Deeper Than the Dead ok-1

by Tami Hoag

  Vince hoped for Dixon’s sake it had a heavy trigger.

  78

  Mendez had only stepped out of the conference room to make a pit stop. Too much Mountain Dew. He was living on caffeine. When he came back out of the men’s room, the world had turned on a dime.

  He watched now on the monitor in the break room, thankful the county had spared no expense in outfitting the building with state-of-the-art security. Cameras in every room but the john.

  Farman had his service weapon jammed to Dixon’s temple. Vince was trying to talk him down. Frank wasn’t having it.

  Mendez thought back to the conversation they had just been having about the possibility of Frank Farman being See-No-Evil. Vince didn’t go for it, but Mendez thought it could be.

  If the killer was a man in a trust position of authority, who personified that more than a man in a uniform? Moreover, he could easily incorporate himself into the investigation. He could even maneuver himself into the position of would-be hero as they pursued suspects.

  “Mendez.” Trammell stuck his head into the room. “We’ve got a big problem.”

  “Yeah. I’m watching it.”

  “No. Out front. Come on.”

  He looked up at the monitor, thinking he shouldn’t leave. What could be more urgent?

  “Really,” Trammell said. “Come on. Leone can keep him talking. You’ve got to see this.”

  They jogged down the hall and out the front doors of the building, stepping into a scene out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

  The grounds were being lit from above by the white glare of chopper-born spotlights. Parked smack on the lawn was a county cruiser, doors and trunk open. Deputies held a perimeter beyond the car, keeping cameras and people at bay.

  “Frank’s car?” Mendez shouted to be heard above the beating of the helicopter blades.

  “Yeah.” Trammell led him around to the back of the car and the open trunk. “And Frank’s wife.”

  Sharon Farman lay dead in the trunk. Beaten, strangled, cut. Eyes and mouth glued shut.

  79

  Dennis lay on the cot that had been brought into the room. The detectives had brought him a TV to watch and some pizza and soda, but he didn’t want to watch TV, and he wasn’t hungry. Some ugly fat cowgirl deputy was supposed to be watching him, but she was sitting at the table reading a book, and she hardly ever looked at him.

  All Dennis really wanted was to go home. Miss Navarre had said he wouldn’t be going home. But what did she know? She didn’t work for the sheriff. His dad worked for the sheriff. His dad would get him out.

  But he had only seen his dad through the glass in the door. His dad hadn’t come in to talk to him or to yell at him or anything. He had only looked in the window the one time, and he hadn’t come back.

  Maybe he never would.

  Not for the first time, Dennis wondered what it would be like to be a part of real family like the ones on TV. Like Wendy Morgan’s and Tommy Crane’s.

  He had always hated Tommy Crane. Tommy Crane had everything. Tommy Crane was smart. Tommy Crane was talented. Tommy Crane had cool parents who gave him everything he wanted.

  He had always hated Tommy Crane, but as he lay on his cot in a room in the sheriff’s office with no one caring about him and no one coming to see if he was all right, Dennis thought it would be pretty darn good to be Tommy Crane tonight.

  Tommy’s bedtime ritual went the way it had every other night in the past week. His mother—still in a terrible mood—made him take his allergy medicine. He had then run into his bathroom and thrown it back up.

  He was mad at her now. Even though he had vowed she wouldn’t ruin his perfect evening with his father, she had. His mother always had to be the center of attention, and she managed that any way she could. Usually by yelling.

  Tommy was tired of it. Why couldn’t his mother be somebody else? Or why couldn’t it be just him and his dad? Sometimes he secretly wished they would get divorced, but then he always got afraid that he would have to stay with his mother instead of his dad.

  They were arguing now. Tommy crept down the hall as far as he dared and tried to listen. He couldn’t make out most of what they were saying on account of they had gone into their bedroom at the far end of the hall and shut the door.

