Deeper Than the Dead

by Tami Hoag

  Her plan had been to bounce downstairs and help her father make breakfast as he always did when he was home on a Saturday. They got up early and made breakfast while Wendy’s mom slept in. They made crazy kinds of pancakes, like pumpkin or butterscotch, and cut them into shapes with cookie cutters. She loved Saturdays with her dad.

  Then she remembered that her dad had left.

  But surely he would come back this morning because it was Saturday and they had their tradition. He might have been mad at her mother, but he wasn’t mad at her. Of course he would come home to make pancakes.

  Then she would talk him into going with her to the park. She wanted to show him where everything had happened. She wanted to tell him about her idea to write a book and/or a movie about the experience.

  That had been her plan.

  But her father wasn’t in the kitchen when she got downstairs. The house was quiet, the only sound the hum of the refrigerator.

  Wendy’s heart felt like a thousand pounds in her chest. It was so unfair. They were a great family. All her friends said so. They all envied her her parents. Her mom was so artsy and funky and cool. Her dad was so handsome and so much fun.

  We had such a nice family, her mother had said.

  Had—like in the past.

  They were being so selfish, Wendy thought. They yelled at each other, hurt each other, but neither of them thought about her.

  Fine then. If they wanted to be selfish, they could be selfish on their own. Let them realize she’s a person too, she should have a say too. Let them find her gone and see how selfish they were then.

  She went back to her room and got her backpack. Then she tiptoed down the stairs and slipped out the front door and headed for the park.

  In another part of town, Cody Roache was being pushed out of his home by his mother. One of the neighborhood dads was taking kids to the park. Not to the part where they had found the dead lady, but to the part where the fun stuff was—the swings and monkey bars and tetherballs.

  Cody didn’t want to go. He felt nervous. But his mother said he would never get over it if he didn’t go out and do normal things and play like a normal kid.

  There were about ten kids piling into the neighbor’s van. He would feel safe with ten other kids and a dad there. So Cody glanced back at his mom and climbed into the van. It never once occurred to him that he might never come back.

  60

  Anne begged off from a ride to Santa Barbara for an afternoon of shopping and meeting some of Franny’s friends for wine in the afternoon.

  “I’ve had enough excitement for one week,” she said as they parted company outside the restaurant. “And I really need to figure out the situation with Tommy.”

  Franny frowned at her. “Please stay out of trouble. And promise me—if you aren’t busy tonight—and by busy, I mean having mad hot sex with Vince—promise me you’ll come over and watch The Golden Girls with me.”

  “The Golden Girls?” Anne raised her eyebrows. “Can we play mahjong after?”

  “Don’t make fun of my favorite show.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.” Anne kissed his cheek and promised to call.

  Franny headed off to the parking lot. Anne walked up the street to the plaza, thinking some mindless window shopping would allow her brain to sort through the trouble with Tommy Crane . . . provided she could keep thoughts of Vince from creeping in. Easier said than done.

  Preoccupied, she almost walked past Peter Crane without seeing him. He was taking the MISSING poster of Karly Vickers off the door of his office.

  “Did they find her?” Anne asked, hopeful.

  Crane stopped, poster in his hands. “Yes. The same way Lisa Warwick was found.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “But she’s alive. It’s quite a story.”

  Anne looked at the photo of Karly Vickers on the poster in Peter Crane’s hands as he told her what he had heard. She looked shy but happy. Like everyone else, Anne had read Karly’s story in the papers. The young woman had fought hard to overcome adversity in her life. The gold necklace she wore with the Thomas Center logo of a woman with her arms raised in triumph spoke to just how far Karly had come. Now she would have to fight hard to just stay alive at all.

  In light of Karly’s story, Anne was embarrassed to feel anxious at all about what was going on in her life.

  “I’m glad I ran into you, Dr. Crane,” she said. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding, and I would really like to clear it up.”

  God knew what his wife had told him about the night before. The best thing Anne could do would be to set the record straight.

  “Sure,” Crane said. “Why don’t you come into the office?”

  He opened the door for Anne, followed her in, and locked the deadbolt behind them. Anne’s heart jumped.

  “No walk-ins,” he said by way of explanation.

  They seemed to be alone. There was no receptionist, no lights on except in the enormous aquarium in the waiting room.

  “You’re not usually open on Saturdays?” she asked, feeling vaguely uncomfortable.

  “Emergencies only,” he said as he bent to pick up the mail that had been shoved in through the slot in the door. For the first time, Anne realized he was in jeans and a denim shirt, and sneakers. “I came in to catch up on paperwork. Why don’t we have a seat?”

  He gestured toward the waiting room where they each took a comfortable leather chair.

  “The detectives asked me to ask a couple of questions of the kids involved in finding the body in the park,” Anne said, going straight to the heart of it. “The questions seemed harmless enough, but—”

  “You don’t need to apologize, Miss Navarre,” he said. “I did think it was odd, coming from you, but, as you said, harmless enough.”

  “Mrs. Crane didn’t seem to think so,” Anne said. “I ran into her after the vigil last night. She was very upset with me. She said I made Tommy think you might be a suspect. I’m not sure how he would have gotten that idea from me. That certainly wasn’t anything I was thinking.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Crane said with a charming smile. “People have enough fear of the dentist without thinking he might be a serial killer.”

