Deeper Than the Dead

by Tami Hoag

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?

  73

  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 outsid
e 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.

  74

  “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.

  “Oh, well, Saturday nights I usually take the Concorde to Paris for dinner, then pop over to Monte Carlo for a little gambling.”

  “Our tax dollars at work,” Mendez said.

  “Seriously.”

  “Seriously?” Vince thought back over the last year. Most of his Saturday nights had been spent in bed, recuperating. And before that? “Pretty much the same thing we’re doing here.”

  “That’s grim, man.”

  “I don’t have a wife. I don’t have a life. I’m the perfect man for the job. How about you, Detective Hicks?”

  “The second Saturday of the month is jackpot calf roping at the rodeo grounds. I’m usually winning me some money right about now.”

  “How about you, Tony?” Vince asked.

  “Nothing special.”

  “Sign that man up for the FBI.”

  “Watch out, old man,” Mendez teased. “I’ll take your job.”

  “You’re welcome to it, junior. I’ve done my time. I’m about ready to move on.”

  “You? Quit the Bureau? No way, man. You’re a freaking legend.”

  “I’ll trade places with you. I’ll move here and live the good life. You head east and take up the mantle.”

  “If it was that easy . . .”

  “You’d have to pay some dues, but hell, you’re young—as you keep reminding me.”

  As if to punctuate the fact, his brain began to throb. He was about done in for the day, and odds were the pizza wasn’t going to taste as good the second time around. He dug in his jacket pocket for the pill bottle.

  Antinausea. Antiseizure. Antipain.

  He tossed them back and washed them down with cold coffee.

  “You pop those things like breath mints,” Mendez said. “What are they?”

  “Breath mints.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Better living through chemistry,” Vince said, shrugging off the topic of his health. “What have you found out about the traffic stops?”

  “If Frank got a dollar for every ticket he wrote, he’d be driving a new Cadillac every year,” Hamilton said. “But we all knew that.”

  “Complaints filed against him?”

  “A few.”

  “By women?”

  “Most of them.”

  “Allegations of inappropriate conduct?”

  “Several,” the detective said, flipping through Farman’s personnel file. “‘He’s rude, he’s condescending, he’s a bully, he’s a chauvinist, he’s a sexist, he made me feel uncomfortable, he made a remark about my ass.’”

  “He likes to push women around,” Vince said. “Any sign of Mrs. Farman yet?”

  “No. We called everyone in her address book. No one has seen or heard from her.”

  “Wouldn’t that be a hell of a deal, if Frank turned out to be See-No-Evil?” Hamilton said.

  “If Frank was See-No-Evil,” Vince said, “the last thing I would expect him to do would be to kill his wife. This killer is getting off on the fact that no one suspects him.”

  “What about his need for publicity?” Mendez asked.

  “He’s getting plenty. ‘Investigators Baffled in Oak Knoll Murders.’ ‘Serial Killer Stumps Sheriff’s Department.’” He held his hands up to frame the imaginary headlines.

  “Meanwhile, he’s walking around like the guy next door,” Vince said. “He’s probably bringing up the case to his neighbors, talking about it over coffee with business associates. He’s loving it. Everybody looks at him and sees the perfect citizen, the perfect husband, the perfect family man, whatever. He’s not going to kill his wife.”

  “Maybe he just lost control,” Mendez ventured. “Bundy’s killings at the Chi Omega house in Tallahassee, Florida, at the end of his career. He lost it. Took a stupid amount of risk. Killed in a frenzy. Kemper’s last victim, the motivation for all of his murders: his mother. He killed her symbolically over and over, until he finally did it for real.”

  “Then why hasn’t anybody found Sharon Farman?” Vince asked. “If your theory holds, he should have planted her right out in front of the building. His last grand gesture. Ed Kemper’s mother was a ball-busting man hater who ragged on him so incessantly that his final act of revenge was to shove her larynx down the garbage disposal.

  “Now, I haven’t met Mrs. Farman,” he said, “but let me take a shot in the dark here, based on what I know of her husband.

  “She’s on the small side. The looks are showing age because she’s a nervous sort. Smokes—maybe secretly. Drinks—but definitely on the sly. Everything is neat and tidy: The house is neat and tidy, she’s neat and tidy, she has a neat and tidy job working for a neat and tidy man in a position of authority. She needs to know her place, and she’s happy to stay in it.

  “How am I doing so far?” he asked.

  “You’re a fucking freak, man,” Hamilton said.

  “Women like Sharon Farman get beaten to death by their bully asshole husbands every day of the week,” Vince said. “But they aren’t the women that drive men out of their homes to kill other women.”

  “Janet Crane is,” Mendez said.

  “She sure as hell could drive me to homicide,” Vince said. “What do you know about Peter Crane tonight that you didn’t know this afternoon?”

  “I spoke to a cop in Ventura about Dr. Crane’s lady friend,” Hicks said. “She’s known for her special talents.”

  “S and M?” Mendez guessed.

  “Yep.”

  “But I don’t think See-No-Evil would be paying for rough sex,” he said.

  Vince arched a brow. “Why not?”

  “Because it wouldn’t excite him anymore. Maybe playing pretend was fine for a while, but now he’s had a taste of the real thing. He doesn’t want fake fear when he can have the real deal. It’s not enough to pretend to strangle a woman now that he’s choked the life out of a couple.”<
br />
  “Good theory. Very good,” Vince said, pleased with his protégé. “Let’s go back to something Crane said this afternoon when you were interviewing him.”

  Mendez went to the TV/VCR and put in the tape of the Crane interview. Vince grabbed the remote and skipped through most of it.

  Crane: “. . . a married man.”

  Mendez: “He should have thought about that before he unzipped his pants.”

  Crane: “I’m really not comfortable talking about this.”

  Mendez: “You said Steve is a complicated guy. In what way? He’s your friend, man. Tell me about him.”

  Crane: “I just meant that Steve is very driven. He’s passionate about the work he does for the center. Steve comes from a tough background—single mom, not much money, desperate times—”

  “You need to know more about that,” Vince said, hitting the Pause button. “Desperate times and a single mom could add up to something.”

  “His motivation for working for the rights of disadvantaged women,” Hamilton said.

  “Or his unhealthy attraction to disadvantaged women,” Vince said. “For every good man drawn to the priesthood, there’s a pedophile two confessionals down. Dig into Morgan’s background—and Crane’s.”

  75

  Typical for a beautiful autumn Saturday night, the plaza and the streets branching off it were full of people dining, socializing, listening to music. Anne let her mind wander as she walked to her car in one of the public lots. She allowed herself the girlish luxury of wondering about the man she was attracted to. Where was he? What was he doing? Was he thinking about her?

  She chided herself for being foolish. The man she was attracted to was hunting a serial killer, not sitting around daydreaming about her.

  But maybe later.

  She thought back to the afternoon when they had had a few moments together alone.

  “How are you feeling about last night?” he asked.

  She felt the blush that swept across her cheeks.

  “It’s a little late to be shy,” he said, chuckling. “Regrets?”

  “No,” she said without hesitation. “I haven’t quite figured that out, but no.”