I Hunt Killers

by Barry Lyga

  Exactly like this. Hands on his own. Guiding him.

  But it was his own hands on the handle. Just like before.

  The Impressionist maneuvered Jazz with his other hand on his back, forcing him closer to Gramma, who snored and twitched, unaware. “This is your first one,” the Impressionist said, “so I want it to be easy on you. She’s not waking up anytime soon. Hell”—he chuckled—“she’s not waking up, period. So. Here we go.”

  He positioned Jazz so that he was leaning toward Gramma, the point of the knife dimpling her dress between and slightly under her deflated breasts. “All you need to do,” the Impressionist whispered, “is put your weight into it. The knife will slip right under the sternum and slide into her heart. She’s old. Weak. Frail. It’ll be quick. She won’t even really feel it, if that’s what you’re worried about. After this, you’ll feel so much better. Then we can go get your girlfriend.”

  “No,” Jazz whispered. There was still a very dark, very disturbed, and very real part of him that wanted his grandmother dead, but he would be damned if he would let this man force him to do it. He would be damned if he would allow it to happen like this. “I won’t.”

  “You will,” the Impressionist whispered, his voice more seductive than any siren. “You want to. You will.” His breath, warm and gentle, in Jazz’s ear. His words soft. “You will. And if you don’t…”

  And if I don’t…

  If he didn’t, she would be dead soon, anyway. She was an old woman. In poor health. With a brain that hardly worked. And her only help was a grandson who frequently drugged her and left her unattended.

  Would it really hurt anyone if he did it? If he removed her from the world? Who would miss her? No one, that’s who.

  He was about to be taken from her, anyway, thanks to Melissa Hoover and Social Services. And Gramma would prefer death to an old-age home.

  Right?

  —like chicken, like cutting into chicken, that’s all it is, like chicken—

  She would die soon, anyway, he reminded himself. And once he killed her, the Impressionist would unlock the cuffs, would trust him, and Jazz could…

  He could…

  He would take advantage of that trust. Keep the knife. Let the Impressionist think he’d won. And then…

  Kill the Impressionist.

  Yes. Jazz’s heartbeat accelerated, as though someone had stomped on the gas pedal connected to his heart. Yes, that would work. He could see it now. Gramma wouldn’t even be finished bleeding out when he would turn on the Impressionist, who wouldn’t see it coming, and do exactly as Billy had taught him—one quick thrust into the heart. A twist to the left. Or, if the angles were wrong, slash across the carotid where it pulsed fat and juicy on the side of the neck, so tempting, so easy, Like God wants us to cut it, Billy used to say. That—

  No. He blinked fiercely until he no longer saw a useless old woman in front of him, but rather his grandmother. What had happened to him? No. No!

  Had he really just been contemplating—anticipating, joyfully!—committing two murders in a matter of minutes?

  “I won’t.” Jazz was more trying to convince himself than deny the Impressionist.

  “If you don’t, Jazz, then I will.” The words hard now, the once-gentle breath coming fast and harsh. “I’ll let her wake up, and I’ll start with the eyes. For her, I’ll be the Artist and Green Jack and Gentle Killer and Hand-in-Glove all rolled into one, and we’ll see how long Granny can last when I start taking pieces and parts away, won’t we?”

  Just then Jazz saw something. Something the Impressionist couldn’t see because he was staring at Jazz.

  Shadows.

  Shadows moving in the light spilling under the door from the hallway.

  Someone was out there.

  “Help!” Jazz cried before he could change his mind. “Help me!”

  The Impressionist snickered. “I told you before: No one can—”

  He broke off as someone from the hallway thumped against the door.

  “What the hell?” He looked over at the door, his hands still tight on Jazz, leaving him no room to maneuver.

  Then a familiar voice said “Try again!” in a high note of panic, and Jazz found that he could twist just enough. The knife point dragged and caught, slicing Gramma’s dress open, but then it came free and up as Jazz pivoted. He missed the Impressionist with the knife but managed to land a double-handed blow against the man’s jaw, which rocked him back on his heels and made him take a step away.

