I Hunt Killers

by Barry Lyga

  Oh, great. He just loved when she thought he was Billy. “I’m good,” he told her. “I’m gonna kill ’em all with my thoughts.”

  Gramma cackled. “You hear that?” More pounding on the door. “He’s gonna kill y’all with—”

  Jazz wrenched open the front door, ready to let loose at Doug Weathers with a soul-withering blast of invective. But instead, he saw G. William standing there, fist raised to knock again, his shoulders still broad, his stance still confident.

  But his eyes…

  Something had gone misty and cold in his eyes.

  Oh, Jazz thought, and the realization hit him even as G. William said it: “You were right. It’s a serial killer. We got another victim.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Jazz ushered G. William into the house. Gramma peeked around the grandfather clock, saw it was the sheriff, and pointed her shotgun, trembling. G. William forced a grin and said, “How do, ma’am? Didn’t know there was a lady present. Apologies.” Then he doffed his hat.

  Gramma giggled and scampered off to her bedroom.

  G. William arched an eyebrow. “She’s getting worse, Jazz.”

  “What? Nah. She’s pretty stable these days. She’s just off-kilter because it’s late, is all.”

  G. William grunted.

  The sheriff had come here many, many times after arresting Billy, so Jazz didn’t have to show him the way to the kitchen. Jazz groaned when he saw the scattered remnants of Gramma’s meal. He swept the remains into the greasy bucket and dumped it in the sink.

  “Coffee?” he asked as G. William settled into a chair.

  “Got enough in me to float an armada, Jazz. Thanks, no.” He sighed. “I am not happy about this.”

  Jazz felt great—he’d been right. Fiona Goodling hadn’t been a one-off. Someone was out there prospecting. Someone was prospecting, and Jazz had seen it—had known it—before anyone else. Tanner sort of reminded Jazz of Reverend Parris from The Crucible: so eager to do something to help the town, but completely unwilling to believe that true evil was afoot.

  At first. Eventually, he came around. He had to.

  Linkage blindness was common in law enforcement, but in G. William’s case, it came with a dose of wishful thinking. At the time Dear Old Dad had violated his own cardinal rule and decided to prospect in Lobo’s Nod, G. William Tanner was a broken man. His wife of thirty-seven years had just died after a yearlong bout with a strain of ovarian cancer so cruel and so lingering that Billy himself would have admired it. In the next election, Tanner was all but guaranteed to lose to a young upstart from Calverton who had run on a thinly disguised platform of ageism, his slogan running along the lines of “Sweep in the new!” Basically, with his wife dead and his lifelong career almost in the grave as well, G. William had had nothing better to do than to obsess over Cara Swinton, a blond cheerleader from Lobo’s Nod High School who’d gone missing, some strands of her hair and a torn patch of her sweater found in a bush outside the post office. Everyone—even Cara’s parents—thought she’d run off to New York (Cara dreamed of being a model), but G. William felt something different in the air.

  And when Samantha Reed—another pretty young blond—turned up dead in a culvert a week later, G. William knew he had something. He tied the murders to two of Billy’s other crimes, committed ten years apart and in ways that Billy had been sure could never be connected. G. William Tanner, though, made the connections and came to realize that the Artist, Green Jack, and others were all the same man, a man now operating in Lobo’s Nod.

  Widower. Almost voted out of office. Combined with the stresses of his personal life, the tracking of Billy Dent nearly destroyed G. William. Jazz understood why the sheriff desperately did not want to have to chase another serial killer.

  “I’ve been tryin’ to call you all night,” G. William said. “Couldn’t get through. Pretty much decided not to bother, but I couldn’t sleep. Realized I needed to tell you that you were right.”

  If Jazz had been waiting for an apology, he would have waited a long time. One wouldn’t be coming. As far as G. William was concerned, Jazz violating the crime scene made them even as far as not trusting each other went.

  Jazz slid into a chair across from the sheriff. “So tell me what happened.”

  A shrug. “All started when we turned up a recent case with the same finger-removal MO.”

