What You Don't Know

by JoAnn Chaney

  Hoskins blinks. Waits for Ted to say he’s joking, but the kid’s dead serious. In his twenties, afraid his mom will catch him doing something naughty.

  “Just curious—do you go to any porn sites?”

  “Only the free ones,” Ted says warily. “Do you want this website or not?”

  “Yeah, what is it?”

  “It’s called alltheprettyflowers.com. Spelled like it sounds.”

  Hoskins raises an eyebrow.

  “And this is a website where we’re going to find something that might lead us to Secondhand?”

  “Yeah,” Ted says. “Lots of websites give themselves an innocent name. So if someone’s going through their browsing history, it doesn’t stick out.”

  “But it shows up as a porn site on your credit card statement?”

  “Yeah.” Ted grins sheepishly. “I found that one out the hard way. I won’t even tell you how pissed my mom was.”

  “All right, what was the site again?”

  Hoskins’s phone rings, and he holds up a single finger—wait one second.

  “Hello?” he says, frowning. “Hello? Is someone there?”

  There’s a long moment of silence, and then Loren is there, sounding irritated.

  “That was fucking weird. The damn thing didn’t even ring.”

  “Loren?”

  “Yeah. So you’re out, I guess? Back at work?”

  “Yeah.” Hoskins closes his eyes, presses down on his eyelids until there are flashes of purple. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Well, I spent this morning getting together the cash to bail you out,” Loren says, sounding amused. “Nice one, by the way. I always like to see a douchebag get his ass kicked for beating on a woman. How’s the girl doing?”

  Hoskins sighs, rubs his knuckles on the underside of his chin. He’d certainly given Trixie’s boyfriend a few broken bones and some bruises to teach him a lesson, but Trixie hadn’t seemed all that appreciative about it. She’d demanded that Hoskins leave, she’d been crying, the tears and snot mixing on her face.

  “She’s fine,” Hoskins says. “But I get the feeling she didn’t want my help.”

  “That’s a woman for you—blowing cold one second, hot the next. Or even worse—not blowing at all.” It’s a joke, a bad one, but Loren doesn’t laugh. Neither does Hoskins.

  “Why’d you disappear yesterday?” Hoskins asks. “You walked off that scene, and no one knew where you’d gone.”

  “Yeah, I like it like that,” Loren says. “Don’t send guys out to follow me again, Paulie. It won’t ever end the way you hope.”

  “Enough of this shit!” Hoskins shouts, suddenly furious. He sees Ted flinch back. “You’ve been acting crazy, Loren. You need to tell me what’s going on. Right now.”

  “Alan Cole is dead. He died last year, I just got confirmation. Heart failure.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not Cole, Paulie. It’s Sammie.”

  “Leave her out of this.”

  “Can’t. Ever since she showed up at Simms’s, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her.”

  “Stop it.”

  “When I visit Seever, he talks about Sammie all the time. Not his wife, not any other woman. Just Sammie. And did you know Seever paints her? I flashed around Sammie’s picture at the prison, a few of the guards recognized her from the paintings he does. They said she’s usually naked in the pictures. Sometimes she’s dead.”

  “Where are you going with this, Loren?”

  “I guess Seever’s wife got her hands on one once, and just about shit her pants. Now, after he paints Sammie, they throw them in the garbage. Destroy them.”

  “I had no idea,” Hoskins says, fishing out his wallet and handing it to Ted, who’s pushed him gently to one side so he could get on the computer. Alltheprettyflowers.com. The page that pops up is simple—a cartoon gravestone, RIP, with a single white daisy sprouting from the patch of grass in front of it. It makes him think of Seever in a clown costume, a daisy pushed into his lapel.

  “Seever’s obsessed with Sammie, and it got me thinking, because Secondhand’s obsessed with Seever. At least, that’s what it looks like.”

  “And now you’re obsessed with her?” Hoskins is watching as Ted types in his credit card information—two hundred dollars a month, it says, plus a termination fee when he cancels—scrolls through the terms of use, inputs a username and is finally in. The site is simple, nothing special, there aren’t even ads running up and down the sidebars, until Ted clicks on the search tool in the top right corner and types in two words: Jacky Seever.

