Game (23 page)

“So there’s no way to know,” Morales had told him, “if this guy left the message for you before the press reported you were in town or after. If before, then that means he saw the story Weathers did on the Lobo’s Nod website. If after, then he’s still calling you out. Either way, he’s obsessed with you.”

WELCOME TO THE GAME, JASPER.

It almost—almost—sounded like something Billy would say. If not for that word—
game
. Billy never thought of what he did as a game. It was fun, yes, but the sort of fun to be taken deadly serious. There was a reason he referred to it as “prospecting.” The prospectors of olden times had been involved in life-or-death stakes for the most part, and when they succeeded, they celebrated.

Jazz could remember Billy returning from prospecting trips, flush with excitement and success. He would dump out of his suitcase a mélange of clothes, trophies, newspaper clippings of his exploits, and the occasional body part, then collapse in the big easy chair in the living room to obsessively watch TV coverage of his “adventures” while eating take-out Chinese food and drinking bottle after bottle of cream soda (one of Billy’s other obsessions).

Jazz would innocently play with the contents of Dear Old Dad’s suitcase, then arrange the trophies carefully in the rumpus room.

When the plane landed, Jazz was surprised to find Hughes standing there at the gate, waiting for him.

“Didn’t bring the girlfriend this time?” the detective asked.

“Thought for sure you’d be on suspension after the reaming out your captain gave you.”

“I’m too valuable,” Hughes joked. “But, yeah, sorry about that,” he went on as they walked to his car, which was parked obnoxiously in a no-parking zone, watched over by a TSA agent. “I didn’t mean to lie to you. But I’d been banging my head against this case for months and getting nowhere and I wanted to bring you, but Montgomery—”

“I get it,” Jazz said, climbing in. “It’s not like I’ve never broken the rules before.”

Hughes nodded and gunned the engine. “So, I understand you’ve met our FBI liaison?”

Jazz wondered briefly if he should mention Morales’s offer to help kill Billy. But no. Hughes might be maverick-y, but he didn’t think the detective would countenance outright murder. “Yeah. She tried some mind-screwing on me, but changed her tune pretty quick.”

“She likes doing that. Messing with guys. She’s a dyke, you know.”

Jazz squirmed at the word. “Didn’t know that,” he said casually, wondering how Hughes would feel if he went all Gramma and dropped the N-bomb.

“It’s statistically proven that of all the law enforcement agencies in the country, the FBI has the largest percentage of lesbians. Isn’t that interesting?”

That actually
was
interesting. “Really?”

Hughes guffawed. “No. I made that up. But it sounds like it could be true, doesn’t it?”

Dyke. Invented FBI stats.
Hughes had his psychological guard up again. Jazz didn’t blame him.

“You’re a true wit. Anything new happen while I was in the air?”

“Nope. Still waiting on toxicology, autopsy, all that stuff. Still going over the scene.”

“What’s the plan?” It was getting dark outside, but Jazz didn’t want to let the fall of night slow him down. He was buzzing to get out on the street.

“Well, first I’m going to get you to the crime scene. The S doesn’t even run some weekends, and this is one of them. So we’re taking our time with crime-scene analysis. Body was still on-site, last I checked. I asked them to hold her there as long as they could, so you could see.”

“Good. Then what?”

“Then back to the precinct. Montgomery and Morales want to bring you up to speed on everything. Officially.”

Jazz nodded, staring at the photo on his phone. “This guy. Whoever he is…”

“He’s getting cocky,” Hughes said. “Which means he’ll slip up.”

“Maybe. I hope so. Sometimes they get cocky because they deserve to be.”

By now, she knew, Jazz had made it to New York. Connie tried to focus on getting through her punishment and thinking good thoughts in the general direction of Brooklyn, but no matter what she did, she kept coming back to that message. She stared at her phone.

r u game?

WELCOME TO THE GAME, JASPER.

What in the
hell
was going on here?

r u game?

It could mean a couple of things.
Game
was something you hunted in order to eat it. So, hell, no, she wasn’t that kind of game.

But it could also mean “Are you up for something?” “Are you ready?”

To which Connie could say only, “Hells, yes.”

