September 7, 2018
“So you’re the new hotshot addition to Homicide everyone’s talking about,” the man sitting behind the desk said. He was leaning back in his chair, his feet kicked up. The tarnished gold plate nailed up on his office door said DETECTIVE PAUL HOSKINS, COLD CASES, but she’d already known who he was when she took the long elevator ride down to the basement. She’d walked out with Loren—get some sleep, he’d said, we have an early morning—but had doubled back and gone downstairs.
If it takes two to keep a secret, was someone holding one for Loren? And she figured there was only one possibility: Paul Hoskins.
“Yeah, I guess,” she said, reaching out her hand to shake. He put down the tennis ball he’d been tossing back and forth and took her hand. His hand was dry and hot, smooth. “Marion Spengler.”
“Good to meetchya.”
“I’m glad I caught you before you went home.”
Hoskins made a noise that might’ve been a laugh.
“Oh, this is it for me,” he said, throwing out his arms. “Nice and cozy down here, don’t you think? I just need to hang one of those needlepoints above the door. ‘Home sweet home.’”
She smiled thinly but didn’t respond. She wasn’t sure what to say. This man had spent a long time as Loren’s partner but now worked down in the basement, going over the old cases no one really cared about anymore. Chief Black had been trying to get him back upstairs, but he’d refused every offer. Rumor was that Hoskins preferred the dark. The chill of the cement walls.
“You and Loren must have the same decorator,” she said, looking around the little office, at all the papers and photos posted on the walls. It was a tiny space, claustrophobic. No windows, no sunlight. Nothing to keep the air moving. If anything it was even worse than Loren’s office: smaller, more cramped. More gory crime scene photos on the walls. It was a room that could drive a person crazy. Or maybe it was the other way around: a crazy person had made the room. “No extra chair I can use while we chat?”
He started tossing the tennis ball again.
“You’re here visiting me unannounced,” he said. “If you wanted to sit, you should’ve brought a chair with you.”
“Sounds like you learned your manners from Loren, too,” she said.
“That’s what I hear,” he said wryly. “Now, what can I do for you? I have an idea you didn’t come all the way down here this evening for my fine company.”
“I was approached by a detective from Loren’s hometown—”
“Ah, Ortiz got to you, too? That guy is a total shithead.”
“What did he say to you?”
“I imagine it was the same thing he said to you. Gave me a copy of the file, asked if I’d try to get Loren to admit he’d killed his partner. I told him to pound sand or I’d put my foot so far up his ass he’d taste leather.”
“But what do you think?”
“About what?”
“Did Loren do it?”
“That’s why you came down here?” Hoskins looked bemused. “You should’ve just asked Loren himself.”
“I tried that. He ignores me.”
“Sounds about right.”
“So do you know?”
“Do I know what?”
Spengler sighed. She’d slung her briefcase over her shoulder and gotten in the elevator to head down to the parking lot to go home to her family and dinner and the warmth of her house, but had ended up riding all the way to the bottom. B2. Not even the basement, but the sub-basement. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what Loren had said, about unloading secrets, and it’d made her wonder about his old partner.
“Do you know if Loren killed his partner and the guy’s family?”
Hoskins stood up and wheeled the chair around the desk, pushing it at her so she could sit. Then he started pacing behind his desk, alternating between tossing the tennis ball in the air and bouncing it off the cement floor. His movements reminded her of a caged animal, desperate to break free of its bonds.
“Spengler, let me tell you a story. When I first joined the force I was assigned the bullshit job of checking up on guys out on house arrest, do a surprise visit and make sure they were minding their manners, you know what I mean?”
“Okay,” she said, mystified at the turn the conversation was taking.
“One day I end at this guy’s place, a total dump out in Aurora. And not in the good part—this is the shittiest area you can imagine. And this guy, he’d been locked up for attempted murder, tried to knife a bunch of holes in some other guy over some dumb-ass turf war, that’s what these gangbangers are about. Turf, like any of it really belongs to them. But this guy was small time with no priors, so he got one of those anklets popped on and was sent home to live with his parents. And this guy, he was nothing but a kid. A baby gangbanger.” Hoskins grinned at the memory. “Pants sagging halfway down his ass, wearing a wifebeater, all tattooed up. Mean look permanently on his face, like he’s got something to prove. A cholo, that’s what they call guys like him.”
“Is there a point to all this?” she asked. “If you don’t know—”
He shushed her.
“So I walk into the house, and his parents tell me he’s downstairs in his room, that he’s refusing to come out. That he’s been hiding something in his closet and won’t let anyone see. And I’m assuming there’s going to be trouble, because what else could it be? He’s got guns in his closet, I figure. Or maybe he’s harboring drugs. You always think the worst with these types, that’s where your mind goes. So I head downstairs and knock on the bedroom door, ready to pull my gun out if I need to, but he opens the door right away when he knows it’s me, lets me in. And when I ask to see what’s in his closet, what he’s been hiding in there, he doesn’t want to show me. House arrest and having a cop find something bad on your property—that would land his ass in a cell for sure, with no chance of seeing freedom for a long time, and he knew it. But I insisted, and finally he rolled back his closet door. Let me take a good look.”
“What was he hiding?”
Hoskins grinned again.
“It was mama cat in a cardboard box, her kittens all snuggled up next to her, nursing. This kid, he’d found them in the backyard and knew they wouldn’t survive on their own, so he’d made them a little nest and snuck them in, had been taking care of them. But his old man was allergic, he said, and would make him get rid of the cats if he found out. So he’d been hiding them. Sneaking milk out of the kitchen for the mother, making sure they were warm enough.”
Spengler shifted her weight from one hip to another.
“I don’t understand what your story has to do with anything.”
“I’m trying to make a point about Loren,” Hoskins said. “He’s not a bad guy, but that’s what most people think when they meet him. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a mean motherfucker, he’s stubborn and rude and doesn’t take shit from anybody, but that doesn’t mean he’s bad. You shouldn’t take anyone at face value. I’ve seen Loren do plenty of kind things, although he wouldn’t admit to a single one.”
“So you don’t think Loren killed his partner?”
“I don’t know,” Hoskins said, slowly. “Maybe he did. And if he did, maybe he had a good reason. Who the fuck knows? Or maybe it doesn’t matter. It happened a long time ago. Maybe it’s better to let dead dogs lie.”
“Don’t you mean sleeping dogs?”
“Whatever.”
“You really think a murder doesn’t matter? And Ortiz said the partner’s wife had disappeared, too. And their baby.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “All I’m saying is, the world isn’t black and white.” He propped his foot up on the lip of his desk and yanked on his shoelace, untying it, then got to work retying it again. “And it’s not just shades of gray. There’s every color of the rainbow out there, you just have to open your eyes.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, join the club.”