Deeper Than the Dead ok-1

by Tami Hoag

  “Your kids have started to figure out there’s a world out there that isn’t always a nice place. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that you let them know it scares you too,” he said.

  “Fear: the human condition,” Anne said. “Hey, kids, this is what you have to look forward to as you grow up: a world gone mad.”

  Franny tossed back the last of his wine and set the glass aside. “Enough of your dark thoughts, Negative Nancy. I’m going to pour more wine, and then we’re going to talk about my favorite topic: me! I’m going to throw a fabulous party for my fortieth birthday next year. It’s going to have a carnival theme. I’m calling it Franival!”

  Tired as she was, Anne managed to laugh. “I love you, Francis.”

  He smiled like a saint. “Everyone does.”

  21

  Game one of the 1985 National League Championship Series. The St. Louis Cardinals versus the incredibly awesome best team in baseball: the Los Angeles Dodgers.

  The day before, Tommy had thought about how much fun it would be: just him and his dad on the couch in the family room, watching the game, eating hot dogs and popcorn, drinking sodas (strictly forbidden by his mother). Wednesday nights his mother had a meeting of one of her many organizations and didn’t get home until late.

  Now the game was playing, and Tommy wanted to lose himself in it and get excited and cheer for his team, but he couldn’t make himself feel the way he wanted to. He sat on the couch, his too-big Dodgers T-shirt swallowing him up, his scorecard abandoned on the coffee table with his Dodgers souvenir pencil. Fernando Valenzuela was pitching. The Dodgers were up by one in the top of the sixth.

  His father sat at the end of the couch, reading newspapers during the commercials. Los Angeles Times, Santa Barbara News-Press, The Oak Knoll Independent. Every so often he would look over.

  “What are you thinking, Sport?”

  Tommy shrugged.

  “Are you hungry? I can make the popcorn now.”

  Tommy shook his head. He glanced over at the paper his dad had put down on the coffee table. There was a photograph of yellow crime-scene tape tied to two trees and uniformed deputies bent over looking at the ground. The headline read: MURDER IN THE PARK. Below it, in smaller bold type: CHILDREN MAKE GRUESOME DISCOVERY.

  “I’m just making sure none of these has the names of you kids in the story,” his father said.

  Tommy said nothing. He didn’t want his name in the paper. Unlike Wendy, he wanted this all to go away as quickly as possible.

  “Dad? What’s a cereal killer?” he asked. “How can you kill someone with cereal?”

  “Not cereal, like breakfast cereal,” his father said. “Serial with an s, as in a series of events. A serial killer kills a number of people over a period of time.”

  “Why would anyone do that? Are they mad at the people they kill? Or are they just crazy?”

  His father seemed to think about his answer before he gave it. “I don’t think people really understand why someone turns out to be a serial killer. I think it’s really complicated. But it’s not something you need to worry about, Tommy.”

  “How do you know? What if the killer saw us, and now he wants to kill us too?”

  “That isn’t going to happen,” his father promised. “I’m not going to let that happen. Miss Navarre isn’t going to let that happen. Detective Mendez isn’t going to let that happen. You don’t need to worry, son. You’re safe. We’re all going to keep you safe. Okay?”

  Tommy didn’t answer because he didn’t want to tell a lie. Instead, he sat closer to his dad and pretended to feel safe while the Dodgers came up to bat.

  Later in the evening, a few blocks away, Wendy sat under her covers with a flashlight illuminating her makeshift tent as she scribbled away in a spiral notebook.

  She had told Tommy she was going to write their story and sell it to Hollywood for a movie. Maybe they would even get to be in it. She liked the idea of being an actress, as long as it didn’t get in the way of her being a journalist. All Tommy had said was that it was going to be a really short story.

  “No, it isn’t,” Wendy said. They had been sitting outside in the sun during the lunch hour, Wendy busily making notes. “Finding the dead body is just the first scene. Now we have to find out who the dead lady is, and who killed her, and why.”

  “That’s the detective’s job,” Tommy pointed out. “I’m not even allowed to play outside now.”

  Wendy made a face. “Your mother can’t watch you all the time. She has a job. We have to go back to the woods.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  “It’s grounded until further notice.”

  “Don’t be such a wuss,” Wendy said, annoyed. “In a couple of days our parents won’t care anymore. Promise you’ll go with me back to the woods.”

  Tommy looked frustrated with her, as he often did. But he always caved in the end.

  She batted her eyelashes like her mom did when she wanted something from her dad. “Come on, Tommy. You said you would protect me. You can keep an eye out in case that dog comes back.”

  “Or the killer,” Tommy said.

  “That would make a great scene in the movie!”

  She made notes about it now, as she hid under her covers. She and Tommy were in the woods, creeping carefully toward the place where the body had been buried. It would be almost dark. Maybe there would be thunder and lightning. That would add to the excitement. The killer would be creeping through the woods too, watching them. And just as she and Tommy came around a huge tree, the lightning would flash, and THERE HE IS!!!! Looming over them, his ugly face twisted, eyes bugging out of his head, clawlike hands grabbing at them. Their hearts would be pounding as they jumped back and screamed.

