What You Don't Know Read online

  “Fingers?”

  “Yeah, dummy. You got some weird kink with fingers? Seems to me like you prefer the middle ones—you stick them up your ass to get off?”

  Seever smiles. He likes to talk, there are some times he won’t shut up, but Hoskins has a feeling they’ll never hear the truth on this, and maybe it doesn’t matter.

  “I have a question,” Hoskins says. It’s the first time he’s said anything, because Loren does most of the talking in these interviews; he’s better at it, he knows what to ask. Hoskins is more like window dressing, backup if it’s needed, a witness in case something bad goes down. Someone to keep an eye on Loren, make sure he behaves.

  “What’s that?” Seever asks. His eyes are greenish-brown, and there’s a bright spot of gold in his left one, under the pupil.

  “Why’d you bury them all in your crawl space?” Hoskins asks. If this interview doesn’t end soon, if he doesn’t get out of this room, he’ll be sick. He felt the same way in the morgue, looking at the victims so far, their bodies laid out on the metal tables with the raised edges, so if the bodies leaked or bled there wouldn’t be a mess to clean. “Why keep them with you?”

  Seever blinks.

  This is the million-dollar question. Sammie asked Hoskins this the night before, when they were in his bed. She had a bowl of trail mix balanced in the crux of her thighs, and even though he hates eating in bed, hated finding the sunflower seeds and nuts in his sheets after she was gone, he lets her do it.

  “If Seever hadn’t kept the—the dead people—”

  “The victims,” he’d corrected her. “Or the departed. That’s what you should call them.”

  “Why’d he bury them all under his house? It’s not like he has a good explanation for how all those bodies got down there. No one will ever think he’s innocent.”

  “He’s not trying to convince anyone he’s innocent,” Hoskins said. “He doesn’t deny anything.”

  Sammie was wearing one of his shirts, and the collar hung loosely off one shoulder. He ran his fingers along her chest, down into the dip above the delicate bone. She closed her eyes, tilted her head back so the fine line of her neck was exposed. He often wondered what Sammie was thinking.

  “Did you go down to your crawl space sometimes, pay them all a little visit?” Hoskins asks now, mildly. There’s a rushing sound in his ears, and it seems like he’s looking at Seever through binoculars, but through the wrong end. Seever looks so far away and tiny, although he’s on the other side of the table, only three feet away, but he thinks that if he were to reach out and grab at Seever, his fist would swipe uselessly through empty air. “You’d go down there and gloat and laugh and jerk off?”

  Seever swallows, his throat making a sharp clicking noise. Then he looks away.

  “How’d you do it?” Loren asks, and Hoskins can hear the impatience in his voice, the waspy hum of anger below the surface. Maybe Seever can’t hear it, but he hasn’t worked with Loren for the last ten years, hasn’t learned to gauge Loren’s temper like you would the temperature of bathwater before climbing in. “Where’d you pick them up?”

  Seever leans forward, his elbows on the table. He’s wearing one of the orange jumpsuits all the prisoners wear, and the front of it is filthy, smeared with dried food and dirt. Seever was always so particular about his clothing, and now that’s gone to shit. Incarceration isn’t nice for pretty boys. Seever props his elbows up on the table. He looks eager to talk, and Hoskins expects that they’ll get more lies out of him, more games and bragging, but instead, they get the truth.

  “I got them from all over, wherever I could,” Seever says. “I never attacked anyone. They all came home with me because they wanted to.”

  “I guess you expect me to believe that they wanted you to tie them up and kill them, too?” Loren asks.

  Seever doesn’t answer this, just laughs, that high-pitched titter that digs right into your brain and doesn’t let go, and that’s what sets Loren off. That’s what they tell the boss man later, that Seever had laughed, he was always laughing like a maniac and Loren couldn’t stand it anymore. But it’s more than the laugh, Hoskins knows. It’s the last seven weeks they’ve spent following Seever around, watching and waiting for him to slip up so they could finally arrest him.

  They were first led to him by an anonymous call; a woman gave them Seever’s name and address, said he was up to something, that she’d seen people going into the house and never coming back out. So they’d started watching him go to work and go to the bar and go home, peering at him through binoculars while he sat on the lip of his bathtub and clipped his fingernails into the toilet bowl. They started watching Seever because they had no one else to watch, no other leads, and they had to do something; the city was screaming for an explanation. Twenty-three disappearances reported in the last seven years in the Denver-metro alone. People disappeared all the time, but not like this, without witnesses or bodies, and there were stories about cults and Satan-worshipping floating around, of white slavery. Hoskins had heard the stories himself, and he’d laughed, because it was all so stupid. There had to be an explanation for all the missing people, he can remember thinking. Something sane and reasonable.

  So they started following Seever, because of that one call, and they could’ve stopped at any time, but there was something that kept them after him. Because Seever was weird, there was something off about him, something wrong. It was Loren who said this, who said Seever was hiding something, that he was up to no good, he wasn’t sure Seever was behind all the missing people, but the dude was bad news. And Loren was to be trusted, he had a nose for the work, he knew how to read people. Loren didn’t like Seever, didn’t like the way he’d shake hands and hold the sweaty grip for a moment too long, didn’t like the way he’d gel his hair so the rows left behind by the comb’s teeth were still plainly visible. Loren wanted to bust Seever for something, anything, even if it wasn’t anything big, because he wanted to see the guy squirm, wanted to laugh in his face when they shoved him into a cell in his fancy suit and left him there to sleep on a cot and shit in a toilet with no seat. Oh, they could’ve busted him anytime for drinking—Seever liked to toss back a few at the bars most nights before heading home, they could’ve pulled him over a dozen different times—but Hoskins made Loren wait.

