by Tami Hoag
Big tears welled up in the cornflower blue eyes. “Dennis killed Cody!”
“No, honey. Cody’s hurt pretty bad, but he’s not dead.”
“Dennis had a knife!” she exclaimed. “He tried to stab me with it, but I think he dropped it or something because he was just hitting me over and over with his fist, and I couldn’t breathe, and then I saw—like—stars, and I thought I was going to die, but then somebody grabbed Dennis and dragged him away, and I really wish my mom would get here!”
“She’s on her way, honey,” the nurse said.
“And my dad too.”
“I don’t know if they’ve found him yet, Wendy,” the nurse said. “But your mom will be here any minute.”
“You hang in there, Wendy,” Mendez said, giving the little girl’s shoulder a squeeze. “We’ll check back with you later.”
“The world’s going to hell on a sled,” Hicks said as they went back out into the hall.
“Before it gets there, let’s go upstairs,” Mendez said. “Maybe we’ll witness a miracle and Karly Vickers can name our killer. I want that guy in hell before Armageddon.”
They took the elevator to the fourth floor and went through the glass doors into the intensive care unit. The only sounds were the beeps of monitors and the sighs of respirators. As they approached the nurses’ station, Mendez felt compelled to speak in a hushed whisper as if he were in church or the library.
They both held up their badges. Mendez said, “We’re here to check on Karly Vickers. Is her doctor available?”
“He’s with another patient at the moment.”
“We’ll wait.”
“Her room is right over there. You can wait with her friend.”
“Her friend?” Mendez asked, immediately thinking Jane Thomas.
But when they turned in the direction she indicated the person staring in at Karly Vickers through the glass partition was Steve Morgan.
67
“No law enforcement agent can legally talk to the boy without a parent or guardian present,” Dixon said. “I’ve got everyone looking for Frank, but no sign of him. And no sign of Mrs. Farman, either.”
They stood in the coffee room watching Dennis Farman on the monitor. The boy had not moved since he had been put in the room.
Anne stared at the black-and-white image of Dennis, thinking he looked very small from the point of view of the video camera high up on the wall. He sat drawing with his finger on the tabletop, looking strangely calm.
Vince had come for her, catching her just as she had been leaving the house to go grocery shopping. There she had been, trying to do one normal thing, and suddenly an FBI agent was asking her to come to the sheriff’s office to speak to her student who had allegedly knifed two kids in the park.
She was beginning to think she would never know “normal” again.
“I’ve called Child Protective Services, but Vince suggested you’re probably more qualified than anyone to try to communicate with him,” Dixon said. “You certainly know him better than anyone here.”
Detective Hicks had called with the names of the two children Dennis had attacked: Cody and Wendy. Cody had been taken to surgery. Anne could only imagine how terrified he must have been. Wendy had no life-threatening wounds. She had been lucky by comparison. But she had already been through an ordeal with Dennis trying to shove a dismembered finger down her throat. Now this.
“I’m not qualified for this,” she said. “I can handle a fight on the playground. But this . . .”
“You’re more qualified than any of the rest of us, Anne,” Vince said. “The boy needs someone to try to reach out to him. At least until his parents get here. He hasn’t said a word to anyone.”
Anne stared at the monitor, at Dennis. He was eleven years old and he had tried to murder two other children. “What if I say the wrong thing? What if I make it worse?”
“He knifed a ten-year-old boy,” Vince said. “How much worse could you make it?”
Anne thought back to Thursday—God, was that all? Two days ago?—to Dennis’s outburst and what she had told him as they sat together, alone in the classroom. She had told him she would be there for him. She knew he had no one else on his side.
“All right.”
She went into the hall with Vince, then took a deep breath and let it out as he opened the door to the interview room for her.
“I’m right out here if you need me,” he whispered.
Anne nodded and went into the room.
Dennis wouldn’t look at her. He stared down at the blank tabletop, drawing patterns on it with his finger. Anne studied him, wondering if she had ever really noticed that his hair was so red, or that his ears sat a little too low on the sides of his head. Someone had taken him out of his bloodstained shirt and jacket and put him in a man’s sheriff’s office T-shirt that swallowed him up.
“Dennis,” she said softly, carefully easing herself down onto the nearest chair as if she was afraid he might spook like a wild pony.
“I know something really bad happened today. I don’t know exactly why.” Her voice was gentle, quiet, the kind of voice she might use to tell a bedtime story or confess an innocent secret to a friend. “I won’t pretend that I understand what you’re going through. I don’t have any idea. I have a feeling you’ve seen things and been through things I wouldn’t want to imagine.”
He lifted his head then and looked at her. A bruise was spreading across his left cheek, blackening the skin beneath his eye. Coagulated blood knit together his swollen lower lip.
“When can I go home?”
The question was stunning. He wasn’t joking. He wasn’t being sarcastic. An hour ago he had stabbed a playmate so seriously the child could die, and Dennis just wanted to go home.
“Dennis, you won’t be going home,” she said. “You hurt somebody really badly.”
“Just Cody,” he said, as if Cody Roache was no more important to him than a toy he had broken.
