Tami Hoag - Deeper Than the Dead

He sat on the bench next to Wendy, watching Mr. Alvarez encourage the hapless and scrawny Kim Karloff to try to hold the bat upright. She looked like she was going to fall over from the weight of it.

“This is so lame,” he said.

Wendy didn’t comment. She had been very quiet all morning. Tommy reached over and poked her to make sure she was still alive. The words “quiet” and “Wendy” didn’t go together.

“What’s the matter with you?” Tommy asked.

“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.”