What You Don't Know

by JoAnn Chaney

  “I don’t know,” Seever had said, and it was the best answer he ever had for the question. “I started, and then I couldn’t stop.”

  Hoskins could understand. That’s life, being addicted to something, even to someone, and not being able to stop, not ever, even when you want to.

  When the water has cooled down enough, he splashes some on his cheeks, rubs the tender spots under his eyes, then presses his face into the hand towel hanging from the rod, breathes in the smell of mildew. He’s been too busy with work the last few days for anything else, and the house is going to hell. He needs to do laundry, load the dishwasher. He pays the woman who comes to keep an eye on Joe enough, you’d think she might lift a finger to help out, but of course she doesn’t. But it’s not part of her job description, people don’t like doing more than the least of what’s expected, he gets it. Doesn’t mean he likes it.

  He heads back into the bedroom and picks his cell phone up off the nightstand. It’s flashing silently, letting him know that at some point while he was asleep he got new messages. Two texts. The first is from Ted. It’s short, to the point, about the cases he was searching through.

  NO VICS MISSING FGRS IN LAST 5 YRS, it says. SRY. ☺

  “Shit,” Hoskins says, deleting the message. He’d hoped he was on to something, that there’d be some missing link between old cases and this new one, but it was nothing but another dead end.

  The second text is more interesting. It’s from Sammie; it could mean anything, or nothing at all. She’s called him a few times over the last few days, left messages, and he’s deleted them all. He isn’t going to help her with another story like he did the last time.

  I NEED TO TALK TO YOU. IT’S IMPORTANT.

  He sits on the edge of the bed, his phone in one hand, still running the towel over his face and breathing in that musky smell that’s both bitter and homey, considering Sammie’s text, and then he hears the scream; at first it sounds like a woman but then he realizes that it’s his father, something is wrong with Joe.

  He grabs his gun from its spot in his nightstand and runs down the hall, a big man in pajama bottoms and a plain white undershirt, sprinting toward the sound of his father’s screams. I need to start exercising more, he thinks in the moment before he bursts into his father’s bedroom, or I’m going to have a heart attack.

  Hoskins is sure that Joe is being hurt, that someone broke in, wanting to steal a TV or money and instead found the old man sleeping in his bed. He’s so convinced of this that it takes him a moment to understand Joe is alone in the room, he’s curled up in a corner and he’s terrified, he’s pointing at nothing, shrieking like an old woman.

  “He’s here,” Joe was screaming, those were the only words Hoskins could make out through all the gibberish, and even when he took Joe by the shoulders and gave him a good hard shake it didn’t seem to matter, the old man kept on screaming, the whites of his eyes showing all the way around and the spittle gathering in the corners of his mouth in white chunks.

  Hoskins doesn’t know what to do, the doctor had mentioned something about hallucinations but he hadn’t said anything about this, the screaming that won’t stop and the old man doesn’t seem to recognize him, only keeps his hands hooked into claws and won’t stop shrieking, pointing at things no one else can see, so he hits his father. Hard, across the face, thinking that it might snap him out of it, and there’s a satisfying crack when his fist connects, and then the screaming stops, as suddenly as if it’d been severed with a knife.

  “That shut you up, didn’t it?” he mutters, and he immediately thinks that those words aren’t his, they’re Seever’s, and Joe is slumped back on his pillows, there’s blood coming from his mouth, some from his ear, and Hoskins realizes he did the wrong thing, he made the wrong choice but it’s too damn late now. He’s had moments like this before, those times he’d rewind his life ten seconds if he could, he’d make it right, he’d do something different.

  His father is slumped back on the pillows, maybe he’s dead, but then the old man opens his eyes, suddenly, as if nothing had happened at all, and looks right at Hoskins.

  “Who are you?” Joe says, and then starts screaming again, but this time Hoskins doesn’t hit him, he backs out of the room and stands outside the door and tries to slow the frightened thump of his heart in his chest.

  * * *

  Later, at the hospital, the doctor will tell him that this is common in people with his father’s diagnosis, that it may only get worse.

