by JoAnn Chaney
It’s about the hunt.
Like one of their early cases together, looking for a man who’d raped and killed three women in their own homes in the middle of the day. There were no signs of break-in, no leads to go on, nothing. It took Loren some time to get going, three women were dead before he got geared up, but then it was on, on like Donkey Kong, and the hunt started. Hoskins had never seen anyone operate the way Loren did, had never even heard of it; it wasn’t so much investigating as it was transforming, the way an actor, a good one, will become the character they’re playing. Loren didn’t do it very often, but when he did, when he hunted, he was all in, all or nothing. He changed his clothes, his voice, his habits, everything, so he became the person they were looking for. Loren called it getting in his head, but to Hoskins it seemed like more of a metamorphosis. A butterfly struggling free of a cocoon and spreading its wings for anyone to see.
Sometimes it was guesswork, sometimes they had nothing to go on, like that early case with the women killed in their homes. But Loren was watching, he was taking in everything, waiting until it felt right. And then he bought a suit at a department store and borrowed a Lexus from a local dealership, and he made Hoskins wait in the car when he went up to a nice house in a fancy neighborhood, not unlike the ones where each of the dead women had been found. A woman answered his knock, a housewife who was home alone, her kids were at school and her husband at work, and Loren had smiled and asked to use her phone because his cell had gone dead and he was late for an appointment. And even though Loren had the face of a rabid bulldog the housewife had taken one look at his nice suit and the Lexus parked at the curb and she’d let him in, had even closed the door behind him. Because money talks, even when its mouth is shut tight. And Loren could’ve done anything behind that closed door, he could’ve raped and killed the woman, or sat down for tea, but instead he called Hoskins, who pulled his vibrating cell from his pocket and stared at it for a moment, with the same expression he would’ve had if he’d pulled out a poisonous snake.
“This is how he’s doing it, Paulie,” Loren said, his voice pleasantly low through the phone’s speaker. Hoskins tried to imagine what was going on inside, if the woman was standing by, waiting for him to finish his call, but Hoskins thought she’d probably turned her back, gone into the other room, wanting to be polite, even if it was her own home. “He doesn’t have to break in. They let him in. Invite him in.”
And Loren was right, he always was, they went knocking on doors again and a neighbor of one of the dead women came forward and said they did remember seeing a white car in the neighborhood around the time of the crime, a late-model Audi, something like that, and the man behind the wheel was handsome, with good hair. I didn’t think about him before, the woman said, spreading her hands and shrugging. I guess he didn’t look like a criminal.
So they brought out a sketch artist, and the neighbor did the best she could, although Hoskins thought “handsome with good hair” wouldn’t get them anywhere, it was about as useful as being told the guy was wearing fucking pants, but the drawing and description of the car caught someone’s attention, and they arrested a guy a week later, a polite young man with a good job who drove an expensive car and liked to hurt women; his DNA matched that left at the scenes, the timelines matched, and it was case closed, everything was neatly sewn up. All because of Loren and his spooky ability, and his love of the hunt.
Hoskins never thought he’d be working in Homicide, never thought he’d be side by side with Loren again, and he’d thought he didn’t care so much, that being in the basement, eight hours a day, five days a week thumbing through dusty old files and plugging them into the computer wasn’t bad, but now, cranking the key in his car and listening to the engine labor in the cold, he thinks there’s a good chance that he misses the hunt too.
* * *
When Hoskins pulls up in front of the house where Carrie Simms’s body has been found, where Loren is running his investigation, he wonders if he might still be in bed, if this might be the most realistic dream he’s ever had. It’s the silent, flashing blue-and-red lights of the patrol units, and the steady, fast thump of the blood through his head. He hasn’t been at a crime scene in a long time; he thought it might never happen again. That’s what happens when they kick you out of Homicide—you can kiss that job goodbye. There’s no coming back from the grave until you’re resurrected for being a good detective, for doing your job right. Rewarded for his merits, although Hoskins wonders if this might be a punishment in disguise.
