Deeper Than The Dead (30 page)

“Somebody’s watching us,” she murmured.
Probably Franny
, she thought, though the feeling that crawled over her skin was creepy, and that wasn’t right.

The somebody must have felt their stares as well. There was another rustling sound and a figure darted from behind one tree to behind another. A smallish figure. A child.

“Dennis?” she called out, walking toward the grave. “Dennis, is that you?”

More rustling, and the figure streaked behind another tree. Anne started to jog, Vince’s jacket slipping off her shoulders.

“Dennis, come out! It’s all right. Come out!”

Another flash of movement. She was picking up speed, dodging branches. Her heart was pounding out of proportion to her effort. She wanted to catch him—needed to catch him—figuratively, literally, before he got away.

“Dennis!”

She caught a glimpse of him, never more. He kept running. She ran harder.

“Anne!” Vince called, gaining ground on her. “Anne, let him go!”

It seemed everyone had let Dennis go, not for the good of Dennis, but because it was too hard to deal with him. Someone needed to hang on to him or he would truly be lost.

“Anne!”

The toe of her loafer stubbed an exposed root, and she found herself falling. Losing him. She hit the ground.

“Anne!”

Vince was beside her instantly. “Are you all right?”

No
, she thought. She began to tremble as the weight of it all settled hard on her shoulders—a rotten week culminating with the suspension of the one child in her class who needed the most help. And that child was now running in the woods like a wild animal, haunting a gravesite where he had somehow managed to steal the finger of a dead woman.

“Hey,” Vince said, his hands cupping her shoulders as he helped her up. “You’re shaking.”

“I’m fine,” she murmured.

She was fine, but tears rose in her eyes and she wished to God it was too dark for him to see them.

“Let me take you home, honey,” he said softly, brushing leaves and twigs from her hair. “You’re exhausted.”

His kindness was her undoing. She could be as tough as she had to be, but kindness . . . she couldn’t manage that. No matter how hard she squeezed her eyes shut, the tears still came.

“Come here,” Vince whispered. He slipped his arms around her and drew her close as carefully as if she were made of fine porcelain. “It’s all right. This shoulder has been cried on before.”

For the first time that week Anne let go. She let the fraying ends of control slip through her fingers, and let loose the pressure that had been building and building inside her.

She let Vince Leone hold her and cradle her head against his chest and tell her she would be all right, that she would make it through this. She took the comfort of a stranger and somehow she didn’t feel like she was free-falling. She felt . . . protected, safe. It took a moment for her to even realize what the feeling was.

Vince came up with a pristine white handkerchief and dabbed gently at the tears on her cheeks, but he seemed in no hurry to let her go. And Anne felt in no hurry to leave.

She tilted her chin up and looked at him, no longer caring what he saw in her eyes—sadness, vulnerability, longing. He settled his mouth on hers for a kiss that was long and deep. And when it was finished, she pressed her ear to his chest and listened to his heart beat for a long while.

“Are you and Mom getting divorced?”

The question just came out, like a hiccup or a cough. Wendy opened her mouth and the words just tumbled out. They were in the backyard, beyond the swimming pool, away from the house where her mother was fixing dinner. Her father had picked her up at school and suggested a game of catch because they hadn’t played in a long time.

“Because you’re never home,” she had said.

She was tired and in a bad mood. It seemed like life was never going to be the same again since they had found the body in the park. School wasn’t the same. Tommy wasn’t the same. Nobody treated her the same. Her parents weren’t the same. It sucked.

Her dad stopped his throwing motion as her question hit him. He looked shocked, which just went to show how oblivious adults were. Like they didn’t think their kids could hear, or that they didn’t live in the same house, or had no clue what was going on around them.

“No,” he said, coming over to her. He tried to laugh it off—as if that question could ever have been part of a joke. “No. What would make you think that, Wendy?”

Wendy rolled her eyes. “Dad, I’m not a baby. I know what goes on.”

“What goes on?” he asked, sitting down on a stone bench. He pulled his fielder’s glove off and set it aside. Wendy did the same.

