie had never before witnessed. It was every maternal instinct, hurtling itself toward freedom for her child. Connie thought she’d never seen something so
pitiable, so powerful. “You know him? Is he okay?” Her voice gathered strength, urgency. “Where is he? Does he know I’m alive? Is he—”

Connie had to wave her free hand to stop the barrage, give herself time to think. She was in the same room as Jazz’s mother. The mother they had just buried in absentia before coming to New York. She was alive and she was healthy and…

And she was shackled in Billy Dent’s Apartment of Doom.

“Jazz’s fine,” Connie said. “He’s here in New York, with the police, actually.”

“The police?” She went rigid with fear. “Did he do something?”

“It’s a really, really long story, Mrs. Dent.” Connie winced as she said it but couldn’t keep the name from spilling out.

The other woman smiled sadly. “Given the circumstances, I think it’s okay for you to call me Jan. How did you get here?”

“I got a phone call. A few, really. Followed some clues.”

“And they led you to Billy.”

At that name, Connie froze. She had almost allowed herself to forget, despite being still tied to the chair. But Billy would be back. That much was certain.

“Yeah,” she said, trying to fight off the images her imagination insisted on feeding her. Billy would cut off more than a braid next time, she was certain. “But he said he wasn’t the one who talked to me on the phone.”

“And you believed him?”

Connie sighed. “I don’t know what I believe anymore. I came here… Look, in hindsight I realize it was sort of
impulsive and stupid. But you have to understand—he sent me a picture of Jazz. Recent. And close. He could get to Jazz so easily, and if I didn’t do what he said, he would hurt him. If I went to the police, he would hurt him. I didn’t have a choice. I had to come here. And honestly, I really thought I was just gathering clues. Getting info for the police. And, yeah, that was stupid, but I didn’t think I would actually run into Billy Dent.” She shook her head. “Things that look stupid on the outside… They might actually
be
stupid, but they don’t seem like it when you think you’re protecting someone you love.”

Connie gnawed at her lip. She hadn’t meant to let that last bit slip out. She knew Billy and Gramma were both racists. She had to at least consider the possibility.…

“You weren’t stupid, Connie. You thought you were helping.”

“I guess after we caught the Impressionist, I thought it would be okay. I figured we knew what we were doing—
I
knew what I was doing—and it wouldn’t do any harm. But instead, I ended up here.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Jan said quietly. “I was married to Billy. I knew him like no one else, and he still managed to catch up to me, all these years later.”

They thought about that for a moment.

There was so much to ask. So much to tell. But Connie didn’t have the time.
They
didn’t have the time. What would this do to Jazz? What would it mean for the
us
they’d become? How could she—

And she was drifting off again, thinking again, when what she needed right now was action.

“We don’t have time for this,” Connie said, her voice pitched low and steady. “He could be back soon.”

“Come back over here,” Jan told her, “and I’ll try to get that other knot untied.”

It had taken too long for Jan to untie the first one in the dark. Connie began to thump her way over. She fell a few times but eventually made it there. Crossing the six feet to Jan’s bedside was like running hurdles. But every time the room fell silent, she thought she heard a door open somewhere, and that just spurred her on even more, until she was at the bed; by the time she got there, she was winded and sweating.

Jan started working at the knot. “It’s a little tighter than the last one,” she said apologetically.

“Take your time.”

They both laughed—short, frightened laughter. Time was the one thing they didn’t have.

“Maybe don’t take your time.”

“Going as fast as I can. You said ‘we’ call him Jazz,” Jan said as she worked. “Who’s we?”

Connie found herself welcoming the distraction. Better to talk than to think right now. “Mostly Howie and me. Howie’s his best friend.”

“There was a boy named Howie Gersten in the Nod. I remember him. He was sick. Anemia or something.”

“That’s him. And it’s hemophilia.”

“That’s right.” Jan sighed. “Jasper has a friend. That’s good.”

“And, uh, a girlfriend.”

“Of course.” Jan smiled. “That’s good. That’s normal, right? I was always so worried that he would, well…” She sniffed back tears and nodded. “Good. I’m glad, Connie. Good for you. And him.”

Connie grinned, despite her situation. A moment later, she yelped in pain.

“I’m sorry!” Jan rushed to say. “So sorry! That was my nail. I was digging under the rope and jabbed you.”

