The victims ranged in age from fourteen to fifty-two. In some cases, the body had been found at the murder site. In others, it had been moved. There were days between some murders, weeks between others. Penis cut off and taken; penis cut off and left at the scene. Guts removed and left piled on the rooftop. Guts removed and gone, gone, gone. Guts removed and left at the scene twice in—believe it or not—those KFC buckets.
“Guy must love KFC,” someone deadpanned. “There’s a better fried chicken joint just three blocks over. He had to go all the way to Fort Greene to get an actual—”
“Shut up,” Montgomery advised.
Jazz appreciated the silence. Guts. And eyelids. And penises.
And now, the eyes missing.
“He’s escalating,” Jazz said, and then felt idiotic for saying it out loud. Obviously he was escalating. That’s what serial killers did—they started slow and small, then expanded their domain as their confidence increased. And, more important, as living out their original fantasy proved not to quell whatever raged and rioted within them, they added new elements, like an addict who needed more and more drugs to get the same old high.
“Penis, guts, eyes. What connects them?”
“The FBI profile says—” Montgomery began.
“Yeah, I read the profile.” It was a good profile, as profiles went. The killer was considered mixed organized, based on his moving of the bodies and ability to evade capture for so long, but also his propensity to leave messy crime scenes. Jazz differed there. He thought the killer was actually highly organized. The messy crime scenes weren’t showing a lack of control—they were the ultimate expression of Hat-Dog’s control. He could make a crime scene look any way he wanted, as organized or as disorganized as he wanted, when he wanted.
WELCOME TO THE GAME, JASPER.
He’s playing.
Definitely male, as semen had been found in some of the raped women. No semen in the male victims, so no male rape, so…
“He’s expressing male power,” Jazz murmured.
“Yeah, we think that’s why he cuts off the penises,” Morales said. “As a way of defining himself as the alpha male.”
“But then why take some and leave others?”
“He takes them when they’re dogs, leaves them when they’re hats. But we’re not sure what that might mean.”
Jazz furrowed his brow and stared at the whiteboard until his eyes lost focus and all the gridded boxes blended on top of one another. Is this what it’s like inside his head? Is it all mixed up and mashed up? Chaotic? Is that why it makes no sense?
No. That’s what he wants me to think. Even if he’s not consciously aware of it. He wants me to think none of this makes sense because if it doesn’t make sense, then I stop trying to figure it out. And then he gets to keep on doing what he wants.
“He’s the alpha male,” Jazz murmured. “Top dog. Top dog? Top hat?”
“Yeah, someone mentioned that a while back,” Montgomery said. “Anyone remember who?” he called out to the precinct in general.
“Doesn’t matter,” Jazz said. “I’m just thinking out loud. Somehow, it makes sense to him. It’s the most obvious thing in the world to him.” He stared at the whiteboard a little while longer, then rubbed his eyes. “Tell me what you have planned for your next step.”
“We’ve got a dozen possibles,” Hughes said. “Guys who fit the profile—”
“More or less,” Morales inserted.
“Agent Morales thinks we’re being a little too liberal in our interpretation of the profile,” Montgomery explained. “We prefer to think of it as casting our net a little wider. Just to be sure.”
“Anyway,” Hughes went on, “there’s a dozen guys. We’re bringing them in one by one, starting tomorrow. Setting it up so that they’ll never see one another. Each guy will think he’s our only suspect.”
Jazz nodded. Good.
“We notified them tonight that we’d like to speak with them first thing tomorrow.”
“Then you’ll stick ’em in a room and watch ’em for an hour or so, right?” Jazz speculated. “The guilty guy won’t be able to sleep tonight, so there’s a chance he’ll nod off while waiting for you.”
“That’s the theory.”
“It might work.” Jazz shrugged. “But Hat-Dog is cold-blooded. There’s every chance he got your call and rolled over and slept like a drunk baby.”
“We’re just using everything in our arsenal.”
“Who’s conducting the actual interrogations?” Jazz asked.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Morales spoke up. “I am. Along with a male NYPD detective. This guy has issues with both sexes. We’re going to play off of that.”
“I want to be in the room, too.”
“Not a chance in hell,” Montgomery pronounced, in a tone that said he was used to having even jaded New Yorkers obey him. “Not risking it, for one thing. For another thing, you’re like a celebrity. These guys see you, recognize you, who knows what it’s gonna do to the interrogation?” Before Jazz could protest, he held up a hand. “You watch with the rest of us through the glass. If you have a problem with it, don’t even bother leaving the hotel tomorrow. That’s it.”
Jazz appealed to Morales, hoping for an override, but the special agent shook her head. “It’s the right call, Jasper. You know it.”
“Fine. Give me whatever you have on these suspects. I’ll look at it all tonight. For now, I need some sleep.” He hadn’t even realized how tired he was until the words were out of his mouth. But something like fifteen hours ago, he’d been sitting on the floor of his father’s old room in the Nod, talking to Connie on the phone. He’d done so much since then that he couldn’t sort through it yet.
“Yeah, sure. Let me take you to the hotel,” Hughes offered.
Hughes ended up staying with Jazz at the hotel. Hat-Dog knew that Jazz was involved in the investigation, after all, and the last thing the task force needed was for Billy Dent’s kid to be killed while assisting on the case. The detective sacked out on a rollaway cot while Jazz slipped into the bathroom for some privacy while calling Connie.
But Connie didn’t answer. Jazz wondered if maybe her dad had confiscated her phone again. He left her a quick voice mail, ending with, “Miss you. I love you.” As he hung up, he wondered about that. When had it become so easy to say “I love you”? At first, he had stuttered and struggled to say it in person. Now he could toss it out to voice mail. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? It could go either way, he realized. It could be that the words passed so effortlessly through his lips because he meant them deeply and truly.
Or it could be that he didn’t mean them at all. And that—like all the lies we tell ourselves—it was easy to repeat.
He crawled into bed. It was better this way, he knew, the two of them separated. With Connie back in the Nod, it was safe for Jazz to lust after her, to yearn for her, to be weak for her. No one could be hurt if they were apart. And that was good.
Hughes’s snores already filled the room. Even though it was still relatively early and he was slightly horny from the mere thought of Connie, Jazz drifted right off to sleep.
CHAPTER 29
Connie stared at her cell phone. A message. From Jazz. She couldn’t believe she had just let her boyfriend go to voice mail as she watched.
But she knew what would have happened if she’d answered. He would have known something was up, the way he always knew something was up. That bizarre, slightly creepy sixth sense he had. He could read your mind by reading between the lines. And she would have told him about the texts and then he would have warned her off—It’s too dangerous, Con! Call G. William!—and Connie wasn’t about to be waved off. Not this time.
I can do this. I can help. I saved Jazz from the Impressionist. I found the Ugly J clue in Brooklyn. I. Can. Do. This.
She would be careful. She would be more than careful; she would be super-careful. And she would let Howie in on it, so that someone knew what was going on, where she was headed…. That was the responsible way to handle it. Almost eighteen, almost a legal adult. Who could tell her not to handle this?
i kno something abt ur boyfriend
Simple as that. That made it Connie’s business to find out.
And maybe…
The little voice tickled at the back of her brain, right on the edge of her thoughts. She chased it away, but she knew what it wanted to say.