What You Don't Know

by JoAnn Chaney

  “I remember that happening once or twice. On hot days.”

  “Okay.”

  “We always had a rodent problem,” Gloria said. “Jacky would set out poison, and the mice would crawl up in the walls and die.”

  The young woman frowned, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She was young, very pretty. By the look of her flat stomach she didn’t have any children; she might not have been married. Gloria didn’t ask—it would’ve been rude.

  “Mice?”

  “Yes. Having that pond out back attracted all kinds of pests.”

  “Did your husband tell you that? About the mice, I mean?”

  Gloria sat back in her chair, a hideous shiny black leather thing with silver buttons punched up the arms, a monster that was supposed to be southwestern-style but was only ugly. It struck her that this girl, who was drinking her coffee and taking polite bites of her cookies, didn’t believe that Jacky was innocent at all, and probably thought she was a liar too.

  “Yes. That’s what Jacky told me.”

  “And you believed him?”

  Gloria bit down on the inside of her cheek, hard enough that it would be tender and swollen all the next day, and sores would form on the broken skin, causing her misery for a week.

  “Why wouldn’t I believe him?”

  “Your husband confessed to murdering thirty-one people, Mrs. Seever, right in your own home,” the reporter said. “I find it difficult to believe you had no idea what was going on.”

  “The police cleared me as a suspect, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Not at all.”

  Gloria stared at her.

  “You look familiar,” she said. “Have we met before?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Jacky would’ve thought you were pretty,” Gloria said. “He would’ve been interested in getting to know you better.”

  The reporter left in a hurry after that.

  Inside is cool and quiet, with the musty smell that always happens when a house is shut up for too long. She’s already taken everything she wants out of the house, but she still wanted to come back, to say goodbye. She was happy in this house.

  Gloria goes upstairs, slowly, because her knees have begun to ache some in the last few months, and turns into the master bedroom, second door on the left. Here is their big bed with the cherrywood headboard, and the filigree metal lamps she picked up from an antique dealer. She’d read that men naturally sleep on the side of the bed closer to the door, so they’d be able to protect their spouse, but she’d always slept in that spot. She wonders what that says about their marriage.

  She gets down on her knees and flips back the edge of the duvet so she can see under the bed. It’s not a comfortable position. The shag is rough on her cheek, and from this close she sees little black smudges caught in the carpet fibers. Dirt, or makeup. Jacky used to always complain when she’d sharpen her eyeliners, and the shavings would end up on the carpet, because they’d never come out, not even after a good scrubbing.

  There’s nothing under the bed except a few dust bunnies, a scattering of bobby pins, and a book. The book has been pushed way back, and she has to strain to reach it, her fingers scraping fruitlessly against the spine before she finally manages to hook it. It’s a book for pregnant women, with advice on morning sickness and colic, breastfeeding and choosing the right brand of diapers. She can’t remember buying it, although she must’ve, because no one else knew that they’d spent most of their marriage trying for a baby. Most everyone assumed that they were one of those couples who’d decided to pass on kids, that they’d forever play the doting aunt and uncle to everyone else’s children and spend all their free time and money on travel and good wine. But everyone was wrong; Gloria had wanted children for so long and then it was too late, her insides had dried up and shriveled from disuse, and nothing could be done. Although now, she thinks, she’s glad there was never a baby.

  She flips through the book, looks at the pages full of words and sketches of a vulva, which looks more like a strawberry cut in half than anything that might be hiding between a woman’s legs. It’s warm in the house, stuffy, and she lies down, rests her head on the soft length of her upper arm. The floor is hard, but she still starts to doze, because it’s so warm and she’s tired and this is her home, this will always be her home. She was nearly asleep when something under the bed moved, and when her eyes flew open there’s a young woman staring at her, only inches away. A woman with a heart-shaped face and mousy-brown hair, wearing a blue dress printed with sprigs of white flowers. It’s Beth Howard, Gloria knows it. Beth Howard, the girl Jacky kept under the bed, and she’d be pretty except she’s dead; her face has a shrunken look about it, like a softening, wrinkled apple left for too long in a dark cabinet. But her eyes are alive, mad and glittering, two tarnished marbles pushed deep into her white face.