She was sick of being told to sit on the sidelines, play the good girlfriend, “stand by your man.” Sick of watching the crazy stuff from the outside. She had sneaked off to New
York to help and that had worked out pretty well, right? Her exploration had discovered… something. And now it appeared that someone knew what she’d found. How?

I could have been followed in Brooklyn. Someone could have been watching.
She shivered at the idea that she might have been under observation the whole time. Who could it have been? The Hat-Dog Killer himself? Billy Dent? Someone named Ugly J?

Her first instinct was to call Jazz and tell him about the text, but she knew exactly what he would say. Jazz would assume he had all the answers because Jazz
always
assumed he had all the answers. One day shortly after their encounter with the Impressionist, he had sat down with her and very seriously explained to her how to survive a serial killer.

“First thing is,” he told her, “run. Just get the hell away. Even if he’s small or seems weak or crippled somehow. It’s all an act. These guys don’t come after you unless they’re sure they can take you, so run. Bundy used to wear his arm in a sling. Fooled people. Made him seem helpless and harmless.”

“I know to run away,” she’d said, more than a little bit exasperated.

“If you can’t run, if he’s already got you,” Jazz pressed on, ignoring her, “then your next line of defense is verbal. Be firm. Tell him to leave you alone. Don’t try to hit him or attack him. Not yet. He’s probably stronger than you and hitting him will just flip his switch. But there’s a chance he might not be used to a woman being firm with him.”

“Or maybe tough chicks make his little pee-pee hard,” Connie said.

“I’m trying to help you,” Jazz said, and then proceeded to describe the escalation of her options: from moderate physical force if possible to verbally puncturing the fantasy (“Nah, why rape me? Let’s go get a drink instead”) to absolute fight-for-your-life, scratch-his-eyes-out panic.

“It’s all going to depend on the situation,” he’d admitted at last. “Some guys will get turned on by you fighting back. Some will be scared by it.”

“So, basically, be careful and don’t do anything stupid,” she’d said, and he had agreed.

Be careful. Don’t do anything stupid.
Exactly what Jazz would say right now. Along with:
Show it to G. William.

Well, she
would
show it G. William. Eventually.

But right now… there wasn’t really anything to show, was there? Just a random text. It could be anything. It might even have been a mistake, something not meant for her, something not even remotely related to what was happening in New York. That had happened to her before, people accidentally texting the wrong number.

You’re making excuses, Connie. Excuses to keep this to yourself.

Yeah. Yeah, she was. Because… because…

Because I’m sick and tired of being treated like I’m a doll made out of cheap plastic, like I could break at any moment. By Jazz, always trying to protect me. By my dad, who doesn’t even trust me to pick a boyfriend. Even by Howie.
And Howie’s the most breakable person I know! Jazz and Howie go off and break the rules whenever they want. But I’m supposed to be the rule follower. The good girl. Since when did I become the freakin’
mom?
Just once I want
—

Her phone vibrated in her hand.

i kno something abt ur boyfriend

Chills radiated up Connie’s arms, and the fine, light hairs there stood on their ends. She shivered involuntarily.

“Don’t go chasing…”

Another vibration. Another message.

no police no parents

She figured that went without saying. And for now she was fine with it. She would call G. William when she knew more, she decided.

Another vibration.

Whoever was at the other end was just going to keep sending her messages, apparently. She could play or not, but she would be given the pieces to put on the board either way.

let’s play
came next, followed by more.

Hughes drove carefully but quickly, wending their way through what he called Queens, then to Brooklyn, then to a bridge that seemed vaguely familiar to Jazz. He was sure he’d seen it in movies.

“This is the East River we’re driving over,” Hughes lectured, “and yeah, this is the world-famous Brooklyn Bridge.”

“I’m not here for a geography lesson,” Jazz said.

“Just thought I’d give you the tourist package as long as you’re in town.”

“Whatever.”

In silence, they headed to the most recent crime scene, in Midtown Manhattan, far out of Hat-Dog’s comfort zone. This is where they’d found the woman in the picture Morales had sent to Jazz. They were loading the body into a body bag as they arrived. “She was ready to be moved a while ago. I can stop them, though. Do you need to see her?” Hughes asked.

