by Barry Lyga
But at least Ugly J had made some sort of sense. Roll of the dice and a number, and then “Bring proof” and “Now we accelerate.” Sensible. Rules.
Then, suddenly, Billy Dent had begun calling in the dice rolls. Arrogant and commanding. Demanding. Insisting on side games.
WELCOME TO THE GAME, JASPER.
Hat had added that sentence to the woman left on the S line at Billy Dent’s decree, writing it in lipstick across her dead and sagging breasts. Written it. Written it. Leaving a handwriting sample for the police. An insidious and stupid order, but Hat had followed, had played the game to its conclusion.
It wasn’t his fault that Dent’s son had showed up with the FBI agent.
A fog had come over Hat in the storage unit. He’d lusted for Jasper Dent’s death. Yearned for it.
He did not care for killing men. Men meant nothing to him. They were worthless since they allowed themselves to be controlled by women.
But Jasper Dent…
To kill the son of Billy Dent. To kill the child of the man who had taken over the game and made Hat’s victory riskier and more difficult…
Had Ugly J still been his usual contact, he would have killed the Dent boy without a second thought. But Billy Dent was not to be trusted. He was mercurial.
And so he’d done the best he could—left the Dent boy alive but where he could not alert the police. Then he’d contacted Billy, and Billy had…
Hat gritted his teeth and stared down. He realized that he was standing, no longer at the table, but now looming over the stove, his right hand already on one of the knobs.
Billy had told him to kill no one.
To kill no one!
Didn’t Billy know how impossible that was? Might as well tell the lion not to eat the gazelle! Tell the Venus flytrap to let the bug go.
Hershey bristled. One Crow should not tell another not to kill! And Hershey was a Crow now. He’d won the game. He’d ascended. Billy Dent was not the Crow King, and even the Crow King should not—
There was a knock at the door.
Billy grinned as the door opened and he beheld, for the first time, Duncan Hershey, one-half of the Hat-Dog Killer.
“Evenin’, Duncan,” he said.
Hershey scowled as he ushered Billy inside. “It’s technically morning,” he said with an air of annoyed officiousness. “It’s past midnight. Long past midnight.” A pause. Then, whispered: “They should have been dead already.”
They were in a short, narrow vestibule. No room for maneuvering. Hat blocked the way farther into the apartment, which was just fine by Billy.
Billy clapped a hand on Hat’s shoulder. “I understand your dilemma. But I’m here to resolve it for you.”
“I don’t need your help. I have a plan.”
“I’m sure you do. But then you shot my son and left him bleeding where no one could help him. So your plan comes after mine, you see?”
“Ugly J said—”
“Yeah, well, I’m the one here.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“Course not. You’re not smart enough to be afraid of me.”
And then Hat did exactly what Billy knew he would do, exactly what Billy had been waiting for: He pulled a big kitchen knife from behind his back and lunged at Billy with it.
It was a laughable attempt. Billy had seen it coming at least ten seconds before it happened. Hat had come to the door with both hands in full view, so as soon as he reached back with one, Billy knew what he was in for. It would have to be a knife, of course, because Hat wouldn’t want the noise of a gun.
Knives were easy. In the confined space of the vestibule, Hat couldn’t get in a good swing, so he had no choice but to jab at Billy’s midsection.
Billy was ready.
He didn’t even try to sidestep the blade. He chopped down hard with the edge of his hand, smashing into Hat’s knife hand with bone-shaking force. Hat yelped in pain; Billy, prepared for it, was silent.
The knife, propelled down, missed Billy’s gut, catching on his belt instead, cutting partially through before the blow to Hat’s hand numbed his fingers enough that he let go of it. Billy had a scratch on his belly, but no big deal.
The knife clattered to the floor. Billy’s hand was going numb, too, from the hit, but he didn’t need that hand. Not right now.
Before Hat could react, Billy threw up his forearm, lodging it at Hat’s throat, driving the man back a step until he fetched up against the wall. At the same moment, he drove his knee into Hat’s groin. Hat would have wailed in pain had Billy not been cutting off his air supply.
