What You Don't Know(16)
He didn’t believe Simms at first, mostly because she was the girl-who-cried-wolf and had called the cops so many times before. Simms was more comfortable with lies than she was with the truth; a lot of people were that way these days. They wanted to be involved but not too much, they didn’t want to rock the boat, but still wanted justice. That was why the police station got so many anonymous tips. Everyone wanted a piece of the pie, but no one wanted to put their name on it. But Hoskins wasn’t sure, so he called Loren into the office to hear her story, even though he’d taken a long weekend for the holiday.
“You called us after it happened, didn’t you?” Loren asked Simms. He was tipped back in his chair, his eyes halfway closed so he seemed half asleep. Hoskins had seen Loren raging and angry in the interview room, and he’d seen him cool and professional, but he’d never seen him like this. Bored, almost. “Did you make that anonymous call so we’d look at Seever?”
For the first time, Simms laid down the marker. She wrapped the fingers of her right hand around her left wrist, so they looked cuffed together.
“No.”
“It had to be you who called.”
“It wasn’t. I never called.”
“What made you decide to come in now?” It was the same question Hoskins had asked, and it’d made her angry, sarcastic, but she reacted differently with Loren. It was strange to see, because most people were either scared of him or repulsed, but Simms was more at ease with him in the room.
“I keep thinking about biting,” she said. Her head was ducked, her chin practically against her chest, so they could barely hear her words. “I want to bite down on soft things and make someone scream.”
They loaded Simms into Loren’s car and drove her to Seever’s house, parked down the street. Seever was outside, walking down his driveway to grab the Post, and Simms’s breath caught in her throat when she saw him. Hoskins didn’t believe her story until he saw her eyes bugging out of her skull and her fists crammed against her mouth, he thought she might be having a seizure but she was just terrified, trying not to scream.
They still didn’t have enough to arrest Seever, but it was more than they’d had before. Years before, Jacky Seever had been detained for marijuana possession, and that’s what Hoskins told the judge they were looking for. Judge Vasquez knew the truth, Hoskins could see it written plainly on the man’s face, but they still got their warrant—not to look for murder victims, but to search the premises for marijuana.
It was all they needed.
*
It’s over, the boss man says. Chief Jonathan Black, the biggest pain-in-the-ass boss Hoskins has ever had, doesn’t want to hear it. The Seever case is closed.
It’s a PR thing, Hoskins knows. A budget thing. They’d been searching for Seever for so long, it’s time to move on. There are other murders, other crimes. They can’t keep this up.
It’s time to hand it over to the people, Black tells them, and it’s true—Seever’s not theirs anymore. He belongs to everyone. Outside the jailhouse where Seever’s awaiting trial there’s a huge crowd, carrying homemade placards and bringing out their folding chairs and cases of bottled water, and it almost seems like a party, except the celebration is more like an orgy of hate, the people smile rabidly, flecks of spittle at the corners of their mouths. Denver has been waiting for the moment when the monster gets pulled out from under the bed and into the light, and that is now; they don’t want to wait for more, they want to see this one brought to justice.
Hoskins leaves through the jail’s side door, pausing to watch the swelling crowd gathering out front. There’s a girl there, wearing a jacket printed with pink bunnies. She can’t be more than five. She’s holding a sheet of poster board, awkwardly, because it’s too big for her small arms, but she doesn’t put it down, doesn’t want to miss out on the fun. There’s a poem written on the board in straggling black letters, and Hoskins hopes she doesn’t know what it says, hopes that she can’t read yet:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Good morning Jacky
We’re gonna
Kill you!
*
Jacky Seever was brought to trial on June 1, 2009, charged with thirty-one counts of first-degree murder. Seever wore a brown tweed suit on that first day, as he was wont to do, and a blue silk tie. No photographers were allowed in the courtroom, but an artist in the audience sketched plenty of images that appeared in the Post alongside Samantha Peterson’s articles. In some of the sketches, Seever is stone-faced, with a sheen of sweat on his brow. In others, Seever looks weary, even remorseful—although it is up for debate whether that’s how he actually felt.
The trial itself lasted less than six weeks, and it was the focus of an entire nation. It had been a long while since the American public had been riveted by one person, and they were hungry for blood and gore, and a good story. They got it. A respected member of the community. Thirty-one victims. Nineteen of those had been identified, and the weeping families would tell anyone who’d listen about their murdered loved ones. Cable news stations had a constant feed on the trial, and every newspaper in the country had sent a journalist to cover the story. Local hotels had no available rooms, and anyone who had nowhere to stay found themselves camping out beside the homeless in Civic Center Park, only to be rooted out by the cops in the middle of the night.