Game

by Barry Lyga

  “We’re not sure why,” Hughes confessed. “Might have just been opportunity…. It’s a good dump site. No street cameras nearby.”

  “Subway entrance over there,” Jazz said, pointing. “So he picked them up coming out of the subway, I guess? Everyone I see here, they come up the stairs with their iPods on, or the first thing they do is check their phones. They’re not paying attention to anything. Easy prey.”

  Hughes turned and looked at the subway stairs as though seeing them for the first time. “That makes a lot of sense, but… no. That stop, this stop here, it was closed all summer long. For maintenance and upgrades. The closest working station is about, uh, eight blocks that way.” He pointed west. At least, Jazz thought it was west. He was having trouble orienting himself—Brooklyn looked the same in every direction.

  So. No watering hole for the lion in the summer, then. It had been dry. Why leave your prey here, then, in this alley?

  “The alley means something to him,” Jazz said, pacing its width. He stroked his fingers lightly against one concrete wall, as if he could read something written there in Braille. “There’s a significance to it. Otherwise, why bring them here?”

  “Like I said—it’s a good dumping ground. It’s—”

  “He didn’t just dump them here. He killed them here, too.”

  “What?” Hughes shook his head. “No. You have to remember the chronology. He started out dumping bodies. It’s only later that he evolves to killing them and leaving them at the murder site.”

  “Wrong.”

  “Wrong? Wrong? Are you going to tell me that the sun rises in the north, too? I’m talking facts, Jasper. There was no evidence, no blood, no—”

  “There wouldn’t have been. It rained the first night, right?”

  Hughes paused, then—clearly frustrated—skimmed through the iPad. “Ah, hell. Okay, yeah. I forgot that. It was months ago. First body, it rained, so no blood, but the second body—”

  Jazz hushed Hughes and closed his eyes; the crime-scene photos floated before him, a garish, ghoulish panorama of phosphenes. “DiNozzo’s heel. Her left heel. It was broken.”

  “You remember that? Seriously?” Almost more exasperated than impressed. Almost.

  “It’s visible in the third photo taken at the scene,” Jazz said, and walked over to where her body had been found. There was no trace of it now, of course. She had been moved months ago. Still, he sank to one knee and put his palm where her chest would have been, as though he could somehow feel the last beats of her heart. “Right here. And her left heel was broken. But you didn’t find it here. It wasn’t on the invoice.”

  Hughes stood over Jazz with the tablet, skimming through data. “It’s not that I don’t trust your memory….”

  “You never found the heel, and rain wouldn’t wash that away. Not on a flat surface like this. Blood, sure. Not something solid. She broke it when he grabbed her somewhere else. Or when he dragged her here.”

  “It could have broken when he dragged her dead body,” Hughes pointed out.

  “No. The lividity’s all wrong. If he dragged her so that her left heel broke when she was dead, there would have been evidence of blood pooling along her left side. But there wasn’t. She was alive when he brought her here.”

  “Sonofa…” Hughes looked as though he wished he could literally kick himself. “Spencer, too, then? Was he alive?”

  “I don’t know. Probably.” Jazz remembered something new. “The newspapers reported the first one as a dump job, didn’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your crime-scene guys,” he said, turning to a Dumpster at the end of the alley, “they found a spot of Spencer’s blood on the Dumpster, right?”

  Hughes swallowed, looked as though he wanted to say something about Jazz’s memory… then consulted the iPad. “Right. Spot of blood. Probably… we thought it flew off the body when our guy dropped it.”

  “No. He saw the newspaper story. Realized what he’d done, that he’d gotten lucky and thrown you off, had you running around looking for a murder site when it was right here all along. So he kept it up. The second time, he was prepared. A drop cloth, probably. Covered the alley floor with it to make it look like a dump job. But a little spatter got away from him when he cut the throat. Hit the Dumpster.”

  “You’re basing a hell of a lot on a spot of blood and some rain.” But Hughes wasn’t protesting very hard.

