by Barry Lyga
She expected her caller ID to say UNKNOWN NUMBER, but it didn’t. She quickly jotted the number down on a piece of paper, as though it might vanish from her phone. “I’m sorry, Mr. Dent,” she said. “But it really wasn’t me. I can’t help it that your old neighbor got agitated when he saw me and called nine-one-one.”
The voice laughed. The sound was metallic and headache-inducing with all the audio processing. “You think I’m Billy Dent? Now, why would you think that?”
“Who else could you be?” She felt dizzy and sat down on her bed. Jazz’s warning about letting a man like Billy into her head spun over and over in her mind. She had to be careful. Billy held all the cards, including his own identity. He could get her confused very easily. She took a stab in the dark: “Or maybe you’re Ugly J.”
Another laugh, this one longer and more sustained. “I like you, Connie,” the voice said. “I’ve liked you since the first time I saw you. A few months ago. In The Crucible.”
Connie shivered and goose bumps broke out along her arms and neck. Oh, God. In The Crucible. Weeks after Billy had broken out of Wammaket… In the audience? In the friggin’ audience and no one noticed?
“I thought you were wonderful as Tituba, Connie. I stood in the back and watched you. And Jasper. Watched both of you. Fine actors. I think you may have a career in show business ahead of you, Connie. Assuming you live, of course.”
“Threaten me all you like—”
“Don’t show me a bravery you don’t really feel, Connie,” the voice warned. “It doesn’t impress me. I appreciate honesty more than bravado. And I’m not threatening you. I haven’t threatened you so far, have I?”
Connie waited and then realized the question wasn’t rhetorical—the voice was waiting for an answer.
“No. You haven’t.”
“Exactly. And I’m still not threatening you. Let me tell you who I am threatening, though.”
At that instant, Connie’s phone trilled with its text message alert. She automatically pulled the phone away from her ear, just in time to catch an incoming picture.
It was Jazz.
In New York.
She knew it was New York because he was wearing that Mets cap he’d bought at the airport as a partial disguise, and because she recognized the edge of Hughes’s sleeve at one side of the photo. It had been taken in New York. Recently.
Close enough to take that picture. Her throat stopped working. Close enough for that picture means close enough… oh, God. If he can get that close without being noticed or seen…
She put the phone back to her ear, tried to speak. Nothing came out.
“Your boyfriend will suffer for your insolence and your lying, if I so choose.”
“No,” Connie tried to say. A rasp. She tried again. “No. He’s not even here. He’s not even involved. It’s not fair to—”
“I think I’ve been very fair with you,” the voice went on. “Sent you clues to that which you seek. Complimented your acting—and I was being sincere, by the way.”
Had she been wrong? Was this not Billy Dent after all? Would Billy threaten Jazz like that? And if he did, just to frighten her… He would never actually carry through on such a threat….
Would he?
She didn’t think so.
But then again… maybe it wasn’t Billy Dent.
The cadence of the voice… the vocabulary… things that Auto-Tune couldn’t hide. She’d seen Jazz’s Billy impression. She’d heard Howie recount the man’s monologues. She’d even seen the few rare TV clips of him speaking. And this didn’t…
Oh, God.
“Did it bother you, playing a slave, Connie? Did it stir something inside? Resentment? Anger? Racial memories you’d thought long buried?”
The voice, processed into neutrality, didn’t sound sly or conniving, but the words did the trick. Connie struggled against it. She would not let herself be dragged into a psychological quicksand pit by a psychopath. She would do this on her terms.
“It was just a role,” she said carefully. “That’s all.”
“But surely a part of you wondered if you only got the role because you were the only black female actor at the school. Didn’t you wonder that? What if you’d not been interested? What would that pretty little drama teacher have done?”
At the mention of Ms. Davis, Connie’s breath caught and her heart leapt forward a beat. Tears sprang to her eyes and she rubbed them away furiously. No. I’m not going to be manipulated.
