by Barry Lyga
“It’s sort of a miracle that you ended up normal,” Howie told her as smoothly as he could, leaning against the counter with as much savoir faire as he could muster. He figured he cut a pretty dashing figure in his jeans and heavy shirt. And gloves. And hat. Not like a page out of a catalog or anything, but it showed how he thought ahead. He was prepared. Women dug guys who were prepared.
His advance preparations were lost on Samantha, who was paying attention to the dishes.
“Normal?” Samantha’s laugh was short and harsh. “Normal. Not a chance. I got the hell out of this house and this town as fast as I could, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t know how to be around normal people by that point. I’ve spent my whole life figuring it out. And once Billy got caught, suddenly it was like I had to start all over again.”
Howie saw his chance; he took off his gloves and nabbed a wet, clean dish from Samantha’s hands, allowing his fingers to linger on hers for a moment. It was a good, subtle move—he’d seen it in a bunch of movies.
“What the hell are you doing?” Samantha asked.
“Taking this dish.”
“Why?”
He was still touching her. He realized he didn’t have a towel to dry the dish with. “Um.”
“Howie, you’re the same age as my nephew.”
“Actually, I’m six weeks older.”
She shook her head. “It’s not going to happen.”
“You say that now.”
“I do.”
“We’re both two lonely people,” Howie said seductively, “trapped in a world created by Billy Dent.”
Samantha howled with laughter. Howie figured that wasn’t a good sign.
CHAPTER 12
Jazz was surprised that he absolutely hated New York City.
No, that wasn’t quite accurate. Being from a small town like Lobo’s Nod, it was no surprise that he hated New York. What really surprised him was how much he hated it. He didn’t dislike New York with the simple diffidence of a small-town kid or the tragic ignorance of a yokel—he loathed it with the entirety of what he hoped was his soul.
The streets—cramped with cars and buses; with all the traffic, it took them almost two hours to get from the airport to some place called Red Hook, which looked like every bad ’hood in every action movie Jazz had ever seen.
The buildings—either run-down to the point of ruin or so overwrought that he felt like they’d been built not to serve any purpose but rather just to prove a point.
The smell—Jazz figured even New Yorkers had to hate the garbage and urine smells, but it wasn’t just that. The city managed to ruin even the good smells; at one point, while walking from the cab to the hotel, Jazz had smelled the most delightful bread baking, but the smell vanished as quickly as it teased his nose, and no matter where he looked or how much he tried, he couldn’t recapture it. He had never realized how odorless Lobo’s Nod was. Other than the occasional car exhaust, the town smelled utterly neutral.
The noise—it was perpetual.
But the worst thing about the city, the thing that poleaxed him, the thing Hughes had warned him about, the thing he should have been prepared for and yet—he acknowledged—never could have been prepared for…
The people.
Look at ’em all, Jasper, Billy whispered in his head.
So… many… people.
Look at ’em. You could take one. Easy. Or more than one. As many as you want, really. There’s so many, it’s not like anyone would miss one. Couple thousand go missing every year in this country—man, woman, and child alike. So many. Most of ’em, no one knows. No one cares. It’s like grabbin’ up blades of grass in the park. One more, one less. Makes no difference.
“You all right?” Hughes asked suddenly, and Jazz whipped around like a kid caught unscrambling the adult channels.
“I’m fine,” Jazz said. It came out weak and unconvincing.
“He’s overwhelmed,” Connie jumped in, grabbing his hand. “He’ll be fine.”
Connie. She’d been here before for short trips and seemed to be in love with New York already. She had managed to grab an earlier flight, a direct one, beating Hughes and him to JFK. An important lesson for Jazz: Connie wouldn’t stay put just because he said so.
There’s ways to change that, Jasper. Ways to make her listen. And the best part is, you know them ways already. You know them real well….
“I’m fine,” Jazz said again, and tightened his grip on Connie’s hand as Hughes led them into the hotel.
