Free I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga Page B

as he slowly made his way around the fender to Jazz’s window and grabbed hold of the side mirror.
    Sighing, Jazz obeyed when the man motioned to him to roll down the window.
    “You’re Jasper Dent, aren’t you?” the man asked, his voice hollow and quavering. “I’ve been looking for you.”
    Now that he was face-to-face with the guy, Jazz saw that his eyes—muddy brown and bloodshot—were sunken, as though they had seen too much and retreated as far into his skull as possible. Heavy bags drooped under them—the man needed a week’s worth of sleep at the very least.
    He wasn’t a reporter; of that much, Jazz was certain. Jazz had a lot of experience with the press, far beyond bottom-feeding morons like Doug Weathers. Reporters of all kinds made their way to Lobo’s Nod, interviewing residents, all of them trying to land the Holy Grail of torture-porn journalism: an interview with Billy Dent’s only child. Jazz could have been rich beyond his wildest dreams by now, just by accepting the offers from the sleazier newspapers and tabloid TV shows, or the seven-figure offer from a big New York publishing house for his memoir. (“We’ll get someone to ghost the whole thing for you,” they had promised him. “The only writing you’ll do is when you sign the check.”)
    “I’ve been looking for you,” the man said again, stumbling over his words. “Just got to town today. Didn’t think I’d…So soon…” As if he’d just remembered what to do when meeting someone, the man extended a hand through the window. Jazz shot a look over at Connie, who was staring at the scene unfolding before her. He sighed and shook the man’s hand.
    “My name’s Jeff Fulton. Hello, miss,” he said, as though just seeing Connie for the first time. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t want to keep you. I just…Harriet Klein is my… was my daughter.”
    Jazz stiffened and jerked his hand away from Jeff Fulton. Harriet Klein. Billy’s eighty-third victim in the official chronology (eighty-fourth in Jazz’s own chronology). White. Twenty-seven years old. Pretty in an unnoticeable sort of way—you wouldn’t stop to look at her on the street, but if you were in a room alone with her, you’d feel it.
    Unbidden, images flashed before his eyes: the police photo of her body, nailed naked to the ceiling of a church in Pennsylvania (“Hoo-boy, that took all night !” Billy had crowed, flushed with triumph and pride), her head lolling downward, her limbs bearing the weight of her body. When the reverend who found the body called the police, the skin and muscle were already coming loose; the medical examiner arrived just before her left arm pulled free from the wall. Four cops had to climb a scaffold and hold her in place so that they could get her down before the rest of her limbs shredded and dropped her amputated corpse to the floor.
    It had been one hell of a piece of work.
    “I don’t…I can’t help you,” Jazz said. And he couldn’t. This wasn’t the first time he’d been approached by a victim’s family. In the months after Billy Dent had been exposed and arrested, family members had flocked to Lobo’s Nod along with the reporters, looking for a glimpse of the killer, looking for clues, looking for that most elusive factor of all: closure.
    In that time, Jazz had learned how to apply Billy’s lessons for hiding in plain sight—walk a certain way, dress a certain way, and people just won’t notice you, especially in crowds. And Lobo’s Nod had suddenly become very crowded.
    Jazz was mostly successful at avoiding personal encounters like this one. The e-mails and phone calls were another matter entirely—no matter what sort of precautions he took, someone always managed to track him down, and then the harassment would start up again. Some pleading. Some just pathetic. Some of them outright threatening, like the woman who sent him detailed e-mails explaining how she wanted to kidnap Jazz and “hire some big