What You Don't Know

by JoAnn Chaney

  Help her? Seever’s voice speaks up, from somewhere deep in his brain. Yeah, I bet you’d like to help her. Help her bend over and stick her ass up in the air.

  “Shut up, shut up!” Hoskins shouts, slamming the flat of his hand against the steering wheel, not noticing the frightened looks he gets from people walking by. “Leave me the fuck alone.”

  He should go home, or back to the station, but he can’t stop thinking of Seever shoving him away, but it wasn’t Seever, he tells himself, it was Loren. Wasn’t it? It all seems so twisted up in his head now, and even his memory seems off. It was Loren dressed as Seever, and he’d been following Sammie, but that didn’t seem right because it was Seever who used to fuck Sammie, it was Seever’s voice he couldn’t get out of his brain, it was always Seever, that bastard had been riding on his back like a monkey for the last seven years, whispering dirty secrets even when Hoskins couldn’t hear him.

  “I’m not a bad guy,” Hoskins says, not even aware he’s saying the words, or who he might be talking to. He’s thinking about the woman who’d killed her daughter, and how good it’d felt to hear her scream, and Joe, too, how he’d fallen silent as soon as Hoskins had hit him. It’s wrong to want to hurt people, he’s known that since preschool, but everything feels different now. Mushed around the edges. “I’ll show you. I’m not a bad guy.”

  He flips on his blinker, turns out onto the street. He’s gripping the wheel, his nails are cutting into the leather. Trixie’s car is just ahead.

  * * *

  Trixie lives in the kind of apartment building that would be called a tenement in a big city, but here, in the middle of Denver, USA, with a view of the mountains and a shitty park nearby, it’s called an urban up-and-comer, like people expect it to suddenly get better any day now. It rises six stories up, and the only way into the apartments is through the long hallways that snake through the building, hallways that always smell like feet and urine and curry. He watches as Trixie gets out of her car and goes inside, and he’s right behind her, close but not too close, because if he loses sight of her in this endless maze of doors, he’ll never find her. But it’s easy, she’s on the first floor, he sees her open a door—15A—and slip in, and she doesn’t lock it, there’s no telling snick of a deadbolt being pulled. Something tells him to wait, not to burst right in, so he walks farther down the hall, his hands in his pockets, strolling, like he belongs there. He sees a few people, but no one gives him a funny look, or asks any questions—that’s one of the good things about a place like this, maybe the only good thing.

  After fifteen minutes he goes back to Trixie’s door, twists the knob in his hand. It opens easily, and he goes inside. He is only in the apartment for a few minutes, and there’s mostly silence, except one scream, a woman’s scream, and then Hoskins leaves, closes the door gently behind him. There is blood on his hands—not a lot, but enough—and the blood isn’t his.

  SAMMIE

  Two hours into her shift at work and if somebody handed her a knife she’d probably stab someone. Or herself. She can remember a time when she thought shopping the weeks before Christmas was fun, as if being sardined into a mall and hunting for elusive gifts was a game, but now she’s on the other side of it. The seedy, ugly underbelly of the retail world. She’d write about that if people were interested, but all anyone wants is blood and gore and death. Jacky Seever, and the Secondhand Killer. And she’s stuck. She’d spent an hour with Seever, asking him every question she could think of, but it’s not what Corbin wants. And Weber’s out there now, sniffing around at crime scenes and putting together something good, and she’s stuck here, waiting for a call from the guy at the gallery that she’ll probably never get, and she can’t think of what else she could possibly do, who she should speak to.

  “There’s a guy here to see you,” one of the girls says, and she weaves through the crowds of shoppers, trying not to make eye contact so she won’t get stopped with a question. She gets to the front of the store and looks around, thinking that it’ll be Loren waiting for her, Loren-as-Seever, and she looks right past Hoskins at first, it’s like he isn’t even there, staring a hole through her, and then her gaze snaps back, she really sees him.

  “What’re you doing here?” she asks. “What happened to your face?”