  Tears filled Wendy’s eyes, and she flung the covers back sending pen and notebook flying. OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD!!! WHAT IF IT REALLY HAPPENED THAT WAY?

  Wendy leapt out of bed and beat it out of her room and down the stairs, yelling, “MOM!!!”

  In another house, in another part of town, Cody Roache was awake in his bed too. He didn’t like being awake at night when his mom was asleep and his dad was at work. He always heard sounds in the house. Floorboards creaking. Footsteps coming down the hall. And he would hold his breath and try to listen harder until all he could hear was the sound of his pulse pounding in his ears.

  He sat in his bed with the covers pulled up around his chin. He was shaking like crazy. Dennis would have called him a pussy.

  Dennis had seen dead bodies in the woods. Cody thought about running through the woods, playing commando, stepping on the dead bodies as they ran. He thought he might never sleep again, because in his nightmares he was running through the woods and a hand reached up out of the ground and grabbed him by the ankle. Then he fell down. Then all the dead people started getting up out of the ground as zombies, their flesh rotting, eyeballs falling out of their heads. And he ran to Dennis for help, but Dennis turned into a zombie too, and came after him.

  Don’t worry about Dennis, Miss Navarre had said.

  Miss Navarre was nice. Cody appreciated her coming over just to see him. That had never happened before in his whole life—an adult coming to the house just to see him—and not because he was in trouble, either.

  But Miss Navarre didn’t know very much about Dennis. She didn’t know the kinds of things Dennis liked to talk about, like doing bad things to girls. And she didn’t know that sometimes Dennis would just get really mad and hit him for no reason. If Miss Navarre knew those things about Dennis, Cody thought, she would be scared too. And she probably wouldn’t want to sleep, either.

  Dennis didn’t want to sleep. He wanted to be mad. He wanted to hit someone, kick someone. Miss Navarre came to mind. Stupid bitch. It was all her fault his father had come after him with his belt. If she would have minded her own business, but no, she had to COME TO HIS HOUSE to personally tell his parents he had been absent from school.
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br />   His back and butt were still stinging like stripes of fire where his father had hit him for lying and for skipping school. He lay now on his stomach because he couldn’t lie any other way. He pushed himself up onto his knees, the anger inside him spinning around like a wild animal. He didn’t know what to do with it, so he started hitting his pillow with both fists, over and over and over.

  He pretended the pillow was Miss Navarre’s face, and he punched her and punched her until there was nothing but blood.

  Stupid bitch. Fucking cunt.

  The rage welled up in him again, and he punched the pillow some more until his arms were tired and tears were running down his face.

  He would show them all one day. Nobody would push him around or embarrass him or tell him he was worthless. He would be the one doing the pushing. They would all be afraid of him.

  Dennis slipped out of bed, got down on the floor, and stuck his arm as far under the bed as he could reach until he got hold of what he wanted. The flashlight he had shoplifted from the hardware store. With the yellow beam of light leading his way, he went to his closet and dug down deep through the pile of dirty clothes to the old cigar box he kept hidden there.

  Pride filled him that he had been able to get away with it. No one had seen him take the thing. No one had suspected he had it in his pocket. Cops all around, and no one had caught him.

  He took the box over by the window and set it down on the chair. Still holding the flashlight in one hand, he opened the lid and peered inside.

  The cigar box was where he kept his most treasured possessions: his pocketknife, the cigarettes he had stolen from his mother, a lighter, the dried-out head of a rattlesnake he had watched a gardener kill, and his newest, most prized addition.

  It was squishy and had started to smell, but that only added to the wonderful grossness of it. This was what the corpse would smell like if they had left it in the ground. It excited him to think about it.

  He smiled as he carefully lifted the treasure out of the box and held it under the light.

  The severed finger of a dead woman.

  22

  Thursday, October 10, 1985

  1:37 A.M.

  Karly Vickers lay in absolute darkness, in absolute silence, in absolute pain, in absolute terror.

  Most people would never in their lives know what true terror really is. There were no adjectives to describe it. It was like the hottest, whit est light and the fiercest, highest-pitched sound imaginable put together to assault every part of the brain and nervous system. And even that was an inadequate description.

  She remembered very little about her abduction—a moment of recognition, but no memory of a face; a blast of panic, like a bomb going off inside her, then nothing. What had followed was both surreal and too real. Nothing made sense except the pain.

  She had no idea when the pain would come, or from where. She had no concept of time, of day or night. She couldn’t always tell up from down. Sometimes she felt like she was falling only to realize with a start that she was lying flat. She could see nothing. She could hear nothing. She couldn’t open her mouth to speak.

  She had no idea how long she had been in this place, or where or what this place was. It was cold. The thing she lay on was hard. She was in too much pain to feel hunger. Periodically, a straw was inserted in the smallest of gaps between her lips, and she was given water, just enough to keep her alive.

  The fear would come on her in waves, huge waves that crashed over her, leaving her struggling for air, struggling against her bonds. She had no idea when her tormentor would come, what he would do to her, when he would leave. Because she couldn’t hear him, couldn’t see him, the only way she knew he was there was to have him inflict pain on her.

