by Barry Lyga
If it was true, there was only one outcome for Jazz. One possibility.
He had no way to get in touch with Jazz. He’d driven to the Hideout again only to find his friend gone. Gone where, he couldn’t say. Perhaps Jazz had finally wised up and decided to grow a beard, find a cabin in obscurest Alaska somewhere, and settle in for a nice, quiet life as a salmon fisherman. Who occasionally solved minor local crimes. That sounded like one of the ridiculous murder-mystery series Howie’s dad devoured, and it would be the best of all possible endings for Jazz.
But Howie knew his best friend too well. If Jazz wasn’t at the Hideout, he was off stalking Billy.
At least he took the rest of the food I brought. A growing boy fighting his insane father to the death has to keep the calorie count up there. Fighting to the death is sweaty work.
So what to do when Jazz isn’t around and there is Jazz-worthy news to be told? The answer was startlingly obvious, even to the oblivious: Go to the girlfriend.
He called Connie on her cell, expecting to get her in New York, surprised when she told him she was back in the Nod.
“I’ve got something you should see, then. Can I come over?”
CHAPTER 46
Connie opened her eyes to the sound of her cell phone demanding attention. “Don’t go chasing—” She grabbed it before it could go any further. She’d chased the waterfall and gotten battered for it.
“Hey, Connie.” Howie. Not Jazz. Had she really expected Jazz to call?
“Howie, have you—”
“Not on the phone.”
Under ordinary circumstances, she would have found Howie’s paranoia either adorable or annoying. But given the forces that had mobilized to look for Jazz, paranoia was probably the most meagerly acceptable level of caution. Billy could kill him. Sam could kill him. The police could shoot him “accidentally.” She knew all about the cops and their trigger fingers and their predilection for dealing with those who would attack their brethren. Her father had drummed such stories into her from a young age; more so into Whiz, who bore the burden of being a black boy about to grow into a black teen. If the police even look at you funny, Dad had said, you hit the ground and put your hands over your head. Don’t talk back. Don’t try to run. Don’t try to explain. They’re just looking for an excuse to shoot you. Don’t give it to them.
The same would apply to Jazz, she knew, despite his white skin. He’d assaulted cops; bad enough. But he was also suspiciously tied to the death of an FBI agent, and that made Jazz the functional equivalent of a black teenager in a hoodie in a white neighborhood.
If—when—the police caught up to Jazz, there was not even the remotest possibility that Jazz would lie flat on the ground with his hands over his head. And the police would, without hesitation, kill him.
She turned her lips away from the phone, struggling with tears. Howie kept talking, and as she told him to come over, she plucked the picture of Jazz and her from last summer from the nightstand. It was the only comfort she had.
Soon Howie arrived. He almost hit his head on the doorframe coming into her room but ducked at the last possible second.
“Ninja reflexes!” he cackled, and Connie almost burst into tears of gratitude for the familiar comfort of his ironic, overstated confidence. She settled for struggling into a sitting position in bed and holding out her arms so that the big goof could hug her. Wanting to squeeze him hard, she instead held him gingerly, nestling her cheek against his bony, sharp shoulder.
When Howie started crying, it was as though his tears gave hers permission to show up, and soon they were sobbing against each other in intermingled relief and fear, clutching at each other like safety bars on a roller coaster. Connie wept unselfconsciously, dampening Howie’s shirt, and his chin vibrated against her hair, but for the first time in her life, she just didn’t give a good goddamn about her hair. Let Howie irrigate it with his tears. She didn’t care.
Eventually, the tears subsided and she became aware that she was in a deep, desperate clinch with Howie, with no idea of how to break loose without hurting his feelings or actually causing him harm. Howie settled it for her when he whispered—in a voice still congested with the detritus of his crying—“I can totally feel your boobs against me.”
Oh, thank God. He was Howie again. And she was Connie again, and she released him, pushing him back gently. “Get your face out of my hair, Bleeding Boy.”
He grinned at her, and they were good.
