Deeper Than the Dead

by Tami Hoag

  “Because he’s a bully?”

  “Because he’s gross AND a bully,” Wendy said. “He always smells bad, and he uses bad language, and he’s always carrying around something disgusting like a smashed frog or some part of a dead animal he found in the road. He’s weird and sick and gross,” she declared. “And stupid.”

  She shot a quick, nervous look at Miss Navarre, like maybe she would get in trouble for that last part.

  “You would say the same thing, Tommy?”

  “Not out loud,” Tommy admitted. “Or I’ll end up like this again.”

  “Neither of you saw him take the finger,” Detective Mendez said, but more to himself than to them. He sighed. “Does Dennis talk much about his father?”

  “Yeah,” Wendy said. “Like, My dad’s a deputy and he can arrest you. My dad’s a deputy so he can drive as fast as he wants.” She rolled her eyes. “Gag me.”

  “Has Dennis ever said anything about his father punishing him?” Miss Navarre asked.

  They both shook their heads.

  Detective Mendez looked at his watch.

  “All right. Thanks, kids, Miss Navarre,” he said, getting up from the table. “I have to go.”

  Miss Navarre said nothing, but watched him go out the door. Then she turned back to them.

  “You guys have had some week,” she said. “Good thing it’s Friday. I just want to say how proud I am of both of you. You’ve gone through things this week that most adults would have a hard time handling, but you’ve handled it all really well. You’ve been very brave.

  “Still, if there’s anything you’d like to talk to me about, I’m here for you.”

  “Can the cops put Dennis in jail?” Wendy asked.

  “Dennis is not going to jail,” Miss Navarre said. “Dennis is a very troubled boy. Hopefully, he’ll get some good counseling.”

  “He’s not coming back to school?” Tommy asked.

  “No. He’s been expelled for the rest of the semester.”

  “Oh, great,” Tommy muttered.

  “You didn’t want him to be expelled?” Miss Navarre asked, looking confused.

  “He’ll blame Tommy,” Wendy said.

  “He’ll blame Tommy because he got expelled for beating up Tommy?”

  “He hates Tommy,” Wendy went on. “He thinks Tommy has everything. Tommy’s smart. Tommy lives in a big house. Tommy plays the piano. Tommy has cool parents. They have cool cars. Blah, blah, blah.”

  “He’s jealous,” Miss Navarre said. “And everybody came to Tommy’s rescue while Dennis got suspended.”

  “Right.”

  “Tommy, how do you feel about that?”

  Tommy shrugged. People did stick up for him. Nobody stuck up for Dennis. Teachers always liked him; they never liked Dennis. Tommy’s dad was cool. And maybe Dennis’s dad hit him. Maybe Dennis had a right to be jealous, but that didn’t give him the right to beat people up.

  “Dennis doesn’t know anything,” he said.

  Miss Navarre left it at that. She looked to Wendy. “That was pretty creepy yesterday with the finger. Did you have trouble sleeping last night?”

  “A little,” Wendy admitted.

  “How about you, Tommy? Are you sleeping at night?”

  Adults were obsessed with sleeping, he had decided. Like, if everybody slept more the world would be a better place or something. His mother was crazy about him getting enough sleep. She gave him allergy medicine to make him sleep. Sometimes he swallowed it, sometimes he didn’t.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  He wanted to get out of this chair, out of this room, and go be a normal kid. He didn’t want all this attention and all these questions. He wished his dad had picked him up from school Tuesday and he never would have fallen on that dead lady. But his dad played golf on Tuesday afternoons, and his mother was busy.

  “Okay,” Miss Navarre said. “Wendy, why don’t you go back to class? I have a couple of things to talk to Tommy about.”

  Tommy felt like a big rock dropped into his stomach. Him alone in a room with Miss Navarre. Oh, brother.

  Wendy left. Tommy’s eyes went everywhere but to Miss Navarre.

  “Tommy, look at me and tell me the truth now. You feel well enough to be in school?”

