I Hunt Killers

From the field, Jazz heads to his Jeep, which happens to be the vehicle that once to belong to his father. The Jeep is parked far away from the police’s sight along a little-used dirt path.

Driving along, Jazz feels a strong compulsion to go to the police station to see G. William. Jazz not only wants to ask the sheriff for more details about the young woman, he also wants to see her body for himself. On the drive, Jazz also thinks about his dad, Billy Dent, the “most notorious serial killer of the twenty-first century” (12). Jazz thinks about how all serial killers ultimately want to be recognized: “In fact…Maybe Dear Old Dad was right. Maybe all the guys—including Billy Dent—wanted to get caught” (12).

Finally, Jazz arrives to G. William’s office at the police station. G. William and Jazz have an unlikely friendship, considering that G. Williams is the man who caught Billy Dent. Ever since his father’s arrest, Jazz and G. William have remained relatively close ever since. Their friendship has its limits, however: “Two things remained unspoken between them [Jazz and G. William], though understood: G. William didn’t want Jazz to end up like Billy, and Jazz didn’t confide everything” (13). G. William is in the bathroom when Jazz arrives in his office, so Jazz is able to sneak a look at the open case folder on the desk: “Excised digits, Jazz was thinking. Digits, plural. Not singular. He’d only seen one finger in the evidence bag” (14). When G. William emerges from the bathroom, Jazz informs him that he thinks the culprit is a serial killer. G. William thinks that Jazz needs to stop obsessing about serial killers. Jazz explains to G. William that, because he was raised by a serial killer, he has insight into how they think and, as such, he is uniquely qualified to help the sheriff find the person that murdered the young woman in that field.

As Jazz sits before G. William in his office, he thinks back to the night they first met, which was four years ago when Jazz’s father was arrested. Jazz describes the events of that night:

It had, after all, been G. William who’d found Jazz that night four years ago, the night Billy Dent’s reign of terror ended. Jazz had been in the rumpus room (a converted pantry in the back of the house, accessible only through a hidden hatch in the basement), doing as his father had commanded: gathering up the trophies so that they could be smuggled out of the house before the cops searched the place (16).

Jazz insists that G. William allow him to help with the investigation, but G. William refuses: “I’ve been doing this for a while. I don’t need your help” (17). G. William also does not agree that the killer is necessarily a serial killer–it could be another, more mundane kind of homicide, G. William speculates. Still, Jazz implores G. William to believe that it is a serial killer, based on the fact that the murderer took two of the woman’s fingers as trophies. They go back and forth, but G. Williams cannot be swayed. When Jazz continues to press him, G. William subtly implies that, because Jazz was hanging around the crime scene, perhaps it was Jazz who murdered the woman. That Jazz is suspected of being a serial killer is his worst fear: “The words slammed Jazz full in the chest, no less powerful and painful than if G. William had drawn his service revolver and put two slugs into his center of mass” (21). Finally, G. William explodes at Jazz, saying that police work is his job; Jazz’s only job is to “try to be normal” (22), as G. William puts it. Jazz leaves, furious that he is not allowed to help with the investigation. 

Later that evening, Jazz returns to the police station with his best friend, Howie Gersten. Howie has hemophilia, which is a blood disorder that causes people to bruise and/or bleed easily, due to an inability to form blood clots. Jazz and Howie’s friendship began when they were young children, when Jazz defended Howie against a trio of bullies who were poking at Howie’s arms, just to watch the bruises form easily and quickly.

Jazz’s plan is, with Howie’s help, to break into the morgue to view the dead body of the young woman. First, they need a key to the morgue, so Jazz enters the police station and distracts Lana, the receptionist on-duty. While Jazz distracts her (he’s known for being quite charming), Howie rummages through an officer’s desk and covertly creates a wax copy of the morgue key:

Making a duplicate key from a wax impression was an extremely useful skill to have if you were the sort of person who liked invading other people’s homes and killing them. Billy Dent felt it was important for Jazz to know how to do this, and for once Jazz was grateful for Billy’s lessons (27).