  “I’m saying, Sammie’s the common denominator in all this,” Loren says, and Hoskins hears both this and the whir of his computer as it loads thousands of images onto the page, pumping everything the site associates with Seever onto his screen. Some of the pictures don’t have anything to do with Seever at all, but most do. “She wrote about every one of the victims for the Post before, and now all of them are dead. She was fucking Seever. Her career took off because of what he did.”

  “Sammie didn’t kill anyone,” Hoskins says numbly, his eyes darting over the computer screen, horrified, taking it all in. There are crime-scene photos from Seever’s crawl space, he recognizes most of them—hell, he’d taken some of them, those photos had all been stored in the PD’s files, they were supposed to be secure. And there they are, the answer to what they’d been wondering—there are photos of victims’ hands, zoomed in and cropped, the stumps made front and center.

  “I didn’t say she did,” Loren says. “But I think Secondhand might’ve started all this because of her. Maybe because he caught on to Seever’s obsession with her, decided to keep it going. She’s back at the paper, isn’t she?”

  “Look at this,” Ted whispers, scrolling down. The page goes on and on, into infinity, it seems, the most recent additions at the bottom. According to the time stamps, a dozen new photos have been added in the last twelve hours, all by the same user, all uploaded at the same time. SecondHand is the username, of course it is, of course he’d want to show off his work, because he wants his ego stroked, maybe he thought he wasn’t getting enough attention and the sick fucks on here would give it to him, would give him a goddamn standing ovation.

  The first photo added by SecondHand is of Carrie Simms, her face covered in blood, lying on her kitchen floor. Hoskins took a picture very much like it with his own phone. Hoskins scrolls quickly through the rest—Abeyta and Brody, and the boy they’d found. Jimmy Galen. There are two photos of the boy, but he’s not out in the woods like they found him, he’s tied up on a concrete floor, his mouth is a big circle, he’s screaming, alive. Hoskins grimaces and clicks to the last photo uploaded.

  “If he was doing it for Sammie at first, he’s not anymore,” Hoskins says. There’s pressure building up behind his eyes, and he hopes he can get a few minutes alone with the Secondhand Killer, it doesn’t matter that his hands are swollen and painful, he’ll teach the little prick a lesson he won’t forget. “We have to find her. She’s in danger.”

  The last upload, it’s Sammie, but it’s not her. It’s a painting of Sammie, propped up against a wall, Seever’s signature in the bottom corner. She’s naked in it, her eyes closed, and bleeding from where two of her fingers have been cut away. But it’s not the painting that bothers Hoskins so much, but the caption beneath it.

  She’s next? SecondHand had typed. And then, added after the words, somehow making it all even worse: ☺

  * * *

  Sammie’s gone. Hoskins met a unit at her house first thing, battered down the door when no one answered and searched the place, but no one’s home. He’s called her cell, called her work, called the security out at the mall, and no one’s seen Sammie. He has the team at the station working on getting a hold of Dean, of her parents. Anyone who might know where she is.

  He’s coming out of Sammie’s house when his phone rings.

  “We found another victim,” Loren says. “About
thirty minutes ago.”

  “Is it Sammie?” Hoskins asks dully.

  “Christ, no. Guy named Chris Weber. And you’ll never believe this shit—it was Gloria Seever who called it in. He was over at her house last night, she says he was there to interview her for the paper, a piece about Seever and the Secondhand Killer. She says he left after the interview, she didn’t notice he was still parked out there until this morning. He’s crammed on the backseat of his own car with half his face bashed in, and all the fingers on his right hand are missing.”

  “You believe her story?”

  “I don’t know what to believe, Paulie. I went by, but I didn’t talk to her—figured if she caught sight of me she’d clam right up. There’re detectives with her now, trying to get to the truth of it, but you know what a closemouthed bitch she is. But we shouldn’t consider her a suspect. I don’t think she’s strong enough to turn this guy’s face into raw hamburger. That’s what it looks like, padnah. This whole thing’s gonna make me swear off red meat.”

