Deeper Than the Dead ok-1

by Tami Hoag

  “What was your other major?”

  “Psychology. I wanted to be a child psychologist, but—” She stopped herself from being so eager. “Life . . . took a different turn.”

  “Funny how that happens.”

  Anne looked away, took a deep breath, and sighed. She was embarrassed, he thought. She probably didn’t just go around telling her life story to strangers—or to people she knew, for that matter. He pegged her for the kind of woman who confided in one friend, if she confided in anyone, cautious in the way of an old soul—or a wounded one.

  The waiter brought the wine. Vince sampled it and nodded his approval. They ordered their meals, sipped at their glasses.

  “Anne,” he said. “I have a confession to make. I don’t work for the sheriff’s office. I’m a special agent with the FBI. For now, it’s better that isn’t common knowledge. My specialty is profiling serial killers.”

  She said nothing, but her eyes got wider.

  “I don’t know how much you’ve been told by Detective Mendez,” he went on, “but there is reason to believe Lisa Warwick—the woman your students found in the park—was the latest victim in a series of at least three murders.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Another woman is missing. So, you can see, it’s imperative that we try to learn as much as we can from every possible avenue.”

  “I don’t know what I can do,” she said. “I teach fifth grade.”

  “Detective Mendez told me you have a pretty good handle on who your kids are. I saw that for myself this afternoon.”

  She laughed without humor. “Oh, yeah. I’m so sharp I had no idea Dennis Farman was having homicidal fantasies.”

  “Why would you suspect that?” Vince asked. “How many people would look at a kid in the fifth grade and peg him for a future killer? Nobody. That’s highly aberrant behavior. No normal-thinking person would look for that.”

  “And that’s where you come in?”

  He gave her half a smile. “Yeah. I’ve been experienced right out of normal thinking. I’ve spent a long time studying murderers and trying to figure out how they got that way and what makes them tick.”

  “How do you sleep with that in your head?”

  “Great,” he admitted, “as long as I’m medicated.”

  “Why do you do it?”

  “Because maybe if I’m good enough at what I do, I can prevent some innocent people from dying. Maybe I can spot a kid like Dennis Farman and get the right people to pay attention to him. I’m sure you can relate to that.”

  She nodded and looked away, a soft sheen of moisture coming into her eyes.

  “I’m sorry you have to get dragged into this world, Anne,” Vince said, genuinely sorry for her. She probably still had ideals, and she probably still believed the world could hold up to them. “I know this is hard for you.”

  “I’m afraid the right people aren’t going to pay attention to Dennis,” she said. “Especially not now. He’s being expelled from school. He’ll be running around loose, with no supervision, no guidance. Who’s supposed to police him? His parents work. And even if they were home, they must be terrible parents or he wouldn’t be the way he is.”

  Vince sighed. He would have been agreeing with her if he hadn’t wanted to keep her from crying. In fact, if he had been teaching a seminar, using Dennis Farman for an example, he would have said it was probably already too late to save him.

  His colleagues back in Quantico would think the same. He had sent them Dennis Farman’s drawing by fax. He would talk to them the next day, but he already knew what they would say. They would say Dennis Farman already had well-established violent, antisocial behavioral tendencies. His artwork already showed sadistic fantasies—sadistic sexual fantasies in a child who had yet to reach puberty. There probably wasn’t going to be any fixing what was wrong with this kid.

  But he wasn’t about to say any of that to Anne.

  “You’re right in what you told his father,” he said instead. “The boy should have psychiatric counseling.”

  “And what army is going to make his father believe that?” she asked. “Frank Farman probably thinks he can beat the bad out of Dennis.”

  The strain of the day’s events was taking a toll on her. Vince reached across the table, put his big hand over her small one and gave it a squeeze.

  “Don’t give up, Anne. Not yet. You fought for that boy today. You stood up to Mendez and me, you stood up to his dad. He needs someone on his side.”

  One crystalline tear slipped over the edge of her lashes and down her cheek as she looked away from him, embarrassed.

  “Hey, come on,” Vince cajoled, his voice soft. “No crying. You’ll ruin my reputation as a ladies’ man.”

  He won a little smile for that one.

  “Are you a ladies’ man?” she asked, visibly relieved for the distraction.

  “That all depends on the lady,” he admitted.

  Her cheeks bloomed pink and she glanced away, still harboring the little smile. She extricated her hand from under his, wiped the stray tear away and tucked a strand of brown hair behind her ear.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t usually fall apart that easily.”

  “I’m betting you never fall apart at all,” he said. “But you don’t usually have a kid bring a severed human finger to your classroom either. I think you can cut yourself some slack.”

  “Yeah. I guess so.”

  Their food arrived. Her caprese salad, his baked ziti. Vince pushed his plate at her.

  “Eat,” he ordered. “Have some ziti. My Italian mother’s cure for everything. She would tell you Avete bisogno della vostra resistenza! Ci e niente a voi!

  She seemed pleased with his flamboyant Italian. “What does that mean?”