  “He took everything from me,” the girl hisses, and Gloria sits up with a jerk, the muscle in her right shoulder wrenching in pain. She scoots away from the bed, her hands scrabbling for purchase against the carpet, until she backs into the armchair she always kept in the corner. From the chair she can see that there’s nothing under the bed, nothing at all but certainly not a dead girl. It was a trick of her imagination.

  Gloria leans against the armchair wearily, pulls her legs up to her chest and settles her forehead against her knees. She looks like a girl when she sits like this, young and vulnerable, the girl she used to be. The girl hiding behind the couch while her father held a gun in her mother’s face.

  She has her eyes closed and is breathing deeply, trying to get herself under control. In through the nose, out through the mouth, like the gym teacher used to tell them back in high school. And then, she smells it. What others had sometimes complained about but she never noticed. The smell of rot, the cloying, wet scent of flesh boiling with maggots.

  It’s my imagination, she thinks. It’s all in my head. I don’t smell anything.

  She waits for it to pass, bundling her hands into fists and pressing them against her eyes. It makes her think of a trip to the zoo when she was much younger, standing inside the moist heat of the monkey house and feeling the bile rising in her throat before that horrible smell finally faded into the background, still there but tolerable, and she thinks this will be the same, but it only seems to get stronger; it might be because of the heat, the big brick house would always get so hot during the summer unless the AC was pumping away, but it’s a moot point, because she can’t take it any longer. She stumbles out of her bedroom and down the stairs, reaching desperately for the front door, barely able to keep from vomiting, or from screaming.

  HOSKINS

  May 18, 2009

  Carrie Simms, the girl who escaped Seever, doesn’t want to testify at the trial. She’s painfully thin and small, with a face like a mouse. She’s normally easy, agreeable to most anything, but not on this.

  “I can’t be in the same room with that guy,” she says. Her hair has grown out in the last few months, and she wears it hanging in her face, strands of it poking into her mouth so she seems to be gnawing on it, making her seem younger than she is, and shy. “Every time I see that bastard on TV I feel like passing out.”

  Simms had wandered into the station the third week of December, when the holiday decorations had already been up for long enough that Hoskins was sick of looking at them. He’d spent Thanksgiving watching Seever’s friends and family through the big front window, passing baskets of dinner rolls and slices of turkey breast around the dining-room table. They were having a good time in there, warm and laughing, and it was those situations that made Hoskins hate his job, because he should’ve been doing the same thing, he should have a wife and kids but instead he had nothing, his ex-wife had left because he was always so wrapped up in his work, he was never around. When he finally called it a day he stopped by his father’s house, but the old man was asleep in front of the television, kicked back in his La-Z-Boy with a can of beer
nestled between the armrest and his thigh. And when Joe woke up, he didn’t seem to recognize Hoskins at first; he was nervous and a little scared, and that depressed Hoskins even more, because that was his life, sitting in front of a suspect’s house alone and then being forgotten by his own father. Even Loren had someplace to go for the holiday, although he wouldn’t tell Hoskins where.

