Tami Hoag - Deeper Than the Dead

“I’ll only ask him about the finger.”

He started toward the table then turned back in an afterthought. “Thank you, Miss Navarre. You’ve been very helpful.”

“I’m staying,” Anne said firmly.

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m staying while you talk to Dennis,” Anne said. “He’s my responsibility as long as he’s in this building.”

Mendez shrugged. “That’s fine.”

She grabbed hold of the sleeve of his sport coat as he started to turn away again. He swung back around and looked at her.

“And I don’t want you asking him about the drawings,” she said, keeping her tone low. “He doesn’t know I have the notebook. I don’t want him to know I betrayed his trust. I want to be able to help him-if I can.”

They went to the table together then and sat down to interview Dennis Farman. But Dennis had nothing to say. Not one word. He wouldn’t tell them how the finger came to be in his possession. He wouldn’t talk at all, and no amount of threats or cajoling could change his mind. He sat mute, staring down at the tabletop with God knew what churning around in his head.

Hicks headed back to the office to see if anything had come in on his background checks of the staff at the Thomas Center. Vince and Mendez walked out of the school and stood on the sidewalk waiting for Frank Farman to show up. The other kids were long gone before they had even made it to the scene-Tommy Crane picked up by his father and taken to the ER, Wendy Morgan picked up by her father also.

“Those are some violent fantasies that kid has running around in his head,” Vince said, offering Mendez a stick of Doublemint gum. “He’s got some deep-seated anger. Why is that? Kids don’t come out of the chute like that. It’s learned behavior. Who did he learn it from?”

“Frank’s wound a little too tight,” Mendez said. “But I don’t see him drawing pictures of women with knives stuck in their breasts.”

“That boy is a perfect candidate to go all wrong and end up really hurting someone. You’ll have to keep your eye on him for years to come.”

“Great. I hope the Cranes press charges. We can pack him off to a juvenile facility.”

“And he’ll be all straightened out when he comes out of there,” Vince said sarcastically.

They just stood there for a minute, taking in the momentary quiet, each turning their thoughts over in their heads.

“The teacher’s cute,” Vince said at last.

“Yeah.”

“She’s got spunk, sticking up for her kids. I like that,” he said. He looked at Mendez out the corner of his eye. “Have you asked her out?”

Mendez startled at the question. “What? No! I’m in the middle of a case.”

Vince shrugged. “A guy’s gotta eat.”

“I just met her yesterday.”

“So? I just met her an hour ago.”

Mendez stared at him. “You asked her out? She’s young enough to be your daughter!”

“Yeah,” he said, grinning. “But she isn’t.”

“I can’t believe you asked her out! In the middle of all of that, you asked her out.”

“We’re meeting for dinner. To talk about the kids,” he added.

“She doesn’t know it’s a date.”

“She knows she’s having dinner with a charming gentleman at a very nice Italian restaurant.”

“I can’t believe you asked her out,” Mendez said. “She’s part of the investigation.”

“She’s not a vic. She’s not a witness. And she’s not the perp,” Vince pointed out. “There’s no conflict of interest. Life is short, junior. Carpe diem.”

A county cruiser pulled up at the curb and Frank Farman got out, his face a mask of steel.

“I can’t believe this,” he said half under his breath. “He had a finger?”

“He had to have taken it off Lisa Warwick,” Mendez said. “She was missing an index finger at autopsy.”

“For God’s sake,” Farman said, jamming his hands on his hips. “I don’t know what’s wrong with that boy. I try to set him straight, and he does something like this.”

“He beat up the Crane kid pretty bad,” Mendez said. “They might want to press charges.”

“Jesus Christ.” He looked one way and then the other, as if he expected Christ to appear on command.

He didn’t get Christ. He got Anne Navarre. The teacher marched out of the building with all the determination of Napoleon.

“Mr. Farman, can I have a word with you?”

“I really don’t have the time-”

“You don’t have the time to discuss the fact that your son brought a human finger to school today? What could you possibly have going on more urgent than dealing with this?”

“I have a job to do, Miss Navarre.”

“Yes. It’s called parenting . It comes with having children. Does it not mean anything to you that your son is having serious problems here?”

Vince watched Farman’s face redden. The deputy wouldn’t take being dressed down in front of his peers. Anne Navarre seemed to have no regard. She stood up to him like an angry mouse taunting a lion.

“Dennis needs help. Professional help.”

Farman leaned toward her, trying to intimidate her with his size. “I don’t need you telling me how to raise my own kid. My wife is coming to deal with Dennis.”

“I should be glad,” she said. “At least the beating will be postponed.”

“How dare you,” Farman growled, taking a menacing step toward her.

Vince stepped between them. “Let’s take a break here, folks. Cool down.”

He herded Anne Navarre a few steps away just as Sharon Farman pulled to the curb behind the cruiser. Frank Farman took a deliberate breath and let it out slowly like releasing steam from a pressure cooker.

“My wife will deal with Dennis,” he said, turning to Mendez. “We have to go.”

“Where?”

“It just came over the radio,” Farman said. “The air search located the two cars: Lisa Warwick’s and Karly Vickers’s. Dixon wants us on the scene.”

The cars were parked in a field with a hundred others. Hiding in plain sight. The field belonged to a scrap dealer named Gordon Sells.

Mendez got out of his car and walked into a circus. The sheriff’s office helicopter had landed, but three other helicopters adorned with logos of LA television stations hovered overhead, blades beating the air. News vans clogged the sides of the country road, and cameramen and reporters were swarming the area like mosquitoes frantic to land on something juicy.

Frank Farman shouted instructions at half a dozen deputies trying to cordon off the scene with yellow tape. Dixon stood near Karly Vickers’s gold Chevy Nova, instructing his photographer and videographer as they captured every possible angle of the car, the cars around the car, the ground around the car.

“Tony. Good,” Dixon said. “We’re going to haul the cars in and process them in our garage.”

“Right. Where’s Lisa Warwick’s car?”

“Two rows back.” He pointed in the direction of several deputies, who stood guard around that car. “The chopper pilot said this car definitely came onto the property from a back gate off a dirt road. He could still see the tracks in the grass.”

“In the last couple of days,” Mendez said.

“And now we’ve got the press all over us,” Dixon said. “Someone heard about the eyes and mouths being glued shut on Warwick and Julie Paulson.”

“Shit. We have a leak in our department?”

“I don’t know where it came from.”

“It could have come from the killer,” Mendez said. “Vince thinks the guy wants publicity.”

“Where is he?”

“At his hotel. He’s working on the profile.”

And a date with Anne Navarre, he thought, still out of sorts about it, even though it was none of his business, and it wasn’t exactly a date. Leone wanted an angle on the kids. Crane’s father was the last person to have seen Karly Vickers. Wendy Morgan’s father had a connection to Lisa Warwick. And the Farman kid was a budding serial killer who had the victim’s severed finger as a souvenir. Any insights she could give them would be welcome.