Game (Jasper Dent #2)(83)

She put the phone back to her ear, tried to speak. Nothing came out.

“Your boyfriend will suffer for your insolence and your lying, if I so choose.”

“No,” Connie tried to say. A rasp. She tried again. “No. He’s not even here. He’s not even involved. It’s not fair to—”

“I think I’ve been very fair with you,” the voice went on. “Sent you clues to that which you seek. Complimented your acting—and I was being sincere, by the way.”

Had she been wrong? Was this not Billy Dent after all? Would Billy threaten Jazz like that? And if he did, just to frighten her… He would never actually carry through on such a threat….

Would he?

She didn’t think so.

But then again… maybe it wasn’t Billy Dent.

The cadence of the voice… the vocabulary… things that Auto-Tune couldn’t hide. She’d seen Jazz’s Billy impression. She’d heard Howie recount the man’s monologues. She’d even seen the few rare TV clips of him speaking. And this didn’t…

Oh, God.

“Did it bother you, playing a slave, Connie? Did it stir something inside? Resentment? Anger? Racial memories you’d thought long buried?”

The voice, processed into neutrality, didn’t sound sly or conniving, but the words did the trick. Connie struggled against it. She would not let herself be dragged into a psychological quicksand pit by a psychopath. She would do this on her terms.

“It was just a role,” she said carefully. “That’s all.”

“But surely a part of you wondered if you only got the role because you were the only black female actor at the school. Didn’t you wonder that? What if you’d not been interested? What would that pretty little drama teacher have done?”

At the mention of Ms. Davis, Connie’s breath caught and her heart leapt forward a beat. Tears sprang to her eyes and she rubbed them away furiously. No. I’m not going to be manipulated.

“I wouldn’t know,” she replied, keeping her voice steady. “I would tell you to ask Ms. Davis, but she’s slightly dead.” Her gut clenched as she said it; it was like pissing on Ginny’s grave. But this game was too serious not to use all of her available ammunition.

The voice chuckled—it sounded like a rubber ball bouncing in a giant tin can. “Trying to keep up with me, Connie? Trying to keep me out of your head?”

“Just being proactive.”

“Ever think maybe that’s what I wanted in the first place?”

Great. Now Connie didn’t know what to do.

“People are dying, Connie, and they will continue to die, while you try to play games with me. While you try to keep me out of your head, a place I’ve already been to. Trust me—you have no secrets from me.”

I don’t believe you. I can’t. “Oh?”

“People keep dying and all you care about is yourself. Oh, you claim you care about your boyfriend, but really you just worry about him because he’s yours. No other reason. You’re selfish, Connie. You’re an actress, after all, and they are a vain, self-centered lot.

“Let me ask you this, though, while I have you on the phone: Do you ever wonder why they always focus on the pretty white girls, Connie? The ones that go missing, I mean. The ones who get killed or maimed or raped or—on a good day—all three. When black girls go missing no one seems to care, do they? If I made you disappear—and I’m not saying I would, though I could—no one would notice.”

“People would notice,” Connie said through gritted teeth, and then slapped her forehead. Damn it! She was doing exactly what he wanted her to do! She was buying into the argument. Accepting the premise. Joining the debate.

“You’d like to think so, I’m sure. Oh, your parents and friends would notice, but no one else. It wouldn’t be a national story. It would make the news in your little town, but even then they would give up reporting on it after a couple of days. They’d devote ten or fifteen seconds to it on the local news the day your raped and mutilated body was found in a shallow grave near the intersection of Grove Street and Route Twenty-seven. You know the spot, Connie?”

She didn’t answer. Didn’t need to.

“Ten or fifteen seconds. A picture of you from the yearbook. A cutaway to your mother weeping hysterically, and all the white folks watching shrug and wait for weather and sports. But when a white girl goes missing… oh, then they go nuts, Connie. They update you every chance they get. The cable channels get involved and it goes national. People talk about the poor pretty girl who’s gone missing. They gather at work and at school and they post blogs and they go on message boards. They name laws after them. They give you AMBER Alerts in their honor. And when those poor lily-white girls show up dead, they spend more than ten or fifteen seconds on them. They show you the home videos. They show the parents. The friends. They take you right to the memorial service. Why is that, do you think?”

“Because this is a racist society that devalues black lives,” Connie said with heat, then immediately bit her lower lip. Damn it! How many times had Jazz told her that you never let a psycho into your head? You never expose a weakness or an irritation or a rage. They live in your heads forever after that.

“Racism!” the voice chortled in triumph. “Racism! Of course! That must be it! Why, that’s the only possible explanation! But, Connie… what if it isn’t racism? What if it’s just true that your life is genuinely worth less than a white girl’s? What would you say to that?”