  “This was more than just a dump site to him, Hughes. He brought them here—and here specifically—to kill them. It’s holy ground to him, for some reason.”

  “I hear you. The only problem is, given the other dozen murders we’ve got… so is about half of Brooklyn.”

  The NYPD and the feds had been working under the assumption that Hat-Dog’s earliest victims were killed at one site and dumped at another, that as he became more comfortable with his skills and his kills (and, no doubt, his selection of sites), he began to leave his victims where he’d murdered them.

  Jazz’s observation destroyed that pattern. It became clear as he visited the sites where the various bodies had been found that Hat-Dog’s decision to leave a body in a particular place had nothing to do with his evolution as a killer. Each decision made sense only to him.

  A rooftop in Brooklyn, for example, didn’t seem like the sort of place for a murder, but the medical examiner was certain that Marvin Candless had been killed up there, and Jazz tended to agree. Literally pints of blood had pooled around the body, and a void pattern that fit the body precisely—poor old Marvin had died on that rooftop, the second to die atop a building (along with an earlier victim named Jerome Herrington). Jazz noted that the ME speculated Mr. Candless had lived long enough to experience his own intestines being removed, based on the amount of blood at the scene. That was probably right.

  “Why not just tie them down instead of paralyzing them?” Hughes asked, staring up at the sky. He clearly had no need or desire to look at this crime scene again, even though it had been weeks since Candless’s death and anyone on the rooftop wouldn’t find anything to indicate a crime had ever happened here.

  “Probably more fun for him this way,” Jazz said. He peered around. “Candless died when it was warmer. What have we got over there?”

  “Where?” Hughes asked.

  Jazz pointed to two large, squarish wooden structures, covered in plastic tarps against the winter.

  “Oh. Roof gardens.”

  “Roof gardens?” It was as alien a concept to country-boy Jazz as life on a desert island.

  Hughes shrugged. “City folk like green, too. Gotta get it where you can.”

  “Nothing here. Let’s move on.”

  And they did. Moving on, then on, then on. Alleyways. An open-air parking space tucked behind an old ramshackle fence that provided just enough privacy for dirty business. Some of the crime scenes, Jazz believed, were clearly thought out and picked out far in advance. Some, it seemed, were chosen on the fly, as good opportunities. Like the new alleyway he stood in.

  “He took his time,” Jazz muttered, remembering the file on Aimee Ventnor, the fifth victim. Aimee had been on her way home from a friend’s house. A judiciously placed subway camera showed her making a bad turn coming off the R train, one that took her to a locked subway gate. The cops believed—and Jazz thought it, too—that Hat-Dog had probably “acquired” her then, watching her head down that blind passageway, knowing she would have to come back his way.

  “Grabbed her right when she left view of the camera,” Jazz said.

  “That’s what we think,” Hughes agreed. “Then it’s a straight shot up to the alley, if you’re willing to dance around some trash cans from the bodega on the corner.”

  Oh, he’s willing to dance, I bet! Billy crowed.

  Like so many of the Hat-Dog crime scenes, this one was a public space. It had been months since Ventnor was found, so the space had long since been released back to the public. Hughes stood at the end of the alleyway to keep away any
onlookers as Jazz paced and watched and thought.

  “Anything?” Hughes asked eventually, joining Jazz.

  “It stinks.”

  “It’s an alleyway in Brooklyn. I’m not sure what you expected.”

  “No, it’s just… it stinks even in the winter. He killed her in the late summer. It would have smelled even worse then, right?”

  “Probably.”

  “Showing his contempt for her. Not leaving her in a nice place. She meant nothing to him.”

  “Right. He killed her.”

  “Some killers have feelings for their victims. Take care of the bodies. Close the eyes, stuff like that.”

  “Well, this guy cut off her eyelids, so he didn’t care about that.” Without even looking at a file, Hughes rattled off the various crimes committed in this alley by Hat-Dog. “Last victim before we started recovering semen.”

  “So, condom for her, but not others?”

