by JoAnn Chaney
So Loren rings every few days to tell Hoskins about his caseload, what’s going on. Most recently, his calls have been about the two women who were pulled out of the reservoir two weeks before. Neither of them had been weighed down, the killer either hadn’t thought of it or hadn’t cared, but they’d been tied together with twine, looped around each of their necks, keeping them tethered, so they’d be found at the same time.
“Those gals used to hang out around Seever’s place before we arrested him,” Loren had said. “You remember those two? Said he’d hired them to weed the garden, to sweep his driveway?”
“No.” But of course Hoskins does, they’d interviewed those girls after Seever’s arrest, along with anyone else who’d been associated with Jacky Seever, and those two, barely out of high school, were walking dynamite. After the interview was over, when Hoskins stood to show them out, the two of them had come right up to him, one on each side, making a Paul Hoskins sandwich, and offered to meet him after work, to let him have them both in bed at the same time. Either one of them—or both—could’ve ended up buried in Seever’s crawl space, but neither seemed overly concerned about it, and he’d thanked them for coming in and showed them out, but he’d been sweating as he did it, trying not to look at their ripe bodies and their puckered mouths. Did he remember them? God.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, you do. These two were snatched off the street, they were kept alive for three days before they were dumped, Paulie. Tortured and raped. The bastard cut off their fingers, just like Seever used to do.”
“Coincidence,” Hoskins said. But he was sweating, shaking a little. That’s how news about Seever made him feel—like a nervous kid. “They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It happens.”
“That suggestion makes you an asshole.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want to hear about Seever, or any of this.”
“You miss it. I know you do.”
“No, I don’t,” he’d said, but was that true? Yes. Sometimes. “Leave me the hell alone.”
It takes ten minutes for him to get to work, to the same building he’s been working in for the last twenty-two years. After Seever’s arrest, he got his own private office that looked out over downtown, one with big windows and a door with a lock. He was in that office for almost five years before he was told to pack it up and pound sand; he was punted off the eighth floor and down to the basement, to an office that’s dry and clean and decent, he’s lucky to still have a job, to still have a paycheck coming in, but it’s still the basement, down where you hide the things you no longer want to see but still want to keep around.
* * *
Everyone thought it would be Ralph Loren who eventually lost his shit, who’d end up being kicked out of the department for doing something stupid, because that was Loren’s jam, that was always what he did. There were rumors that before Loren had joined the Denver PD, when he’d been working undercover out in Miami—or was it Atlanta?—that some big-time drug dealer had pissed him off and Loren had shoved a bong so far up the guy’s ass that it’d ruptured something inside, and that’s how he’d ended up in Colorado, transferred halfway across the country for his own safety.
But it was Hoskins who was put on an unpaid suspension, because he’d hit a woman. No, not just hit her—he’d punched that bitch right in the mouth and wrenched her arm up behind her back until she squealed like a pig, and she’d ended up with a cracked tooth and some bruised ribs and a bald patch where he’d snatched the hair right off her scalp. Hoskins wasn’t the type of guy to hurt a woman—he’d never done it before, and he had no plans to do it again—but he hadn’t been able to not do it, because that woman had killed her daughter; she’d starved the six-year-old and then beat her until her skull was broken open like an uncooked egg. Oh, it was bad, but it was somehow worse because that woman wasn’t a crackhead, she wasn’t a desperate hooker with a drug problem or insane—she was just mean, liked to see her kid in pain. That woman had a nice house with a minivan parked in the driveway and wore fucking cardigans, and they’d found the little girl stuffed in her own bedroom closet, knees drawn up to her forehead and her sunken eyes closed like she was sleeping, and the woman stood there and said she was depressed, that her husband had been stationed overseas by the military and she felt out of control, that she hadn’t known what she was doing, that someone should’ve checked on her, that the girl’s school should’ve noticed something was wrong, that this whole tragedy could’ve been prevented. And Hoskins had lost it, big-time, because he was tired of the excuses, he was worn out from his job, from seeing terrible things and dealing with terrible people, but it was Seever he was thinking about when he hit that woman. It’d been years since Seever, but he still dreamt about him, still caught himself reliving all the conversations they’d had, mostly one-on-one, because Seever had refused to speak with Loren after he’d punched him, wouldn’t breathe a word if Loren was anywhere around. Hoskins was the only one he’d have, and once Seever got going, once he opened his mouth and let it rip, it was almost impossible to shut him up. Seever told Hoskins almost everything he’d done, everything, and Hoskins wishes he could forget it all, wipe his memory clean, because knowing things another person is capable of, well, those things stay with you, they change you.
I liked to hear them scream, Seever had said.
He’d been a different man before Seever. A better man. But Seever had managed to rip that part of him out, with his teeth. Chewed him up and spat him out.
“Why’d you let me do it?” Hoskins asked Loren, later, after the woman had hired a lawyer because he’d used excessive force and demanded Hoskins’s head and he’d been quietly moved out of Homicide and into the basement office, where he was away from prying eyes. He was a department liability; they couldn’t fire him but they couldn’t not fire him, so this was the next best thing. “You didn’t even try to stop me.”
