Deeper Than The Dead (19 page)

“My dad came home last night.”

“You’re usually excited when your dad comes home.”

“He got home really late,” she said, “but I heard him. So I got out of bed, but when I got to the stairs, he and Mom were having a fight.”

“Oh,” was all Tommy could think to say. His mom was always trying to pick a fight with his dad.

“She was yelling at him for not coming home the night we found the dead lady. And he said he just couldn’t. And she said, ‘And where the hell were you?’ She said she tried to call him at his hotel, and they said he wasn’t even registered there. Then he said, ‘You know that was a mistake. I called you back.’ And then she said that the mistake was his and he should have covered his tracks better.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I think she thinks he’s having an affair,” Wendy said. “You know, a love affair with some other woman, like on
Dallas
and
Dynasty
. People are always having affairs.”

Tommy didn’t know. He wasn’t allowed to watch very much television, and never anything like the shows Wendy was always talking about. He sometimes got to watch
MacGyver
, but
MacGyver
wasn’t interested in girls. He was too busy saving people. “Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know,” she said, exasperated. “Why do people do anything? Why did somebody kill that lady?”

“My dad says nobody really understands why someone turns into a serial killer.”

“That’s scary,” Wendy said. She looked past the end of the bench to where Dennis Farman was tormenting Cody Roache, poking at him with something. Cody kept trying to get away from him, but he never ran far enough or fast enough. “I think Dennis is going to grow up to be a serial killer.”

Tommy looked over at him. “Probably.”

“What do you think Miss Navarre did to him?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Miss Navarre is nice. She probably tried to talk some sense into him.”

“Ha! Like that could ever happen.”

Dennis caught them looking. Tommy groaned. “Great. Now he’s going to come over here and harass us.”

“Don’t let him, Tommy. Stand up to him.”

No sooner had she said it than Dennis made a fist and socked Cody in the stomach. Cody doubled over.

“And get my head knocked off?” Tommy said.

Dennis swaggered up in front of them, a sneer on his face. In his left hand he held something wrapped in tissue.

“Look,” he said. “It’s the lovebirds. Are you having sex yet?”

Tommy ignored him.

Wendy’s eyes flashed. “Shut up, Dennis.”

“Is your gay boyfriend gonna make me?” he taunted.

“You’re such a moron,” Wendy snapped. “You’re such a moron even other morons don’t want you hanging around.” She glanced meaningfully at Cody, who was bent over throwing up on the grass.

Dennis’s face began to get red. Tommy swallowed hard, but Wendy was pissed off and kept going.

“If you weren’t such a moron that you got held back a year and now you’re bigger than everybody, somebody would kick your butt.”

Dennis got redder and redder. He stepped in closer. “You’re a cunt.”

Wendy stood up on the bench so she was taller than he was. Tommy looked to see if Mr. Alvarez had heard the
C
word.

Wendy was furious now, her hands clenched into fists. “You’re stupid. You’re stupid and everybody hates you!”

Dennis suddenly grabbed her by the arm and pulled her off the bench. He took the thing in tissue paper and shoved it in her face.

“I’m gonna make you eat it!” he shouted.

The tissue fell away, and Wendy screamed. Dennis pushed her backward into the bench, trying to push the blackened thing into her mouth. Wendy frantically turned her head from side to side, trying to escape the thing.

Tommy lowered a shoulder and ran into Dennis Farman like a human battering ram. But Dennis was in a rage now, and even though he staggered sideways a step he continued trying to shove the black thing into Wendy’s mouth.

Tommy took his fist and used it like a hammer on Dennis’s head. Dennis turned toward him and Tommy clipped him in the mouth, splitting his lip. Blood gushed out.

“You fucking little faggot!” Dennis screamed. He took a wild swing and hit Tommy hard in the face, knocking him off his feet. Dennis’s shoe hit him square in the stomach and knocked the wind out of him.

Tommy tried to curl into a ball. He put his hands over his head to protect himself as Dennis kept kicking him over and over.

Then suddenly his assailant was gone, dragged backward by the scruff of his neck by Mr. Alvarez, who was shouting something Tommy couldn’t understand. Stars spun before his one good eye.

