“What do you know about chaos theory?” Jazz asked, and Hughes sighed. “Never mind. Not important.”
“I actually know all about chaos theory,” the detective said. “Sensitive dependence on initial conditions, right? I’m just aggravated that we missed this somehow.”
“Well, I’m not sure what it means. It’s just him trying to throw us off. I’m not sure it gets us any closer to him, but it shows how he thinks. A little.”
Hughes made a note in a little notebook he carried in his breast pocket. “I’ll get some guys to come talk to the workers tomorrow. See if anyone noticed anything when they started working. Also interview some of the building people, nose around, see if we can figure out how he did get in, if not through the window.”
“What’s next?”
Hughes checked his watch. “It’s late. The only place you haven’t seen yet is the one way down in Coney Island.”
“Is that far?”
“Far enough. Let me get you back to the hotel. Get some rest. We’ll hit the Tilt-A-Whirl tomorrow, okay?”
Jazz checked the time. “Yeah. I better call my aunt. I totally forgot to do that today.”
When Hughes dropped him off at the hotel, Jazz found a quiet corner of the lobby to call home. Aunt Samantha picked up. They talked briefly about Gramma, who seemed to be doing well, having apparently forgotten that her daughter hadn’t been home in decades. “We sort of picked up right where we left off,” Samantha said.
“I guess that’s good. And Howie’s helping?”
“Um, yeah. He’s… friendly.”
That sounded like Howie. “Good. Look, just one more thing, Aunt Samantha. I don’t think this’ll be an issue, but just in case—don’t talk to any reporters, okay?”
“Oh,” she said, as if the idea hadn’t even occurred to her. “Right. Okay. I won’t.” A moment passed, and then she said, “Not even the ones you’re friends with?”
Friends?
Before she could answer his next question—before he even asked it—Jazz knew what was about to happen. “What friends?” He had made it an unbreakable policy not to befriend anyone in the media.
“The guy…” she said, uncertain. “The guy from the local paper. Weathers.”
Of course. Doug Weathers. Jazz nearly went blind as his vision turned red. “Doug Weathers,” he said. “You talked to Doug Weathers.”
“He came by this afternoon. He didn’t seem like the national people. Just wanted to check in, he said. He said he hadn’t talked to you in a while and was wondering—oh, Jesus. Jasper, what did I do?”
You gave information to the enemy, you idiot! Jazz wanted to scream. He took a deep breath, then another. She didn’t know. Aunt Samantha had been hit with the media sledgehammer four years ago, but that had been it. She hadn’t lived under the constant threat of press intrusion like Jazz had.
“What did you tell him?”
“I am so sorry,” Samantha said. “God, I was an idiot, wasn’t I? He seemed so nice. And I thought, I thought, well, He’s just a local paper. And he said he knew you, that you were friends.”
“He was telling half the truth. Which, to be fair, is about fifty percent more than usual. What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. Well, not nothing. But nothing important. He asked if you were around and I told him you were out of town.”
“Is that it? Did you tell him where I went?”
She sighed, resigned and defeated. “I said you were in New York. But,” she said hurriedly, “I didn’t tell him you were there for the police.”
It didn’t matter. Weathers was a sleaze, a bottom-feeder, and a poor speller, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew that if you added Jasper Dent and New York, you could only come up with one solution: the Hat-Dog Killer.
“Okay, thanks, Aunt Samantha,” Jazz said as calmly as he could. Connie walked through the lobby just then, carrying two bottles of soda and a bag of chips. She arched an eyebrow at him as she headed to the elevator.
“I’m so sorry,” Samantha said again.
“Don’t worry about it. Tuck Gramma in, and I’ll talk to you again tomorrow.”
In the room, Connie was at the desk, a neatly ordered stack of paperwork before her. “I can’t believe I came all this way to play secretary,” she began, but when she saw the look on his face, her snark fell away and she went to him, wrapping him in her arms. “What happened?”
“I think it’s all gonna hit the fan,” he told her.
Later, they lay in bed together, curled into each other. They had snuggled in the backseat of the Jeep before and had napped together at the Hideout or—on occasion, when her parents and Whiz were away—at Connie’s house. But this was—would be—their first time spending an entire night together. Jazz suddenly wished he’d thought to bring condoms.
He was also glad he hadn’t. There was no way Connie would let them have sex without protection, so he was safe.
You could talk those pretty legs open if you wanted to, Billy told him, licking his chops. She wants it so bad, she’s drooling for it. And you know it. You know it in your gut and in your balls. It’ll feel so good, and the best part of it is that you’ll be making her do it, making her want it. That’s the best part, Jasper. When they can’t help themselves.
“What are you thinking?” Connie asked.
“You don’t want to know.”
“You’re thinking about the murders.”
“Yeah,” he lied. It was easier, the lying. It spared her so much.
She sat up in bed. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No. I don’t want to bother you.”
“It’s okay. I’m here to help.”
He ransacked his mind for something he could discuss. It wasn’t difficult. The case files were jam-packed with contradictory and nonsensical bits of information, so he latched on to one of them.
“It’s the disemboweling,” he told her.
“Because he didn’t do that right away,” Connie said, and Jazz smiled in the dark, proud of her.
“Right. He didn’t start disemboweling until his sixth victim.”
“So why start then? Is that what’s bothering you? He didn’t start the paralysis until later, either.”
“Yeah, but that’s a practical thing. He doesn’t feel an urge to paralyze them—I really believe he just does it to make things easier.”
“And by ‘things,’ you mean gutting them.”
“Yeah.”
“But wouldn’t paralyzing them make them not feel pain? I thought these kinds of guys got off on causing pain.”
“He’s paralyzing them from the waist down. Then cutting open their bellies. Trust me—they felt plenty of pain.”
Connie shivered next to him. “Does this mean he’s getting worse?”
“Escalation like this isn’t unheard of. A lot of these guys take time to refine their fantasies. He’s been thinking about all of this stuff for a long time. Maybe he thought that raping and killing and cutting off the penises would be enough. But by the time he hit number six, it wasn’t doing it for him any more. He needed something else.”
“So he adds in disemboweling.”
“Right. But here’s the thing: When he gutted number six, he was sure, confident. The cuts were precise. Almost surgical. When he killed number seven, there were hesitation cuts.”
“Like he was unsure of himself. Or maybe unsure of what he was doing?”
Jazz squeezed her hand. “Right. And that’s just weird. These guys usually get better, not worse. So why did he hesitate to gut number seven?”
Connie thought for a while. Jazz allowed himself to enjoy the quiet and the radiating warmth of her. “Maybe,” she said, “something distracted or startled him. No one is consistent all the time. Not even your dad.”
Variety’s the spice of life, Billy admitted.
But Jazz wasn’t buying it. “It’s not just the gutting,” he told her. “It’s other things, too. Like the rapes.”