  Every once in a while a word stood out. His name. Why would you . . . ? How could you . . . ? Anne Navarre . . .

  Tommy felt sick in his stomach in a way that had nothing to do with his allergy medicine. He didn’t want to be the problem. Tears filled up his eyes, and he hurried back down the hall to his own room.

  He didn’t have to listen, anyway. He knew what would happen. His dad would get fed up with fighting, and he would leave and not come back for hours.

  Only this time he wouldn’t be going alone.

  80

  Anne paced around the kitchen, wondering what to do. What could she do? Nothing. She had called 911 as soon as Vince had disconnected from her line, and she had been told they were aware of the situation at the sheriff’s office.

  The Situation. Frank Farman was in the sheriff’s office with a gun to Sheriff Dixon’s head.

  Anne shivered at the thought of how close she had come to disaster herself at the hands of Farman. If Tommy and his father hadn’t come by . . .

  She wondered now just how disturbed Frank Farman really was. Had he killed his wife? Had he killed only his wife?

  It would have been so easy for him to pick his victims. Every woman would stop for a police car. Every woman would trust the man in the uniform who got out of that car. All he had to do was pull them over on a lonely stretch of road . . .

  The breach of trust was unconscionable. And when she thought of what had been done to those women . . . No nightmare could have been more terrifying.

  Shivering at the little jolts of adrenaline still zapping through her, she walked the entire house, checking windows, checking doors. Wishing Vince was there. Funny how quickly that was becoming a habitual thought.

  She went into the living room and turned the television on just for the company of voices, and was presented with a bird’s-eye view of the sheriff’s office. The banner across the bottom of the screen read: SIEGE AT THE SHERIFF’S OFFICE: SHOWDOWN IN OAK KNOLL.

  The building was surrounded by press and media helicopters sweeping the ground with spotlights.

  Anne grabbed the remote and turned up the volume, catching the handsome LA reporter midsentence.

  “. . . suspected in the alleged beating and strangulation death of his wife, whose body was allegedly discovered less than an hour ago in the trunk of this police car located on the lawn behind me—presumably Deputy Farman’s department vehicle.”

  Oh my God.

  “In an even more bizarre twist, the deputy’s eleven-year-old son is said to be in the building. He was arrested earlier today in connection with a stabbing in a nearby park.

  “Speculation is, of course, rampant that the deputy may in fact be the notorious See-No-Evil killer who has been stalking this idyllic college town—”

  Anne flipped from channel to channel to channel, every one of them showing the same scene from a different angle. None of them showing the drama going on inside the building, where lives were hanging in the balance.

  81

  “What can we do for you, Frank?” Vince asked.

  They had been at it for thirty-five minutes. Him trying to pull answers out of Frank Farman, slowly trying to get him to turn his back to the door. Farman, sweating and shaking now from the strain of holding on to the sheriff and keeping the gun up to his head.

  Vince was fighting his own war of attrition, his own energy reserves draining to the last drop. He was starting to feel shaky too, but if he could just keep Farman occupied for a little while longer something would happen. The deputy would give up, or the cavalry would burst in.

  The trick was to keep him talking.

  “You need to sit down? You need something to drink? What?” Vince asked, pl
anting those needs in Farman’s head over and over.

  Farman blinked hard as sweat ran down his brow and dripped into his eyes.

  “Give me something, here, Frank.”

  “I’ve given this department everything I have,” Farman said, his voice cracking under the strain of his emotions.

  “Then let’s try to salvage some of that,” Vince suggested. “You’ve done a lot of good, Frank. Credit where it’s due. Let’s don’t fuck that up now.”

  He risked taking a full step toward Farman, angling away from the door.

  “Don’t come closer,” Farman said.

  “I just want to help you out here, Frank,” Vince said, lowering his voice so Farman would have to concentrate a little harder to hear him. “Let’s end this in a good way.”

  Farman shook his head. “It’s too late. It’s done. You don’t know.” “What don’t I know, Frank?” Vince asked. “Tell me. I’ll help you any way I can.”

