“It could be a con job,” Montgomery reminded him. “These guys are good at wearing masks.”
Yeah, Jazz knew that. He was pretty good at wearing masks himself, and he prided himself on being able to see through them.
Then again, there was Jeff Fulton/Frederick Thurber/the Impressionist. That had been a mask made out of lead. Not even Jazz’s X-ray vision had been able to see through it.
Just then, Hughes made a show of standing up and stretching, as though trying to work out a kink in his neck. That was the sign that they were done with this guy.
“Not the guy,” someone in the observation room said. One of the FBI guys.
Told you, Jazz didn’t say.
He didn’t need to. Montgomery looked over at him and lifted an eyebrow that seemed to say, Well, yeah, okay.
“What were the odds it would be the first one?” Montgomery said.
What are the odds it’ll be any of them? Jazz wondered. How many people live in Brooklyn? In the whole of New York City? The profile was good; the task force had done a tremendous job. But they were still looking for a chameleon in heavy weeds.
“Next victim,” someone deadpanned.
“Anyone need coffee?”
Jazz sighed.
The sun shone brightly overhead when Connie started digging in what had once been the backyard of Billy Dent’s house. She quickly became overheated and should have taken a break, but instead she just peeled off layers and kept digging, sweat streaming down her face even though it was freezing outside.
A persistent beeping noise began, repeating over and over—three quick beeps, followed by a pause, then three again. She ignored it and kept digging.
CHAKK
Her shovel hit something, and as she peered down into the hole she’d dug, she was horrified to see a flap of hair and flesh pared away from gleaming white bone by the tooth of her shovel.
Beep-beep-beep.
“Don’t go chasing…”
Someone was buried here. She had found a body.
Don’t.
Go.
Cha-
-sing…
Swallowing, she kept digging, trying not to strike the body again. The police would want it intact, wouldn’t they?
Beep-beep-beep.
She cleared more dirt away from the head and bit back a scream of absolute terror.
Beep-beep-beep.
It was Jazz.
She’d found Jazz buried in his own backyard. She would know that face anywhere. Recognize that nose, those lips…
But how? How could Jazz be buried here? And oh, God, if he was down here, then who—what?—had she been dating and kissing and almost sleeping with all these months?
Connie took a step back, dropping the shovel, and a hand came around her from behind and she tried to scream and then she opened her eyes and almost without thinking reached out to slap her alarm clock, silencing it halfway through a sequence of Beep-beep-beep.
Oh, God, she thought, and touched her chest, feeling her heart race exactly as it had just now in the dream. Oh, thank God.
“Look who’s joining us for breakfast on a Saturday,” Mom said, pleased, when Connie appeared in the kitchen. The rest of the family was already there at the table, Dad wearing a tie, which meant he had to go into the office even though it was a weekend. Ugh. The only work Connie ever wanted to do on a weekend was a Sunday matinee performance on Broadway.
“You’re quiet this morning,” said Dad as she poured milk over her cereal.
“She’s tired from sneaking around the house all night,” Whiz said helpfully. Connie shot him a dirty look.
“What’s this?” Dad asked, clearing his throat and suddenly taking tremendous interest in his daughter. “Sneaking?”
“Something woke me up,” she lied. “I thought I heard something, so I went to check on Whiz.” She glared at him. “I should have let the boogeyman take him.”
“I’ll show you boogies!” Whiz cried, and went for his nose with one finger.
“Wisdom!” Mom said sharply. “If you stick that finger in your nose, you will lose it, do you hear me?”
Whiz shrugged and dove back into his scrambled eggs. He insisted on eating them topped with a nauseating concoction of ketchup, mustard, and soy sauce.
“What did you think you heard?” Dad wouldn’t let it go.
Connie made a show of being exasperated, even though the direction of the conversation petrified her. Did Dad know she’d sneaked out the previous night? “I don’t know. Something. It was probably a dream. Or the house settling. Or the wind.”
Dad hmphed and checked his watch. That would be one parent out of the way. Mom worked at the Tynan Ridge branch of the state university, and they never called her in on weekends. Connie had to get her and Whiz out of the house so that she could escape. Howie had tormented her earlier this morning with a text that said Ready?, accompanied by a picture of himself standing in overalls, propping up a long-handled shovel like the farmer in Grant Wood’s American Gothic.
After Dad was gone, Connie slipped into Whiz’s bedroom, where he busily slaughtered something vaguely dragonish on his Xbox.
“I need a favor,” she said.
Whiz ignored her. He was good at that when he wanted to be.
She tried again. “I need your help. I need you to get Mom to take you to the mall.” The nearest mall was a half-hour drive away. Connie would prefer that Mom be gone all day, giving her a chance to get out, dig, and come back before being missed. But if Mom just dropped Whiz off and came home, it would still give her plenty of time to get out of the house, cover her tracks, and contemplate the punishment her father would eventually visit upon her.
“I don’t want to go to the mall,” Whiz said, aiming and swiping his on-screen sword with scary precision. Connie idly wondered if Billy Dent had ever owned an Xbox.
“Sure you do. There’s that new movie—”
“Already saw it.”
“And you want to see it again.”
Whiz hit Pause and assessed his sister craftily. “What do you want?”
“I just told you—I want you and Mom out of the house.”
“So that Jazz can come over and you guys can do the nasty?”
Jeez, even my kid brother thinks we’re ready, Jazz! “No. Jazz isn’t even in town. I just need to do some stuff. And I can’t have you guys around.”
“What’s in it for me?” Whiz said, his tone clearly conveying that he knew she had nothing to offer him for such a favor.
Connie drew in a deep breath and played her best card.
“I’ll show you the code to unlock the parental controls on the satellite box,” she said.
Whiz’s eyes grew wide with something akin to worship.
CHAPTER 32
There were two interrogation rooms, one on either side of the observation room. While one suspect was being questioned, the next one would wait in the other room. The observers could look in on either one, and as the day crawled along, Jazz started to feel dizzy as he rotated between the two.
As the morning dragged into a cigarette-stale afternoon, Hughes and Morales ran their good cop/bad cop on four more suspects, all of whom fit the profile in various ways. It was a parade of white guys in their mid-thirties, all of them leading lives of depressingly similar dissatisfaction, all of them as empty as overpumped wells.