Movies and TV shows had prepared Jazz for two kinds of big-city hotels. There were the ostentatious, gilded palaces for the wealthy, and the rank, decrepit hovels for the itinerants and the junkies and the hookers. So he was mildly disappointed to find himself ensconced in neither—the hotel the NYPD had chosen for him was a bog-standard Holiday Inn that wouldn’t have looked out of place along the highway that ran past and beyond Lobo’s Nod.
“You okay?” Connie whispered as they waited for Hughes to check them in.
“Yeah.”
“You’ve been squeezing my hand like it’s putty.”
“Sorry.” He released her. “Trying to find amusement in our setting.”
She looked around. “Yeah, doesn’t feel very New York, does it?”
Maybe that was a good thing.
Hughes approached them, brandishing two keycards. He hesitated for a moment and sized them up. “How old are you guys again?”
“Seventeen,” Connie answered.
The detective clucked his tongue, then shrugged. “I only have the one room. Use protection.” He handed over the cards and left them to find the room and get settled in while he attended to some other business, promising to return by lunchtime to get started on the case.
As Hughes retreated, Jazz stared slack-jawed at Connie, well and truly shocked by something not involving blood for the first time in a long time. “Can you believe that? He’s just gonna let us stay in the same—”
“We’re practically adults,” Connie said with an air of urbane sophistication. “What did you think he was going to do—call our parents? It’s New York. It’s a whole different world.” She waved her card in the air and led him off to the elevator.
The room had two beds. Jazz wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. He had stayed in hotels only as a child, on occasional “road trips” with Billy. Billy never flew anywhere, if he could help it. Too many security checks. Too many people checkin’ your ID. Too much damn nosiness, Jasper. So they had driven to any number of places, usually so that Billy could impart some sort of lesson to his son. Hands-on experience, Billy called it, turning Jazz into his assistant and his accomplice on more than one occasion.
Those hotels had usually been out-of-the-way rattraps, the sheets musty, the bathtubs stained even before Billy showered off the grime and the blood of his most recent prospect. This place was pleasant, if boring. There was a large framed photo of the Statue of Liberty over the bed.
“Why would you want to look at a picture of the Statue of Liberty when you’re in New York?” Connie demanded. “You can go see the real thing.”
Jazz shrugged and poked his head into the bathroom, half expecting to see his father emerging from the shower, dripping wet and grinning.
“On a scale of one to ten,” Connie said, “how pissed are you at me?”
“I don’t have time to be pissed at you,” Jazz said, more curtly than he’d intended. “I need to help the NYPD and then get the hell out of this city.”
“Settle down, big guy. You’ve seen a chunk of Brooklyn from the cab and a grand total of two whole blocks on your feet. Give it a chance before you hate it.”
“It’s not that.” He pushed away her comforting hands, forcing himself to do it gently. “This place isn’t good for me. It’s a hunting ground. It’s a… It’s a prospecting gold mine.”
“You’re not a killer,” she told him, grabbing a hand and imprisoning it with both of hers, then holding it to her che
st. “Listen to me: You’re not a killer. It doesn’t matter what this place is.”
He stared at the Statue of Liberty. Flicked his eyes to the lamp on the nightstand between the two beds. Anything to avoid looking at Connie. “Remember how I told you once that the problem with people is that when there’s so many of them, they stop being special?” She nodded. “Well, take a look around and do the math.”
You could slaughter a thousand of them and never be caught, Jasper, m’boy. You could do all those things I taught you. You could—
Connie dragged him into the middle of the room. “You know what? Ten out of ten Lobo’s Nod boys would be splitting their pants right now at the thought of being unsupervised in a hotel room with me. That’s not ego talking—I saw that on someone’s Facebook page. So stop thinking about killing people and start thinking about the fact that we’ve got a couple of hours before Hughes comes back and you have to go to work.” She arched an eyebrow for added effect.
