Blood of My Blood (26 page)

Jazz looked no better than he had last night in the cemetery, but at least he looked no worse. Figuring Jazz would have to avoid stores in the town where everyone knew his face, Howie had sneaked several water bottles, some Gatorade, a few apples, and a fistful of protein bars from the Gersten kitchen before heading out. When he nudged Jazz awake and held a bar out in front of him, his best friend didn’t even say “Good morning.” He snatched the bar and barely took the time to peel back the wrapper before eating it.

Howie arranged his loose, overlong form on the chair that appeared most capable of providing both support and comfort. He got maybe halfway to each, which he figured
was pretty lucky, all things considered. Jazz devoured the protein bar and an apple in an orgy of gnashing teeth and belches, washing the food down with water, chasing it with pills from the prescription bottles, and then more water.

“Good call on the meds,” he said. “’Cause when you hear this, you’re gonna wish you were stoned out of your mind.” Howie held up his cell and waggled it. As Jazz guzzled Gatorade and munched through another apple, Howie set his phone on a chair between them, cranked up the volume, and played the file. Even though he didn’t want to.

“… is on now.” The voice was familiar. Billy’s. It went on: “Brought this little thing here and now we’re gonna use it, ain’t we? Sound good to you?”

Something muffled in response. Desperate.

“We’re gonna get started now,” Billy said, and that was the last time he spoke for the remainder of the audio file, which lasted a bit more than twenty-five minutes.

First, there was just that muffled voice again. “Wait,” Howie thought he heard. Again: “Wait.”

Then the voice jumped suddenly, sharply, turning into a high-pitched
“Nonononononononono.”
Cut off just as suddenly and then a scream, a scream unlike any Howie had ever heard before. It was babies in a blender. It was dogs wriggling, still alive and whining to the moon while spiked to the ground with spears. That scream went on for a full minute before breaking off and transforming into thick, heaving, wet sobs.

Howie drew his knees to his chest, as if they were armor.
Jazz chewed his way through another protein bar, staring at the phone. Like a kid watching TV. Rapt, but not disturbed.

Jesus, Jazz
.

A rough, rhythmic sound. Firm, but somehow wet.

Howie expected another scream, but heard only a low, guttural groan, interrupted by more sobbing.

Oh, God
, he thought.
Is this Jazz’s mom? Is Billy torturing her in order to get Jazz to—

“Jazz, dude, can we—”

“Shh.” Jazz stayed focused on the phone, cutting Howie off with a hiss and a chopping movement from one hand. Impossible though it was, he appeared healthier and more vibrant, as though hearing the torment revitalized him.

A solid,
chunk
sound. A slap? A punch? Definitely flesh and bone against flesh and bone. Howie flinched as though struck. Jazz was a marble column, a granite statue. He was
The Thinker
with a half-eaten protein bar and a seriously damaged psyche.

The voice again:

“Pweeeeeeth.”

It took a moment. Howie realized it was
Please
, spoken with lips and a tongue horribly wronged.

It went on. Howie twisted and turned in his seat. What the blue hell was he
doing
here? The message was for Jazz, not for him. He should have left the phone and hightailed it home, or at the very least waited in the car.

At last, it ended. Not with a final scream or another plea for mercy, but rather with the flat
click
of the recorder shutting off.

“Oh, Jesus.” The Hideout was cold, but Howie’s forehead was dotted with sweat; his armpits were swamped with it. “Double-u tee effing
ef
, man! What
was
that?”

“A message. Instructions.”

“Are you kidding me? That was torture porn. For reals. That was beyond—”

“It was for me. Not for you.” Jazz blinked and looked over at Howie as though just realizing he was here. “I should have told you to go. I’m sorry.”

Howie regarded his best friend for a moment, searching for the old Jazz in there. He thought he detected something way back in those eyes, but he couldn’t be sure. Jazz’s expression was nearly blank, his speech slow and too deliberate, a robot reading lines.

