What You Don't Know(9)
So Loren considered, spent a day mulling the whole thing over, then went to Chief Black, said he’d thought about it, and he’d decided the best thing to do would be to wait, to keep watching Seever and look for a good time to sweep in and nab him, and the boss man agreed to give them more time. Later, people would congratulate Loren on having that kind of foresight, on knowing when it was best to pull back, on having such good instincts, and Loren never once tried to correct anyone. Hoskins wasn’t mad—that was life with Loren, what he’d come to expect. You had to give a lot to Loren to get a little, and the glory wasn’t as important to Hoskins as it was to do his job the right way. The ends justify the means, or, like his father used to say, it doesn’t matter what you put in your mouth, it’s all shit in the end.
Be vewy, vewy quiet, Loren would whisper when they were parked across from Seever’s house at night, struggling not to fall asleep. We’re hunting wabbits.
It was funny at first, and then later, not so much.
Seven weeks of Elmer Fudd, seven weeks of watching Seever shovel food down his mouth-hole and stroll out to the curb to check his mail and chat with the neighbors, who all seemed to like Seever, who thought he was a pretty damn good guy. It was all going nowhere. Loren was persuasive but he wouldn’t be able to convince Chief Black to let them watch this one guy forever. They needed a break. And they got one: a nineteen-year-old girl named Carrie Simms, the only person who’d ever managed to escape the crawl space.
But those seven weeks of Seever before Simms strolled into the station, fifty hours a week of him, sometimes more, there were nights Hoskins would dream about Seever slipping into bed with him, his hand hot and inviting when it snaked over his hip, reaching for his dick, and it didn’t matter how hard Hoskins fought, he couldn’t get free of him. They’d only been watching Seever, but he’d still managed to worm his way into their heads like a parasite, and Hoskins knew that was the real reason Loren jumped out of his chair and punched Seever right in the face, making his nose crunch flat and blood spray everywhere. Loren didn’t do it because Seever was a killer—they’d arrested plenty of those before, men who’d done terrible things to their wives and children and complete strangers—but because Seever was like the chorus of a terrible song, set on infinite replay. He was the awful taste caught in the back of your mouth, the one that can’t be rinsed away. The bloodstain in the carpet that won’t ever come out.
Hoskins grabs the back of Loren’s shirt and hauls him back, the two of them stumbling clumsily together, and Seever’s shrieking, one hand clamped over his gushing nose, and he’s looking right at Hoskins, because Loren’s out of it, his eyes are closed and his lips are moving, counting slowly back from ten like the department psych told him to do when he felt ready to lose his shit.
“This isn’t over,” Seever screams. His voice is thick and syrupy from the blood pouring down his throat and over his lips to the collar of his jumpsuit, but Hoskins can understand him perfectly. “It’ll never be over.”
SAMMIE
February 21, 2009
Thirty-one. That’s how many bodies they have when the crawl space is all dug through and the backyard is plowed up and the concrete floor in the garage has been smashed to pieces and trucked away.
“I hate that bastard,” Hoskins says. He’s tired, big bags hanging under his eyes. He’s been spending lots of time with Seever, hours and hours of interviews and questions, just the two of them, because Seever won’t talk in front of Loren anymore. Hoskins doesn’t tell her much, but she knows that Seever told him where to dig under his garage, and they’d found a skeleton there, that he’d been brought out to his house to show them the area in his yard where he’d buried another. “If I have to spend one more minute with that bastard, I’m going to lose my shit.”
She doesn’t say anything to that, because she always liked Seever, she still can’t believe he’s a killer. But you can never know what one person is capable of, she thinks. Like her husband. Dean isn’t stupid; he knows something’s going on, he’s been watching her. He doesn’t trust her anymore, and that bothers her, although it probably shouldn’t, because why should he? Look what she’s doing—to him, to their marriage. And to Hoskins. She can’t forget Hoskins, who is tired and cranky most days, is not as often in the mood for sex but still clings to her. He’s the kind of man who needs a woman in his life. If they’d met years before, she might’ve ended up with Hoskins instead of Dean, but thinking that makes her feel idiotic, because why should she always think about her life in terms of men? But she’s never been without one, not since her first kiss in the seventh grade, and maybe she’s like Hoskins—she can’t live without a man in her life. But she doesn’t have one man, she has two, and something’s bound to give sooner or later, it’s only a matter of time. Dean’s asking questions and Hoskins is pressuring her to file for divorce, to move in with him, and she can’t commit either way, because someone’ll end up hurt, and is it so bad this way? It’s the first time in her life that she doesn’t want more, she’d be happy if things would stay the same, but then Hoskins makes the choice for her, says he’s met someone else, that it’s serious.
“What’s her name?” Sammie asks. She hadn’t thought it would be this way. She should be the one breaking up with him, that’s how she’d always imagined it happening. Not this, over dinner, with another couple at the next table, eating silently, and she knows they’re listening, and there won’t be any tears or screams from her; Hoskins picked the perfect spot to do this, to escape unscathed. Without a scene.