“Why didn’t you come to us with this right away?” Hoskins had asked. “You said it happened—four months ago? Beginning of August? Why’d you wait so long?”
“I don’t know,” Simms said. A few minutes into their conversation she’d asked for blank paper and a highlighter, and she’d sat there, still talking, running the marker over the white sheet until it was completely yellow, and then she’d started on the next one. The pinkie finger on her right hand was gone, only a badly healed stump was left; she said Seever had cut it off, although she couldn’t remember him doing it, she’d been unconscious when it happened, woke up and it was gone. They didn’t believe this, not at first; it seemed like another lie, another fantasy. Simms was missing teeth and had the scabby skin of a meth-head, she had track marks all up and down her arms—on anyone else, a missing finger would’ve been startling, but on Simms it was barely worth noticing. Hoskins didn’t believe her story about Seever cutting off her finger until he saw the other victims being hauled out from under the house, their hands mutilated, the stumps sometimes still weeping with pus and blood and rot. “It’s not like I want to advertise that some dude spent two days jamming a dildo up my ass and talking about the hole he’s digging in the crawl space for me.”
He didn’t believe Simms at first, mostly because she was the girl-who-cried-wolf and had called the cops so many times before. Simms was more comfortable with lies than she was with the truth; a lot of people were that way these days. They wanted to be involved but not too much, they didn’t want to rock the boat, but still wanted justice. That was why the police station got so many anonymous tips. Everyone wanted a piece of the pie, but no one wanted to put their name on it. But Hoskins wasn’t sure, so he called Loren into the office to hear her story, even though he’d taken a long weekend for the holiday.
“You called us after it happened, didn’t you?” Loren asked Simms. He was tipped back in his chair, his eyes halfway closed so he seemed half asleep. Hoskins had seen Loren raging and angry in the interview room, and he’d seen him cool and professional, but he’d never seen him like this. Bored, almost. “Did you make that anonymous call so we’d look at Seever?”
For the first time, Simms laid down the marker. She wrapped the fingers of her right hand around her left wrist, so they looked cuffed together.
“No.”
“It had to be you who called.”
“It wasn’t. I never called.”
“What made you decide to come in now?” It was the same question Hoskins had asked, and it’d made her angry, sarcastic, but she reacted differently with Loren. It was strange to see, because most people were either scared of him or repulsed, but Simms was more at ease with him in the room.
“I keep thinking about biting,” she said. Her head was ducked, her chin practically against her chest, so they could barely hear her words. “I want to bite down on soft things and make someone scream.”
They loaded Simms into Loren’s car and drove her to Seever’s house, parked down the street. Seever was outside, walking down his driveway to grab the Post, and Simms’s breath caught in her throat when she saw him. Hoskins didn’t believe her story until he saw her eyes bugging out of her skull and her fists crammed against her mouth, he thought she might be having a seizure but she was just terrified, trying not to scream.
They still didn’t have enough to arrest Seever, but it was more than they’d had before. Years before, Jacky Seever had been detained for marijuana possession, and that’s what Hoskins told the judge they were looking for. Judge Vasquez knew the truth, Hoskins could see it written plainly on the man’s face, but they still got their warrant—not to look for murder victims, but to search the premises for marijuana.
It was all they needed.
*
It’s over, the boss man says. Chief Jonathan Black, the biggest pain-in-the-ass boss Hoskins has ever had, doesn’t want to hear it. The Seever case is closed.
It’s a PR thing, Hoskins knows. A budget thing. They’d been searching for Seever for so long, it’s time to move on. There are other murders, other crimes. They can’t keep this up.