  “Dementia is very serious,” the doctor said. “He could hurt himself the next time he has an episode. Or someone else.”

  “I see.”

  “Mr. Hoskins, I don’t think you can continue caring for your father on your own. An assisted-living facility would be best for him. I have some information you should take home and look over. I can answer any questions you might have.”

  The doctor shoved a few brochures into his hand, shiny booklets with happy, smiling white-haired folks on their pages. You can’t take care of one old man, is what Hoskins hears. You’ve royally fucked it up this time.

  “Thank you.”

  “He’ll need to stay the rest of tonight, and possibly tomorrow night for observation. Do you happen to know how he hurt his head?”

  Hoskins pauses. Slips his hand into his coat pocket so the doctor can’t see the bruises on his knuckles.

  “I don’t.”

  “Okay,” the doctor gives him a half-smile, and shrugs. He knows, Hoskins thinks. He knows exactly what happened. “It’s not a big deal, just thought I’d ask.”

  “Okay.”

  * * *

  Idaho Springs is northwest of Denver, the first town on the map as the city disappears and the mountains crowd in. There’s not much to it—a handful of gas stations, a single supermarket, a few clustered neighborhoods of older homes. It’s a nice little town, but it’s the kind people pass straight through to get to the ski resorts, a town where no one really lives. Hoskins veers off I-70 once Denver’s nothing but a gritty haze on the skyline behind him, ending up on a two-lane road that snakes south, into an area where the homes and businesses peter out and the wildlife squeezes back in. He drives slowly, worried that another car might speed around the next blind curve, but there’s no one on the road, either in front or behind. It’s strange out here, Hoskins thinks. He doesn’t like it so much. He’s more comfortable with concrete and asphalt, buildings made of steel and brick. Not this. All these trees, crowded in so close there’s a solid wall of bark and leaves on either side, so thick you can barely see anything in the distance.

  He eases slowly around a switchback in the road, pulls off on the packed dirt beside the blacktop, where two police patrols are parked, low and sleek, mean metal grilles attached to the fronts. Local cops, and the units look brand-new, but that isn’t much of a surprise. On the east side of Denver you had kids in rags, starving to death, but out here there was money. A hundred and fifty years before there’d been the gold rush, and then silver, and now there was skiing, tourism. Different delivery methods, but the same results.

  He parks farther down, past the units, out of the way, and turns off the car. It’s colder out here than in the city, but there’s less snow on the ground, under the cover of all the pines and evergreens. A gray moth lands on the windshield, spidery legs ticking along as it walks. Hoskins smacks the flat of his hand against the glass, but it doesn’t move. Doesn’t even flutter its wings. He leans closer, trying to get a good look at its underbelly, and there is a metallic tap on his window, just beside his head, and he jumps, startled. The moth flies away.

  “Roll it down,” the officer shouts, one of the locals, and Hoskins is bemused to see him make the cranking motion with his hand, because when was the last time he’d seen a car with one of those?

  He opens the door instead, stands up. He’d gotten the phone call when he was leaving the hospital, he’d planned on going home and back to bed, but here he is, because another victim has been found,
and it looks like another one belonging to Secondhand.

  “Detective Hoskins?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Loren’s already here. He wanted me to wait for you, walk you out to the site.”

  “Has he been here long?” Hoskins asks.

  “About ten minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  “We got an ID on the victim,” the cop says. “James Galen. Jimmy, that’s what people called him. He was going to work, his mom said. Never made it there.”

  “Did the kid know Seever?”

  The cop shrugs.

  “All right.” Hoskins sighs, zips his coat as high as it’ll go. “Let’s go take a look, see what we’ve got.”

  * * *

  The kid out in Idaho Springs had been found by a couple taking a walk, although from the looks of them, Hoskins thinks it was probably more likely that they’d parked and went looking for a quiet place off the beaten path to get high, maybe squeeze a little sexy time in. There isn’t much snow out that way, especially under the cover of all those trees, but the ground is damp and soft and spongy, and that’s where the couple had found Jimmy Galen, thrown onto a bed of wet pine needles, his arms and legs thrown out wide so he looks like a starfish.

