Stop being an idiot. Stop it. This is just a reaction to figuring it out. To knowing the truth.

Jazz suddenly wished Connie were there with him. Or Howie. He just didn’t want to be alone in this place.

It was the neatness, he decided. For one thing, it lay in stark contrast to the filthy, unkempt near-beggar he’d seen at the precinct. “Slob Oliver” was a put-on, a sham, designed to distract the cops. This apartment… this was the real Oliver Belsamo: The to-a-pin precise placement of everything. The way a decorative mirror on the wall hung perfectly perpendicular to the floor, as if regularly straightened with a level. Such neatness had been Billy’s mania, too, and even though Belsamo’s tiny studio was a fraction the size of the house Jazz had grown up in, the place vibrated and shimmered with the same crazy energy, as if possessed by the spirit of the departed Dent house.

But it went beyond the neatness. The place was neat, yes, but also cramped. Too organized. Preternaturally organized, almost. Piles of magazines, their spines exactingly lined up with one another, set so that the colors of the spines ran from darkest to lightest. Books placed in precise order of height and thickness, a staircase of pages. Every bit of wall space was claimed with either shelves or piles of reading material or that freakishly perfect mirror, which Jazz avoided gazing into, lest something be in there. Something like horror in his eyes. Or his own monstrous reaction to Belsamo’s lair.

Oliver Belsamo had clearly kept every scrap of paper and every piece of reading material he’d ever owned. And had it organized according to some system that had welled up from deep within.

That makes him a hoarder, not a serial killer.

Jazz had bought a small, cheap flashlight at a convenience store near his hotel, and now he played its beam around the apartment. The apartment was a studio; the only door led to a tiny bathroom that Jazz couldn’t believe was actually usable. In order to get to the toilet, he had to squeeze through a gap of mere inches between the sink and the shower. It was impossible to turn around at the sink at all.

Still wearing his leather gloves, he opened the medicine cabinet and pawed around with impunity. Nothing. Belsamo used Crest toothpaste. As far as I know, Howie would have joked, that’s not one of the diagnostic criteria of sociopathy.

He abandoned the bathroom. There was a tiny stove with a half-height fridge in a little nook that could not be called a kitchen by any reasonable standard. Jazz realized Belsamo must have to wash his dishes in the bathroom sink.

He opened the fridge, half expecting to see a collection of penises and intestines, and perhaps an eyeball or two. But no. Just a container of yogurt, some celery, and a pack of energy drinks.

One step up from hobo at the precinct, but in real life… other than the energy drinks, he seemed to eat healthily.

He keeps everything. But what about the trophies? Where does this packrat keep his favorite cheese? Where are they?

Jazz examined the neatly made bed. Nothing out of order. The bookcases were crammed with mostly nonfiction—true crime. That didn’t necessarily mean anything. Lots of people read true crime. He skimmed the collection anyway. No books about Billy. That did seem a bit odd. Wouldn’t a real true-crime aficionado have at least one book about the twenty-first century’s greatest living boogeyman?

Maybe. Maybe not.

An end table had a neat stack of mail on it. Bills. Jazz glanced through them. One wasn’t for Belsamo. The address was right, but the name was different. What kind of man didn’t throw away missent mail like that?

Jazz was beginning to regret coming here. He figured he should just go back into the bathroom and see if he could find a hair to bring back for the cops to compare to the DNA found at the various Hat-Dog scenes. Maybe he’d been wrong about Belsamo. Maybe his logic was wrong. His intuition was wrong. And that magical, superstitious buzz he’d felt on entering the apartment—maybe that was wrong, too.

But he decided to check one last place, dropping to his belly to skim the flashlight’s beam under the bed. He didn’t know what he expected to find, but it wasn’t what was there: a laptop. Old and boxy.

He hauled it out from under the bed and opened it. There was only one folder on the desktop.

It was named Game.

Jazz swallowed hard. He tried to open the folder, but it asked for a password and he had no idea whatsoever.

WELCOME TO THE GAME, JASPER.

The laptop wasn’t connected to the Internet, but Jazz looked at the browser history anyway. He found a bunch of links to what appeared to be S&M porn sites, but without an Internet connection, he couldn’t check to be sure. He was sort of glad for that.

S&M porn wasn’t Jazz’s particular kink, but it didn’t necessarily mean anything. Plenty of people were into that sort of thing, and the overwhelming majority of them didn’t rape, kill, and gut innocent victims.

There was nothing else of interest on the laptop.

Game.

Not Games. You might expect someone to have a folder on their computer labeled Games. Solitaire and video poker and Angry Birds and that stupid minesweeper game Howie loved to play.

But “Game”? Singular?

Game doesn’t just mean something you play, Jazz realized. Game also means something you hunt.

Was he looking at a folder containing information on the Hat-Dog victims? Profiles, dossiers, lists… clippings from websites about the murders? Cyber-trophies for an Internet-age madman?

But where does he keep the real trophies? The body parts he took? Where does he keep his killing gear? Weapons? Rope? Tape? Knives?

Suddenly, Jazz focused beyond the secure folder, noticing for the first time Belsamo’s desktop pattern.

It was a crystal-clear photo of a black bird. Some sort of crow or raven.

He remembered the noise Belsamo had made in the interrogation room. Some sort of cawing sound. Just like a crow…

What is going on here? A chill ran up both of Jazz’s arms and rippled across his shoulders for a split second. He imagined his Yosemite Sam tat shivering. A crow. The Crow King… the story… oh—

The ring of a phone made Jazz jump. Had he not silenced his phone before sneaking in here? What an idiotic—

No. The sound was coming from a corner of the bookcase. Jazz scrambled over and noticed three identical cell phones there. One of them was ringing, and Jazz snatched it up and opened it before thinking it through.

Before he could say anything, a voice said, “Nine. Five and four. Nine.” A chuckle. “Looks like you’ll be staying close to home again, eh?”

Jazz couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t breathe. He knew the voice.

It was his father.

CHAPTER 39

Jazz struggled for words—for thoughts—unable to filter either. He had suspected, on some level, that Billy was involved with Hat-Dog, but now to have confirmation…

“Did you hear me?” Billy said, voice now stern and icy. “I said nine. If I don’t hear a response, you’re going to help me redefine misery.”

A response. What kind of response could Billy possibly want? Every second—every millisecond—that Jazz hesitated, his father was gathering information, processing it. Jazz had to act. Quickly.

“I understand,” he said. There had to be more. “Nine is confirmed,” he went on, fighting to disguise his voice. He was pretty good at this—he had a decent range of voices to fall back on, none of them related to any specific person, but all of them different from his own. Right now, he was going for as close to Belsamo as he had in his repertoire, a sort of grim yet uncertain bass. He usually used it on the assistant principal at school when he needed to get out of a class.