  He looked straight at her and tried not to blink. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “No running around at lunch and no gym class today. And if you don’t feel well, you tell me right away.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Your mom is really upset about what happened.”

  “I know,” Tommy said. “She was yelling last night. She was yelling this morning. Sometimes I think her eyes are gonna pop out of her head when she yells like that.”

  “Does she do that a lot at home?”

  Tommy shrugged. “It depends.”

  “Does she yell at you like that?”

  He shrugged again and looked down. “Sometimes. When I do something wrong, or mess up the schedule.”

  He thought his mom was really mad at him this week on account of him finding that body, and him getting beat up, and her having to change her schedule to come to school where she always felt like she had to scream at people.

  “I wish none of it ever happened,” he said, and to his horror, he felt like he might cry.

  Miss Navarre came around the table and squatted down beside him, her pretty flowered skirt floating into a puddle around her feet. She looked up into his face like she was searching for something.

  “I wish that too, Tommy. But you know none of it was your fault, right? You didn’t cut through the park expecting to find that body. You didn’t miss your piano lesson on purpose. You didn’t ask Dennis Farman to beat you up. It’s not your fault.”

  Tommy didn’t argue with her, but he knew it was his fault. He had decided to cut through the park. He had looked at Dennis when he shouldn’t have. His mother was upset because of all of this trouble he had fallen into.

  Miss Navarre stood up and crossed her arms and walked around in a little circle. From Tommy’s observations that usually meant the person was working up to saying something nobody wanted to hear.

  “Do you remember last Thursday night?” she asked. “Do you remember what you did that night? Were your mom and dad home?”

  “I think so,” Tommy said, puzzled. “My dad and me watch The Cosby Show.”

  “I like that show too,” Miss Navarre said with a little smile. “Does your mom watch with you?”

  “No. She doesn’t think anything is funny.”

  “That’s too bad for her.”

  “She’s not a very happy person,” he said.

  “How about your dad? He seems like a happy person.”

  “Most of the time,” Tommy said, but he didn’t say anything about how it was when his mother was on one of her rampages and yelling at his dad. He didn’t say that sometimes his dad would just have to leave, and how he wouldn’t come back for hours.

  It didn’t feel right to tell anybody things like that. Not even Miss Navarre. That was family stuff. You weren’t supposed to tell other people family stuff. It was like a code. You had to be loyal to your family first.

  “My mother used to say ‘This too shall pass,’” Miss Navarre said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means even bad times will go away. All the crazy stuff that happened this week already happened, it’s behind us. We should look forward. Next week could bring something really great.”

  I hope so, Tommy thought as he slid off his chair and followed her out of the room, holding his arm against his aching ribs. I sure hope so.

  38

  “I can’t believe any of this is happening,” Sara Morgan said, pulling her pink sweater around herself as if she was freezing, even though the morning was warming up quickly.

  She was a pretty woman in a wholesome athletic sort of way, dressed like maybe she was on her way to aerobics class in black leggings with gray leg warmers slouching around her ankles.
She had a head of hair a man would like to tangle his hands in—thick with curls and waves. She had caught up a couple of sections in barrettes in a halfhearted attempt to keep it under control.

  They stood on the sidewalk in front of the school. Mendez flipped his Ray-Bans down against the bright sun.

  “We had such a nice life a week ago,” she said. “Suddenly everything is wrong.”

  She was on the verge of tears—out of proportion to what had gone on in the conference room. Although, Mendez thought, Janet Crane was almost enough to make him cry.

  “You’ve had a lot to deal with,” he said. “I spoke to your husband yesterday. I understand he was out of town when the kids found the body.”

  “Yes,” she said, suspicion creeping into her expression. “You talked to Steve? Why?”

  “The murder victim, Lisa Warwick, volunteered at the Thomas Center as a court advocate. She and your husband had worked together frequently. We thought she might have confided in him if someone had been giving her a hard time. Did you know her?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I met her a couple of times.”