Wendy hit the dirt beside him. “Tommy? Are you okay?”

Tommy was coughing as he fought to sit up. “No,” he croaked.

They both looked over at Dennis, who was in a blind rage, screaming and cursing and hitting and kicking at Mr. Alvarez.

They looked at each other, then they looked at the ground where Dennis had dropped the thing he had been trying to shove into Wendy’s mouth: a human finger, blackened and rotted like a bad banana.

The offices of Peter Crane,
DDS
, were located in a renovated white stucco, Spanish-style building on a bustling, beautiful, tree-lined pedestrian plaza near the college. Shoppers wandered in and out of upscale boutiques and galleries on the three-block stretch. Sidewalk cafes and coffeehouses were busy with a mix of students, adults, and older people. A guitarist playing classical music sat on a bench outside the bookstore.

Nice town,
Vince thought, spying an Italian place that advertised Chicago-style pizza. He could smell the olive oil and garlic as if he were swimming in it.

They went inside the dentist’s office and Vince took in the waiting area with its leather chairs and a huge saltwater aquarium built into one wall. Even the magazines on the coffee table were upscale:
Town & Country
,
Architectural Digest
,
Scientific American
. Mendez showed his badge to the elegant African American woman behind the curved wood counter.

She raised her pencil-thin brows. “How may I help you, Detective?”

“Can you tell us if a woman named Karly Vickers had an appointment here last Thursday?”

She flipped back a couple of pages in the appointment book. “Yes. She had a four o’clock cleaning and exam. She arrived at three fifty-five.”

“We’ll need to speak with Dr. Crane and whoever did the cleaning.”

The receptionist led them into an examination room to wait out of sight of patients. Vince helped himself to a seat in the big chair.

“My mother wanted me to be a dentist,” he said, staring up at the mural on the ceiling—a blue sky crowded with plump white clouds. “I’ve got hands the size of catcher’s mitts. Can you imagine having one of these in your mouth?”

A male face loomed over and blocked his view of the clouds. Good-looking guy, midthirties, dark hair, dark eyes.

Vince exited the chair.

“Detective Mendez,” Crane said, shaking hands. “And?”

“Detective Leone,” Vince said.

“Ava said you had some questions about a patient.”

“Karly Vickers,” Mendez said, producing a snapshot from his pocket. Karly hugging her dog. “You saw her Thursday afternoon, late in the day.”

Crane took the photo and stared at it for a moment. “Her hair was different, but yes, I remember her. I gave her a routine exam after her cleaning, and we took a set of X-rays. She needs a couple of crowns, but that’s not a crime,” he said, handing the photograph back. “Can I ask why you’re asking?”

“Miss Vickers is missing,” Vince said. “You may be the last person to have seen her.”

Crane was nonplussed. “Missing? And you think I might know something about that? I looked at her teeth.”

“We’re just trying to retrace her movements that day,” Vince reassured him. “Her appointment here was her last of the day that we know of. Did she happen to say if she was going anywhere after she left here? Perhaps dinner with a friend, anything like that?”

“Oh my God,” Crane said. “First there’s a murder, now there’s a woman missing? Nothing like that ever happens here.”

“It’s disturbing,” Vince agreed.

“Are the two things related?”

“We don’t know yet,” Mendez said.

“Probably not,” Vince added. “You’d be talking about a very rare kind of criminal if the cases were linked. It’s highly unlikely.”

“We’ve already talked about the possibility of a serial killer,” Crane said.

Vince looked at Mendez, who looked a little sheepish. “In theory,” he said.

“After we spoke yesterday, I started thinking,” Crane said. “About a year or so ago—wasn’t there a woman found murdered outside of town? Do you think that murder is connected to this one?”

“I’m not free to speculate,” Mendez said.

“I’m not sure which answer would be worse,” Crane said. “More than one ordinary killer on the loose, or one extraordinary killer on the loose.”

“We’re aiming for C: None of the above,” Vince said.

“The woman in the park,” Crane said, “have you found out who she was?”

“Yes, she’s been identified as Lisa Warwick, a nurse—”

“Lisa Warwick?” he said, shocked. “No.”

“Did you know her?”

“Enough to say hello. She used to work at the Thomas Center. Oh, man, that’s terrible.”

