Tami Hoag - Deeper Than the Dead

Hicks put Sells in one interview room and left him there. Mendez stuck the nephew in the room next door. The two of them walked down the hall to get coffee. It was going to be a long night.

“What do you think?” Hicks said.

“The guy gives me the creeps,” Mendez said. “You running his record? He’s got to have a sheet.”

“Not back yet, but I agree.”

“Did he ask for a lawyer?”

“Not yet.”

“If we can book him for the car theft, we get his prints. I called the ADA for search warrants.”

Hicks made a face. “I can’t wait to look under the furniture in that place.”

“I’ll flip you for the bathroom.”

“Oh, man…”

They doctored their coffees and went to their desks. Sells and his nephew could sit and reflect.

Hicks checked the message slips that had been left on his desk and held one up. “Greg Usher-Karly Vickers’s ex-is doing a nickel in LA County for growing pot in his apartment.”

“Cross him off the list.”

“Here’s a good one. One of the maintenance guys at the Thomas Center has a record. His current name is an alias.”

“A record for what?”

Hicks raised a brow. “Car theft among other things.”

“Anything violent?”

“Domestic violence on a girlfriend six years ago.”

“Can we pick him up for something?”

Hicks laughed. “He has outstanding parking and traffic violations to the tune of four hundred and fifty-eight dollars.”

Mendez shook his head.

The phone they shared between their two desks rang. He picked it up and listened, and when he hung up he said, “I can trump your car thief. Gordon Sells has a record. As a sex offender.”

“It’s not a date,” Anne insisted.

“It had better be a date. Chinese night is sacrosanct,” Franny said as they walked from the downtown parking lot toward the plaza. “This is Detective Hottie?”

“This is a different detective,” Anne said evasively.

“Also a hottie?”

“He’s old enough to be my father,” she said, even though she certainly hadn’t reacted to him that way. Her father had thirty years on Vince Leone.

“Oooh, kinky, but I can totally see it,” Franny said.

Anne gave him a look. “Thanks. I’m glad I have such an adventurous sex life in your head.”

“You should be. It’s the only sex life you have.”

She couldn’t argue that.

“You’re attracted to him,” he declared slyly. “You changed clothes.”

“So did you.”

“But I didn’t go from Nancy Novice Nun to showing off my perky little breasts in a clingy sweater.”

“You’re horrible to me,” Anne said. “Isn’t this what you want me to do? Wear something different?”

“Yes, but you never listened before,” he pointed out.

“This is a perfectly conservative sweater,” Anne grumbled. And her moss-colored skirt was a perfectly conservative-if slightly form-fitting-skirt that hit just below the tops of her low-heeled brown boots.

The sidewalks and streets were busy. College kids roamed in packs, laughing and talking, heading to the bookstore, to the coffeehouse, to ladies’ night at the Buddha Bar. The restaurants were busy. Musicians parked themselves on street corners, playing for change.

“I’m coming to the restaurant,” Franny declared.

“No, you aren’t. You’re going for Chinese.”

“I can’t go for Chinese without you. It wouldn’t be right.”

“Don’t hold back on my account, really.”

“You never answered me,” he said. “Is he hot?”

Hot wasn’t the right word. Honestly, Mendez was hot. Leone was ruggedly handsome, yet distinguished… Anne felt a blush creeping up her neck, much to her consternation. “No.”

“Liar!” Franny exclaimed, laughing, highly amused.

Anne stopped and looked at him. “Why am I speaking to you?”

He kissed her on the cheek. “Because I just took your mind off the fact you have the Marquis de Sade Junior for a pupil. Run along now, Anne Marie. Don’t want to keep your gentleman friend waiting.”

Shaking her head, Anne walked across the plaza to Piazza Fontana, to her non-date.

“It’s not a date,” Vince muttered to himself as he straightened his tie in the men’s room mirror.

What the hell had he been thinking? Anne Navarre probably hadn’t even been born yet when he joined the Bureau. He had to be out of his mind. Maybe he should start taking the antipsychotic drugs, after all.

And asking her in the middle of what had been going on at the school-definitely a sign of brain damage.

It was the bullet’s fault. A hallmark of damage to the frontal lobe of the brain: impulsive behavior.

He was feeling edgy, that end-of-the-day out-of-gas nervousness that usually precipitated a big crash. He had managed a short rest after Mendez dropped him off, and he had dozed under the lights of the tanning machine in the salon, but it hadn’t been enough. He needed about seventeen hours of sleep. At least he had a healthy glow in his face now thanks to a gazillion watts of fluorescent light and his easy-to-tan Italian complexion.

“Maybe you’re just old, Vince,” he muttered.

Then again, he should have been dead. So what the hell? Why shouldn’t he have dinner with a lovely, intelligent twentysomething lady?

He spotted her entering the restaurant as he stepped out of the men’s room. She looked very… determined, he decided, determined to be serious, determined to be taken seriously. She also looked a lot less like an elementary schoolteacher in her body-skimming sweater and stylish skirt. Nice.

“Miss Navarre,” he said with his most charming smile. “You look lovely.”

“Detective-”

“Vince, please. It’s been a long day for both of us. Let’s shelve the formalities, shall we?”

The maitre d’ led them through the restaurant’s interior to a quiet booth in a corner. Miss Navarre raised an eyebrow.

“We don’t want eavesdroppers,” Vince explained. “This isn’t a conversation for public consumption, all things considered.”

He ordered a bottle of pinot grigio and two glasses-not that he would be able to drink it considering the drugs he was on, but he could pretend to while the lovely Anne loosened up a bit. She looked just this side of suspicious.

“Are you allowed to drink on the job?”

Vince grinned. “Darling, life is too short not to drink wine.”

“Okay. Well, I can certainly use it.”

“You’re not used to having your school overrun with detectives?”

“Not before this week.”

“How long have you been a teacher?”

“Five years.” It seemed like that was all she was going to say, but then she hastened to add, “But I had a double major in college, which took an extra year, and then a year of grad school.”

So she wasn’t as close to being jailbait as one might have thought. She had to be twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He wanted to smile at her need to set him straight on that, but he refrained.

“What was your other major?”

“Psychology. I wanted to be a child psychologist, but-” She stopped herself from being so eager. “Life… took a different turn.”

“Funny how that happens.”

Anne looked away, took a deep breath, and sighed. She was embarrassed, he thought. She probably didn’t just go around telling her life story to strangers-or to people she knew, for that matter. He pegged her for the kind of woman who confided in one friend, if she confided in anyone, cautious in the way of an old soul-or a wounded one.

The waiter brought the wine. Vince sampled it and nodded his approval. They ordered their meals, sipped at their glasses.

“Anne,” he said. “I have a confession to make. I don’t work for the sheriff’s office. I’m a special agent with the FBI. For now, it’s better that isn’t common knowledge. My specialty is profiling serial killers.”