Game (Jasper Dent #2)(75)

Curiosity fueled her muscles as she swung the pickax again, trying not to imagine a choking cloud of something noxious and lethal erupting from the open box.

This time, the lock broke.

Connie opened the box, thoughts of explosives and gases and anthrax already fled from her mind. She needed to know what was inside. Some part of her thought that Howie would be disappointed not to have been here for the opening, but she was beyond caring now, driven. She had to know. She had to see it.

The box did not contain anthrax or a bomb or anything else exotic. A few inches shallow, it contained exactly three things: two clear plastic bags with envelopes zipped into them, and…

A toy.

She plucked it from the box gingerly, as if it were dangerous. But it was just a small plastic bird. Black. A raven, or maybe a crow. Something like that. Weren’t they part of the same family? Or genus? Connie couldn’t remember—her bio class interested her about as much as Whiz’s video games.

A crow… the Crow King…

This was a cheap plastic bird, the kind of thing you bought at a gift shop somewhere. It was hollow—when squeezed, it made a halfhearted wheezing sound. Connie shrugged and put it on the ground next to the box.

She unzipped one of the plastic bags and withdrew a manila envelope that measured something like six inches by five inches. Even as she did it, she thought, Maybe I should actually measure it and take notes for the cops, before realizing that she had already touched and moved the evidence. Oh, well. So much for preserving the crime scene.

What crime? So far, all you’ve found is some junk buried in the backyard.

The envelope was only partly full, still crisp and nearly flat, fastened with a metal clasp, then sealed. She opened it as gingerly as she could, thinking of old cop shows where “the guys in the lab” managed to pull DNA samples from envelope flaps and identify the killer that way. Her hands shook.

What are you doing, Connie? Call the cops! Call them now!

But she was powerless to stop herself as she peeled back the flap, then shook the contents out into her hand.

Anthrax! screamed some primitive part of her, but all that fell into her palm was a set of photographs.

There were half a dozen of them, all of them with three people. The man Connie recognized immediately—it was Billy Dent. He was younger, but there was no mistaking that infamous grin, those piercing eyes.

The woman, she knew, was Jazz’s mother. It was a shock seeing her—Connie had seen only the one photo of her, the picture Jazz kept in his wallet and now had scanned into his phone. The only picture that had survived Billy’s purge of all things “Mom” from the Dent house nine years ago. But here were more pictures of her.

Holding a baby, in the top picture.

Connie didn’t need to flip the photo over, didn’t need to read JASPER, 7 MONTHS to know that she was seeing something Jazz had never seen—his own mother holding him as a baby. Jazz had one fat little baby fist jammed in his own mouth, and from his free hand dangled the very same crow toy Connie had just examined. Baby’s first toy…

The other pictures progressed from Jazz at seven months to fifteen months. Connie couldn’t tell if these were special occasions or what. Each photo was roughly the same—Jazz’s parents and baby Jazz in some combination. In one photo, Jazz was standing, arms akimbo in that drunken baby waddle toddlers use, as his parents crouched near him, ready to catch him if he fell. It looked so normal that Connie realized in a flash how Billy had managed to go without being identified as a sociopath for so many years. He really did seem normal. He just seemed completely normal.

Jazz’s mom looked… unhappy. In most of the pictures, she seemed off-kilter, as if dissatisfied or distracted. Connie wondered if she was on drugs—some kind of prescription or maybe something you didn’t pick up at the pharmacy along with tampons and Halloween candy. Or maybe she just knew what her husband was, what he did, and she couldn’t hide that knowledge.

How many had Billy killed at this point? Did she think it would get better, that he would stop? Was she in denial?

And who, she wondered suddenly, took these pictures?

Probably Gramma. Who else would it be?

She scrutinized the pictures for long minutes, looking for some clue, some detail that would illuminate her current quest. Or maybe something that would mean something to Jazz when he saw these photos. But there was nothing. The clothing and the decor—the photos having been taken, no doubt, in the house that once stood mere yards from her—were typical of the late nineties. Nothing special.

At least Jazz would now have more pictures of his mother. That was something, right?

She tucked the photos back into the envelope, then rezipped it into the bag and set it next to the crow.

The envelope in the second plastic bag was so thin that she thought it must be empty, but when she opened it, she saw a single sheet of paper within. With the tips of her fingernails, she pulled it out.

For a moment, she didn’t know what she was looking at. But then she realized: It was a birth certificate. More important, it was Jazz’s birth certificate: DENT, JASPER FRANCIS was typed in the appropriate space, along with Jazz’s birth date, time of birth, length, and weight…. It was signed by a Dr. Ian O’Donnelly at Lobo’s Nod General Hospital.

Connie stared at it, and then she saw what she should have seen right away, and all her breath left her lungs and the world swam black and red.