  When the panic exhausted her, sometimes she would think about the job she was supposed to have started. Had they told anyone she hadn’t come to work? Had anyone gone to the cottage to check on her? Had her mother begun to wonder why she hadn’t called Sunday night? Was anyone taking care of Petal?

  Then she would start to cry, but her eyes produced no tears, nor could she open her eyelids to let them escape if they had come. She could feel the sobs wrack her chest, but if any sound came out at all, she couldn’t hear it.

  Why would anyone do this to her?

  Early on, before her hearing had been destroyed, she had heard another woman struggle, had heard a single, blood-curdling scream that had cut through her like a knife. But that had been what seemed long ago. She had no way of knowing if that woman was still here. She thought not. She felt so alone.

  That was the worst thing: the isolation, the sense of being trapped inside her own body, inside her own mind.

  She began to pray that the next time her tormentor came he would kill her.

  He sat on a stool at the foot of the metal table, watching his victim, wondering what must be going through her mind. Was she still sane? Had she tried to imagine who her tormentor was?

  This was his other life, his release from the so-called normal world where pressures built inside him on a daily basis; where the demands on his time, on his energy, on his sense of self came from other people with their own expectations of who he was and who he should be. A husband, a father, a professional, an upstanding citizen.

  With his victim, he was in control, he could let loose the self that existed in the innermost part of him.

  It excited him that his victim didn’t know and would never have suspected who he really was. She had believed him to be trustworthy and deserving of respect. Respect had taken on a whole new meaning in the face of his absolute control of her.

  Absolute control. Absolute power.

  Absolutely thrilling.

  23

  Thursday, October 10, 1985

  6:15 A.M.

  Mendez and Hicks took the first pass through Karly Vickers’s, wanting to see it pristine, exactly as she had left it. It was a small place, neat as a pin. They went carefully through drawers and closets, looking for anything that might have pointed to Vickers having a current boyfriend or a current connection to her past boyfriend, the Simi Valley thug.

  She had crossed Greg Usher’s entry out of her address book. If she was still in contact with him, the contact probably wasn’t being initiated by her. Mendez held the book open for Jane Thomas to see.

  “I told you she was through with him,” she said.

  “People don’t always turn out to be as strong as we would like for them to be, ma’am,” he said. “That’s part of my job.”

  “Disillusionment?”

  “Sometimes. Doubt, always.”

  He would have preferred not to have her there. He knew she was anxious, and she was undoubtedly feeling violated on behalf of her client as she watched them go through Karly Vickers’s things.

  That was how he had felt when he was a teenager, and the cops had come to search his family home: violated. They had been looking for evidence against his older brother, a gang member accused of dealing drugs. They had gone through the house like a human tornado, with no regard for personal property or personal feelings. He remembered his mother crying as they riffled through her dresser, touching her clothing, her undergarments, her mementos.

  He had never forgotten that when he searched through the homes of victims and perps alike. A little respect went a long way.

  Hicks turned the bedding down and pulled the shades. Mendez turned off the lamp then went over the sheets with a black light, looking for bodily fluids—specifically semen—to fluoresce. There was nothing.

  “She isn’t seeing anyone,” Jane Thomas said. “She’s been completely focused on getting her life on track.”

  “Is she always this neat?” Hicks asked.

  “She always was at the center. She’s very respectful of the chances she’s been given.”

  “Does she have any close friends that you know of?” Mendez asked. “Any of the other women at the center? Someone she might confide in if she was interested in someone or if someone w
as bothering her?”

  “Maybe Brandy Henson. I saw them together a lot.”

  This was why he allowed Jane Thomas to hang close. She knew Karly Vickers, knew about her life, her friends. There was a good chance if something wasn’t right here, it would jump out at her.

  Unfortunately, as they made their way through the tiny house, nothing jumped out. Mendez opened the front door and motioned in the crime scene team.

  “They’re going to dust for fingerprints,” he said as he held the back door open for Thomas. “It’ll be a mess. But if there was anyone else in here, we’ll know about it. If any of the prints match up with a known offender, we’ll have a direction to go in.”

  Of course, months could pass before they got a match, but he didn’t mention that. Comparing latent fingerprints was a manual needle-in-a-haystack process that relied completely on the trained eye of a fingerprint specialist. Someday the system would be automated and offender prints would go into a national database easily accessed. But the prints taken today would be of little use until they had a suspect to compare them with, a scenario that was less than optimal for Karly Vickers if she had in fact been abducted.

  “Anything you need to do.”

  “We’ll want to get her phone records. Is the account in her name?”

  “No. The account will be in the name of the center with a numeric suffix. That’s how it’s set up with all the properties we own. The numbers are all unlisted.” She forced an ironic smile, looking off in the distance as if she might see Karly Vickers down the street. “We take all the precautions we can to keep the women as safe as possible. The bills come to the center and are on file. But Karly just moved into this house. We haven’t had a bill yet.”

  “We’ll get the local usage details from the phone company.”

  “What about search and rescue?” she asked. “Why aren’t there search parties out looking for her?”