  “I don’t know,” Hoskins had said. He was usually the one who plowed forward without a second thought—prepare for ramming speed, look away if you’re squeamish—but this was different, there was some niggling doubt, a pricking in his thumbs that told him to slow down, to wait. To watch. If Seever was guilty of something big—and as they spent more time watching him, Hoskins was sure this was the case—and they jumped on him too soon, he’d be lost. Seever had money, he had friends; people liked him. They could slap him with a DUI, but then they’d have to back off, because otherwise he could claim they were harassing him, that the police department was out for blood on an innocent citizen, and they’d never be able to get him for anything else. “It would probably be better to wait.”

  “Bullshit,” Loren had said, smacking his palm hard against the steering wheel. They were in his car, parked outside one of Seever’s restaurants, watching the shadowed figures moving behind the glass, eating and laughing and sometimes doing nothing at all. “We could have him behind bars tonight.”

  “That won’t get us into his house,” Hoskins said, drumming his fingers on the dashboard and staring out at the white stripes painted on the asphalt, as if he were bored. “Let’s say he is the one behind all these missing people. We’ll never know if we never step foot in his place. Then we’ll be the assholes who let this dipshit slip through our fingers.”

  Loren wouldn’t take orders, he didn’t like to be told what to do, Hoskins had learned that not long after they became partners. Loren would only go along with something if he thought it was his own idea, so Hoskins played the game; he was the one yanking the puppet strings, although it had to be done softly, with care. None of Loren
’s other partners had figured this out; Loren had stomped all over them and none of them had lasted, not until Hoskins. Because a partnership can’t work with two snarling pit bulls—one of them has to play the part of the leash.

  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.

  “That’s not important.”

  “It is to me.” But why should it be? she thinks. Isn’t this what she was looking for, this chance to step cleanly out of this relationship and back into her marriage? There’s no reason to hang on. There’s no reason to go to Seever’s house anymore; there are other stories to write, it’s time to let go.

  “You don’t like me seeing other women?” Hoskins says, smiling. “You go home to your husband but it’s not okay if I have a girlfriend?”

  “I never said that. I just want to know her name.”

  “If you don’t want me seeing anyone else, move in with me. Leave him.”

  “I can’t do that. You know I can’t do that.”

  “Yes, you can. Pack yourself a bag of clothes and leave. I can buy you whatever else you need.” This is Hoskins in a nutshell, she thinks. He wants to be the hero. If he lived in the Old West, he’d be wearing a white ten-gallon hat and she’d be hog-tied on the train track, screaming her fucking head off. “I’ll take care of you.”

  She doesn’t think there’s another woman. There can’t be. Hoskins has spent every moment of the last few months wrapped up in Seever, and in her. He hasn’t had time to meet anyone else. He’s making this up, she thinks. So she’ll get jealous and leave Dean. Hoskins wants to settle down, he’s told her that before. And she wonders why she always meets men like this, her whole life it’s been this way—men who want more than she has to give. Where are all the men who want nothing but sex, to have some fun and move on?

  “I need to go,” she says, yanking her napkin off her lap and cramming it right down on her salad, smush, so she hears the lettuce leaves crack under the pressure.

  “Were you listening to anything I said?” Hoskins asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So that’s it?” he says. “You’re all done with me?”

  “No.”

  “Then leave him. Come home with me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I don’t understand.” And he wouldn’t, she thinks. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be married to a nice man, a good man who makes
her happy most days, and then have Hoskins, who she might love, but she can’t leave Dean, because that choice would be irreversible, and what if it turned out to be the wrong one? It’s not as if she could take it back. She’s right in the middle, and it’s safe there. She has her cake and she eats it too, like her mother would say if she knew all this was going on, but her mother would die if she did find out. Die of shame. She’d never be able to show her face in church again, that’s what she’d say. I have a whore daughter and I’m never getting into heaven. “You got what you wanted, I guess? You got the story, you’re getting the good assignments, and now you’re done?”

  “No.” She shakes her head and bites on the pad of her thumb, but the truth is that she is getting the good assignments, that now Dan Corbin considers her a serious journalist. She gets calls from other reporters at other papers, hoping to squeeze information out of her, asking for her contacts, her sources, when it wasn’t all that long ago that she was the one making the calls. She owes it all to Hoskins, but there’s something inside her that hardens when she thinks about that. She’s a miser, loath to give up anything to pay her debt. Especially when she knows exactly what Hoskins wants—he wants her. “That’s not how it is.”

  “You’d lie to get anything you want,” Hoskins says, and he stands up fast enough that his drink knocks over, spilling water all over everything, and a waiter rushes forward, wanting to help, to save the meal, but that seems as if it’s happening far away, completely separate from this moment. “God, you’re an ugly bitch.”

  Later, at home, Sammie will cry over what Hoskins has said. It isn’t the part about being a liar that hurts, because she is a liar, she already knows that. But who isn’t? Mostly it’s the ugly thing that’ll bother her. Because she’s not ugly. Everyone, her entire life, has told her how pretty she is, how beautiful. It’s a part of who she is; it’s as much of her identity as her fingerprints or the freckle on her right hip. Her beauty has been the one thing she can count on, her fallback when everything else is going wrong. She has never had anyone call her ugly, and it hurts, although a part of her thinks that Hoskins is right, that she is ugly, that everyone sees it and tells her the opposite, she doesn’t know any better.