  There’s a bruise rising on his cheek, his eyelids look swollen and red, as if he’s been crying, although she can’t imagine that. He reaches for her, slowly, like he’s moving through water, and she grabs his arm. The sleeve of his coat is cold, covered in half-melted snowflakes.

  “Is he here?” Hoskins asks, and she has to duck close to hear the words. He’s looking around, his eyes darting from one corner to another, searching.

  “Who?” she asks, worried, because Hoskins looks like he’s hiding, like someone’s following him and he’s on the run, scared.

  “Seever,” Hoskins whispers. “You said he’s been following you. Is he here?”

  “Have you been drinking? You should eat something. I think we’ve got cookies in the back—” She tries to turn around, but Hoskins grabs her elbow hard enough that she gasps in surprise.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call you about the new victim,” he says, his voice shaking. “I should’ve called you. I love you, I should’ve called.”

  “It’s fine,” she says, trying to back up, but there are so many people around that there’s nowhere to go, not unless she turns tail and runs.

  “All I ever wanted to do was help,” he says. He grabs her by the shoulders, his fingers digging into her flesh, needy, trying to pull her closer, it reminds her of the way he used to touch her when they were in bed together, and she feels the palms of her hands go hot and damp. “That’s all I ever try to do.”

  He’s not drunk. He’s exhausted, reeling on his feet.

  “Help with what?” she says, trying to untangle herself from his arms. “You’re not making any sense.”

  “Yeah,” he says. He’s still reaching for her, trying to touch her face, but she shies away. His knuckles are shredded, bleeding.

  “Oh my God. What the hell did you do to yourself?”

  “Come here.” Hoskins spreads his arms, and without thinking she steps into them, is enfolded in the familiar smell of him. She’s short enough that she can press her forehead into his breastbone, feel the rumble of his heart. “Let me hold you.”

  “Hoskins?” a man says, and she turns. It’s a uniformed cop, his hat still on his head, and another one a few steps behind. They’re both young, hardly old enough to shave, Sammie thinks, but everyone looks young to her these days. They’re both embarrassed. “Detective Hoskins?”

  “Yeah?” Hoskins says. He runs his hand down over his face. “Hey, Craig. Mark.”

  “Listen, I hate doing this,” the cop says.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I know.” Hoskins looks sheepish.

  “What’s going on?” Sammie asks.

  “We have a warrant for your arrest,” the cop says to Hoskins. He’s looking down at the blood on Hoskins’s hands. Sadly, it seems. “I don’t like to do this to one of our own, but we don’t got no choice in it.”

  “What did you do?” Sammie asks, stepping back, out of the circle of his arms.

  Hoskins ignores her and sticks out his wrists.

  “We don’t need cuffs,” the cop says, wincing. “I don’t think you’re a flight risk.”

  “Do it,” Hoskins says. He nods at the crowd that’s gathered around them, the people holding up their cell phones and recording the exchange. “Give these people a little excitement.”

  “What did you do?” Sammie asks again, grabbing at Hoskins’s arm as she watches the cuffs circle his wrists. Then, a terrible idea settles into her brain. “You’re not the Secondhand Killer, are you?”

  Hoskins laughs.

  “Wouldn’t that be an amazing story? I can see the headline now—detective picking up where Jacky Seever left off. You’d better get on writing that.”

  * * *

  There is a mom
ent after the police have gone and the crowd has started to disperse that she wonders why Hoskins came to her, she has her arms folded across her stomach as if she’s cold, or in pain, and then she sees Dean, standing off to one side, watching her. Watching her as she was watching Hoskins be led away, and in the few steps it takes for her to reach her husband she wonders how long he’s been there and what he’s seen, what Dean saw on her face, and for some reason she feels guilty, although she’s not sure why, because she was standing in Hoskins’s arms, and although it wasn’t the embrace of two lovers, it might’ve looked that way. It probably looked that way.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks. “You never visit me at work.”

  He holds out a bouquet of flowers. Red roses. Love triumphant, she thinks. But the way he’s looking at her, it doesn’t look like love. He looks wearily disgusted, like he’s smelling something bad.