  “You need your strength. You’re too skinny. My mother thinks everyone under two hundred pounds is too skinny. Never mind that I can pick her up with one hand.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Eighty-two. And your mother?”

  “Passed away.” She dropped her eyes and picked at a piece of pasta. “A few years ago. Pancreatic cancer.”

  “I’m sorry,” Vince said. The different turn Anne Navarre’s life had taken. Her mother died. She left school. “And your father?”

  “Will outlive both of us, despite his alleged poor health.”

  She didn’t seem especially happy about the prospect.

  “You still haven’t told me how I’m supposed to help your investigation,” she said. Back to business.

  He stuck a fork in his side of the pasta. “Tell me about Tommy Crane.”

  She thought he’d thrown her a curve ball. She looked up at him, suspicious again. “Why would you want to know about Tommy?”

  “We have to pursue all possible angles in a case like this,” he said. “Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not saying the investigation is going in one direction or another at this point. We’re still trying to piece together the last day anyone saw Karly Vickers, the missing girl. Miss Vickers had a dentist’s appointment last Thursday. It was her last appointment of the day.”

  “With Peter Crane.”

  “So far, he’s the last person to have seen her—that we know of.”

  “You can’t possibly think he’s involved,” she said. “He’s the nicest man. Tommy adores his father.”

  “I didn’t say he was a suspect. He’s not even a person of interest at this point,” Vince explained. “But he is the last person to have seen this young woman. We have to account for his whereabouts that night. I would like to do that as discreetly as possible.”

  “I can’t tell you anything about that,” she said. “But I can tell you he seems to be a wonderful father. Now Tommy’s mother, on the other hand ...”

  “Difficult?”

  “The Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland. Ask Detective Mendez.”

  “And what’s Tommy like?”

  “He loves baseb
all, he plays the piano, and has a better head for math than I do,” she said with a crooked smile. “He’s smart, thoughtful, quiet. Every mother’s dream.”

  “Outgoing?”

  “No. Tommy is an observer,” she said, very much in her element talking about her student, analyzing what made him tick. They weren’t so different that way. She wanted to get into their little heads, figure them out. “He stands back and watches what’s happening before he decides on a course of action.”

  “He got his butt kicked today.”

  “He was coming to the rescue for Wendy—the girl Dennis attacked. And he did that knowing full well Dennis would kick his butt.”

  Vince smiled. “Chivalry lives on.”

  “That’s the kind of boy he is. And by Tommy’s accounts, that’s the kind of man his father is.”

  “Fair enough,” Vince said. “But would you do me a favor? Would you ask Tommy about last Thursday night? Was his dad home or did he go out that night?”

  The idea was leaving a bad taste in her mouth. He could see her resistance rising.

  “They’re easy questions, and they probably have easy answers,” he said. “I just think it’s better if they come from you. He doesn’t need an FBI agent scaring him, asking him questions about his dad. He trusts you.”

  She arched a brow. “So I should manipulate him?”

  “I’m not asking you to manipulate him. Ask him a couple of questions for me. That’s all.”

  “Why don’t you ask Mrs. Crane?”

  “The Queen of Hearts?” he tossed her own description back at her. “Wives have ulterior motives. Kids don’t.”

  She thought about it for minute, giving him the I-don’t-quite-trust-you eye. She had a shield like a Spartan warrior, this one, and she might guard herself with it, or she might smack him in the head with it if that seemed the more prudent thing to do.

  “I’m not asking you to steal trade secrets,” Vince said, scooping up some ziti. “Just to ask a little boy where his dad was last Thursday night.”

  “I guess I could do that,” she said reluctantly.

  “What do you know about the Morgan family?” he asked.

  “They’re nice people. The dad—Steve—is an attorney. Sara sometimes teaches art classes for the community education program. She’s mostly a stay-at-home mom. They have the one child—Wendy.”

  “Good marriage?”

  She shrugged. “As far as I know. Don’t tell me Steve Morgan is a suspect.”

  “He was a friend of Lisa Warwick. We have to check him out. It’s just routine. You could probably get a feeling from the girl if something was off at home, right?”

  “And what do I get for interrogating my students?” she asked, surprising him.

  “I’ll talk to your principal,” he offered. “Recommend that he set up some tutoring sessions for Dennis Farman. Maybe the boy could come to school for a couple of hours a day, as long he isn’t allowed in the classroom or on the playground. That way you can maintain some contact with him. How does that sound?”

  “I would appreciate your support in that.”

  Quid pro quo, Vince thought. Maybe she would find out something useful, or maybe nothing would come of it . . . except another dinner . . . or two . . .

  He reached his hand across the table and she met it with hers. Her hand was small and soft, but strong, like a woman who knew what she wanted. He liked that.

  “Deal?” he asked.

  “Deal.”

  He insisted on walking Anne to her car, and she put up little resistance. With a possible serial killer on the loose, it was no time for women to be turning down extra safety measures.

  He put her in her sporty little red Volkswagen and leaned down into the open window.

  “Lock your doors and don’t stop for anybody,” he instructed.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And don’t call me ‘sir.’ You’ll make me think I’m too old.”

