No. She couldn’t do that. This wasn’t the sort of news you delivered over the phone: Your father might not be your father after all…. Uh-uh. She had to do it in person. Look him in the eye. Hold his hands. Show him the birth certificate and be there for him….
Checking the Internet, she assumed he was busy with Hat-Dog in New York, even though there was no mention of him on any of the websites. The task force was definitely keeping his involvement a secret. And the local Lobo’s Nod news had nothing, of course. Not even a mention of Hat-Dog at all. This, she realized, was how guys like Billy got away with it. Most serial killers were local. They only made national news when they did something stupid, like forsaking their “jeopardy surfaces” for new territory. In Billy’s case, he just kept changing methods and signatures as he changed geographic areas. No one was watching the news in—for example—Tennessee and in Utah, so no one made the connections. Until it was too late.
Hat-Dog was killing people in New York. No one in Lobo’s Nod cared. Why should they?
They would care if they knew there was a connection to Billy. But there’s no hard proof of that yet.
Yet being the operative word.
Connie knew that Billy was involved somehow. The Ugly J graffito and acrostic on the Impressionist’s letter just couldn’t be a coincidence. She refused to believe that. That meant there was a connection—however tenuous—between Billy and the Hat-Dog killer. Connie was even willing to bet that it was Billy who had—somehow—invited Jazz to “the game,” whatever that meant. And she was sure he was the one who’d guided her to the old Dent house and its strange buried treasure. Who else could have done that? Who else would have done that? Who else would even know there was something there in the first place?
Her cell rang and she grabbed it. Howie was supposed to call her if he learned anything new from Sam, but when she answered, she realized immediately that it wasn’t Howie.
“You broke the rules, Connie,” said a voice she didn’t recognize, and not because it wasn’t familiar to her. She didn’t recognize it because it had been filtered and Auto-Tuned to the point that it sounded both musical and robotic at the same time.
“Who is this?” she asked, not expecting an answer, and not surprised when she didn’t get one.
“You broke the rules,” the voice said again, sounding vaguely disappointed in its flat way. “And the rules weren’t complicated. I said no police. You called the police. So simple. I thought you were smarter than that.”
Connie’s mind raced. She hadn’t called the police. But someone else had. The guy with the baseball bat. But how on earth could her caller know that? It had just happened, like, an hour ago. Maybe ninety minutes. How…
“I didn’t call the police,” she said. “It wasn’t me. It was a neighbor. It was—”
“Do you really expect me to believe you?” the voice asked. “Do you expect me to trust you? You would say anything, wouldn’t you?”
If the voice knew about the police… that meant the person had to be local, right? Someone who would be aware of happenings in Lobo’s Nod.
Or just someone who has a line to the Lobo’s Nod police band. Or…
She flipped up the lid of her laptop and searched BILLY DENT PROPERTY and the day’s date. Sure enough, a squib popped up on the Lobo’s Nod Web version of the police blotter that the cops had been called to Billy Dent’s old haunt. Attributed to Doug Weathers, of course. That weasel probably lived with a police scanner glued to one ear, just on the off chance Billy Dent’s old address popped up on a broadcast.
And now it was online. Anyone in the world could know.
She expected her caller ID to say UNKNOWN NUMBER, but it didn’t. She quickly jotted the number down on a piece of paper, as though it might vanish from her phone. “I’m sorry, Mr. Dent,” she said. “But it really wasn’t me. I can’t help it that your old neighbor got agitated when he saw me and called nine-one-one.”
The voice laughed. The sound was metallic and headache-inducing with all the audio processing. “You think I’m Billy Dent? Now, why would you think that?”
“Who else could you be?” She felt dizzy and sat down on her bed. Jazz’s warning about letting a man like Billy into her head spun over and over in her mind. She had to be careful. Billy held all the cards, including his own identity. He could get her confused very easily. She took a stab in the dark: “Or maybe you’re Ugly J.”
Another laugh, this one longer and more sustained. “I like you, Connie,” the voice said. “I’ve liked you since the first time I saw you. A few months ago. In The Crucible.”
Connie shivered and goose bumps broke out along her arms and neck. Oh, God. In The Crucible. Weeks after Billy had broken out of Wammaket… In the audience? In the friggin’ audience and no one noticed?
“I thought you were wonderful as Tituba, Connie. I stood in the back and watched you. And Jasper. Watched both of you. Fine actors. I think you may have a career in show business ahead of you, Connie. Assuming you live, of course.”
“Threaten me all you like—”
“Don’t show me a bravery you don’t really feel, Connie,” the voice warned. “It doesn’t impress me. I appreciate honesty more than bravado. And I’m not threatening you. I haven’t threatened you so far, have I?”
Connie waited and then realized the question wasn’t rhetorical—the voice was waiting for an answer.
“No. You haven’t.”
“Exactly. And I’m still not threatening you. Let me tell you who I am threatening, though.”
At that instant, Connie’s phone trilled with its text message alert. She automatically pulled the phone away from her ear, just in time to catch an incoming picture.
It was Jazz.
In New York.
She knew it was New York because he was wearing that Mets cap he’d bought at the airport as a partial disguise, and because she recognized the edge of Hughes’s sleeve at one side of the photo. It had been taken in New York. Recently.
Close enough to take that picture. Her throat stopped working. Close enough for that picture means close enough… oh, God. If he can get that close without being noticed or seen…
She put the phone back to her ear, tried to speak. Nothing came out.
“Your boyfriend will suffer for your insolence and your lying, if I so choose.”
“No,” Connie tried to say. A rasp. She tried again. “No. He’s not even here. He’s not even involved. It’s not fair to—”
“I think I’ve been very fair with you,” the voice went on. “Sent you clues to that which you seek. Complimented your acting—and I was being sincere, by the way.”
Had she been wrong? Was this not Billy Dent after all? Would Billy threaten Jazz like that? And if he did, just to frighten her… He would never actually carry through on such a threat….
Would he?
She didn’t think so.
But then again… maybe it wasn’t Billy Dent.
The cadence of the voice… the vocabulary… things that Auto-Tune couldn’t hide. She’d seen Jazz’s Billy impression. She’d heard Howie recount the man’s monologues. She’d even seen the few rare TV clips of him speaking. And this didn’t…
Oh, God.
“Did it bother you, playing a slave, Connie? Did it stir something inside? Resentment? Anger? Racial memories you’d thought long buried?”
The voice, processed into neutrality, didn’t sound sly or conniving, but the words did the trick. Connie struggled against it. She would not let herself be dragged into a psychological quicksand pit by a psychopath. She would do this on her terms.
“It was just a role,” she said carefully. “That’s all.”
“But surely a part of you wondered if you only got the role because you were the only black female actor at the school. Didn’t you wonder that? What if you’d not been interested? What would that pretty little drama teacher have done?”