It also meant to have intercourse with.

The killer wanted to own women. In every way. And he had, indeed, owned many. Even the ones he found possessed (that word again!) of subpar appearance he yearned to own, for to own meant to be able to destroy.

Tall, short, thin, fat, ugly, gorgeous, black, white, all shades between and beyond… He wanted them all. For his own. So that no one else could have them. His to use and to keep or discard as he saw fit.

He had spent much of his life dreaming of this. Dreaming of captive women, compelled to do as he commanded. Dreaming of them on their knees before him, subject to his whims—beaten or comforted, killed or succored, raped or loved.

The dreams could not be sated. Not by anything he watched or touched or knew. Only finding her (any “her”) and owning her, making her his in every way, could satisfy his needs.

The first time he’d owned a woman, he’d thought it over at that. Thought that with the realization of his dream, he could and would now be like all the others he saw around him. He would now be what they called “normal.” He discovered relaxation; he learned that with his fantasy fulfilled, he could breathe and settle and close his eyes at last.

But his calm, his repose, did not last. The fantasies returned, first as niggling daydreams, then as all-consuming compulsions, until every woman he saw on the street, on the subway, anywhere, was a target, a victim waiting to happen. And he resisted. He resisted as long as he could. As best as he could. Until…

Until…

Until he no longer had to.

Until the message and the voice…

Just then, a phone rang. The killer stiffened. It was not his cell phone or his wife’s. It was something else.

“Is that yours?” his wife asked.

“Yes,” he said, and swiftly went to the small, cramped bedroom, where he closed the door and dug into the bottom of his chest of drawers. Three cell phones were there. One rang again. The killer answered, trembling.

“The number is six,” the voice said, and the killer felt a trill of anticipation—six!—until the voice said, “Six. Five and one.”

“Six,” the killer repeated. Five and one. Not three and three.

“And,” the voice went on, “a little something special this time.”

Shocked, the killer almost dropped the phone, but held tight and kept listening. He wrote nothing down—that would be foolish—but memorized every word.

“I understand,” he said when the voice had finished, then removed the battery from the phone. On his way back to the TV, he stopped in the kitchen and tossed the phone’s battery into the trash. Then he quickly snapped the cheap plastic hinge and tossed both halves of the broken phone into the garbage compactor.

“Who was that?” his wife asked.

He ignored her. She ignored him back, caught up in her show.

The killer stared at the TV. The dental hygienist from Spokane was staring back at him.

CHAPTER 20

Even though she wanted to, Connie didn’t bring up what had happened between them at the hotel overnight. She said nothing about it in the car on the way to the airport, nor at the airport itself, as they went through security and then waited for their flight. The NYPD—eager to get Jazz out of its jurisdiction as quickly as possible—had made some calls and arranged for his ticket to be switched to Connie’s flight, so they were in a rush from the time she returned to the hotel.

She tried to pretend that nothing had happened, that nothing had changed. She started to tell Jazz about her mini-tour of the crime scenes, but he clearly wasn’t focused. He kept interrupting to bring up something about Long or Hughes or the captain guy—Montgomery—who’d kicked him out of New York, and she eventually realized that he just needed to vent. So she listened as he told her about his encounter with the NYPD. And Special Agent Morales of the FBI.

“Do you think she was serious about helping you kill your dad?” she asked in a low voice. They were at their gate, and it was crowded. She didn’t want anyone to overhear.

Jazz shrugged. He was wearing sunglasses indoors and had bought a Mets cap, which he kept pulled over his forehead. Being recognized would—in a word—suck. “I don’t know.”

“Would you…” She stopped herself. This was neither the time nor the place for such a discussion. The amount of hatred in her heart for Billy Dent surprised her, though. She felt an immediate and powerful kinship with Special Agent Morales, whom she’d never even met. Any woman who wanted Billy Dent dead badly enough to risk her career—for surely if Jazz reported what she’d offered to a superior, she’d be out of the FBI—was a woman Connie could learn to love. Conscience Hall was well named by her parents, but even her conscience had its breaking point. The man who had mauled the childhood of the boy she loved definitely occupied a spot beyond that breaking point.

So she wasn’t surprised to find that she wanted Billy Dent dead. What surprised her was how happy the thought made her, how liberated it made her feel, even though she knew that Jazz killing his own father would send her boyfriend into a darker place than even he could imagine.

But if Jazz didn’t do it… If this Special Agent Morales was the one to do it…

Well, that wouldn’t be so bad, would it? The world would be rid of Billy Dent. More important, Jazz would be rid of him, without adding to the burden already on his too-full back.

Maybe this FBI lady is a gift from God, Connie wanted to tell Jazz.

She settled for squeezing his hand. After a moment, he squeezed back.

Jazz said nothing on the flight, staring moodily out the window instead, as though answers or resolutions had been inscribed in the billowy curves of the clouds. Connie, for her part, stared just as moodily at him, willing him to turn and look at her.

She so badly wanted to discuss what had happened the night before, in the hotel room. She still didn’t know who was being more unfair to whom, but one thing was certain—she wouldn’t figure it out until they actually opened their mouths and talked about it.

Had it been presumptuous to bring the condoms to New York? Probably. She could admit that. But she couldn’t shake the memory of the giddy, stomach-twirling elation she’d experienced at the drugstore when she’d bought them. They’ll have condoms in New York, she had thought. Why buy them here, where someone you know might see you? Then she dismissed it. She didn’t care if someone saw. She was in love. So what if people knew she was having sex with the man she loved? Her parents were both at work, so they wouldn’t see her—it would be a friend or an enemy, and it just didn’t matter.

She’d bought them and packed them and thought of them on the flight to New York. This was the right way to do it. Responsible. She and Jazz were both virgins, and they would do this the right way. The adult way.

It was time.

She knew in her head and she felt in her heart and in other, more primal, parts of her body. She was ready. When this state of readiness had been obtained, she couldn’t say. But after the Impressionist nearly killed Jazz, and after Jazz finally faced the demon of his past—his father—she sensed a change in their relationship. A growth. A maturation. They were ready for the next step, and once she knew that, she was desperate for it.