She was trying to distract him. Trying to break the cords of his inherited fears that bound him. He loved her for it.
He pitied her for it. Those cords, he knew, could be loosened and rearranged, but they could never be severed.
“Hughes said to use protection,” he said, smiling weakly. “We don’t have any.”
“We’re not going that far,” she said, kissing him hard and sure on the lips. “We’re just gonna get real close and mess up one of the beds, is all.”
He surrendered to her.
True to his word, Hughes was back in a couple of hours. By then, Jazz and Connie had remade the bed and were lounging innocently as if they’d moved not an inch since Hughes had left.
Hughes wasn’t fooled; he cracked a smile as soon as he walked in the door, then hid it behind his usual stern façade. He bore a huge flat pizza box, topped with another box, as well as a satchel slung over one shoulder. “I come bearing pizza and pictures of death,” he announced.
Soon they had the files spread out over one of the beds, with the pizza and drinks on the smallish hotel table. Jazz was surprised at the dearth of files—fourteen murders should have generated a lot more paperwork.
“Most of it’s scanned in,” Hughes told them, and handed over an iPad. “Crime-scene photos and video, reports, evidence photos, the whole nine yards. Makes it a lot easier to see what’s what, and keeps me from having to schlep a metric ton of paperwork over here.”
“Why are we working here?” Jazz asked. “Why can’t we just go to the”—it wouldn’t be a sheriff’s office, not in New York—“precinct?”
Hughes shook his head. “Trust me, you don’t want to go there. It’s a disaster area. The task force is spread out all over the place. It’s a madhouse.”
Jazz thought of the state of G. William’s building when the Impressionist Task Force had moved in. Yeah, maybe it was better to work here.
“If it turns out there’s something I forgot or something else you need, just let me know,” Hughes said, “and I’ll get it for you.”
“Where do we start?” Connie asked.
Hughes raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean ‘we’?”
“Oh, is this work too manly for a princess like myself?” Connie’s sarcasm was damn near toxic.
“Whoa! Whoa!” Hughes held both hands up in surrender and looked over at Jazz for help. Jazz just gave him a “You’re on your own, pal” smirk. “Damn, I didn’t think there was a girl on this planet who could handle Billy Dent’s kid, but I’ve been proven wrong. Look, Connie—it’s Connie, right?—this has nothing to do with boys versus girls. Jasper here is technically my, well, he’s here at the request of the NYPD. You’re not. I can’t just let you go rummaging through files.”
Connie folded her arms over her chest and fixed Hughes with a glare that said she wasn’t buying it. Jazz figured he’d better jump in before Hughes felt threatened enough to draw his weapon.
“Look, maybe she can’t go through the files with us,” Jazz said, “but there’s nothing that says she can’t stay in the room, right? And if she hears us talking and has ideas, it’s still a free country and she can say what she wants.”
He wasn’t sure Hughes would go for the hair-splitting, but the detective’s face split into a huge, delighted grin. “Bend that rule, Jasper!” he said. “Bend it!”
Connie dropped onto one of the beds, and Hughes and Jazz set up at the room’s desk.
“The first thing we need to do,” Jazz said, “is index all of the data. So, for example, organize everything by type of file—picture, video, whatever—and then cross-index it by victim—”
“Already done,” Hughes said, producing a stapled set of papers. “There’s an electronic version in the Master Index file.”
“Okay, then we need to make up a chart of the victims, in the order they were discovered—”
“Victim_Timeline.xls,” Hughes said, producing another printout. “E-version and dead-tree version.” He grinned at Jazz. “This is the big leagues, kid. We know what we’re doing.”
Jazz nodded. He wasn’t in Lobo’s Nod anymore. “Okay, I’m going to start with the paper—those are the most recent, right?” Hughes nodded. “Good. Then that means they show him at his most organized and sophisticated. I’ll start with them and work my way back.”
“What about me?” Hughes asked.