“I wouldn’t know,” she replied, keeping her voice steady. “I would tell you to ask Ms. Davis, but she’s slightly dead.” Her gut clenched as she said it; it was like pissing on Ginny’s grave. But this game was too serious not to use all of her available ammunition.
The voice chuckled—it sounded like a rubber ball bouncing in a giant tin can. “Trying to keep up with me, Connie? Trying to keep me out of your head?”
“Just being proactive.”
“Ever think maybe that’s what I wanted in the first place?”
Great. Now Connie didn’t know what to do.
“People are dying, Connie, and they will continue to die, while you try to play games with me. While you try to keep me out of your head, a place I’ve already been to. Trust me—you have no secrets from me.”
I don’t believe you. I can’t. “Oh?”
“People keep dying and all you care about is yourself. Oh, you claim you care about your boyfriend, but really you just worry about him because he’s yours. No other reason. You’re selfish, Connie. You’re an actress, after all, and they are a vain, self-centered lot.
“Let me ask you this, though, while I have you on the phone: Do you ever wonder why they always focus on the pretty white girls, Connie? The ones that go missing, I mean. The ones who get killed or maimed or raped or—on a good day—all three. When black girls go missing no one seems to care, do they? If I made you disappear—and I’m not saying I would, though I could—no one would notice.”
“People would notice,” Connie said through gritted teeth, and then slapped her forehead. Damn it! She was doing exactly what he wanted her to do! She was buying into the argument. Accepting the premise. Joining the debate.
“You’d like to think so, I’m sure. Oh, your parents and friends would notice, but no one else. It wouldn’t be a national story. It would make the news in your little town, but even then they would give up reporting on it after a couple of days. They’d devote ten or fifteen seconds to it on the local news the day your raped and mutilated body was found in a shallow grave near the intersection of Grove Street and Route Twenty-seven. You know the spot, Connie?”
She didn’t answer. Didn’t need to.
“Ten or fifteen seconds. A picture of you from the yearbook. A cutaway to your mother weeping hysterically, and all the white folks watching shrug and wait for weather and sports. But when a white girl goes missing… oh, then they go nuts, Connie. They update you every chance they get. The cable channels get involved and it goes national. People talk about the poor pretty girl who’s gone missing. They gather at work and at school and they post blogs and they go on message boards. They name laws after them. They give you AMBER Alerts in their honor. And when those poor lily-white girls show up dead, they spend more than ten or fifteen seconds on them. They show you the home videos. They show the parents. The friends. They take you right to the memorial service. Why is that, do you think?”
“Because this is a racist society that devalues black lives,” Connie said with heat, then immediately bit her lower lip. Damn it! How many times had Jazz told her that you never let a psycho into your head? You never expose a weakness or an irritation or a rage. They live in your heads forever after that.
“Racism!” the voice chortled in triumph. “Racism! Of course! That must be it! Why, that’s the only possible explanation! But, Connie… what if it isn’t racism? What if it’s just true that your life is genuinely worth less than a white girl’s? What would you say to that?”
; In a tone of frosty neutrality, she responded, “I would say that you definitely have the most up-to-date version of the White Supremacist Jackass app on your phone. Good for you.”
A long, sustained burst of tinny, artificial laughter. “I like you so much, Connie. I really do. You give me hope for the future.”
“Glad to help. Now why don’t you tell me exactly where you are and who you are?”
“Heh. That wouldn’t be any fun. We’re playing a game, Connie. You agreed to the rules.”
“I don’t even know what the rules are.”
“Well… basically, the rules to this game are whatever I decide they are. This isn’t like the game being played in Brooklyn. This is our game, Connie. A game for you and me. Something special, just for us.”
“I’m touched and honored,” Connie said sardonically. “When do I get to make my next move?”
“Oh, soon. Very soon. But it’ll be a little tougher on you, Connie, because you broke the rules.”
“I told you, I didn’t call the—”
“There must be a penalty for people who cheat,” the voice went on, “for people who don’t abide by the rules, wouldn’t you agree?”