He’s gone over the edge, hasn’t he? He’s locked down, shutting everything out. He’s decided what he’s going to do
.

“I brought you a blanket,” Howie said for absolutely no reason, except that maybe the banal details of life would force Jazz to think of something other than blood and death. “Thought you might—”

“Not necessary. This is ending today.” He stood and frowned, then turned to Howie. “That other thing I asked you to do…”

Howie shook his head. “No time last night.” He anticipated an outburst from Jazz; the silence was worse. “If my parents take away my keys, I can’t—”

“Just do it now, please,” Jazz said, far too politely.

“Jazz…”

Jazz reached behind the beanbag and held out a large,
black-gray book in a plastic Ziploc bag. “I need you to take this.”

“Is this what you found in, you know, in the grave?” Howie turned the book over in his hands. It was dense with some unknowable mass.

“Yes. It’s Billy’s. I need you to hide it, and if I end up dead, give it to G. William.”

Howie blinked rapidly at the onslaught of tears that assaulted him. Damn sneak attack. Sniffling, he said, “Don’t talk like that. You aren’t—”

“This is it, Howie. I may not come back. If I do, I’ll need that book. If not, G. William can use it to pick up where I left off.”

Wiping at his eyes, Howie set his mouth in a firm line. “You’re being an idiot. You should take this stuff to G. William and let him handle it.”

“It’s my job. I have to be the one.”

“Why?” Howie hated the note of whining that crept into his voice but could do nothing to excise it. “Why?”

“Because I could have killed Billy. When I was a kid. Or at least turned him in. I didn’t. I was afraid.”

“You were a kid!” Howie yelled and damn near bashed Jazz over the head with his father’s Book of Evil and Crazy. “Stop beating yourself up over this! Go to the cops!”

Jazz shook his head. “I don’t expect you to understand. Billy’s crazy, and so is Sam. So was my grandmother. And from what I’ve heard, so was my grandfather. It’s genetic, Howie. It’s in my blood, inherited, just like you inherited your hemophilia.”

“So what? What does that have to do with…” Suddenly it dawned on him. “You
want
to die,” Howie whispered. “You don’t plan on coming back. You think you deserve it.”

Jazz folded his arms over his chest and looked away. “I’m just doing what has to be done. And I’m asking you for these two last favors. And that’s it.”

“There isn’t enough space on your body for the tattoos, man.”

Jazz shook his head. “We’re not trading here. This isn’t
I do something for you, you do something for me
. This is hard-core friendship. Varsity level. This is me asking you to do something for me without getting anything in return. This is friendship, Howie.”

More tears. Howie swabbed them away with the heel of his hand. “That’s a low blow. You’ve manipulated me before, but—”

“I’m not manipulating. I think for the first time, I really understand what friendship is. And I have you to thank for that.” He rested his hands, gently, on Howie’s shoulders, gazing up into his eyes. “You’ve been the best, most normal thing in my life for the longest time. Before Connie, there was you. And I can never repay you for that. And I can never repay you for what you’re doing for me now. You just have to ask yourself, Howie: Do you need to be repaid or not?”

Every piece of him cried out to say
yes
, to demand that in return for what he had done and would do, Jazz would give up now and live.

But.

He knew.

He knew what he didn’t know. Which was this: what it was like to grow up with Billy Dent as a father. What it was like to live with that burden hanging over your head, dangling like that sword of that Greek dude they learned about in school and promptly forgot about. What it meant to discover a dead mother still alive but now in the clutches of a lunatic with every reason to kill her an inch at a time.

He couldn’t pretend to understand any of that. So his job as best friend was to trust
his
best friend. Trust that Jazz knew what he was doing. And would somehow come out of this alive and whole.

“If you die,” Howie said, “I’m going to piss on your grave twice a year. On the solstices.”

For the first time in a long time, Jazz favored Howie with a grin. He chucked Howie along the jaw, careful not to do it too hard. “Attaboy,” he said.

