Part Two

4 Players, 3 Sides

CHAPTER 4

It was a cold, clear January day when they gathered to bury Jazz’s mother.

Bury was probably the wrong word; there was no body. Janice Dent had disappeared more than nine years ago, when Jazz was eight, and hadn’t been seen since. The world knew she was dead; the courts had declared her dead after the requisite seven-year waiting period. Jazz just hadn’t been able to bring himself to take the final step.

A funeral.

As the only child of the world’s most notorious serial killer, he’d grown up with an intimate understanding of the mechanisms and the causes of death. But, strangely enough, he’d never attended a funeral until now.

This was poetic justice, in a way: Many of his father’s victims had had funerals without bodies, too. They would have had more mourners, of course. For Janice Dent, wife of Billy, there were fewer than a dozen people. The press, fortunately, was held back at the cemetery gate.

No one would cry for Janice Dent. Not today. Her parents were long dead, and she’d been an only child. She had no friends left in Lobo’s Nod that Jazz knew of, at least no one who had come forth when the funeral had been announced. Jazz figured this was fitting; she had vanished alone, and now she would be buried alone.

Next to him, his girlfriend, Connie, squeezed his hand tightly. On the other side of him stood G. William Tanner, the sheriff of Lobo’s Nod and the man who had brought Billy Dent to justice more than four years ago. He was the closest thing Jazz had to a father figure, an irony that Billy would probably have laughed at. That was just Billy’s sense of humor.

“Dear Lord,” the priest said, “we ask that you continue to look over our beloved sister Janice in your kingdom. She has been gone from us for a while, O Lord, and we know you have watched over her in that time. Now we ask you to watch over us, as well, as we grieve for her.”

Jazz found himself in the strange position of wanting this to be over as quickly as possible, for the priest to wrap things up and let them all go. Ever since Lobo’s Nod’s assault by the Impressionist—a Billy Dent wannabe—and then Billy’s escape from prison into the wide world a couple of months ago, Jazz had felt a burning need to close off as much of his past as possible. He knew the future portended a brutal reckoning (Billy had been quiet, but that wouldn’t last), so he wanted his past put to rest. Finally acknowledging his mother’s death was the biggest step he’d taken so far.

Jazz hadn’t cared which faith buried his mother; Father McKane at the local church had been the most willing to perform the service, so Jazz had gone Catholic. Now, as the priest droned on and on, Jazz wondered if he should have held out for a less verbose brand of religion. He sighed and gripped Connie’s hand and stared straight ahead at the casket. It contained a bunch of brand-new stuffed animals, similar to the ones Jazz remembered his mother buying him as a child. It also contained a batch of lemon-frosted cupcakes Jazz had baked. That was his strongest memory of his mother—the lemon-frosted cupcakes she used to bake. He could have just had a service and a stone, but he’d wanted the whole experience, the totality of the funeral ritual. He wanted to witness the literal expression of burying his past.

Sentimental? Probably. And what of it? Bury it all. Bury the memories and the sentiment and move on.

Arrayed around the cemetery, he knew, were more than a dozen police officers and federal agents. Once the authorities had gotten wind of Jazz’s plan to hold a funeral service for his mother, they had insisted on staking it out, certain (or maybe just hopeful) that Billy wouldn’t be able to resist this opportunity to emerge from hiding. It was a waste of time, Jazz had told them, his insistence as useless as a sledgehammer against a tidal wave.

Billy would never reveal himself for something as prosaic and predictable as a funeral. He had occasionally attended the funerals of his victims, but that was before cable news had splashed his face on HD screens all around the world. “Butcher Billy” was too smart to show that famous face here, of all places.

“We’re going to make a go of it, anyway,” an FBI agent had told Jazz, who had shrugged and said, “You want to waste tax dollars, I guess that’s your prerogative.”

Finally the priest finished up. He asked if anyone would like to say anything at the grave, looking pointedly at Jazz. But Jazz had nothing to say. Nothing to say in public, at least. He’d come to terms with his mother’s death years ago. There was nothing left to say.

To his surprise, though, the priest nodded and pointed just over Jazz’s shoulder. Jazz and Connie both turned—he caught the shock of her expression, too—and watched as Howie Gersten, Jazz’s best friend, threaded carefully between G. William and Jazz, studiously avoiding meeting Jazz’s eyes. Dressed in a black suit with a somber olive tie, six foot seven at the age of seventeen, Howie looked like a white-boy version of the images Jazz had seen of Baron Samedi, the skeletal voodoo god of the dead. The suit jacket was slightly too short for Howie’s ridiculously long limbs, and a good two inches of white shirt cuff and pale wrist jutted out.

“My name is Howie Gersten,” Howie said once he’d gotten to the gravestone. Jazz almost burst out laughing. Everyone here knew who Howie was already. “I didn’t know Mrs. Dent. But I just really feel like when you bury someone, when you say good-bye, that someone should say something. And I figure that’s my job as Jazz’s best friend.” Howie cleared his throat and glanced at Jazz for the first time. “Don’t be pissed, dude,” he stage-whispered.

A ripple of laughter washed over the attendees. Connie shook her head. “That boy…”

“Anyway,” Howie went on, “here’s the thing: When I was a kid, I used to get pushed around a lot. I’m a hemophiliac, so I have to be careful all the time, and when you combine that with being a gangly string bean, it’s like you’re just asking for trouble, you know? And I wish I could tell you that Mrs. Dent was nice to me and used to say kind and encouraging things to me when I was going through all of that, but like I said, I didn’t know her. By the time I met Jazz, she was already, y’know, not around.

“But here’s the thing. Here’s the thing. And I think it’s an obvious thing, but someone needs to say it. We all know that, uh, Jazz’s dad wasn’t, isn’t, exactly a great role model. But there I was one day when I was like ten or something and these kids were having a fine old time poking bruises into my arms. And Jazz came along. He was smaller than them and outnumbered, and let’s face it—I wasn’t going to be much help—”

Another ripple of laughter.

“But Jazz just waded into those douchebags—um, sorry, Father. He just waded into them and kicked their, um, rears, which I know isn’t terribly Christian or anything, but I’ll tell you, it looked pretty good from where I was standing. And I guess the thing is—the obvious thing that I mentioned before is—that I never met Mrs. Dent, but I know she must have been a good person because I’m pretty sure Billy Dent didn’t raise Jazz to rescue helpless hemophiliacs from bullies. And that’s all I have to say. I’ll miss you, Mrs. Dent, even though I never met you. I wish I had.” He started to walk back to the group of mourners, then stopped and said, “Um, God bless you and amen and stuff,” before hustling back to his spot.