  He expected it to be the same for Christmas. More watching Seever, alone, while everyone else was opening presents or drinking nog, and he was thinking about this as he looked at a sprig of mistletoe someone had stapled to the ceiling near his desk. He was just about to get up on his chair and rip it down when Simms came in, wanting to tell someone her story. He didn’t believe her. Not at first. Simms was a high-school dropout who’d fallen into drugs, mostly meth, and she’d been arrested for prostitution a few times, once for assault. She’d called police eight times in 2005, saying she’d been robbed, trying to file claims for TVs and stereos and expensive things she’d never owned. She was nineteen but looked forty-five, she was a junkie who needed a fix, and she said she’d ended up with Seever because she was more than willing to suck dick for cash, and that’s what she’d offered him. She’d climbed willingly enough into Seever’s BMW, he’d given her shots of tequila, a hit of coke, and a handful of pills, and then she’d blacked out. When she woke up she was naked and hog-tied, and the guy who’d been so friendly at the bar was suddenly a different person, and he had a big bag of all kinds of things, things you can’t buy in a store but only through catalogs that arrive in the mail wrapped in heavy black plastic so the mailman can’t see what kind of kinky shit you’re into. Seever had big plans, he was practically bouncing on his tippy-toes with excitement, like a kid at Christmas. It had gone on for days before Simms was able to escape, when the twine around her wrists was loose—partly because Seever was lazy and hadn’t double-checked his knots, but mostly because Simms was so damn skinny. She’d managed to wiggle free from the ropes and she’d run, not paying attention to where she was going or where she’d been, or even to the fact that she was only wearing panties and a ripped undershirt.

  “Why didn’t you come to us with this right away?” Hoskins had asked. “You said it happened—four months ago? Beginning of August? Why’d you wait so long?”

  “I don’t know,” Simms said. A few minutes into their conversation she’d asked for blank paper and a highlighter, and she’d sat there, still talking, running the marker over the white sheet until it was completely yellow, and then she’d started on the next one. The pinkie finger on her right hand was gone, only a badly healed stump was left; she said Seever had cut it off, although she couldn’t remember him doing it, she’d been unconscious when it happened, woke up and it was gone. They didn’t believe this, not at first; it seemed like another lie, another fantasy. Simms was missing teeth and had the scabby skin of a meth-head, she had track marks all up and down her arms—on anyone else, a missing finger would’ve been startling, but on Simms it was barely worth noticing. Hoskins didn’t believe her story about Seever cutting off her finger until he saw the other victims being hauled out from under the house, their hands mutilated, the stumps sometimes still weeping with pus and blood and rot. “It’s not like I want to advertise that some dude spent two days jamming a dildo up my ass and talking about the hole he’s digging in the crawl space for me.”

  He didn’t believe Simms at first, mostly because she was the girl-who-cried-wolf and had called the cops so many times before. Simms was more comfortable with lies than she was with the truth; a lot of people were that way these days. They wanted to be involved but not too much, they didn’t want to rock the boat, but still wanted justice. That was why the police station got so many anonymous tips. Everyone wanted a piece of the pie, but no one wanted to put their name on it. But Hoskins wasn’t sure, so he called Loren into the office to hear her story, even though he’d taken a long weekend for the holiday.

  “You called us after it happened, didn’t you?” Loren asked Simms. He was tipped back in his chair, his eyes halfway closed so he seemed half asleep. Hoskins had seen Loren raging and angry in the interview room, and he’d seen him cool and professional, but he’d never seen him like this. Bored, almost. “Did you make that anonymous call so we’d look at Seever?”

  For the first time, Simms laid down the marker. She wrapped the fingers of her right hand around her left wrist, so they looked cuffed together.

  “No.”

  “It had to be you who called.”

  “It wasn’t. I never called.”

  “What made you decide to come in now?” It was the same question Hoskins had asked, and it’d made her angry, sarcastic, but she reacted differently with Loren. It was strange to see, because most people were either scared of him or repulsed, but Simms was more at ease with him in the room.

  “I keep thinking about biting,” she said. Her head was ducked, her chin practically against her chest, so they could barely hear her words. “I want to bite down on soft things and make someone scream.”

  They loaded Simms into Loren’s car and drove her to Seever’s house, parked down the street. Seever was outside, walking down his driveway to grab the Post, and Simms’s breath caught in her throat when she saw him. Hoskins didn’t believe her story until he saw her eyes bugging out of her skull and her fists crammed against her mouth, he thought she might be having a seizure but she was just terrified, trying not to scream.