Loren had shrugged. Hoskins had heard that it was Loren who’d pushed for Hoskins’s transfer instead of a termination, and it’d gone through because Loren had influence, he had the higher-ups firmly by the balls, and when he wanted something he usually got it.
“Sometimes the shit gets to be too much,” Loren said, and that’s all he’d ever say about it, but Hoskins thought it was as close as Loren would ever come to telling him that he understood.
SAMMIE
Her phone rings on a Tuesday, although she misses the call, has to let it go to voicemail. Her cell is tucked into her bra, the screen pressed against the side-swell of her breast, and she feels it vibrate when the call comes through. She doesn’t get a chance to look at her phone for the next hour, because it’s not allowed when she’s on the clock, when she’s supposed to be working. Girls have been let go for less than that, and she needs this job.
This is what happens when newspapers become obsolete, when your editor says there’s an economic fluctuation and they can’t afford you anymore but you still have bills to pay—a mortgage and a car payment, groceries, you’re a grown-up, those things come along with the territory—and it doesn’t matter that you have a degree, a damn master’s degree, because you aren’t the master of anything, especially not your own fate, and you can’t find any work writing, not if you’d like to make actual money.
So you take what you can get.
It’s been almost eight months since Dan Corbin laid her off, and she was unemployed for three months, ninety days of not knowing what to do with herself except sit in front of the computer twelve hours at a time and email her résumé to a thousand places and fill out a million applications, and then she ended up here, in a shop in a big fancy mall in south Denver, not because of her education or her background but because of how she looks—at least, that’s what she thinks, because she doesn’t have any experience selling cosmetics, and none in retail. You’ll catch on quick, the manager said when she was hired. Be confident. Customers trust confidence.
It was true, she caug
ht on, she learned, and what she didn’t know she pretended to know, and customers seemed to like her, although it would’ve been easier if she was a gay man or a foreign woman, because that seemed to be the law of beautyland: The gay men and eastern European women know all. But it was all right. It wasn’t writing, and it wasn’t exciting, and there were times she’d be applying eyeliner to a client or swatching every possible shade of red lipstick to the back of her hand if the customer would just buy something, please God anything, and she’d think: This is my life. This is all there’ll ever be, forever and ever. I’m going to get old and wrinkled and ugly, and I’ll still be showing women how to contour their cheekbones and fill in their eyebrows.
Sammie is taking antidepressants.
She sits in the food court during her lunch break, at a table near the center of the action, where she has a good view of everything. It’s noon, there are twenty-four days until Christmas, and the holiday crowds are hungry. If you want to judge a person, she thinks, watch how they shop. That will tell you everything you need to know.
“Nothing to eat today?”
She’s scrabbling down the front of her shirt, digging for her phone, but then stops, smiles at the young man standing nearby. His name is Ethan; she doesn’t know his last name, doesn’t know much about him except that he works at one of the restaurants in the food court, a deli that serves sandwiches and coffee, fresh cookies. He’s dating one of the girls she works with—Kelly, who has big hips and a bigger mouth, the kind of girl who thinks the world owes her a favor, the kind of girl who constantly sticks her foot in her mouth and doesn’t realize it but just keeps on yapping—and he comes into the store a lot to visit his girlfriend, brings her drinks and snacks. A nice kid. A few years out of high school, trying to figure out what he wants to do. He’d recognized her from her photo they’d printed in the Post beside her articles, and it was flattering when he was so excited to meet her, he told her he always wanted to write, he has plans to go back to college and get a degree in journalism. He’s always asking her questions, about the newsroom, the crime desk, all the pieces she’d written. He’s like a kid, always wanting to know more. And she’s told him a lot, shared more than she probably should’ve, because no one else ever wanted to hear her talk about her time at the Post, they wanted her to live in the present and look toward the future. Move on. But Ethan, he ate it up and begged for more.
“Not today.”
“I can grab you a sandwich, if you’d like. It’s no problem.”
“No, that’s okay.”
He’d asked Sammie out a few weeks before, and then reneged the offer before she had the chance to say a word. He hadn’t meant for it to sound like a date, he said, because that wasn’t it. He had Kelly. He just wanted to pick Sammie’s brain about writing, about making it a career. He might end up taking a few classes at the community college. He’d never managed to succeed at anything, he’d said, except making one hell of a pastrami sandwich, and that wasn’t going to fill his mother with pride.
“I’m a loser,” he’d told her once. “I can’t do anything right.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is. Sometimes I think you’re my only friend.”
“You have Kelly.”
“And you have your husband.” Ethan laughed. He didn’t laugh often, and she liked the way he looked when he did. If she’d been ten years younger and single, she would’ve taken him to bed, Kelly or no Kelly. Maybe in spite of Kelly. “And here we are.”
Her cell phone is vibrating again.
“Sorry, I need to see who it is,” she says, digging down her shirt again. Ethan takes a few steps away, and stops. Waits, like he wants to talk more when she’s done. It’s probably Dean, calling to check on her, see how her day is going, and it’s a 303 area code, but it’s not her husband. It’s the Denver Post. It’s Dan Corbin, her old editor.
