Jazz’s heart pounded. Montgomery swore softly under his breath.

“You killed her,” Morales said, her voice controlled and soft. “Just her?”

For a moment, it seemed as though Belsamo did not understand the question. Struggle writhed his features, twisted his lips, and crunched his eyebrows together. But finally he shook his head.

“How many?” Hughes asked. Flat. No expression on his face. No judgment. No excitement. How many?

“A bunch of them,” Belsamo went on. Pause. Then, as if helpless to stop himself, gathering steam: “I killed them all.”

CHAPTER 33

The precinct dropped its pretense of studied, methodical calm and fell right into chaos. As Jazz emerged from the observation room, he felt as though he’d stepped into an evacuation drill. People ran in every direction. Phones blared.

Hughes slid out of the interrogation room, his eyes shining and bright and alive. “Did you hear that? Were you in there? Did you hear that?”

“Yeah.” Jazz accepted a sudden and unexpected bear hug from the detective, who trembled with what Jazz could only assume was joy. Or maybe a massive overload of adrenaline.

“I mean, it’s not definite,” Hughes went on. “He sort of clammed up right away, like he realized what he’d said. And people confess to crap they didn’t do all the time, especially in this city, where the crazy quotient is ridiculous, but—”

“Hughes—”

“—I just have a feeling, you know? He just feels right for it.”

“Hughes, he doesn’t fit the profile.”

Hughes released Jazz and stepped back. “Yeah,” he said, looking for all the world like a toddler whose birthday party has just ended. “I know. I know that. But—”

“I’m just saying. Not married. No kids. No serious relationship at all. A loner. And look at him. Did you really look at him? The hair? The dirty nails? He’s not organized enough to take a shower or wash his hair—how do you expect him to be organized enough to pull off the Hat-Dog murders?”

Hughes frowned. “He confessed. You weren’t in the room. You didn’t see the way he reacted when we showed him the crime-scene photo.”

“I saw. I was watching.”

A head shake. “No, man. It was different, in the room. Ask Morales.”

As if summoned by her name spoken aloud, the FBI agent emerged from the interrogation room, grabbing another FBI guy to say, “I want an NCIC check on this guy ASAP. Get a medic down here right now. I’m getting a court order for his blood, and as soon as it gets here, I want that blood out of him and in a lab.”

“Is he under arrest?” Jazz said, and then felt stupid for asking.

But Morales shook her head. “No. Once he’s in custody, I have to read him his rights. If he babbles something else in the meantime, I want it to count. Once the court order for his blood gets here, we’ll make it official and take him into custody, Mirandize him, all that.” She shouted at the other agent, who apparently wasn’t moving quickly enough for her. “Get on the damn phone and get that medic! I want a DNA match to the blood and semen samples yesterday, got it?”

“How long until we know?” Jazz asked her.

Morales clucked her tongue. “It’ll take maybe an hour to get the court order, depending on how quickly we can find a judge on a Saturday. Shouldn’t be that tough, though. I’m going to put the highest possible priority on this.”

“And then…”

She cocked her head at him. “And then once I have the court order, we officially arrest him. Then we take our DNA samples. We match them to the samples we already have and when they match, we have our guy.”

“How long will that take? Matching the DNA?”

Hughes and Morales shared a look. “Depends if we go with the city or the federal labs…” Hughes said.

“We can get a special courier to get the samples to Quantico within hours,” Morales said. “I bet our lab is less backlogged than yours.”

“I’ll get someone to check,” said Hughes. “Either way, it’s gonna take a couple of days to get results back,” he told Jazz. “It’s not like on TV, where it takes a couple of hours.”

“How long can you hold him? Can you hold him until the results come back?”

“Probably. It’s a weekend. Once we officially charge him, we can keep him for twenty-four hours before we take him to a judge. By then, it’s Sunday, so we get a break. Monday, we take him to the judge. If the results are back by then—”

“If,” Hughes stressed.

“If,” Morales agreed, “then we’re golden. If not, we show the confession and hope the judge holds him without bail pending the DNA results.”

“In the meantime, we have an hour before you’re actually arresting him, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I need to talk to him,” Jazz said. “You have to let me in.”

“No. No way,” Morales said. Hughes nodded in agreement.

“He called me out, you guys! If it’s him, he left that message for me. You have to let me talk to him.”

“No way. Sorry, but I’m not risking having a confession thrown out because of something you did or said. I want him in jail for life. Or maybe even a needle in his arm, if we play our cards right.” Morales seemed to relish the idea, and her mien completely convinced Jazz that she would gleefully help him kill Billy.

“Look, once you get the DNA results back, his confession won’t even matter,” Jazz said. “The whole reason you brought me out here was because you think I have some kind of rapport with guys like this, right? He wants to see me. He wants to talk to me. Let’s give him what he wants and see what happens.”

Montgomery had joined the group while Jazz was talking. “Has anyone Mirandized this bedbug yet?”

“He’s not under arrest, Captain,” Hughes said. “He came in voluntarily—”

“We need to step very carefully here. I don’t want him to lawyer up yet, but I don’t want to step in a pile of crap that the DA’s gonna have to scrape off my shoe, either.”

“I’m sort of a legend to these guys,” Jazz said, adding a dollop of embarrassment to his voice. “If this guy’s a serial killer, then he called me out. He knows who I am. Just my presence alone might jostle something loose from him. I can be very careful with what I say and do, Captain Montgomery. I won’t violate his rights in any way. But if we can pull some more information out of him…”

Montgomery looked over at Morales. “Well?”

“Not a chance in hell.”

Jazz threw his hands up in the air. “Look, he confessed. Right now, he’s in there realizing he made a mistake. There’s a good chance that he’ll recant. Hell, once you Mirandize him, you’ll probably never hear his voice again, and there’s still plenty to learn from him. If seeing me can make him talk some more, isn’t that a good thing? Trust me, Captain Montgomery”—and he gave the captain his most potent look of trustworthiness—“I know where the land mines are. I know what areas to avoid to make sure your case is still solid.”

Montgomery wiped both hands down his face. It was a gesture of surrender Jazz had seen time and time again on teachers, principals, and G. William. “Okay,” the captain said, nodding. “It may seem crazy, but so is this guy. As long as someone’s in there with you. For protection.”

“I’m totally against this, Captain,” said Morales.

“It’s not your call to make,” said Montgomery, and Jazz fought off the grin that wanted to blow up on his face. Gotcha, he thought. Finally gotcha, Montgomery.

“Fine. Hughes, you’re on this, then.”

“Let’s do it.”

Moments later, Jazz and Hughes went into the interrogation room. Jazz felt a moment’s frisson of panic/delight. He was in control here.