Game (Jasper Dent #2)(54)

On the plane, Jazz didn’t even have time to enjoy or dread his flight. He was busy pondering the message left for him at the latest crime scene. Morales had e-mailed him all of the preliminary information, including crime-scene photos.

“We’re bringing you in,” Morales had told him on the phone. “I don’t care if I have to go over Montgomery’s head to the governor. This guy has called you out. So you’re in.”

Less than a half hour later, it was official, and Jazz was on his way back to the airport after a call to Connie to let her know what was going on. Aunt Samantha was good to watch Gramma for a little while. Jazz truly regretted leaving her so soon. He felt like they had much more to talk about.

When he’d told Aunt Samantha that he had to go back to New York, he’d only had time for a quick talk. The topic had been Howie. “I’m sorry to leave you with him. I know how he is, but he’s actually a good guy—”

“You act like I’ve never been around a horny boy in my life,” she’d said. “I think I can handle him. I would actually find it sort of flattering if I didn’t know for sure that he does this to everyone.”

“Not everyone. Just, like, ninety percent. Maybe ninety-five.”

“I’ll humor him. It’s no big deal. Go do what you have to do.”

During the flight, he flicked through the screen of his phone, looking at the crime-scene photos Morales had sent. This one was different. For one thing, the body wasn’t even in Brooklyn. It had been found on subway tracks in Manhattan, on something that at first he’d read as the Sline—which sounded strange even for New York—but then realized was actually the S line. Jazz didn’t know what that was and he didn’t particularly care, but Morales had helpfully annotated one of the photos: S line: shuttle between Grand Central and Times Square along 42nd St. Jazz had no idea how far apart Grand Central and Times Square were, so that told him nothing. Still, it was nice to see that Morales was thinking of him and his general ignorance of all things Big Apple.

One thing he did know, even with his limited experience with New York geography: This part of New York—this part of Manhattan—was even farther from Hat-Dog’s jeopardy surface than Coney Island had been.

The ME’s preliminary examination of the body at the scene indicated that the murder had taken place several hours earlier, elsewhere. The victim’s intestines had been removed and were not with the body. Paralyzed, as usual. Eyelids cut off, like the others. White female, between twenty-five and thirty. Five-four. Maybe one hundred twenty pounds (when all those innards had been in their proper places).

And because it wouldn’t be the Hat-Dog Killer without some kind of escalation: The eyes were missing. Jazz sighed. He knew from Billy’s stories over the years what was involved in that. Eyes were actually pretty easy to scoop out, assuming you had your victim conveniently unconscious or dead. Just some tendons and nerves holding the eyes in; nothing you couldn’t cut easily with whatever was lying around the house. He wondered if they’d been removed pre-or postmortem? He supposed the autopsy would tell them.

So, he killed her and gutted her and de-… eyed her somewhere else. De-eyed? Un-eyed. Anyway. Then hauled her to the S line and dumped her.

A hat was carved into her sternum, between her breasts. Above was written the message to Jazz.

WELCOME TO THE GAME, JASPER.

Game.

It’s not a game, you sick lunatic.

The best estimates as to the death were that the victim had died in the early morning hours. So that meant she’d been killed before the New York press had glommed on to Jazz’s presence in the city and (unofficial) involvement in the Hat-Dog case.

“So there’s no way to know,” Morales had told him, “if this guy left the message for you before the press reported you were in town or after. If before, then that means he saw the story Weathers did on the Lobo’s Nod website. If after, then he’s still calling you out. Either way, he’s obsessed with you.”

WELCOME TO THE GAME, JASPER.

It almost—almost—sounded like something Billy would say. If not for that word—game. Billy never thought of what he did as a game. It was fun, yes, but the sort of fun to be taken deadly serious. There was a reason he referred to it as “prospecting.” The prospectors of olden times had been involved in life-or-death stakes for the most part, and when they succeeded, they celebrated.

Jazz could remember Billy returning from prospecting trips, flush with excitement and success. He would dump out of his suitcase a mélange of clothes, trophies, newspaper clippings of his exploits, and the occasional body part, then collapse in the big easy chair in the living room to obsessively watch TV coverage of his “adventures” while eating take-out Chinese food and drinking bottle after bottle of cream soda (one of Billy’s other obsessions).

Jazz would innocently play with the contents of Dear Old Dad’s suitcase, then arrange the trophies carefully in the rumpus room.

When the plane landed, Jazz was surprised to find Hughes standing there at the gate, waiting for him.

“Didn’t bring the girlfriend this time?” the detective asked.

“Thought for sure you’d be on suspension after the reaming out your captain gave you.”

“I’m too valuable,” Hughes joked. “But, yeah, sorry about that,” he went on as they walked to his car, which was parked obnoxiously in a no-parking zone, watched over by a TSA agent. “I didn’t mean to lie to you. But I’d been banging my head against this case for months and getting nowhere and I wanted to bring you, but Montgomery—”