And then they lowered the casket into the ground. The stone said JANICE DENT, MOTHER. No dates, because Jazz couldn’t be sure exactly when Billy had killed her.

He took the small spade from the priest and shoveled some dirt into the grave. It rattled.

G. William and Connie and Howie followed suit. Then they backed away so that the cemetery workers could do the real shoveling.

Jazz became aware that he was staring at the shovels as they heaved dirt on top of the casket that did not hold his mother’s body, snapping out of it only when Connie poked him to get his attention. She held a tissue out for him.

“What’s this for?” he asked, taking it automatically.

“Your eyes,” she said, and Jazz realized that—much to his surprise—he was crying.

CHAPTER 5

Jazz’s grandmother was waiting for him when he got home, sitting on the porch in a rocking chair, a blanket thrown over her legs. From all appearances, she looked like just another old lady enjoying a crisp day in January.

“They’re here,” she whispered to Jazz as he mounted the front steps. “They’ve come for your daddy.”

Jazz wasn’t sure who she meant when she said “your daddy.” Gramma was delusional enough that she sometimes thought Jazz was Billy, meaning that she could think “they” had come for Jazz’s long-dead grandfather. Or she could be lucid enough to think that the “they” in question—actually Deputy Michael Erickson, who had volunteered to keep an eye on Gramma during the funeral—were here for Billy himself. Which meant that Gramma’s thinking was roughly on par with the FBI’s these days. Jazz wasn’t sure if that was funny or sad.

He could see Erickson peering out at them from the corner of a window. Gramma had hated Mom, so there was no way in the world Jazz was going to have her at the funeral. And even if Gramma had loved Janice, when given the choice between inviting his black girlfriend or his insane, racist grandmother, Jazz would choose Connie every time.

“They sent spies,” Gramma went on, her voice a hush, “and they look like one man, but they can split into two, then four, and so on. I’ve seen it before. During the war. It’s a Communist trick and they taught it to the Democrats so that they could take our guns. I would have fought them off, but they already made the shotgun disappear.”

No, Jazz had made the shotgun disappear. It was Grampa’s old hunting piece, and Jazz had plugged both barrels and removed the firing pins so that Gramma couldn’t really hurt anyone with it. But when he was going to be gone for a long stretch—like today—he made sure to hide it from her. It was nice to know that she was blaming Washington politicians and not him.

Years of dealing with Gramma’s progressively deteriorating mental state had rendered Jazz pretty much impervious to shock. “So, there’s a commie spy in the house looking for Dad, huh?” he said. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear myself say. “Don’t worry. I’m gonna go in there and run him out. He won’t dare come back by the time I’m done with him.” He brandished the ceremonial spade the priest had given him at the end of the service as though it were a samurai sword.

Gramma’s eyes widened, and she clapped her hands. “Gut him!” she yelled. “Gut him like that raccoon you gutted on Fourth of July that one year!” And she made vicious stabbing and hacking motions as Jazz went inside.

“How’s it going?” he asked Erickson. “Other than the usual.”

Erickson shrugged. “She started bugging out about an hour ago. I just decided to go with it. As long as I could keep an eye on her from in here, I figured it was better just to let her sit outside.”

“Good call. She thinks you’re some kind of Communist clone, by the way.”

Erickson laughed. “That explains a lot.”

“Anyway, I’d consider it a big personal favor if you could sort of run like hell on your way out of here.”

“For you? Anything.”

Jazz felt a pang of guilt. Erickson was a good cop, relatively new to the tiny town of Lobo’s Nod, transferring in right as the Impressionist had begun his string of Billy Dent–inspired murders. To his eternal shame, Jazz had suspected Erickson in the crimes and hadn’t been shy about letting the sheriff know it. After that, he figured he was the one who owed Erickson, but the deputy didn’t see it that way. As far as Erickson was concerned, Jazz’s deducing and rescuing the Impressionist’s next victim made him a hero.

“Thanks again for watching her.”

“Take care of yourself, Jasper.” Erickson opened the door and then burst through as if chased by demons, screaming in a hilariously high voice all the way to his squad car.

Gramma minced into the house, peering around. “He didn’t leave any little baby spiders, did he? They’re tiny mind-controllers, and they crawl into your ears while you’re asleep and rewire your brain until you don’t know who you are anymore.”

Ah, so that’s what had happened to Gramma…. Jazz sighed. She was getting worse. He’d always known she was getting worse, but somehow he’d convinced himself that her madness was manageable and harmless. Once upon a time not long ago, a social worker named Melissa Hoover had moved heaven and earth to get Jazz removed from Gramma’s house to a foster home. Jazz had resisted, and then Billy—after his escape from prison—had killed Melissa before she could submit her report, putting an end to that particular problem.

For now.

The fact of the matter was that soon enough Social Services would get around to assigning another caseworker to Jazz. He still had six months until his eighteenth birthday—they could still yank him from Gramma’s house. And Jazz was beginning to think that maybe Melissa had been right after all. Maybe he needed to be out of this environment. Away from his grandmother. Away from Lobo’s Nod, even. Away from all the memories of his childhood and of Billy.

Oh, who was he kidding? Billy was out there in the world somewhere. As long as Billy was free, Jazz could never escape his past. His father would, he knew, find him and contact him. Somehow. Some way. No matter how many cops and FBI agents were looking for him and surveilling Jazz, Billy would find a way.

Jazz settled Gramma in the parlor in front of the TV. The first channel he happened to see was local news. Doug Weathers—sleazebag reporter par excellence—was speaking to the camera: “—funeral of Janice Dent, wife of the notorious William Cornelius Dent, also known as the Artist, Green Jack, Hand-in-Glove, and many other aliases. The press was not invited, but we can tell you that the service was brief and sparsely attended—”

Jazz quickly flipped over to a shopping channel. Gramma found them hilarious.

In the kitchen, he started washing the dishes Gramma had used while he was gone. Erickson had stacked them neatly in the sink for him, a far cry from Gramma’s latest habit of sticking them in the broiler. As he soaped and sponged them, he gazed out the kitchen window at the backyard.

And the birdbath.

You know that old birdbath my momma’s got in her backyard?

Billy. In the visitation room at Wammaket State Penitentiary.

She’s got it oriented to a western exposure. See? It’s not gettin’ the morning light, and that’s what them birds want. It needs to be moved to the opposite edge of the lawn.

They’d argued. Jazz had felt like an idiot, arguing with his sociopathic mass-murdering father about a birdbath….

Just move the damn thing. Go when she’s asleep and just move it. You know, where that big ol’ sycamore sits.