Hat’s one hand was useless. His other Billy met with his own good hand, pinning it to the wall. With his weight pressing against Hat, Billy had him completely off-balance and immobilized, all for the price of a belt.
“Hell, now, Duncan—you sure that’s your best play? You maybe want a do-over? Take another shot at old Billy?”
Hershey struggled against Billy. Billy jammed his knee a little higher against his balls. Hat’s face began turning purple.
“I only kill for, well, for pure reasons. I kill them what don’t matter, them what call to me, what summon me with their need for dyin’. I don’t kill for petty reasons. I don’t kill for hate. Or revenge. Nothing like that. You hearin’ me, Duncan?”
Hershey said nothing. His eyes had gone panicked. His lips burbled as Billy leaned harder on his windpipe.
“I guess what I’m trying to explain to you, Duncan, is that this ain’t bringin’ me no joy. This is like a football player runnin’ for the subway train, got it? A person doin’ what he’s good at for a really pedestrian reason. A really insulting reason.”
Hat’s eyes began to roll back. His nostrils flared, desperate for breath.
“And I suppose if I thought you cared for them, I would do your wife and your kids next. But I know you were lookin’ forward to that, so I’ll tell you what, high-and-mighty Hat Killer, high-and-mighty Crow: I’m gonna leave ’em alive. Just to piss you off. They’re gonna outlive you. How do you like that?”
Hat shuffled his feet, trying to get an angle that would allow him to push back. But he couldn’t find the right purchase. And he didn’t have any strength left, anyway, as his cells and muscles pleaded for more oxygen.
Billy wiggled a finger. “Hey, look at that! My hand’s comin’ back to life. Well, good. That means maybe this will be a little bit of fun after all.”
CHAPTER 10
It was three in the morning when the cell phone at his bedside blasted just enough of an old Eric B. and Rakim song to wake Detective Louis Hughes from a sound sleep. He flailed around in the dark for a moment, still half-waterlogged by dreams, then finally slapped at the phone to shut it up. The caller ID showed the dispatch desk at the 76th Precinct.
“Hughes,” he said. “I’m not catching tonight, so who the hell—”
“Captain Montgomery said to call you,” the dispatcher said apologetically. “We caught a call about Duncan Hershey, and Montgomery said you’re the guy to talk to.”
Duncan Hershey. It took a moment for the name to bleed through the layers of dissipating sleep fog. Hershey. One of the men they’d interrogated about the Hat-Dog killings.
Oh, Jasper, you sick son of a bitch. Were you right? Were there two of them?
“What did he do?” Hughes demanded, vaulting out of bed, halfway into his pants already.
“He didn’t do anything,” the dispatcher said, and then kept talking as Hughes, now fully awake but numb with both fascination and dread, kept getting dressed.
Less than twenty minutes later, Hughes stood in the entrance vestibule to Hershey’s apartment. Farther inside and out in the corridor, cops and crime-scene techs milled about.
Hughes stood over the body, careful to keep his shoes from disturbing the pool of blood.
Who knew the old man had so much blood in him?
Shakespeare, right? Not quite a hundred percent, but close enough for government work.
&n
bsp; Sometimes Hughes’s mind did this trick at crime scenes, at the really bad ones. He started dredging up random bits of trivia, quotations from books read back in college.… The brain’s way of coping with horror, maybe.
In the apartment, he could hear a child crying, wailing over and over. And a woman—Hershey’s wife, no doubt—sobbing as she told a uniformed officer, “… and I thought maybe I dreamed the noise, but Duncan wasn’t in bed, so I went looking and that’s when I saw…”
Duncan Hershey—according to Jasper’s theory, the “Hat” in Hat-Dog—wouldn’t be killing anyone ever again. He wasn’t just dead; he was severely dead. He was one of the deadest people Hughes had ever seen, and Hughes had seen quite a few.