“Sammie, thank God you answered.”
“What?” she says. She’d never thought she’d hear from Corbin again, even though she’d sent him several emails letting him know she’d be interested in coming back to the paper if the budget got better, but he’d never responded. There’s something especially cold about being ignored by email.
“It’s Corbin,” he says slowly, and she realizes he misunderstood, he thought she couldn’t hear him. “From the Post.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Okay.” He pauses. Any normal person would ask how she’d been, if she’d enjoyed her Thanksgiving. But that wasn’t how Corbin operated. He’s one of the smartest people she’d ever met, but his social skills have always been shit. “Listen, the seven-year anniversary of Seever’s arrest is coming up.”
He pauses for dramatic effect. Corbin always did like some flair, but this time it’s deserved. This is the phone call she’s been waiting for, she’s spent more than half a year wondering when Corbin was going to pick up the damn phone and dial, and now here it is.
“Okay.”
“And his execution date is coming up. What is it—a year from now?”
“Thirteen months, I think.” It’s not a guess. She knows the exact date Seever is scheduled to die—January 13, 2017. Friday the thirteenth.
“Well, with these things coming up, there’s been a renewed interest in Seever.”
“Okay.” She nods, smiles, because that’s what she’d learned years before, that people could hear a smile in your voice, once she’d had a boss who stuck a mirror to the side of her computer so she could watch herself when she was on the phone. She’s still smiling, but she wishes Corbin would cut the shit and ask her to come back. To resurrect her career with what started it—Jacky Seever.
“Our subscriptions were higher than they’d ever been when you were writing about Seever, and I think rehashing his crimes in some new pieces could be a good thing. Help generate business, get us back to where we used to be.”
It’s all too good to be true.
“It sounds amazing,” she says. “And I still have all my old files, all the photos. I’d be happy to come back.”
There’s a moment of silence, and Sammie thinks that they might’ve been disconnected, until Corbin gives a kind of laugh, rough and hoarse, like the bark of a dog.
“I think you’re misunderstanding me, Sam. I’m not asking you to come write for the Post again. I was under the impression you’d given up writing. Sam, you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” she says, and it’s incredible how normal her voice sounds, like there’s nothing wrong at all, but Ethan is looking at her, concerned. I must look upset, she thinks vaguely. Like I got bad news. Like I’m being told someone set my house on fire and murdered my dog. Jesus. She swivels on the plastic seat, turns away so she’s watching the guys at the pizza counter twirl their dough and slice up the pies. “Then why’d you call me?”
“I wanted to see if you’d help Weber out,” Corbin says. “Get him up to speed on Seever, share your sources—or point him in the right direction.”
“Weber?” she says. “You gave this assignment to Chris Weber?”
“Yeah. You remember him?”
“Of course I do,” she says, shaking her head. Chris Weber was a complete jackass. A moron who’d been raised to think his shit didn’t stink. He was a big ol’ boy, tall and broad but not fat, liked to wear sweatshirts with the sleeves pushed up past the elbows. He was the type of guy people expected to see working the crime desk, and Sammie had hated him from the moment they’d met. “He’s a fucking tool.”
“Sam, he’s been doing solid work.”
“I haven’t seen any of it.”
“You still read the Post?”
“Occasionally.” Oh, the lies. She still has the paper delivered, she reads it every morning as soon as she pulls herself out of bed and brews a pot of coffee, from the front page all the way to the back, every single word. Dean didn’t like it, called her a baby with a pacifier, and maybe that was true, but she told him to go fuck himself and did it anyway. Sometimes she�
��d read the paper and then get on her computer and pull up the online versions of her old articles, although they were getting harder to find, buried in the backlog of Internet garbage, and she’d read them, slowly, so it became that she’d memorized nearly every word she’d ever typed. Her photo, the expensive one she’d had done by a professional that helped readers remember her face is gone, but her name was still there, and it always would be; at least they couldn’t take that away from her.
“His first big piece comes out tomorrow, front-page stuff. Take a look when you get a chance. It’s good. He’s a hell of a reporter, all I’m asking is that you help him out. Throw me a fucking bone, Sam.”
“What’s it about?”
“You know I can’t say.”
“Quit being an asshole, Corbin. You’re already running the damn story, it won’t be a secret for long.”
“Did you hear about those two women pulled out of Chatfield Reservoir a few weeks ago?”
“Yeah,” she says. The story had caused a big flurry—two women murdered, possibly raped, then dumped in the water. A couple on an afternoon walk had spotted them and called the cops. “I didn’t think any details had been released on them yet. Even their names.”
“Weber tracked down some cops out drinking, bought them some beers, pumped them for information. Got the whole story.”
“And what is the story?”
“The two gals the cops pulled out are Tanya Brody and Selene Abeyta.”
It takes her a minute to recognize the names, less than a minute, but then she remembers. She’d interviewed both the women after Seever’s arrest, although back then they’d been girls in their senior year of high school, and they’d spent quite a bit of time doing chores out at Seever’s place for cash. They’d both agreed to talk to her about Seever, and they’d come to the interview together, because they were best friends forever, they didn’t do anything separately.