“You do a lot of work for the center?” Vince asked.

“I give a break to their clients and employees,” Crane said. “It’s a good cause. My wife volunteers there as well. She helps with getting donations of clothing for work wardrobes and bringing in successful businesswomen to speak.”

“Had you seen Ms. Warwick recently?” Mendez asked.

“No. I couldn’t say when.”

He leaned back against the counter, crossed his arms, and shook his head. “How did she die?”

“We’re waiting on the full results of the autopsy,” Mendez said. “But it appears she was strangled.”

Crane closed his eyes and rubbed a hand across his forehead as if the revelation had pained him.

“I hope she didn’t suffer,” he said quietly. “She was a nice girl.”

“How is Tommy doing?” Mendez asked.

“He’s pretty undone by the whole thing.”

“Dr. Crane’s son was one of the kids that found the body,” Mendez explained.

Crane looked sharply at Vince.

“I was out of town that night,” Vince said easily. “What a terrible thing for kids to have to see.”

“He doesn’t understand how one human being could do that to another human being,” Crane said. “He asked me last night if I thought the man who killed that lady was crazy or just really angry with her.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I don’t think anyone really understands why someone turns out to be a killer.”

“That’s not very reassuring,” Vince said.

“My son is ten, and he’s very bright, Detective. He knows if someone is lying to him. I told him he shouldn’t worry about it, that just because a bad thing happened to that woman doesn’t mean anything bad is going to happen to him; that he has a lot of people looking out for him, to keep him safe.”

“Did he buy that?”

“I don’t think so,” Crane said honestly.

“Do you remember what time Ms. Vickers left here last Thursday?” Mendez asked.

“A cleaning and exam usually runs around an hour, so it must have been around five. Ava will remember,” Crane said. “Ava remembers everything.”

“How did Miss Vickers seem to you?” Vince asked.

Crane shrugged. “She didn’t make much of an impression on me. She sat with her mouth open and I looked at her teeth. She seemed upset when I told her she would need the two crowns. She was getting ready to start a new job at the Quinn, Morgan law offices. She was worried about having to take time off.

“I told her I doubted it would be a problem. I know everybody at Quinn, Morgan. I told her she should talk to the office manager and we would work something out together. Maybe she went by there on her way home.”

“Do you have patient parking here, Dr. Crane?” Vince asked.

“I have three spots behind the building. If those are full, they have to use public parking.”

“It’s all right if we take a look back there,” Vince said. “There’s a back door, right?”

“Yes. I’ll show you.”

He led them down a hall and out a door into the shadowed alley behind the building. Vince took it all in—the surrounding buildings, the lack of activity. The building directly next door had a large
FOR
LEASE
sign up on the wall.
JAMESON
REAL
ESTATE
with the phone number of the agency and a photo of a pretty, smiling agent inviting interested parties to call.

Two of the three parking slots marked for Peter Crane,
DDS
, were taken. One by a sleek, dark blue Jaguar sedan, and one by a white Toyota Celica.

“I couldn’t tell you if Miss Vickers parked back here or not,” Crane said. “Ava might know.”

“Are there any surveillance cameras back here?” Vince asked, scanning the buildings across the alley.

“I don’t know. I don’t have one.”

The door to the office opened and the all-knowing Ava leaned out.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said. “But Miss Navarre called, Dr. Crane. There was some kind incident at school. She asked if you could please come pick Tommy up.”

“Incident?” Crane repeated. “What now?”

“She didn’t elaborate.”

Crane sighed. “I’m sorry, guys. I’ve got to go.”

“By all means,” Vince said. “Family first.”

Ava held the doctor’s car keys out to him, but looked to Vince and Mendez. “Our hygienist, Robin, will be in tomorrow. She did Miss Vickers’s cleaning.”

“Just for the record, Dr. Crane,” Mendez said. “Where were you last Thursday night?”

“Home with my family. Call me if you have any more questions,” Crane said, going to the Jag. “But I honestly don’t think I’ll be of much help. I’m sure I’m not the last person who saw Karly Vickers that day.”

“Why do you say that?” Vince asked.

“Because the last person to see her that day must have been the person who took her, and I know that wasn’t me.”