by Barry Lyga
“It helped me figure out this guy’s pattern,” Jazz said.
“That doesn’t make it any less morbid.”
“Morbid, shmorbid,” Howie chimed in. “It’s just plain creeeeeeeepy!” He shot a rubber band and nailed victim number twenty-seven—Marsha Van Horn—between the eyes. “Oops.”
Jazz rubbed his eyes. A rubber band to the forehead was the least of Marsha’s problems.
“We need to figure this out,” he said. “I need your help, guys.”
“I aim to serve,” Howie said, saluting.
Connie smoothed Jazz’s hair back from his temples. “I, on the other hand, am here to tell you to chill out and forget all this nonsense.”
“Can’t forget it,” Jazz said.
“Man’s gotta do a man’s work,” Howie drawled in what was quite possibly the world’s worst John Wayne impression. “Gotta strap on those six-guns and—”
“No one’s carrying six-guns,” Jazz told him. He didn’t even have to look over; he knew Howie’s expression would be crestfallen. “But I need to do this. I need to prove that I can do more than just mess people up with what Billy taught me. I can do some good with it, too.”
Connie kissed his forehead. “Tanner’s on the case. He caught your dad—he can catch a guy doing an impression of your dad.”
“G. William got lucky when he caught Billy,” Jazz said. “He might not get lucky a second time. Besides, he’s not a hundred percent convinced this guy will follow Billy’s pattern.”
“What is the pattern?” Howie asked, swiveling the chair and leaning forward to get a better look at the Wall of Victims. “Victim numero four-o—”
“Cuatro,” said an exasperated Connie.
“—was Vanessa Dawes. Heh. VD. Venereal disease.” He chortled.
“Grow up,” Connie said.
“She was an actress,” Jazz said, ignoring both of them, staring at the ceiling. He didn’t need to look into a file for information on any of Billy’s victims—they were hammered straight into his memory banks for good. “Came from Boise, Idaho—”
“Home of the Great Potato!”
“—and moved to New York when she was nineteen,” Jazz went on, still ignoring Howie. “She was on a trip with friends, train-hopping down the East Coast, when Billy met up with her. It was in a deli. She was ordering a corned beef sandwich.” Jazz swallowed. Suddenly, it was like he was there, living it as Billy had described it. He remembered the dance of obscene light in his father’s eyes as he’d told Jazz how he had pretended to recognize Vanessa, then apologized profusely when he “realized” he didn’t.…
Even said to her, “You must think I’m some kind of crazy,” Billy had said. And she fell all over herself to tell me that wasn’t the case, that she totally understood, that she got that a lot.…
“She was on some commercials,” Jazz said now. “Nothing major. Nothing national. All local and regional. But enough that Billy could get a good hook into her ego, get her thinking he was harmless. And then it was just a matter of offering to buy her a drink, getting her alone.”
“And bang—two cc’s of Drano, please, nurse.”
“Howie!” Connie punched the bed. “People are dead!”
Chastened, Howie swiveled the chair back to Jazz’s desk and fiddled idly with the computer mouse.
“Billy had already killed a waitress in the same town. At that point, he stayed there for three weeks. Killed Vanessa, then two more before skipping out.”
“So we think he’s going to kill three more people in Lobo’s Nod before moving on?”
Jazz sat up, nodding. He stared at the Wall, in particular at Vanessa Dawes. “All of the copycat’s victims have been identical to Billy’s—same occupations. Same hair colors. Same initials. Same ages. So we’re looking for someone in the Nod who has black hair, the initials V.D., age twenty-two.”
Howie snorted again, then stopped, as if he could feel Connie’s eyes blasting death rays into the back of his head.
“The Nod isn’t exactly Hollywood,” Howie pointed out from the desk. “It’s not like there are a lot of actresses in this town. How would we find them, anyway?”
“What if he goes a little farther afield?” Connie asked, her voice heavy and slightly hesitant with thought.
Jazz turned to her. “What? What are you thinking?”