  “I wanted to surprise you,” he says dully. “I got a promotion. And a raise.”

  “You never mentioned it before.”

  “I wanted to surprise you,” he says again.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “You don’t know a lot,” he says bitterly. “You don’t know half the things I’ve done to try to make you happy.”

  He pushes the flowers into her hands.

  “I’ll see you at home,” Dean says.

  He doesn’t kiss her goodbye.

  * * *

  She’s afraid to go home. Not afraid of Dean, because she doesn’t think he’d ever hurt her, but afraid of what he’ll say. She’s spent the last seven years swearing to her husband that she’s not been in touch with Hoskins, and for most of that time it’s been true. But this makes her look like a liar, and she could tell Dean the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but she’d still look a liar, because she’s kept it from him. She never told him about following Hoskins to Simms’s house, or going to dinner with him, and if he hadn’t been watching she never would’ve told him about Hoskins coming to her work. And withholding information isn’t lying, or maybe it is, and she’s just trying to pull a fast one.

  So she doesn’t go home. After work she finds a table in the food court and nurses a cup of lukewarm coffee. There are still plenty of customers, the smell of French fries and hot pizza is thick in the air. A person might think it’s impossible to be lonely while in the center of such a crowd, but that’s wrong. You can be lonely anywhere.

  “What’s wrong?” Ethan says, pulling out the chair beside her, not lifting so the legs scrape across the floor, making a horrible sound that makes her teeth come together in a snap, and she realizes that she feels the same way she does when she’s sick, or when she hasn’t had enough sleep. Like the world is made from exquisitely blown glass, and she wants to put her fist through every last piece of it.

  Stay the fuck away from me, she almost says, viciously. Go back to making sandwiches and cleaning tables, and leave me the fuck alone.

  But instead her mouth drops open and she finds herself telling Ethan everything. She has to talk, to get it all off her chest, she doesn’t have anyone else to speak to, and one person is as good as the next, as long as they’ll sit and listen, nod their head at the appropriate places and look sympathetic. Ethan’s so young and he can’t possibly understand, but she tells him anyway, about Corbin not wanting her latest article, about Weber being a better reporter than she is, about visiting Seever and seeing Gloria, about Dean, about her job. She keeps her voice low, and speaks quickly, barely pausing for breath between one word and the next, because if she does she’s going to cry, she’ll break down in the middle of all these people and that’s the last thing she wants. To have people looking at her, wondering at her tears, nudging one another and whispering. Look at her, they’d say. Can’t hold it together.

  “Detective Hoskins, the cop I told you about, he was arrested earlier, right in front of me,” she says, shaking her head slowly. “I’m sure he’s not the Secondhand Killer, but maybe I ignored all the signs. I guess he could be—”

  “Tell me about the guy working for the paper,” Ethan says. “Weber, is that his name?”

  “Yeah. Chris Weber. God, I hate him. If he wasn’t around things would be going a lot smoother.”

  “I’m sorry you’re having a tough time,” he says, and clasps his hand on top of hers. He’s trying to be nice, thoughtful, but his hand is moist and warm, and she wishes he wasn’t touching her, so she pretends that her nose itches and pulls away, then drops both her hands into her lap.

  “Thank you for listening,” she finally says. It’s late, and the tables around them are mostly clear. A young woman in uniform is pushing chairs out of the way so she can sweep, and a few of the restaurants have their lights off and the metal grates pulled down. “I needed that. To get everything off my chest. I owe you one.”

  “I know exactly how you can repay me,” Ethan says. She draws back, cringing, expecting him to suggest something that she won’t want to do, dinner and sex, or just sex. “It’s nothing weird, I promise. I’ve been doing some writing, and I was hoping you’d read some of it, give me your feedback.”

  “Of course,” she says weakly. She’s relieved, but she also feels guilty, because what kind of life has she lived, to immediately assume a man is going to ask her to spread her legs to pay back a favor? Maybe, she thinks, that’s the reality every woman faces, or it’s her. Oh, who is she kidding? It’s definitely her. “Here, give me your phone, I’ll program my number, and I’ll take yours. We could meet sometime, have ourselves a writing workshop for two.”