The eye sockets were pools of blood and glistening jelly that Hughes suspected the ME would confirm to be Hershey’s own vitreous humor. One ear lay nearby against the baseboard, as if tossed or—Hughes’s gut seized—spat there. The nose was busted, and a crust of blood fanned out from both nostrils like a half mask, covering almost his entire lower face.
The neck had been clawed open at one side. Enormous gout of blood there.
Stomach cut to ribbons. More blood. Blood everywhere. Splashed up the walls. Running in rivulets along the floorboards.
At Hershey’s crotch, there were what appeared to be stab wounds, as well as more bloodstains. Hughes did not relish the moment when the dead man’s pants were pulled down. Hughes had seen and experienced a hell of a lot as a New York homicide detective and had become inured to most of it over the years, but genital trauma still skeeved him out.
“Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” That’s what it was. Macbeth, right?
“Macbeth had the bit about ‘who would have thought the old man,’ et cetera, right?” he asked a crime-scene photographer crouched down near the body.
The photog’s expression clearly revealed that she thought Hughes had been to one too many crime scenes. “How the hell am I supposed to know?” she asked.
“Well-rounded education?” Hughes suggested.
Maybe it was a falling out. If the Dent kid’s theory held, then Hershey had been working in concert with Oliver Belsamo. Maybe they disagreed about something. Maybe Dog decided to eliminate Hat from the Monopoly board.
But here? In the man’s own home, with witnesses right down the hall?
Hughes remembered Jasper saying, It’s probably the only thing in the world that makes sense to him, actually.
“Done here,” the photog said, standing up. “You can take a look.”
Hughes hunkered down, careful to keep the long train of his overcoat from dragging in any stray blood. There was now a complete photographic and video record of the crime scene, but no point messing things up.
No point getting blood on his clothes, either.
The widow Hershey was still sobbing in the other room. The kid was pitching a fit, too. And now a third voice—another kid—joined the chorus.
You people are better off, Hughes thought. You have no friggin’ idea.
Next to the body, he focused on two playing dice. He’d noticed them immediately upon entering the apartment, but he hadn’t touched or disturbed them yet. They were translucent red, with white pips. Boxcars. Nothing exceptional about them.
But now that he was closer to them, he noticed that they held down a slip of paper that was beginning to sop up some of Hershey’s blood.
“You get a picture of this?” Hughes called to the photog, who had just gotten out the door. She turned around, saw where he was pointing, and rolled her eyes.
“Yes, Detective. I pointed my camera at the paper and made clicky noises with the buttons.”
Hughes hated the world.
With a pair of tweezers, he prized the now-sticky paper out from under the dice.
There was a bit of writing on it:
YOU’RE WELCOME.—Wm. C. Dent
“Oh, in the name of all that is holy,” Hughes whispered. A headache sprung full formed behind his left eye, pulsating so badly that his eyelid began to twitch.
“Shut down the block!” he screamed, rising from his crouch. “Shut down a five-block radius! Do it now!” he roared when the uni next to him only blinked in surprise. At the roar, the uni rushed into the hall, barking instructions into his shoulder mic.
“I need every available unit and man in this area, and I need it ten minutes ago!” Hughes went on. “We are going to personally search every unit and every room in every building in this area. I don’t care how long it takes. Billy Dent was here no more than twenty minutes ago—move it!”
He watched for a moment as the chaos around him shuffled and shimmied into some kind of order. There could be no doubt in his mind that this was half of the Hat-Dog Killer, just as Jasper had suspected. Then, looking down at the body, another thought occurred to him.
“And get me Jennifer Morales! Now!”
CHAPTER 11
Howie’s phone reported the time as well past three in the morning when he decided to creep forth and surveil. The hospital was quiet, and Howie’s parents were long gone, having been somewhat mollified by the usual lies and half-truths. Howie had slept most of the evening, thanks to whatever Dr. Mogelof had shot into him, so he was wide-awake now.
Perfect time for some snooping.
