Game (Jasper Dent #2)(109)

“Except for the last phone call. Well, and that I came to you.”

Morales clucked her tongue. “I have to think for a second. And I have to go get dressed because I can’t believe I’m sitting around talking about this in a bathrobe.”

She grabbed some clothes from a suitcase, then disappeared into the bathroom. Jazz took advantage of the few moments he had to take a quick inventory of the room.

Standard hotel room. Nothing special. The Bureau clearly wasn’t about to rent out a suite for one of its special agents. The room had the feel—no surprise—of someone who used it only to sleep and for the occasional shower. Morales had two double beds, her suitcase open on one of them. He glanced into it—dirty laundry, from the looks of it, probably ready to be sent out. Would it be terribly stereotypical—as a guy and as a potential future serial killer—to steal a pair of used panties? His amusement at the thought surprised him. Maybe if he could mock his own proclivities, he would end up all right. Billy Dent didn’t seem to truck in irony, after all.

Her service revolver—a standard-issue Glock 22—hung in a shoulder holster over the desk chair. Jazz stared at it. He’d figured her for the Glock 23 instead. It was basically the same weapon with the same load—a .40-caliber—but it was about an inch shorter. Easier for women and smaller men to handle. Made more sense for her to carry one of those, and not this friggin’ hand cannon in a shoulder rig that would ruin the line of those blazers Billy had taken note of. She was either exceptionally confident or exceptionally proficient. Or both.

She left that gun here with you. She deserves what comes next, Jasper.

Stop it.

Take that gun and hold it on her when she comes out of the bathroom. And then—I promise you—the fun starts.

Jazz turned away from the gun, away from the suitcase with its pervert bait. On the nightstand, he noticed a small frame with a black-and-white photo. Male. Caucasian. Maybe mid-thirties, lazy grin.

“My ex-husband,” Morales said from behind him. Jazz turned. She was in her FBI armor now—slacks, formless shirt. Hair tied back.

“I’m sorry,” Jazz said, mainly because it seemed to be the thing real people said when death and divorce were brought up. Ex-husband. So much for Hughes’s lesbian crap. Can’t believe I fell for that.

Morales shrugged.

“Most people don’t keep a picture of their—”

“I still love him,” she said. “He couldn’t deal with…”

“With you being a fed?”

“No. It was your dad. I became obsessed. Charlie couldn’t live with… he didn’t—”

“You don’t need to—”

“He shouldn’t have had to have dealt with it. With my obsession with catching the Hand-in-Glove Killer. But he tried to deal with it and then he couldn’t and then we got divorced. Okay?”

Jazz felt soiled somehow, but he merely nodded.

“So what are you thinking?” she asked. “Why didn’t you go back to Hughes with the new phone call?”

“Because he’s pissed enough at me.”

“Like I’m not totaling up all the state laws you’ve broken in my head? Hell, I bet Belsamo could even file a civil suit against you. He’d probably win, too.”

“You said you would help me kill Billy,” Jazz told her, forcing her to shift uncomfortably, like a recalcitrant toddler needing to use the bathroom.

“Killing Billy and catching Dog are two different things.”

“No. They’re the same. The path to Billy leads through Dog. He said he came to New York looking for someone. Said he would tell Dog who. We catch Dog—without NYPD, without the task force—and we can force him to tell us who Billy came to find. And then we get that person and we’re one step closer to Billy.”

“Force him, huh? You gonna go all Cheney on him?”

“I don’t know what you mean by that. But I think I can be persuasive. In the first place, these freakshows are all giant Billy Dent geeks. The last one I caught thinks I’m some kind of demigod.” He left out the part about the Impressionist ramming his head into the bars of his cell.

“What if Dog doesn’t want to talk? Or what if he’s just too crazy to tell us anything worthwhile?”

“I think his whole cawing, look-at-my-dick act in the interrogation room was just that—an act. He wouldn’t be together enough to keep from being caught this long, otherwise. But you just have to trust me, Morales. We nail him down and I can make him talk. One way or the other.”

Morales rubbed her temples. “You’re talking about torture. You’re talking about kidnapping a United States citizen—”

“A criminal.”

“A United States citizen—”

“A serial killer.”

“—and depriving him of his rights, his due process. Then torturing him into giving up information not related to the crimes he’s accused of—”

“The crimes he committed.”

“—and using that information to assassinate another U.S. citizen.”

“You’re the one who offered to kill Billy!” Jazz threw his hands into the air. What the hell? He thought she was a hardcase. All of a sudden, she was a big ol’ wuss.