Deeper Than The Dead (44 page)

Leone left the room. Mendez wanted to follow him, to pick his brain as he gathered details from looking at the victim, but there was still an issue to discuss with Dixon.

“Why didn’t you tell us Miss Thomas had complained to you about her clients being stopped for traffic violations?” he asked.

Dixon looked at him, taken a little off guard by the question, as if the subject was something he filed away long ago.

“There was nothing to it,” he said.

“She told us she’s had this discussion with you on more than one occasion. How is that not significant to us?”

“If I thought there was anything to it, I would have said so, Detective,” he said, getting irritated. But he got up from the arm of the sofa he had been sitting on and started to pace, arms crossed over his chest—which told Mendez he wasn’t comfortable with the subject.

“Did Jane bring this up to you?” Dixon asked.

“Actually, Steve Morgan brought it up,” Hicks said.

“Don’t you think Jane would have been the first person to say something about it if she felt it was significant?” Dixon said.

“Except that she trusts you. She trusts your judgment,” Mendez said.

Dixon glared at him. “And you don’t?”

“Don’t jump on me, boss. I’m doing the job you hired me to do.”

“A couple of the deputies seem to have a written a lot of stops on women from the center,” he conceded. “But they’re deputies who write a lot of tickets across the board. The numbers didn’t bother me. And I’m sure as hell not going to tell them to treat Thomas Center clients any differently from the rest of the population.”

“I just want to know one thing,” Mendez said, dreading asking the question, already knowing the answer. “Is one of those deputies Frank?”

Dixon sighed heavily. “Yes. Of course. Frank leads the league in traffic citations—and in complaints from the people he’s written up. That’s hardly news.”

“I want to see his file,” Mendez said.

“I’ve reviewed his file.”

“Yeah, well, I want to see it.”

“You think I’m trying to protect him?”

“I think you and Frank go way back, and it’s not appropriate or fair to you to make a call on him. Sir.”

He half expected Dixon to blow a gasket. His boss was a by-the-book kind of guy, and he had toed that line so far with Frank Farman, but friendship and history could make that line blur, even with men like Cal Dixon.

But Dixon held his temper. He stopped his pacing, staring down at the gray industrial-grade carpet on the floor.

“Frank’s wife is missing,” he said quietly. “His son is saying Frank killed her.”

Mendez felt all the blood in his body free-fall to his feet. Hicks got up from the arm on the other end of the sofa and said, “What?”

Dixon filled them in on what had transpired that afternoon while they had been at the hospital with Wendy Morgan and Cody Roache.

“Where is he now?” Mendez asked.

“Home,” Dixon said. “We don’t know that Sharon is dead or even missing. I’ve got Trammell and Hamilton calling her friends and relatives. Frank claims she left on her own. And the boy is less than reliable. I don’t even know if he has a firm grasp on reality. He seems almost catatonic for the most part.”

“Except the part where he said his father killed his mother,” Mendez said.

“Frank let me have a look around his house. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.”

“Or he wouldn’t have consented,” Mendez pointed out.

“It’s a catch-twenty-two,” Dixon conceded. “And you know damn well I wouldn’t cut him any slack on a charge like this. We simply have nothing to indicate a crime has been committed. We’ve got nothing to hold him on.”

Mendez put his hands on his head and turned around in a circle. “What a fucking mess.”

Vince approached Karly Vickers’s room with the same kind of quiet respect he would have used in church. Jane Thomas sat beside the girl’s bed, holding her hand, the gold necklace laced through fingers entwined.

“She’s lucky to have you on her side,” he said softly.

“I don’t know how she’s going to make it through this,” Thomas confessed. “She’d been through so much before she ever came to the center.”

“She wants to live,” Vince said. “Or she wouldn’t be here now. She’ll find a way to make it, and you’ll find a way to help her.”

Tears glittered in her green eyes as she looked up at him as if he might actually have an answer. “Why does it have to be so hard?”

“I don’t know. I only know my part, and that’s helping find the animal who did this to her. Can you help me with that?”

Jane Thomas helped him catalog the wounds Karly Vickers’s tormentor had carved into her, and Vince left her with a promise to do everything in his power to bring a madman to justice.