  Anne relaxed a little.

  “Really, I’m not upset or offended,” he said. “Janet is much more apt to take offense. She’s had a hard time dealing with everything that’s happened this week. I know she’s been difficult.”

  “I’m not going to try to tell you that isn’t true,” Anne said honestly. “We’re all in uncharted territory, dealing with the things that have happened this past week. Everyone at the school is doing the best in a bad situation.”

  “I know that,” Crane said. “I think you’ve done an admirable job, all things considered. I appreciate that you take a real interest in my son, Miss Navarre.”

  “Thank you.”

  “As for my wife . . . Janet is a person who needs to be in control of her environment. She has good reasons for that. Obviously, I can’t elaborate, but she had to overcome a lot in her early life, and in times of stress . . . She doesn’t always handle that well.”

  Anne had no interest in understanding Janet Crane. No matter what she’d had to overcome in her life, Janet was an adult and should have been able to conduct herself in a better way than she had. But she wasn’t Anne’s focus.

  “I’m actually worried about Tommy,” she admitted. “I’m afraid he somehow thinks I betrayed his trust.”

  “Tommy thinks the world of you.”

  “I would feel better seeing that for myself. I would really like to be able to sit down with him and have a talk, one-on-one. I want him to know he can rely on me. Do you think there would be any way we could arrange that without upsetting Mrs. Crane?”

  He thought about it for a moment, no doubt weighing the benefit for Tommy against the risk of incurring his wife’s wrath.

  “I’ll see what I can do. Can I call you?”

  “Of course. I
would really appreciate that.”

  “I’m sorry if Janet has made your life difficult.”

  “I’m fine,” Anne said, getting to her feet. She felt worse for him and for Tommy. Janet Crane could attack her and Anne could still go home at the end of the day. Peter Crane and his son had to live with the woman. “My concern is Tommy.”

  The buzzer at the front door sounded, making Anne jump. Crane got up and went past her. When he opened the door the space was taken up entirely by Detectives Mendez and Hicks. Mendez flicked a glance at Anne.

  “Dr. Crane,” he said. “We have a couple of things we need to discuss with you. Would you mind coming down to the station with us?”

  61

  Dennis went into the woods, not from the park entrance, but from the back, from the service road. On the other side of the service road was the sheriff’s office. Where the good guys worked. That was what his third-grade teacher had told the class when they had all walked over, hand in hand, from school for a field trip.

  Mrs. Barkow hadn’t known Dennis’s father beat his wife, beat him. Dennis had always believed his father was a good guy, anyway, that there had to be something wrong with him that he made his father so angry. He was bad, he was stupid, he was brain damaged, and his mother was just a drunk, stupid cunt, and she deserved whatever happened to her.

  Maybe that was all true, but he didn’t think the same way about his father anymore.

  His backpack was heavy with stuff he had taken out of the kitchen—cans of soup, tuna, beans—stuff he needed to live on his own. He trudged along, kicking through the fallen leaves, thinking of nothing but his destination.

  The yellow tape had started to fall down, making it look like a place nobody cared about anymore. That was good. Then no one would come there and bother him. Dennis dropped his backpack on the ground and sat down on the rock where the dead lady had put her head.

  It was time for lunch, and this was where he wanted to have it: in a grave.

  Wendy didn’t go into the woods. She stayed in the park where the grass was mowed and there were no fallen branches or thornbushes, or graves. She sat on a bench with her legs crossed, doodling in her notebook.

  It was quiet here, the kind of quiet with birds in the background and the sound of running water from the fountain across the path. Not the kind of quiet at home.

  She wondered if her dad would move away or just out of their house. It seemed like he was going to Sacramento a lot, but maybe that was just what he said when he went to have his affair. She wondered if the Other Woman had kids, and if she had kids, did Wendy already know them? What if they were kids in her school? What if they were kids she didn’t like? What if Dennis Farman was going to be her step-brother?

  These were things adults never considered, things that didn’t matter to them.

  Of course, she would live with her mother. They would stay in their house. Maybe her mom would have to get a job. She had had a job before Wendy was born. There was a picture in their family room of her mom and dad in graduation caps and gowns, getting their diplomas from college. That meant she could get a good job.

  Or, Wendy thought as she looked out into the woods, she could write her book about her and Tommy finding the dead body, and it could get made into a movie, and she would be rich. Her father would be sorry then.

  Cody flipped himself around the monkey bars, pretending he was really a monkey. Monkeys had it good. They were always his favorite animals at the zoo in Santa Barbara—especially the white-handed gibbons with their long, long arms, swinging them from limb to limb. He pretended now that he was a white-handed gibbon, and he started making loud monkey noises as he negotiated the bars.

  The thing he wanted to do most in the world—next to being an astronaut—was to go to the San Diego Zoo. His mother had told him maybe next summer they could have a real family vacation and go there. The San Diego Zoo had every kind of monkey there was, he bet.

  Cody was glad he had come to the park. He didn’t feel nervous anymore. Hopping down from the monkey bars he ran over to the tetherballs and started a game with a younger kid from down his street.

