“You’ll never know!” he called after her, following her back to the car now. “I was just about to try that!”
“Sure.” But she wasn’t paying attention anymore. She was thinking of coming back with a shovel, when it was light out. When the ground would be a little warmer and less solid in the light of the sun. Thinking of digging.
Wondering what she might find.
Howie pulled a reversal of his clandestine extraction, drifting headlightless and engineless down the gentle slope toward her house.
“You’ll call me tomorrow, right?” he asked, and yawned.
“I’m about to jump out of a moving car and you’re yawning.”
“We’re going, like, a mile an hour.” He checked the speedometer, squinting. “Maybe a mile and a half.”
“I’ll call,” she said, and hopped out, jogging alongside the car until she had the door closed.
She felt very conspicuous, standing literally in the middle of the street. Howie had dropped her off (“inserted,” he insisted on saying, demanding they use spy lingo) three houses up from her own, just in case someone was awake and looking out the window in the Hall home. She moved to the side of the road and approached her house carefully. With the exception of the light near the front door, it was dark. And quiet.
She had a feeling, again, that someone was watching her. Not her dad or her mom. Not even Whiz. No, she had a sudden, foolish feeling that Billy was out there. Which was ridiculous, because the odds seemed to be that Billy was in New York. And even if he wasn’t, he wasn’t stupid enough to hang around Lobo’s Nod, the one place on the planet where almost every person would recognize him on sight.
But maybe he has magical powers and he can be in two places at once or can see across vast distances….
She shook herself and came just short of slapping her own cheek. She was exhausted. Thinking stupid things. Childish things.
As Howie had promised, her lubricated window opened easily and silently. With a small, nearly inaudible “Oof,” she hauled herself over the sill and into the quiet familiarity of her own bedroom. With the window closed, the room went warm and still. She enjoyed it for a moment.
If this had been a horror movie, she knew, there would be something here. Like, a clue. A note from the person who’d texted her, maybe.
Or a severed head. Or maybe a finger from the Impressionist. Or maybe…
She was suddenly completely convinced that her family was dead.
Isn’t that what would happen? she thought. Lure me out of the house and then—
She didn’t let herself think further. Paranoia pumped through her like blood and she struggled against it, stripping off her clothes and slipping into boy shorts and a T-shirt for bed.
No one is dead. No one is dead. Stuff like that only happens in movies and in books.
And in real life.
Even as she told herself that she wouldn’t do it, she sneaked out of her room. Just going to the bathroom, is all. That’s all. And the bathroom is next to Whiz’s room….
She put an ear to Whiz’s door. Heard nothing.
Cranked the door open a bit, wincing at the slight creak. Why was the creak absent during the day, present only when she needed to be absolutely quiet?
In the glow of a street lamp coming through the window, she saw a lump under the covers.
Doesn’t mean anything. Could still be dead. Might not even be him.
Stop it, Connie. Stop being so ridiculous.
It’s not ridiculous. Billy Dent has done worse, hasn’t he?
She didn’t want to, but she suddenly remembered something Billy had done as Satan’s Eye. Jazz wouldn’t talk about the things Billy had done—not to her, at least—but she’d done some research. She couldn’t help it. And she remembered how in one night, Billy had kidnapped two women, murdered them, and then put them into each other’s beds, where they were discovered the next day by a husband and a boyfriend.
I’m doing this.
She crept into Whiz’s room. The form in bed seemed not to move, but as she came closer, she was relieved to find that it was, in fact, moving—the rhythmic, soft up and down of sleep-breathing.
The street lamp picked out her younger brother’s face, so much less obnoxious and peaceful in repose. Connie sighed.
Whiz’s eyes snapped open so suddenly that Connie almost screamed. She gasped and took a step back in shock.
“What are you doing?” he whispered accusingly, as if he’d caught her emptying his piggy bank.
“I… thought I heard something.”
“You’re a freak,” Whiz shot back, then rolled over to face away from her. “Get out of here.”
I love my brother, and I’m glad he’s not dead, Connie told herself as she went back to her room. I love my brother, and I’m glad he’s not dead.
She intended to repeat it over and over in her head until she believed it, but she fell asleep first.
CHAPTER 31
Lips on his
(oh, yes)
down farther
Touch me
says the voice
again
His fingers
Oh
so warm
Oh
Jazz woke early. Not because he wanted to and not because he felt compelled to, but rather because Hughes shook him roughly by the shoulder and said, “Wake up,” in a commanding voice devoid of sympathy. The detective was already dressed.
Tangled in the sheets, clutching a pillow, Jazz blearily looked around the room. “What time is it?”
“Five of seven. First suspect is scheduled for interrogation at eight. And you still have his file to look at.”
Groaning, Jazz rolled over and pulled a pillow over his head. Hughes snatched away the pillow and tossed it over his shoulder.
Fifteen minutes later, Jazz was on his way to the precinct, flipping through the files on the dozen men suspected of being Hat-Dog. They all lived in Brooklyn, well within a specific computer-plotted jeopardy surface that contained most of the crime scenes thus far. The two extreme outliers were Coney Island and the S line in Midtown. “Why Coney Island?” Jazz asked. “Why Midtown? Why go outside his comfort zone?”
“Midtown, we’re thinking it’s a crime of opportunity. The girl lived nearby. We think maybe he works in Midtown, stays late at the office or something, sees the girl…”
“Hmm.” Jazz didn’t like that theory. Hat-Dog had been at this too long to go off half-cocked like that. He was too organized, too mature. But sometimes the impulses could scream and hoot and holler like monkeys in a cage, and the only way to shut them up…
I had to go and get me one, said Dear Old Dad.
That’s what Billy had said the night he’d returned from killing Cara Swinton. He had drummed into Jazz from an early age that “we don’t crap where we eat,” meaning “no prospecting in Lobo’s Nod.” And then one night, soon after Jazz’s thirteenth birthday, Billy went out and did exactly that, crapping right there where he ate, killing poor Cara.
The only explanation he ever offered: “I had to go and get me one.”
The compulsion. The urge. The need.
“… Coney Island,” Hughes was saying. “We’re thinking he might have been on vacation….”
“Any of these guys married?” Jazz asked, refocusing on the present and the suspects. “Kids?”
“Six married. Four divorced. Couple girlfriends. That’s the profile, right? Highly organized, probably married or in a relationship. Four of ’em have kids.”
“Start with those guys.”
“We plan to.”
“Do these guys know they’re suspects?”