  “It’s too late,” he said again, his eyes filling. “She’s gone.”

  “I know your wife left. We can find her, Frank. We can bring her here. You can talk.”

  Farman shook his head. “It’s too late.”

  Oh, shit, Vince thought. She’s dead. The risk of the situation going totally wrong multiplied by a hundred times. If he had killed his wife, there really was no going back for him. He would go to prison. Prison would not be an option for Frank Farman. He would choose death.

  Vince took a deep breath and let it out. “I understand,” he said quietly. “I get it, Frank.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Farman whispered, a terrible pain carving deep into the lines of his face.

  “Let’s not make it worse,” Vince said, taking another half step toward him. “Let the man go.”

  He kept his eyes on Farman, not flicking so much as a nanosecond’s glance at the door easing open behind him.

  Mendez slipped into the room, holding his breath. Three quick strides and he was behind Frank Farman, gun to the back of his head, just as Farman said, “I can’t go to prison.”

  “Drop the gun, Frank,” he said. “Right now. It’s over.”

  Three things happened simultaneously: Cal Dixon dropped, dead weight, straight down to the floor; Vince Leone shouted NO; and Frank Farman put the barrel of his .38 in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  The bullet traveled on an upward trajectory through the roof of his mouth, through his midbrain, and exited out the back of his skull, two inches right of center, slicing a shallow groove along the outermost edge of Mendez’s cheek and traveling on to bury itself in the wall.

  Farman dropped where he stood like a sack of bones, falling across Cal Dixon’s legs, the entire back of his head shattered like an egg.

  82

  According to the handsome reporter from LA, THE SIEGE AT THE SHERIFF’S OFFICE was coming to some kind of conclusion. Shots had been fired. The sheriff’s department tactical squad had stormed the building.

  Anne was shaking. The conclusion wasn’t guaranteed to be everyone’s happy ending. She wouldn’t relax until she knew Frank Farman had been subdued, one way or another, and that everyone else was safe. That Vince was safe.

  Needing something to busy her hands, she brought her purse into the living room and dumped the contents on the ottoman. She actually managed to smile as Tommy’s gift tumbled out. This was what she needed—a sweet surprise.

  The box was about the size and shape a ring might come in. Tommy had obviously wrapped it himself. Anne opened it as carefully as if it might contain a Fabergé egg.

  Inside the box was a small puddle of fine gold chain. A necklace, she thought, a little bemused. Where did a ten-year-old boy get the money to buy his teacher a necklace? And what would she do if the gift was too extravagant? It would break his heart if she gave it back.

  She emptied the box into her hand and carefully sorted out the ends of the chain, lifting it up and letting it unfurl like gold thread.

  A simple gold figure dangled from the chain.

  A figure of a woman standing with her arms raised in victory.

  The necklace Karly Vickers had been wearing in her photo on the MISSING poster.

  Anne’s blood ran cold.

  Her heart was beating so fast she felt faint. Her hands were trembling so the small golden figure danced this way and that, catching the lamplight.

  Where could Tommy have possibly gotten this? Could there be any reasonable explanation that he would have access to a piece of jewelry given only to the women who made it through the Thomas Center program and graduated to independent living?

  Her brain stalled as she tried to make sense of it. Had he found it in the woods? Would Lisa Warwick have had one too? It could have fallen in the dirt and leaves. Tommy could have picked it up during that time he and Wendy had been sitting waiting outside the yellow crime-scene tape—the time between finding the body and when she had gotten there.

  That didn’t ring true, but her brain wanted to believe it anyway. Funny how the mind would willingly twist itself into a pretzel trying to make sense of something using just the incomplete information it had, filling in its own blanks.

  If Frank Farman was the killer, as the newspeople were speculating, maybe Dennis had the necklace, and Tommy somehow had gotten it from Dennis.