Anne didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know if this was a hardwired part of Dennis Farman’s psyche or a by-product of the day’s trauma. Could he really care so little about the only boy who had ever tried to be his friend?
“I’m so sorry, Dennis,” she said. “I wish I could have helped you sooner. I wish I had a clue how to help you now, but I don’t. All I can do is sit here with you until someone who knows more than I do can come and try.”
“What’ll happen to me?” he asked.
As horrible as his crime was, Anne felt her heart break for Dennis Farman. She didn’t know if it was a trick of the harsh lighting or the dimensions of the room, but he seemed smaller to her now than he had in her classroom. And she had the strangest, saddest feeling as she sat there watching him that he was getting smaller and smaller before her very eyes, that the light inside him was getting dimmer and dimmer, and before long he would disappear altogether.
“The sheriff is trying to find your mom so she can come and be with you,” she said. “Do you know where she might be?”
He looked up at her for the first time since she had walked in.
“She’s dead,” he said without emotion. Then he looked past her to the glass inset in the door.
Anne turned to see Frank Farman’s face in the window.
“He killed her.”
68
“I thought the rules up here were: authorized personnel and family only,” Mendez said.
Morgan turned and looked at him. “Detective. Jane needed a break. Or, I should say, I made her take a break. She’s down the hall in the family room resting. She made me promise to stand here and come get her if anything changed.”
“Miss Vickers’s family hasn’t arrived yet?” Hicks asked.
“Not yet.” He turned and looked at the girl in the bed again. “It didn’t seem right to just leave her. That doesn’t make sense, does it? I mean, she doesn’t know we’re standing here. She’s not aware of anything at all as far as we know.”
“Or maybe
she’s playing it all through her mind,” Mendez suggested. “What happened to her, who did this to her. And if she can just fight her way up through the fog, she’ll tell us everything.”
“What are the odds she’ll remember anything?” Morgan asked. “The doctor said it’ll be a miracle if she survives at all. I wouldn’t hang your hat on getting the story from her.”
“But here’s the thing with my job, Mr. Morgan,” Mendez said. “Even dead victims tell their stories, one way or another. It just takes longer.”
“You always get your man? We’ll all hope so.”
“We’ll have to spell you here, Mr. Morgan,” Hicks said. “You’re needed in the ER.”
They accompanied Steve Morgan to the ER and hung back at the edge of the Morgan family drama. Sara Morgan had arrived to comfort her daughter. The parents managed to hide all but the edge of the tension between them as they let Wendy take center stage and tell her story.
Mendez answered what questions he could as to what would happen to Dennis Farman, though he admitted he had never come across such a young violent offender. He had no idea if there was any precedence to guide the powers of the judicial system on how to deal with him. The only thing he knew with certainty was that Dennis Farman would not be going home that night, or any night soon.
The doctor informed them that Wendy could go home. She had a badly bruised sternum and ribs, but considering what had happened to Cody Roache, she was a lucky girl.
“Will Cody be all right?” Wendy asked.
“He’ll be in the hospital for a few days, but he’ll be all right,” the doctor announced to the relief of everyone. The surgeons had managed to repair the damage to his spleen and stop the internal bleeding. He was a lucky little boy.
“This guy has a damned strange definition of luck,” Hicks commented as they loitered in the hall, waiting for the Morgans to leave. “Luck would have been never running into Dennis Farman in the first place.”
They followed the Morgans out to the parking lot where Steve lifted Wendy out of the obligatory wheelchair and into her mother’s minivan.
“Daddy, are you coming home?” the little girl asked, her cornflower blue eyes as big and hopeful as she could make them.
“I’ll be along soon, honey. Don’t you worry.”
But as Sara and Wendy Morgan drove away, and Steve Morgan turned to go to his own vehicle, Mendez stepped in his way.
“We have a couple more questions for you, Mr. Morgan.”
Morgan only hesitated a second, then walked around him. “It’s been a long day, Detectives. I’m going home.”
Mendez fell in step beside him. “When I asked you this morning where you were at three A.M., you failed to mention the bed you were supposedly sleeping in was at a hotel.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“It’s really not a good idea for you to blow us off, Mr. Morgan,” Hicks said, striding along on Morgan’s other side. “It gives us the impression you’re being arrogant in a situation that calls for cooperation.”
“I’m not being arrogant. I’m irritated,” Morgan said. “I give a big part of my life to the Thomas Center and the clients there. I don’t appreciate being considered a person of interest because of my generosity.”
“That’s not why we’re looking at you, if that makes you feel any better,” Mendez said. “We’re looking at you because you’re being less than cooperative and because we know you were having an affair with one of the victims.”
“You don’t know—”
“Yes, we do. Peter Crane confirmed it for us. He also told us you were planning to spend last night at the Holiday Inn because your wife threw you out.”
Morgan stopped beside a low-slung black Trans Am. “My marriage is not your business.”
“Could be a good motive, though,” Hicks said. “If Lisa Warwick was putting pressure on you, threatening to tell your wife—”
“And what’s my motive for attacking Karly?”