The droning, toneless roboticism of the voice was beginning to grate, sawing through her brain and generating a massive headache in its wake. “Stop playing around and tell me who you are,” she said. “As if I didn’t already know.” A bluff. Maybe it would…
“Oh, I’ll tell you. In my own way. In my own time. The first clue is in that lockbox.” The voice paused for a moment. “I’m going to give you five minutes, Connie. Five minutes to find the clue and then I’ll call you back. If you don’t have the clue, you’ll never hear from me again.
“Well… until the night I come for you, that is.”
“Wait!” Connie shouted. “Wait! Five minutes? That’s not fair. I can’t—”
“Not fair?” The voice’s aggravation and anger broke through the Auto-Tuning. “Fair? You broke the rules, Conscience Hall! And now you suffer the consequences! Five minutes, beginning… now.”
Click.
Oh. Crap.
Connie rooted through the box. Baby pictures of Jazz with his parents… the birth certificate… was that the clue? That it was Billy? Or maybe the clue was that little crow toy… which could still be Billy, really. She shivered, remembering the creepy Crow King fairy tale.
Or maybe it was something else. Something related. What was the word crow in Latin? In Spanish? In French? She had taken classes in all three languages and struggled to remember, then thought, What if it’s not a crow? What if it’s a raven? And what if the clue is in Russian or German? What if the damn toy isn’t the clue in the first place?
Her clock had advanced a minute. You’re kidding me. Her heart thudded so hard in her chest that she would not have been surprised if she could have seen it throbbing through her shirt.
Less than four minutes left. The desire to speed through the contents of the box was great, but she forced herself to scrutinize each item. Same three people in each photo:
Jazz. No. Not him. Duh.
Mom. Dead. Not her. Double-duh.
Billy. Obvious choice. Too obvious, in fact, now that she thought about it. Billy’s escape from Wammaket had been planned and coordinated and abetted by someone on the outside. So her mystery Auto-Tuned voice would be someone helping Billy. Someone on his side of the game board. Hat-Dog?
Now who’s cheating, jerk wad?
Staring at the photos… Maybe someone was in a background….
Or maybe it’s the person who took the pictures….
That was most likely Jazz’s grandmother. Even though the racial nonsense her caller had spewed would have been right at home in Gramma Dent’s mouth, Connie couldn’t imagine her having the sense or stability to make that call.
So what was the clue? None of the photos were illuminating. She switched over to the toy. Just a chunk of plastic.
It’s hollow.
Is there something inside it?
Can I get it open?
Need a knife.
Kitchen.
Time?
Damn it. Who knows what this lunatic is going to do in… ugh… two minutes if you don’t have the special clue?
Or was the clue the crow itself? Raven. Whichever. Maybe that’s all she had to do when the phone rang, was say, “Crow!”
Too easy. She couldn’t believe it was that easy. Or maybe the voice just wanted her to think it was too easy….
Once you let them into your head…
“Don’t go chasing…”
Nothing else left. Nothing except the envelopes. She wasted a futile thirty seconds peering into them, looking for something stuck or written there.
Was the arrangement of the items in the lockbox important? No, that was crazy—the contents would have moved when it was unearthed. You couldn’t rely on any particular order once it was buried.
Less than a minute to go.
She stared at the lockbox, now not even seeing it, not even looking for anything because it was pointless, the seconds counting down, and she would never get it and just as her phone rang, she saw it.
She saw it.
Oh, thank God. Thank God she left the lid open.
Another ring. She took in a deep breath, steadied herself so that she would sound calm, then hit Answer.
“Bell,” she said before the voice could speak.
An infinity of silence passed, and Connie was certain that she’d screwed up, that the small image of a bell she’d spotted carved into the inner lid of the lockbox was really nothing more than a trick of the light, a shadow cast by the latch or…
“Very good, Connie,” the voice said. She thought she detected some surprise through the Auto-Tuning, but couldn’t be sure.