“You’ve already seen all of this. You can help clear up any questions we have. But stick to the facts. I don’t want your suppositions and guesses to pollute my thinking on this.”
“Got it.”
They dug into the reports and photos, as well as the pizza. Soon enough, a picture began to emerge.
The killings had begun seven months ago, long before Billy escaped from Wammaket, long before the Impressionist launched his one-man assault on Lobo’s Nod. Summer in New York. From the way Hughes told it, it had been sweltering since the solstice, with off-and-on rain that crept up on you without warning.
The first two victims had both been found near a place called Connecticut Bagels, a little deli in a neighborhood called Carroll Gardens. They were found two weeks apart, and at first nothing had connected them. The first victim—a woman named Nicole DiNozzo—had been killed in the alleyway behind the deli, her throat slit with a precision Jazz couldn’t help but admire. A crude hat had been carved into the flesh of DiNozzo’s chest. Since all of the wounds to the body were slashing wounds, there was no way to determine any of the blade characteristics; she could have been cut with a pocketknife or a samurai sword, for all anyone knew. Bruising and general trauma indicated she’d been raped, though no fluids had been found, meaning the killer most likely used a condom.
Pretty simple. Other than the carving, it could have been any number of random rape/murders.
“But this is Carroll Gardens,” Hughes told them. “If this was the nineteen-eighties and DiNozzo was mobbed up, I’d say she screwed someone over and was made an example of. Used to happen all the time back then. The Mob was big around here—Italian neighborhood. Used to find bodies in Carroll Park a few times a year. But things are different now.”
“And DiNozzo’s not mobbed up, according to your own data,” Jazz said. “What about the other victims? Give me a preview. How many are white?”
“Thirteen out of fourteen,” Hughes said. “We’re pretty sure our unsub is white.”
“Makes sense. This first murder is pretty controlled.”
“Yeah. Check out the second one.”
The second victim—Harold Spencer—was found dead in the same alley, at the other end. His genitals had been excised. No one had found them. Also dead of a slashing wound across the throat, this one not as precise as DiNozzo’s.
“So what are the odds your crime-scene guys just missed the penis in their search?” Jazz asked.
Hughes shook his head. “Zero. Are you kidding me? Two murders in the same alley in the same number of weeks? We went over that place with a magnifying glass. If it was there, we’d have found it.”
&n
bsp; “So what happened?” Connie chimed in from the bed. “Did he—gross—take it with him?”
“Maybe,” Jazz said. “Or maybe he just tossed it somewhere else.”
“The FBI profile says he’s terrified of his own power. Rapes the women, makes up for it by castrating the men. Punishing himself.”
“No,” Jazz said immediately. “Doesn’t track. In that case, why take the penis with him? If he’s punishing himself, he wouldn’t take it. He would shun it. He’s not terrified. He’s proud of his male power. He revels in it. Cuts off the penises to show his dominance.”
“But for the eighth victim,” Hughes pointed out, “he left the penis at the scene. Cut it off and tossed it aside. Same for number eleven. Our profile—”
“No profile is perfect.”
Jazz and Hughes stared at each other. Jazz could have kept it up all night, but he shrugged and flipped to a photo of the second victim. A crude dog had been carved into Spencer’s shoulder.
“These guys usually get better with each murder,” Jazz pointed out. “But the cut that killed the second guy is jagged, not smooth like the first one.”
“We think Spencer fought back. Struggled. Made it tougher to kill him. He was older and he was a guy. The signature led us to connect the two right away,” Hughes went on. “Slashing throat wounds in the same alley… Too much of a coincidence. We checked for a connection between the two vics right away, but there were none.”
“Nothing?”
“Nope. Other than that they were both white. Spencer was forty, DiNozzo in her twenties. It’s all on the timeline. DiNozzo was a neighborhood girl; Spencer lived in Manhattan and was in Brooklyn visiting friends. No work connections. Nothing. Complete strangers to each other.”