And he walked out of the room and away from the
ICU
thinking the same thing she had asked him:
Why does it have to be so hard?

When Anne saw Tommy waiting outside the pizza place it was all she could do not to break into a big smile. He had dressed up in what had to be his best outfit: smart gray pants with a buttondown shirt and a navy blue sweater under his open Dodgers jacket. If he’d worn a tie he would have looked like a miniature prep school candidate. Only the black eye Dennis Farman had given him spoiled the image.

“You look very nice tonight, Tommy.”

“Thank you. So do you, Miss Navarre,” he said, terribly serious.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

He had run out of things to say. He sighed and tried not to fidget. Anne looked up at his father, handsome and relaxed, a pleasant smile curving his mouth. “Dr. Crane, I want to thank you for making this possible.”

“Not a problem,” he said. “I appreciate your concern for setting the record straight. Why don’t we go inside? The smell of that pizza is too much to resist.”

They went into the restaurant and found a booth. The place was booming with Saturday night customers—college kids, families, teenagers traveling in packs. Video games bleeped and growled in their own alcove at the rear of the place. Tommy was wide-eyed, taking it all in.

“We don’t get to come here very often, do we, Tommy?” Peter Crane said.

Tommy shook his head.

“Tommy’s mom is a member of the food police,” Crane explained. “All healthy, all the time.”

“And as a dentist, you must agree with that,” Anne said.

“I don’t think the occasional pizza is such a bad thing. Tommy and I sneak in some fun stuff every once in a while, don’t we, Sport?”

Tongue-tied, Tommy nodded.

“What do you like on your pizza, Tommy?” Anne asked.

“Cheese.”

“Me too. What about pepperoni?”

The shy smile tucked up one corner of his mouth as he nodded again.

“What about Brussels sprouts?”

“No!” he said emphatically, shaking his head so hard his whole body swung from side to side.

Anne laughed. “All right. No Brussels sprouts.”

A waitress came and took their order for pizza with no Brussels sprouts. When she had gone, Anne looked across the table at Tommy, growing serious.

“Tommy, after seeing your mom last night, I just want to make sure you don’t have the wrong idea about something,” she began. “When I asked you those questions I never meant for you to think that your father might be involved in what happened, or that I might think that. Do you understand?”

“I guess,” he said in a tone of voice that was less than convincing.

“You know the detectives have to ask a lot of questions when they’re investigating a crime,” Anne said. “They ask questions of a lot of people. That doesn’t necessarily mean they believe everyone they talk to might be guilty. But they have to ask a lot of questions to try to get a clear idea of where people were when a crime was being committed. They want to know who couldn’t have committed the crime as well as who might have.

“Detective Leone asked me to find out from you if your dad was home that night. And you told me he was. That’s all they wanted to know.”

Tommy’s brow furrowed. “But why didn’t they just ask my dad?”

“They did ask me,” Peter Crane said. “But not everybody tells them the truth. They need to get confirmation from other people—like you or Mom.”

“My dad would never kill anybody,” Tommy said. “He’s a good person. He doesn’t even ever yell—not even at my mom. And even if he wasn’t home, that doesn’t mean he would kill somebody.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Anne agreed even as she found his statement odd.
Even if he wasn’t home
. . .

“My dad helps people,” Tommy said. “That’s what he does. Even when he doesn’t have to.”

“That’s great,” Anne said. “Your dad is a really good example for you.”

“My mom says he’s a pillar of the community,” he said, not exactly sure what that meant, but certain it was something very admirable.

“I’m sure he is. And I’m sure you will be too, when you grow up,” Anne said. “You’ve been through a lot this week, and you’ve handled it all with a lot of courage. I’ve been very proud of you and Wendy.”

At the mention of his friend’s name, Tommy’s face went very sober. “Dennis Farman attacked Wendy and Cody in the park today.”

“Yes, I know,” Anne said, wishing they could have gotten through the evening without this conversation. She had decided it would take her until Monday to come up with a way to explain to her students what had happened to Wendy and Cody, and what would happen to Dennis. She couldn’t make sense of the senseless to herself. How was she supposed to make sense of any of this madness in a way ten-year-old children would understand?

