Hughes shrugged. “Could be. Some guy just wandering into the precinct like that? It’s possible. Some of these guys—a lot of these guys—they want to get caught.”
Most of these guys, they want to get caught, Dear Old Dad had said so many times that Jazz had lost count. You understand what I’m saying? I’m saying most of the time, they get caught ’cause they want it, not ’cause anyone figures ’em out, not ’cause anyone outthinks ’em.
“Yeah. Some of them.”
Almost without realizing it, he rubbed briefly at his collarbone, where the reversed I HUNT KILLERS tattoo emblazoned his flesh.
Yeah, I hunt killers. Right. Seems more like they hunt me lately. Between the Impressionist literally knocking on my front door and Hat-Dog calling me out, I’m not doing much actual hunting.
“He just doesn’t seem right for this,” Jazz said, switching the topic to a more comfortable area. “Hat-Dog is highly organized. Belsamo… isn’t.”
“We don’t know that,” Hughes argued. “We don’t know how much of what we saw in there was an act.”
“Really? Pulling your pud in a police station is a far way to go for an act.”
“You’re the one who’s always saying that the stuff we think is crazy makes perfect sense to these guys. Maybe he’s spent the past year wanting nothing more than a chance to show his junk to Billy Dent’s kid.”
For some reason, this made Jazz think of a world in which the solution to serial murder was for him to see the exposed genitals of serial killers, leading to a brief mental image of a traditional cop lineup, sociopaths all in a row, pants on the floor, and Jazz walking down the line like the Pope blessing worshippers.
“That’s insane.”
“Exactly.”
“Insanity alone can’t account for everything. For someone as organized as Hat-Dog, there’s an underlying sense to it.”
“What about this Ugly J thing? You think that’s some connection between your dad and this guy and that Impressionist guy?”
Jazz shrugged. “Billy was in jail when Hat-Dog started up. But he was in jail when the Impressionist was prospecting, too. Someone kick-started the Impressionist. Maybe Hat-Dog. Or maybe the other way around.”
“Prospecting. You said that before. Is that… is that what he called it? Prospecting?”
And now Jazz felt like he was the one who’d exposed himself in public. He wanted to curl up in a corner of the car and melt away. He’d forgotten that not everyone had memorized every detail of Billy’s career. Was the word prospecting even something in the public record? He didn’t know.
“Never mind,” he said.
Hughes said nothing, and they sat in silence, gazing out at the Statue of Liberty until Hughes’s cell chirped for attention.
“It’s Morales.”
“Too soon for the court order,” Jazz said. “Even for the feds.”
“Text just says ‘bad news.’ ” He started the car. “Let’s find out what.”
Jazz and Hughes arrived at the precinct just in time to watch them let Belsamo go. He shuffled out the door reluctantly, like a vagrant turned away from a shelter.
“What the hell?” Hughes demanded. “He confessed! You can’t have even taken his DNA yet, and the bastard said he killed—”
“That’s enough!” Montgomery barked, and dragged them into his office. “Settle down, Louis. You can’t go off like that out there, whipping everyone into a frenzy.”
“What happened?” Hughes asked, and Jazz answered almost by reflex, realizing in a flash of insight what must have happened.
“They found a new body,” he said. “Didn’t they?”
Hughes gaped at him and before Montgomery could respond, Morales breezed into the office.
“New body,” she said tightly. “Three damn blocks from here. The bastard is laughing at us. Corner of Henry and Baltic. Right outside P.S. Twenty-nine. Assistant principal leaving school found the body fifteen minutes ago.”
“But Belsamo could have—”
“Let me guess,” Jazz said, interrupting Hughes. “The body wasn’t there this morning.”
Morales nodded emphatically. “The body had to have been dumped during the day. In broad daylight. The timing doesn’t work—Belsamo was here most of the morning, waiting to be interrogated, seen by a million cops and feds.”
“The whole damn task force is his alibi,” Montgomery said bitterly.
“Just another nutjob.” Hughes sounded defeated.
“Unis and evidence collection are on the scene. Want to check it out?” Morales asked.
“Let’s go,” Jazz said.
Morales drove Jazz to the crime scene; Hughes stayed behind to coordinate the task force gathering the day’s alibis from their potential suspects.
“We also ran his name as a matter of course,” Morales said, still speaking of Belsamo, clearly pissed off. “He was questioned the night of the S-line murder in connection with a drunk-and-disorderly. Unis confirm he was with them for an hour in Boerum Hill. No way he had time to schlep out to Midtown, find our girl, do his thing, and then leave her on the S.”
“So… it’s definitely not him.”
Morales nodded a tight little nod. “Never even got anyone in there to take a blood sample. All happened too fast. Damn!” She slammed a palm against the steering wheel. “Thought we had this one.” She grabbed her phone and stabbed out a number as they paused at a light, then barked at whoever answered to cancel the court order. “No point wrecking a judge’s weekend for nothing. We might need a happy one later on.”
Jazz could feel the smoldering anger boiling off her like steam. She probably thought it made her tough, but it actually made her vulnerable. Angry people weren’t thinking straight. It would be easy to—
Stop doing that!
Never killed a cop before. Not even a lady cop, Billy mused. And this one’s real special, ain’t she? Tried to catch ol’ Hand-in-Glove, didn’t she? Would be great to get to know her from the inside out, get my drift?
Go to hell, Billy.
Hell’s all around, Jasper m’boy?
As Morales had said, the crime scene was mere blocks from the precinct. A crowd had gathered, along with the usual media vultures. Morales handed Jazz a pair of sunglasses and an FBI baseball cap. Crude disguise, but maybe it would work.
NYPD uniforms had set up a perimeter around the scene and now did their level best to keep gawkers and press from getting too close. Jazz looked around quickly as he stepped out of the car. This was brazen, leaving the body here. P.S. 29 was on the corner of Baltic and Henry. Not a busy intersection, from what Jazz could tell, but even a lightly traveled New York intersection got more traffic than the busiest in Lobo’s Nod. Right across the street was a Chinese restaurant—two guys in food-spattered aprons stood in the doorway, gaping at the craziness across the street.
The rest of the buildings within sight looked residential. Smallish, squat apartment buildings and some town houses.
“He’s definitely getting cocky,” Jazz murmured to Morales as they ducked under the crime-scene tape. “Dumping right out in the open like this?”
“Yeah.” Morales had taken in the surroundings, too. “Safe bet—well, safe-ish—that no one’s lingering around a school on the weekend, but even so, he had to figure someone would pop up unexpected.”
“Where’s the witness?”
Morales pointed. An NYPD uniform stood near the front door to the school, holding out a cup of what could have been coffee or water or even whiskey to a woman in a winter coat who seemed to be on the verge of hyperventilating. “Dr. Meredith Sinclair. Assistant principal at P.S. Twenty-nine. She’s not going to be any use to us for a few minutes. Let the unis calm her down and then we’ll take a run at her.”