I Hunt Killers

It is morning in Lobo’s Nod and Jazz, the teenage protagonist of I Hunt Killers, wakes up to the sound of his personal police scanner announcing a “code two-two thirteen” (2), which Jazz recognizes as code that means the police have found a dead body. Jazz lives at his Gramma Dent’s house, and so to leave without her noticing, he shimmies down the drainpipe of his window and runs in the direction of the scene of the crime. There, at a grassy field just outside town, police are already on the scene. Surrounded by yellow police tape lies the unidentified corpse of a young woman.

Jazz scans the field from afar on a perch where he can observe the police activity undetected: “The field was thick with cops—state troopers in their khakis, a cluster of deputies, in their blues, even a crime-scene tech in jeans and a Windbreaker” (3). Jazz is impressed to see that a special investigator has been brought to Lobo’s Nod for this incident: “The town of Lobo’s Nod was too small for its own official crime-scene unit, so usually deputies handled evidence collection at the scene” (3). Jazz inches his way closer to the crime scene, scooting on his belly toward the action so that he can get a better look at the body.