“Is it bad? It feels bad.” And it did. It felt worse than just a little jab. “Is it bleeding?”

“Just a little. It’s all right. Not so bad. Not, uh, like…” Jan’s eyes flicked upward.

Oh, right. In all the confusion since she’d been dragged into the room, Connie had forgotten about the cut along her neck. She probed it gently with her free hand. The blood was still oozing, but it had thickened, gone slightly tacky. She figured it was clotting and left it alone, no matter how badly she wanted to pick and prod at it.

“Okay, no worries. Just get me out of this and I’ll get you out of there and then…”

“One step at a time, Connie.” Jan grunted as she tugged at the rope.

One step at a time. I bet that’s what Billy thinks when he’s dismembering—

Bad idea to go down that route. She distracted herself again: Connie told Jan about the box she’d unearthed in Billy Dent’s backyard, the bell engraved in it, the Auto-Tuned voice that might or might not have been Billy that used a combination of goading and threat to bring her back
to New York. The trip to the luggage pickup, where she’d received the toy gun and the picture of Eliot Ness that had brought her here.

“The whole thing,” she summed up, “seems crazy.”

They exchanged a knowing look. Jan smiled wryly. “Do you think?”

“I just mean…” She remembered her drive to the airport with Howie.
Sammy J
. Jazz’s aunt. They had wondered if maybe Billy’s sister possessed his same madness.

“Do you know Billy’s sister?”

“Samantha? Not
well
; she wasn’t around a lot.”

“Did they keep in touch?”

“Maybe. Turns out there’s a lot that was going on when I was with Billy that—ah! There!”

The knot finally pulled apart. Connie’s hand tingled with the sudden rush of blood and sensation. She flexed the fingers, wincing at the pain but also glad for it. Pain meant life.

Yeah, keep thinking like that, Connie. I bet Billy loves that kind of crap
.

She bent and found that she could just barely reach the rope around her ankle.

“There’s something else,” Connie said, working on her left leg’s knot while Jan worked on the right. “Something we need to talk about.”

“What’s that?”

“I found things in the lockbox. Pictures of Jazz when he was a baby. A toy crow.”

“So?” Still working on the rope.

“Jazz’s birth certificate.”

Jan stopped tugging at the loops of rope but stayed bent over, not looking up. She said nothing.

“Jan.”

Still nothing.

“Jan, the space for father was—”

“I’m not ready to talk about that yet.”

“But it could mean—”

“I said,” she snarled, pulling savagely at the rope, “that I’m not ready to talk about that yet!”

Connie counted to five in her head. Was this really the time or the place to have this conversation? Probably not. But they weren’t leaving anytime soon. “I just think it’s important,” she said. “If Jazz isn’t—”

“Stop calling him that!” Jan snapped. “ ‘Jazz.’ It’s ridiculous. It’s a girl’s nickname. His name is
Jasper
.”

“All due respect, you don’t know a whole lot about him these days.”

Jan stopped her ministrations at Connie’s ankle and pulled back, withdrawing bodily onto the bed. Connie felt terrible. Who knew how long this poor woman had been Billy’s captive? And before that, what had she seen and endured during their marriage? Hell, what had it been like for her at first, on the run, terrified that Billy could be around every corner, waiting in every car, loitering in every elevator?

And then Connie reminded herself that Jan had left an eight-year-old boy alone in the house with Billy Dent, and her sympathy dried up.

“I guess I deserved that,” Jan said.

“You left him,” Connie retorted, more coldly than she’d thought herself capable.

“You don’t know what it was like. You can’t understand.”

“I understand you were his mother.”

Jan nodded. Connie liberated her left ankle and got to work on the right.

“Are you good for him, Connie?”

“For Jazz?” She thought of their hotel room here in New York. Of the night Jazz had woken up from a dream and clutched at her, only to fall off the bed and then snap at her. She thought of her yearning for him, of what they’d endured together.

“I think I’m really good for him.”

“I bet you are.”

The last loop of rope gave, and Connie prized it loose. She rubbed some feeling back into her feet, then chanced standing. The world went wobbly for a moment, but she controlled her breathing until the sensation subsided.

Jan gazed at her from the bed.

“Now,” Connie said, grimacing as she stared at the handcuff, “we work on
you
.”