“You’re here,” the man finally said, gasping it as though he’d inhaled tear gas. “You’re him.”
Jazz kept his expression carefully neutral. You show any weakness to a serial killer, he’d once told Connie, and they live inside you after that. He had managed to survive interviews with his father and the Impressionist and come away essentially intact. He wouldn’t let Hat-Dog break that streak.
“Of course I’m here,” he said calmly. “You called to me. You sent me a message. So I came.”
Belsamo’s awed manner cracked, becoming confusion. If it was false, then it was a truly magnificent performance. Jazz almost stood and applauded.
“You sent me a message,” he said again, still calm. “So I came. What did you want to tell me?”
Belsamo tilted his head, an archaeologist finding the wrong fossils.
“Was it about the men?” Jazz whispered, leaning in. “Did you want to tell me why you kept some of their penises, but not others?”
Still nothing.
Desperate, Jazz knew he had two powerful cards to play, his aces in the hole. His trumps. He could mention Billy. Or he could mention the thing that had made the Impressionist fling himself face-first into his cell door….
“Is this all about Ugly J?” Jazz asked. “Do you have a message”—for? to? from?—“about Ugly J?”
Belsamo blinked, then opened his mouth….
And a sound came out.
It wasn’t a word. It was just a noise, loud and sharp and short. Then Belsamo grinned and made the noise again.
“Caaaawwww!” he cried.
Stunned, Jazz sat back in his chair. He thought he had been prepared for anything Belsamo might say. What the hell?
Belsamo jumped up, twirling drunkenly as he warbled to the ceiling. Hughes was up instantly, moving faster than Jazz thought possible, interposing himself between Belsamo and Jazz.
“I think we’re done here,” Hughes muttered.
“Yeah, I think so.” They watched Belsamo for another moment as the man wheeled and spun and tumbled into a corner of the interrogation room, giggling to himself as he hit the wall.
Hughes held the door open, and just as Jazz went to walk through, Belsamo cried out, “Behold my power!”
Jazz turned, hearing Hughes swear vigorously at the sight of Belsamo, his pants and underpants dropped to his ankles, his turgid junk gripped in one hand and waving proudly. “Behold!” Belsamo shouted again, and cawed.
Hughes pushed Jazz through the door and slammed it shut behind them. “Great. Now someone’s gonna have to clean up in there when he’s done choking his chicken.”
“Hughes, that guy… is it just me, or was he totally clueless when I mentioned the message he sent to me?”
Hughes grimaced. “I don’t think I like where this is headed.”
“It’s just that… if he doesn’t know about the message, he couldn’t have—”
“Look, let’s just wait and see what the DNA says. No point burning brain cells over it until then.”
“But—”
The detective shushed him. “We have some time. Ever seen the Statue of Liberty, Jasper?”
CHAPTER 34
That afternoon was cold but sunny in Lobo’s Nod, even on the cursed ground that had once belonged to Billy Dent. Connie had tried calling Jazz—this was big stuff now, she’d decided, and that dream of him buried had rattled her—but the call had gone to voice mail. Just as well, maybe. He was doing something important and most likely dangerous in New York. He didn’t need a distraction.
The branch was still where she’d jammed it the night before when Connie and Howie arrived once again at the site of the former Dent house. Howie peered around in the bright of day. By daylight, the place was less foreboding. It was also less concealed, despite the trees and hedges. Anyone driving by would see them.
“You think someone’s gonna see us?” Howie asked. “Chase us off?”
Connie shrugged and dropped the tools on the ground. She looked around the perimeter of the former Dent property, at the trees and shrubs. “I don’t think so. But let ’em try. Hopefully we don’t need long.”
They started with a pickax, taking turns breaking through the hard crust of the earth. Howie had swiped the shovel from his own garage, but realized on his way to get Connie that at this time of year, they’d need to break up the frozen topsoil first. So he’d stopped off at a hardware store. (“You owe me twenty bucks, by the way,” he told Connie.)
Within the first five minutes, Howie was exhausted. Connie stripped off her heavy coat and kept swinging the pickax. She tried not to imagine what she would do if it turned out this was a setup or a hoax. She would be getting in a hell of a lot of trouble with her parents for nothing.
“You’re doing great,” Howie cheered from the sidelines. “Look at you go!”
Resisting the urge to bury the pickax in Howie’s head instead of in the ground, Connie flailed away until she’d broken up a patch roughly a foot and a half in every direction. The soil beneath was warmer and looser. She reached for the shovel. Howie helpfully handed it to her.
She dug out a foot or so down before favoring Howie with a deathly glare that got him off his butt and over to the hole. He dug for a while, maintaining a steady patter of complaints, until his phone chirped for his attention.
“It’s Sam,” he said, looking at it. “She needs me.” His voice almost vibrated with pleasure.
“Gramma probably needs her adult diaper changed,” Connie told him.
“But my fingers may gently brush against Sam’s as we change the diaper together,” Howie pointed out.
“Fine. Go. Just remember to come back for me.”
Once Howie left, Connie allowed herself a five-minute break before taking up the shovel and attacking the ground again. She was determined to dig until she found something. A gopher hole. A rabbit warren. A treasure chest full of Spanish doubloons. A pocket of oil that would make her richer than Midas and solve the energy crisis. Something. Even if it took all day and all night.
But it didn’t take that long. It took only another ten minutes.
Bodies, Connie knew, were buried six feet deep, for reasons she couldn’t recall. Something superstitious and ancient and partly forgotten, like so many modern rituals. Something about being certain that the dead person couldn’t get out of the grave…
She didn’t have to dig six feet, thank God, only three.
Only? Ha! Her arms and shoulders ached as her shovel hit something with a CHANNNNG sound. She thought—briefly—of her dream, of finding Jazz buried here, then plunged ahead, spooning out loose dirt and digging around the edges of the thing to find its dimensions. With a few more minutes’ hard digging, she’d managed to clear away its top.
It was a lockbox of some sort, measuring maybe twelve inches by five inches. Connie pried around the edges of it, then lay flat on her belly to reach down and pull it up. It was only a couple of inches deep, and lighter than it appeared; she had no problem hauling it out.
Once it was on the ground next to her, she stared at it for long moments. Gray and dull, with a hinged top and a stout combination lock hanging from a steel loop. She picked it up and tilted it gently from one side to the other. Something inside shifted. Something light, but relatively solid. It didn’t feel fragile. She put the box back down on the ground and stared at it.
Jazz had told her once how to foil a combination lock. She didn’t remember all of the details—something about sensitive fingertips and listening to the tumblers—so she just raised the pickax with the last of her strength, aimed carefully at the lock, and brought it crashing down.
And missed, gouging another new trough into what was left of Billy Dent’s backyard.