“I’ve had heaps of jobs,” he said. “I like to get a taste of everything.”
He’d worked in lots of kitchens, he’d spent six months working as a night watchman at a retirement home, he’d even worked in a mortuary. Gross Mortuary, he told her, not a joke, but because it was the owner’s last name—Gross. He’d done mostly grunt work there, but he’d sometimes helped with the departed. That’s what he always called them. Not the bodies or the dead people or the stiffs. The departed. He would get them dressed in their Sunday best, put rouge on their cheeks, prop their heads on the satin pillows, and make sure their hair would lay right so the relatives settling the bill would be satisfied.
“It wasn’t creepy?” she’d asked. “Working with dead people, I mean?”
They were walking through a park when she asked, holding hands, and he hadn’t looked at her when she spoke, but straight ahead, squinting in the sunshine.
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t bad at all. It might’ve been the best job I ever had.”
SAMMIE
This is the place Jacky Seever used to live, the spot where his house once stood. It was the house where he lived with his wife, where he had an office off the dining room where he kept his account logs for the restaurants, and a desktop computer—the same computer where police had found hours and hours of pornography, some of it tame but most of it the kind where women are tied up and tortured and end up dead, although you can’t ever tell for sure, because the woman might be acting. Or not. This is where Seever ate dinner, built model cars in his free time, and murdered more than thirty people.
But it’s all gone now, every brick has been torn down and trucked away, to be quietly used elsewhere or dumped and buried. It was done to keep the gawkers away, the sickos who come searching for a souvenir, some bit of Jacky Seever to take home with them. She doesn’t understand how people can stand it, to have a bit of a killer on display in their homes. It’s unsavory, she thinks. Distasteful. And it would drive her crazy, having that bit of Seever around all the time, making her think of him and things he’d done. She’s already reminded enough of him, isn’t she? Every day, all the time, she won’t ever be able to forget, not until the day she dies.
What was it like, fucking him?
She still smells like vomit.
She’s not sure why she came here after she dropped Hoskins back off at his car, parked under a lonely streetlamp in front of this empty lot in the middle of this quiet neighborhood, except that this is where it all started. Oh, if she was completely honest, this isn’t where Seever’s story really starts—its real beginning is probably somewhere else, years and years ago, deep in his childhood, although no one would ever know the truth of it except Seever. But to her, this makes sense. This feels like the beginning.
Carrie Simms. She wasn’t the beginning for Seever, she was the very end, the one who finally got him put away. If she hadn’t gotten away, if she’d died in that garage and been buried in that crawl space with all the others, Seever might still be free. And now she’s dead. Murdered in her own home, seven years later. Loren is dressing like Seever. Hoskins is quiet, withdrawn, different from how she’s ever known him. And Jacky Seever is locked safely away in prison. There’s something going on, she doesn’t understand what yet, it’s like she’s in the dark, groping around without knowing what she’s looking for.
It looks strange, this empty lot in the middle of the other homes, even though the HOA is diligent about stopping the lawn from going wild, keeps the sidewalks clear of snow. Sammie wonders how long it’ll take before they put a playground in. A few park benches, a big sandbox, a nice water feature. Maybe it’ll happen. Maybe it won’t. Maybe this place is too damn sad to be saved. She hasn’t been here in a long time, not since before the house was demolished, when they were still pulling bodies out of the crawl space. She’s been parked out front for almost thirty minutes, and she’s seen only two people the entire time, a couple going for a late-night walk with their dog. When they see her, they stare. She waves, the start of a smile on her lips, but the woman pulls a face and yanks the dog away, the man flips her the bird. It doesn’t upset her. They probably get a lot of strangers on this street, morbid fucks looking for a thrill. She doesn’t take it personally, but she starts her car and leaves anyway, because the man is on his cell phone, he’s looking at her and gesturing, he seems upset.
*