Howie drove off to the next stop on the Jazz Dent World Tour of Crazy.

In truth, he wanted to be anywhere in the world but Gramma Dent’s house. It had always been a creepy, off-putting place. The old lady smell of it. The reality show–level hoarding that rendered certain rooms unusable. And of course, Jazz’s grandmother’s tendency to erupt at any moment into a fusillade of racist epithets, paranoid delusions, fragmented memories of the past, or some combination of the three. Over the years, he’d gone through different phases
during his visits, alternating between finding the house terrifying, hilarious, disturbing, and flat-out weird.

The last time he’d been there, Sammy J had ripped half the skin off his fingers and Gramma had gotten one banana peel closer to the grave. He was just plain damn sick of the place now.

But Jazz insisted and Howie obeyed. He had called the sheriff’s office already and blatantly lied, telling a deputy that he’d left his phone charger at the Dent house the night of “the incident” and needed to get it back. The place was technically a crime scene, but the cops were done with it. No reason not to let him in.

They were cagey, though. They insisted he have an escort.

A Lobo’s Nod Sheriff’s Department car waited for him in the driveway. A deputy he didn’t know got out.

“Gersten?” the deputy said. “I’m supposed to be your escort.”

“For serious?” Howie climbed out of his car. “An escort? I kinda wanted one with big knockers.”

The deputy groaned and gestured Howie to the house.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Howie went on. “I mean, if you guys are footing the bill, I would have taken an escort with little tiny ones, too, but I’m just expressing a preference, you feel me?” He kept up a constant stream of chatter as he mounted the porch steps and crossed the threshold, hoping that his babble would keep the cop from noticing how nervous he was. Going back into the house… not sure what he would find…

Just inside the door, the floor was strewn with some junk left behind by the EMTs—small pieces of cardboard, torn plastic wrappings, a slim needle cover. There was a brownish stain on the floor that Howie realized had to be his own blood. And the shotgun—the Plugged-Barrel Special Howie had threatened Sam with—lay nearby. His head spun at the sight, and he had to close his eyes for a moment.

“Get a move on,” the deputy snapped. “We don’t have all day.”

Jazz wanted him to check the house for anything left behind by Samantha. Given that Gramma and Howie had both been hauled out on stretchers under mysterious circumstances, the police would have already gone through the house, but—as Jazz put it—
They’d be looking for obvious things. Signs of criminal activity. You were there every day. You’ll see what they didn’t
.

Howie scoured the downstairs—kitchen, living room, dining room—then went upstairs to the bedrooms. The deputy’s eyes widened when he saw Jazz’s Wall of Billyness, the photos of Billy’s victims painstakingly tacked up in chronological order.
This dude is running straight to TMZ and cashing a big ol’ check
, Howie thought sourly.
SON OF SERIAL KILLER OBSESSED WITH DAD’S VICTIMS!
The headlines write themselves.

After checking the entire house, Howie was as annoyed with himself as the deputy was. He’d looked everywhere and found nothing. Even in Jazz’s room, where Sam had slept while staying in the Nod, he’d found not so much as a forgotten pair of panties.
Stop thinking about that, Howie!

With a weak chuckle and shrug of his shoulders—“I guess I lost it somewhere else”—Howie allowed himself to be led back outside and escorted to his car. Trying not to let his annoyance and frustration show, he backed out to the road that made a
T
at the end of Gramma’s long, winding dirt driveway and carefully cranked the wheel to turn the car perpendicular. His first time coming here in the car, he’d nearly killed the mailbox on his way out.

Wait
.

Wait
.

The mailbox?

He hit the brake. In his rearview, Gramma’s mailbox leaned halfway out into the road, as it always had. It was dented, appropriately enough, and mounted on a hefty spike of oak. Barely discernible on its sun-faded, pitted exterior were old painted orchids and letters in black reading
MR. & MRS. J. DENT
. Howie shivered at the memory of the last time he’d seen Jonathan’s name. On his gravestone.