  “It’s not his MO,” Jazz said. “It’s his signature.” He bit his lip immediately, and too late; G. William didn’t need to be schooled right now.

  But the sheriff just nodded wearily. “Right. Right. I know,” he said without reproach. “Anyhow, body turned up three days ago, up in Lindenberg, just across the state line. Two fingers removed, one of them left behind. The middle finger.”

  “Just two fingers? He only took one? Are you sure?”

  “We pretty much have the whole count-to-ten thing down pat, Jazz.”

  “Do they have an ID? Was she connected to Goodling at all?”

  “No. Not so’s we can tell, at least. Name’s…” G. William heaved his bulk to one side and slid his smartphone out of his hip pocket. He scrolled through a screen. “Name’s Carla O’Donnelly. College student from State U. No connection to Goodling that we can tell.” G. William replaced the phone and passed a hand over his face, as though he could work some sort of magic trick and—ta-da!—change the world before his eyes.

  The trick didn’t work.

  “I don’t know if I’m up to this, Jazz,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “I’m just…” His fingers trembled as he massaged his temples. Jazz felt like he’d just walked in on someone having sex—awkward and embarrassed for G. William and ashamed of himself all at once. And maybe a little confused. Still, he couldn’t help watching. Observing. Some cold and clinical part of him—maybe the same part that made him such a fit for Reverend Hale—filed away G. William’s reactions, his motions, his words. This is what it’s like to be completely overwhelmed, he thought. This is what it’s like to be at the end of your rope. Hale’s words were fitting here: “No man may longer doubt the powers of the dark are gathered in monstrous attack upon this village.”

  Hale…Acting…

  What if it was all an act? The visit at night. The almost-breakdown. Jazz didn’t want to think it, but he had to. It would be irresponsible not to think it.

  What if the killer was none other than G. William Tanner?

  Everyone said that pursuing Billy had almost driven the sheriff crazy. So what if that “almost” wasn’t part of the equation? What if G. William had gone completely off his rocker and now had become the thing he hunted? Was that possible?

  No.

  No. Jazz wouldn’t let himself believe it. Not everyone has a killer inside. Not everyone is like me.

  The sheriff harrumphed loudly and steepled his fingers on the table in front of him. “Anyway. She wasn’t strangled to death like Goodling; she was smothered. Probably with a plastic bag, according to the report we got from Lindenberg. They e-mailed the whole thing, but I haven’t gone through all of it yet. We don’t know why he changed the number of fingers. We don’t—”

  “He’s counting,” Jazz interrupted. It came to him like the original flash of insight that told him a serial killer had prospected Fiona Goodling, back when he only knew her as Jane Doe. “He’s counting his victims. Goodling was his second. O’Donnelly was his first. He takes one finger for each victim to count. Leaves one behind to flip us off. That’s his signature.”

  “Yeah, probably. That makes sense.” Here is all the invisible world.…

  Jazz leaned forward. “You need me on this, G. William. I can help you. Let me see the report. Both of them—Goodling and O’Donnelly. I was right from the beginning, and I can help.”

  For a moment, Jazz thought that G. William would finally relent, but the moment passed. A head shake, vigorous and implacable. “No. Not a chance. For one thing, you get involved and word will leak out. And then I’ll have the press all over it,
and that’s the last thing I need right now. Especially that jackass Doug Weathers. He’ll try to ride this thing to fame and fortune, just like he tried to ride your daddy.”

  “But—”

  “No. I’m not letting you get dragged into this nonsense. Like I said the other day: Your job is to try to be normal. Your job is to be a kid, then grow up, then have a decent life. You’ve seen enough already.”

  “So have you.”

  The sheriff smiled a tight, grim smile. “Difference between you and me, kid? I get paid for this.”

  Jazz shrugged. “Okay, you talked me into it—I’ll even give you a break on my salary.”

  G. William guffawed, slapping the table with one heavy palm. “Nice try, Jazz. Nice try. I think I’ve abused your grandmom’s hospitality enough for one night, though. Sorry I got her all het up.”

  Jazz walked him to the front door. “I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if there was a nice, calm, quiet night around here.”