  “I thought Sammie was writing about Secondhand for the Post.”

  “She was. And so was this guy. They were competing against each other for the same job, I guess. That’s the story Dan Corbin fed me, anyway.”

  Hoskins takes a pen and a scrap of paper out of his pocket, writes Chris Weber down on the paper. Circles it. Draws a line, then writes Sammie’s name. Ted’s back at the station, trying to get a hold of the people running alltheprettyflowers.com, see if they can find out exactly who is registered as SecondHand, but it doesn’t look promising. People who run websites like that prefer to remain anonymous, and they extend that courtesy to their clients. Hoskins figures it for pointless, but they have to try.

  “Any word on Sammie yet?” Loren asks.

  “Not a thing,” Hoskins says. Something pulls against his ankles, makes him jump. It’s a stray cat, mewling to be picked up, and he kicks at it, furious. “She’s gone, her husband’s nowhere to be found. It’s not looking good.”

  SAMMIE

  “I didn’t think you’d be okay coming over here,” Ethan says, standing back so she can come inside. “I could’ve met you somewhere, you know.”

  “This is a nice neighborhood,” she says, unwinding her scarf from around her neck and dropping it on a side table, beside a framed photo of an older couple, posed in a studio in their Sunday finest. The man is in a nice suit and has the sharp look of an educated gentleman, and the woman looks kind. Her white hair is styled in soft curls that seem to melt away from her face. “Who’s this?”

  “Who?”

  “This.” She points at the picture. “Your grandparents?”

  “Yeah, that’s them. This is their house.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “On vacation in Florida. I’m housesitting.”

  “Oh.” She peeks into the living room. It’s a nice house, small. Lots of knickknacks and doilies, wallpaper with cabbage roses. “It smells weird in here.”

  Ethan rubs his hand on the back of his neck. “I need to take out the garbage.”

  She walks farther into the house and he’s right behind her, like a puppy dog. He’s nervous, she can practically feel it coming off him in waves. She’d tried to call Hoskins again, before she’d even pulled out of her driveway, wanting to see where he was; if he’d been released from jail she would’ve gone to him, probably fucked him, that’s what Dean thinks she’s been doing, so why not? But there was still no answer, and she’d been considering what to do, whether or not to go back inside and wait or head down to the police station when her phone rang in her hand, it was Ethan, calling just when she needed it most, and he invited her over to talk and now here she is, walking through his grandparents’ house.

  They sit, side by side on the couch. There are clear plastic covers on the arms, to keep them from too much wear, and Sammie smooths down the one on her side. Ethan is sitting so straight he could have a pole up the back of his shirt, and sequins of sweat are clinging to his forehead. When was the last time a man was so nervous around her? High school, probably, but she can’t remember. It’s nice, to have that kind of effect on a man. She’d forgotten how it was, that prickle of anticipation that comes before sex with someone new.

  “Are you all right?” she asks, and when she touches his knee he jumps like he’s been spattered with hot grease. “Do you want me to leave?”

  “No. I’ve—I’ve never had anyone want to come here.”

  “What about Kelly?”

  He blinks, looks away. “We broke up,” he says. She waits, thinking he might say more, but he doesn’t.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. It’s for the best. We’re not interested in the same stuff.” He clears his throat. “I should go get my notebook, let you read what I’ve written so far.”

  “Wait.”

  She’s never been good at starting these things. It’s always the man who starts it, who touches her, kisses her. But Ethan is so young and so nervous, and he’s terrified, she can see it in his eyes, and he’s never going to touch her, and if she doesn’t do something soon she’ll end up going home. Already she can feel her resolve dissolving, this petty revenge was a stupid idea, but then she thinks of Dean, and how he’s punishing her for something she didn’t even do, and she wants to get back at him, even if Dean never knows she’s here, even if he never finds out what she’s done, she’ll know, and that’ll be enough. She slides her hand from his knee up his thigh, until she’s cupping Ethan through his pants, and that’s easy because he’s already hard.

  “Sammie,” he says weakly, and she puts her hand loosely over his mouth and holds it there. There’s a cut over one of his eyebrows, shallow and mean-looking.

