Game (Jasper Dent #2)(14)

“My name is…” He stopped. It seemed too formal. “This is Jazz,” he said. “Jasper, I mean. Your nephew.”

The silence from the other end of the connection burrowed into his brain and seemed to hollow him out from within.

“Jasper,” she said at last, her voice so carefully neutral that even Jazz’s skilled ear couldn’t tell what she was thinking or feeling.

“It took some persuading,” Jazz told Howie, “but she’s arriving tomorrow morning and she’ll stay until school starts again. I just need you to come over and help her out in the afternoon and evening. That’s Gramma’s worst time. She’s okay most of the morning.”

“So I get to help out during the Bad Hours. Great. Should have let the Impressionist kill you,” Howie grumbled.

“He wasn’t going to kill me.”

“That’s just because he didn’t really, really know you.”




A few hours later, after Gramma was tucked safely in bed and Howie had wheedled permission to order dirty movies on pay-per-view while on duty, Jazz wheeled his borrowed suitcase down his driveway to Hughes’s rental car. He had called Connie to say good-bye to her, but she hadn’t answered. Maybe she was angry that he was going to New York without her. Well, he couldn’t worry about that right now.

“Let’s do this,” he said, and climbed in.

They said nothing for most of the ride to the airport. Jazz had thought the fast-talking New York detective would start right in with information about the Hat-Dog Killer, but Hughes seemed content to focus on the back roads that, to him, were unfamiliar. When they pulled onto the highway, Jazz couldn’t help turning to look off to one side. He could just barely make out the edge of the Harrison property, where Fiona Goodling’s body had been found, kicking off Jazz’s hunt for the Impressionist.

“Don’t be surprised or overwhelmed by the city,” Hughes said suddenly.

“What?”

“You were just looking a little homesick already. I’m just telling you to prepare yourself, is all. The city can be overwhelming your first time.”

Homesick? Jazz snorted. “I’ve seen New York on TV. I think I can handle it. It can’t be worse than growing up with Billy.”

“Oh?” Hughes shrugged. “It’s pretty big.”

“So what?”

“It can be confusing.”

“Don’t care. I’ll be with you.”

“Whole lotta people who don’t look like you.”

Jazz bristled. “Just because my grandmother is—” He stopped himself and started over. “I’m not like her. I’m not a racist. Dude, my girlfriend is black.”

“Hey, yeah? Good for you. So’s mine.”

Jazz threw his hands up. “Fine. I lose. You win. Whatever.”

Hughes grinned, and Jazz suddenly realized what was really going on. The detective was poking and prodding, looking for weaknesses. Trying to find Jazz’s pressure points. And Jazz had given him one. Cops and crooks, Billy whispered to him, always usin’ each other’s tools.

All right, then. Lesson learned. Hughes liked to pick around in other people’s heads. Well, Jazz was no slouch at that, and he’d done a decent job keeping Billy out of his head back at Wammaket. It was tough to catch Jazz with the same trick twice. He adapted easily. A sociopath’s best trick—adaptation—and one that Jazz couldn’t help being damn good at.

“Kid,” Hughes said, his tone friendly now, “you gotta stop taking everything so seriously. Otherwise high blood pressure’ll kill you before your pops ever gets a chance.”

Ah, high blood pressure. What a way to go. Somehow a heart attack or a stroke sounded positively peaceful and bucolic compared to what Jazz knew Billy to be capable of. Still, Jazz didn’t fear his father. Or, more accurately, he had no personal fear of his father. Billy was convinced that Jazz would someday take up the family business and be the serial killer that other serial killers looked up to. Jazz knew his father would never jeopardize that by harming his only son. Billy had too much of himself—his ego, his madness, his genius—invested in Jazz to risk killing him.

“My dad would never hurt me. Not physically, at least.”

“So, no spankings when you were a kid?” Hughes said it with a lightness so deft and so false that even Jazz thought for a moment that it was just curious conversation. But it wasn’t. This was a skilled detective, a trained interrogator, digging for information. Jazz was impressed—he was tough to fool, and Hughes had come close.

“Nope. Not once.” It was harmless enough information to give to Hughes. It was also true. Billy had never laid a hand on Jazz as a child.

“So where do you think your dad is these days?”

Now Jazz shot him his best I-don’t-talk-about-my-dad look. Hughes was visibly rocked by it.

“Sorry.” He recovered nicely; they made ’em tough in NYC. He refocused on the road ahead. “Just making conversation.”

“You make conversation like the Inquisition.”

Hughes laughed. “Occupational hazard. Could be worse—I dated an ADA once and she couldn’t ask what you wanted for dinner without it feeling like a cross-examination. You’ve got a hell of a glare, kid. But I guess that’s to be expected.”