“Sammie didn’t kill anyone,” Hoskins says numbly, his eyes darting over the computer screen, horrified, taking it all in. There are crime-scene photos from Seever’s crawl space, he recognizes most of them—hell, he’d taken some of them, those photos had all been stored in the PD’s files, they were supposed to be secure. And there they are, the answer to what they’d been wondering—there are photos of victims’ hands, zoomed in and cropped, the stumps made front and center.
“I didn’t say she did,” Loren says. “But I think Secondhand might’ve started all this because of her. Maybe because he caught on to Seever’s obsession with her, decided to keep it going. She’s back at the paper, isn’t she?”
“Look at this,” Ted whispers, scrolling down. The page goes on and on, into infinity, it seems, the most recent additions at the bottom. According to the time stamps, a dozen new photos have been added in the last twelve hours, all by the same user, all uploaded at the same time. SecondHand is the username, of course it is, of course he’d want to show off his work, because he wants his ego stroked, maybe he thought he wasn’t getting enough attention and the sick fucks on here would give it to him, would give him a goddamn standing ovation.
The first photo added by SecondHand is of Carrie Simms, her face covered in blood, lying on her kitchen floor. Hoskins took a picture very much like it with his own phone. Hoskins scrolls quickly through the rest—Abeyta and Brody, and the boy they’d found. Jimmy Galen. There are two photos of the boy, but he’s not out in the woods like they found him, he’s tied up on a concrete floor, his mouth is a big circle, he’s screaming, alive. Hoskins grimaces and clicks to the last photo uploaded.
“If he was doing it for Sammie at first, he’s not anymore,” Hoskins says. There’s pressure building up behind his eyes, and he hopes he can get a few minutes alone with the Secondhand Killer, it doesn’t matter that his hands are swollen and painful, he’ll teach the little prick a lesson he won’t forget. “We have to find her. She’s in danger.”
The last upload, it’s Sammie, but it’s not her. It’s a painting of Sammie, propped up against a wall, Seever’s signature in the bottom corner. She’s naked in it, her eyes closed, and bleeding from where two of her fingers have been cut away. But it’s not the painting that bothers Hoskins so much, but the caption beneath it.
She’s next? SecondHand had typed. And then, added after the words, somehow making it all even worse: ?
*
Sammie’s gone. Hoskins met a unit at her house first thing, battered down the door when no one answered and searched the place, but no one’s home. He’s called her cell, called her work, called the security out at the mall, and no one’s seen Sammie. He has the team at the station working on getting a hold of Dean, of her parents. Anyone who might know where she is.
He’s coming out of Sammie’s house when his phone rings.
“We found another victim,” Loren says. “About thirty minutes ago.”
“Is it Sammie?” Hoskins asks dully.
“Christ, no. Guy named Chris Weber. And you’ll never believe this shit—it was Gloria Seever who called it in. He was over at her house last night, she says he was there to interview her for the paper, a piece about Seever and the Secondhand Killer. She says he left after the interview, she didn’t notice he was still parked out there until this morning. He’s crammed on the backseat of his own car with half his face bashed in, and all the fingers on his right hand are missing.”
“You believe her story?”
“I don’t know what to believe, Paulie. I went by, but I didn’t talk to her—figured if she caught sight of me she’d clam right up. There’re detectives with her now, trying to get to the truth of it, but you know what a closemouthed bitch she is. But we shouldn’t consider her a suspect. I don’t think she’s strong enough to turn this guy’s face into raw hamburger. That’s what it looks like, padnah. This whole thing’s gonna make me swear off red meat.”
“I thought Sammie was writing about Secondhand for the Post.”
“She was. And so was this guy. They were competing against each other for the same job, I guess. That’s the story Dan Corbin fed me, anyway.”
Hoskins takes a pen and a scrap of paper out of his pocket, writes Chris Weber down on the paper. Circles it. Draws a line, then writes Sammie’s name. Ted’s back at the station, trying to get a hold of the people running alltheprettyflowers.com, see if they can find out exactly who is registered as SecondHand, but it doesn’t look promising. People who run websites like that prefer to remain anonymous, and they extend that courtesy to their clients. Hoskins figures it for pointless, but they have to try.
“Any word on Sammie yet?” Loren asks.
“Not a thing,” Hoskins says. Something pulls against his ankles, makes him jump. It’s a stray cat, mewling to be picked up, and he kicks at it, furious. “She’s gone, her husband’s nowhere to be found. It’s not looking good.”
SAMMIE