Blood of My Blood (29 page)

Hughes was expecting Connie Hall, so he was surprised when instead a ridiculously tall, thin white kid emerged from the corridor into the Halls’ living room. Hughes hoped that the kid’s basketball skills were up to snuff because otherwise all that height was going to go to waste. Damn shame.

He and Tanner had spent the day making the rounds of places in Lobo’s Nod where either of the Dents might be holed up, to no avail. “Neither one of them’s an idiot,” Tanner had confided as they left yet another fruitless spot. “I don’t really think we’ll find ’em by checking these places, but we have to cross all the
T
s, you know?”

Despite himself, Hughes was growing to like Tanner. Under all that blubber beat the heart of an excellent homicide cop. In New York or San Francisco, Tanner would be a first grade, or maybe running his own unit. His talents and insights seemed wasted in a place like Lobo’s Nod, but Hughes couldn’t figure out a polite way to say that. Instead, he settled for listening to the sheriff ramble as they drove the
Nod and its environs, occasionally checking run-down hotels and condemned storefronts.

They lunched at a place called—Hughes couldn’t believe it—DINNER. He couldn’t tell if the joint had begun as a dinner-only restaurant or if someone just didn’t know how to spell
diner
. They each checked their phones obsessively as they ate, but there was nothing conclusive. Each Dent had been spotted in pretty much all fifty states at this point, and there were two reports from Mexico and one from Canada. People were seeing the Dents on TV and then projecting.

And Hughes and Tanner had nothing but pure guesswork and the word of a female trucker who claimed that she’d dropped off Jasper Dent an hour away at a gas station. Tanner’d sent deputies to investigate, and they’d found nothing.

Later in the day, Hughes finally asked the question he’d been dying to ask: “Tell me, Sheriff. How’d you catch Billy, all those years ago?”

Tanner cracked a smile, piloting his car past an old railroad track. There were some shacks out that way to check out. “Wish I could tell you it was brilliant police work, but it was just dumb luck.”

“I think you’re being modest, Sheriff.”

“Call me G. William. And my momma used to say modesty is just braggin’ that ain’t been used in a while.”

“What the hell does
that
mean?”

Tanner shrugged. “Not sure. Sounds good, though, right?”

They chuckled together and then swept the shacks with flashlights, guns drawn, and found—again—nothing.

“What now?” Hughes asked as they returned to the car.

Tanner stared off into space. If this had been New York, Hughes would have known the next steps, but out here in Timbuktu, he was at a loss. Were there more ramshackle piles of rubble for the Dents to squirrel away in? God, he hoped not.

“Connie’s back in town,” Tanner said. “Let’s go talk to her. You said Jasper called her while she was in the hospital, right? So let’s see if she remembers anything new.”

When he said
remembers
, Hughes knew that was his polite, southern way of saying,
Let’s see if she’s decided to tell us what really happened on that phone call
.

“Sounds good.” It actually sounded desperate, but at this point, desperation was the name of the game. Hughes did not want to be standing over another body anytime soon.

And now they were in Connie’s living room. The mother had hustled a kid out into the kitchen, and the dad had looked none too pleased to see Hughes again, though he’d been friendly enough with G. William. The gangly white kid loped into the room as if he owned the place and flopped onto the sofa. Hughes expected to hear the rattle of his bones clicking against one another.

“What’s the what, G-Dubs?” asked the world’s worst gangsta. Hughes had to fight the urge to step over there and smack the wigger out of the kid.

“Howie,” Tanner said with the air of a man who had been pushed past every conceivable annoyance and now had attained a Zen-like understanding of them. “Didn’t expect to see you here. We—”

Before he could finish, here came Dad down the hallway, pushing Connie in a wheelchair. Hughes winced at the sight of her. In a hospital bed, she’d looked bad enough, but now most of the bandages were off, revealing a patchwork of bruises, abrasions, and cuts on most of her exposed flesh. Her left leg jutted out before her, and her father carefully navigated it around the living-room furniture, positioning her close to the kid named Howie. Hughes couldn’t help but notice that Dad had chosen to put her as far away from him and Tanner as possible, with a love seat and a coffee table between them.

Connie reached out and took Howie’s hand. How sweet.

“Mr. Hall,” Hughes said, nodding. “A pleasure to see you again.”

“I’m sure it’s all yours.”

Lawyers.

