“We have jack. You broke—”
“I’m not a cop,” Jazz pointed out. “You can use everything I found in there. There’s no prosecutorial conflict. No violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. Go ahead and arrest me for breaking and entering and whatever else I did when I went in there. I poked at his mail and took a burner phone. Probably not even fifty bucks’ worth. I’ll plead guilty. It’s my first offense—I bet I walk or get probation. In the meantime, you can use the evidence against Belsamo.”
“Are you some kind of special idiot they grow down South?” Hughes erupted. “Do they fry you up with grits and whatever the hell else they deep-fry down there? No judge worth his robe is gonna let Billy Dent’s kid walk on a first offense, no matter what that offense is. No prosecutor who likes his job—and believe me, Jasper, they love their jobs—would let you plead out to anything but the top count on the indictment. You will go to jail. That’s a guarantee.”
Jazz began to protest, but Hughes cut him off with a threatening gesture. “Beyond that,” the detective went on, “is the fact that you’ve been working with the NYPD and the task force in an official capacity. Approved by Montgomery and everything. Any defense attorney in the world, even the most overworked public defender in the friggin’ Bronx, could convince the deafest, dumbest judge in the city that you needed a search warrant to go into that apartment. None of this evidence is admissible. It’s useless. It’s worse than useless because it’s also going to get you arrested and thrown in jail, where you won’t be able to help us nail this guy and where you’ll get raped and shived to death five minutes after you hit gen-pop.”
“They wouldn’t put me in with the general population,” Jazz said with some confidence.
Hughes glared at him wearily. “Then you get stuck in solitary like your old man. That sound good to you?”
Jazz forced a grin. “Well, he broke out….”
Hughes slammed the steering wheel with his fist. “Don’t joke about that! People died when your dad got out!”
“I know that!” Jazz screamed back at him, and even though he had sworn to himself that he would never break in front of anyone, that he would never show weakness, he couldn’t help himself. It was as though he’d been lugging a net full of boulders for weeks in stoic silence and could bear it—and them—no longer. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t know everything that weighs on my conscience? Those guards are dead because of me! And Helen Myerson and Ginny Davis and Irene Heller are dead because I didn’t figure out who the Impressionist was quickly enough. And all the people Billy killed from the time I was around ten—when I could have reported him or killed him myself—those forty-seven people are dead because of me. And Melissa Hoover,” he remembered. “You can add her to my tally, too, Hughes! And let’s put my mom on the list, too, because I should have been able to save her. So you add that up. Go ahead. It’s more than fifty people on my list. I’m like Speck and Bundy and Dahmer combined. I’m one of the greatest murderers in U.S. history!” He kicked at the dashboard in frustration, in rage, leaving a broad scuff.
You’re a killer. You just ain’t killed no one yet.
Billy was right. He was right all along. Billy was always right.
I am Ugly J.
“You gonna cry now?” Hughes asked, somewhat softly.
Was Hughes poking at him again? Trying to prod a reaction out of him? Or was he actually concerned?
Didn’t matter. Jazz struggled to regain control of his emotions, grappling with them like a greased wrestler until he’d subdued them. Like always.
“That wasn’t for show,” he said evenly, “but I could. Do you want me to?”
Hughes sighed and stared out through the windshield. “No. I guess not.” He started the engine. “Damn it, Jasper. Look at this spot you’ve put me in.”
“You risked things to bring me here. This is—”
“This is different.” Hughes pulled away from the curb and they headed north. “That was a calculated risk on my part. Low risk, high reward. No laws broken. And it was my decision. You understand that, Jasper? It was my decision. I made it. You forced this one on me.”
“I’m sorry.” It was an automatic reaction. Programmed. When people were upset with you, you apologized. It usually worked.
“I know you are.” Hughes shrugged. “I guess you are. In any event, this is between us for now. You don’t tell your girlfriend or your grandmother, even. You sure as hell don’t tell anyone on the task force. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“I’ll take you to the hotel. You’re not coming in tomorrow. I’ll sling a line of bull at Montgomery and Morales. In the meantime, I’ll figure out a way to get some unis to sit on Belsamo without raising suspicions.”
“So you believe me?”
“What choice do I have? Unfortunately, now I have to do this the hard way. E-mail that picture to me. Now. I’ll see what I can find out about the storage place.”
Jazz remained silent as Hughes turned east and then south, piloting them back to the hotel. “Thanks,” he said when the detective pulled up to the hotel.
“Don’t thank me for this,” Hughes said, and drove away.
CHAPTER 41
Early the next morning, Connie packed a duffel bag and went to her parents; she didn’t even give them time to speak before saying, “This is how it’s going to be….” She had spent the night trying to think of ways to trick or cajole them into letting her return to New York, but in the end decided that a blitz attack was best, so she just walked into the family room and announced that she was headed back to New York.
“Oh?” Her father’s voice and expression both teetered on a precipice between amusement and anger. “You’re going to tell us how it’s going to be?” He sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. If he could have snorted a burst of fire, he would have. “This should be interesting.”
“It’s not really interesting at all,” she said. “It just is. I’m seventeen—”
“You live under my roof,” Dad interrupted. “And you—”
“Let her finish,” Mom said quietly.
“Are you on her side?” Dad turned to Mom. “What’s going on here?”
“There’s no ‘her side’ here, honey. We’re a family. There’s one side—our side—and we share it.”
“I’m seventeen,” Connie pressed, “and in a few months, I’ll be an adult. Like, officially. But I’ve always been responsible. I’ve always been good. My grades have always been excellent, and I’ve never been in trouble.”
“Until—”
“Until recently, I know,” Connie said, jumping in before her dad could go off on a rant. “And that should tell you something. If I went all this time without doing something wrong, doesn’t it tell you that I must have had a good reason?”
“You’re our child, Conscience.” He was mellower than she’d expected. Maybe he thought she could be reasoned out of this, rather than bludgeoned with parental wrath. Under normal circumstances, he might have been right. But Connie was convinced that this was a matter of life or death, if not for Jazz, then certainly for more innocents in New York. “Until you’re eighteen, it’s our job to take care of you. And we take that pretty seriously. When it comes to this boy”—she hated how he avoided saying Jazz’s name—“you don’t always think clearly.”
Mom picked at the edge of her sleeve. “Honey, this isn’t about whether or not you get to spend time with your boyfriend—”
“I know.”
“—it’s about the fact there are dangerous people—”
“There is a serial killer loose in New York,” her father interrupted. “And your boyfriend is directly tied into, caught up in it all. How on earth can you think of getting yourself wrapped up in that? And what in the world makes you think we would be okay with you doing that?”