Deeper Than the Dead

by Tami Hoag

  “That’s a strange question,” his father said. “Did she ask the whole class?”

  Tommy shook his head. “Nope. Just me.”

  “Huh.”

  He turned and looked at his father. “Dad, I’m not going to have to go to another school, am I? I like Miss Navarre. She’s a really good teacher.”

  And pretty. And she smelled nice. And she really cared about him. But he said none of that to his father. Being married and old and all, he probably didn’t remember what it was like to like a girl.

  “No, son. Your mom was just upset about what happened yesterday. She’ll calm down.”

  How does she think I felt? Tommy wondered. His mother had been all worried about him at the emergency room after Dennis beat him up—when there were people all around making a fuss—but she hadn’t had much to say to him since then. She was too caught up being mad at people. But Tommy said none of this to his father, either.

  “I think the Dodgers’ll win tomorrow, don’t you?” he said instead.

  His father got up from the desk, went to the bookcase, and poured himself another drink. “I hope so.”

  “If they win tomorrow, then it’s only one more game and then they’re in the World Series!” Tommy said, thrusting his fists into the air like a champion—then quickly bringing them down because that hurt like crazy. He turned around in a couple of tight circles until he started to get dizzy.

  “I’m going to check on dinner,” his father said. He ruffled Tommy’s hair absently and walked out of the room.

  Tommy wasted no time scrambling into the big leather swiveling desk chair. Someday he would have a desk and a chair like this one, and he would do something important, like his dad.

  He went back to reading the article in the newspaper to see if his dad’s name was in it.

  Karly Nicole Vickers, 21, originally of Simi Valley, California, was last seen around 5:00 P.M. on the afternoon of Thursday, October 3, in the office of local dentist, Dr. Peter Crane . . .

  44

  It took Sharon Farman nearly five minutes to come to the door. Mendez and Hicks stood on the front steps, periodically ringing the doorbell, then knocking. They had been told at Quinn, Morgan that Mrs. Farman had stayed home for the day to look after her son. Her maroon minivan was parked in the driveway.

  “Why doesn’t the kid answer the door?” Hicks asked.

  “He’s probably chained to a radiator,” Mendez said.

  “Maybe he slit his mother’s throat and took off.”

  Mendez rang the bell again and banged his knuckles on the door.

  “Frank is going to shit a brick over this,” Hicks said.

  “We don’t have a choice. If he’s got nothing to hide, then he should shut up and let us do our jobs.”

  “Yeah. That’ll happen.”

  The door opened then. Sharon Farman had clearly been asleep. Her puffed-up hairdo was lopsided, squished flat on the right, and there were creases on her cheek. Her eyes were a little bleary. Her lipstick was smudged.

  “Mrs. Farman? Detectives Mendez and Hicks,” Mendez said, holding up his ID. “We need to ask you a few questions.”

  She stared at them, confused. “What’s this about? Dennis?”

  “No, ma’am. Would it be all right if we came in for a few minutes?”

  Still slow to react, it took her several seconds before she stepped back from the door. Mendez watched her closely. She seemed a little unsteady on her feet, and he began to wonder if it wasn’t something other than sleep impairing her reaction time.

  She led them into a dining room.

  “Are you feeling all right, ma’am?” he asked as they all took seats at the table.

  “I was having a nap,” she said, reaching for a pack of cigarettes. Her hands trembled ever so slightly as she lit up.

  “We’re sorry to interrupt your day,” Hicks said. “We have just a couple of questions and we’ll let you go.”

  “Questions about what? Are the Cranes going to press charges?” she asked, irritated. “Kids get into fights. Maybe they should teach their precious little angel to stick up for himself.”

  The longer sentence gave her away. Her speech slurred ever so slightly. She’d been drinking.

  “This isn’t about your son, ma’am,” Hicks said. “We need to clear up a couple of things as to your husband’s whereabouts last week Thursday evening.”

  “My husband? Frank? You work with him, for heaven’s sake, why don’t you just ask him?”

  “This is a bit delicate,” Mendez admitted. “Because your husband made a traffic stop on Karly Vickers the day she went missing, we have to make sure his time after that is accounted for so he can officially be ruled out as a suspect.”

  Sharon Farman sobered at that. She sat up a little straighter. Her cigarette burned down in her fingers. “A suspect? You think Frank had something to do with that?”

  “Not really, ma’am,” Mendez said. “Deputy Farman’s reputation speaks for itself. The timing was unfortunate, that’s all. This is a formality.”

  Hand shaking again, she put the cigarette in the ashtray.

  “I’m not comfortable with this,” she said. “Maybe I should speak to my husband first.”

  “It’s really not a big deal, ma’am,” Hicks said easily. “We just need to nail down his time line. Do you remember what time he got home that evening?”

  “We eat dinner at six thirty sharp,” she said. “Every night.”

  She glanced at her watch then and what color she had left her cheeks. “Oh my God. Look at the time! I had no idea how late—Oh, no. I haven’t even taken meat out of the freezer! Why didn’t the girls wake me? Where are they?”

  She looked around the room, as if they might appear.

