What You Don't Know(73)

He turns, feels the pinprick eyes of all the victims posted up on the wall following him. This office is giving him the creeps, and he wants to go outside, stand with his feet in the snow. He grabs for the knob, then sees what’s hanging on the back of the door and recoils. It’s a costume, satin fabric, half blue and half red, with a big ruffled collar and fuzzy yellow pom-poms sewn down the front instead of buttons. A clown suit. Always with the fucking clowns.

Hoskins touches the costume, rubs the silky fabric between his thumb and first two fingers. There’s dried blood on the sleeve, ground into the lace cuff.

This room, full of Seever’s victims, Loren dressing like Seever, acting like him, it isn’t good. He’s worked with Loren for a long time, he’s seen the guy do some strange stuff, but not like this. This is obsession, plain and simple. Bad things are born out of obsession.

“I know where he is,” Jenna says, sticking her head in the door. She has her cell phone in one hand, and her other keeps tucking her hair behind her ear, nervously.

“Where?”

“He’s over at St. Luke’s, on Nineteenth,” she says, and he’s already past her before she can finish, his car keys jingling in his hand. “Visiting with patients.”

*

“You ever been in love, Paulie?” Seever had asked him once. They’d been together every day for two weeks straight, Seever filling Hoskins’s ear with names and details and stories, half-truths and nightmares, about the victims and the murders and his childhood, more than Hoskins had ever wanted to know about Jacky Seever, more than he could stomach.

“Yeah,” Hoskins said, leaning back in his chair, one foot balanced on the opposite knee. “Couple times.”

“You want to tell me about them?” Seever asked, and winked. “Give me a few nasty details, something to keep me warm at night?”

Seever held up his hands and shook them, made the handcuffs jangle on his wrists. He was handcuffed, and then chained to the table when he was in IR2, Hoskins made sure of it. The other detectives thought it was overkill, that Seever was nothing but an old man who’d passed his prime, but Hoskins had seen what he was capable of, and he didn’t trust him. Seever had recounted his childhood for Hoskins, he’d told him about the father he’d never had, the boys in high school who’d laughed and thrown rocks, he’d rambled on endlessly about his restaurants and his marriage, he’d made himself sound like a nice guy, a normal guy, but Hoskins still didn’t trust him. Because Hoskins knew that you could know things about someone without really knowing them, and that’s how Seever had operated his whole life. He’d put on his expensive suits, he’d worn his clown costumes, and people had never bothered to see past that.

Seever was the wolf posing as Grandma.

“I don’t think I’ll be sharing anything,” Hoskins said. “This is supposed to be about you, Seever. Not me.”

“Oh, right.” Seever grinned. “Sometimes that slips my mind.”

“Have you ever been in love?” Hoskins asked, curious. He expected that Seever would say he’d been in love a dozen times, a hundred, that he’d loved every person he’d murdered. That he was in love with his wife, that he was in love with Carrie Simms, and Beth Howard, and all of them, but Seever shrugged instead, as if puzzled by the question he’d asked himself.

“I don’t know,” he said. He looked down at his wrists, gave them another shake. “I’d meet someone, work with them, and I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about them. It’d drive me crazy, I’d become obsessed. Is that what love is? I don’t know. Maybe it is. I don’t know.”

*

Hoskins is almost sure it’s 2008 again, those days when they’d watch Seever clamber out his front door in a clown costume, and they’d follow him to the hospital and watch him entertain the kids, blowing up balloon animals and singing songs, and it almost seemed like he might be innocent, that a man who’d volunteer to help sick children couldn’t be capable of anything bad. But there was something off about Seever, something that didn’t quite jibe, even when his painted face was smiling and he was squeezing his nose and telling jokes, but Hoskins couldn’t put his finger on it, not at first.

The realization came while he and Loren watched Seever prance around the children’s unit, giving horsey rides. It was his face that was all wrong, the makeup he’d smeared all over himself to create a mask. The paint around his mouth was too red, like blood, and the corners of his smile weren’t rounded, but had points as sharp as daggers. He looked like a clown who’d stick a knife in your throat and defile your corpse. Oh, people smiled when they saw Seever coming down the halls at the hospital, but Hoskins started noticing the way they turned their faces in distaste when he came close, like he was a bad smell, like deep down, subconsciously, they knew what he really was.

Hoskins shakes his head, trying to clear it, because he’s not crazy, he’s not—it’s 2015, and he’s coming up behind Ralph Loren, who’s swaggering through the hospital in a clown costume, and Loren’s done his makeup the way Seever used to, with all the sharp angles and all that red paint, too much red. Loren’s laughing, that stupid-ass donkey laugh of Seever’s, and Hoskins would like to pull his gun from the holster and shoot the clown right in the back of the head, his hand actually twitches toward his belt, but he grabs Loren by the shoulder instead, spins him around.