“No.”
He pushes past Jenna and goes down the hall, rattles the knob on Loren’s office door. It’s locked, of course—Loren doesn’t like anyone in his personal space, he doesn’t want anyone going through his things. But the doors are a joke—flimsy and thin, and all Hoskins has to do is kick against the knob and it snaps back, the cheap plywood splintering. There’s a shriek from behind him—Jenna, with her hands clasped at the base of her throat—and a group of detectives gathered together, watching. None of them try to hold him back, or even talk him down from his rage; they watch, bright-eyed with interest. No one seems all that surprised at his anger—it’s almost as if they’ve been waiting for this to happen, they’ve been wondering when the shit was going to hit the fan. Most of them were around when Loren and Hoskins were partners, they’ve seen the arguments and the brawls, but even the new guys would’ve heard the stories.
Why are you so upset? Ted had asked after Hoskins had opened the painting. I don’t understand.
And Hoskins doesn’t understand why he’s so mad either, only that everything about this is wrong. This isn’t supposed to be about Seever, this is about a new killer, but somehow Seever’s back anyway, leering at him out of the painting, his name printed in the newspaper, everyone talking about him again. Hoskins thought he was done with Seever for good, but there was Loren, all dressed up in those three-piece suits, his hair slicked back with so much gel you could see the white of his scalp peering through, and Sammie, digging for more information and writing that damn article, getting people all worked up, even after he asked her not to. Loren and Sammie both thought Secondhand was connected to Seever, that he was finishing Seever’s work, but Hoskins thinks Ted might be right: Secondhand knows about the fingers, but it’s not through Seever directly. Secondhand isn’t connected to Seever, he’d seen an opportunity and jumped on it. He doesn’t think it’s Alan Cole behind the murders; Cole had put on his boogie shoes and split, he was already on the run, had been for years. Hoskins can’t imagine he’d be back in Denver, begging for the spotlight. No, whoever the Secondhand Killer is, he is doing it for the attention, he is doing it because he wants people to look.
He is doing it to have his ego stroked.
“Holy shit,” Hoskins says. He freezes after one step into Loren’s office. He feels like he’s been told there might be land mines under his feet, ready to blow him straight to hell. “What the fuck is all this?”
It isn’t the view Hoskins notices first, the same good one he used to have from his office. No, what he first sees are the corkboards on the walls, barely visible because of all the papers tacked to them, the photographs. There are photos of Seever’s crawl space, of the victims being carried out, of Seever’s house. Some of them are newspaper clippings, but most are photos Loren must’ve taken himself and then printed. Hoskins takes another step into the room. There are autopsy photos and reports tacked up, he’s seen them all, he was there when it was all happening, those are burned into memory, but they’re still a shock to see. An unpleasant shock.
And then there’s the painting, the original clown, nailed up over Loren’s desk, in a place no one could possibly miss it. Hoskins had always figured someone had thrown the damn thing away, but here it is, watching him. Smiling.
“Fuck me,” Hoskins croaks, backing slowly out. Distantly, he realizes that his own office looks almost exactly like this, only his walls are made up of many different cases, but it doesn’t matter, it’s all shit in the end. Loren might be crazy, he thinks. But then so am I.
He turns, feels the pinprick eyes of all the victims posted up on the wall following him. This office is giving him the creeps, and he wants to go outside, stand with his feet in the snow. He grabs for the knob, then sees what’s hanging on the back of the door and recoils. It’s a costume, satin fabric, half blue and half red, with a big ruffled collar and fuzzy yellow pom-poms sewn down the front instead of buttons. A clown suit. Always with the fucking clowns.
Hoskins touches the costume, rubs the silky fabric between his thumb and first two fingers. There’s dried blood on the sleeve, ground into the lace cuff.
This room, full of Seever’s victims, Loren dressing like Seever, acting like him, it isn’t good. He’s worked with Loren for a long time, he’s seen the guy do some strange stuff, but not like this. This is obsession, plain and simple. Bad things are born out of obsession.
“I know where he is,” Jenna says, sticking her head in the door. She has her cell phone in one hand, and her other keeps tucking her hair behind her ear, nervously.
“Where?”
“He’s over at St. Luke’s, on Nineteenth,” she says, and he’s already past her before she can finish, his car keys jingling in his hand. “Visiting with patients.”