What You Don't Know

by JoAnn Chaney

  Oh, she could write about Seever, and she’d have a captive audience; people would be eating right out of her hands. She could write about the way he’d held her naked hips, the rough feel of his hands grabbing them so he could nudge in a little deeper. Or she could write about the way he’d liked to tie her up, or when he’d asked her to fix the sleeve of his shirt around his neck and choke him while he masturbated, but she can’t. She wants to write again, but her pride keeps her from going that far, because people would look at her and they’d know, and Dean would too, and she doesn’t want to see the revulsion in his eyes. It makes her cringe, the idea that one day everyone could know these things about her, and how would she defend herself? By saying that she was so young, that she’d wanted a good time, that she hadn’t known he was a killer? And all those things are true, but no one will care, because all that matters is the juicy story.

  She’d been turning this over in her mind when her stomach had started churning, and she’d run for the bathroom. It’s because of Seever, she thinks. The vomiting. That’s all she can think, because it started after she started pursuing the Seever story, not long after she’d started sleeping with Hoskins, and it’s tapered off over the years since then, mostly disappeared. But still, even now, if she thinks about Seever, if she thinks about that period of her life, her tongue gets thick and heavy, and her stomach flops helplessly. When it first started, she’d attempted to diagnose herself, got online and looked up symptoms, tried to get in her own head and make sense of the cloying taste on the back of her tongue after meals, the way her throat would clench, and the strange pleasure of emptying her belly after filling it with food. Maybe, she thought, she did it because Seever got so fat as the years passed, or because Seever had such huge appetites—for food, for murder, for life—or maybe it was stress, because it was hard to write about a man everyone hated so much, even though she hid the difficulty, made it seem easy. Or maybe it didn’t have anything to do with the men in her life at all, or her job, it was just her, trying to make herself smaller somehow, to pare back everything she was, to shrink until there was nothing left of her at all.

  * * *

  Her cell phone rings as she’s leaving the bathroom. It’s Dean.

  “Where are you?” he asks, concerned. This is the best part of marriage. You always have someone waiting at home for you.

  This is also the worst part of marriage.

  “Are you at the hospital?” he asks. “Is everything okay?”

  It hadn’t occurred to her, when Dean surprised her with a new phone a few months before, that it wasn’t just a nice gift from her husband. It was brand-new, in a hot-pink case, fully loaded with all the bells and whistles. She hadn’t found out until later that he could find out where the phone was anytime, pull up the information on a website and check her location, like she was an animal implanted with a tracking device. All the phones have it, he said, and she believed him, and if that’s what he needed, that glowing blue dot on a computer screen that was her, she’d let him have it.

  “I’m fine,” she says. “There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s—Heather.” There’s only the slightest hesitation as she spins the lie. She’s out of practice these days, but she can’t tell her husband what’s going on. If he finds out it’s Hoskins she’s waiting for, there’ll be all kinds of trouble, because even though they’ve gone to counseling and talked it out and did everything imaginable, Dean thinks she still wants to be screwing Hoskins.

  “Heather?”

  “Yeah, you know. The woman I work with? The one who sells those oils? The, uh—essential oils?”

  “No.”

  “You know, the pretty one. I’ve told you about her. I think she got food poisoning. Bad piece of fruit she ate during her break.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m out in the waiting room. I can’t leave yet, I don’t know if her husband’s coming to pick her up.”

  “What time do you think you’ll be home?”

  “No idea,” she says. Someone steps into the waiting room, catching her eye so she looks up. It’s Chris Weber, and the moment he spots her his face goes bright red. “Here she is. I’ve got to go, I’ll try to be home soon.”

  “I figured Corbin was full of shit when he told me what you’re up to,” Weber says, walking quickly up to her, his legs stiff. He’s wearing slacks and a blazer, a turtleneck. When he’d first started at the Post, all he’d wear were blue jeans and sweatshirts. Street gear. He’s moved up in the world. A serious reporter. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I’m waiting for a friend to be released from emergency care,” she says coolly. “Why are you here?”

