I Hunt Killers

This chapter switches back to the perspective of the Impressionist. Tonight was the night he had intended on killing Brenda Quimby, but when he arrives at her home, the place is surrounded with police officers. The Impressionist realizes that Jazz must have tipped them off, which infuriates him.

Cutting away from Brenda Quimby’s home, the scene picks up just in front of Jazz’s house. The Impressionist strides calmly up the driveway, where he waves cheerfully to the officer there to protect the Dent home: “See? Nothing to worry about there. Why, if I were a serial killer, I would hardly call attention to myself with a wave, would I?” (328). The Impressionist moves closer to the officer, until he is just within reach; at which point, the Impressionist shoots the officer dead with a silenced pistol from his pocket. The Impressionist then walks up to Jazz’s front door.

Returning to Jazz’s perspective, he hears the front door bell ring. He races down the stairs shouting, “Hang on!”(329) as the rings get more insistent. When he opens the front door, Jazz sees Jeff Fulton.

Back to the Impressionist’s perspective (now confirmed to be Jeff Fulton), he takes in the foyer, excited that he is once again in the house where his idol Billy Dent grew up. Jazz offers the Impressionist coffee, thinking that it is Jeff Fulton looking for closure. When Jazz turns his back to the coffee maker, the Impressionist reaches into his pocket and produces a pistol, which he bashes over the back of Jazz’s neck, rendering him unconscious. 

Jazz regains consciousness with his head throbbing, still in his bedroom. Suddenly growing more aware of his surroundings, he notices that he is bound to a chair in his room: “His limbs, numb until this moment, had come back online and reported that he was shackled. And—oh, what a pleasant surprise—gagged” (332). The Impressionist sits in front of Jazz, leaning forward, asking if Jazz can understand him. He tells Jazz not to worry, the injection was not his usual drain cleaner, just a mild sedative. Jazz finds his voice and demands to know what the Impressionist wants.

Jazz asks if the Impressionist is doing this, committing these killings, as vengeance for his daughter. The Impressionist laughs and clarifies that he is not actually Jeff Fulton. The reason he kills is because he idolizes Billy Dent, and, by extension, he puts Jazz on a pedestal, as well. Addressing Jazz, the Impressionist yells: “You’ve forsaken your birthright. I’ve decided to make sure you accept it, Jasper Francis Dent. I’m here to help you learn the ways of blood and bone” (335). The Impressionist takes a knife and forces it into Jazz’s hands. He then positions Jazz so that he is aimed directly at Gramma Dent, who is passed out and lying on Jazz’s bed. The Impressionist tells Jazz that he is going to help him fulfill his destiny, by helping him commit his first kill.

Just as the Impressionist is about to force Jazz’s knife deep into Gramma Dent’s heart, Howie and Connie burst through the door: “Out of the corner of his eye, Jazz saw Connie and Howie spill into the room. Howie, unbelievably, wielded a shotgun, looking like the world’s most improbable action hero” (344). With the Impressionist distracted, Jazz bites hard into his wrist, blood spilling everywhere.

Police soon arrive on the scene. The Impressionist is now shackled to the same chair that just held Jazz and, as police ready the Impressionist to go to the station, Jazz gets a call from G. William. The sheriff delivers the news that, just a couple of hours before, Jazz’s dad broke out of prison.

Billy commits murder immediately after getting out of prison. His victim is Melissa Hoover, the social worker who threatened to put Jazz into foster care. The crime scene at Melissa’s apartment is particularly brutal: “Billy’s appetites had gone unsated after his arrest and during his years in prison; Melissa Hoover had been the banquet he’d ravaged on first sight” (348). At the scene, G. William tells Jazz that it seems as though someone was communicating with Billy from outside prison. Jazz does not tell G. William, but he suspects that the birdbath has something to do with the code that allowed Billy to escape prison. Jazz suspects Billy has many admirers that helped him escape: “He thought of the protestors outside Wammaket. Thought of a nationwide movement. How many true believers were there? How many people would help his father?” (352).

Before Jazz leaves the crime scene, G. William gives Jazz a note from Billy that was found addressed to him in Melissa’s apartment. The note says that Billy was so glad to see him at Wammaket, and that he has grown into such a “strong and powerful young man” (353). The note ends with a post script that terrifies Jazz: “P.S. Maybe one of these days we’ll get together and talk about what you did to your mother” (353).

Jazz decides he must see the Impressionist in prison. G. William gives Jazz just five minutes alone with the Impressionist in the Lobo’s Nod Municipal Police Building. Without saying anything at all, the Impressionist tells Jaz that he will not help him: “I’ll tell you nothing. Nothing but this: Embrace your destiny. I did, and I have no regrets. Even though I ended up here” (357). Jazz tells him to cut it out with the “faux psychological crap” (357) and asks about the letter that the Impressionist carries in his pocket. Jazz then produces a photocopy of the note, which reads: “Under no circumstances are you to go near the Dent boy. Leave him alone. You are not to engage him. Jasper Dent is off-limits” (358). Jazz tells the Impressionist that, based on the handwriting, he can tell that it is not his father’s handwriting. Jazz wonders who then wrote the note. He again asks who the Impressionist is working with. Knowing that the Impressionist will lie, Jazz takes another approach and says to him:

Listen closely. If you can contact my father, I want you to send him a message for me. I want you to tell him that I’m on to him. That I’m hunting him. Tell him that I’m using every trick he ever taught me, that I won’t rest until I’ve run him to the ground. And tell him this, too: He one said that I was already a killer, I just hadn’t killed anyone yet. Well, tell him that once I catch him…I will” (359).

It is one week after Billy escapes from prison, and the scene opens at a tattoo parlor, where Jazz is being tattooed: “A total of twelve letters, in two-inch highblack Gothic script, inked along the broad V of his clavicle. The letters were flipped, but when Jazz looked in the mirror, he could read them just fine: I Hunt Killers” (360).

The Epilogue takes place five weeks after Jazz gets his tattoo, just before Thanksgiving. It is the inaugural performance of The Crucible, with Jazz in the role of Reverend Hale. As a trench-coated figure looks onto the performance, the book concludes with Jazz reciting the lines: “There is blood on my head! Can you not see the blood on my head!” (361).