“It might be nothing.” She looked from Jazz to Howie, who had spun around in the chair again. “It’s probably—”
“Tell us.” Jazz gave her one tenth of his sternest voice.
“Reel Life,” she said immediately. “Over in Tynan Ridge. You know it? Actors go there all the time.”
The boys shook their heads, almost in unison.
“It’s an acting school. Some guy…Can’t remember his name. He used to be on that stupid TV show about the monkey that solved crimes—”
“Connie,” Jazz said in his best “move along” tone.
“Anyway, he set up this acting school. Does summer camps, stuff like that. My parents and I looked into it when we moved here, but it was too expensive. But he would have actresses from all over. Including the Nod.”
Jazz nodded. Yes, that made sense. But also…
“What about The Crucible?” Howie asked, reading Jazz’s mind. “There are actors right here in Lobo’s Nod, too.”
“They’re too young. Still in high school,” Jazz said. “But age twenty-two…Maybe there’s someone who used to be an actor in high school, but graduated—what?—four or five years ago, and still lives in town. We’ll have to check that out.”
He hopped out of bed and started barking orders. “Connie, you take Howie’s car and go to Reel Life. Check with this monkey actor guy and see if he has anyone enrolled who meets our criteria. You’ve been there before, so the guy will know you. Howie and I will go to school and check the roster for the drama club and the plays from the last few years.”
“We should just call the sheriff,” Connie said doubtfully. “This is his territory, not ours.”
“Yeah,” Howie said, “and more important than that, why does she get to take my car?”
Facing resistance from both of them, Jazz did the only thing he could think of: He paused for just a moment, pretending to weigh their thoughts. Then he started to speak; stopped; looked down at the floor as though ashamed.
“Guys,” he said hesitantly, wondering if the little hitch in his voice would work. When he looked back up, they were both staring at him, rapt, enthralled, and he felt a sick/good flip-flop in his stomach. A job well done already, and he wasn’t even halfway there.
“This is really important to me,” he said, forcing his voice into a hushed whisper, as if he could barely speak without weeping. “You don’t understand. G. William won’t listen to us, anyway. This way we can get some solid evidence and present it to him. And maybe…Maybe I can actually make the Dent name stand for something good and decent for a change.”
He knew he had them when Connie put her arms around him.
Moments later, they headed for the cars.
Jazz wasn’t proud of himself for manipulating his girlfriend and his best friend—
No. Wait. That wasn’t entirely true. If he was being honest with himself, Jazz had to admit that there was a part of him that positively preened at how adroitly he’d gotten Connie and Howie to do what he wanted. What he needed. It was necessary, he told himself. They were holding him back, and the world was propelling him forward. He’d had no choice.
Besides, it had been kind of fun, using that particular talent. There was no harm in that, right? Just a little adrenaline rush, a glow of pure yes! suffusing his whole being. He hadn’t killed anyone. He hadn’t done any harm to anyone.
He accelerated, pushing the Jeep faster down the road to the school. It was dark, and the streets of Lobo’s Nod were practically empty. Jazz goosed the Jeep to six miles over the speed limit. He knew from careful observation that the Lobo’s Nod cops rarely bothered to pull anyone over unless they were
doing seven or more miles over the limit.
“Is this the right way to do it?” Howie asked. “Like, is this how the real cops do things? Figure out who the victim is, instead of who the killer is?”
“Sometimes that’s all you have to go on,” Jazz said.
“What if I already have a theory about who the killer is?”
Jazz smirked. This should be good. “Go ahead.”
“I think it’s that creep Weathers.”
Jazz opened his mouth to tear apart Howie’s theory. Then he shut it again.
“That,” he said slowly, “isn’t totally stupid.”
“Gee, thanks. You do wonders for my self-esteem.”
“He knows Billy’s crimes. He would want the media to go nuts in the Nod again.”
“See? See?”
Jazz thought of Weathers and his ego. That he could be the killer was certainly more likely than Jazz’s earlier rogue thought that G. William might be guilty. The memory of it made him squirm with guilt.