“Maybe you just plain enjoy it,” Mendez suggested.
He looked through the back passenger window into the car. There was a black Members Only jacket on the backseat, and a couple of baseball caps. A box holding MISSING posters of Karly Vickers. On the floor was a dusty pair of hiking boots. There were no instruments of torture, no obvious souvenirs from victims, nothing that could have given him probable cause to search the car.
“I understand you have a job to do,” Morgan said. “But you’re wasting valuable time on me when maybe you should be looking a little closer to home.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hicks asked.
“Ask Dixon. Let’s just say the interest some of your deputies take in the women from the center is less than altruistic in nature.”
They watched him drive away, both of them at a loss for words.
Finally, Hicks said, “What now?”
“I think if Dixon wanted to tell us something, he would have told us already.”
“Right,” Hicks agreed, and started back toward the hospital. “Let’s ask Jane Thomas.”
69
“He’s lying!” Farman shouted.
“Frank, sit down and shut up,” Dixon ordered.
They had gone into the interview room next door to where Farman’s son had just declared him a murderer. Despite Dixon’s order, neither of them sat. They were two broad-shouldered men with their arms crossed, each of them laying claim to his section of the room.
Vince watched them on the monitor, knowing this wasn’t going to go well.
“I was told he’d been in a fight,” Farman said. “Was that just a lie to get me down here so you could accuse me of something, Cal? What the hell?”
“Dennis wasn’t in a fight, Frank. He attacked two kids in Oakwoods Park. He stabbed a boy. The child could die. Dennis is under arrest.”
Farman’s face dropped. “What? He did what?”
“He stabbed a boy. The boy is in surgery. He might not make it, Frank.”
Now Farman sat down as if his legs wouldn’t hold him up any longer. He looked dazed.
“I don’t understand,” he said, almost to himself. “I don’t understand what’s wrong with him. You know Sharon was drinking when she was pregnant with him. He’s never been right.”
“I brought his teacher in because I know she has some rapport with the boy,” Dixon said.
“Oh, great!” Farman said. “That snotty little bitch. Who knows what she’s put in his head. She’s got a problem with men—”
“Can it, Frank,” Dixon snapped. “Stay on point here. We’re talking about your eleven-year-old son committing a felony. I’m trying to decide where to house him. He’s too young to go to juvenile detention, let alone jail.”
“This is . . . I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Where’s your wife, Frank?” Dixon asked. “We’ve been trying to reach her. Now your son tells us she’s dead.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Why would he make that up?”
“Why would you believe him?” Farman countered angrily. “Jesus, Cal! We’ve known each other a dozen years. We’ve been through it together. And you turn on me like a fucking snake! I don’t get it. A week ago we were friends. I was your goddamn right hand!”
“I haven’t turned on you, Frank,” Dixon snapped back. “I’m doing my damn job! How hard do you think this is for me? My right-hand man is acting like a suspect. My right-hand man can’t account for himself when a girl was abducted. My right-hand man can’t tell me why his kid was in possession of the finger of a murder victim! Don’t give me all this wounded-friend bullshit!”
Vince went across the hall and knocked on the door before sticking his head into the room. “Sheriff, you have a phone call. It’s urgent.”
Dixon gave his right-hand man a final scathing look and exited the room. He was red in the face and breathing too hard.
“What’s the call? Is it Mendez?”
“The call is, You need to step out, boss,
” Vince said. “This isn’t going anywhere good.”
Dixon jammed his hands at his waist and breathed in and out, visibly reining himself in.
“Let me talk to him,” Vince said. “I got no stake in him. I don’t know him from anyone. It’ll be easier for me to get what you need.”
Dixon nodded.
Vince walked into the interview room, coffee in hand, and took a seat at the table, turning his chair a little sideways so he could comfortably cross his legs in front of him.
Farman glared at him. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“You should be happy to see me, Frank,” Vince said evenly. “I’m fucking Switzerland. I don’t know you. I got no history with you. I got no beef with you. There’s nothing personal going on here. I’ve got some questions. You’ve got the answers. It’s all good.”
Farman said nothing, but Vince could see him settle with the idea somewhat. He was going to have to answer these questions. Better to answer them with no emotion involved.
“So where’s your wife?” Vince asked. “She should be part of the discussion about your son. Let’s just get hold of her and clear this up.”
“She left,” Farman said.
“And went where?”
“I don’t know. We had an argument last night, and she left.”
“See?” Vince said, lifting his hands. “There’s always an explanation. Was that so hard?”
Farman said nothing.
“So, what happened?” Vince asked. “She got pissed off, took off, went to her mother’s, something like that?”
“I don’t know where she went. I admit I had too much to drink at dinner. I was an ass. Later I passed out. When I woke up this morning, she was gone.”
“Does she have a friend, a sister, or someone nearby?”
Farman shook his head, but to himself, as if he was having an internal conversation, considering and discarding answers. “I don’t know her friends.”
“Do you have kids besides Dennis?”
“Sharon’s two girls from her first marriage. They’re staying with friends or something. They’re teenagers. I don’t try to keep track of them.”