by Barry Lyga
Jazz gripped the doorjamb tighter. Then tighter. His fingers cried in pain, but he ignored it. The pain clarified. Gave him strength.
His parents weren’t perfect. They’d made a mistake.
Two of them, in fact.
First, the birth certificate. It taught him what didn’t matter. That it didn’t matter who his biological father was—I am what I am, regardless. I haven’t killed anyone yet and don’t even want to. Could I? Sure. Would it be easy? Sure. I even told Connie that once. And it might not even bother me later. But I don’t want to. That’s their sickness. Mine is that I can imagine it and see it.
The second mistake was killing Gramma. He’d laughed at the news of her death, but not out of joy or glee. He’d laughed at the notion that she’d been taken away, that the person he’d focused his murderous thoughts on for four years was now gone. He had no target. And that, too, set him free. Free to no longer have to resist killing her, free to realize—now that he couldn’t kill her—that he never would have.
Because she was still his blood kin. And as crazy as she was, as spiteful and as mad, she had never, to the best of his knowledge, harmed another human being. Which was more than he could say for his mother or his father. Or even himself. When her Alzheimer’s took a turn toward the childlike, she became exasperating and verbally abusive, but also sweet, kind, and funny.
Killing Gramma was wrong. It outraged him, and the outrage gave him strength, stiffened his legs, flushed the guilt and shame and pain from his stomach. He pushed off from the doorjamb and stood straight and confident.
My mother killed my grandmother, and that was wrong. It’s as simple as that.
I’m human.
She said, “What happened between us was—”
“I didn’t want this!” he screamed. “Don’t you understand? I didn’t ask for this! I just wanted a life!” He didn’t even know what he meant by this. So many were the depredations piled up in his past that such a small word was too tiny to contain them. From nowhere, tears arose, and he resisted them. He’d made it this far. He could make it through to the end. Whatever that was.
“I’m becoming bored, Jasper,” Mom said. “The only question remaining is this: Will you take your father’s place, or will you be just another prospect?”
He’d been expecting that question, though he’d thought it would come from Billy or Sam. Not from his mother.
He knew the answer. He’d known for a while maybe, deep down, but certainly since the moment Howie had told him Gramma was dead. At that time, with that news, he’d known instantly who he was. What he was.
“I won’t kill for you,” he told her.
“Oh.”
And then his mother produced a pistol from next to her hip and shot him.
CHAPTER 56
I have to stop getting shot, Jazz thought deliriously.
And collapsed forward, dropping into the room on his hands and knees. He couldn’t breathe. His chest was on fire and his mind raced, thoughts flicking by on fast-forward. Not his life flashing before his eyes—not entirely—but random snatches and snippets, intercut with pain and panic. He couldn’t catch his breath
—Connie flickered before him—
or focus his vision, gone blurry
—his mother stood from the chair—
The world flooded with black, then red, then glimmered with sparkles before resolving again. Hardwood under his hands. No air in his lungs.
This wasn’t like being shot in Brooklyn. This wasn’t in his leg. He’d been shot in the chest at point-blank range, and he was dying. His heart jerked and pumped in staccato fits, and his lungs had lost the ignition key.
His mother took her time pacing the few feet between them, the pistol held casually at her side. He could see her only from midthigh down, lacking the strength to lift his head.
“Killing your daddy and making love to your mommy,” she cooed. “We should have named you Oedipus, not Jasper.” She crouched down before him and gazed into his eyes. Her brow furrowed. “At least then your pathetic little girlfriend wouldn’t call you by that ridiculous nickname. ‘Jazz.’ I named you!” she ranted. “I gave you your name, your identity. I took your virginity, and I made you mine. Who the hell is she to have a claim on you, Jasper? She’s nothing. Nothing!”
He put his head down and gasped, hitching half a breath into his lungs. It felt sweet and bitter at once. He slumped down onto his elbows. Get the head closer to the floor. Easier for blood to get there. Stay alive. Oh, God, who am I kidding? She’s right there with the gun. I can’t move. It’s over.