  G. William snorted something noncommittal and empathetic as he opened the door. He jammed his hat on his head. “Rest easy, Jazz. And hey—good call.” It was the closest thing to an apology Jazz would get, he knew.

  “You know there’ll be more, right?” Jazz told him. “He’s counting up, not down.”

  G. William said nothing. He just nodded once, and when he walked out the door, Jazz thought he’d just seen a dead man go out into the night.

  And a dream.

  And a knife.

  (one two)

  There was always a knife in a sink.

  And now in his hand.

  (something new)

  And a voice.

  (Billy’s voice)

  And a hand.

  (my hand)

  A hand on the knife.

  Easy. So easy. It’s just like cutting chicken.

  And another voice says:

  (one two)

  It’s okay. It’s okay. I want—

  A line of blood bubbles where the knife slices.

  Good boy. Good boy.

  (one cut, two cuts)

  Just like that. Just like—

  (one two)

  For the second time that night, Jazz awoke suddenly. This time, though, it had nothing to do with anyone pounding on his door. All was silent, save for the occasional snore from Gramma through the wall.

  Jazz sat upright, shifting from dead asleep to fully awake in a split second, his mind buzzing and sparking. Somehow, in his sleep, he’d made the connection. It was about the counting. The fingers. He knew.…Was it even possible?

  He flipped on a light and went online, searching for information about Fiona Goodling. In an irony that Jazz enjoyed for a brief moment, he noticed that Doug Weathers had posted a story with all the pertinent information, beginning with her discovery in the field and ending with her identification. Strangled to death. Hands around her neck. Yes. Definitely. But what else? She’d had a boyfriend, he knew. What about her age?

  Weathers had linked to her hometown paper’s obituary, which included her age—twenty-seven. Jazz broke out in a cold sweat all at once. This just could not be happening.…

  And what about Carla O’Donnelly? College student. She was probably between eighteen and twenty. He did another search and brought up the news reports from Lindenberg, the results of the police finding her body. She’d been found by a railroad worker near a spur line. The guy had been on a smoke break. He never would have seen the body if not for the fact that he kicked a rock and was surprised by the sound it made when it landed among a tall stand of weeds. A moment later, he peered within…and his life changed.

  Wait. Wait a second. Lindenberg? Wasn’t Erickson from there? Hadn’t he just transferred from there? Yes. He had.

  Wonder if he was on the scene there, too.

  But the paper had no names for the police officers on the scene where Carla O’Donnelly’s body had been found. It did, however, have information on how she’d been killed.

  Asphyxiated, the newspaper said, most likely smothered by a plastic bag tied around her neck with a cord. She was nineteen.

  Oh, God, Jazz thought, wiping sweat from his upper lip. I can’t believe…

  He tossed a quick look over his shoulder at the photos of his father’s victims. They seemed to glare at him. What are you waiting for? they said. Why are you sitting around? they said.

  Had it just been a couple of days ago that he’d railed against G. William for suffering from linkage blindness? Ha! Jazz had had linkage blindness, too, it turned out.

  The fingers—the fingers threw me off. I thought they were his signature, but they’re not. They’re something else entirely. He’s counting, but he’s not just counting.

  Jazz fumbled for the telephone and dialed G. William’s cell. He got the sheriff’s voice mail. As the message rambled—“You’ve reached Sheriff G. William Tanner. If this is an emergency, hang up and call nine-one-one. Otherwise, you know what to do, so get to it already.”—he ran through what he would say. At the beep, he drew a deep breath. He wanted to blurt out everything he knew, but instead he had to stay calm, so that G. William would understand him.

  “G. William. Hey. It’s Jazz.” Calm. Cool. Rational. Inside, though, his blood thrummed and his soul screamed. “I figured it out. There will be more victims. Here’s what I know about the next one.…”

  CHAPTER 16

  In the crisp light of the autumn morning, Jazz was no longer as certain as he’d been the night before. He double-checked his logic and found no flaws. No flaws except for the fact that his theory was completely insane. But maybe G. William would see potential in it.