“Time for you to return to New York,” it went on. “You’ll want to fly into JFK if you can. The second clue to my identity is there, at terminal four, Arrivals, on the first floor. Bring cash.”
“What do you—” But the voice was gone, the line as dead as Billy Dent’s victims.
Time for you to return to New York…
A quick Internet check found a single seat on a flight bound for JFK the next afternoon. A center seat, of course, right smack in the middle of the plane to guarantee the worst possible experience. And booking at the last minute like this would suction the last of her babysitting and summer job money right out of her bank account, but what choice did she have?
None. This was for Jazz.
Besides, paying for the ticket would be the easy part. Connie stared at the closed door to her bedroom, imagining her parents beyond it. Oh, yeah, this was gonna be pleasant….
CHAPTER 38
According to the police file—a copy of which Jazz had of course been given (being an official task-force member was a nice change of pace)—Belsamo lived in a place called Fort Greene. On the cell phone map, it seemed close enough to Carroll Gardens. Clueless as to the subway, Jazz decided to walk it and ended up hopelessly turned around and lost on the stupid Brooklyn streets. His cell phone’s maps only loaded sporadically and he couldn’t get any sort of bearing. Most people were bundled against the cold and rushing along and he couldn’t bring himself to stop one of them for directions. Doing so would probably involve tackling, given how they moved.
He finally managed to get to Fort Greene. The neighborhood itself seemed nice enough, but Belsamo’s building was tucked deep into the darkest end of an alley strewn with trash and debris. Jazz idly checked the walls for the Ugly J graffito, but didn’t see it.
The wind picked up. The sun was going down. Jazz turned up the collar on his coat, tugged his cap down around the tops of his ears, and slipped on thin but warm leather gloves.
There was a surprisingly strong lock on the door to Belsamo’s building. Ten buzzers lined up in two ranks of five. Belsamo was apartment 4A. When Jazz buzzed, nothing happened.
Good. He’s not in.
The next part—get
ting into the building—would be easy. Billy had done it dozens of times.
Y’see, most people are lazy. And stupid. Best of all, they like t’think they’re all good people, nice and helpful people.
Jazz started pressing buttons. On the third buzz, someone responded.
“UPS,” Jazz said, making himself sound both bored and annoyed at the same time. “Got somethin’ for Three-C, but no one—”
He didn’t even get to finish the spiel; whoever lived in apartment 2B hit a button and the front door buzzed and unlocked. Jazz slipped into the vestibule.
The entryway was cramped and gray. A sickly yellow bulb gave off enough light for him to see down a short hallway to two doors, as well as up to a landing. Jazz smelled fried onions, strong and persistent.
He made his way up the stairs, moving quickly, but not too quickly. If someone saw him, he didn’t want to appear to be in a guilty hurry.
The door to 4A was disappointingly plain. Jazz wasn’t so naive as to hope for a sign reading SERIAL KILLER WITHIN! or WELCOME TO THE GAME, JASPER! but he’d thought maybe there would be some indication….
It was locked. Not a problem. Billy had been teaching Jazz how to force locks, jimmy doors, and shim with credit cards since he could walk. A New York City apartment building didn’t phase Jazz in the slightest. Even if Belsamo had a chain, there were ways around that. A deadbolt or a police bar would be a real challenge, though….
Despite the jog up four flights of stairs and the illegality of what he was in the process of doing, Jazz found his breath coming easily, his heart thudding along with reliable, dull predictability. With his stiff, laminated high school ID, he managed to trip the lock on the third try, not even needing to resort to the collection of hairpins and wires he’d brought with him.
He took a deep breath and stepped into Belsamo’s apartment, closing the door quietly behind him.
As soon as he entered, he knew.
He knew.
He couldn’t explain it. If called to testify in court (and he was miserably certain that would happen), he would be able to say nothing beyond, “I just knew. I felt it in my bones.” Comically and pathetically psychic.