“You’ve seen him?” Connie asked in a low voice, worried about her parents or Whiz overhearing.
Howie laid a too-long index finger over his lips and stood to close the door. Then he returned, slumping into her wheelchair. Despite the several feet of height difference and the too-white skin, he looked for all the world as Whiz had looked, helpless and forlorn and trying so hard to be a man. He nodded.
If she hadn’t been cried out after the jag in Howie’s arms, Connie might have fired up the waterworks again. But she was dry and she focused.
“When?” she asked. “Where?”
Howie’s lips quirked to the left like they did when he was considering a lie. It made his face look like someone had smeared a finger over a still-wet painting.
“Howie. Tell me.”
“Not sure it matters. He isn’t where he was. I checked.” He leaned forward, spiky elbows on jutting knees. “It’s going down, Connie. I think it’s happening.”
He told her how Billy had called to leave Jazz a message—“And to talk about my dad’s golf swing; what is it with this guy?”—and how Jazz had disappeared after that. No matter how much she asked, he refused to play the message.
“I’m gonna have nightmares for the rest of my life and then in my next incarnation as the twenty-second century’s version of Hugh Hefner. No need to give them to you, too.”
“Hefner, eh?”
“Hey, after everything I’ve suffered in this life, I figure I’m due for a lifetime of endless sex. But check it—on orders from you know who, I scoped out Gramma’s house and found this.” He produced a torn-open envelope from his pocket and handed it over to her.
The letter within was handwritten and brief. Connie read it twice, furrowing her brow as she tried to coax additional meaning out of it. It seemed so simple.…
“I don’t get it,” she admitted.
“What if what it says is true?” Howie asked.
“Well, then…” She trailed off. She wasn’t making the connection. Damn painkillers.
“If the letter is legit,” Howie said, “then that means we were wrong. You. Me. Jazz. Wrong. We made an assumption, and if it’s wrong—”
“Oh, God!” Connie dropped the letter and clapped her hands over her mouth. “Oh, God, Howie! Then—”
“We have to go to the police,” Howie said. “No more screwing around. We tell them everything, and if Jazz doesn’t like—”
A knock at the door. Her father poked his head in.
“Conscience,” he said gravely, “the police are here to see you.”
CHAPTER 47
Hughes was expecting Connie Hall, so he was surprised when instead a ridiculously tall, thin white kid emerged from the corridor into the Halls’ living room. Hughes hoped that the kid’s basketball skills were up to snuff because otherwise all that height was going to go to waste. Damn shame.
He and Tanner had spent the day making the rounds of places in Lobo’s Nod where either of the Dents might be holed up, to no avail. “Neither one of them’s an idiot,” Tanner had confided as they left yet another fruitless spot. “I don’t really think we’ll find ’em by checking these places, but we have to cross all the Ts, you know?”
Despite himself, Hughes was growing to like Tanner. Under all that blubber beat the heart of an excellent homicide cop. In New York or San Francisco, Tanner would be a first grade, or maybe running his own unit. His talents and insights seemed wasted in a place like Lobo’s Nod, but Hughes couldn’t figure out a polite way to say that. Instead, he settled for listening
to the sheriff ramble as they drove the Nod and its environs, occasionally checking run-down hotels and condemned storefronts.
They lunched at a place called—Hughes couldn’t believe it—DINNER. He couldn’t tell if the joint had begun as a dinner-only restaurant or if someone just didn’t know how to spell diner. They each checked their phones obsessively as they ate, but there was nothing conclusive. Each Dent had been spotted in pretty much all fifty states at this point, and there were two reports from Mexico and one from Canada. People were seeing the Dents on TV and then projecting.
And Hughes and Tanner had nothing but pure guesswork and the word of a female trucker who claimed that she’d dropped off Jasper Dent an hour away at a gas station. Tanner’d sent deputies to investigate, and they’d found nothing.
Later in the day, Hughes finally asked the question he’d been dying to ask: “Tell me, Sheriff. How’d you catch Billy, all those years ago?”