“Wendy called and told me,” Tommy said. “She said Dennis had a huge knife and he tried to cut Cody’s heart out!”

“He had a knife,” Anne said. “And he hurt Cody with it, but Cody is going to be all right. So is Wendy,” she added, in case Wendy had taken the opportunity to embellish her part in the story as well.

“My mom says Dennis is evil and he should be locked up like an animal.”

“Dennis has done a lot of bad things,” Anne said. “He’s a very troubled boy, Tommy. As easy as it is for us to just be angry with Dennis, we need to feel bad for him too.”

“Why?” Tommy said with all the brutally honest incredulity of a child.

“Son, we can’t know what makes other people do bad things,” his father said. “We can’t make excuses for them, but we have to understand that there are probably a lot of complicated reasons Dennis is the way he is.”

Tommy made a face. “I just don’t want him to be around me, that’s all. If he was a grown-up and he tried to cut somebody’s heart out, he would have to go to prison, wouldn’t he?”

“Yes,” Anne said. “And Dennis will have to pay for what he’s done. But at the same time, I hope someone can help him understand why he did it.”

“’Cause his brain doesn’t work right,” Tommy said matter-of factly as the waitress brought their drinks.

He was bored with the subject now, having stated unequivocally the root of the problem. He took a big gulp of his Pepsi and looked up at his father.

“Dad, can I go play Pac-man until the pizza comes? Please?”

“Sure,” his father said, digging quarters out of his pocket. “Excuse yourself from the table.”

“Excuse me, please, Miss Navarre.”

“Have fun,” Anne said, watching him dash for the arcade machines. “You have a very special little man there, Dr. Crane.”

“He’s a good boy. I’ll thank my lucky stars today especially, after hearing about what the Farman boy did. It’s difficult to imagine a child that young having that much rage inside him.”

“I don’t think Dennis has had the best childhood,” Anne said. “We really can’t know what goes on in someone else’s family.”

“No,” Crane agreed. “Every family has its secrets, and those secrets can run deep—deeper than lies, deeper than death. And they impact every member of that family in ways we can’t know.”

“True enough,” Anne said, thinking of her own family secrets. Her father’s philandering and callous treatment of her mother had left lasting scars on her, though certainly no one outside the Navarre household knew anything other than what a model family they had appeared to be.

“I worry a little about Tommy,” Crane admitted. “His mother can be a very negative influence on him. I do my best to counterbalance that aspect of my wife’s personality. But will it still have an impact on Tommy? Probably. Will it drive him to knife a playmate? I don’t think so, but with all this talk about serial killers this past week, you can’t help but wonder what drives someone to do that.”

“Hopefully the killer will be caught soon, and we won’t have to think about it at all,” Anne said, steering the conversation on to activities coming up on the school calendar for Tommy and his classmates, including a field trip to the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, which Tommy had seemed especially excited about.

She felt relieved to have set things straight with Tommy. One burden off her shoulders. She tried not to think about Dennis Farman, who was spending the night on a cot in the same interview room where she had seen him that afternoon. Instead, she tried to enjoy the pizza and the company.

As they left the restaurant and said their good-byes, Tommy’s eyes suddenly got big.

“Oh! I almost forgot!”

He dug a hand in the pocket of his jacket and came up with a small, gift-wrapped box, which he presented to Anne.

“That’s for you.”

Anne bent down next to him and accepted the gift with a soft smile. “Thank you, Tommy. How sweet of you! You didn’t have to bring me a present. Should I open it now?”

“No!” he said, blushing furiously. “Not until you get home.”

“Okay.” Anne leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Thank you. I’ll see you Monday.”

She tucked the little box in her purse and walked down the plaza thinking maybe there was hope for humanity after all.

“How do you usually spend your Saturday nights, Vince?” Hicks asked.

They were in the war room, a couple of boxes of decimated pizza spread out on the table in between stacks of files and reports. Dixon had remained at the hospital as Karly Vickers’s mother had finally arrived.