  “Is that all?” Mendez asked, feigning surprise. “They never met at your home to talk about a case?”

  “Steve doesn’t bring his work home with him.”

  “Hmmm. Well, I suppose that’s good, but it makes for a lot of late nights at the office, doesn’t it?”

  “Steve’s very dedicated,” she said, her voice cool.

  “To his work,” Mendez said. “Does it bother you that he gives up so much time to the Thomas Center?”

  “It’s a worthy cause.”

  She looked away, pulled a pair of aviator sunglasses from on top of her head and settled them in place to hide the stress in her cornflower blue eyes.

  “You volunteer as well?” Mendez asked.

  “No. I’m busy with other things.”

  Like holding herself together, he thought. We had such a nice life a week ago.

  “Mrs. Morgan,” he started, “there’s no delicate way of asking this question. Was your husband involved with Lisa Warwick? Romantically?”

  “No!” she said, too quickly, hugging herself tight.

  “We’ve looked at Ms. Warwick’s phone records. There are a lot of calls to your husband’s office. A lot of after-hours calls.”

  “You said yourself, they worked on a lot of cases together.”

  Mendez didn’t press for more. Browbeating Sara Morgan into saying it aloud would only have been cruel. Her husband was unfaithful to her. She was suffering enough keeping the secret to herself.

  “One other thing,” he said. “Do you happen to remember where your husband was last week, Thursday, late in the day?”

  “He was in town,” she said. “I remember that. I teach an art class every other Thursday evening. He was home when I got back.”

  “What about from, say, five to seven?”

  “He rarely gets home before seven. I leave for my class at six.”

  Which meant she couldn’t account for his whereabouts during the time period Karly Vickers went missing.

  He waited for Sara Morgan to ask why he wanted to know, but she had had enough.

  “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Morgan,” he said. “I’ll let you go. Have a nice day.”

  She laughed without humor, already on her way to her car.

  “I spoke with Sara Morgan,” Mendez said, walking into the war room, where Vince had carved out a spot for himself at a small table in one corner.

  He glanced up from making notes, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. “And?”

  “It’s a good bet Steve Morgan was having an affair with Lisa Warwick. Mrs. Morgan was very uncomfortable with the topic,” Mendez said, pulling up a chair.

  “She didn’t come right out and say he was cheating on her?”

  “No. She couldn’t deny it fast enough. She’s trying to hold together what she has,” Mendez said. “It’s a sore point with her that he dedicates so much time to the Thomas Center.”

  “With other women,” Vince said. “Vulnerable women, women in need of heroes. That’s a rich prowling ground for the wrong kind of guy.”

  “Everybody says he’s a Boy Scout.”

  Vince arched a brow. “What kind of merit badge do they give out for adultery these days?”

  “A scarlet letter?”

  “Good one,” Vince said. He pulled his glasses off and set them aside. “So, let’s say he’s having an affair with her. That’s a long way from doing what was done to her.”

  “Maybe she was threatening to tell the missus, giving him an ultimatum he couldn’t live with.”

  “Motive for murder, yes. But a guy murders his mistress in the heat of the moment. He gets rid of the body. He doesn’t carve it up like a totem pole and plant it in a public park for school kids to stumble on.”

  “Maybe he wants to make it look like some maniac did it.”

  “How much information about the Paulson murder was made public knowledge?” Vince asked. “The strangulation? The cutting? The mutilation? The glued eyes?”

  “Almost none of it,” Mendez admitted. “And the wife couldn’t account for his whereabouts when Karly Vickers went missing, either. Guess we’d better find out if he ever met Julie Paulson.”

  “She had a record, right?”

  “A couple of old prostitution charges in another jurisdiction.”

  “See if she got busted with a john. Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

  “I’ll make some calls. Did you get anything from Quantico?”

  “One of the agents knew a case in Ohio where a guy went away for killing a ten-year-old girl. When he got out, he switched to killing prostitutes of small stature—childlike. He figured when a kid goes missing, people notice. When a hooker disappears, c’est la vie.”