“It’s possible,” he admitted. “But our best bet is to find the next victim. That will lead us straight to this guy, whether he’s Weathers or not.”
Howie had his arm out the window, hand-surfing the wind currents. “I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Howie complained. “Actually, no. I take that back. I can totally believe you talked me into this. What I can’t believe is that you talked Connie into this.”
“Between the three of us, we’re gonna figure this out,” Jazz said. “This guy is done. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
“How many people did your pops kill?”
“A hundred twenty-four,” Jazz said, adding—as always—his mother to the “official” tally.
“And you think we’re gonna stop this guy after three?”
“He wants to get caught. Billy once told me that most of these guys want to get caught. This guy is practically waving a white flag of surrender, man.”
Howie snorted. “If this works…”
“If this all works out, I’ll get two tattoos, man.”
Howie hooted and pumped his fist. “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!”
Jazz grinned and shook his head. “You’re way too ex—”
He broke off mid-word, staring straight ahead.
“Oh, crap,” he said.
“Jazz!” Howie screamed at the top of his lungs, and Jazz blinked and cranked the wheel left just in time to avoid a car peeling around a corner. He stomped on the brakes and the Jeep skidded to a halt in the middle of the intersection. The other car’s horn blared loud and angry, Dopplering into a whine as the driver accelerated ahead of them and out of sight.
“The light was red!” Howie said. “Redder than red! Red like Christmas! Aw, man, look!” He held out his right arm, bruised from where it had hit the side of the car.
“I missed it.” Jazz was surprised to find that his heart wasn’t beating any faster, that his breath was perfectly normal. He had nearly slammed the Jeep into the other car at top speed, and the result would not have been pretty. The Jeep was too old to have air bags, so Jazz probably would have been wearing the steering wheel halfway through his chest, and Howie…Well, the internal bleeding from jerking against the seat belt probably would have done Howie in.
“Are you trying to kill us?”
“Virginia,” Jazz said. “You said Virginia, right?”
“So what?” Howie ranted. “I didn’t know the word offended you so much that you were gonna try to—”
“We have to go.” Jazz slammed his foot on the gas as he threw the Jeep into reverse. Tires squealing, he spun the Jeep around and then headed back the way they’d come.
“Where are you going? School is that way.”
“I know. We’re not going to school. We’re going to Ginny’s.”
“Ginny’s? You mean Ms. Davis? Why are we going there?”
Jazz focused on the road, now breaking the speed limit by significantly more than seven miles an hour. Howie wasn’t stupid. He would figure it out.
“Oh, man,” Howie said a moment later. “Ginny. Virginia Davis. And she’s an actress with black hair.…”
“I don’t know how old she is, but she’s right out of college. I bet she’s twenty-two,” Jazz said, leaning into the wheel, gripping it like a race-car driver, throttling it like a throat. “What are you doing?”
This last because Howie had fished his cell phone out of his pocket. “Calling the sheriff, man. This is his department. Like, literally.”
Jazz risked taking one hand off the wheel long enough to snatch away the phone. “Hey!” Howie complained.
“You call G. William and one of two things will happen. One, he won’t believe us and we’re right back at square one. Two, he’ll totally believe us and he’ll send a million squad cars over, and that’ll scare this guy off.”
“Isn’t scaring the guy off a good thing?” Howie asked, reaching for the phone, but Jazz dropped it between his legs on the seat.
“No. We want to stay one step ahead of him, but he has to stay on the same path. Get it?”
“So if he thinks we don’t know about Ginny…”
“We get there. We ask her if she’s noticed anything weird lately. Like some guy following her around. If she has, then we tell G. William what we think, and he can put some undercover guys on her or something. If not, we can still ask her about any other actresses with her initials in town. Faster than breaking in to school to check the records.”
“Ah, and now the reason you brought me instead of Connie becomes clear,” Howie grumbled. “Whenever it’s illegal, there’s good ol’ Howie.”
Jazz threw him a grin. “Your life would be so boring without me, and you know it.”