  “I’d like that,” Ethan says, smiling so sweetly that she can imagine what he looked like as a little boy. “And then I’ll owe you one, I guess.”

  TWO BIRDS, ONE STONE

  If this were a movie, you’d know some bad shit was about to go down, because the music has gone low and haunting, and your heart starts beating at that same rhythm, even while your hand is digging into your greasy popcorn and you’re smelling the god-awful perfume of the woman sitting two rows down. You know it’s going to be bad, because the camera sweeps down through the morning sky, and it’s actually blue today, a nice break in the winter habit, down to a car parked at a pump outside of a gas station, a nice SUV that burns through gasoline faster than it said it would on the dealership sticker, and it’s Chris Weber squeezing the handle and dumping E85 into his tank, pissed that it’s $3.49 a damn gallon and hoping that it’ll get better before it gets worse, although things never seem to work that way. If gas prices keep heading up, he’ll either have to sell his car and buy a bike—not a motorcycle, but a bike with pedals—or find another job. He wants to write, loves to do it, but it doesn’t pay shit, and his father keeps telling him to get his real-estate license, that’s where the real money is. His dad’s even offered to pay for the courses, but Weber still keeps pushing back, because he doesn’t want to sell houses, he wants to sell stories, and he thinks this Secondhand Killer story might lead him to something big, there’s a possible book deal dangling out there, there’s a lot of money. Once he writes that book his father’ll have to drop the real-estate lecture, he’ll have to back off. He’ll see that writing for the paper isn’t some phony dream. Even now people recognize him, like the guy who’d pulled up to the pump beside him, who’d peered at him for a long moment before speaking up.

  “Don’t you write for the paper?” the guy had asked. “Weber, right?”

  “Yeah,” he’d said, surprised and trying to hide it, because no one had recognized him before. “Yeah, that’s me.”

  “Cool,” the guy said, and then he’d slammed his car door and headed for the convenience store, whistling as he bopped across the parking lot, swinging his keys on his finger, round and round in a motion that made him think of a watchman swinging a nightstick. Weber had watched him, bemused. So that’s what it’s like to have people recognize you, he thought. He couldn’t decide if he liked it or not.

  He finished filling up his car—$75.84!—and pulled b
ack onto the road. He has an interview this morning, with Gloria Seever, and he’d worked hard to get it, he’d had to talk fast to get her not to slam her door in his face.

  “Gloria Seever?” Corbin had said when Weber told him. He hadn’t been able to tell if Corbin was impressed or confused, not at first. “Like I told you, these pieces aren’t exclusively about Seever.”

  “I know,” Weber said quickly. “But I’m pretty sure she knows something about the Secondhand Killer, I think I could get it out of her.”

  That wasn’t entirely true, but Weber thought a little white lie couldn’t hurt anyone. With the way Secondhand was operating, he figured the guy must be communicating with Seever somehow—but everyone else thought the same damn thing. The cops were being closemouthed about it, not that they were ever helpful, and he knew Sammie had gone to visit Seever at Sterling; Corbin had called him the day before, specifically to tell him, because a sit-down with Seever might turn into something big. That’s the kind of reporter Sammie is—flay the meat from the bones, go right for the jugular. Hell, that’s the kind of reporter he wants to be, although he knows better than to compete blindly with Sammie, who is still good, even after nearly a year out of the game. Sammie knew cops, she had pull, she was able to get in to interview Seever, no fuss, no muss. He’d showed up in Idaho Springs when he’d heard about Jimmy Galen, but the cops had turned him right around, shooed him back onto the interstate and into town. But, he thought, if he were Sammie Peterson, he would’ve gotten a front-row invitation to the crime scene.

  God, he hated her. Everything about her. Before she had the idea to pit herself against him, he’d shown up at her work, thinking that she’d help if he took her out for lunch, kissed her ass some. But she hadn’t been there at all, and then Corbin called her and things went right to hell. But that was this business—if you didn’t keep one step ahead, you might as well throw in the towel.