  It was 5:09, Mendez noted. Sharon Farman was genuinely distressed, not just ready to give them the bum’s rush out the door.

  “Has Frank seemed different in any way this past week?” Hicks asked. “Stressed?”

  “Of course he’s been stressed,” she snapped. “Look at what’s gone on: a murder, a kidnapping, our son finding that body. We’re all stressed, Detective.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Do you remember if your husband was home all evening, or if he might have gone out after dinner that night?” Mendez asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said impatiently. “It was a week ago. And I have meetings on Thursday nights. I’m sure he was here when I left and when I came home. He always is.”

  She looked at her watch again and got up from her chair. “I have to start dinner. Is there anything else?”

  “No, ma’am,” Mendez said, rising. “Thank you for your time. We’ll show ourselves out.”

  Without a word Sharon Farman turned and disappeared into the next room, leaving her cigarette smoldering in the ashtray.

  “Well, that was weird,” Hicks said as they walked out to the car. “What do you suppose happens if she doesn’t serve dinner at six thirty on the dot?”

  “I don’t know,” Mendez said. “Court-martial? But I bet I know where she goes on Thursday nights.”

  “Where?”

  “AA meets at the Presbyterian church on Piedra Boulevard Thursday nights. That’s my jogging route. They’re usually all out smoking on the lawn when I run by.”

  “She had definitely had a few before we got here.”

  “Yeah. Nap my ass. Sleeping it off is more like.”

  Hicks shrugged as they reached the car. “If I was married to Frank, I’d drink too.”

  Farman was in Dixon’s office when they got back. He did not look happy to be there.

  Join the club, Mendez thought as he and Hicks walked into the room.

  “It’s just a formality, Frank,” Dixon said.

  “It’s an insult,” Farman snapped. “How many years do we go back, Cal?”

  “A lot.”

  “A dozen. A dozen years, and you’re doing this to me? This is bullshit.”

  “I’m not doing anything to
you, Frank. We’re following procedure to the letter. If I had written that girl up myself, I’d have the detectives do the same thing. If Mendez had written the girl up, I’d be doing the same—and you’d be saying it was the right thing to do.”

  Farman had nothing to say to that because it was true. He would have been the first one in line demanding to treat Mendez like any other person of interest. But he was embarrassed and his pride was hurt, and Mendez could understand that too. A guy like Frank lived for the job. His reputation was everything to him.

  “It’s nothing personal, Frank,” he said. “We’re dotting i’s and crossing t’s, that’s all.”

  Farman wouldn’t look at him. Mendez sighed.

  “You wrote up the Vickers girl at fifteen thirty-eight that day,” Hicks said, getting on with it. “We’ll just need to see your logbook for the rest of the shift.”

  Farman crossed his arms over his chest. Dixon motioned to the logbook sitting on his desk. Hicks picked it up and paged through.

  “You’d never met the girl before, right?” Mendez asked.

  “Do you remember every citation you ever wrote?” Farman demanded.

  “No,” Mendez said calmly.

  “I didn’t remember the girl ten minutes later. It was just another ticket.”

  Mendez had a hard time believing that, but he let it slide. “You’d never met her before that.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t want to go through the DMV records and find out you wrote her up before.”

  Farman looked at him then. “You’re a prick.”

  “Frank,” Dixon cautioned.

  “I’m just saying, Frank,” Mendez said. “Better if you tell me now than have it be a surprise.”

  “Fuck yourself.”

  Mendez held his temper, remembering what Vince had told him about getting what he needed out of people—even the Frank Farmans of the world. From the corner of his eye he saw Hicks frown as he read the log entries.

  “Frank, it says here you took dinner from five to six that day.”

  “So?”

  “Your wife told us you’re home for dinner at six thirty every night.”

  Farman got to his feet, his face turning dark red. “You spoke to my wife? You went to my home and spoke to my wife without telling me?”

  “Standard op, Frank,” Mendez said.

  “Have you ever heard of common courtesy, you arrogant little shit?”

  Dixon stood up. “Frank, that’s enough.”

  Mendez took a step toward Farman, feeling the need to draw a line.

  “I’ve taken enough abuse off you, Frank,” he said, keeping his tone calm and even. “I’m bending over backward to do this right. You want to make it hard? That’s your choice.

  “I can take the gloves off and make this hard for you. I can call in every person you know, all your neighbors, the people you go to church with, and ask them all about you. Does he drink? Does he fuck around on his wife? Does he beat his kids?

  “Is that what you want?” Mendez asked. “Or we can turn this over to another agency and really do it right. You can have some arrogant little shit you don’t know and who has no loyalty to this office digging through your life. Would you rather we do that?”

  Farman looked like he might blow an aneurysm. So much for getting what he needed.

  “Frank, sit down,” Dixon ordered. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Farman sat and stared at the front of the desk.

  “I worked late that night,” he said. “I had paperwork. My wife is mistaken.”

  “You were here?” Hicks said. “Okay.”

  But as he said it, he cut Mendez a look.

  Farman caught it from the corner of his eye. He turned on Hicks. “What?”

