Tami Hoag - Deeper Than the Dead

“You grew a mustache.”

Vince swiped a hand over the coarse steel gray, not-exactly-regulation hair decorating his upper lip. “You’re very observant. You should be a detective.”

“Makes me think you’re not really back. How are you? Really.”

“The meds make me puke up everything I eat,” he confessed. “But I hear that’s all the rage these days among the beautiful people, so…”

“Should you be here?”

“Where should I be? Sitting in a recliner watching the hours of my life tick away? You might as well shoot me in the head. Oh, wait, somebody already did that.”

“What’s with this case?”

“A kid I taught in the National Academy classes a year or so ago, Tony Mendez, called me at the crack of dawn with this. The crack of dawn our time. Had to be in the middle of the friggin’ night where he is. He’s pretty het up about the case. His first serial killer.”

“If that’s what it is.”

“If that’s what it is,” Vince agreed.

“Where does the kid rank on it?”

“He’s the lead detective. He works for the county sheriff.”

“The sheriff gave him the okay to bring this to us?”

Vince made a face. “Not exactly. But the kid’s going to convince him.”

“And I’m going to learn to speak Italian.”

“Bella!” Vince said, laughing.

His friend shook his head. “How you still have a sense of humor is beyond me.”

“Hey, I’m a living punch line. I got shot in the head and lived to tell about it. That’s a big joke on somebody-the perp, God, me.”

“What do you want to do with this, Vince? This case won’t even come close to the standard. And we’ve got legit cases coming in for review every day of the week. If I had twenty profilers, they’d all be up to their asses in work.”

“This UNSUB has used the superglue at least twice, and probably on a third vic in another jurisdiction,” Vince said. “This time he literally plants his handiwork for public display. That’s (a) highly ritual ized behavior, and (b) escalating in terms of the attention he wants. He isn’t going to stop.

“And I like this kid Mendez,” he admitted. “He’s sharp. He’d make a good agent. I’d like to see him come to the Bureau.”

“And let me guess. He’s an ex-marine.”

Vince grinned. “ Semper fi , baby. There’s no such thing as an ex-marine.”

“You want to mentor him.”

“He promised he’d take me deep-sea fishing.”

“There’s no way I get this approved through the unit chief. He’ll tell you if you want to teach he’ll get you all the class time you want.”

“So I go on my own time. I’m still on leave anyway. And then there’s the mustache…”

“On your own time, on your own dime. No per diem, no hotel room, no nothing.”

“Nancy’ll let me skip an alimony payment. She’s feeling guilty.”

“If she hadn’t divorced you, you wouldn’t have gotten shot in the head?”

“She is all-powerful.”

They were silent for a moment. His friend sighed. Vince sighed.

“Look, John, you know how I feel about going to the scene with these cases. For me, being detached from the setting, working out of this friggin’ tomb, doesn’t give me perspective, it doesn’t make me objective. I’d like to teach a hands-on approach to what we do, because for some of us that works better. If I can go out to California, be of some service nicking this dirtbag before he becomes the next Bundy, and cultivate a new agent, why not?”

Why not? Because the Bureau had a book of rules and regs, and “why not” was not an approved reason for any action to be taken by an agent. “Why not” would have to go through the channels of ASACs and SACs, unit chiefs, and half a dozen committees on its way to the head of the Bureau. It sure as hell wouldn’t happen in his lifetime.

A knock sounded on the door, and a clerk stuck her head in.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but there’s an urgent call on line two for Special Agent Leone.”

Vince went to the phone on the credenza and listened, then put his hand over the receiver and turned to his friend. “They just ID’d the vic from yesterday, and they’ve got another woman missing, both connected to the same women’s center.”

His old friend shrugged and smiled. “Go with God, my friend.”

“Miss Thomas, does the name Julie Paulson mean anything to you?” Mendez asked.

They had gone into a private family room in the funeral home. The drapes were heavy and the room reeked of stargazer lilies and gladi olas. Jane Thomas had sunk down into a corner of a velvet couch the color of a good cabernet. She was as pale as death, still shaken by the discovery of Lisa Warwick’s body.

Mendez had gone into overdrive at the realization that they had both a dead woman and a woman missing, and that both women had ties to the Thomas Center for Women. He had a million questions and wanted to fire them off like rounds from a machine gun, but Jane Thomas was fragile, and he had to be patient. Not one of his stronger virtues.

Jane looked at him, confused. “No. Who is she? Is there some reason I should know her?”

“She was never a client at your facility? She never worked at your facility?”

“Not that I remember. What does she have to do with…?” She turned her head in the direction of the embalming room, unable to say the victim’s name.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, shaking. “Karly. You think she’s with the-the animal that did that to Lisa, don’t you?”

Cal Dixon put a reassuring hand on her knee. Mendez mentally raised an eyebrow.

“Jane,” Dixon spoke quietly, as if he were talking to a nervous horse. “Chances are Karly is with someone she knows. She probably just went-”

Jane Thomas steeled herself, sitting up a little taller. “Don’t you dare patronize me. We’ve been over this. Karly did not just anything.”

“Miss Thomas?” Mendez tried to bring her attention back to him, a little irritated at his boss for bringing an obviously personal note into the proceedings. “Julie Paulson was a woman found murdered outside of town in April last year. I’m wondering if she might have had a connection to the center.”

“April ’84? I was in Europe for several months. My parents own horses. Their top horse was competing in Germany and Holland. I went with them…”

Mendez knew why people in this situation rambled and digressed. If Jane Thomas was thinking of her parents’ show horses, she couldn’t be thinking about the horror she had seen in the room down the hall.

“Have there been any threats against the center recently?” Dixon asked.

“The usual kooks and religious fanatics.”

“What does ‘usual’ mean?” Mendez asked.

“The a-woman’s-place-is-barefoot-and-pregnant crowd. The whores-should-turn-to-Jesus-or-burn-in-hell crowd. The right-to-lifers, though I’ll never figure that one out. We provide our women with access to medical care. We don’t advocate abortion.”

“Do you keep hate mail?”

“Yes. In a file at the office.”

“We’ll need to see it.”

“Of course.”

“You said the victim-Lisa Warwick-used to work for you. When was that?”

“A few years ago. She was an administrative secretary and she volunteered as a victim’s advocate in her spare time, hand-holding clients who had to deal with the court system. She still does-did-that from time to time.”

“Any cases lately?”

“A few months ago. A client with a drug history was trying to get visitation rights to her children.”

“Was there an angry father involved?”

“No. Actually, in the end the father was so impressed with the progress his ex-wife had made, he withdrew his objection.”