“People have affairs,” she said. “I know all about it.”

Of course, she didn’t. Not exactly. It made no sense to her. You only married someone if you loved them, and then why bother with having an affair? From what she’d seen on television it was never worth it, and everyone involved was just miserable.

Her father scratched his head, trying to think of what to say. “Did your mother say something to you?”

“No, because all she does anymore is cry and try not to let me know it.”

“Honey, your mom is upset about the things that have happened this week: you finding that body, and what that Farman kid did to you—”

“I heard you fighting,” she said, playing her big card. He couldn’t know exactly what or how much she had heard.

He closed his eyes and sighed, leaning his forearms on his thighs and letting his hands dangle between his knees. He looked tired and maybe a little angry.

“There are things your mom just doesn’t understand,” he said, his tone of voice short, almost businesslike. “Things I need to do. Sometimes I have to be away. That’s just how it is. She should be used to it by now, but this week has been difficult. It’s not something you need to worry about, honey. All right?”

Wendy wanted to say no, but she had the feeling he would get mad at her. Besides, her mother had come onto the patio to call them in for dinner.

Tommy wandered into the small office down the hall from the family room. He liked being in this room with his father’s desk and the leather chairs. The bookshelves were full of all kinds of books. He liked to climb up and pull them out at random just to see what was inside.

His favorite was the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
. Page after page, volume after volume with all the knowledge in the world practically. He would pick a letter at random and sit in the big fat leather chair in the corner and examine every page.

His father sat at his desk now, going through the newspaper, sipping on a drink, while his mother worked in the kitchen fixing dinner.

“What are you reading?” Tommy asked as he walked around the desk, running his finger along the carved edge.

His father didn’t look up. “The news. You want to see? Here’s a picture of where I was this afternoon.”

Tommy came around to his father’s side and looked at the photograph. A bunch of people standing around in a field. The headline above read:
SEARCH
CONTINUES
FOR
MISSING
OAK
KNOLL
WOMAN
.

“There’s Wendy’s dad,” Tommy said, putting his finger on the image of Wendy’s father in serious conversation with a blonde lady.

“Yep.”

“Who is that lady?”

“That’s Jane Thomas. She runs the women’s center.”

“Did you find the missing lady?”

“No. Not yet.”

“She’s probably murdered,” Tommy said gravely. “That’s what serial killers do.”

“Hopefully not,” his father said, taking a sip of his drink.

Whiskey. Tommy liked the smell and the color of it, but he had once tasted some left in the bottom of a glass on the blotter, and it was gross. He had coughed and choked and gagged on it until he ran into the kitchen and got a drink of water.

“Dad? Did we watch
Cosby
last week?”

“Last week? I don’t remember. Why?”

“I don’t know,” Tommy said. “Miss Navarre asked me today if we were home last week on Thursday. I think we were.”

“Why would she ask you that?”

Tommy shrugged and winced because it still hurt his ribs to move. His attention was already on to something else. He had started to read the article about the search. He recognized the place in the picture. He and his father had gone there once to look for parts to the old Mustang convertible that sat in the garage in a million pieces. It was a cool place in a kind of a creepy way.

“That’s a strange question,” his father said. “Did she ask the whole class?”

Tommy shook his head. “Nope. Just me.”

“Huh.”

He turned and looked at his father. “Dad, I’m not going to have to go to another school, am I? I like Miss Navarre. She’s a really good teacher.”

And pretty. And she smelled nice. And she really cared about him. But he said none of that to his father. Being married and old and all, he probably didn’t remember what it was like to like a girl.

“No, son. Your mom was just upset about what happened yesterday. She’ll calm down.”

How does she think I felt
? Tommy wondered. His mother had been all worried about him at the emergency room after Dennis beat him up—when there were people all around making a fuss—but she hadn’t had much to say to him since then. She was too caught up being mad at people. But Tommy said none of this to his father, either.

“I think the Dodgers’ll win tomorrow, don’t you?” he said instead.

His father got up from the desk, went to the bookcase, and poured himself another drink. “I hope so.”

