Game (Jasper Dent #2)(22)

“You wanted to see if I would pick up on it. That’s okay. I get it.” His respect for Hughes rose a notch. He hoped the detective was returning the favor.

Connie leaned over. “Paralysis?” She stared at the crime-scene photo. “How can you tell? It’s a picture. Nothing moves.”

Hughes didn’t tell Connie to back off, so Jazz let her keep looking over his shoulder. “Void pattern,” he said. A void pattern was an area defined by lack of blood where blood should have spattered… meaning that something had been sitting there at the time of the bloodletting, then moved. In the crime-scene photo, there was a void pattern that outlined a pair of human legs. The victim’s. “In the early crime scenes, there was blood smeared all over the place as he disemboweled them and they thrashed and kicked and fought. But at later scenes, there’s a void pattern instead, indicating that they weren’t moving their legs when they bled out.”

“Maybe he drugged them,” Connie suggested. “Or knocked them out.”

“No. Toxicology shows nothing exotic in their systems. No blunt-force trauma to the head that would indicate a blow strong enough to result in unconsciousness.” Aware of Hughes’s eyes on him, Jazz reconsidered. “Well, no consistent blows to the head. Some of them were hit hard, but not all of them. So I’m saying paralysis. It’s probably not hard, if you know what you’re doing.” He studied the new report for a moment. “ ‘Knife wound at thoracolumbar junction… T-twelve, L-one…’ Slip a knife into the spine, I guess. Right above where the belly button would be from behind.” He twisted to point to the spot on his own back as best he could. “Am I right?” he asked, turning to Hughes.

“Yeah. ME says severed spinal cord at L-one/L-two,” Hughes said. “Damn,” he said, almost involuntarily.

“It’s just a little thing,” Jazz said modestly.

Little things can mean nothin’ or little things can mean everythin’, Dear Old Dad whispered. And the only one who knows for sure is me. Ain’t that special?

“Yeah, but what does it mean?”

“Mean?” Jazz shrugged. “It probably means he was tired of them kicking and getting blood all over the place while he gutted them. Just making his job easier, is all.”

“Just making his job easier?” Hughes blew out a long, exasperated breath, and Jazz finally saw the annoyance and anger that had been lurking under the surface. “Just making his job easier? So I’m looking for a lazy serial killer? Is that it? It just doesn’t make any sense. None of it makes sense.”

It makes sense to us, Billy said. And that’s all that matters. Don’t matter what anyone else thinks.

“It makes perfect sense to him, though,” Jazz said. “It’s probably the only thing in the world that makes sense to him, actually.”

“Look, I could…” Hughes hesitated, as if he knew what he was about to say could be explosive. “I could arrange for you to meet some of the victims’ families. If you want to. If that would help.”

Jazz stared at him far longer than people usually stare. “Why on earth would I want to meet the victims’ families?”

“Sometimes it makes it more real,” Hughes said.

“It’s plenty real. Don’t worry about that.”

The two of them glared at each other until Connie cleared her throat and brought them back to the task at hand.

“Not to interrupt this macho stare-down, but I’m wondering… why hats and dogs?” Connie asked. “And why alternate?”

“He doesn’t alternate,” Hughes said quickly. “He did for a while, but if you look at the chart we put together, you can see—”

“He alternates until victim seven,” Jazz said. “He gives her and the next victim hats, then switches back to a dog. Does the same thing later—two hats in a row before a dog.”

“Why?” Connie asked.

“Don’t know.” Jazz leaned back against the headboard, staring up at the ceiling. Hats are for gentlemen, Billy said quietly. My daddy wore a hat every day of his life. Pictures of Jazz’s grandfather floated in his mind’s eye. “Hats are for gentlemen,” he murmured.

“But he put hats on women, too,” Hughes complained.

“Top hats,” Connie specified. She had dragged a chair over and sat with them now, part of the group. “At least, that’s what they look like. They’re actually pretty good. I mean, when you consider they’re being cut into someone’s skin and all.”

“Ever seen prison tats?” Hughes asked, and Jazz’s memory flickered for a moment, remembering the words LOVE and FEAR tattooed across Billy’s knuckles at Wammaket. “A lot of those are done with just a paper clip,” Hughes went on. “Or even a staple. It’s possible to get some real consistent art just with—”

“Hats are for gentlemen,” Jazz said again, interrupting, “and dogs are for…”

“For bitches,” Connie said with finality.

They stared at each other, then over at Hughes.

“No,” the detective said, shaking his head emphatically. “He hatted women and he dogged men. It doesn’t track—”

“It’s not about their actual gender,” Jazz protested. “It’s about how he sees them. It’s about his perception of them. Maybe he decides which they are before he kills them—maybe that’s part of what sets him off. Or maybe he decides based on how they die. How they act. Like this one…” He flipped through data on the tablet. “Look—victim six. A woman. Elana Gibbs. A dog. He raped her, but the ME found less vaginal tearing and fewer bruises than the hat, Marie Leydecker, he raped three weeks later.”