YES. Then, a beat, and another message: I DID IT FOR YOU.
Sammie barely has time to read the text before Ethan comes loping around the corner, and she finally tries to run for the front door but it’s too little too late, he’s fast and the hall is short and then he’s on her, dragging her deeper into the house, and she’s screaming, fighting, and it’s only then that she realizes why she’s been thinking of Seever. It’s the smell. This place smells like Seever’s did when they were digging up the crawl space.
HOSKINS
Piece together the victim’s timeline. That’s what Hoskins keeps telling himself as the minute hand on his watch ticks forward. Find out where Chris Weber had been in the hours before his death. The minutes. He repeats this to himself, mutters it under his breath until people are looking at him like he’s crazy.
Sammie is still nowhere to be found.
“Don’t think about her right now,” Loren says. “She’s probably out shopping. At the spa. Turned her phone off. You need to focus. Weber’s been dead less than twelve hours. He’s our best chance of finding the Secondhand Killer. Maybe someone saw them together before Weber was killed.”
But Loren knew as well as he did—Sammie wasn’t at a spa, and she wasn’t shopping. Sammie was probably dead, her fingers cut off and her head smashed in. Seever might’ve loved Sammie, cared for her, he’d painted her picture and kept her name on his visitor’s list, and the Secondhand Killer had picked up on that, maybe he loved Sammie now too. Hate is a dangerous thing, Hoskins knew, but love can be even worse.
*
Chris Weber lived on his credit cards, used them for everything. Rent, food, his online shopping addiction. He was close to maxed out on several of them, barely keeping from drowning in debt. Not that Hoskins is judging—he’s toting around plenty of financial garbage himself, even ten years after his divorce.
But one good thing about all that debt: it makes it easy to track Weber once the banks start cooperating and sending statements. According to his boss, Weber had spent most of the day before at the Post’s office downtown, then left late in the afternoon, without telling anyone where he was going. But they could see what he’d done by where he’d spent money—thirty-two on an early dinner at a Mexican restaurant, then seventy-five on gas.
“These are the last places he went before he stopped at Gloria’s place,” Loren says. “Let’s meet at the gas station, we’ll work backwards from there.”
It’s a kid named Davey working the front counter, who’d been the only employee around when Weber had come through. He’s pulling hot dogs off the rollers when Hoskins and Loren come in, dumping them right in the trash and putting new ones on.
“Does anybody ever eat those things?” Hoskins asks, grimacing.
“Oh, yeah. There’s this whole subset of people supporting the popularity of gas-station food. It’s an underground movement.” Davey eyes him, taking in his slacks and pressed white shirt, the gun holstered at his belt, then at Loren, who still hasn’t given up Seever’s suits. “I’m sure you guys aren’t familiar with it.”
Hoskins grins. He likes smart-ass kids.
“You remember seeing this guy yesterday?” Loren asks, holding out his phone. It’s a photo of Weber, snatched right off the Post’s website.
“Most people pay at the pump, I never see them,” Davey says. “And I don’t remember that dude coming in.”
“You got cameras?”
“Oh, yeah.” Now Davey is excited, walking fast through the store toward the back room, his orange smock flapping out behind him. “State-of-the-art shit, man. The owner put it all in a few months ago. The best there is.”
“I need to see footage of the pumps. See if this guy talked to anyone, if he was acting strangely.”
“He dead?”
“Why would you think that?” Hoskins asks.
“Because the only time I ever see cops come around is if someone’s dead or getting high,” Davey says. He takes the bulky headphones from around his neck where they’d been hanging like a noose and spins them on his forearm. “This something to do with that Secondhand Killer?”
“We can’t tell you that.”
“Okay, okay. But I want you to know I have an alibi for the last twenty-four hours.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything.”
“No, sir. You’re not.”
“You afraid of us, kid?” Loren asks.
“Nah,” Davey says. “But my momma told me that if a cop ever comes around asking questions, I should keep my mouth shut and smile real pretty.”