Tanner cracked a smile, piloting his car past an old railroad track. There were some shacks out that way to check out. “Wish I could tell you it was brilliant police work, but it was just dumb luck.”
“I think you’re being modest, Sheriff.”
“Call me G. William. And my momma used to say modesty is just braggin’ that ain’t been used in a while.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Tanner shrugged. “Not sure. Sounds good, though, right?”
They chuckled together and then swept the shacks with flashlights, guns drawn, and found—again—nothing.
“What now?” Hughes asked as they returned to the car.
Tanner stared off into space. If this had been New York, Hughes would have known the next steps, but out here in Timbuktu, he was at a loss. Were there more ramshackle piles of rubble for the Dents to squirrel away in? God, he hoped not.
“Connie’s back in town,” Tanner said. “Let’s go talk to her. You said Jasper called her while she was in the hospital, right? So let’s see if she remembers anything new.”
When he said remembers, Hughes knew that was his polite, southern way of saying, Let’s see if she’s decided to tell us what really happened on that phone call.
“Sounds good.” It actually sounded desperate, but at this point, desperation was the name of the game. Hughes did not want to be standing over another body anytime soon.
And now they were in Connie’s living room. The mother had hustled a kid out into the kitchen, and the dad had looked none too pleased to see Hughes again, though he’d been friendly enough with G. William. The gangly white kid loped into the room as if he owned the place and flopped onto the sofa. Hughes expected to hear the rattle of his bones clicking against one another.
“What’s the what, G-Dubs?” asked the world’s worst gangsta. Hughes had to fight the urge to step over there and smack the wigger out of the kid.
“Howie,” Tanner said with the air of a man who had been pushed past every conceivable annoyance and now had attained a Zen-like understanding of them. “Didn’t expect to see you here. We—”
Before he could finish, here came Dad down the hallway, pushing Connie in a wheelchair. Hughes winced at the sight of her. In a hospital bed, she’d looked bad enough, but now most of the bandages were off, revealing a patchwork of bruises, abrasions, and cuts on most of her exposed flesh. Her left leg jutted out before her, and her father carefully navigated it around the living-room furniture, positioning her close to the kid named Howie. Hughes couldn’t help but notice that Dad had chosen to put her as far away from him and Tanner as possible, with a love seat and a coffee table between them.
Connie reached out and took Howie’s hand. How sweet.
“Mr. Hall,” Hughes said, nodding. “A pleasure to see you again.”
“I’m sure it’s all yours.”
Lawyers.
“We’re here—”
“Aren’t you a little out of your jurisdiction, Detective?”
Friggin’. Lawyers.
Tanner stepped between them. “Jerry, I know you don’t want your girl put through anything more than she’s already been through, and Lord knows I don’t want to be the one puttin’ her through it. We just have a couple of questions, and then I swear y’all can get back to your evening.”
That seemed to mollify Hall, who nodded curtly but moved not an inch, arms over his chest, glaring at Hughes.
“Since we have Howie here, though…”
Hughes knew what Tanner was getting at. The sketch artist from the county had finally made her way to the Nod and finished the sketch of the woman Deputy Erickson had seen in the hospital. They were confident the woman was Samantha Dent, but no one in town had seen her in years.
Except for Howie.
“Could you just take a look at these?” Tanner asked, unfolding a sheet of paper and holding it out to Howie. “Upper left is the way she looked to Erickson. Then we have projections without the glasses, without her hair up in the cap. This is the woman we believe may have been involved in the murder of—”
Howie yelped in pain and jerked his hand away from Connie. “What the hell—?”
Connie had blanched. She looked over at Howie, and something passed between them.
“Oh, God,” Howie breathed.
“Poor Jazz,” Connie whispered. “Oh, Jazz…”
“What?” Hughes demanded. The dad be damned—something was going on here.
“You don’t…” Howie shook his head.
Connie fixed him with a tear-filled scowl. “It’s hopeless,” she said with finality. “There’s nothing anyone can do for Jazz now.”
CHAPTER 48
The knife was a feint, Jazz knew.