Using the was mold, Jazz creates a duplicate copy of the morgue key.

Jazz and Howie unlock the morgue using the forged key and slip inside. Jazz reminds Howie that they need to conduct their business there in a hurry: “We need to move quickly […] There’s a rent-a-cop who comes by every hour” (28). Putting on purple latex gloves and shower caps, Jazz and Howie begin their investigation:

They slipped into a small refrigerated room, where the bodies were stored while awaiting autopsy, reclamation, or burial. Right now, there was a single body in the freezer, zipped into a new body bag (the one on the scene had been bright yellow; this one was black) and resting on a wheeled stretcher (30).

Jazz flips through the manila file of the young woman, who is referred to as Jane Doe:

There were crime scene photos paper-clipped to the inside of the folder. Jazz stared at them. It was almost eerie, the perfect poise of that body. Unnatural. Perfect, save for the missing fingers, and even they had been neatly ‘excised’ (the police report’s antiseptic language) postmortem, with no blood loss. No pain(32).

Howie is uneasy there in the morgue and nervously makes jokes to ease the tension. After reviewing the file, Jazz unzips the body bag to reveal the young woman’s corpse. He sees no indication of trauma: “No bruises, no cuts or contusions, or scrapes. All he could do was a cursory examination, and the report had most of that data already” (33). Jazz’s mission to see the body is for one particular reason: to examine Jane Doe’s right hand with three severed fingers.

According to the file on Jane Doe, the ring and index fingers were not found at the scene of the crime, only the middle finger. Jazz interprets this as intentional on the killer’s part, typical of a serial killer: “Yeah. He literally gave the cops the finger. He’s saying ‘Come and get me. Catch me if you can.’ That’s a serial killer” (35). By examining Jane Doe’s neck, Jazz also determines that the killer confronted Jane Doe before strangling her to death. Confrontation is another sign that they are dealing with a serial killer, as Jazz explains to Howie: “If you’re a newbie, you don’t want a fight on your hands. You sneak up behind them and you knock them out and then you start the nasty stuff. If you confront someone while they’re awake, you’re a badass” (36). Jazz concludes his examination of the body, with the final determination that the body was killed in one location and moved to another. Meanwhile, Howie makes a copy of Jane Doe’s file. Just as they are about to leave, Jazz looks at Howie and sees that his face is completely covered in blood. 

With blood gushing from Howie’s face, Jazz at first thinks that Howie has been injured in an attack. Then he realizes that it is actually just a nosebleed, which Howie is subject to on a regular basis, due to his condition: “Howie had twice-weekly shots to boost his clotting factor, but he was still prone to nosebleeds” (41). With Jazz’s sensibility about how to get away with murder (literally), he begins making calculations immediately about the implications of having Howie’s blood in the morgue: “Blood was the worst bit of evidence to leave behind: Blood is chockablock with DNA, and it’s almost impossible to remove every trace from most surfaces” (42).

Jazz goes to work scrubbing the morgue of Howie’s blood and disposing of any other evidence that they were there: “He forced himself back to the present, drying his hands and tossing the gloves into one of the morgue’s medical-waste containers” (42). Howie apologizes for the mess, but Jazz tells him not to worry about it. While Howie remains in the morgue office with his nose pinched to prevent further bleeding, Jazz gets to work cleaning every trace of Howie’s blood from the freezer. Meanwhile, Jazz and Howie discuss the details of the case: Can the police use fingerprints to determine her identity? Why was she left naked? Was she raped? Jazz suspects that she was not raped, but that she was left naked by the killer just to humiliate her, for the killer to demonstrate his power over her.

Suddenly, Jazz and Howie are interrupted by a voice saying: “Excuse me” (47). It is the deputy from the crime scene, who Jazz recognizes right away. The deputy apprehends both Jazz and Howie, cuffing them in the hallway of the morgue’s adjacent funeral home. G. William soon arrives on the scene, who is furious at Jazz for interfering with his investigation. G. William instructs the deputy—named Deputy Erickson—to take Howie to the police station, just a few doors down, to process his paperwork. G. William interrogates Jazz about what he was doing in the morgue and why he needed to see the body. Jazz admits that he was not sure that the police did a thorough enough job of the investigation; he needed to see Jane Doe for himself, to make sure they did not miss anything. After seeing the body, Jazz is even more convinced it is a serial killer. G. William is still not so sure.