  “Maybe he thinks some are clean and some aren’t? Gibbs—the next vic—was married. Maybe he figured she wouldn’t have an STD?”

  That made some sort of sense, but it wasn’t anything Jazz could solve now. “I think I’m done here.” They toured the rest of the crime scenes as the early winter night fell around them.

  One of the body sites wasn’t outside at all—it was inside what had been an abandoned office building, now being refurbished and converted into apartments. Hughes flashed his tin to a security guard and they trooped inside, where they found that the crime scene was now a half-painted, half-completed studio unit.

  Hughes handed Jazz the iPad. “By the time we got to this one, we had the FBI involved. They did some computer hoodoo on all the photos on here. It’s supposed to work like some kind of augmented-reality thing….”

  Jazz fiddled with it and soon saw what Hughes meant—the camera on the back of the tablet picked up whatever he pointed it at, and showed him on its screen what that part of the studio had looked like when the police had arrived. Very cool. Jazz walked the perimeter of the apartment, unraveling the past as he went.

  “Broken window.” The screen showed glass on the floor, and footprints consistent with footprints found at some of the other scenes.

  “Yeah. He broke the glass and came in through the window.”

  Jazz stared at the image from the past in front of him. Something was wrong….

  Something’s always wrong, Billy said. I make sure something’s wrong….

  “He didn’t come in through the window. He broke it after the fact.”

  “But, Jasper,” Hughes protested, “the glass was on the inside. That means he had to break it from the outside—”

  “Right. So he opened it from in here, crawled out onto the fire escape, and broke it then.”

  “Why do you say that? There’s not a shred of forensic evidence—”

  “Ha! You know what Billy used to say about forensic evidence? Hell”—he dropped into an eerily perfect impression of his father—“forensic evidence is like snappin’ together five pieces from a hundred-piece puzzle and sayin’, ‘That’s close enough.’

  “You can’t trust anything you find,” he went on in his own voice. “Especially the obvious stuff. Check out this picture. It shows a partial footprint under one of the shards of glass. If he’d broken the window and then come in, he would have either stepped on the glass or avoided it. But the only way for his footprint to be under the glass is if he was already in the room.”

  Hughes stared.

  “Every conclusion we draw is based on something we find, Billy used to say.” If you start muckin’ up what they find, then you’re muckin’ up their conclusions, too, Jasper. It’s basic chaos theory—outcomes depend on initial conditions.

  “What do you know about chaos theory?” Jazz asked, and Hughes sighed. “Never mind. Not important.”

  “I actually know all about chaos theory,” the detective said. “Sensitive dependence on initial conditions, right? I’m just aggravated that we missed this somehow.”

  “Well, I’m not sure what it means. It’s just him trying to throw us off. I’m not sure it gets us any closer to him, but it shows how he thinks. A little.”

  Hughes made a note in a little notebook he carried in his breast pocket. “I’ll get some guys to come talk to the workers tomorrow. See if anyone noticed anything when they started working. Also interview some of the building people, nose around, see if we can figure out how he did get in, if not through the window.”

  “What’s next?”

  Hughes checked his watch. “It’s late. The only place you haven’t seen yet is the one way down in Coney Island.”

  “Is that far?”

  “Far enough. Let me get you back to the hotel. Get some rest. We’ll hit the Tilt-A-Whirl tomorrow, okay?”

  Jazz checked the time. “Yeah. I better call my aunt. I totally forgot to do that today.”

  When Hughes dropped him off at the hotel, Jazz found a quiet corner of the lobby to call home. Aunt Samantha picked up. They talked briefly about Gramma, who seemed to be doing well, having apparently forgotten that her daughter hadn’t been home in decades. “We sort of picked up right where we left off,” Samantha said.

  “I guess that’s good. And Howie’s helping?”

  “Um, yeah. He’s… friendly.”

  That sounded like Howie. “Good. Look, just one more thing, Aunt Samantha. I don’t think this’ll be an issue, but just in case—don’t talk to any reporters, okay?”

