“What makes you say that?”
“Seever kept his victims. Buried them under his house. He wanted them close, and he wanted to keep under the radar. But this.” Hoskins takes a breath, slowly, but not deeply. “This guy isn’t even bothering to hide the victims. He tied those last two together, he wanted them to be found at the same time.”
“Okay.”
“He’s targeting people, specific people. This guy wants us to find these women and immediately connect it to Seever. You saw that article this morning about Brody and Abeyta? People are already making the connection to Seever.”
“It’s a lot of work to set up these murders so it looks like Seever’s involved,” Loren says. “Why would this guy go to all the trouble?”
“I don’t know,” Hoskins says. “I stopped trying to understand the shit people do a long time ago.”
“You should see one more thing,” Loren says, putting the cigarette out against the side of the house before stepping inside. “Down here.”
Hoskins follows Loren, slowly picking his way out of the kitchen and down a hall—so short it could barely be called that, a few feet at most—and into the only bedroom. It’s small. A futon bed pushed against the wall takes up most of the room, a cheap dresser eats up the rest. There are textbooks on the dresser, a calendar tacked up on the wall. It’s probably a freebie from a bank, but the pictures are good. Scenes of Colorado, it says. It’s open to November still, the photo of jagged red rocks jutting up out of snow-covered pines.
The blankets are wadded at the end of the bed, caught in the no-man’s-land between the mattress and the frame, the bottom sheet covered in fans of dried blood.
“Up there,” Loren says, and it takes him a moment to notice the words written above the flimsy metal headboard in heavy black letters. He wonders if the guy had written them up there while Simms was still alive, if she’d had to look up at those words as she’d been fighting, trying to survive. He hopes not.
It’ll never be over.
“There’s no way Seever’s in contact with anyone on the outside. He doesn’t write letters, he doesn’t have access to email. No one visits him anymore except his wife, and half the time he’s so drugged up he can’t find his own dick. I don’t see how he could have anything to do with this.” Loren sighs. “But then there are the fingers. No one ever knew about those.”
“Yeah, but there were plenty of guys working that crawl space. Any one of them could’ve let it slip, told someone. It was in the case files. There were photos taken. It could’ve gotten out a dozen different ways.”
“What about this shit?” Loren asks, pointing at the words above the bed. “That never made it into any of the reports at all. That was between me and you and Seever.”
“What’re you saying?”
“How would this guy know to write those words up there, unless he’d heard them before?”
“If you think I’m guilty of something, say it,” Hoskins says. “Don’t be a pussy. Ask me.”
“You never told anyone about him saying that, did you?”
“No.” Hoskins answers immediately, without thinking, and realizes that’s a lie a moment too late. Because he did tell someone—Sammie. “I never told anyone.”
“I never told anyone either,” Loren says.
Loren looks at him, then away. Another throwback to when they were partners. Being suspicious of each other. It’s hard being chained to one person for so long, and there were times they hadn’t handled it well.
“You think I killed Carrie Simms?” Hoskins asks. “Is that what you’re getting at?”
“Did you?” Loren asks.
“You’re really going to ask me that when you look like Seever’s doppelg?nger?”
“Don’t act like this is new, Paulie. You know how I work.”
Yeah, I do, Hoskins thinks. Seever’s the best thing that ever happened to him. Seever made Loren’s career, it got him a promotion, a private office, a nice raise. Seever made Loren a legend, and after it was all over, after the hunt was done, everything seemed so bland in comparison. So tame. These three dead women are perfect for Loren; he gets to go back to Seever, life is one big carousel and here they are, back where it started, like star football players reliving the playoff game.
“Bullshit,” Hoskins says. “It was never like this before. And now he’s in prison, so you can cut the crap.”
“Okay,” Loren says. “Maybe I dressed up like Seever for you.”
“What?”
“You and Seever, spending all that time together in that room. Which one was it? Interview Room Two, the one all the way at the end of the hall, right? Good ol’ IR2—isn’t that what everyone calls it? Seever was filling your ear with all his dirty secrets, and you haven’t been the same since then.”
“What the fuck are you getting at?”