  “I know it’s Detective Hoskins back there,” Weber says, stepping close. “This is my story, and I’m going to make you very sorry if you don’t back the fuck off.”

  He’s taller than her, bigger, and he’s probably used to intimidating people with his size. But she spent years in the newsroom, teaching herself to talk fast and act tough, to swear like a sailor and hold her liquor. When you play with the boys, you have to behave like one, and after all those years at the Post, a man in a turtleneck doesn’t bother her in the least.

  “What’re you going to do if I don’t?” she says. “Break my legs? Tell my mommy?”

  “What kind of game are you playing here? This is my story.”

  She laughs, actually laughs in his face. It feels good, not to have to be pleasant, not to be kind and helpful, like she has to be every day at work.

  “Are you new here?” she asks. “It’s not your story. It’s all up for grabs, anyone can take the gold medal.”

  “This is my chance,” Weber says. “Do you know what I had to do to get this job?”

  “What?” Sammie asks. “Did you have to steal? Or cheat? Suck a dick?”

  “No,” Weber takes a step back, taken aback at her sudden vitriol. Surely he’s heard about her, the rumors, and he knows what she’s had to do, he’s heard what she’s capable of, but he still seems surprised. “Nothing like that.”

  “Or maybe you’re the killer,” she whispers to him, coming closer. She’s just screwing with him now, trying to get him riled up, but an emotion still flickers across his face—shock, or guilt? It’s gone before she can tell. “That’d be the perfect way to get your career going, wouldn’t it? Murder a few people, make it look like Seever’s work. And then you’re in, right?”

  “That sounds like something you’d pull, not me,” Weber says. “The last year has been lonely, hasn’t it? All you’ve got now is a pathetic retail job to hang on to.”

  “Oh, spare me,” she says, spitting out the words. She can feel the corners of her mouth twisting down, the crease between her eyebrows deepening. She is angry, and anger is ugly. “You thought this was going to be easy, didn’t you? That Corbin would hand these assignments right over, free and clear, that I’d be begging to help you? That’s not how any of this works.”

  Hoskins steps into the waiting room. He pauses, listening to the woman at the front desk, and then he looks at Sammie. There’s a bandage across the bridge of his nose, he’s holding an ice pack to the back of his head.

  “Now, if you’ll get the fuck out of my way, I have an article to write,” she says, flipping her hair over her shoulder and walking away.

  “What’re you doing here?” Hoskins asks. He doesn’t look pleased to see her, but he’s not exactly angry either, and she takes that as a good sign. He doesn’t seem to notice Weber at all. “Are you still following me?”

  “You look like shit.”

  “That’s what I need right now. Someone pointing out how I look after I get my face broken into pieces.”

  “I heard you had it coming,” she says, and he stares at her, blinks. There’s dried blood crusted around the inside of his left nostril. “I understand you’re beating up kids now?”

  Hoskins snorts, then grabs at his head and groans.

  “Jesus, it hurts.”

&n
bsp; “Let me buy you a cup of coffee,” she says, putting her hand on his arm and guiding him farther down the hall, away from Weber, who looks like he’s been kicked in the balls so hard they’ve popped up in his throat. But he’ll recover quickly, and she wants to be gone by then, to have Hoskins alone. “Maybe some dinner.”

  “And what do you get out of it?” Hoskins asks, but she can tell by the way he’s looking at her that he already knows what she wants—his words. Just like old times.

  “I get the pleasure of helping a good friend.”

  HOSKINS

  They go to McDonald’s, because that’s what she wants, and she’s driving, so he can’t put up much of an argument. She doesn’t want to go through the drive-thru and eat in the car, so they go inside and sit in one of the hard plastic booths. She orders four double cheeseburgers and a large fry. A gigantic cup that must hold a gallon of Coke. Hoskins only has coffee, and watches, bemused, as she spreads a napkin onto her lap and starts shoveling food into her mouth.