“I am the best sidekick in the history of sidekicks,” Howie muttered to himself as he swung his legs out of bed. “I will be promoted to bona fide action hero any day now. It’s a lock.”
They had turned off his monitors once his vitals stabilized, so he didn’t have to worry about any sort of alarm going off. His IV stand—miracle of miracles!—was well greased and didn’t squeak as he pushed it along the floor. He made a quick pit stop in the bathroom and checked himself in the mirror. Yikes. It was pretty bad. He could see why Mom had been spazzing. There was a massive bandage strapped to his forehead, and his face was puffy and more black-and-blue than its usual pasty white. He looked as though he’d gone several rounds with a heavyweight champion, and he decided instantly that that would be the story he’d tell at school. Followed by “You should see the other guy!”
I conveniently will not mention that the other guy is a middle-aged woman.
Thinking of Samantha brought him back to the present. He had to figure out what had happened to her. The best way to do that was to find Jazz’s grandmother. Sam would be with her, no doubt, and Howie decided that—as long as she didn’t actually turn out to be a serial killer—he would forgive her for hewing to her mother’s side and not his. G. William claimed she’d disappeared, but that could just mean she was off on a Starbucks run somewhere. If she brought Howie a latte, he’d forgive a lot.
But if she’s a serial killer, all bets are off. Unless… conjugal visits? Hmm…
The only problem immediately before him was actually right behind him. His bony ass was hanging out of the hospital gown. He rummaged around in the room’s dresser and closet, finding nothing, then spied a plastic bag under his bed. It contained his clothing, minus his shirt, which he imagined had been soaked in blood.
I lose more shirts that way…
He slipped into his jeans and left the gown on, then stealthily opened the door to his room, creeping along with infinite patience. He couldn’t be caught. This was too important. Too big.
Cracking the door just enough to slide through, he eased into the silent corridor.
“Going for a little walk?” a nurse asked as she breezed by. “Great! Just watch your IV line on the door handles!”
Howie watched her recede down the hallway. I totally saw that coming. Totally.
He made his way to the nurses’ station, where a tired-looking woman in her fifties (or nineties—Howie couldn’t tell once people hit forty) barely glanced at him. He had to clear his throat several times before she finally looked up from her phone screen, where she was fiercely texting what looked to be roughly fifty percent emoji.
“I need to find a patient,” Howie
told her.
The nurse’s eyes flicked from Howie’s battered face to his IV pole.
“A patient besides me.” Smart-ass, he added mentally.
“Patient confidentiality—”
“You can tell me if someone is here, right? I’m not asking for a diagnosis and a copy of her X-rays.”
Howie could tell that the nurse was about to say something like, I don’t have time for this or I’m busy, but she caught herself, realizing that her now-chirping phone put the lie to those notions.
“Patient name?” she asked, resigned.
Howie had an awful moment where he couldn’t remember Mrs. Dent’s first name. He almost blurted out “Gramma.”
“Uh, she was admitted today. Old white lady.” The nurse herself was kind of an old white lady; Howie hoped she wouldn’t be offended. “Last name: Dent.” Helpfully, he spelled it out.
She paused in her typing at the computer. “First name?”
“Oh, come on. How many Dents are there in this town? For real.”
“Too damn many,” the nurse muttered under her breath. “She was admitted earlier to—well, late yesterday, technically. Room two-zero-zero-seven. She’s in a step-down unit from ICU. But she’s on the no-visitors list.”
“That’s fine. I just want to send flowers,” Howie said, backing away, giving her his best, most flirtatious smile. She grimaced at it. Must have been the bruising.
Room 2007 was one floor up. Howie sought out the elevator and spent the brief ascent practicing his seduction rap on a cute doctor with uncute bags under her eyes. As he got off the elevator, she stayed on and told him, “Psych is down two floors.” Which was random, but helpful, he supposed.
Even if he hadn’t been given the room number for Gramma Dent, Howie would have found it easily. He was fairly certain that only the mother of Billy Dent would have a uniformed Lobo’s Nod deputy parked outside her room.