  And then there is Loren, dressed in a Seever-suit, a pair of glasses pushed high up on his nose, standing over the body, his hands perched on his hips. It is a Seever-pose, and Hoskins wonders how much Loren had practiced to get it down, if he stands in front of his bathroom mirror and works it.

  “Left the clown suit at home this time?” Hoskins asks, and Loren laughs, a fat chuckle, then yanks up on the thighs of his slacks and kneels over the dead boy.

  “His mom said he’s been gone a few days, but she said he’d done it before. Up and disappeared. That’s why she didn’t report it sooner. Said they’d been fighting about a car, and she figured he was mad,” Loren says. “He’s been gone for a few days, but dead less than twenty-four hours.”

  “Any word on locating Cole?” Hoskins asks, curious. And hopeful that they’ll make an arrest soon, although he still doesn’t believe Alan Cole is their guy.

  “I’ve got a team on it,” Loren says. “They’ll have him in custody real soon.”

  “I guess we’ll just watch the victims pile up until then?”

  Loren flips him the bird.

  Hoskins’s phone vibrates in his pocket, against his chest. He pulls it out, glances at it while Loren’s still talking, telling him about the victim, Jimmy Galen, who’d mowed Seever’s lawn a few times. Galen’s mother had been in the paper, answering some questions about Seever years before, Loren said. Sammie’s the one who’d interviewed her.

  “What’s that?” Hoskins asks slowly, looking up from his phone. He’d heard Loren say Sammie’s name, and that was funny, because the text he’d gotten was from her; he’d read it three times already, trying to make sense of it.

  “I said, your girlfriend’s the one who interviewed this kid’s mother for the paper.”

  “I got a text from Sammie,” Hoskins says, frowning.

  “Speak of the devil and she shall appear,” Loren says. “If you wanna be some help around here, why don’t you put your goddamn phone away?”

  CALL ME, Sammie’s text said. I NEED TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT LOREN.

  He sees Loren’s lips moving, but he can’t seem to hear what he’s saying. Instead, Hoskins’s ears are filled with a high-pitched whooshing sound, like the wind tearing through a tunnel, and later he realizes the noise is his blood rushing, faster and faster, pumping through his head and back to his heart at dizzying speed.

  HE’S STILL DRESSING LIKE SEEVER, Sammie had typed. Two minutes ago, maybe less, depending on how long it took for the words to be beamed up to a satellite in space and then reflected down to his phone. I SAW HIM LAST NIGHT. HE WAS FOLLOWING ME.

  “You with me, Paulie?” Loren says, coming over, until he’s close enough for Hoskins to see the twisted hairs of his eyebrows and smell the bacon on his breath. If there’s one thing Loren hates, it’s to be ignored, and he’s pissed now. “You gone deaf, Paulie? I said, put your fucking phone away.”

  SHOULD I BE WORRIED? Sammie had texted, and that was it. Hoskins wondered how long she’d debated sending this last sentence, because Sammie wasn’t that type. She’d once told Hoskins that she was the middle child, born between two other girls, and she’d been the tomboy, the one who never cried, the only one not afraid of the dark. But now Loren was following her, all dressed up like Seever, and there were people turning up dead, people who’d once been connected to Seever, and who was more connected than Sammie? She’d waited tables at Seever’s restaurant back in college, she’d written all those articles about him for the paper, enough to fill a book. And she’d once been his lover. The task force on this case had been busy, trying to reach every person Seever had known before the Secondhand Killer did, and not once had anyone considered that Sammie should be warned, that she might be the next one in danger.

  Loren was following Sammie.

  Loren, who’d put in a good word and saved Hoskins’s job when he was ready to get the boot. Loren, who called women bitches but still held doors open for them, who’d made more arrests than any other cop in the department. Loren, who’d been dressing like Jacky Seever, who’d been putting on a clown costume and makeup and heading to the local hospital to prance around, who hunted suspects by becoming them, and Hoskins had always wondered what would happen if the play-act went too far, it was a thin line between crazy and not, and Loren was constantly teetering between the two. Loren, who was the only one besides Seever who ever called him Paulie.