  Jazz hopped backward, looking for a better angle to slash with the knife, but he tripped over his own feet and fell, the knife clattering from his hands. It bounced once and landed a couple of feet away. He lunged for it, corkscrewing his body, straining against his bonds to reach out with both hands just as the Impressionist pounced on him and pinned him to the carpet.

  “Don’t even—” the Impressionist started, and then broke off with a howl of pain as Jazz craned his neck and bit deep into the man’s wrist. His teeth scraped against bone and the taste of blood filled his mouth.

  The door thumped again and then exploded open. Out of the corner of his eye, Jazz saw Connie and Howie spill into the room. Howie, unbelievably, wielded a shotgun, looking like the world’s most improbable action hero.

  Still entangled with Jazz, the Impressionist ripped his arm out of Jazz’s mouth. Blood spurted. The Impressionist twisted and reached for the knife.

  Connie kicked it away.

  And then suddenly Howie stood over them, the shotgun leveled without so much as a tremble at the Impressionist’s head.

  “Watch it, man,” Howie snarled. “If you’re not careful, I will bleed all over you.”

  Jazz couldn’t help it; he started laughing.

  Jazz rubbed feeling back into his wrists and ankles. Connie was wrapping a hand towel from the bathroom around the Impressionist’s wound. The Impressionist—shackled to the same chair he’d bound Jazz to, and with the same cuffs he’d used on Jazz—stared straight ahead, impassively. Howie stood guard with the shotgun.

  “He’s really bleeding,” Connie said. “We should call nine-one-one again and tell them we need an ambulance, too.”

  “Let him bleed,” Howie said in a stone-cold tone Jazz had never heard from him before.

  “Watch him,” Jazz said, heading for the bedroom door. “I want a couple of minutes with him before the cops get here.”

  Jazz disappeared down the hall into the bathroom and slurped water from the sink, then spit it out. No matter what he did, he could still taste the Impressionist’s flesh and blood on his tongue. He wondered how long it would take to lose that taste. He felt infected.

  He went back to the bedroom. Howie and Connie still stood guard over the Impressionist, who simply stared straight ahead.

  “How did you guys get here, anyway?”

  Connie stepped back from the Impressionist and shrugged, as though she knew her makeshift bandage wasn’t the best, but didn’t really care. “Howie couldn’t sleep at home. Called and made me come get him. Or else he says he would have walked the whole way.”

  “We got here and the cop was—” Howie broke off, swallowing hard.

  “Not doing his job very well,” the Impressionist said.

  Howie surprised Jazz with a savage swing of the shotgun. It was poorly aimed—he missed the killer’s face and clipped his shoulder instead—but it was a solid hit, and the Impressionist nearly toppled over in the chair.

  “Shut up!” Howie screamed. “Shut up! You killed him! You almost killed me!”

  “I’ll cut deeper next time, bleeder.”

  Jazz snatched away the shotgun before Howie could brain the Impressionist into a coma. He needed the man alive. For now.

  Howie retreated to the other side of the room, breathing hard.

  “We tried G. William, but couldn’t get him. So we called nine-one-one,” Connie said, picking up from where Howie had left off, “and they promised to hurry, but dispatch is all screwed up an
d everyone’s all crazy.”

  “Because of the task force,” Howie continued. “And because everyone’s scrambled to snap up this guy”—he jerked his head at the Impressionist—“at the next victim’s house.”

  “Right. So we came inside.…”

  “Found the shotgun…”

  “Right near the grandfather clock,” Connie said, nodding.

  Jazz grinned. The Impressionist didn’t know that he’d been held at bay with a harmless shotgun.

  “And when we realized you were in here,” Howie said, calmer now, “we kicked in the door.”

  “What do you mean, ‘we’?” Connie said.

  “I meant to say, Connie kicked it down. I supervised.”

  The Impressionist blinked. “I just wanted to make you strong,” he said. “That’s what it’s all about. Making you strong. Making you worthy of your name.”

  He shifted in the chair and something in the way he moved made Jazz think back to moments earlier, when the two of them had struggled on the floor. Something had brushed against him, he was sure. He’d been too busy fighting for his life to think about it, but now…

  “What did you do with the fingers?” he asked the Impressionist. “What was that about?”