  “Karly Vickers is small,” Mendez said. “But Lisa Warwick was pretty curvy. No mistaking her for—or pretending she might have been—a child.”

  “Let’s go see your Mr. Sells,” Vince said, getting up slowly. He stuck his reading glasses on top of his head and picked a folder from a neat stack on the table. “Dixon gave me the go-ahead to interview him. I want to know what pushes his buttons.”

  Gordon Sells looked at Mendez as they entered the room, and jabbed a finger in his direction. “I got nothin’ to say to you, you fuckin’ spic.”

  Mendez looked at Vince and shrugged. Vince tipped his head toward the door. He didn’t want Sells pissed off just because he didn’t like Mendez.

  Vince sat down, perched his reading glasses on his nose and paged slowly through the notes that had been made thus far regarding Gordon Sells. Sells watched him suspiciously and fidgeted in his chair as the minutes ticked past.

  Finally Vince sighed and looked up.

  “Mr. Sells,” he said with a friendly smile. “I don’t care how many stolen cars you’ve shipped to Mexico.”

  Sells didn’t deny it.

  “That’s not important. Not to me, not to you. You’ve got other issues,” Vince said. “I’ve talked to a lot of guys like you over the years. Guys who had that same . . . attraction . . . you have. None of them wanted to have it, you know. You probably don’t want to have it either. I mean we all know it’s against society, but you didn’t ask to be that way. It’s not your fault you like girls younger than other people think is right.”

  “Who are you?” Sells asked. “Are you a shrink?”

  “Something like that,” Vince said. “I’m Vince.”

  He reached across the table to shake the grubby hand of Gordon Sells.

  “Now, Gordon. May I call you Gordon?”

  Sells shrugged. “I guess.”

  “So, Gordon, Detective Mendez thinks you have something to do with the murder of a woman—Lisa Warwick.”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “And the disappearance of another woman—Karly Vickers.”

  “Don’t know nothing about it.”

  Vince got up, went to the wal
l, and taped up three black-and-white crime scene photos. The partially decomposed remains of Julie Paulson. “Come have a look.”

  Sells came over and looked at the gruesome pictures, held his hands up and turned away. “That’s sick. I got no stomach for that. I maybe have done some things in my time that ain’t right, but nothing like that.”

  “See? That’s what I figured,” Vince said. He went back to the table and took a couple more photos out of the file, pornographic images of well-endowed women in their twenties. He stuck them up on the wall beside the others.

  “I need coffee,” he said. “Would you like some coffee, Gordon?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  He went out the door and across the hall.

  Dixon looked at him as he strolled into the monitor room and went to the coffeemaker. “What’s the point of that?”

  “The porn?” Vince said, pouring two cups of black coffee. “You’ll see.”

  He doctored his coffee with four plastic thimbles of fake cream, stirring as he came over to the monitor. In the other room, Sells went over to the wall, looked at the porn for a minute, looked at the other photographs, and walked away.

  Mendez opened the interview room door and let Vince back in. Vince handed a cup to Sells. “I brought it black. I didn’t know. Me, I’ve got to load up the cream. Bad stomach.”

  Sells took the coffee and sipped at it.

  “See, I said to Detective Mendez you wouldn’t be interested in anything like that,” Vince said, hooking a thumb toward the photos. “That’s not what you’re about. You’re not a violent man. You don’t want to hurt women.”

  “That’s right,” Sells said. “I never hurt nobody.”

  Vince went back to the wall and took down all the photographs. He replaced them with three photographs of a twelve-year-old girl, her unripe body naked, just beginning to bud into something more. She looked at the camera as she touched herself provocatively.

  Vince went back to the table and promptly knocked over his coffee.

  “Oh, shit! Look at that! Oh, man . . .”

  He scooped up the file, the jacket dripping coffee. “Shit. Excuse me. I’ve got to get some towels.”