“Where are you going?” Hoskins shouts, everyone nearby is watching, standing with their heads turned and their eyes bright, so they look like curious animals peeping out of their underground burrows, checking out the commotion. “Where the hell are you going?”
But Loren doesn’t answer, he’s already halfway across the clearing, his arms swinging by his sides, and it’s his own walk, at least, not some more Seever mimicry. Loren’s distracted enough to forget to keep up his charade, something about painting, and Sammie—
“Should we go after him?” another detective asks, sidling up beside Hoskins. The guy looks ready for a fight, anxious to knock Loren on his ass, but that won’t help anything. No, Hoskins wants to know what Loren’s up to, and it won’t do a damn thing to drag Loren back now. Hoskins glances back at Jimmy Galen’s body, his glassy, horrified eyes rolled up to the clouded sky, and sighs.
“Just follow him,” Hoskins says. “I want to know where he’s going. What he’s doing.”
SAMMIE
Desperation is not a pretty thing. It’s the burlap sack of emotions—no one looks good wearing it. Sammie can’t think of one time in her life when she’s felt as desperate as she does now, and maybe that’s a good thing, to have lived most of her life free from it.
“I don’t know,” Corbin is saying. She puts the phone on speaker and places it on the table in front of her. She can’t stand one more second of Corbin speaking right into her ear, especially when he sounds like he’s gearing up to reject the article she’d emailed over. “I mean, it’s a solid interview. But there’s nothing about the Secondhand Killer in it.”
“Seever claims he doesn’t know who Secondhand is.”
“Yeah, I get it. And Seever’s big news, but he’s only back in the paper because of Secondhand. Whatever you’re writing—it’s gotta have both of them in it to work. It needs to be current.”
“But if there was a book about Seever—”
“Yeah, I know this would be perfect for a book about him. But what I need now is a piece about the Secondhand Killer. And Seever. Look, if you would’ve gone and talked to Seever seven years ago, yeah, that I could’ve run. Front page, above the fold. But this—I mean, there’s nothing in this interview we don’t already know. It’s interesting stuff. But nothing new.”
She stands up, slams her fist into the front of a kitchen cabinet. It drives her fucking crazy, to be back in this place, fighting for a story and the chance to make her career again. Maybe it’ll always be like this—the constant paddle upstream, the struggle to stay afloat. She’s not sure if she likes the idea.
“Sammie? Are you there?” Corbin asks, alarmed. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” Sammie says, sitting down again, cradling her sore fist between her breasts. “If this isn’t working, what should I write about?”
“I don’t know. You’re the writer, not me. But I can’t run this. Not when Weber’s got some really great stuff in the works…”
“What’s he got that’s so great?” Sammie asks. Weber has had a new piece in the paper every day, about Secondhand, about Seever. It’s good, well written, although she hates to admit it. “Has he figured out who Secondhand is now?”
“No, but if you figure it out, I’ll never publish anything else Weber writes,” Corbin says, laughing. “I’m not going to tell you what he’s working on.”
“Oh, c’mon. What do you think I’m going to do? Sweep in and steal his story?”
“That wouldn’t surprise me in the least.”
“Fine,” she says. A little hurt. “Don’t tell me.”
“Okay,” he says, more smug than she would like. “I won’t.”
She hangs up the phone and puts her head down on top of her folded arms, but her eyes are still open, staring at the table’s rough wood grain. She has to be at work in a few hours, she’s trying to use her free time for writing, but it’s not happening. The more you want something the harder it gets, and she wants to write a good story for the paper so badly it almost hurts.
“You’re perfectly safe,” Hoskins had said when he’d called her back, right before she’d gotten on the phone with Corbin. “I have some officers keeping an eye on Loren, and I’ll know if he gets anywhere near you.”
“Are you with him?”
“No,” Hoskins said, drawing the word out.
“Do you think he’s the Secondhand Killer?” Sammie asked, and he was silent for so long that she thought he might’ve hung up, except the phone was still picking up the background noise. The sound of the wind, and of people working, speaking in hushed, serious voices, the crunch of tires over gravel and slamming car doors. They were sounds she recognized.
“He’s not,” Hoskins finally said. “Loren’s insane, but he’s not a killer.”
“And you know that for sure?”
“He’s not Secondhand, Sammie. I had someone clear him after I got your text, made sure he had alibis for the times the other victims went missing. And he does.” Hoskins sounded strangely satisfied. “Like I said, Loren’s crazy. But he hasn’t killed anyone.”
“Are you at a crime scene?” she asked, and Hoskins paused, thrown off by the sudden change in questions.