  “You’re going to eat all that?” he asks.

  “Watch me.”

  So he does, sits back and looks at her. There are smears of makeup under her eyes, her lipstick is bleeding at the corners of her mouth. Sammie looks older in the cheap fluorescent lighting, drawn. Some women gain weight as they age, put on a few extra pounds around their middle, but he thinks Sammie has actually lost weight the last seven years. He can see every vein crisscrossing the tops of her hands, every tendon. They’re ugly hands. Witch hands. She smells like oranges. Men love the smell of fruit on a woman, she used to say, but he’d always thought that she was talking about him, not other men. She used to spray her perfume behind her ears, on her wrists, the soft spot where her thighs came together.

  Did Seever like it when she smelled like fruit?

  He doesn’t ask.

  “So who was killed in that house?” she asks, her mouth so full of food he can barely understand the words. “Is it connected to the other two women? Brody and Abeyta? Is it a copycat killer?”

  He picks up his plastic spoon, puts it down again.

  “I know why you attacked that kid, but it’s not him, Paulie.” That’s what Loren had said over the phone; he’d called when the doctor was looking him over and Hoskins had answered, even though they hadn’t wanted him to. There was a sign in the room—No Cell Phones—but that’s one of the perks of being a cop. You could ignore rules like that. “That kid—what’s his name? Ted? I checked. He was in Miami the weekend Brody and Abeyta went missing, his mom says he’s been home every night for the past week.”

  “Why did he run when he saw me?”

  “I don’t know, padnah. Could it be because you’d just ripped his ass for going through the Seever files, and he didn’t want another helping? You got him pretty good, he’ll be out of work for a few days. Hopefully he won’t press charges.”

  And because the doctor was waiting, and the impatient nurse was staring, he couldn’t say anything, he couldn’t explain himself. “I didn’t know,” he said instead, that seemed to be the only thing to say, and that made Loren laugh.

  “You haven’t changed, you know?” Hoskins says now. “All you reporters—you’re all the same.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You can’t stop pumping me for information for two minutes.”

  “That’s not true. I asked you how you’ve been,” she says, smiling.

  “Please. I know exactly what you want from me. You get your jollies off seeing your name in print,” he says. “If you had to choose between living in paradise for the rest of your life or seeing your piece on the front page, I know exactly what you’d choose.”

  “What?” Her smile is spreading, because she knows exactly what the answer is. It’s the words, the writing, it’s always been that way for her, like it was for almost every other reporter he’d ever met. They were like crackheads jonesing for another hit. There were times back at Seever’s house when they’d pull another victim from the crawl space and she’d known she’d have more to write, and he could see the sheer pleasure on her face. She’d take her notes and talk to the guys and snap some pictures and when the paper printed her piece she’d carry the damn thing around all day, and it wasn’t only that she was proud, she was high as a kite. After every piece was published she’d want to fuck; once it was in her own kitchen while Dean was at work, on the linoleum while the dishwasher hummed beside them. She’d lain on her back and propped her heels up on the seats of the kitchen chairs so she could lift her hips into him, and she’d bitten his shoulder when she came, until he’d bled.

  The back of his neck is hot.

  “I’m not asking for much,” she says. “Everyone’s going to find out sooner or later what happened in that house. I’m asking for a head start. A name. So I have something to turn in. I need this.”

  “We’re trying to keep people from getting scared,” he says. “I don’t want to read some article full of lies so you can sell a few more subscriptions. Like the garbage piece that ran this morning—I hate shit like that.”

  “That’s not the kind of stuff I write,” she says scornfully. “You should know me better than that.”

  “Yeah, I know you. That’s the problem,” Hoskins says. “We’re trying to close these cases up as soon as possible. And honestly, the less the public knows about all this, the easier my job will be.”

  She hitches up one eyebrow.