  Hicks looked uncomfortable. “You were off the clock at four thirty. You’re salaried. You don’t get overtime. Why put it in your logbook that you went to dinner?”

  “Habit,” Farman said.

  Hicks looked to Dixon. “Can I keep this for a couple of hours?” he asked, lifting the logbook.

  “Un-fucking-believable,” Farman muttered, shaking his head. He stood up. “I’m done here. I’m going home.”

  Mendez checked his watch. 6:26. He hoped for Sharon Farman’s sake dinner was ready.

  45

  “You received a traffic fine in the mail.”

  Anne looked at her father as she dropped her book bag and purse inside the front door. “What?”

  “It says something about reckless driving and destruction of property. I taught you how to drive better than that.”

  “I learned to drive from Mom,” Anne said, taking the citation from him. Frank Farman had written the ticket because she had turned around on his lawn after he parked behind her and blocked her in. Jerk. “You must be thinking about some other daughter you had with some other woman.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know exactly what it means. It means you don’t get to reinvent my history.”

  “You don’t have to worry about it, anyway,” he said, waving at the ticket. “I give to the sheriff’s charity every year. They know me. They’ll look the other way.”

  “I don’t think that’s how it works, Dad.”

  Fine: $150!

  “Of course that’s how it works. What were you doing behind the wheel? Drinking and driving?”

  “No, but I’m thinking about taking that up.”

  He didn’t react because he never listened to her. The other person’s role in a conversation with Dick Navarre was to kill time while he was deciding what to say next.

  In all their years of marriage he had probably heard about 3 percent of what her mother ever had to say. Her opinion had meant nothing to him, nor had Anne’s. She remembered when she was nine years old her mother telling her to go into the living room and talk to her father before dinner. Even then Anne had seen the futility of that exercise.

  “Really, honey,” her mother had said. “Daddy wants to hear about your day at school.”

  Anne had looked up at her mother, perfectly coiffed, perfectly made up, all for her husband who treated her like a servant, and said, “Mom, he doesn’t even know what grade I’m in.”

  She regretted saying it instantly only because her honesty had hurt her mother. Her father probably couldn’t say what grade she taught now because what she did was of no interest to him, even though he had been a teacher himself. The ultimate narcissist, it only mattered to him that she took care of the things he needed taken care of.

  “You’re late,” he said. “Again. What’s your excuse tonight?”

  “I’ve been recruited by the FBI to work undercover in this murder investigation.”

  He looked annoyed. “The FBI doesn’t hire women.”

  “Yes, they do. It’s 1985, Dad. We have the right to vote and everything.”

  “Ha. Very funny,” he grumbled, walking away. “The right to vote.”

  Anne dropped the citation on the dining room table and headed for the kitchen, calling, “Did you take your meds?”

  “Of course I did. I’m not senile. I don’t need you to tell me what to do.”

  “Good. In that case, I’ll be moving out next week.”

  She looked into the plastic case that held his pills for the day. He hadn’t taken half of them. If she asked him why not, he would undoubtedly tell her it was because he once read an article in The New England Journal of Medicine while waiting for his dermatologist to remove a mole, and therefore knew more about the subject of pharmaceuticals than any one of the three medical specialists he saw.

  “Maybe you can get a girlfriend,” Anne called out, dumping the pills into her hand. “It’ll be just like the old days.”

  “I don’t know why you go on like that,” he groused. “I was a very good husband.”

  “Really?” she said, coming back into the dining room. “To whom?”

  “You always took your mother’s side.”

  “Yes. D
amn but that I didn’t inherit that amoral gene of yours. My life would be so much easier.”

  “Are you finished?” he asked coolly. “I’m going next door to watch Jeopardy! The Ivers are such a lovely family.”

  Anne rolled her eyes. “You hate Judith Iver. Tuesday night you called her a stupid cow.”

  “Not to her face.”

  “Well, that makes all the difference. Here,” she said, handing him a fistful of pills and a glass of water. “I’m not letting you out the door until you take those.”

  “I don’t know why you bother,” he complained. “You’d be happier if I was dead.”

  “Yes, but I’m such an obvious suspect.”

  “I’m sure your new friends at the FBI would take care of you.”

  “It would make a better story if I called in all your markers for donating twenty dollars a year to the sheriff’s annual circus day fund.”

  Her father sniffed and struck a pose like a Shakespearean actor on stage. Sir Richard of Bullshit. “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!”

  “Oh, please,” Anne said, quickly thumbing through the rest of the mail. “I’m completely thankful to my parent. That just doesn’t happen to be you, that’s all.”

  “I’m leaving,” he announced, offended. It would give him something to talk about when he sat down with Judith Iver and her nephew. He could lament his daughter’s low treatment of him and elicit half an hour’s worth of sympathy while flogging them at Jeopardy!

  Anne hurried to her room to shower and change clothes. The Thomas Center was holding a candlelight vigil for Karly Vickers and in memory of Lisa Warwick, and she felt a need to be there. She refused to recognize the fact that she expected to see Vince there, just as she refused to think too hard about the fact that he had kissed her. She had allowed him to kiss her.