Deeper Than The Dead (23 page)

“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.

“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 presents.”

“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.”

Sells glared at him and literally spat out the words, “Fuck you, you fuckin’ spic!”

Mendez shot up out of his chair and leaned across the table. Sells went backward so fast, he tipped his chair over and spilled himself onto the floor.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Mendez said. “I need a cup of coffee. This case is such a slam dunk, I’m bored with it.”

With the Sells file tucked under his arm, he walked out the door and across the hall where Hicks and Dixon were watching the video monitor.

“How do you like that?” Mendez asked. “This guy’s a member of the master race.”

“Unbelievable,” Hicks said.

“Did the cars come in?” Mendez asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

“Yeah.” Dixon nodded. He looked a little frayed around the edges. “I’m mobilizing a ground search for Karly Vickers at first light.”

“If she isn’t found in a fifty-five-gallon drum in Gordon Sells’s garage tonight,” Mendez said. “The crime scene unit is still out there, right?”

“It’s going to take days for them just to get through the trailer,” Dixon said. “The guy is an animal.”

“That’s an insult to the animal kingdom,” Hicks declared.

“How do you think he’s connected to the Thomas Center?” Dixon asked.

“Maybe the fact that both women were associated with the center is just a coincidence.”

“Three women,” Dixon corrected him. “Julie Paulson was there briefly in eighty-four. She washed out of the program. Jane was out of the country. That’s why the name didn’t ring a bell with her. Can’t be a coincidence times three. How could he know these women? How could he abduct three women without somebody seeing something? If you were a woman and this guy tried to get his hands on you—”

“People would hear me screaming five miles away,” Hicks said. “But maybe he’s not the one who nabbed them.”

“Tweedle Dumb in the other room?” Mendez asked. “That’s hard to imagine. He probably can’t figure out how to roll the window down in a car, let alone persuade some woman to get in with him.”

“No,” Hicks said. “I’m thinking about this maintenance guy from the center.”

“What maintenance guy?” Dixon asked.

“Hamilton found out the guy has a record for car theft and domestic abuse.”

“That’s impossible,” Dixon said. “Jane does background checks on everyone working there. She never would have hired someone like that.”

“The guy’s been using his brother’s name and identity,” Hicks explained. “They live together. Hamilton goes to the house to interview the guy—Doug Lyle—but the Doug Lyle he talks to doesn’t work at the Thomas Center. The brother, Dave, used Doug’s information because he didn’t think anyone would hire a car thief fresh out of prison.”

“Jesus,” Dixon said. “Jane is going to flip out when she hears that story. She goes to such lengths to make sure her women are safe and protected, and it turns out she let the fox in the henhouse herself.”

“And how do Doug Lyle and Gordon Sells connect?” Mendez asked.

“My theory,” Hicks said. “Lyle steals the cars, takes them to Sells, Sells ships them somewhere, and they split the proceeds.”

“And kill a woman or three in the process?”

“Why not? The Hillside Strangler in LA turned out to be two guys working together.”

“It’s a viable scenario,” Dixon said. “See if you can connect Sells to Lyle. You take a crack at him, Bill. You guys can tag team him until he decides he wants a lawyer.”

Hicks took the “Sells file” and went across the hall.

Mendez sipped his coffee, anxious for the caffeine to kick in.

“What do you think, Tony?” Dixon asked. “Do you like this guy for it?”

Mendez stared at the monitor, watching Sells pick his nose until the door opened and Hicks walked in. “That would be an easy solution. If we can tie him to Lyle, and prove that Lyle stole the cars, et cetera.”

“But?”

He shrugged. “Sells is a pedophile. They don’t usually graduate to crimes against adult women. They go after kids because kids are most vulnerable, kids can’t fight back, because something in their own background attaches their sex drive to a certain age group.”

“Maybe the other guy is the sexual predator.”

“Maybe.”

They listened while Hicks questioned Sells about any association to Doug Lyle. Sells denied it.

“You’re bringing in the maintenance guy?”

“We sent a unit to pick him up.”

“I want to know when he gets here,” Dixon said, heading for the door.

“Right. Did you find anything inside the cars yet?”

He stopped in the doorway and turned back around slowly, looking like the weight of the world had descended on him.

“Karly Vickers had a traffic ticket in her glove compartment, dated the day she disappeared,” he said.

“Yeah? So?”

“The ticket was written by Frank Farman.”

Friday, October 11, 1985

12:47 A.M.

Karly had no idea how much time had passed since she had last been visited. It might have been a day. It might have been a matter of a few hours.

She was losing her sanity. Exhausted and weak, she had begun lapsing into hallucinations. She would see Petal walking around the room, coming over to look at her quizzically. Karly would go to pet her and realize she couldn’t move her hand, though she didn’t understand why. Then Petal would speak as clearly as any person.

“You can’t get up. We have to kill you.” And the dog would lunge for her throat and tear it out.

This time when the hallucination came and she went to pet the dog, her hand was free. If only that was true, she thought. Then the dog vanished and darkness descended, and she began to think she might actually be conscious. And her hand was still free.

And her other hand was free.

And she was able to move her legs.

Was this really happening or was it another dream? Slowly, carefully she tried to sit up. The pain was terrible in her stomach, her ribs, but she sat up. Dizziness swirled around in her head like water in a toilet bowl. She waited for it to pass. When it had, she carefully turned herself until her legs dangled over the side of the table.

Was she alone? Was she being watched?

She had no way of knowing if her tormentor ever left. He could have been right there, sitting at a table, eating his breakfast, casually watching her, knowing she would never be able to get away.

But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t try. She had fought so hard to rise above her past. Having her future snatched away from her wasn’t fair. She had to get angry. She had to try to help herself. Miss Thomas always said, “God helps those who help themselves.”

She had to try to help herself.

Having no idea how far it might be to the ground, she started to slide off the table, reaching downward with her toes. And there was the floor. It was cold. Pain bolted up her legs, up her spine to her brain. The soles of her feet had been cut numerous times. The half-closed wounds burst open as she put weight on her feet. It had been so long since she had been upright, her legs felt as if they didn’t really belong to her.

She gripped the edge of the table, fighting not to pass out or collapse to the floor. She couldn’t think about the pain. She had to fight.

Slowly, she began to walk. One step and then another. She clutched the edge of the table as she inched along. If she could make it to a wall, she would follow the wall around until she came to a door. When she found a door, she would go through it.

Without sight or hearing she had a difficult time trying to balance. Her head felt as huge and heavy as a bowling ball perched on top of her neck. As she moved it would feel as if the bowling ball began to roll one way and she would overcorrect and tip in the other direction.

She began to panic when she realized the table was not sitting against a wall. She would have to walk across open space.

Three steps and she couldn’t tell up from down. She stumbled and flailed with her arms, pitched forward. She didn’t realize she was falling until she hit the hard floor. Because she was disoriented, she didn’t even try to break the fall with her hands. She hit the floor head-first, her skull hitting so hard it bounced twice before she lost consciousness.

She didn’t know how long she had been out when she came around again. It didn’t matter. She had to get out. Maybe she would walk out a door into a neighborhood and someone would see her and call for help. Or she might walk out into the wilderness, wander aimlessly, and die of exposure. At least that would be on her own terms.

Karly pushed herself up onto her hands and knees and began to crawl. Better to stay on the ground, and still she lost her balance and fell again and again. She ran into a cabinet and slowly felt her way up the front of it until she was standing again.