But it’s not only being here. It’s also the woman coming his way, who’d pulled in behind him and immediately climbed out of her car without bothering to turn her headlights off. At first, he thinks it must be one of the neighbors, home from work and wanting to know what’s going on, but there’s something familiar about the way she swings her arms as she walks, the tilt of her face up toward the sky. And then the woman pushes through the shadows and stops in front of him, her face lit by her car’s headlights so she looks like a ghoul.
“Holy shit,” he says, not bothering to keep his voice down. What’s the point? She’s got to know how surprised he is. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Sammie Peterson. It’s been seven years since he last saw her, when he’d tried to force her into making a decision, and that was a mistake, because she’d chosen her husband over him. It’d pissed him off, being passed over like that, so he’d gone to her house and knocked on the door; he’d known she was inside but she still wouldn’t answer, so he’d sat in his car, the engine off while he broiled in the afternoon sun, waiting. Hoskins likes to think he’s a good guy, rational, but every man has a point when the wires get crossed and things go bad, very bad, and that was his point, because he loved Sammie—hell, he didn’t love her, he was in love with her. So he’d waited until her husband came home, and Hoskins had told him everything, standing out on the sidewalk while the sprinklers ran and some neighborhood kids pedaled by on their bikes. Told Dean how he’d been fucking Sammie, how she’d basically worshipped his cock, how she’d taken it up the ass and in the mouth and in any position he wanted, how she’d loved it, how she’d begged for it. And Dean hadn’t said anything at all to any of it, just shifted from one foot to the other until Hoskins was done and then went inside and shut the door firmly behind him. He’d been expecting Dean to argue, to fight him, something, and he’d gone home disappointed. But after that he’d started letting go, stopped driving past her house and thinking about her, except sometimes, when he’d wake up with a thudding headache and no memory of his dreams, but he’d know, somehow, that they’d been about Sammie again.
“What’re you doing here?” she asks, and that catches him off guard, because he should be the one in charge, he’s the police and this is a crime scene, but he wasn’t expecting her, especially not like this, casually sauntering up as if they don’t have seven years separating them, as if time has stopped and rucked up so they’re back there now, before it was ever over.
“I’m a cop,” he says rudely, that’s always been his safety net when he’s uncomfortable—bad manners. “And this is a crime scene.”
“I know that,” she says. Pauses, and smiles. “Sorry. It was a stupid question.”
The house they’re in front of is big, older. A Realtor would describe it as rambling, he thought. The mailbox at the bottom of the driveway was built to look like a cat, and then painted orange with black stripes. It’s meant to be cute, whimsical, but Hoskins guesses it probably irritates the neighbors.
“What do you want?” he asks, still looking around, trying to get a feel for the place. This is how he’s always tried to do this—he keeps his eyes open, even before he gets inside, because he never knows what he might see. It’s not the space immediately surrounding a victim that’s the crime scene, some cops forget that. “You need to get the hell out of here.”
“Don’t be like that,” Sammie says, touching his hand. She doesn’t wear a wedding ring, even after all t
hese years. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry. For what I did to you.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry.” She looks embarrassed. “I never got a chance to apologize for how I treated you back then. I’d take it back if I could.”
He looks at her. She’s wearing all black, even her coat’s black, and she’s got makeup on. He’s never seen her done up before.
“You came out here to apologize?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“It’s been seven years. Seven years, and I haven’t heard a word from you.”
She bites her lip, looks abashed.
“Yeah, sorry it took so long,” she says.
“Did you follow me here?” he asks.
She looks up at him, then away. Toward the house, where a cop is walking around the edge of the property, stringing up yellow tape. This is a crime scene, that tape says. Something bad happened here. Already there are people wandering toward the house, people who live in the neighborhood and others who happen to be driving by and were attracted by the flashing lights, they have their cell phones in their hands, ready to take pictures and videos to repost on the Internet, they’re hoping for some gore, that’s what the world is coming to, Hoskins thinks, one big voyeuristic funbag.
“Yeah, I did,” she says.
“Don’t do that. Ever. Don’t ever do that again.”