  “Too old for what?” she asked with that little Mona Lisa half-smile and a sparkle in her eye.

  With no thought process involved, he leaned down and kissed her on the lips.

  “For that,” he murmured.

  Damn bullet.

  She didn’t slap him. That was a good first step.

  “Thanks for your help, Anne,” he said.

  She was still trying to process the kiss in her analytical little brain.

  “Thanks for the ziti,” she said.

  He watched her drive away into the night, not quite daring to let his hopes go where they wanted. Then he walked across the street and down the alley to the back of Peter Crane’s office.

  Anne poured herself a glass of wine and went to stand on the back porch, just outside the open kitchen door. She thought of Vince’s warning to be careful. There was a killer prowling the streets. But her yard was fenced, and the moon was bright, and she wanted just a few minutes to overthink the evening before she went to bed.

  She touched her upper lip, still feeling the brush and tickle of his mustache as he kissed her. She tried to remember the last time she’d been kissed.

  Not only did she not have dating life, truth to tell, she was avoiding having a dating life. The men in her social circle weren’t men, they were overgrown frat boys who still played video games. The second ring of her social circle was made up of the parents of her students, most of whom were married, not many happily. From her own perspective as a child, she had seen the ideal of being married with children was not all it was cracked up to be. And so she had never been in a hurry to go there.

  But she had to admit there was something about Vince Leone that attracted her, beyond his looks. He was strong, intelligent, knew his mind. He saw something he wanted, and he took it.

  Too bad he wouldn’t be sticking around. He would finish his work here and go back to Virginia, to another round of heinous crime.

  She couldn’t imagine constantly being immersed in a world of death and evil. Three days of it had been enough for her.

  Even as she took a sip of the warm, full-bodied cabernet, she shivered at the idea that evil was not that far away, roaming the streets like a wolf hunting for prey. She thought back to what she had been doing Monday night—grading papers, going over lesson plans, listening to a Phil Collins album—while someone had been torturing and killing Lisa Warwick. She had been sleeping soundly while the killer buried her body in the park, leaving her head aboveground with the idea that someone would see her and be shocked and horrified.

  As she stood there on her porch, he was out there with another victim. Things were happening that she would never want to imagine.

  She shivered again and goose bumps ran over her in a stampede. She stared out to the darkness beyond her yard and felt as if he might be right there, watching her, the division between her world and his only as thick as the width of her lawn.

  She turned then and went into the house, locking the door behind her . . . never aware of the figure standing just out of reach of the moonlight, watching her go.

  34

  “So, Gordon,” Mendez said, sitting down across from Gordon Sells at the little table in the interview room.

  Sells scowled at him. “I didn’t say you could call me that.”

  “I didn’t ask,” Mendez said flatly, looking down at the papers he had brought into the room with him. “So, Gordon, you’ve got yourself a record. You’re a pedophile.”

  “I am not.”

  “A jury decided you are.”

  “Them girls lied. I didn’t do nothing to them.”

  “Except expose yourself, fondle yourself, put your hand down their pants—”

  “I never did that.”

  “And you didn’t have a collection of kiddie porn stashed in your house either, I suppose. It says here you had a hundred thirty-one pages of photographs of minor girls in various states of undress.”

  “From the JC Penney catalog!” Sells shouted. “Them were things I was gonna order for my nieces for Christmas p
resents.”

  “And the twenty-seven photographs of minor girls engaging in sexual activity with an adult. Whose Christmas present was that collection?”

  Agitated, Sells got up out of his chair and started to walk toward the door. Mendez rose, blocking him.

  “Stay on your side of the table, Gordon. And have a seat. We’re going to be here for a long time.”

  He turned to another page in what was supposed to be a thick file on the life and times of Gordon Sells. In reality he had one sheet on Sells. The rest of the file was from an assault case he had closed three months prior.

  “You were a guest of the California State Department of Correction for twelve years up in Wasco.” Mendez looked up at him, just this side of amused. “I bet that was fun. There’s nothing cons like better than raping a child rapist. Or maybe you liked that.”

  Sells jumped up out of his chair again, his face flushing red. “I don’t wanna talk to you! I wanna talk to the other guy!”

  Mendez remained calm. “Nobody here cares what you want. Sit back down and stay there or I’ll cuff you to the wall.”

  Reluctantly, Sells took his seat. He was breathing hard.

  “You’re going back to the can,” Mendez said. “But it won’t be Wasco this time. They’ll send you up to Folsom where a whole new pack of cons can take a crack at you.”

  “I ain’t going to prison,” Sells said. “I didn’t do nothing wrong.”

  “The crime scene team isn’t going to find any more pictures of little girls when they turn that pigsty you live in upside down?” Mendez asked. “That’s a parole violation. We can send you back in just for that. Then there’s the grand theft auto, and the murder—”

  “I didn’t kill nobody!”

  Mendez shrugged. “You look good for it to me. You’ve got her car. If the CSI team comes up with so much as a hair from the head of Lisa Warwick in your home, you’re done. And if there’s any justice in the world, maybe the death penalty will come back before you go to trial.”