“If they win tomorrow, then it’s only one more game and then they’re in the World Series!” Tommy said, thrusting his fists into the air like a champion—then quickly bringing them down because that hurt like crazy. He turned around in a couple of tight circles until he started to get dizzy.

“I’m going to check on dinner,” his father said. He ruffled Tommy’s hair absently and walked out of the room.

Tommy wasted no time scrambling into the big leather swiveling desk chair. Someday he would have a desk and a chair like this one, and he would do something important, like his dad.

He went back to reading the article in the newspaper to see if his dad’s name was in it.

Karly Nicole Vickers, 21, originally of Simi Valley, California, was last seen around 5:00 P.M. on the afternoon of Thursday, October 3, in the office of local dentist, Dr. Peter Crane . . .

It took Sharon Farman nearly five minutes to come to the door. Mendez and Hicks stood on the front steps, periodically ringing the doorbell, then knocking. They had been told at Quinn, Morgan that Mrs. Farman had stayed home for the day to look after her son. Her maroon minivan was parked in the driveway.

“Why doesn’t the kid answer the door?” Hicks asked.

“He’s probably chained to a radiator,” Mendez said.

“Maybe he slit his mother’s throat and took off.”

Mendez rang the bell again and banged his knuckles on the door.

“Frank is going to shit a brick over this,” Hicks said.

“We don’t have a choice. If he’s got nothing to hide, then he should shut up and let us do our jobs.”

“Yeah. That’ll happen.”

The door opened then. Sharon Farman had clearly been asleep. Her puffed-up hairdo was lopsided, squished flat on the right, and there were creases on her cheek. Her eyes were a little bleary. Her lipstick was smudged.

“Mrs. Farman? Detectives Mendez and Hicks,” Mendez said, holding up his ID. “We need to ask you a few questions.”

She stared at them, confused. “What’s this about? Dennis?”

“No, ma’am. Would it be all right if we came in for a few minutes?”

Still slow to react, it took her several seconds before she stepped back from the door. Mendez watched her closely. She seemed a little unsteady on her feet, and he began to wonder if it wasn’t something other than sleep impairing her reaction time.

She led them into a dining room.

“Are you feeling all right, ma’am?” he asked as they all took seats at the table.

“I was having a nap,” she said, reaching for a pack of cigarettes. Her hands trembled ever so slightly as she lit up.

“We’re sorry to interrupt your day,” Hicks said. “We have just a couple of questions and we’ll let you go.”

“Questions about what? Are the Cranes going to press charges?” she asked, irritated. “Kids get into fights. Maybe they should teach their precious little angel to stick up for himself.”

The longer sentence gave her away. Her speech slurred ever so slightly. She’d been drinking.

“This isn’t about your son, ma’am,” Hicks said. “We need to clear up a couple of things as to your husband’s whereabouts last week Thursday evening.”

“My husband? Frank? You work with him, for heaven’s sake, why don’t you just ask him?”

“This is a bit delicate,” Mendez admitted. “Because your husband made a traffic stop on Karly Vickers the day she went missing, we have to make sure his time after that is accounted for so he can officially be ruled out as a suspect.”

Sharon Farman sobered at that. She sat up a little straighter. Her cigarette burned down in her fingers. “A suspect? You think Frank had something to do with that?”

“Not really, ma’am,” Mendez said. “Deputy Farman’s reputation speaks for itself. The timing was unfortunate, that’s all. This is a formality.”

Hand shaking again, she put the cigarette in the ashtray.

“I’m not comfortable with this,” she said. “Maybe I should speak to my husband first.”

“It’s really not a big deal, ma’am,” Hicks said easily. “We just need to nail down his time line. Do you remember what time he got home that evening?”

“We eat dinner at six thirty sharp,” she said. “Every night.”

She glanced at her watch then and what color she had left her cheeks. “Oh my God. Look at the time! I had no idea how late—Oh, no. I haven’t even taken meat out of the freezer! Why didn’t the girls wake me? Where are they?”

She looked around the room, as if they might appear.