I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga Page A

sucked,” Connie said.
    Jazz checked the rearview mirror as they pulled out of the school parking lot; Jeff Fulton stood in the same spot, watching them go. Then, as they turned onto the main road, he shuffled away with infinite slowness until he disappeared from Jazz’s mirror.

    Jazz dropped Connie off at her house. “Do you want to come in?” she asked. He saw that her father was already home, his big SUV stationed in the driveway like a blockade.
    “No, that’s all right.” Connie’s dad hated Jazz. The race stuff that didn’t matter to Jazz and Connie mattered a lot to Connie’s dad. Jazz could reel off the arguments, though he could never understand them. There’s a history of white men doing what they want with black women in this country , Connie’s dad had said to him once, barely controlling a rage that wanted to come to the surface. Go read about Thomas Jefferson. Read about what white men used to do to black women in America.
    Jazz knew all about that. I’m not one of those guys , he wanted to say. I’m not a bad person. That was a long time ago.
    But who was he to talk about the past like that? Or to claim to be a good person?
    Why didn’t you stop him? the boy had cried.
    Should have taken that knife from the sink and cut him , should have cut Billy. That’s what the world wanted.
    —good boy, good boy—
    In the Jeep now, Connie mistook Jazz’s silence for worry about her father. She simply shrugged when she saw him looking at the SUV. “He won’t do anything stupid. You can come in.”
    “I just need to think,” he told her. “I’m a little shaken up.”
    She kissed him gently on the lips, then leaned in closer for a more urgent kiss. For a moment, he couldn’t help thinking of what else had happened in this Jeep. With Billy pleading guilty to so many crimes, most of the seized evidence had been returned, and Jazz couldn’t afford a new car. But how many crimes had Billy planned from this seat? How many victims had he stalked behind this wheel?
    But then he let himself go and surrendered to the kiss, to the soft insistence of Connie’s plush lips, to the warmth of her tongue, to the familiar tang of her hair. When they separated, she arched an eyebrow and asked in a passable Jamaican accent, “Are you sure you don’t want to be comin’ in, Reverend Hale?”
    Jazz laughed. “Thanks, Tituba, but I have to go catch, define, and calculate the invisible world.”
    They kissed again—a quick peck this time—and Connie got out of the Jeep, but not before saying, “Don’t do anything stupid again, okay?”
    Last night’s trip to the morgue flashed through him in an instant.
    “Why would I do anything stupid?” he asked.
    Which made her happy. But it wasn’t an agreement, and it also wasn’t a lie.

CHAPTER 8
    On bad days, Jazz wondered if he had figuratively taken his father’s place, just as he’d literally taken Billy’s place behind the wheel of the Jeep. Was that his destiny? Billy Dent made no secrets of his plans for Jazz: You’ll be the greatest ever, Jasper. They’ll never catch you. You’ll be the new boogeyman parents use to scare their kids into behaving. You’ll make everyone forget Speck and Dahmer and even Jack the Goddamn Ripper. My boy. My boy.
    But today wasn’t a bad day. Play practice had gone well; Connie had forgiven him for getting caught breaking into the morgue. A part of him wished he could forget about tracking down whoever had killed Jane Doe. Just be a normal guy. Look to the future, not the past. Maybe focus on the play. On school. On being a better friend to Howie and a better boyfriend to Connie. Prove once and for all to her dad that he was a good fit for his daughter, and prove to the world that he wasn’t going to grow up to be the new Billy.
    That would be nice.
    Yeah, right. And Howie might be starting center for the Pistons next season.
    As his grandmother’s house came into view on the left, a familiar sight greeted him: a