  “Shut up,” she says, and he groans when she undoes his pants and he springs free, his eyes roll back in his head and he’s already trembling, lifting his hips into her hand so she’ll take more. “Sit still, don’t move. Let me do it.”

  But it’s already over, before she can do anything else, it’s gone before it’s even there, deflated to nothing in her hand, and he’s crying, Ethan is actually weeping from embarrassment, and he grabs her hand, wipes it clean on his shirt, leaves a gleaming smear across the fabric.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ve never been with anyone like that.”

  She’s not sure if he means he’s never gotten a handjob, or if he’s never had sex.

  “It’s fine,” she says, pulling away. “It happens all the time. Really, it’s fine.”

  She pats his back awkwardly, wanting to be kind, but she’s already wondering how soon she can leave, what excuse she could give to get out the door. And then her phone rings, perfect, she pulls it out of her purse and glances at the screen. It’s the Denver PD calling, maybe she’ll finally know what happened to Hoskins, where he is.

  “Excuse me,” she says. “I have to take this.”

  She gets up and steps outside the room, tugging on the bottom of her shirt as she puts the phone up to her ear. It’s funny, how quickly things can go wrong, although she’s never had it go bad quite that fast.

  “Hello?” she says, but there’s no answer, only a low-pitched hum. “Is anyone there?”

  “You’ll have to go outside if you want to hear them,” Ethan says from the living room. “Phone service is hit or miss in this house.”

  “Oh. Okay. I’m gonna go wash my hands, and then I’ll step out and call them back.”

  There’s a powder room off the front hall, and there’s a dish of soaps shaped like seashells beside the sink basin, the towels on the rack are looped off at the middle with thick lengths of raffia ribbon that’ve been tied into bows. It reminds her of Seever’s house, because Gloria had decorated like this—carefully, thoughtfully. She washes her hands, turning one of the soap-shells in her palms to get a lather going, and dries her hands on the thighs of her jeans.

  She comes out of the powder room and pauses to look at the photos nailed up on the wall before going outside. Ther
e are a lot of them—pictures of the grandfather in a business suit, the grandmother rowing a boat on a lake. It looks like Ethan’s grandparents are travelers, but there are no children in the photos. Lots of friends, it looks like, lots of good times. Sammie peers at a few of the photos, looking for Ethan’s face among the old ones, but she doesn’t spot him. But Ethan’s shy—maybe he doesn’t like his picture taken.

  The wall of photos, it makes her think of Seever’s house. Again. She hasn’t thought of the time she’d spent in that house for a long while, but now it’s come up twice in the last few minutes. Why? This little house is nothing like Seever’s McMansion.

  Her phone buzzes in her hand as she’s looking over the photos, but it’s a text this time, from a number she doesn’t recognize. I’D FORGOTTEN I HAD THE GUY WHO CALLS ABOUT SEEVER’S STUFF STILL SAVED IN MY CALLER ID. HERE’S HIS NUMBER.

  The art dealer, she realizes. Simon. She’d thought he might not get back to her at all, that she’d have to search out a new angle, but it looks like things are about to turn around. Fuck you, Weber, she thinks, tapping on the number Simon had sent over and starting a text.

  HI, she types. I WAS TOLD YOU’RE LOOKING TO BUY SOME OF SEEVER’S ARTWORK. PLS CALL OR TXT ME BACK. THX.

  She finishes, hits Send. Then, she hears a muffled, canned voice, coming from somewhere nearby.

  Alright, alright, alright. She recognizes the sound—it’s a cell-phone alert, the kind you download and use instead of the standard ring or beep. She’s heard all kinds of them, usually while at work—alarms set to sound like Christmas music or belches or even the revving engine of a racecar—and she’s even heard this particular one before, used by a woman who blushed bright-red when the man’s voice bellowed out of her purse. It’s from Dazed and Confused, the woman had said. I love that actor, but I can never remember his name.

  “Was that your phone?” Sammie asks.

  “I must’ve gotten a text,” Ethan says.

  She can hear Ethan moving around, shifting pillows and books, hunting for his phone.