  Yep. He was glad he had come to the park.

  Out in the woods, Dennis dug a can of beans out of his backpack and got out his pocketknife. He couldn’t figure out how to work the piece that was supposed to be the can opener.

  It didn’t look like any can opener he had ever seen. He tried and tried to work it, but all it did was make a dent then slip off to the side. And every time that happened, he became more aware of being hungry. And then he began to feel something else.

  He began to feel.

  Fingers fumbling, he cut himself closing the can opener. Bright red blood welled up out of his finger. He stared at it for a minute, then licked it off.

  He opened the big blade on the knife, and stabbed it hard into the top of the can. He stabbed it again, and liquid from the beans squirted out through the holes.

  He stabbed it again and he began to feel something bigger growing in his chest. All the pain, all the anger started coming out as he stabbed the can with the knife.

  So he stabbed it again and again and again . . .

  62

  “Oh God, this is embarrassing,” Peter Crane groaned, looking at the arrest report—complete with mug shot—Mendez had put down on the table in front of him. He sighed and looked away.

  “What you do in your free time is your business, Dr. Crane. I don’t want an explanation,” Mendez said. “I’m not going to tell your wife. I don’t need another homicide to investigate. You seem like a nice enough guy.

  “My problem with this is that on that same night, in that same vice sweep, Julie Paulson was arrested.”

  “Who’s Julie Paulson?”

  “Julie Paulson was a prostitute. Not long after her arrest in Oxnard, she turned up at the Thomas Center. And not long after that, she turned up dead.”

  “I don’t know anything about that!” Crane said, shocked.

  Mendez made a pained face. “But you do, Doctor. Actually, you brought that murder up the first day we spoke.”

  Crane looked confused for an instant. “The girl that was murdered last year? The one found outside of town? I read about that in the newspaper!”

  “I have a hard time with that,” Mendez said. “I don’t believe in coincidences—especially not when they start to pile on top of each other.

  “Julie Paulson was a prostitute in Oxnard. You were arrested for soliciting a prostitute in Oxnard. Julie Paulson comes to Oak Knoll. You live in Oak Knoll. She gets in the program at the Thomas Center. You work with the women at the Thomas Center. She ends up dead. Karly Vickers goes missing. You knew Lisa Warwick . . .

  “Can you see where all these things might lead me, Dr. Crane?”

  Crane rubbed his hands over his face. “Oh my God.”

  Mendez let him stew for a minute, tapping his pen on the tabletop slowly as the seconds ticked past.

  “I didn’t know Julie Paulson,” he said at last. “The girl I got arrested with in Oxnard, Candace, I used to see her from time to time.”

  “You were a regular customer is what you’re saying?”

  Crane closed his eyes like he had a bad headache. “I’m not proud of it. And it’s not that I don’t care about my wife. It’s just . . . Janet has some . . . issues—”

  “I really don’t want to know about that,” Mendez said. “Really.”

  “I know you’ve only seen the worst of her,” Crane said. “This week has been a nightmare. She’s really not a bad person. I don’t cheat on her in the truest sense of the word—”

  “Don’t care. Really.”

  If Peter Crane wanted absolution he was going to have to consult a priest. Mendez had no interest in arguing the definition of adultery. The man was fucking women other than his wife—that pretty much defined the word for him.

  Crane sighed. “After I got arrested, I stopped going down there.”

  “And Julie Paulson moved here,�
�� Mendez said. “You’re not helping yourself here, Dr. Crane.”

  “I’m telling you what happened,” he said, exasperated. “I can’t help it that that girl moved here. It’s a free country. Maybe she had a friend here, but it wasn’t me.”

  “And you stopped going to Oxnard.”

  “Yes.”

  “And . . . ? What? You gave up prostitutes? You gave up sex?”

  “I . . . have . . . Oh Jesus,” he muttered, looking down at the floor. “I have an . . . arrangement . . . with a woman in Ventura.”

  Mendez slid a paper and pen across the table to him. “I’ll need her name and phone number.”

  Crane looked like he wanted to be sick. Mr. Respectable Upstanding Citizen frequenting prostitutes.

  When he had written the information Mendez took the paper. “I’ll be right back. You want a coffee or something?”

  “No. Thank you,” Crane said, staring at the table.

  Mendez went across the hall and handed the paper to Hicks. Vince and Dixon were watching the monitor. Crane sat with his head in his hands.

  “Good job, kid,” Vince said. “You’ve got him twitching.”

  “Man, he’s sweating like a horse,” Mendez said. “Can you imagine what his wife would do to him if she found out where her pillar of the community has been?”

  Hicks laughed. “Yeah, his pillar’s been all over the place.”

  “Although, you can hardly blame the guy,” Mendez said. “That wife of his . . . She’d be like fucking a bear trap.”

  “Press him about last night,” Vince said. “Ask him how his card game went.”

  Mendez poured himself a cup of coffee and went back into the interview room.

  “So how was your card game last night?”

  “My what?”

  “Your wife told us you weren’t home last night because you were playing cards.”

  “Oh.”

  “Where were you? Ventura?”