Which statement was true? Was it all Billy screwing with his mind?
Well, of course it was Billy screwing with his mind. That’s what Billy did. Dear Old Dad had a PhD in mind screwing. The question was, was it just Billy screwing with his mind?
He shook his head and actually said “Stop it!” out loud to himself in his strongest voice. What had happened? How had Janice Dent died? By Billy’s hand, or by her son’s?
That’ll be the first thing I do. The next time I see him, the first thing I do will be to ask him that.
And the second thing?
He remembered Special Agent Morales leaning toward him. She wore no perfume. Her face was smooth and unblemished by makeup, and her grin had revealed big, strong teeth. “You want to do more than find him, don’t you? You want to kill him,” she’d said. “Well, I can help with that.”
The second thing—he would figure that out when the time came.
The other piece of paper was the letter found on the Impressionist. It was two pages long, but the sheriff’s department had reduced it to fit both pages on one sheet. Handwritten in a careful, neat, and unfamiliar hand. Most of the letter was a listing of the major characteristics of Billy Dent’s first victims, with notations as to possible doppelg?ngers for the Impressionist to use in his harrowing of Lobo’s Nod. But there was an appendix at the end, one that still mystified Jazz:
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ARE YOU TO
GO NEAR THE DENT BOY.
LEAVE HIM ALONE.
YOU ARE NOT TO ENGAGE HIM.
JASPER DENT IS OFF-LIMITS.
He stared at the letter for a while, willing the letters to rearrange themselves into something that made more sense, then gave up, grabbed some clean clothes and the letters, and headed to his temporary quarters. He figured he’d delayed the inevitable long enough.
Sitting on the floor, his back against his father’s childhood bed, Jazz called Connie.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he said back.
Neither of them said anything. Jazz ran through his options. Pretend nothing had happened? Apologize immediately? The nuclear option: break up. He’d written and rewritten the speech in his head a million times: I know you love me and I love you, but I’m broken, Connie. I’m defective. I’m the toy you got for Christmas that’s missing pieces, and even if it was complete, no one bought the batteries to go with it.
“Before we talk about anything else, I need to say I’m sorry,” Connie said.
“Excuse me?”
“I shouldn’t have pushed you. I know you have… issues with sex. I get it. And, I mean, don’t get me wrong. I totally think we’re ready, but I went about it wrong. It wasn’t cool. So I’m sorry.”
Jazz closed his eyes and thumped the back of his head against the bed. “Con… it’s not… you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s me. It was me. And then with your dad… I just…”
“I know. And we’ll talk about that in—look, you don’t have to… In New York. I just thought that with me, it might be okay. It might be safe. For you.”
He sat upright. “What do you mean? What do you mean by that?”
“Well, I know that your dad never… never prospected any African Americans. Right?”
Jazz’s heart thrummed. What?
“And I always figured that that maybe meant that I wouldn’t… that I couldn’t…” She blew into the phone, exasperated. “I know what you’re worried about. You’re worried that he somehow, like, programmed you to be a serial killer. And that there’s all this crazy lurking under the surface—”
“It’s not just under the surface,” he said seriously.
“I know. But anyway, there’s this stuff buried in you, and you’re afraid it’ll erupt if you have sex. Like, sex is the trigger, right? But Billy never killed any black women. It’s like he just skipped over us. Almost deliberately. Like we don’t exist to him. So I thought maybe that made me safe for you.” She paused. “Didn’t you ever think that?”
Jazz held back a laugh of commingled relief and horror. His big secret! His hidden fear! That Connie would someday find out why he’d first dated her. How long had he been terrified of telling her this, only to learn that not only did she know but she was okay with it and thought it was a good idea.
“I don’t know what to say,” he admitted. “I was just sitting here thinking how I needed to apologize to you—”
“For what? For freaking out?” She said it like it was no big deal.
“For that. For the way I freaked out. And now, I guess, for the way we first started dating. Which seems pretty racist, now that I think about it.”
Connie laughed. “Jazz, if you liked—I don’t know—blond girls or girls with big boobs—”
“Your boobs are pretty big.”
“Anyway. If you had a thing for one of those girls and saw her across a crowded room and went and introduced yourself, would that be a bad thing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I do—the answer is no. So, in my case, you saw a really foxy-looking black girl across a crowded room—”
“It was the Coff-E-Shop and it was close to closing, so no one was there.”
“—and you were like, ‘I like black girls, so I’m going to introduce myself.’ No big deal.”
“Yeah, but what if the reason I like black girls is because they’re, you’re, safe—”
“So what? Who knows why anyone likes what they like? Guys who are obsessed with, like, redheads. Why? Because they’re rare? Because they had a redheaded babysitter? Because they watched too many Emma Stone movies? Beats me. Who cares? I mean, why do I like white boys?”
“I’m the only white boy you’ve ever dated.”
“And I’m the only black girl you’ve ever dated. So there.”
“So, we’re good?”
“We’re beyond good.”
“Is your dad gonna come at me with a shotgun the next time I come over?”
“Probably.” She waited for a moment. “You went too far, you know. At the airport.”
“I know.”
“You crossed the line.”
“I know.”
“It’s one thing to mess with a teacher’s head to get out of detention or to charm that girl at the police station to get you some file you shouldn’t have, but—”
“I know.”
“—this is my dad, Jazz. He’s my father. And you were, like, like, waving a cape in front of a bull.”
“It was totally wrong.”
“And you know what they do to the bulls, right? And that’s how you were treating my dad.”
“I’m sorry. I really am.” Nah, Billy whispered, you ain’t sorry. You just know sayin’ it gets you what you want.
Jazz shook Billy away. He was sorry.
He was, like, 99 percent sure he was really sorry.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “I’ll apologize to your dad right now.”
Maybe 98 percent.
“That is not a good idea. He’s still on fire. He’s so pissed it’s ridiculous. He just now stopped lecturing me. If you’d called five minutes ago, he would have grabbed the phone and you’d be talking to him instead.”
Ouch.
“But anyway,” she went on, “every couple has their thing, you know? My dad doesn’t like you. And your grandmother thinks I’m the spawn of Satan. We’ll deal.”
“What about…” He didn’t even want to bring it up, but he had to. It was in the open now. “What about sex?”
“Yes, please,” Connie deadpanned.
He laughed. “Seriously. Come on.”
“We’ll take it slow.”
“We’ve been taking it slow. Because of me. You know it’s true, Con. Any other guy would have been all over you after a week. We’ve been together for almost a year.”
“Maybe those guys would have been all over me, but they wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. And you wouldn’t have gotten anywhere, either. Not that soon. I wasn’t ready. Not then. Now I am. Any man worth having will wait for his woman to be ready. How can I not return the favor?”
And that was when Jazz knew Connie was more and better than he deserved.
“I’ll just have to get by thinking about you while I’m in the shower,” she went on. “It’s gotten me this far.”
Jazz groaned. “You just had to put that image in my head, didn’t you?”