“Yeah, she did. A lot of it before she died. I’d bet he finished her with the toaster over there. You see it? There’s blood and bone fragments smeared all over it. A lot of hair. He got tired of watching her struggle, started hitting her over the head until she was dead.”
“Christ on a cross.”
“No shit.” Hoskins doesn’t chew gum. Instead, he sticks a ballpoint pen in his mouth, and gnaws on the end until it’s too warped and broken to work anymore.
Hoskins stands up, his knees popping. Simms’s hair is thrown over her face, and he’s thankful for it. He’s seen plenty of dead over the years, but there’s always something awful about it, that final death grimace. Her left arm is thrown forward, her pointer finger stuck straight out, like she was trying to get them to look at something, although there’s nothing there except a blank wall. Her right arm is tucked under her body, out of sight. She’s wearing a white sleeveless undershirt, and one of those sweatshirts that zips up the front, but it’s pulled open and hanging loosely from her thin shoulder. It’s almost flirty. Sexual. Her bottom half is naked, except for a pair of ankle socks that had once been white but are now a rusted brown from all the blood. There are marks around her wrists, red swatches cut deep in the flesh. Rope burns, but most likely twine judging by the width of the lashes. There are bruises all up and down her limbs, cuts in her skin.
“It was twine on the other two, right?” Hoskins asks.
“Yep.”
“How long’s she been dead?”
“Rigor’s passed, so about twenty-four. Not much more, though. We’ll have a better idea when we get her on the table.”
“Rape?”
“Oh, definitely.”
There’s a cut screen, a window that’d been jimmied open. Whoever he was, he’d crawled in and found Simms. Maybe she’d been sleeping, or in the shower, and he’d gotten in without her knowing. The last time anyone had seen Simms was four days before, when she’d gone to class at the community college. She hasn’t been dead long. So she’d been alive the last three days, trapped in her own home, wishing she were dead while cars drove by on the street, while people walked their dogs, not very far from where she was. And she’d known what was coming, because she’d been through it all before, with Seever.
Christ.
Hoskins picks his way carefully around Simms, giving her a wide berth, careful not to put his foot down in any of the blood. He takes his cell phone out, snaps a few pictures. It’s an old habit, he’s always done it, years ago it was with the bulky old camera he carried around with him, and now with his cell, but it’s the same, he does it without thinking, and Loren doesn’t protest. He stands back, lets Hoskins do his thing.
Simms looks so small on the kitchen floor, so thin and fragile. He remembers the first few victims being carried out of Seever’s crawl space. One of the boys had a woven bracelet around his wrist, something he’d probably braided for himself out of parachute cord, and that’s what made it real for Hoskins, that’s what made it worse. Because that boy had once been alive, he’d once decided that wearing a bracelet was cool, he’d played with it when he was nervous or excited, he’d spun it around his wrist until his skin was raw.
“She’s had some fingers cut off,” Loren says casually, pulling the pack of cigarettes from his pocket and tamping them against his palm even though he’s already got one in his mouth. “Just the way Seever used to do it.”
“She’s not missing anything on her left,” Hoskins says.
“It’s her other hand. Seever got the pinkie. This guy got two more.”
“I want to see it,” Hoskins says, and Loren motions to the group out in the yard. Two of the technicians break off, set down their coffees, and slip on latex gloves. They ease through the kitchen, step around Hoskins, careful because it’s so tight, so close. They’re both young and professional, their faces blank, even as they hoist Simms up off the floor and onto the stretcher they’ve brought in. Good at their job. There’s a loud sucking noise when they lift her, because the blood doesn’t want to let her go, and Hoskins turns away, fights back his rising gorge. He’s been to dozens of crime scenes, hundreds, and it doesn’t much matter—that kind of shit will always be gross.
Hoskins grabs Simms’s right hand by the wrist, gently, holds it up so everyone can see. The hand is purplish-red and swollen, filled with blood from being trapped under the body. The pinkie is gone, but that’s nothing new, that’s how Simms came to them. Seever had already taken that part of her. Hoskins counts the fingers once, then again, even though it’s not necessary. Simms only has two fingers now, the pointer and the thumb. Her fingers make the shape of a gun, he thinks. A smoking gun.
He slowly lays her hand beside her and turns away, rubs the back of his wrist against his eye, watchful of his gloved hands, covered in the muck of death. He needs some coffee, or a nap. And he needs to call home, check on Joe, make sure the nurse is still there.
“This doesn’t feel like Seever,” Hoskins says, watching the techs carefully zip Simms into a black body bag.