Deeper Than The Dead (40 page)

Maybe that was all true, but he didn’t think the same way about his father anymore.

His backpack was heavy with stuff he had taken out of the kitchen—cans of soup, tuna, beans—stuff he needed to live on his own. He trudged along, kicking through the fallen leaves, thinking of nothing but his destination.

The yellow tape had started to fall down, making it look like a place nobody cared about anymore. That was good. Then no one would come there and bother him. Dennis dropped his backpack on the ground and sat down on the rock where the dead lady had put her head.

It was time for lunch, and this was where he wanted to have it: in a grave.

Wendy didn’t go into the woods. She stayed in the park where the grass was mowed and there were no fallen branches or thornbushes, or graves. She sat on a bench with her legs crossed, doodling in her notebook.

It was quiet here, the kind of quiet with birds in the background and the sound of running water from the fountain across the path. Not the kind of quiet at home.

She wondered if her dad would move away or just out of their house. It seemed like he was going to Sacramento a lot, but maybe that was just what he said when he went to have his affair. She wondered if the Other Woman had kids, and if she had kids, did Wendy already know them? What if they were kids in her school? What if they were kids she didn’t like? What if Dennis Farman was going to be her step-brother?

These were things adults never considered, things that didn’t matter to them.

Of course, she would live with her mother. They would stay in their house. Maybe her mom would have to get a job. She had had a job before Wendy was born. There was a picture in their family room of her mom and dad in graduation caps and gowns, getting their diplomas from college. That meant she could get a good job.

Or, Wendy thought as she looked out into the woods, she could write her book about her and Tommy finding the dead body, and it could get made into a movie, and she would be rich. Her father would be sorry then.

Cody flipped himself around the monkey bars, pretending he was really a monkey. Monkeys had it good. They were always his favorite animals at the zoo in Santa Barbara—especially the white-handed gibbons with their long, long arms, swinging them from limb to limb. He pretended now that he was a white-handed gibbon, and he started making loud monkey noises as he negotiated the bars.

The thing he wanted to do most in the world—next to being an astronaut—was to go to the San Diego Zoo. His mother had told him maybe next summer they could have a real family vacation and go there. The San Diego Zoo had every kind of monkey there was, he bet.

Cody was glad he had come to the park. He didn’t feel nervous anymore. Hopping down from the monkey bars he ran over to the tetherballs and started a game with a younger kid from down his street.

Yep. He was glad he had come to the park.

Out in the woods, Dennis dug a can of beans out of his backpack and got out his pocketknife. He couldn’t figure out how to work the piece that was supposed to be the can opener.

It didn’t look like any can opener he had ever seen. He tried and tried to work it, but all it did was make a dent then slip off to the side. And every time that happened, he became more aware of being hungry. And then he began to feel something else.

He began to feel.

Fingers fumbling, he cut himself closing the can opener. Bright red blood welled up out of his finger. He stared at it for a minute, then licked it off.

He opened the big blade on the knife, and stabbed it hard into the top of the can. He stabbed it again, and liquid from the beans squirted out through the holes.

He stabbed it again and he began to feel something bigger growing in his chest. All the pain, all the anger started coming out as he stabbed the can with the knife.

So he stabbed it again and again and again . . .

“Oh God, this is embarrassing,” Peter Crane groaned, looking at the arrest report—complete with mug shot—Mendez had put down on the table in front of him. He sighed and looked away.

“What you do in your free time is your business, Dr. Crane. I don’t want an explanation,” Mendez said. “I’m not going to tell your wife. I don’t need another homicide to investigate. You seem like a nice enough guy.

“My problem with this is that on that same night, in that same vice sweep, Julie Paulson was arrested.”

“Who’s Julie Paulson?”

“Julie Paulson was a prostitute. Not long after her arrest in Oxnard, she turned up at the Thomas Center. And not long after that, she turned up dead.”

“I don’t know anything about that!” Crane said, shocked.

Mendez made a pained face. “But you do, Doctor. Actually, you brought that murder up the first day we spoke.”