  “That’s not for you to know!” the Impressionist shouted, as though terrified. “You can’t know! You’re not ready.”

  The Impressionist wore a loose-fitting golf shirt—perfect camouflage for his Jeff Fulton disguise. No one would give it a second thought. But now Jazz thought of something. Wondered something.

  Ignoring Howie and Connie, who asked what he was doing, Jazz approached the Impressionist.

  Something told Jazz not to lift the shirt, but he ignored that, too.

  The Impressionist flinched and twisted, but couldn’t stop Jazz from tugging up on the shirttail.

  Oh. Wait. Oh, God…

  Nice ink.

  The ring of Howie’s cell phone sounded distant and alien.

  “Hello?” Howie said, as Jazz stared at the Impressionist’s exposed midsection.

  “What the—” said Connie.

  It was a belt. A belt worn under the shirt and against the skin—a thick leather cord from which dangled severed fingers, trophies from the Impressionist’s victims. And on each finger…

  Oh, God!

  “Nice ink,” Jazz said.

  A shrug. “Brand-new. Glad you like ’em.”

  “Hey, Jazz,” Howie said. “It’s the sheriff. He says it’s important.”

  Jazz took the phone, unable to tear his eyes away from the belt of fingers encircling the Impressionist’s waist. Each finger was inscribed with a rough tattoo on the knuckle so that they spelled words as they looped around him. Fifteen fingers in total, so the words repeated.

  “Jazz?” G. William said. “Jazz, that you?”

  LOVE, the tattoos said. FEAR, they said.

  “Oh, God,” Jazz whispered.

  “Jazz, buddy, I don’t know quite how to tell you this,” G. William went on, his voice papery and thin. “But your daddy, he…Your daddy broke outta prison a couple hours ago.”

  “I know,” Jazz said.

  CHAPTER 36

  Free for the first time in four years, Billy Dent needed only an hour to find and kill his first victim. The sheriff sent two cars to the Dent house—one to secure the Impressionist and tend to Gramma, the other to pick up Jazz, Connie, and Howie. The second car had them on the scene in under twenty minutes.

  Melissa Hoover lay dead on the coffee table in her own living room, barely recognizable as herself. Or as a female human being at all.

  Jazz took one look at the crime scene and spun around, pushing Howie and Connie out the door.

  “Jazz!”

  “You can’t see this,” he said. “You’ll have nightmares for the rest of your lives.”

  Billy’s appetites had gone unsated after his arrest and during his years in prison; Melissa Hoover had been the banquet he’d ravaged on first sight. There were seasoned cops at the crime scene—federal agents and locals handpicked by G. William for this kind of work—and every last one of them looked more than ill. They looked haunted. Jazz imagined they were watching him with something like contempt as he mingled among them, asking themselves how long they could possibly endure near a creature like Jazz in the midst of Billy’s handiwork. At least, he hoped he was imagining it.

  Deputy Erickson was in the room, standing off to one side, as usual. But for the first time, Jazz really saw the man. What he’d thought was belligerence and meanness was actually deep pain at the senseless murders he’d been forced to see one after the other after the other. He’d just transferred to what was supposed to be a quiet little town, only to find a bloodbath. Jazz felt like he owed Erickson an apology for everything he’d thought, every accusation he’d harbored.

  Maybe later. Right now, there were more important things to do.

  Melissa had been a royal pain in the ass, but she didn’t deserve what Billy had done to her. And that, Jazz knew, was precisely Billy’s point. Her body was devastated. Her surroundings had become a cathedral of pain and degradation. Jazz knew she had begged and pleaded for her life. Billy hadn’t cared.

  “Still getting all the stories straight,” G. William said as Jazz picked his way through the crime scene, careful not to disturb anything or bother the cops. “Billy cut his own neck open to get into the infirmary. Knew just how to make it look bad, but it wasn’t, of course. Looks like some protestors were involved as a diversion. Three people killed in a firefight while Billy escaped, we think with someone else. Not really sure yet. We figure someone on the outside was keeping in touch with him. Communicating with him, feeding him information through some kind of code in his fan mail. What we can’t figure out is how he communicated back. He never wrote to anyone, never made phone calls.”

