Game Page 4

  And lying, she realized, is really just acting. And I’m good at acting.

  Almost without realizing what she was doing, she started speaking, putting down her fork and focusing intently on her father, the tough one to persuade.

  “Here’s the problem,” she said, the blanks in her plan filling themselves in as she spoke, her heart beating faster as she realized what she was doing. She was Billying her parents. So this is what that feels like. “Here’s the problem. We only have a few more days of break left, and I really want to spend them with Jazz”—she marked the tightening of her father’s expression, the deepening of the worry lines around her mother’s eyes—“but there’s a great orientation weekend at Columbia, too. I know it’s sort of early for me, but Columbia’s where I want to go and I could narrow down my application choices for the fall right now. But here’s the thing: I would have to leave tomorrow.” Before her parents could say anything, she rushed on. “Remember Larissa? She played Maria in that weird version of West Side Story I did that summer at drama camp in Charlotte? Well, she’s already in college at Columbia, and she’s the one who told me about it. It sounds amazing, and I could totally stay with her. But then”—she said it expertly, as though it were just occurring to her—“I wouldn’t see Jazz until school started up again.”

  Her parents exchanged a glance.

  “How much would this trip cost?” her father asked, and Connie knew she had them.

  “I can stay with Larissa for free. And you’ll always be able to reach me on my cell.” With a couple of texts, she could easily get Larissa to cover for her. And she figured Jazz would have a hotel room. Just the two of them… in a hotel room… The thought made her head spin and did things to her body she couldn’t enjoy right now. “I can probably fly standby since it’s last minute, and I can help pay for it—I have money from babysitting and Grampa’s Christmas check.”

  Her father stroked his jaw and exchanged another look with her mother.

  “She shouldn’t get to go to New York all on her own!” Whiz complained. “That’s not fair! I don’t get to go anywhere!”

  Dad rolled his eyes in exasperation, and Connie knew she had him.

  So this was how Jazz felt. All the time. Every day.

  Connie had to admit it was pretty spectacular.

  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 bl
ood 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.