Minutes later, they pulled up to a dingy brick building with an NYPD shield on the outside and a sign reading 76TH PRECINCT. Jazz wondered briefly if he was under arrest. But he hadn’t been cuffed or read his rights, just pushed around.
Inside, the precinct was a madhouse, alive with chaos and noise. Uniformed cops, detectives in shirtsleeves, and a couple of men in ties who could only be—based on their stick-up-the-butt bearing—FBI agents milled about. The entrance to the precinct was clearly a sort of gathering area/lobby that had been pressed into duty as a command center; whiteboards and corkboards on wheels were parked against the walls, pinned and markered and taped with photos, names, dates. Jazz recognized it all from the information Hughes had brought him yesterday. And it was there that Jazz sat for more than an hour, waiting to be seen by… someone. The cops and agents cast cursory and disinterested looks in his direction, until at some point someone must have realized who he was. At that point, a buzz of excited conversation stirred the stale, overheated air of the precinct, making Jazz want to curl up and vanish.
He texted Connie: I think this is gonna take a while….
Directly across from him, unavoidably in his line of sight, was a series of plaques mounted to the wall, along with various badges and a trifolded American flag in a frame. It was a 9/11 memorial, he realized, reading the plaques. In honor of those from this precinct who’d died that day.
Jazz was too young to remember 9/11 itself, but Billy had been periodically obsessed with it. Throughout Jazz’s youth, he would sometimes sit and watch video of the World Trade Center towers collapsing over and over, the explosion of glass and flame from the side of the North Tower like a gush of arterial blood. Over and over.
So efficient, Billy would mumble. But no style. No flair.
It was the difference between serial murder and mass murder, as far as Billy was concerned.
“All these jackasses have done,” Billy told Jazz once, “is make people afraid to fly and afraid of New York. Which they already were in the first place. Takes real talent to get up close and personal and make you afraid of something brand-new.”
Jazz didn’t think the cops here would appreciate Billy’s insights into the tragedy that had claimed their brothers. He kept his mouth shut and waited.
Eventually, a door flew open down a hallway and Hughes stormed out. At first he didn’t see Jazz there, but as he got closer he spied Jazz and his expression softened for an instant.
“Sorry, kid,” he said, passing by.
Jazz realized in an instant what had happened.
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.
Long dragged Jazz into the office Hughes had vacated, much more harshly than was necessary for someone coming willingly. Nothing like a little embarrassment to ramp up the aggression, Jazz thought.
A cop sat behind a desk, his uniform festooned with more bric-a-brac than the other cops Jazz had seen. CPT. NILES MONTGOMERY read the sign on his desk.
“Here he is, Cap,” Long said, shaking Jazz a bit by his arm.
“Easy, Long. Don’t take it out on the kid. Have a seat, Jasper. Long? Give us a minute.”
Long left, closing the door. After a brief hesitation, Jazz decided to sit.
Sighing, the captain said, “I’m sorry to do this. You’re not supposed to be here. You were never supposed to be here….”
And then it all came out, just as Jazz had imagined it: Doug Weathers’s story—headlined NYPD SEEKS TO “DENT” HAT-DOG?—had hit the Lobo’s Nod newspaper’s website overnight. It was a matter of a couple of hours before a New York reporter came across it and, scanning it, realized its implications. The reporter called the New York mayor’s office and woke up a press person there, demanding a comment on the insertion of Billy Dent’s son into the Hat-Dog Killer investigation. The mayor’s office, caught completely off guard and totally flabbergasted by the very idea of involving Jasper Dent, had immediately contacted Captain Montgomery, the titular head of the task force, waking him up an hour before his alarm.
“As you can imagine,” Montgomery told Jazz, “I was a bit surprised to find out that a newspaper was reporting you were helping my investigation.”
Jazz said nothing. He knew what would come next.
“I don’t know what Detective Hughes told you, but the fact of the matter is this: He doesn’t speak for this precinct, this department, or this task force. He was supposed to visit you in Lobo’s Nod and show you a limited subset of our investigatory data. He certainly wasn’t supposed to open his kimono. And especially not to bring you to New York.”
Jazz still said nothing.
“I’m sorry that it had to come to this. This neighborhood… these neighborhoods, really… the ones that are at the center of this. Nice, peaceful. For the most part. Biggest crime we usually get around here is purse snatching. Now we’ve had seven months of bodies. Gun permit applications are up—literally—four thousand percent. Every couple of nights, I get to go to a different school auditorium and try to calm people down, and they just yell and scream and demand answers I can’t give them. They’re scared. It’s my job to reassure them, and it’s not very reassuring when the media starts saying that now I’m relying on the teenage son of a serial killer for help. It reeks of desperation. You understand?”
Jazz shrugged.
“This isn’t about you. You didn’t do anything wrong,” Montgomery assured him. “But I can’t have you involved in this. I’m going to send you home.”
Now it was time to speak. Jazz picked his words with cautious precision and leaned forward in the most urgent yet restrained way he could. He’d perfected this pose/expression combination over years of practice. It almost always worked. “Captain? Sir?” he began. “I understand everything you’ve said, but can I suggest you keep me on anyway? I know you think it’s crazy, but I really am good at this. You can call Sheriff Tanner back in Lobo’s Nod—he’ll tell you. I’ve already helped get one of these guys. If you let me, I can lead you places you’d never go otherwise. And no one has to know it’s me. You can keep me in that little hotel where Hughes set me up. I’ll never set foot in this building again. The press will never see me. And God knows I will never talk to them. Not once. Let me help. Please.”
Montgomery leaned back in his chair. “Look, it’s not like I’m saying we don’t need help—”
“Exactly,” Jazz said, pouncing. “Not that you guys aren’t qualified or anything,” he added hurriedly, “but when you get something like this, in a neighborhood like this, it’s all hands on deck, right? So you’ve got your local guys and your Homicide guys and you pull in the FBI. Why not go all the way?”
The captain was on the edge, Jazz could tell; he could go either way.
“When you stand up in those schools, I bet you tell people you’re doing everything possible, don’t you?” Jazz said, and when Montgomery’s head inclined in the slightest nod, Jazz knew he had him. One more push. “How can you go back out there and tell them that if it’s not the truth? You’ve got one more resource sitting right in front of you. How can you not use it?”
On a good day, Jazz could talk his way into or out of just about anything. This was a good day.
But he hadn’t counted on one thing.
“I can’t do it,” Montgomery said, with a tone of real regret. “The mayor, the commissioner, the chief of Ds… they’ve made it clear: They want my head or they want yours. And I’ve grown attached to mine.”
“But—”
“Thanks, but no thanks. And please stop talking. Your freakin’ Jedi mind tricks are giving me a headache. I’m going to ask you not to talk to any of the media in New York or when you get back home. Not about this case, at least. And please turn over anything Detective Hughes may have given you.”