  Right. Like Dennis would give Tommy anything. Dennis would have beat up Tommy to get the necklace from him. There was no version of that story that worked in the reverse.

  Wendy’s father did a lot of work for the center. Maybe somehow Wendy had come by the necklace and Tommy got the necklace from Wendy.

  Peter Crane donated his services to the center.

  But only women who graduated the program got the gold necklace. Not even Jane Thomas herself wore a gold one.

  Of course there would be a perfectly reasonable explanation for it, she thought. There was no reason to find it troubling . . . and yet she did.

  She gathered the necklace into one hand and walked around with it in her fist, as if she thought it might speak to her somehow.

  She would have to ask Tommy. Or maybe she would bring it up to his father. There would be an answer.

  Sooner rather than later, she thought, as the doorbell rang, and she opened the door to Peter Crane.

  83

  “You’re going to have a scar,” Vince said.

  “Just one?” Mendez asked.

  “The ladies will find that one sexy,” he said, pointing to the angry red line that creased the detective’s cheek. “The ones they can’t see . . .”

  He shrugged and sat down on the stone bench beside Mendez, and leaned his forearms on his thighs.

  They sat outside, neither of them noticing the damp chill of the night air. It smelled like lavender and rosemary with a hint of the ocean that stretched beyond the small mountains to the west. It didn’t smell like gunpowder or death.

  The media had given up for the night, Dixon shutting them down and sending them on their way. What had happened inside the sheriff’s office might have made for compelling news, but it was also a family tragedy, and enough was enough for one night.

  The paramedics had come and gone. Mendez had refused the ride to the hospital. Once he had showered the blood and brain and bone fragments off, a little cut on the cheek didn’t seem like anything to lose time over. He could have just as easily been as dead as Frank Farman.

  “You want to share some of that pharmacy you’re carrying around on you?” he asked.

  Vince dug the pill bottle out of his jacket pocket and shook a few into his hand.

  “I recommend the long white one,” he said. “Unless you’re thinking about having a seizure. Then I’d go for the pink one.”

  Mendez arched a brow. “A seizure?”

  “The bullet went in right here,” Vince said, pointing just beneath his right cheekbone where an odd smooth shiny patch of new skin smaller than a dime marked the spot. People rarely noticed the scar for what it was. The mustache he had grown since
Mendez had last seen him was a far more noticeable feature.

  “Bullet?”

  “Do I need to call the paramedics back here?” Vince asked. “You’re repeating me.”

  “What bullet?”

  “If only I’d seen it coming,” he said wistfully. “I could have turned my head a little, maybe got a nice razor line like you. Or maybe ended up with an eye patch. My ex-wife used to have a thing for pirates in the romance novels.”

  “What happened?”

  “The Reader’s Digest version: a junkie mugger with a cheap .22. That’s the thing about those small caliber handguns—what goes into the vic doesn’t always come out.”

  “You’re walking around with a head full of lead?” Mendez said, incredulous.

  “Explains a lot, doesn’t it?”

  “Actually, yeah.”

  “I’m officially on a medical leave.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Uh . . . because I don’t want anyone to know,” Vince said. “Call me paranoid, but I think people treat a guy different when they know he’s got a bullet in his head.”

  “You should be dead.”

  “Yeah. But I’m not,” he said with a shadow of the big white grin. “Life’s a funny old dog. Don’t take it for granted, kid.”

  They were quiet for moment. A couple of county cruisers rolled past them into the back parking lot. Just another night at the SO now. The show was over.

  “You really are going to quit, aren’t you?”

  Vince nodded. “If I didn’t know it when I came out here, I know it now. I know it tonight.

  “You don’t want to end up like old Frank, kid; just a hanger for a uniform,” he said. “Nothing means anything to you except the job. It’s who you are. It’s what you are. Been there, done that, time to go.

  “Love what you do. Don’t get me wrong. Have passion for it. But don’t make it your only mistress.”