  “People should know what’s going on in their city,” she says. “They deserve to know. And if you don’t tell me now, it’ll get out sooner or later, it doesn’t matter how much you want to keep it quiet.”

  He could give her what she wants—and he could ask for sex. For a blowjob. Or one of those deals he’d heard some guys at work talking about once, when a woman sucked a guy off while he took a shit. A blumpkin, that’s what it was called. He could have anything he wanted. Those were the terms they’d had before, although he hadn’t been in on the game back then—sex in exchange for information. He could insist they go back to that, he could ask her to do anything he wanted, every perverted thing that’d ever crossed his mind, he could tie her up and twist her nipples like radio dials and make her scream in pain, and she’d do it, he can tell by the look on her face. She’d agree. She wouldn’t like it, but she’d do whatever until she had what she wanted, and then she’d be gone.

  But in the end, he doesn’t ask for sex. He doesn’t ask for anything. He tells Sammie what she wants to know because she’s right, it doesn’t matter, it’ll all be out soon enough. And because he still loves her, even though he wishes to God he didn’t.

  “The victim is Carrie Simms,” he says, keeping his voice low, casual. There isn’t anyone sitting close by, but you could never be sure who was listening.

  “Carrie Simms?” Sammie frowns. “Simms? That name—oh my God. That’s the girl who got away from Seever.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened?”

  “Someone broke into her place. Tortured her, raped her. They made sure we’d connect it to Seever.”

  Sammie frowns, taps her fingers on the tabletop. He can see the wheels in her brain spinning frantically. Most women would be upset by this, be horrified, but Sammie has never been that way and he admires her for it. There’s something cold about her, calculating, and you don’t see that so often in women, at least not like it is with Sammie, who wears it all on her sleeve.

  “So that’s why Loren’s dressed like Seever,” she says.

  “Yeah.”

  She’s excited, he knows by the way she’s chewing, the sparkle in her eyes. This is exactly what she wanted from him, all she’s ever wanted from him. But nothing in life is free. There’s gray hamburger meat stuck in her teeth, her lipstick is smeared all over the bottom half of her face from eating, so she looks a mess.

  She looks almost like a clown.

  “I have a question for you,” he says.

  “What is it?”

  “Did you r
eally have sex with Seever?”

  She looks down, at the half-finished burger sitting in front of her, in the middle of the yellow wrapper with half a pickle sticking out of it, and puts her hand out, as if to pick it up and take a bite. But at the last minute she seems to think better of it, and drops her hand back on her lap.

  “Yes,” she says, softly.

  “Did you enjoy it?” he asks, leaning toward her, until the edge of the table is pressed into his chest, cutting a line into his skin. He doesn’t know why he’s doing this, why he suddenly wants to hurt her, but he can’t seem to stop himself. “What was it like, fucking him?”

  Sammie looks away from the hamburger, turns her gaze up to him. She has beautiful eyes, she always has: wide, innocent eyes, like you’d see on a girl. She looks like she might cry, but he doubts it, because Sammie’s tough, she takes shit and puts it right back out. No, she doesn’t cry, but Hoskins is surprised when Sammie leans over the side of the table and makes a belching noise, it sounds like a bullfrog, and then vomits, all the dinner she’d inhaled coming right back up, all that chewed hamburger and foaming soda, spreading over the clean tile floor.

  GLORIA

  When Gloria was young, strangers would stop her mother on the street, call to her from their car windows. I think you might be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, they’d say, and her mother would nod and move on, her purse looped over one arm and her lips pressed tightly together. And even if no one said anything to her mother, they’d still look, sometimes throwing glances from under lowered lashes, but most times it was open staring, and every so often there were whistles and catcalls, lewd suggestions. Her mother never talked about it, never repeated the things that were said to her. It was as if none of it had ever happened at all, like it didn’t matter. Gloria couldn’t understand it, didn’t know how someone could shrug off a compliment. Maybe it was because she was so young, or because she was so ugly.