Game (Jasper Dent #2)(78)

“Then why check around the other blocks?”

“Because he had to come from somewhere. If you can get an ID on the kind of car, maybe you can figure out which direction he came from. Maybe another camera out there somewhere on his route caught a picture of him or his license plate or something.”

Morales kicked at the ground. “Yeah. Okay.” He could tell by her tone of voice that she thought it was useless. And she was probably right. But they had to try something. Anything, at this point.

“He’s showing his contempt for us,” Jazz told her. “He knows the investigation is headquartered right down the road. He might have even known we were interviewing suspects.”

Morales clucked her tongue. “How would he know that? You think he’s a cop?”

She asked it so matter-of-factly that it stunned Jazz. No attempt to conceal her thoughts, no attempt to lower her voice. The New York cops within earshot all went stony-faced, offended, angered. If she noticed, Morales didn’t show it.

“Nah,” Jazz said lightly. It was possible, of course. But this seemed like such a risky move…. Would a cop—even a crazy cop—take such a chance? “I think he’s FBI.”

Morales blew out a puff of laughter. “Okay, yeah, right.” She took the woman’s wrist in her hand, almost as though checking for a pulse. “Her extremities are in rigor. Rest of the body’s getting there.”

“Given the cold temperatures, figure she’s been dead six, seven hours?” One of the medical techs looked at Jazz with impressed surprise and nodded, confirming the estimate.

“So he kills her early this morning and dumps her here right away,” Morales said. She moved, carefully, in order to get a better angle on the body. “Raped?”

“Won’t know until we get her on the slab,” the tech said, “but I’m guessing yes, based on some bruising on her inner thighs. Could have just been from rough consensual intercourse at some point in the last twelve to sixteen hours, but given the circumstances…”

“Let me know what you get,” she told the tech. To Jazz, she said, “Do you need to see anything else?”

Jazz glanced over at the assistant principal again. She was gulping whatever was in the cup, and the cop with her looked bored.

“Are we sure she didn’t see anything when she got here?”

“She says—”

“Witnesses are wrong. Eyewitness testimony is pretty unreliable.”

“I know that.”

“I’m just thinking… if I were a serial killer and I wanted to throw the cops off, I might drop a body so that it’s found when I’m talking to them. Make them think I’m just some kind of crackpot.”

Morales shook her head. “I would buy that if we came to him. But he approached us. We didn’t suspect him to begin with. Why would anyone—even a lunatic—try to throw off suspicion by raising suspicion?”

To that, Jazz had no answer.





CHAPTER 36


Connie didn’t even realize that she was still staring at the birth certificate until a voice suddenly shouted and shocked her back to reality.

“Hey! Hey, what are you doing?”

She looked up and around. Realized that the voice came from through the hedge to the east. A man stood there with a baseball bat.

“That’s private property!” he shouted.

Connie froze. Who the hell was this guy to try to run her off? It wasn’t his property. She opened her mouth to say “Buzz off!” but before she could, he said, “I’m calling nine-one-one!” and held up a cell phone as if he needed to prove it.

Oh… crap.

Trespassing. Disturbing evidence. Damaging private property… And those were just the crimes Connie could imagine herself. The justice system probably had plenty of other blanks to fill in.

She stooped down and gathered up the box and its contents, then took off in the opposite direction, leaving the shovel and pickax behind. I owe Howie more than twenty bucks now, some crazy part of her realized.

“Hey!” the guy shouted. “Hey! Stay right there! I’m calling the cops! I’m serious!”

I know you’re serious, dumbass, Connie thought as she ran like hell for the cover of the woods. Why do you think I’m running?




She didn’t know the woods and back byways of Lobo’s Nod the way Jazz and Howie did, but Connie did have excellent coverage on her phone. Its GPS got her through the woods and into another housing development, where she paused to catch her breath and text Howie while hidden behind someone’s shed. Howie, fortunately, was done at Jazz’s and easily able to pick her up, though he did complain—of course—about the lost shovel and pickax.

He stopped complaining when Connie showed him the lockbox and its contents.

And the birth certificate.

“This is the big one,” she said. “This changes things.”

“Why? So, it’s Jazz’s birth certificate. Now we know he wasn’t born in Kenya. Big deal.”

She pointed to a specific portion of the birth certificate. Howie’s eyes widened immediately and his chest hitched as though he’d been shoved.

“Oh my God.” He stared incredulously where she pointed. “Is this for real?”