“Stop trying to distract me with nonsense!” G. William thundered. “Tell me where Connie… Oh, Lord. She’s gone to New York, hasn’t she?” G. William’s eyes widened with horror. “Jesus God, Howie! How could you let her do that? How could her parents—”

“She didn’t really give them much of a choice.”

“Erickson!” G. William bellowed with all his considerable lungpower. The deputy appeared almost immediately in the doorway—Howie figured he’d been loitering nearby, listening in.

“Yeah, boss?”

“Get the state lab on the phone and tell ’em I’ve got evidence I need fingerprinted and run through the state database and IAFIS ASAP. Plus, sweep this thing”—he gestured to the lockbox—“for any possible DNA.” As Erickson moved to scoop up the lockbox, Tanner said, “But before you do that, call the Halls and tell them that we’re getting their little girl back safe and sound.”

“Yessir.” Erickson vanished as quickly as he had appeared.

“Which airport is she landing at?” Tanner asked Howie. Howie realized that he didn’t know, and also that he would never be able to convince Tanner of this. But before he could say anything, the sheriff waved him off. “Just get out of here, Howie. I don’t have time to deal with you now. I’ll track her through her credit card.” He started jabbing buttons on the phone.

As Howie made for the door, Tanner said, “And don’t leave town!” Howie nodded meekly, biting back the urge to say, “Did you really just say that?”

He slipped out of the sheriff’s office into the night. He stared up at the sky, the same sky being navigated by Connie’s plane on its way to New York.

Fumbling his smartphone from his pocket, he quickly tapped out a text to Connie:

go ghosty, girlfriend. 5-0 headed your way

CHAPTER 46

“If this is all true,” Hughes told Jazz, “and I’m not saying it is… then who ran things before Billy escaped?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the Impressionist. I haven’t figured that connection yet. But Billy was able to communicate from prison, somehow. So maybe he’s been running this all along.”

“Then who’s Hat?” Hughes still sounded skeptical, but at least he was asking the right questions.

“I don’t know. He could be anyone. The FBI profile might match him or it might not. You guys were profiling two killers at once without realizing it. One of them the woman-hating rapist with supreme organizational skills. That’s Hat. Then there’s Dog, Belsamo—women might as well not exist for him. He’s obsessed with men and their power, his own power and the power of other men. No wonder there were so many apparent contradictions—you were looking at a portrait painted simultaneously by two different artists.

“Belsamo’s the one who helped me figure it out,” Jazz went on. “It wasn’t just the game aspect—at first I thought he was playing a game with Billy, not being played with by Billy. But then I thought about him waving his dick at me in the interrogation room. Talking about his power.”

“And?”

“And I thought about how Hat-Dog performed penectomies, but only Dog ever took the penises with him. As trophies. Hat just tossed them aside. Chop and toss. He didn’t care. He was just doing it because Dog did it and it had to look like the same guy. He probably didn’t even know Dog was keeping the penises. Hat has contempt for maleness. Dog exults in it. He sees power in maleness and he takes it with him.”

“But they both raped women—”

“Sort of. The ME reports show differences between the two. More bruising with Hat’s female victims. I think he actually raped them. As an aspect of control. He wants to possess them, and raping them is a way of establishing ownership. He enjoys it. Dog’s victims weren’t bruised. I don’t think rape excites him. I don’t think women excite him. I bet he used a sex toy to rape them, probably perimortem.”

“What about the paralysis?”

“A Hat innovation. He hates touching men. He didn’t want to kill men at all—he had to, in order to keep up the pretense of the game, that there was just one killer. In his own mind, he probably thinks of himself as the only man who matters, the only one who deserves to dominate women. Also, he was used to dealing with girls and women; it was probably easier for him to deal with men if they were incapacitated.”

Someone in a shirt and loosened tie—probably an FBI agent—opened the door and peered inside. “Oh. Didn’t know someone was—”

“Give us a minute,” Hughes said wearily.

The fed glanced at Jazz appraisingly and backed out, closing the door.

“This is all interesting—”

“Because it’s true. Look, there was only one non-white victim, right? One Asian. Gordon Cho, victim fourteen, killed by Dog right before you came to get me in the Nod. And what space did Dog land on, if you do the math?”

“Very interesting—”

“He landed on Oriental Avenue, Hughes.” Jazz shook the paper at him.

“—but it’s just that,” Hughes said. “Interesting. It’s not evidence. It’s not proof.” Hughes made a show of folding the paper in half and then in half again as he spoke. “Like my old man used to say: I ain’t sayin’ it is and I ain’t sayin’ it ain’t. I’m going to look into this. But I have to do it on my own and I have to be careful how I do it. You better actually hope you’re wrong about this, kid.”

“What? Why?”

Hughes stood and walked to the door. “Because,” he said, turning to Jazz, “if you’re right, we only know it because you broke the law to gather evidence while an official representative of the task force. Which means that piecing this all together in a legal way that will stand up in court and put Dog behind bars and lead us to Hat before he gets his next die roll…” He shook his head. “It’s all going to be ten times tougher than it would have been if you’d done this the right way. That’s why. Good enough answer for you?”

He didn’t wait for Jazz to respond, leaving Jazz alone in the office.

Jazz kept the office to himself for a few minutes after Hughes left, pondering. On one level, Hughes was right, of course. Jazz had “gone off the reservation,” as the cops put it. He’d gone rogue. Endangered the prosecution’s ability to put Belsamo and the still-anonymous Hat behind bars.

And yet… he knew he was right. He had taken the quickest, most direct route to Dog. Billy had rolled a nine for Dog, meaning that he would commit a crime that had something to do with Atlantic Avenue. Worst-case scenario, the cops knew where to wait for Dog when the time came to dump his body. One more victim would be his last.

No. No, that’s not cool. That’s Billy thinking. “One more victim” is one more too many. People are real. People matter.

Yes, Jazz had obtained evidence illegally, but that wouldn’t matter if they caught Dog in the act and snatched him up. All Hughes had to do was sit on Dog. Eventually, he would lead them to his next victim and the cops could swoop in and grab him. Make him tell them who and where Hat was. Maybe even…

Maybe even lead us to Dear Old Dad.

And Jazz wondered: Had that been his motive all along? Deep down, had he decided to forsake justice for Hat-Dog’s victims in order to hack out the quickest, most direct route to Billy? He could claim he’d simply been so excited at the thought of catching Dog that he’d ignored the law, but maybe there was a part of him that no longer cared about Hat’s and Dog’s victims, a part that wanted only one thing….

That final confrontation with Billy.