"Jasper, m'boy." Billy's voice crowed through the disposable cell phone Jazz had found on his bedside table the morning before.
He brought the phone away from his face, cursing under his breath at the sound of his father's voice. Then, he changed his demeaner until he was calm, collected, and ready to do a battle of wits with the man who had raised him.
"Billy. Always good to hear from you." Quickly, Jazz stepped out of his room and made for the front door, internally praying that his grandmother was asleep.
He was lucky and slid out of the house silently, locking the door behind him.
"Aww, are we really moving away from calling me Daddy?"
"I never called you Daddy." Jazz retaliated, then mentally cursed again. He was playing right into Billy's hands. He decided to change tactics. "Sorry, Dad. What did you want?"
"That's better; anyway, I called you up for a reason." Billy's voice was smooth, no trace of any deceit or pretense, but Jasper was smart enough to know that just because he couldn't hear it, it didn't meant there wasn't any there.
"You don't say?" Jazz struggled to keep his voice light; he was good, but Billy would always be a master manipulator. "Want to get something off your chest? Got a couple more murders you'd like to confess to?"
Jogging now, Jasped moved around the bend in the road near the police station. G. Williams would want to hear whatever Billy had to say.
He laughed, the sound coming over distorted on the phone.
"Actually, that's what we need to talk about." Billy chortled. "You have an assualt and battery that you need to learn about."
Jasper paused, his hand on the handle for the heavy metal door of the police station. Normally, he would just go straight in and- no, that was a lie. Normally, he wouldn't even think about telling G. Williams about a phone call from his dad, but something was up this time. Billy was hinting at something. Something big.
"I have to learn about an assualt and battery. That I've done?"
Most people wouldn't need to be told what they had or hadn't done in their life, but Jasper had some unfortunate – or fortunate, depending on how you look at it – lapses in memory from his childhood.
"That's right, m'boy."
Jazz could practically hear Billy leering through the phone, but he kept up his pretense of apathy.
"Who, exactly, did I assualt?"
"Whom, acutally. You know her. She actually kind of looked like you."
Jasper immediately processed the information. It was obvious that Billy was talking about Jasper's mother, the one that had gone missing eight years ago. He had said looked – past tense, as in she didn't look like him anymore. As in she was probably dead.
"I would never have hurt her." Jazz said instinctively, and threw open the police station doors. Rushing past Lana, he let himself in to G. William's office and put a finger to his lips when the older man moved to speak.
"You did." Billy said. He didn't sound like he cared if Jazz believed him or not, and he most likely didn't. "You cut her up with this pretty little butterfly knife while I had her tied down. Then you got bored and went to watch Barney while I cleaned up your mess."
Anger rushed through his veins, hot and violent. Jazz's hand tightened on the phone, and G. Williams was the only reason he didn't throw it across the room.
"Is she dead?" He didn't like the way his voice sounded, monontone and flat.
"I don't know. Is she?"
Even G. Williams couldn't hold him back now. Jasper ripped the phone away from his ear and hurled it at the furthest wall, pleased when it shattered.
"Jasper…" G. Williams didn't seem to know what to say, but it didn't matter. Jazz only had a few seconds before he broke, and he wanted to be alone when that happened.
"G. Williams, I'll talk to you about it later." He promised, then sprinted out of the office, out of the building, and into the woods nearby.
Jazz ran until he was out of breath, and sunk into a tree, his face sliding into his hands. There were no tears; Jasper didn't cry. He couldn't even cry for his mother. The one who's death he was responsible for.
Jasper knew that what Billy had said was true, to some extent. He remembered the way he had hurt her, but he also remembered how Billy had put the knife in his hand and told him too, saying that if he didn't, what happened to Rusty would happen to him. So he did.
Screaming in pure rage, Jasper ripped into the bark of the tree he had been leaning against tearing it off and throwing it, as if it would somehow help the memories that he had repressed for years, until he had practically begged Billy to dig them back up.