“But I need to talk to you.”
“So, talk.”
“Right now?”
“Why not?” he asks. “You came rushing out of your car like a bitch out of hell to catch me. You must have something important to say.”
“I need to sit and talk with you, I have questions—”
“Listen, I’m not interested in dealing with the Post anymore. If you want a quote or something for an article, you’ll need to get in touch with PR. They’re handling that shit now.”
“It’s not about an article.” She’s starting to look flustered, angry, and he likes that. He always liked getting Sammie worked up, get the blood rushing into her face and her tail feathers ruffled.
“Yeah, sure.” He doesn’t believe her, because that’s what it was always about for Sammie—about her work. About getting ahead.
“It’s not.”
“All right, princess. I believe you. Calm down.”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“Okay. Then what do you want from me? You got a six-year-old kid stashed in your backseat who looks like me? I don’t make enough to pay you child support.”
She snorts.
“I’d forgotten about you calling me that.”
“What? A bitch out of hell? To be completely honest, I still call you that all the time.”
Sammie laughs, a little too loudly, and covers her mouth with her hand. He’d forgotten how beautiful she is, seven years will do that. He catches himself staring, looks away. Her face, that’s what he’d first been drawn to, those eyes that have the slight uptilt at the corners, and he’d started sleeping with her, congratulated himself on his good luck, all the while assuming that she was dumb as a bag of rocks. But that beauty is all for show, because Sammie’s funny, she’s charming, and she’s also smart. And over the years he’s learned that smart can be dangerous.
“Well, isn’t this a surprise. A nice reunion, seven years in the making.”
Hoskins sees the shock on Sammie’s face before he turns around, she’s looking at something behind him, at someone, and she looks ready to scream, to turn on her heel and run. She’s staring at the man standing behind him, a man in a three-piece suit and wire-rimmed glasses, a man with buffed nails and his hair parted sharply to the right. It’s Jacky Seever, but it can’t possibly be, because Seever’s locked up in the prison out in Sterling, the next time he’ll walk outta there’ll be his last, when they take him down to Cañon City for his execution. Some cops out in Cleveland had tried to “borrow” Seever a few years back, hoping to pick his brain, figure out what makes a killer tick, but they couldn’t get clearance for it, because Seever’s home is where his ass is, and his ass isn’t going anywhere, no judge in Colorado is going to let that happen.
But here he is.
“You look good, Paulie,” Seever says, but it’s not Seever after all, it’s Ralph Loren, that’s what Hoskins tries to tell himself, it’s Loren, back to his old tricks, he’s seen him pull this one before, many times, getagrip, it’s Loren, Ralph Loren. Then, the headlights on Sammie’s car turn off, they time out, and they’re all plunged into darkness.
And Loren, because he knows that he’s scared them, Loren can read people like a book and he’s a sick fuck who gets off on making people squirm—he laughs. Loud and hard, like a crazy person.
SAMMIE
“You still sucking dick to make your deadlines?” Loren says. He’s chewing gum, smacking it in his jaws, enjoying it. “I can’t believe how fast you media assholes get the word out. It’s like bleeding in the ocean—you just have to wait, the sharks’ll show up sooner than you’d think.”
“What the hell is all this?” she asks, pointing at the suit, the hair. She doesn’t like Loren, never has, but this puts him in a whole new light. She’s always thought there was something off about Loren, and Hoskins had told her about his tricks, that he liked to dress up like his suspects, that his investigation style was strange, but it’s one thing to hear about it, and another to see it. She can’t get her heart to stop racing in her chest, or her hands to stop sweating, even though she knows this isn’t Seever standing in front of her, her brain knows it, only the rest of her body won’t listen. “What kind of sick fuck are you?”
“Oh, I love to hear a pretty lady talk dirty,” Loren says. “Make me bend over and grab my ankles, and I’ll bark like a dog for you.”
“God, you’re disgusting.”
Hoskins hasn’t said anything yet, he still looks pale and shaken, like he’s seen a ghost. Maybe he has.