“You are mine,” she said. “And I am yours. I am for you; she isn’t. You signed your work, Jasper. You proved your love.”
Her dress rippled into view, dropping away and pooling at her feet as she stood up again. He craned his neck, beholding her in her leggings and bra, glaring down at him.
Her upper arms and torso were a map of scars and puckered, healed wounds.
—like cutting chicken—
—knife in the sink and a hand touches the knife and the hand is his—
“Couldn’t wear sleeveless blouses or dresses,” she said. “Not after you practiced on me.”
He groaned and forced air into his lungs. Rested his cheek on the floor and wormed one hand to his chest to feel how bad the shot was.
She’ll put a bullet in your head. Doesn’t matter. Give up. Probably blood in the lungs already. Dead already. Too dumb to know it.
“You could have been a god with us, Jasper. Could have ruled the Crows and seen us to the glory of a world where we hunt without penalty or fear.” She crouched down again, her scars—his scars, his trophies—glimmering in the light. “We have a senator. He’s only done three, but that’s enough. For now. A man of uncommon needs and uncommon restraint. He’ll be president some day, and then… Oh, then things will change, Jasper!
“For a time, we thought of being the police. But we realized: Why be the cops when we can be the ones holding the cops’ leash? Politics is such a fine old job for crafty, sociable folks such as us.”
He probed his chest, surprised to find that he was breathing much better now. Shallow breaths, but they were coming one after the other, each one a little longer. His heart was still a frog in boiling water, but the fact that it worked at all was a miracle.
His fingers circled the bullet hole in Hughes’s overcoat. He hissed in pain at the pressure.
His mother leaned over to whisper in his ear. “And you were to have been the vanguard of that. But now you will die here, in this place, at this time. For your lack of vision. For your pitiable devotion to those who are prospects. Realize, Jasper, that your rebellion has solved nothing, protected no one. Rest assured I will see to the bleeding boy and Connie and the sheriff before I leave. You rescued no one. What do you have to say to that? What do you have to say before you die?”
Jazz muttered something.
“Speak up, son,” she said, amused, sounding almost exactly like Billy in that moment.
“I said,” he managed, “you shouldn’t carry such a girl’s gun. Small caliber.”
And before she could react, he thrust out his hand, grabbing her ankle and spilling her to the floor on her back.
His heart was fine. His lungs were fine. He was breathing and pumping and alive.
All because his mother was an excellent shot. She’d aimed and hit exactly where a bullet should have at least nicked his aorta.
The precise spot where he’d pinned Hughes’s badge earlier.
Another word for badge is shield.
CHAPTER 57
The pain in his chest was real. He was bruised inside and out, and at least two ribs were cracked.
But he was alive. He wouldn’t die. Not yet. Not now.
With an animal growl, he pounced atop her, pinning her right wrist, the gun pointed away. Her finger spasmed and two shots went awry. He leaned hard on her wrist, pounding it until the gun slipped from her nerveless fingers.
; As he reached for it, she raked his face with her left hand, nearly clawing out his right eye. Ribbons of pain and blood unspooled from his temple down to his jawline, and he reflexively hauled back, forgetting the gun for a moment. His mother hissed and scratched out again, catching his neck, gouging him there. He straddled her, pinning her down, sitting on her bare stomach, and planted his knee on that free, clawing arm. Then he laid his arm across her, pinning the other arm, and stretched out for the gun. She raised her head and snapped at him with her teeth. The gun was almost in reach. Small caliber, yeah, but he would be shooting her right in the eye. No doubt about what the bullet would do to her.
He flashed momentarily to Morales in the storage unit, as Hat’s bullet crashed into her skull. The way her eye had filled with blood.
And his mother heaved, arching her back, throwing him off-balance. His fingers connected with the gun, just enough to send it spinning away from him. It ricocheted off a wall and bounced even farther away.