Crane looked confused for an instant. “The girl that was murdered last year? The one found outside of town? I read about that in the newspaper!”

“I have a hard time with that,” Mendez said. “I don’t believe in coincidences—especially not when they start to pile on top of each other.

“Julie Paulson was a prostitute in Oxnard. You were arrested for soliciting a prostitute in Oxnard. Julie Paulson comes to Oak Knoll. You live in Oak Knoll. She gets in the program at the Thomas Center. You work with the women at the Thomas Center. She ends up dead. Karly Vickers goes missing. You knew Lisa Warwick . . .

“Can you see where all these things might lead me, Dr. Crane?”

Crane rubbed his hands over his face. “Oh my God.”

Mendez let him stew for a minute, tapping his pen on the tabletop slowly as the seconds ticked past.

“I didn’t know Julie Paulson,” he said at last. “The girl I got arrested with in Oxnard, Candace, I used to see her from time to time.”

“You were a regular customer is what you’re saying?”

Crane closed his eyes like he had a bad headache. “I’m not proud of it. And it’s not that I don’t care about my wife. It’s just . . . Janet has some . . . issues—”

“I really don’t want to know about that,” Mendez said. “Really.”

“I know you’ve only seen the worst of her,” Crane said. “This week has been a nightmare. She’s really not a bad person. I don’t cheat on her in the truest sense of the word—”

“Don’t care.
Really
.”

If Peter Crane wanted absolution he was going to have to consult a priest. Mendez had no interest in arguing the definition of adultery. The man was fucking women other than his wife—that pretty much defined the word for him.

Crane sighed. “After I got arrested, I stopped going down there.”

“And Julie Paulson moved here,” Mendez said. “You’re not helping yourself here, Dr. Crane.”

“I’m telling you what happened,” he said, exasperated. “I can’t help it that that girl moved here. It’s a free country. Maybe she had a friend here, but it wasn’t me.”

“And you stopped going to Oxnard.”

“Yes.”

“And . . . ? What? You gave up prostitutes? You gave up sex?”

“I . . . have . . . Oh Jesus,” he muttered, looking down at the floor. “I have an . . . arrangement . . . with a woman in Ventura.”

Mendez slid a paper and pen across the table to him. “I’ll need her name and phone number.”

Crane looked like he wanted to be sick. Mr. Respectable Upstanding Citizen frequenting prostitutes.

When he had written the information Mendez took the paper. “I’ll be right back. You want a coffee or something?”

“No. Thank you,” Crane said, staring at the table.

Mendez went across the hall and handed the paper to Hicks. Vince and Dixon were watching the monitor. Crane sat with his head in his hands.

“Good job, kid,” Vince said. “You’ve got him twitching.”

“Man, he’s sweating like a horse,” Mendez said. “Can you imagine what his wife would do to him if she found out where her pillar of the community has been?”

Hicks laughed. “Yeah, his pillar’s been all over the place.”

“Although, you can hardly blame the guy,” Mendez said. “That wife of his . . . She’d be like fucking a bear trap.”

“Press him about last night,” Vince said. “Ask him how his card game went.”

Mendez poured himself a cup of coffee and went back into the interview room.

“So how was your card game last night?”

“My what?”

“Your wife told us you weren’t home last night because you were playing cards.”

“Oh.”

“Where were you? Ventura?”

“No. Janet and I had a fight.”

“What about?”

“She was angry that Tommy’s teacher had asked him some questions about our home life. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, my wife can be a formidable character in an argument,” he said. “It’s been a long week. I’d just had it. I didn’t want to hear any more, so I went out.”

“Out where?”

“I had dinner at O’Brien’s Pub, watched the American League Championship game. Around nine Steve came into the bar—”

“Steve Morgan?”

“Yeah. We sat around and cried in our beer until closing time.”

“What was his problem?”

“A fight with his wife. What else? She kicked him out.”

“Why did she throw him out?”

“She accused him of having an affair, which has gotten to be a routine thing with her.”

“Is he?” Mendez asked. “Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.”

He didn’t answer for a while, turning words over in his head, trying to choose them carefully. “Steve’s a complicated guy.”