“Want to see what a disgusting dog I can be?” Loren drags the word out, rolling it over his tongue, so it’s more like daaawg. A disgusting daaawg.
“I don’t want to lose my breakfast, thank you,” Sammie says. “Your costume is quite enough.”
“There won’t be a problem with you losing anything, if you take it up the—”
“Jesus Christ, enough,” Hoskins says. There are two spots of color high in his cheeks, bright red. He’s angry, she can tell by the color and the glitter in his eyes, and she also knows that Loren bugs the shit out of Hoskins, that they have the kind of explosive relationship that only the PD would get behind, because they’re both good cops, so wouldn’t pushing the two of them together make a dream team? “It’s too early to have to listen to this bullshit. Can you both shut up?”
“Same old Paulie,” Loren says, dropping a hand onto Hoskins’s shoulder. “I missed you, padnah.”
“Isn’t this sweet?” Sammie asks, looking back and forth between the two. “I hate to break up the reunion, but I do have some questions—”
“Oh, I thought you knew,” Loren says, giving Hoskins’s shoulder another squeeze. “When you dump a guy, you stop getting whatever information you want for your shitty articles. So buzz off, lady.”
“Get off me,” says Hoskins, shrugging out from under Loren’s hand. “Don’t touch me.”
Loren frowns, pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose in a gesture so much like Seever that she stares at him for a long moment, fascinated. He’s good; he must’ve spent time practicing it, standing in front of the mirror and analyzing himself, wanting to be perfect. But it makes her wonder what kind of man mimics the appearance and gestures and voice and everything of a man who was best known for being a monster.
“You didn’t have any trouble finding the house, did you? You been out here before, Paulie?”
“What?”
“Where were you yesterday? Around this same time?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Just wanting to clear you as a suspect. A man can never be too
careful.”
“Chief Black called me,” Hoskins says. His face is beet red. “He asked me to come out here. To help you out.”
“The fuck he did,” Loren says. “I don’t need anyone’s help.”
“Call Black, then. Tell him that. I’d be happy to head home, right now,” Hoskins says, crossing his arms over his chest. But he’s staring at the house, hard, and Sammie thinks he’s dying to get in there, to see what’s going on. To put on his Sherlock hat and poke around. “I’ve got plenty of other things I could be doing.”
“Did someone else get murdered?” Sammie asks, and the two men look at her, as if surprised that she’s still there. “Is that what’s going on? Is it someone else connected to Seever?”
She doesn’t have anything to take notes on, and that’s a damn shame, she thinks, because there’s something going on here, and she doesn’t see any news crews around, not yet. She’s first on the scene, but she’s unprepared. It won’t happen again.
“Paulie, tell your girlfriend to go home,” Loren says. Hoskins’s face is pointed at the house, but he keeps glancing at Loren, like he’s afraid to look away for too long.
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Is Seever somehow orchestrating these murders from prison?” she asks.
“Jesus,” Hoskins mutters, scuffing his shoe against a dirty pile of snow. “That’s what we need in the paper. A conspiracy theory about Seever playing puppet master from death row.”
“Hey, that reminds me.” Loren snaps his fingers and turns to Sammie. “I go visit your old buddy Seever sometimes—he loves to run his mouth, and there’s not very many people who go see him these days. He’s got this list of visitors, you know, Seever had to okay it, the judge had to approve. They can’t just let anyone in to visit that jerk-off. I’m on it. Hoskins is too. His wife, his lawyer. And you’re on it. Samantha Peterson. Now, why would you be on the list, even after all these years?”
“I don’t know,” Sammie says. But she does have a good idea—it was Dan Corbin who called Seever’s lawyer and got her put on the visitor list years before, thinking that she’d go out and visit, get a few quotes directly from Seever. It’d been a hassle to do, Dan had made sure to tell her. Lots of red tape, documents to sign. But she could never bring herself to visit, didn’t think she could stomach it. She hadn’t realized she was still on the list, but it’s something she can use to her advantage. Pay Seever a visit, get a direct quote from him. Access to Seever could open up all kinds of doors.