What You Don't Know(69)
And that was the thing, wasn’t it? This Secondhand Killer—and it seems like that’s what he’s going to be called, whether any of them like it or not—was careful, he was thorough. He hadn’t let anyone see him, and he hadn’t left much, or anything, behind, although the tests are still being run on the samples they’d taken from Simms. He was good, very good; some people might say he was lucky, but over the years Hoskins had come to understand that a person makes their own luck, especially if that person is a killer.
He turns to the first page of the file, looks at the photo of the woman who’d disappeared in 1952. She had dark hair and big eyes. A lush mouth filled in with lipstick, probably red, although he couldn’t tell in the black-and-white photo. Whoever killed her had been experienced. He’d done it before. And maybe, he thinks, it’s the same with the Secondhand Killer. Maybe he’d killed, and then he’d switched gears and decided to go after people connected to Seever, he’d even started doing it the way Seever did it. Why?
Because he wants his ego stroked.
Lots of killers crave attention, for people to sit up and notice them. They do it for the blood, they do it for the sex, but it’s also driven by the ego. It sounds like some crazy Freud shit, but it’s true. There was the Zodiac Killer out in California, BTK in Kansas, both had sent letters to the police, they’d taunted and teased, because they wanted the attention, like a kid screaming for candy. And Secondhand was sending them messages too, because he’d chosen to mimic Seever, but he wasn’t hiding the victims like Seever did—no, he was leaving everything out for anyone to see, because he wanted them to notice. He didn’t want to be caught, oh no, he wanted to stay free and keep doing what he was doing, but he wanted everyone to be talking about him, he probably went to bed at night smiling because he was so damn satisfied.
Hoskins taps on his keyboard, wakes his sleeping computer back up. He’ll comb the database of unsolved murder cases involving a female victim that happened in the last five years, possibly even less. The last two years. There wouldn’t be too many—Denver is still a safe place to live, not safe enough to keep your doors unlocked at night, let’s not get crazy, but safe enough. He waits, hoping the computer will get its ass going, but it just sits there with a half-loaded page, not doing anything, even when Hoskins tries to reboot it.
“I need a few things, it won’t be long,” Ted says, and Hoskins looks up in time to see the kid walking past his office door, his cell phone stuck against the side of his head. He hadn’t expected to see Ted anytime soon, he’d figured the kid would still be at home, but this is good, he wants to apologize, to clear the air, and besides, he needs his help. “Give me two minutes.”
“Hey, I didn’t expect to see you here,” Hoskins says, standing in the office door. Ted freezes, then slowly looks over his shoulder. If a person could look like a scared rabbit caught in a snare, that person would be Ted. “I’m glad I caught you.”
“I thought you were working upstairs,” Ted says, turning full around. There’s a clean white bandage crossed over an eyebrow, and a ring of purple bruises around his neck. The whites of his eyes are red from burst blood vessels. Hoskins winces, touches his own face. His upper lip is swollen, his nose sore, and there’s a lump on the back of his head, but Ted looks worse, and it’s bad because he was the one to do this.
“No, I’m still working from down here.”
“Oh, okay.” Ted pulls a ring of keys from his pocket and unlocks his office. “See you around.”
“Hey, wait.”
Ted pauses, looks at him warily.
“I’m sorry about what I did,” Hoskins says. He doesn’t have any problem with apologizing, never has—even when he doesn’t mean it. But this time he does mean it. “I saw you at the crime scene, and I lost it. It’s not an excuse, but I’ve always had a hard time dealing with things connected to Seev—to that particular case I worked before. Not an excuse, but that’s what it is.”
Ted’s lips move but no sound comes out. He looks at the clock on the wall, then at Hoskins.
“My mom thinks I should quit,” he finally says. “After what you did to me.”
“Don’t do that, man,” Hoskins says, taking a step closer. He stops, holds up his hands when Ted shies away. “You’re good at this job. You work hard, and everybody appreciates you. Don’t let my stupid shit get in your way. I promise nothing like that will ever happen again.”
Ted sighs. “I like it here.”
“Then don’t quit. I can call upstairs if you want, see if they’ll move me to the other side of the basement. Or maybe you could go upstairs, get a nice office with a window. But don’t quit because of what I did.”
“What you did to me, was it like before?” Ted says. “When you got kicked out of Homicide?”
Hoskins pauses, lowers his hands to his sides and folds them up into fists. Of course Ted would know about that, everyone does. Not like it’s a big secret.
“Yeah, I guess it was like that time.”
Ted looks down at the toes of his sneakers. Sighs again. There are some people who will hold a grudge their whole lives, coddle it, never spit it out, as if they’re holding a piece of steak in their mouth until the meat has gone gray and unrecognizable, a tasteless lump, but Ted isn’t one of those people. Hoskins can tell by the slope of his shoulders, by the crease between his eyebrows, that he wants to let things go back to the way they were before.