“How do you get to the ripe old age of seventeen without knowing how to get out of the house?” Howie demanded. “Hell, your bedroom is on the first floor! You don’t even have to climb down a trellis or sneak down squeaky stairs.”

“But once I’m out, I’m screwed—I don’t have a car.”

“Ah.” Howie chuckled. “You’ve come to the right place, ma’am.”

An hour later, Connie slipped silently out her window into a frigid January midnight. She willed her teeth to stop chattering. At Howie’s suggestion, she’d lubed the tracks of the window with some hand lotion (good stuff, too—fifteen bucks a bottle) so that it would open and close quickly and quietly as she came and went. Howie was a goofball of the first order, but a lifetime of parental fascism had inculcated in him some truly spectacular sneaking skills.

She darted to the cover of a cluster of firs at the end of the driveway and waited. Soon Howie’s old car drifted into view, its headlights and engine both off. Connie wasn’t sure how necessary this next part was, but Howie insisted.

As the car passed, coasting down the hill, Connie emerged from cover and then, jogging alongside, wrenched open the passenger-side door and threw herself in.

“Close the door!” Howie said. “Close it!”

Connie managed to slam the door. “This is ridiculous,” she panted, catching her breath. “You just wanted to be able to say you pulled this off.”

“You want your parents to see or hear a car driving by this time of night?”

“My parents are asleep.”

“People wake up.”

Once they were out of sight of Connie’s house, Howie gunned the engine and flicked on the headlights. “Where to, Miss Daisy?”

“I think you have a couple of things reversed,” she told him drily. “And I’m not sure where we’re headed yet.”

In short, clipped sentences, she told him about the Ugly J discovery at the dump site, as well as the note in the Impressionist’s pocket, followed by the mystery texts. In the dim light of Lobo’s Nod’s ill-spaced lampposts, Howie’s face became more and more pale as she went on.

“Are you nuts?” he asked. “Is Jazz’s kind of crazy an STD or something? This isn’t something for you to mess with. It’s for the cops. This is G. William territory.”

According to Jazz, Howie always balked at first but invariably caved in the end. She hoped she could be as persuasive as Jazz.

“I’m just going to do some preliminary investigating.” She liked the way that sounded. Very official. Very safe. “Then I can point G. William in the right direction.”

“Some crazy person—probably a serial killer—is texting you and you want to get the cops started? Not sane, Connie. Not sane at all. This is Jazz-level idiocy.”

“You broke into a morgue with him. I’m not asking you to do anything illegal.”

“Jazz is my bro.”

“I respect that. But maybe a little of his bro-hood rubbed off on me.” She regretted it as soon as she said it. Howie’s eyes widened and he started to speak, but she said, “Can we just stipulate that you made a killer double entendre with ‘rubbed off’ and then move on?”

“I guess.” Howie’s shoulders slumped in disappointment and Connie almost felt sorry for him. Howie lived for innuendoes. He signaled and took a right turn out of Connie’s neighborhood, onto the main road that cut directly through the center of the Nod.

“This is for Jazz,” she reminded him. “It’s about him, at least.”

“ ‘I know something about your boyfriend,’ ” Howie quoted. “That could be anything. That could be someone who knows where he buys his underwear. Or it could be that jackhole Weathers trying to lure you into an interview. Cell number was blocked, so it could be coming from somewhere around here for all we know. Probably is.”

Connie hadn’t considered that. Doug Weathers was just the sort of devious, bottom-feeding scumsucker who would plant a string of clues to pique her curiosity and try to trap her into some kind of compromising position that he could splash across a newspaper: BILLY DENT’S SON’S GIRLFRIEND IN CONTROVERSY! Or maybe just lure her into an interview. “If that’s what it is,” she said with measured cool, “then all he’s gonna get is a pissed-off sister all up in his grill.”

“I love when you go all hard-ass.” Howie shot her a pleased smile.

She returned it. “So does that mean you’ll stick around and see this through?”

“Well… I mean, if you’re gonna do something stupid, I guess I should stick around. That seems to be my function. And besides, Sam went to bed already.”

“Sam? Is that what she goes by?”

“It’s what I call her. If you give a girl a nickname, it’s endearing and forges a bond between the two of you.” He glanced over at her. “I read that on the Internet.”

Connie melted. Howie was so desperately pathetic in so many ways that she could never stay angry or disgusted for long. She reached out to pat his shoulder, but he flinched and said, “Whoa! Careful.”

“I’m going to be gentle,” she assured him, and then stroked his shoulder so lightly that even his hemophiliac blood vessels didn’t rupture. “You’re a good guy, Howie.”

“Will you tell Sam that? I also read that women trust other women more than men.”

She sighed. “Help me out tonight and, yeah, I’ll put in a good word for you.” Not that it would help. She couldn’t imagine a woman Samantha’s age hooking up with Howie. Although stranger things had certainly happened in the world.

“Score!” Howie fist-pumped. “What did the text say again?”

“It said ‘go 2 where it all began.’ ”

Howie frowned. “Where is that? Where what began?”

“That’s what I’ve been wondering. But it first said that this was about Jazz. So I’ve been thinking about Jazz’s past. Where it all began for him.”

“Hospital where he was born?” Howie asked.

“Too literal. I think it’s his house.”

“I just came from—ah. Oh, right.” Howie nodded grimly. “Got it.”

He flipped a uey and gunned the engine.

According to the dashboard clock in Howie’s car, it was three in the afternoon. Connie mentally subtracted the fourteen-plus hours by which the clock was always wrong (thirteen-plus during the summer) and decided that it was twenty of one in the morning when they pulled up to what had once been the Dent house. Not the house where Jazz lived now, the house Billy had grown up in—that was Jazz’s grandmother’s. The short gravel drive Howie’s wheels now crunched led to the house owned by Billy Dent himself.

“Don’t go chasing…”

Billy Dent, Connie mentally substituted. The rhythm still worked. Don’t go chasing Billy Dent. Please stick to the normal and the sane that you’re used to….

Denuded tree branches seemed to clutch at the car as they drove along, almost as though the spirit of William Cornelius Dent possessed them.

Stop thinking like that, Connie.

“How long do we have?” she asked Howie. Anything to break the silence.

Howie shrugged. “My parents think I’m spending the night at Jazz’s grandmother’s house.”

“Your parents? Your overprotective parents?”

“They know Jazz is out of town. They figure it’s safe.”

“Yeah, but… with his aunt?” Connie was shocked. Howie’s parents, letting their son (try to) shack up with an older woman?

“Oh, that. They think she’s an ugly old crone.” He shrugged. “This might be because I told them she was an ugly old crone. I’m not entirely sure. Man, it’s been a while since I’ve been here….”

The spot where Jazz’s childhood home used to be was marked out by a series of stakes with caution tape strung between them. A sign read NO TRESPASSING! Another read PRIVATE PROPERTY.

Finally, one read: THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED.

Condemned. Yeah, in so many ways, really…