  Jazz thought of the favor he’d done for Billy. Moving the birdbath. A signal?

  A few hours after he did it, Billy was free. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Billy must have had his escape plan set up long in advance.

  And then Jazz pulled the trigger.

  “When? When did it happen?” Jazz asked.

  “He escaped at around two this morning.”

  Jazz checked his watch. It was past five. He’d been drugged and with the Impressionist for hours.

  “Then it wasn’t the Impressionist. He was with me the whole time.”

  “You sure this guy was working with Billy? Not just inspired by him?”

  “He had the prison tats on the fingers, G. William.” Jazz shivered. “Billy just got them yesterday. It had to be coordinated. Some kind of communication. Or…” A new thought occurred to him. A new link. He didn’t want to think it; he pushed it away, deep into his brain. But it wouldn’t go into the darkness. It flashed at him.

  G. William had some more details on Billy’s escape, but Jazz couldn’t listen to them just then. The details didn’t really matter, anyway. What mattered was the flashing thought, the one that wouldn’t be ignored: Billy must have set all of this up before he ever went to prison. He had admirers out there, after all. Crazies all over the country who worshipped him. Any combination of them could be out there on his behalf.

  He thought of the protestors outside Wammaket. Thought of a nationwide movement. How many true believers were there? How many people would help his father?

  “The penitentiary logged every piece of mail he got,” G. William said, “but there’s a lot of it. U.S. Marshals are helping us, but it’ll take a long time.”

  Jazz nodded, gnawing on his bottom lip. One of the cops had given him a blue Windbreaker with POLICE stenciled on the back to cover up his naked torso, and he pulled it tighter around himself as he watched the crime-scene techs scurry about the house.

  Billy had left all kinds of evidence: hair, fiber, fingerprints. Some saliva, of course. Probably semen, once the rape kit was done.

  Not that it mattered.

  “He signed this,” Jazz said. “
Literally.”

  G. William nodded. “Yeah. Pretty much. He knows we know it’s him. And it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care. He’s not trying to hide.”

  Of all the personas his father had taken on—the Artist, Green Jack, Hand-in-Glove, Gentle Killer—this one, this pure Billy, frightened Jazz the most.

  “He trashed her computer, wrecked her files.”

  You’re the only one who can take care of my momma while I’m locked up in here, Billy had said. And now he had seen to it that the only person who could have taken Jazz away from Gramma…couldn’t.

  “He also left this.” G. William held up a plastic evidence bag. Within was a sheet of paper filled with cramped writing. Jazz took it from the sheriff.

  Up close, he could see a bloody thumbprint on it, too.

  The stationery was FROM THE DESK OF MELISSA HOOVER. The word DESK was crossed out and replaced with DEATH

  The note read:

  Dear Jasper,

  I can’t begin to tell you what a pleasure it was to see you at Wammaket. You've grown into such a strong and powerful yound man. I am so proud of what you will accomplish in this life. I already know you are destined for great things. I dream of the things we’ll do together. Someday.

  For now, though, I have to leave you with this. Never let it be said your old man doesn’t know how to repay a debt.

  Love,

  Dear Old Dad

  And there was a postscript that made Jazz want to kill everyone in the room, himself included:

  PS Maybe one of these days we’ll get together and talk about what you did to your mother.

  The police insisted on Gramma going to the hospital, and the doctors wanted to keep her for observation. Jazz stayed with her. He knew he needed to sleep, but he couldn’t. He was responsible for Billy’s escape. For the death of a corrections officer, the wounding of two more. For the horrors visited upon Melissa Hoover.

  And, if Billy could be believed, maybe for his own mother’s death.

  G. William had asked about that bit in the letter about “repaying a debt.” Jazz made a split-second decision not to tell G. William about the birdbath. He didn’t know why—he just knew that he couldn’t handle a lecture from G. William at the moment. So he pled ignorance, and G. William—overwhelmed by the crime scene—accepted it.