Jazz elbowed her in the face, then punched her. His ribs grated and kept him from putting his full force behind either blow, but she went still for a moment.
Panicked, he crawled off her and lunged for the gun. It was too far, and his ribs flashed twin bolts at him as he moved. He stopped to catch his breath, and his mother was on him, digging her nails into his shoulders. Before he could react, she sank her teeth into his neck, unspooling fresh threads of shock and blood. He jerked before she could fasten onto him and rip out his carotid, rolling over, throwing her off and onto her back again. Blood ran down his neck.
She stretched out, supine, reaching for the gun, one arm flung out over her head. Jazz fought through the pain and lurched forward, collapsing on top of her. It was enough to stop her from inching closer to the gun. He allowed himself two counts to catch his breath and then put his hands around her throat. Tightened them.
She swatted at him, but he ignored her blows. Let her claw him wide open. Let her shred his flesh. He would not let go of her throat. Not for anything.
Her eyes lit with something known but unfamiliar. She dropped her hands to her sides and then she thrust her hips, grinding against him. Desperate tactic or was she actually into this? He didn’t know. Didn’t care. The hell with her. And her games. This was how they’d started and this was how they’d end. If they died together, so much the better. She heaved and bucked and she would be dead soon and maybe Billy was right: Maybe it padded behind you like a big cat and maybe that cat was growling and maybe it would pounce on him with her death.
It wasn’t until she pulled the knife out of his side that Jazz realized he’d been stabbed. So sharp. So clean going in. Burning eruption of lava blood coming out. Her pelvic thrusts had been so that she could work her hand under her body and have access to a blade.
He gurgled, his side aflame. It was a small blade, but he felt it go in again, this time up to the hilt. She was stabbing blindly, in a panic, and he yearned to keep strangling her, but his self-preservation instinct took over, and he rolled off her. But not before a third knifing.
Coughing and grunting, his mother turned onto her side, facing away from him. Jazz lay on the floor, panting, hands to his flank, trying to stanch the blood. She got up on hands and knees, wheezing, barely able to move. She’d dropped the knife, and she was crawling like an invalid, making her way to the gun.
Jazz kept one hand on his side, rotated on his hip, and reached out, snagging her ankle. She kicked at him but lost her balance and fell over. Jazz caught his breath and pulled her toward him. She wailed with a voice like an asthmatic and thrashed against him.
He used his other hand. It was slick and coated with blood. He grabbed her free ankle and pulled, feeling more blood spurt from his side.
With a burst of energy that he could never have imagined possessing, he managed to come parallel to her. With his hands clapped to her shoulders, he rolled them both over until he was on his back and she lay atop him on her back. They both gasped for breath, their bodies hot, their lungs racing to keep up.
He’d thought before that he didn’t want to kill. That had been ten thousand years ago, when he’d been another person. Right now, he didn’t care about himself or his own life. He didn’t even care about Connie or Howie. He cared about only one thing.
Killing his mother.
It’s all about geometry.
He wrapped his arm around her throat. He squeezed, and it was the finest feeling he’d ever experienced in his life.
CHAPTER 58
This time, Hughes didn’t so much mind Tanner’s driving. Maybe he’d gotten used to barreling through the streets of Lobo’s Nod, but more likely it was just that he was aware of how close they were to ending all this. The twenty-plus career of Billy Dent was over. The Hat-Dog Killer was over. And now it was time for the coda to the whole blood-soaked mess.
Outside the town limits, Tanner slowed the cruiser. As he turned onto a dirt-and-gravel drive, he cut the headlights, and they crept along until another car and a house hove into view. The house was dark, save for a slight chink of light escaping through a gap in the boards covering a second-floor window.
Before they’d left Weathers’s apartment, Tanner had ordered the deputies to join them at the Dawes house once the county boys arrived to spell them, but the radio remained silent.