“Sure. Why not?” Even though it was January, it was still
hot and humid in the subway. Jazz stripped off his heavy coat and handed it to a nearby cop, then went to duck under the crime-scene tape. The area was cordoned off and crawling with crime-scene techs. Jazz idly checked his cell phone and saw that he had no signal. Connie had been right about that.

“Whoa!” Hughes stopped him. “Can’t have you stomping around in there.”

Jazz grinned. “I’ll be a ghost. Believe me, I know how to walk around crime scenes. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid.”

At a flash of Hughes’s badge, the techs allowed Jazz to crouch down next to the body bag. It wasn’t zipped up yet, so he could see the victim. He flashed back to a few months ago, when he and Howie had broken into the Lobo’s Nod morgue to see the body of Fiona Goodling, the Impressionist’s first victim in Jazz’s hometown. Back then—it seemed so long ago already!—Jazz had refused to see her as a person, preferring to imagine her as a thing. Now, though, he knew better.

I’m not going to rest
, he thought, gazing at where her eyes should have been, staring into the black pits.
I’m going to get him. Because that’s the only thing in this world I’m any good at, I think.

The medical examiner, noticing where Jazz was staring, cleared her throat. “As you can see, she’s been enucleated.”

That was a new word to Jazz.

“Try it in Spanish,” Hughes said. “I’m more fluent in that.”

“Sorry,” the ME said, “it’s just that you don’t get to use that word a lot. Means her eyes were taken out.”

“Are they still here?” Jazz asked, glancing around as though he might see them lying on the ground.

“I just said—”

“You said that they were taken out. This guy cuts off penises, too, but he doesn’t always take them with him.”

The ME, clearly miffed at being upbraided by a kid, went stiff and formal. “Immediate area canvass found no eyeballs with the body or in the immediate vicinity. But that doesn’t mean one of the unis won’t stumble across them somewhere. There’s also a chance we’ll find them during the autopsy. I had a case once where some toes were missing and we found them in the victim’s throat. They were stuffed down there postmortem.”

If the ME was expecting a reaction, Jazz disappointed her, merely nodding at the thought of severed toes jammed down a dead man’s throat.

“Did a decent job removing the eyeballs…” Hughes commented. “I mean, the eye sockets and the skin around the sockets don’t even look disturbed.”

“Yeah,” Jazz agreed with a shrug, “but it’s not that difficult, really. Billy used to do it with one of those grapefruit spoons. You know, the kind that are serrated?” He mimed dishing out a spoonful of grapefruit and was rewarded with—for the first time—a nauseated look from the Homicide cop. “All that’s back there are a couple of muscles and a big optic nerve. Piece of cake. Your eyes aren’t really all that secure in the first place.”

“It’s true,” the medical examiner agreed grimly, as though personally offended by the fragility of the human body. “You just cut the lateral tendon—same thing as in a lateral canthotomy—and you can pop—”

“Enough!” Hughes said, pressing his thumb and forefinger lightly against his eyelids, as if assuring himself that his eyes weren’t about to spontaneously pop out. “I get it. I get it. We done here?” he said to Jazz.

“Give me a few minutes.” He prowled the crime scene, playing a borrowed flashlight over the walls and ceiling, along dripping pipes. He even hopped down from the platform, avoiding touching the rails because he didn’t know which one was the electrified one, and walked a hundred feet or so in either direction. Other than smashed-up plastic bottles and discarded chip bags, he didn’t find anything.

Well, he did see the single largest rat he’d ever seen in his life. It glared at him with defiant, completely unscared eyes before scampering off into a crevice somewhere.

“Find anything?” Hughes asked, giving him a hand back onto the platform.

“Just the biggest rat in God’s creation.” Jazz measured off the rat’s length with his hands.

Hughes chuckled and said, “That’s not big, Jasper. That’s average.”

“I was looking for…” Should he tell Hughes about Ugly J? Yeah, he decided. It might not turn out to be connected—there was still a chance that Ugly J had multiple meanings, after all—but it wouldn’t hurt. He filled in Hughes about
Connie’s discovery and the acrostic on the Impressionist’s letter. “I guess it could be a coincidence. It might just be an Impressionist thing and also be some kind of New York thing and they might have nothing to do with each other. But maybe there’s a connection.”