  They still didn’t have enough to arrest Seever, but it was more than they’d had before. Years before, Jacky Seever had been detained for marijuana possession, and that’s what Hoskins told the judge they were looking for. Judge Vasquez knew the truth, Hoskins could see it written plainly on the man’s face, but they still got their warrant—not to look for murder victims, but to search the premises for marijuana.

  It was all they needed.

  * * *

  It’s over, the boss man says. Chief Jonathan Black, the biggest pain-in-the-ass boss Hoskins has ever had, doesn’t want to hear it. The Seever case is closed.

  It’s a PR thing, Hoskins knows. A budget thing. They’d been searching for Seever for so long, it’s time to move on. There are other murders, other crimes. They can’t keep this up.

  It’s time to hand it over to the people, Black tells them, and it’s true—Seever’s not theirs anymore. He belongs to everyone. Outside the jailhouse where Seever’s awaiting trial there’s a huge crowd, carrying homemade placards and bringing out their folding chairs and cases of bottled water, and it almost seems like a party, except the celebration is more like an orgy of hate, the people smile rabidly, flecks of spittle at the corners of their mouths. Denver has been waiting for the moment when the monster gets pulled out from under the bed and into the light, and that is now; they don’t want to wait for more, they want to see this one brought to justice.

  Hoskins leaves through the jail’s side door, pausing to watch the swelling crowd gathering out front. There’s a girl there, wearing a jacket printed with pink bunnies. She can’t be more than five. She’s holding a sheet of poster board, awkwardly, because it’s too big for her small arms, but she doesn’t put it down, doesn’t want to miss out on the fun. There’s a poem written on the board in straggling black letters, and Hoskins hopes she doesn’t know what it says, hopes that she can’t read yet:

  Roses are red

  Violets are blue

  Good morning Jacky

  We’re gonna

  Kill you!

  * * *

  Jacky Seever was brought to trial on June 1, 2009, charged with thirty-one counts of first-degree murder. Seever wore a brown tweed suit on that first day, as he was wont to do, and a blue silk tie. No photographers were allowed in the courtroom, but an artist in the audience sketched plenty of images that appeared in the Post alongside Samantha Peterson’s articles. In some of the sketches, Seever is stone-faced, with a sheen of sweat on his brow. In others, Seever looks weary, even remorseful—although it is up for debate wheth
er that’s how he actually felt.

  The trial itself lasted less than six weeks, and it was the focus of an entire nation. It had been a long while since the American public had been riveted by one person, and they were hungry for blood and gore, and a good story. They got it. A respected member of the community. Thirty-one victims. Nineteen of those had been identified, and the weeping families would tell anyone who’d listen about their murdered loved ones. Cable news stations had a constant feed on the trial, and every newspaper in the country had sent a journalist to cover the story. Local hotels had no available rooms, and anyone who had nowhere to stay found themselves camping out beside the homeless in Civic Center Park, only to be rooted out by the cops in the middle of the night.

  The prosecution asked for the death penalty.

  It took only three hours for the jury to make their decision. Fast enough that they were done in time to grab an early prime-rib dinner and shrimp cocktails at the Broker. The American public was relieved—a monster had been condemned, and they could finally get back to their regularly scheduled programming.

  Jacky Seever was sentenced to death by lethal injection.

  But a crime like this isn’t only about the killer. There are others to consider. The victims. Their families. Detectives Ralph Loren and Paul Hoskins, who were both given a commendation and a goodish raise for Seever’s arrest. Sammie Peterson, who became something of a local celebrity because of her articles covering the case. Gloria Seever, who had to learn how to live in a world without her husband. Those are just a few, because a crime like this has a wide reach, and you can never know how many are actually affected. That’s how things like this are—a drop in still water that starts a ripple, and it spreads in every direction, going on and on, probably into infinity, never flatlining but starting other ripples that head in completely new directions. Sooner or later, the original ripple will slow, it will lose much of its urgency, but it’s still there.