“Backup?” Hughes asked, hoping to get the answer he wanted.
“No time to wait,” said Tanner. The sheriff did not disappoint.
In the trunk of the cruiser, Tanner had two bulletproof vests. “We do it right this time,” he said with an air of gruff self-recrimination. They vested up, and Tanner also plucked from the trunk what was not the world’s largest shotgun but was certainly its meanest.
Seeing the look of astonishment on Hughes’s face, Tanner shrugged. “Got a fine Nitro in there. Sixty cal. Want it?”
Hughes shook his head at the offered hand cannon. Rednecks and their guns. He was more comfortable with his service weapon. He knew it well.
Weapons out, safeties off, they made their way up the porch. They didn’t bother knocking. It was unlocked, and Hughes nudged it open. Tanner followed him through the door into an empty vestibule, covering a staircase with that damn elephant gun as Hughes scanned a barely lit hallway dead ahead.
They exchanged a look. Up or stay here?
A thump from upstairs, followed by another, then another, settled it for them. Though his legs urged him to race up the stairs like he was late for the subway transfer, Hughes forced himself to take it one stair at a time, following Tanner. He winced with each creak.
On the second floor, they hung a right toward a light. Tanner led the way; Hughes walked backward, his weapon poised, ready for the ambush from behind.
Then he bumped into Tanner, who’d stopped dead in his tracks. Hughes spun around. The sheriff blocked the door into the room ahead, frozen, saying nothing.
Hughes pushed him to one side just enough to squeeze by. When he stepped into the room, he, too, froze in place.
The floor was a map of blood—spatters, footprints, drag marks. In the middle of the room lay Jasper Dent. Atop him was a woman Hughes recognized from the sketch of the woman Deputy Erickson had seen, the woman who’d killed Clara Dent.
Jasper Dent’s own mother. And from the look of it, Jasper was strangling the life out of her.
They were both covered in blood. Jasper’s eyes were nearly dead, but he had the look of a man possessed. The mother was half-naked, her expression slack, her tongue lolling from her mouth.
The kid’s strength flagged, and he relaxed his grip. The mother gasped, a pathetic hitch, and then Jasper tightened his grip again and she choked and went silent. An instant later, Jasper lost his power again, releasing her for a moment before reapplying his dying muscles to her throat once more.
Hughes’s first impulse was to raise his weapon to his own temple and blow his brains out because God oh God oh sweet fucking Jesus Christ, he did not want to live in this world.
&nb
sp; Years later, he would still wonder: Would I have done it? Would I have ended myself right then and there if Tanner hadn’t done what he did? And even years later, no answers were forthcoming.
But Tanner did do what he did next, which was to shove Hughes to one side and shout, “Jasper!” at the top of his lungs. When that obviously wasn’t going to work, Tanner fired the shotgun at the ceiling. The roar deafened Hughes in the confined space of the room. The overhead bulb swung back and forth, casting the room in a hellscape of churning shadows. The blood on the floor seemed to dance.
Dent lost his grip again. Tanner lumbered forward, and Hughes snapped out of it, rushing to help. He pulled Jasper back as Tanner dragged the mother off her son. As soon as Jasper came free from under her, Hughes noticed a gush of blood from Jasper’s side. Kidney hit? He couldn’t tell.
“We got a problem,” he said, and looked up. Tanner loomed over the mother, who appeared deader than an actual doornail.
“We got two,” Tanner said, and was screaming into his shoulder mic for an ambulance before Hughes could respond.
Dent mumbled something. Hughes leaned down to hear.
“… sorry…” the kid said.
Hughes flashed back to the last time Jasper Dent had apologized to him, but this time the kid was clearly in no position to attack.
“I couldn’t do it,” Jasper groaned. “I couldn’t kill them.”
“Shh. Ambulance is coming.” He glanced up at Tanner, who had started CPR on the mother. “Talk later.”