What You Don't Know(25)
“Those cold cases are still open investigations,” Chief Black had said. He was trying to make the move sound appealing, but couldn’t manage to sound entirely convinced himself. “You’re still technically a homicide detective. You’re an extension of the department.”
So here he is, two years after his fall from grace, plugging away on the cold cases, opening up the old brown folders with the creaky spines and the corners that had long ago splintered from age. Squinting at old photographs and deciphering the handwriting of detectives who’d retired before he’d even joined the force.
February 26, 1970: A pretty cheerleader never made it home from a high school basketball game and was found raped and murdered six miles from her home the next day.
June 23, 1979: A nineteen-year-old was shot in the head in Washington Park as he slept under a pine tree.
October 28, 1996: A skeleton was found on the side of the road in north Denver, still bound with rope across the midsection and legs. The coroner guessed it had been there for over a year before being found. The body was never identified.
If Hoskins were still up in Homicide, he’d be investigating those two girls pulled out of the reservoir. He can imagine what the two of them looked like, swollen with water, their tongues black and fat. Their eyes gone, because fish get hungry. He’d skimmed the article about them that morning, not that he could miss it, not right on the front page of the Post, about the connection the two victims had to Jacky Seever, the possibility of Seever having a partner, someone who was still free, raping and killing. The whole thing was ridiculous—or maybe it wasn’t. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, Hoskins knows that for a fact, but he also knows this: Seever never worked with anyone. Not a lone wolf, Hoskins would never call him that, but more like a weasel, a creature that seems harmless but will rip off your face if given the chance.
At least, he thinks, the article wasn’t written by Sammie. There have been times over the years that he’d yank the newspaper out of its blue plastic sleeve and unfold it to find her face staring up at him, a tiny, blurry photo printed beside her byline that was still clear enough for him to make out the hard line of her jaw, the sarcastic twist of her lips. Enough to make something inside him give a lurch and then settle down to silence once more. He hasn’t seen Sammie’s face in the paper for a while now, but he’s still surprised that she wasn’t the one to cover these two new murders, that she wasn’t the one to connect their deaths to Seever. He wonders at it, but not too much. He’s finally reached a point when he doesn’t think about her all that often, and he’d prefer it to stay that way.
“I’m gonna grab some lunch,” Ted Johnson says, sticking his head into the office and startling Hoskins out of his daze. Ted works in the next office over, and Hoskins isn’t sure what he does—something to do with the department’s computers, with the software. Tech stuff, the shit no one else seems to understand. He can usually smell the cheap cologne Ted always wears before he actually sees him, because the kid must bathe in the stuff. “Want me to grab you something?”
“I’m good,” Hoskins says. “Thanks for asking.”
“You doing okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve been quiet, that’s all.” Ted takes a step into the office, and stops. He’s holding his wallet in his hands like it’s a purse, and Hoskins knows exactly what sorts of comments Loren would’ve made about that. Hoskins guesses Ted’s in his early twenties, sports those tight jeans and the low-top sneakers all the kids seem to wear these days, and not even ironically. If the kid lived in San Francisco or Seattle, he’d be working at some tech company, changing the face of the Internet. But in Denver, Colorado, Ted’s another unseen cog in the wheel of the police force, hidden away underground. “You want to talk?”
Hoskins is stunned for a moment, and then laughs, actually guffaws, because when was the last time he had anyone besides the department psychologist ask if he wants to talk? He was partners with Loren for almost fourteen years, and he was never the kind of guy to talk; if you started sharing with Ralph Loren, he would’ve told you to stick your feelings right up your poop-chute.
“What’s so funny?” Ted asks, frowning, and it makes Hoskins think of when he’d first been moved down to the basement and Ted had introduced himself. He’d asked Hoskins to call him Dinky, because that’s what his big brothers had always called him, and all his friends, and that had made Hoskins laugh, hard.
“Why Dinky?” Hoskins had asked. “Out of every nickname in the damn world, why that one?”
“You ever seen those vacation movies? You remember the dog that got tied to the bumper and dragged?”
“Yeah.”
“One time this kid hog-tied me to his bike,” Ted had said. “He dragged me down the street, and I lost most of the skin on my arms, had gravel ground into my face. The doctors had to pick it out with tweezers.”
“Nothing’s funny,” Hoskins says now, wiping at his eyes. “You surprised me. Same shit, different day. You know.”
Ted nods, still frowning, but Hoskins knows that Ted doesn’t know, because he’s a kid; he’s still wet behind the ears and he doesn’t know shit about much of anything. Ted still lives at home with his parents, still drives the car they bought him for his sixteenth birthday, spends most of his free time with his eyes glued to the screen of his cell phone. He’s a nice enough kid, smart and hardworking and eager to please, but he’s also na?ve. Probably still a virgin.