  He gulped down a quick breakfast and set up Gramma in her favorite chair in front of the TV. Mornings were her best time, so she was usually okay during the day while he was at school. By three or four in the afternoon, though, she started wavering, which was one reason among many why Jazz was eager for The Crucible to have its debut in a couple of weeks. It was also why he’d never had—and never could have—an after-school job.

  He met Howie at the Coff-E-Shop, which was more chaotic than usual for the morning rush. On this morning, his best friend was sporting a massive bruise along the left edge of his jaw. It looked like someone had smacked him in the face with a sock full of quarters.

  “What happened?” Jazz asked.

  “Medicine cabinets are dangerous,” Howie said. “Those doors, man. They’ll just spring on you like a ninja. Mark my words: Be careful in your bathroom or you could end up like me.”

  What would it be like to go through life so fragile? Jazz wondered. He was glad he would never know, but he also worried that someday Howie’s sense of humor would run out. Or at least prove not broad enough to cover an ever-growing roster of bruises, abrasions, and contusions.

  “Nice set of luggage,” Howie said out of nowhere, and it took Jazz a moment to realize he was talking about the bags under his eyes.

  “Yeah, didn’t sleep much.” He told Howie about G. William’s late-night visit and the revelation that there was definitely a serial killer at work.

  “Suh-weet!” Howie fist-pumped the air in triumph, then realized that he was celebrating a serial killer’s handiwork. “I mean, you know, ‘suh-weet’ that you were right, not ‘suh-weet’ that…you were…right.…” He drifted off and they stared at each other for a silent moment.

  “What is taking so long today?” Howie demanded, peering around the shop. Helen was nowhere to be seen, and the rest of the staff was scrambling to keep up.

  Before Jazz could answer, he saw Doug Weathers push his way through the door and the crowd. Persistent. Like hemorrhoids.

  “Let’s just get out of here,” Jazz said, tugging Howie toward another door.

  “But I need my caffeine! And today I was gonna try a double-pumpkin foamless latte with vanilla syrup, cloves, and—”

  “Come on. We can grab Cokes at school.”

  They were already at school and in separate homerooms when Jazz realized t
hat he’d forgotten to borrow Howie’s cell phone. He wanted to call G. William and see what the sheriff thought of his theory. By the time lunch rolled around, Jazz had successfully allowed himself to be distracted by Howie’s demands that they get the new tattoo this weekend.

  In fact, he managed to forget about the case all day long, until about halfway through play practice, when the rear door to the auditorium suddenly clanged open with a sound like an off-key church bell. Ginny spun around in her seat in the middle of the house and shouted, “Quiet, please! Rehearsal!” at a volume hilariously at odds with her tiny frame.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Deputy Erickson said in a tone that made it clear he really could not care less. He stomped halfway down the aisle to the stage, then planted his feet and pointed a steady finger right at Jazz. “You. Now.”

  Jazz, standing onstage between Tituba and John Proctor, looked around as if he’d just been accused of witchcraft. “Me? What?”

  “I will drag you out of here if I have to,” Erickson said.

  After a hasty apology to Ginny and a quick hand-squeeze of reassurance from Connie, Jazz hopped off the stage and walked up the aisle. Erickson didn’t wait for him—he turned on his heel and was out the door before Jazz was halfway there.

  The hallway was empty, school having gotten out an hour ago, and Erickson stood in front of the glass trophy case, staring at his own reflection. The extracurricular clubs would all be meeting in rooms somewhere, and Howie was probably lurking in the library, where he liked scoping out the hot college girl who was student-teaching toward her library degree and stayed late to reshelve books. (Howie had suddenly developed a yen for the work of e. e. cummings, since that was shelved with the best view of the circulation desk.)

  Jazz came to a halt behind Erickson and planted his feet. “Who do you think you are—”

  He didn’t get any further. The deputy spun around so fast that Jazz was surprised the man didn’t topple over. Erickson’s eyes narrowed, and then he grabbed Jazz by the arm and marched him out to the parking lot and hustled him into the back of his squad car.