“We’re here—”

“Aren’t you a little out of your jurisdiction, Detective?”

Friggin’.
Lawyers
.

Tanner stepped between them. “Jerry, I know you don’t want your girl put through anything more than she’s already been through, and Lord knows I don’t want to be the one puttin’ her through it. We just have a couple of questions, and then I swear y’all can get back to your evening.”

That seemed to mollify Hall, who nodded curtly but moved not an inch, arms over his chest, glaring at Hughes.

“Since we have Howie here, though…”

Hughes knew what Tanner was getting at. The sketch artist from the county had finally made her way to the Nod and
finished the sketch of the woman Deputy Erickson had seen in the hospital. They were confident the woman was Samantha Dent, but no one in town had seen her in years.

Except for Howie.

“Could you just take a look at these?” Tanner asked, unfolding a sheet of paper and holding it out to Howie. “Upper left is the way she looked to Erickson. Then we have projections without the glasses, without her hair up in the cap. This is the woman we believe may have been involved in the murder of—”

Howie yelped in pain and jerked his hand away from Connie. “What the hell—?”

Connie had blanched. She looked over at Howie, and something passed between them.

“Oh, God,” Howie breathed.

“Poor Jazz,” Connie whispered. “Oh, Jazz…”

“What?” Hughes demanded. The dad be damned—something was going on here.

“You don’t…” Howie shook his head.

Connie fixed him with a tear-filled scowl. “It’s hopeless,” she said with finality. “There’s nothing anyone can do for Jazz now.”

The knife was a feint, Jazz knew.

And knowing Billy’s sense of justice, irony, and symbolism, he was willing to bet it was the same knife he had used to cut Connie’s braid away. It was a beautiful, tempting feint, but a feint nonetheless. If he went for the knife, Billy would all-too-quickly reverse it and Jazz would be staring at the point, not the handle. He wasn’t sure if his father would kill him or not; Billy’s parental desire to see Jazz slaughtering at his side ran strong and true. But if Billy absolutely believed that Jazz was a lost cause, that he would not become the slaying, torturing godling Billy had envisioned for years… Well, if Billy became convinced of that, there was no telling what he might or might not do.

Jazz wanted that knife so badly that his palms itched.

“I’m not fighting you,” he said. “Not until you tell me where Mom is.”

“You think that information will mean anything to you?”

“I know that after I kill you, I won’t be able to ask you any questions, so I’m asking now.”

Eyes widening in excitement, Billy smiled like a child opening birthday gifts. “Now you sound like a Crow, boy!” The knife did not waver, hanging in the air. Jazz tried not to stare at it. Billy was like a magician—one hand distracted you while the other performed bloody tricks.

“I don’t know that you’re ready to see your mom,” Billy went on. “I don’t know that you’ve earned it. Now, whyn’t you show Dear Old Dad what you’ve got in your pocket there.”

No choice. Jazz had lost control of the conversation, if he’d ever had it in the first place. Billy held all the cards. Billy had Mom. Until he learned where Mom was, Jazz had to play along with Billy’s games.

Blowing out a breath in annoyance, Jazz removed his hand from his pocket and showed Billy… Hughes’s badge.

“Ha! I bet there’s a pissed-off cop gettin’ his ass reamed somewhere in New York.”

“I’m sure.” Jazz had left the badge in the same pocket as the Taser, fortunately. Billy wasn’t the only magician in the family.
Watch the shiny badge over here and don’t pay attention to what else I might have in my pocket
.…

“Pin that on you,” Billy said, a tinge of amusement lingering on the edges of his words.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It’ll be funny, maybe? I just got a hankering to see you like a cop, and I don’t tend to ignore my hankerings.”

The overcoat, Jazz thought, would be too thick. He pried aside the lapels and pinned Hughes’s badge to the left breast of Mark Culpepper’s shirt. “There. Happy?”

Billy smirked. “Nah. Not as funny as I thought it’d be. Oh, well. Don’t suppose you had to kill anyone to get your hands on that.…” Hopeful note to his voice. A father opening a report card he suspects will be bad but hopes will have at least one B.