“Yeah, well, if you don’t want to scare this guy off, you should probably slow down. If we careen into Ms. Davis’s parking lot like a bat outta hell, he’s going to think something’s up.”
Good point. Jazz tapped the brakes, and by the time they’d gotten to Ginny’s, the Jeep was moseying along like any other lazy car.
Right after casting for The Crucible had been finalized, Ginny had invited the whole cast and crew to her apartment for an informal read-through and getting-to-know-one-another session. Jazz had lurked around the kitchen, uncomfortable being crammed into the tiny apartment with so many other kids. He’d watched Connie as she effortlessly flitted from one small cluster to another, and by the end of the night he’d figured out how to mimic that behavior well enough to fit in. So the night had been a win for him, and now it was a double-win because he knew exactly where she lived: a small three-story apartment building inserted like a mismatched LEGO block between a dry cleaner and a car wash.
He pulled in to the parking lot and pointed through the windshield. “Her car,” he told Howie. “She’s home.” He parked. Scanned the area quickly. Nothing weird in the parking lot that he could see. No cars with out-of-state plates. No big vans or sedans that would make it easy to sneak a body away.
“Let’s get this done and over with,” Howie said with a nervousness that made Jazz want to laugh.
Jazz handed Howie’s cell over and killed the Jeep’s engine. “Let’s go.”
Ginny lived on the third floor. There was no elevator; Howie beat Jazz by virtue of his ridiculously long legs, which ate up stairs three at a time.
“I win!” he chortled, knocking on the door.
“What exactly did you win?”
“Bragging rights.”
Jazz let it go. They waited for Ginny to come to the door. Nothing.
“She probably didn’t hear you,” Jazz said. “Knock harder.”
“I bruise easy,” Howie said, as if Jazz needed reminding.
Jazz gently pushed Howie out of the way and knocked on the door—three quick, hard raps that couldn’t be missed from inside.
“Maybe she’s not home.”
“Her car’s in the parking lot. She— Wait.”
Jazz put his ear to the door.
&nbs
p; “What?”
“Shh!” He waved Howie into silence, concentrating. From within the apartment, he heard…something. “I hear—”
“Is she coming?”
Jazz backed up and his gaze drifted down. To the keyhole. His stomach twisted. Was that a glimmer of reflected light he spotted?
He leaned over and sniffed the doorknob, ignoring Howie, who wanted to know just what the hell he was doing.
Glue. Filled with superglue.
You need some alone time? Billy’s voice whispered from the past. You need some special, uninterrupted time? Well, then you gotta make sure you can’t be interrupted in the first place, you know what I mean? Block the doors. Block the windows. Make it so no one else can get in. And hey—bonus! When the cops come, they have to break in, and that makes a mess, and a mess is our friend, Jasper. Evidence gets lost in a mess. People get confused by messes.
Jazz’s heart raced. A high-pitched whine filled his ears.
“He’s here,” he whispered.
CHAPTER 19
“What?” Howie goggled at Jazz like a kid stuck on the Ferris wheel.
Jazz grabbed Howie by the neck and pulled his friend’s ear to his lips. “He’s. Here.”
“Holy crap.”
“Run, Howie. Get outside. Call the cops. Watch for him by the fire escape out in the alley, in case he tries to get away.”
Howie stared straight ahead, fear and shock flickering in his eyes. Jazz pushed him, hard. “Go!” he whispered as loudly as he dared. “Now!”
Howie ran like hell for the stairs.
Jazz didn’t think. He didn’t allow himself to think. He’d heard the killer in there, he was sure. Maybe they weren’t too late.
His heart no longer raced. His breath came slow and easy, and the world seemed doused in syrup—everything moving lethargically. He had all the time in the world.
In that strange, sudden fugue state, he backed up against the opposite side of the narrow corridor and lunged forward, kicking out with his right foot, catching the door at doorknob height, just the way Billy had taught him. The door trembled. A shock wave of pain vibrated up to Jazz’s groin. It felt like he’d pounded a sledgehammer against his thigh, and all he had to show for it was a little bowing around the doorknob.