G. William leads Jazz to the police station to collect Howie: “He gestured for Jazz to follow and led him out of the morgue, then up to the police station. Howie sat shackled to a chair next to Deputy Erickson’s desk, looking miserable” (51). G. William lets both of them go without pressing charges for breaking into the morgue, saying that they should let this be a warning—next time, he will not let them off the hook so easy.

It is nearly midnight when Jazz and Howie drive away from the police station in Jazz’s Jeep. Howie notes that their morgue incident was a close call, and he is thankful to finally be on their way home. Jazz, however, suggest they go back to the field where Jane Doe’s body was found; Howie emphatically refuses. Jazz relents and takes Howie home, but for strategic reasons: “Jazz really wanted to go back to the field and see it the way the killer had seen it—in the predawn dark. But he would need Howie’s help again, so it was best to let his friend cool off first” (54). As Jazz drives alone back to his grandmother’s house, he wonders why G. William cannot see what is so obvious to Jazz: “How could G. William not see what Jazz saw? How could he miss it? Were the million petty details of being a cop making G. William ignore what was right in front of him? Or was it something deeper?” (55).

Jazz arrives home to his grandmother’s place. As he brushes his teeth and readies himself for bed, he thinks about who Jane Doe’s killer might be, still committed in his belief that this person is a pathological serial killer: “This was not the killer’s first victim, nor would it be his last. If G. William didn’t see that, then Jazz would have to take matters into his own hands” (55). Jazz flops into his bed and falls asleep. Jazz dreams a recurring nightmare of his: a fragmented scene involving a knife lying in the sink and him cutting through something that feels like “cutting chicken” (56). Jazz jolts away from this nightmare, thankful that at least he woke up before its usual conclusion, though Jazz does not name what exactly that conclusion is. Jazz lies awake, staring at the ceiling. He reaffirms his commitment to finding Jane Doe’s killer: “If he was going to do this—really do this—then he couldn’t make any more stupid mistakes” (58). Tomorrow, he plans to return to the site of where Jane Doe’s body was found, the field just outside the city, to investigate, and make sure G. Williams and his police squad did not miss any important clues. He drifts back to sleep.

Chapter 6 switches perspective from Jazz’s third-person perspective to that of an unknown man who calls himself “The Impressionist.” The Impressionist stands outside of Jazz’s home, wondering what “Billy Dent’s son” dreams about: “Did Jasper Dent dream of bodies and blood, or was he like every other teenage boy, dreaming of girls and cars and the future?” (60). The narrator continues: “The Impressionist—that was the name he’d settled on for himself, picking it from a list of three quite good ones—stood just across the street from Jazz’s house, gazing up at Jazz’s dark bedroom window” (60).

The Impressionist recalls the events from earlier that day—how he followed Jane Doe as the police took her to the morgue. It is implied that the Impressionist killed Jane Doe: “But when you’ve spent such intimate time with someone, when you’ve seen the light in her eyes glimmer and then blink out, heard the soft sign of her last breath…Sometimes it’s hard to let go” (60). The Impressionist recognized Jazz’s Jeep from an episode of 60 Minutes and followed him home from the police station. The identity of the Impressionist is not revealed, but the narration notes that, like Billy Dent, the Impressionist is completely average: “The Impressionist blended in, too. The dead woman in the field hadn’t suspected a thing when he’d first approached her at the Dairy Queen off the highway just outside Lobo’s Nod” (62). From the Dairy Queen, the Impressionist tricked Jane Doe into having her accompany him to his car, by saying that it was broken down and he needed her help calling AAA.

Returning to the present, the Impressionist remembers the “rule” he has been given that no harm should come to Jazz—it is unclear who gave him this rule, and it is equally unclear if the Impressionist plans on following it.