“So if they fight back, they’re a gentleman, and if they don’t they’re a bitch?” Hughes said doubtfully. “You’d think that’s the opposite of how it should be.”
“Yeah, to you,” Jazz said. “To you, it makes sense to go the other way—a woman who fights is a bitch. But what if after that second victim struggled, he learned he liked it? That the resistance arouses him even more? If they struggle, he has an excuse—justification in his mind, a rationale—to hurt them more, to be more violent with them. So they’re giving him what he wants, which makes them gentlemen. Hats.”
Connie shivered next to him. Her face had gone ashy. “I think I’m gonna go get some more ice from the machine. And maybe a Coke. You guys need anything?”
Jazz and Hughes both glanced at the six-pack of Coke Hughes had brought, half of which was still unopened. The three cans sat next to a nearly full bucket of ice.
“That’s a good idea,” Jazz said after a moment. “Stretch your legs, too.”
After the door closed on Connie, Hughes shook his head. “Can she handle this?”
“She’ll be okay.” I hope. “What’s this thing in here on the fourth murder? The bit about a flashing light?”
“Yeah, that’s the only real bit of eyewitness testimony we have. Witness saw a bright flash down on the subway tracks where we later found the body. Thought it was a train at first, but it was coming from the wrong direction.”
“He took a picture….” Jazz mused.
“Yeah, that’s what we think. His trophy.”
“But that doesn’t… that doesn’t quite track.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, he already has a trophy. The penises.”
Hughes rubbed his eyes. “He doesn’t always take them. Sometimes he does. Sometimes he doesn’t.”
“Yeah, but…” Jazz frowned. “Why two different trophies? It’s not unheard of, but it has to mean something.”
Hughes took the last piece of pizza. It was cold and stiff, like rigor mortis. “I wish I had more to tell you. But this is why I wanted you involved.”
“I?”
“I. Me. We. Whatever. I was the one who lobbied to bring you in, is all.”
Hughes ate the pizza, chewing with a thoughtful look on his face. “Okay, look, let’s do the rundown one more time. The things we know for sure, all right?” He started ticking facts off on his fingers as he spoke, reciting from memory. “Based on the direction and angle of the slashing wounds, as well as the footprint we found at the third crime scene, he’s between five-ten and six-one, probably something like a hundred ninety, two hundred pounds. He’s right-handed. Most likely white. He’s escalating and he’s smart, so he’s older—mid-thirties. Very organized, so he may be married. Most likely in a stable relationship of some sort. His kill zone seems to be centered on the Red Hook/Carroll Gardens area, but he’s killed as far away as Coney Island. His comfort zone is clearly Brooklyn, which makes him a local. That’s what we know for certain.”
“Wrong,” Jazz said. “Those aren’t things you know for certain. Those are things you think you know for certain. For all we know, those are things he wants you to think you know. Staging the scenes to maximize your confusion. Like here”—he pointed to a photo—“this scene. This murder. He dumps the guts into a KFC bucket. Why do that? Just to mess with you, I guarantee.”
“Or he just likes KFC, ’cause he did the same thing with another one a little while later. Not everything can be faked,” Hughes scoffed.
“Wrong,” Jazz said again, insistent. “Everything and anything can be faked. Billy avoided capture for decades. Every time he killed, some cop somewhere sat down and said, ‘Well, here’s what we know for certain.’ And every time, they were wrong, and Billy lived another day.” Livin’ another day is what it’s all about, Jasper, m’boy, ’cause every day we live is another chance to kill.
Hughes slumped in his chair, defeated. “I’ve spent months chasing this bastard and you’re telling me I’m no closer than the first day.”
“No. I’m just saying you can’t assume you’re any closer. Once you start making assumptions, a guy like this owns you. You were right about one thing: He’s highly organized. But… he’s also picked on some street people—a bunch of homeless, some prostitutes. High-risk victims, if the guy is settled and married like you think.”
“A random middle-class white dude hanging out with homeless people would stick out,” Hughes agreed. “But so far, we don’t have any witnesses. Nothing.”
“You should announce that you do have a witness,” Jazz said. “They almost caught Billy that way once. Cops had nothing, but they leaked to the press that they had an eyewitness and they were closing in. Billy felt like he had to go in and give them some cock-and-bull story about why he was in the area and how he couldn’t have been the killer.”
“What happened?”
Realized it was better to run, Jasper. Billy laughed in his memory. You remember that: Sometimes, the best thing to do is just run. Don’t look back. Don’t look over your shoulder—they’re either there or they’re not, and lookin’ ain’t gonna change that. Run.
“He changed his mind. But it was close.”
“I’ll see what I can do about that. The fake-witness idea. We’ll see.” Hughes stood and stretched.
Jazz took the momentary break to change the subject. “I’ve gotten everything I’m going to get out of papers and screens. I need to see the crime scenes. I need to be where it happened.”
Hughes nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. You have to understand: We have dump sites, but only some of them are also murder scenes.”
Jazz understood. Most crimes had three actual “scenes”—where the crime was planned, where it took place, and where it ended. Sometimes they overlapped.
“And furthermore,” Hughes continued, “a lot of these crimes happened months ago. He’d sometimes go weeks between murders. He’s accelerating.”
“All the more reason—”
“But what I’m saying is, these dump sites were mostly public areas. After we finished up our forensics and everything, we had to turn them back over to the public, you know?”
“I get it. I still need to see them.”
“No problem. I’ll show you everything you need.”
CHAPTER 13
His first big-city crime scene. Maybe it should have been special or memorable somehow, but it was just an alleyway. Nothing remarkable about it. Nothing to distinguish it from any alleyway in any city in any country in the world.
Except that the Hat-Dog Killer had left his first two victims here.
Crime scene meant a lot of things. Technically, it was the place where a crime was committed. But a crime scene doesn’t necessarily mean the only place where a crime was committed. Each individual act of murder could have multiple related crimes: Where the victim was first taken. Where the victim was raped or harmed or injured. Where the victim was actually killed. And where the victim’s body was left. Each one could be a separate scene. Or one scene could combine any or all of them.
Right now, the sun was going down, but the day wasn’t finished blushing, and the alley was cold. Jazz tried to picture it as it had been months ago, in the hottest, dampest days of summer, with the sun gone, the moon high, and the heat rising from the streets in tortuous waves. What had drawn the killer to this alley, to this place behind—what was it called?—Connecticut Bagels? And why, a weirdly nagging part of his brain insisted on wondering, was the place called Connecticut Bagels when it was in New York?
“Two of them here,” he murmured.
They say lightning never strikes twice, Billy’s voice whispered. But that ain’t actually true. It can and it does; that’s science. But not us. We don’t. We don’t drop bodies in the same place. We don’t pick up prospects at the same place. That’s a routine, Jasper. And routines get you killed.