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

Billy shrugged. “Disappointment is part of parenthood, Jasper. The trick is learnin’ to love your kids even when they disappoint you. You know they made me try therapy in Wammaket? Didn’t last long, but I did learn that when we’re disappointed with someone else, it’s actually sort of a mirror bounce. We’re actually disappointed at something in ourselves.” Billy lowered the knife, clearly convinced Jazz wasn’t going to lunge for it. He regarded it for a moment and then, with a one-shoulder shrug, tucked it into his waistband. “I spent a lot of time in solitary. Learned to think real hard about what I done and what I didn’t do. And my disappointment in you, Jasper, is really disappointment in me. That I left you so soon. Before I could finish bringing you up right. It ain’t your fault you are the way you are. It’s mine.”

No kidding.

With real remorse in his voice, Billy continued: “If I’d held my… urges in check, that fat prick Tanner never would’ve caught me. I’d’a been a free man, and I could have finished teaching you.”

“You taught me enough,” Jazz said quietly. Quite unbidden, he flashed to the knife in his hands, cutting into flesh.…

Mom? Was it Mom I cut? Or did Sam let me practice on her?

Billy was still talking, as though Jazz hadn’t spoken. Jazz realized he’d gone into a fugue state for a moment, spacing out in front of the most dangerous man he knew. “Instead, you go off and make
friends
.” Billy spat the word. “You pollute your flesh with ink.”

“Look who’s talking.” Billy’s prison tats still stood out on his knuckles.

“Don’t you sass me, boy!” Billy shouted, the cords on his neck standing out. “Don’t talk back! These words
mean
something!” He raised both fists.
LOVE
, spelled the one.
FEAR
, the other. “This is
philosophy
. Your ink is bullshit. You defile your body for
entertainment
.”

And Jazz remembered—with startling clarity—the first needle penetrating his flesh, the day he’d gotten the stylized
CP3
tattoo. Howie had stood nearby, the look of sheer joy in his eyes so childlike and innocent in comparison with his lurking, adult frame.

“No. For friendship.”

Billy thrust his fists out. The tats were ragged and imprecise.
LOVE. FEAR
.

“Which one holds your fate, Jasper? Love for your family, for your kin? For the people who made you what you are? Or fear of yourself? Fear of the prospects and the world they want you to live in?”

Leave it to Billy to put it that way. Leave it to Billy to
imagine that you could break down the world into precisely two categories and then to define them thus.
Love
didn’t have to mean family.
Fear
didn’t have to apply to the rest of the world.

“I think I’ve had enough of your kind of love,” Jazz said, surprising himself that he clenched his jaw tight, tears gathering. “You… you
abused
me,” he spluttered. “You did horrible things to me. You made me—”

“I never abused you.” Billy dropped his hands to his sides. “I loved—I
love
you, boy. You’re my son. My child. I never once—”

“You made me cut her!” Jazz shouted. “You made me cut her and you, and you, and you—” He gulped air. He couldn’t speak. Oh, Jesus, what was
wrong
with him!
Can’t lose control
, he told himself.
Can’t go crazy. You lose it and Billy moves into your head, and then you’re done for, one way or the other. You either end up dead or you cave, giving in to the most lethal Father/Son Day ever
.

To his surprise, Billy simply stood there and watched—something like concern spreading over his features—as Jazz composed himself and drew in a deep breath. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

“You all right?” Billy asked gently.

“Screw you.” Jazz’s voice was heated. “You’ve been manipulating me my whole life, but I won’t fall for it anymore. You made me…” He gulped. He had to say it. He had to say it out loud. When he did, it came out in a whisper. “You made me have sex with my own
aunt
. The things you did—”

Billy shook his head and clucked his tongue. “Did no such thing, Jasper. I swear it.” He actually raised one hand and put the other over the spot where a human being would have a heart. “Never happened.”

“I remember it.” Jazz’s voice barely worked. He was choking on his own language. He couldn’t stop thinking of the dream, the dream that—like the dream of cutting—had turned out to be real. The touches.

“I can’t help what you remember,” Billy said with a shrug.

Jazz forced himself away from it. He made himself think of something else. The birth certificate. His tear-clotted throat allowed a rueful laugh to escape. That damn birth certificate. That was Billy’s first mistake. The mocking, accusatory blank next to
father
had taught Jazz an important lesson.

“If I have to kill you to save Mom,” Jazz said, “I will. Without a second thought. Without remorse or regret.”

Billy nodded thoughtfully. “And that’s one step away from killing
anyone
for
any
reason. Without remorse or regret.”

“Stop trying to mess with my head. Stop telling me what I think and feel, what I
will
think and feel. I’m the master of my own mind.”