And knowing Billy’s sense of justice, irony, and symbolism, he was willing to bet it was the same knife he had used to cut Connie’s braid away. It was a beautiful, tempting feint, but a feint nonetheless. If he went for the knife, Billy would all-too-quickly reverse it and Jazz would be staring at the point, not the handle. He wasn’t sure if his father would kill him or not; Billy’s parental desire to see Jazz slaughtering at his side ran strong and true. But if Billy absolutely believed that Jazz was a lost cause, that he would not become the slaying, torturing godling Billy had envisioned for years… Well, if Billy became convinced of that, there was no telling what he might or might not do.
Jazz wanted that knife so badly that his palms itched.
“I’m not fighting you,” he said. “Not until you tell me where Mom is.”
“You think that information will mean anything to you?”
“I know that after I kill you, I won’t be able to ask you any questions, so I’m asking now.”
Eyes widening in excitement, Billy smiled like a child opening birthday gifts. “Now you sound like a Crow, boy!” The knife did not waver, hanging in the air. Jazz tried not to stare at it. Billy was like a magician—one hand distracted you while the other performed bloody tricks.
“I don’t know that you’re ready to see your mom,” Billy went on. “I don’t know that you’ve earned it. Now, whyn’t you show Dear Old Dad what you’ve got in your pocket there.”
No choice. Jazz had lost control of the conversation, if he’d ever had it in the first place. Billy held all the cards. Billy had Mom. Until he learned where Mom was, Jazz had to play along with Billy’s games.
Blowing out a breath in annoyance, Jazz removed his hand from his pocket and showed Billy… Hughes’s badge.
“Ha! I bet there’s a pissed-off cop gettin’ his ass reamed somewhere in New York.”
“I’m sure.” Jazz had left the badge in the same pocket as the Taser, fortunately. Billy wasn’t the only magician in the family. Watch the shiny badge over here and don’t pay attention to what else I might have in my pocket.…
“Pin that on you,” Billy said, a tinge of amusement lingering on the edges of his words.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It’ll be funny, maybe? I just got a hankering to see you like a cop, and I don’t tend to ign
ore my hankerings.”
The overcoat, Jazz thought, would be too thick. He pried aside the lapels and pinned Hughes’s badge to the left breast of Mark Culpepper’s shirt. “There. Happy?”
Billy smirked. “Nah. Not as funny as I thought it’d be. Oh, well. Don’t suppose you had to kill anyone to get your hands on that.…” Hopeful note to his voice. A father opening a report card he suspects will be bad but hopes will have at least one B.
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
Billy shrugged. “Disappointment is part of parenthood, Jasper. The trick is learnin’ to love your kids even when they disappoint you. You know they made me try therapy in Wammaket? Didn’t last long, but I did learn that when we’re disappointed with someone else, it’s actually sort of a mirror bounce. We’re actually disappointed at something in ourselves.” Billy lowered the knife, clearly convinced Jazz wasn’t going to lunge for it. He regarded it for a moment and then, with a one-shoulder shrug, tucked it into his waistband. “I spent a lot of time in solitary. Learned to think real hard about what I done and what I didn’t do. And my disappointment in you, Jasper, is really disappointment in me. That I left you so soon. Before I could finish bringing you up right. It ain’t your fault you are the way you are. It’s mine.”
No kidding.
With real remorse in his voice, Billy continued: “If I’d held my… urges in check, that fat prick Tanner never would’ve caught me. I’d’a been a free man, and I could have finished teaching you.”
“You taught me enough,” Jazz said quietly. Quite unbidden, he flashed to the knife in his hands, cutting into flesh.…
Mom? Was it Mom I cut? Or did Sam let me practice on her?
Billy was still talking, as though Jazz hadn’t spoken. Jazz realized he’d gone into a fugue state for a moment, spacing out in front of the most dangerous man he knew. “Instead, you go off and make friends.” Billy spat the word. “You pollute your flesh with ink.”
“Look who’s talking.” Billy’s prison tats still stood out on his knuckles.
