Words to live by, for Jazz. He had no other choice—the moment he stopped believing that (and it would be depressingly easy to do so, he feared) would be the moment he turned into his father.
But, yeah, people were real and people mattered, but Jazz couldn’t save them all. Flush off his success of capturing the Impressionist, he’d gone and tattooed I HUNT KILLERS in gigantic black Gothic letters on his chest. A new mantra, this one inked directly into flesh so that he couldn’t forget.
But in the months since the Impressionist’s arrest, Jazz had hunted nothing more than his own self-doubt. Sure, “I hunt killers” sounded great and made for a nice little slogan, but at the end of the day, he was still seventeen. Still dealing with his disintegrating grandmother and her dilapidated house. Still trying to get through school. To figure out what the hell he would do when he graduated. The million mundane details of everyday life had made him feel old before his time, as though the promise of that tattoo had begun to fade the instant the ink dried. Maybe even while it was still wet.
Jazz sighed and watched his breath drift off and dissipate. “Look, Detective Hughes. I got… I got lucky. Once. I’m sure you guys are doing the best you can. You have the FBI and all the resources of the NYPD. I’m not going to be much more help.”
“I disagree.” Hughes leaned in close, his eyes wide and insistent. “You understand these guys, don’t you? You have a lifetime’s experience with them, in a way even the best, most dedicated profiler can’t understand. All we can do is ask them questions after the fact. And who knows if they tell us the truth, or how much of the truth they bother with?
“You’re different. You grew up with him. While he was still hunting. And he told you everything, didn’t he?”
“Prospecting…” Jazz whispered before he could stop himself.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing.”
“You said ‘prospecting.’ Is that what your dad called it?”
“I said it’s nothing.” Jazz shoved Hughes’s arm away from the door. “I can’t help you. I’m seventeen, man. I’ve got school starting up in a few days.”
“So? I’ll write you a note. I write good notes.” Hughes grinned, his teeth huge and almost predatory. “Look, it’ll just be a couple of days. You come up, you look at some of the case files. Go to some of the crime scenes and work your mojo.” Hughes waved his hands like a magician. “You’re back before Christmas break is over. Maybe you miss one day of school. I will seriously write you a note, on NYPD letterhead and everything. I’ll get the commissioner to sign it. The mayor. You can eBay it when he runs for president someday.”
“I’m really sorry,” Jazz said, and even though he wasn’t all that sorry, it was no big trick to make Hughes think he was. The word sorry had magical properties. Say it with the right intonation and downcast eyes, and people will always believe it.
“My card,” Hughes said, believing. “In case you change your mind.”
Jazz tucked the card into his pocket without looking at it. “I won’t,” he said, and went inside.
CHAPTER 6
Touch me
says the voice
like that
it goes on
And he does.
He touches.
His fingers glide over warm, supple flesh.
Touch me like that
His skin on hers.
Move on
says the voice
like that
And his legs, the friction of them—
And so warm
So warm
like that
Jazz woke up, trembling, but not because of the cold. His grandmother’s old house was drafty and leaked like a torpedoed tugboat, but the space heater next to the bed kept him plenty warm.
He trembled from the dream. From what it meant. Or didn’t mean. Or could mean.
He didn’t know. Days like this—nights like this, he checked himself—he felt like he didn’t know anything. Not a single thing in the whole wide world.
The new dream…
It was sex.
Duh.
Obviously.
In the old dream—the dream which now seemed to be relegated to special guest appearances as the new one took over the starring role, yee-haw!—he had been hurting someone. Cutting someone with a knife. And the question for him then had been this: Unless I’ve actually cut someone with a knife before, how could I know what it feels like? How could I dream it so… so… keenly?
Jazz was a virgin. Despite what Billy chose to believe, Jazz had never had sex. He was terrified by the possibility and the probability of it.
He longed for it, too, of course. He was, after all, seventeen years old and in good health. He had hormones pumping through his bloodstream like any other seventeen-year-old. Sometimes he wanted sex so bad that he thought he would pass out from the strain of desire. He was dizzy with wanting it.
But he was afraid of what it could lead to. Yes, there were serial killers out there who had no sexual component to their depredations, but they were few and far between, so rare as to be almost nonexistent. And none of them had been programmed since birth by William Cornelius “Billy” Dent.
Jazz couldn’t remember much of his childhood. Who knew what time bombs Billy had planted deep down in his subconscious?
Yeah, it was better to avoid sex. No matter how much he wanted it. No matter how smoking-hot his girlfriend was.
Would that last forever? Or just until the raging flush of teen hormones abated in his bloodstream? He had no idea. Didn’t even want to speculate. But priests managed to live lifetimes without sex, right?
Well, some of them managed.
Poor Connie. She pretended like she didn’t mind missing out on sex, but especially in the last couple of months, it had become obvious to Jazz that she was ready—eager, even—to take things to the next level. And he just couldn’t do it.
He had to be strong. For both of them.
Rolling out of bed, he crept down the stairs. There was a bathroom upstairs, but it shared a wall with Gramma’s room, and flushing the toilet would wake her up.
Washing his hands in the sink, he caught his bare torso in the mirror, and there it was: I HUNT KILLERS, tattooed in a V along his collarbone in those tall, black Gothic letters. It was tattooed backward so that he could read it in the mirror.
That’s what I thought I was. A stalker of stalkers. A predator preying on predators.
Sounded good. In theory. But the reality was this: He was just a messed-up kid living in a little town called Lobo’s Nod. What could he do? Hop on a plane to New York at a moment’s notice? Right. Who would watch Gramma? Who would take care of her and keep her deteriorating mental state a secret if he went off gallivanting to the big city to… do what? Sit in a squad room somewhere and regale a bunch of cops with tales of growing up under Billy’s thumb? Would that really accomplish anything?
He turned this way and that in the mirror. In addition to his own tattoo, he also had four others: a massive pistol-packin’ Yosemite Sam on his back, a stylized CP3 (for basketballer Chris Paul) on one shoulder, a string of Korean characters around his right biceps, and the latest addition: a flaming basketball on the other shoulder. These weren’t really his tats—they were just renting space on his body. Howie’s hemophilia prohibited him from getting tattoos, so Jazz had volunteered his body as Howie’s personal billboard. He had always felt that this gesture was a point in his favor, something a true sociopath would never do. Now he wasn’t so sure. Offering up his body like that? Permanently marring it without even really thinking about it? Was that the height of friendship or the height of lunacy?
He dried his hands and sneaked back upstairs without waking Gramma.
He’d gotten lucky with the Impressionist. Simple as that. The man had been obsessed with Billy, and that obsession bled over to Jazz. It would have been nearly impossible not to catch the Impressionist. The man had literally come knocking at Jazz’s front door.