  “Oh,” she said, as if the idea hadn’t even occurred to her. “Right. Okay. I won’t.” A moment passed, and then she said, “Not even the ones you’re friends with?”

  Friends?

  Before she could answer his next question—before he even asked it—Jazz knew what was about to happen. “What friends?” He had made it an unbreakable policy not to befriend anyone in the media.

  “The guy…” she said, uncertain. “The guy from the local paper. Weathers.”

  Of course. Doug Weathers. Jazz nearly went blind as his vision turned red. “Doug Weathers,” he said. “You talked to Doug Weathers.”

  “He came by this afternoon. He didn’t seem like the national people. Just wanted to check in, he said. He said he hadn’t talked to you in a while and was wondering—oh, Jesus. Jasper, what did I do?”

  You gave information to the enemy, you idiot! Jazz wanted to scream. He took a deep breath, then another. She didn’t know. Aunt Samantha had been hit with the media sledgehammer four years ago, but that had been it. She hadn’t lived under the constant threat of press intrusion like Jazz had.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I am so sorry,” Samantha said. “God, I was an idiot, wasn’t I? He seemed so nice. And I thought, I thought, well, He’s just a local paper. And he said he knew you, that you were friends.”

  “He was telling half the truth. Which, to be fair, is about fifty percent more than usual. What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing. Well, not nothing. But nothing important. He asked if you were around and I told him you were out of town.”

  “Is that it? Did you tell him where I went?”

  She sighed, resigned and defeated. “I said you were in New York. But,” she said hurriedly, “I didn’t tell him you were there for the police.”

  It didn’t matter. Weathers was a sleaze, a bottom-feeder, and a poor speller, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew that if you added Jasper Dent and New York, you could only come up with one solution: the Hat-Dog Killer.

  “Okay, thanks, Aunt Samantha,” Jazz said as calmly as he could. Connie walked through the lobby just then, carrying two bottles of soda and a bag of chips. She arched an eyebrow at him as she headed to the elevator.

  “I’m so sorry,” Samantha said again.

  “Don’t worry about it. Tuck Gramma in, and I’ll talk to you again tomorrow.”

  In the room, Connie was at the desk, a neatly ordered stack of paperwork before her. “I can’t believe I came all this way to play secreta
ry,” she began, but when she saw the look on his face, her snark fell away and she went to him, wrapping him in her arms. “What happened?”

  “I think it’s all gonna hit the fan,” he told her.

  Later, they lay in bed together, curled into each other. They had snuggled in the backseat of the Jeep before and had napped together at the Hideout or—on occasion, when her parents and Whiz were away—at Connie’s house. But this was—would be—their first time spending an entire night together. Jazz suddenly wished he’d thought to bring condoms.

  He was also glad he hadn’t. There was no way Connie would let them have sex without protection, so he was safe.

  You could talk those pretty legs open if you wanted to, Billy told him, licking his chops. She wants it so bad, she’s drooling for it. And you know it. You know it in your gut and in your balls. It’ll feel so good, and the best part of it is that you’ll be making her do it, making her want it. That’s the best part, Jasper. When they can’t help themselves.

  “What are you thinking?” Connie asked.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “You’re thinking about the murders.”

  “Yeah,” he lied. It was easier, the lying. It spared her so much.

  She sat up in bed. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No. I don’t want to bother you.”

  “It’s okay. I’m here to help.”

  He ransacked his mind for something he could discuss. It wasn’t difficult. The case files were jam-packed with contradictory and nonsensical bits of information, so he latched on to one of them.

  “It’s the disemboweling,” he told her.

  “Because he didn’t do that right away,” Connie said, and Jazz smiled in the dark, proud of her.

  “Right. He didn’t start disemboweling until his sixth victim.”

  “So why start then? Is that what’s bothering you? He didn’t start the paralysis until later, either.”

  “Yeah, but that’s a practical thing. He doesn’t feel an urge to paralyze them—I really believe he just does it to make things easier.”