“I don’t care,” Mendez said. “I want to know: Was he having an affair with Lisa Warwick?”

Peter Crane rested his elbows on the table and hung his head, looking defeated.

“Don’t fuck around with me, Dr. Crane,” Mendez said sharply. “The woman was murdered. Was he having an affair with her?”

“Yes.”

Dennis crept through the woods like a commando, crouched low, sometimes crawling on his belly. He had smeared dirt on his face for camouflage and tied a rag around his head like Rambo.

He could hear voices in the park. People talking, kids laughing. People with normal lives. He hated them.

He could see them from the edge of the woods, where he hid behind a tree. Little kids, bigger kids, a couple of adults. He crept a little closer.

They were having fun. They were happy. And there was Cody, who was supposed to be his friend, playing catch with a kid from the fourth grade.

“Hey, Cody,” he said, standing at the very edge where the park became the woods.

Cody glanced over at him and frowned.

“Hey, Cockroach, come ’ere.”

Cody pretended not to hear him.

“Come on,” Dennis said. “I have something cool to show you.”

Cody came a little closer, looking at him kind of suspicious through his stupid, crooked patched-together glasses. “I’m not supposed to play with you, Dennis. My mom said.”

Dennis rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on. I found something. It’s really cool.”

Cody glanced back at the people who had brought him to the park. The kid he had been playing catch with ran over to the swings.

“Come on. Don’t be such a wuss,” Dennis said as he took a step back into the woods.

“I’m not supposed to go in the woods.”

“You’re such a mama’s boy.”

“Am not.”

“Are so.”

Cody looked tempted but unsure.

“I thought we were friends,” Dennis said.

“You’re mean.”

“You’re stupid.” Dennis shrugged his shoulders. “Suit yourself. You’ll just miss it, that’s all.”

He turned sideways and started to walk away, back into the woods. Cody looked back at the playground, then back at Dennis, then back at the playground. Dennis took a few more steps, turning his back. Then footsteps came behind him in the fallen leaves.

Dennis glanced at Cody and started to jog. Cody broke into a trot. They went over a little rise and out of sight of the playground.

Dennis stopped, laughing. Cody ran up on his heels. He was laughing too. Then Dennis turned, still laughing, and plunged the knife into Cody Roache’s belly as deep as it would go.

Wendy sat on the park bench looking out into the woods. She had made a sketch in her notebook showing the scene of the crime—the hill they had jumped off and tumbled down, the rocks and trees, and the grave at the bottom. She was afraid to draw the head of the dead lady, like the drawing would somehow come to life and the head would start talking to her.

That was stupid, of course. If Tommy had been there, he would have told her what a stupid idea that was. Although it might be a good, really creepy thing in their movie: If the head of the dead lady haunted them and followed them around in ghost form, and talked to them about what had happened. And no one would be able to see her except Wendy and Tommy. Unless she wanted to be seen in order to scare people, like Dennis or the killer.

Or maybe, in the movie, Dennis would be the killer.
THAT
would be really weird. There was nothing scarier in a movie than an evil kid. Dennis wouldn’t even have to be acting, she thought.

She wished now she had called Tommy and prodded him into coming with her to the park. Now, in the full light of a beautiful day, the woods didn’t seem so scary, and she wanted to go back in and retrace their fateful journey from school that day. But it would have been much better if Tommy had been there to help her recount the tale.

It made Wendy mad that Tommy’s mom was so strict. He always had to go to this lesson or that recital. He couldn’t just be a normal kid and play. He had to be here by a certain time and there before dark, and he couldn’t this, and he couldn’t that.

And he wasn’t like Harlan Friedman, who pretended to be weak and allergic to everything so he didn’t have to do gym class or go on field trips. Tommy liked to do stuff. He just didn’t like to get in trouble.

Wendy was in no mood to be that careful. Her parents were already going to be mad at her because she had left the house without permission. She might as well do what she wanted before she got caught. And even when she got caught, what were they supposed to say to her? How could her father talk to her about not breaking the rules, when he was breaking the biggest rule of all himself?