“I’m sure you’d like to think so.” Billy withdrew the knife again, and once again held it out, handle toward Jazz. “But you won’t really know until you try, hmm?”

Without meaning to, without even being wholly aware of it, Jazz took a step closer to Billy, a step closer to the knife. His right hand jerked upward, and Jazz had to will it back into place.

Billy’s eyes twinkled. Blue ice floating on a sea of bloodshot white.

“You can’t do this to me,” Jazz whispered, but it was already being done. He could see himself taking the knife. Could see himself cutting those damn twinkling eyes from his father’s face. Then the tongue, that goddamn tongue that never, ever,
ever
stopped wagging. Yes! Silence the voice forever. Sever the tongue, pull it, still wriggling and longing for speech, from the well of blood that would be Billy’s mouth.

And then, when Billy was defenseless and at his most pathetic: the blade. Through the chest. Into the heart. Twist it to be sure. Would he feel the cardiac muscles separating, the sensation transmitted through the blade? Oh, hell yes, he would!

It would be too disappointing otherwise.

He wanted to feel his father’s heart as it broke.

His fingers spasmed. They longed for a weapon.

“I think you’re ready now,” Billy said. They stared at each other, transfixed. His father laid the knife on the back of the sofa. “I think you’re ready for the truth. For the Crow King.”

“I know the truth,” Jazz whispered. “I thought you were the Crow King. But you aren’t.”

“Never was,” Billy agreed. “Tell me what you know.”

Yes. Yes, he would. It seemed easier to surrender. The darkness didn’t have to be cold. It could be warm. He could settle into it like a down blanket and just… let the world happen. It was what Billy had done, and Billy was so happy.

Why not?

He heard himself spell it out, everything he’d come to understand. How wrong he’d been all along. He’d thought Billy was the Crow King, the ruler, the master boogeyman, but he’d been wrong.

It had been his aunt Samantha all along. The puppeteer. The gender was a ruse. Female serial killers were so rare that no one would ever suspect a woman at the head of the Crows. No one would ever suspect a woman was the Crow King.

Jazz had sat across Gramma’s kitchen table from her, drinking coffee. He could have stopped all this back then, if he hadn’t been so desperate for some family connection.

Well, he had all the family connections he could ever want now. Father and aunt murder machines. It was in his DNA.

“Sam was older than you,” Jazz began. “She made contact first.” He thought of the story Sam had told him, of Billy as a child, standing naked in her room one night. He believed that story. She had just ended it too soon, was all. What had happened after what she’d told him?

His own memories of childhood filled in the blanks. And the thought no longer nauseated him. This was just the way of it now. This was what the Dents did. Had his grandfather molested Billy or Sam? Is that how it started? He would never know. His grandparents were dead, and he couldn’t imagine Billy answering that question. Sam and Billy had been born bad or they had learned bad. Either way, the results were the same.

For a long time
, Sam had said,
I thought there was something wrong with
me
because no one else seemed to notice
. Such an idiot. She’d practically told Jazz who and what she was.
She recognized Billy’s madness and propensity for murder early on. And no doubt encouraged it. The doting, adoring older sister, taking her little brother by the hand and teaching him.

“She left the house first. Went out prospecting. Got the attention of the Crows and brought you into the fold. And that’s when your career really took off. Maybe she helped you on some of your kills. I’m not sure. But she was out there in the world, working her way up the Crow ladder. Playing their games and winning every single one. Until she became the Crow King and the two of you could reunite. She sent the Impressionist to Lobo’s Nod. She arranged your escape from Wammaket.”

Billy nodded thoughtfully. “Got it all figured out.”

Numb, Jazz shoved his hands into his pockets. Oh, right. The Taser. He didn’t even bother with it. There was no point. He could stun and kill Billy, and Aunt Samantha would just come for him.

“You’re right about everything,” Billy said. “Except for the things you’re wrong about. But playtime’s over. Are you ready to meet the Crow King?”

Jazz had already met Sam, but he allowed Billy the moment of melodrama as his father picked up the iPad and turned it on.

“This thing? Goddamn miracle, Jasper. Missed out on ’em while I was in prison, but it’s so easy.…” He fiddled with it for a moment, then propped it up on the sofa so that it faced Jazz. A little light turned on, indicating that the webcam was active, and then FaceTime came up.

“Hello, Jasper,” said his mother.