  “You left me that painting,” Hoskins says slowly. “You left that painting Seever made.”

  “Yeah?” Loren says, confused. “Seever sent that thing to me years ago, I figured it’d make you laugh. He’s painted a lot of…”

  Loren trails off, looks away, as if he’s lost his train of thought, and Hoskins grabs his shoulder and pinches down, hard.

  “You’ve been following Sammie,” Hoskins says, but Loren isn’t listening, it’s his turn to be staring off into the distance, lost in his own head, until Hoskins gives him a hard shake. “Why have you been following her? What are you up to?”

  “He paints,” Loren says, softly. “Seever paints, all the time.”

  “What? Yeah, we already know that, Captain Obvious.”

  Loren’s phone rings, and he pulls it out of his pocket, glances at the screen, frowning.

  “I need to go,” Loren says, trying to push him away, but Hoskins isn’t letting go. “There’s something I need to check.”

  “What are you up to?” Hoskins says, pinching down as hard as he can, but Loren hardly seems to notice.

  “Get off me,” Loren says, shaking off his hand and shoving him away. “You wanted back into Homicide, here you go.”

  “Where are you going?” Hoskins shouts, everyone nearby is watching, standing with their heads turned and their eyes bright, so they look like curious animals peeping out of their underground burrows, checking out the commotion. “Where the hell are you going?”

  But Loren doesn’t answer, he’s already halfway across the clearing, his arms swinging by his sides, and it’s his own walk, at least, not some more Seever mimicry. Loren’s distracted enough to forget to keep up his charade, something about painting, and Sammie—

  “Should we go after him?” another detective asks, sidling up beside Hoskins. The guy looks ready for a fight, anxious to knock Loren on his ass, but that won’t help anything. No, Hoskins wants to know what Loren’s up to, and it won’t do a damn thing to drag Loren back now. Hoskins glances back at Jimmy Galen’s body, his glassy, horrified eyes rolled up to the clouded sky, and sighs.

  “Just follow him,” Hoskins says. “I want to know where he’s going. What he’s doing.”

  SAMMIE

  Desperation is not a pretty thing. It’s the burlap sack of emotions—no one looks good wearing it. Sammie can’t think of one
time in her life when she’s felt as desperate as she does now, and maybe that’s a good thing, to have lived most of her life free from it.

  “I don’t know,” Corbin is saying. She puts the phone on speaker and places it on the table in front of her. She can’t stand one more second of Corbin speaking right into her ear, especially when he sounds like he’s gearing up to reject the article she’d emailed over. “I mean, it’s a solid interview. But there’s nothing about the Secondhand Killer in it.”

  “Seever claims he doesn’t know who Secondhand is.”

  “Yeah, I get it. And Seever’s big news, but he’s only back in the paper because of Secondhand. Whatever you’re writing—it’s gotta have both of them in it to work. It needs to be current.”

  “But if there was a book about Seever—”

  “Yeah, I know this would be perfect for a book about him. But what I need now is a piece about the Secondhand Killer. And Seever. Look, if you would’ve gone and talked to Seever seven years ago, yeah, that I could’ve run. Front page, above the fold. But this—I mean, there’s nothing in this interview we don’t already know. It’s interesting stuff. But nothing new.”

  She stands up, slams her fist into the front of a kitchen cabinet. It drives her fucking crazy, to be back in this place, fighting for a story and the chance to make her career again. Maybe it’ll always be like this—the constant paddle upstream, the struggle to stay afloat. She’s not sure if she likes the idea.

  “Sammie? Are you there?” Corbin asks, alarmed. “What was that?”

  “Nothing,” Sammie says, sitting down again, cradling her sore fist between her breasts. “If this isn’t working, what should I write about?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the writer, not me. But I can’t run this. Not when Weber’s got some really great stuff in the works…”