Tami Hoag - Deeper Than the Dead

She said nothing, but her eyes got wider.

“I don’t know how much you’ve been told by Detective Mendez,” he went on, “but there is reason to believe Lisa Warwick-the woman your students found in the park-was the latest victim in a series of at least three murders.”

“Oh my God.”

“Another woman is missing. So, you can see, it’s imperative that we try to learn as much as we can from every possible avenue.”

“I don’t know what I can do,” she said. “I teach fifth grade.”

“Detective Mendez told me you have a pretty good handle on who your kids are. I saw that for myself this afternoon.”

She laughed without humor. “Oh, yeah. I’m so sharp I had no idea Dennis Farman was having homicidal fantasies.”

“Why would you suspect that?” Vince asked. “How many people would look at a kid in the fifth grade and peg him for a future killer? Nobody. That’s highly aberrant behavior. No normal-thinking person would look for that.”

“And that’s where you come in?”

He gave her half a smile. “Yeah. I’ve been experienced right out of normal thinking. I’ve spent a long time studying murderers and trying to figure out how they got that way and what makes them tick.”

“How do you sleep with that in your head?”

“Great,” he admitted, “as long as I’m medicated.”

“Why do you do it?”

“Because maybe if I’m good enough at what I do, I can prevent some innocent people from dying. Maybe I can spot a kid like Dennis Farman and get the right people to pay attention to him. I’m sure you can relate to that.”

She nodded and looked away, a soft sheen of moisture coming into her eyes.

“I’m sorry you have to get dragged into this world, Anne,” Vince said, genuinely sorry for her. She probably still had ideals, and she probably still believed the world could hold up to them. “I know this is hard for you.”

“I’m afraid the right people aren’t going to pay attention to Dennis,” she said. “Especially not now. He’s being expelled from school. He’ll be running around loose, with no supervision, no guidance. Who’s supposed to police him? His parents work. And even if they were home, they must be terrible parents or he wouldn’t be the way he is.”

Vince sighed. He would have been agreeing with her if he hadn’t wanted to keep her from crying. In fact, if he had been teaching a seminar, using Dennis Farman for an example, he would have said it was probably already too late to save him.

His colleagues back in Quantico would think the same. He had sent them Dennis Farman’s drawing by fax. He would talk to them the next day, but he already knew what they would say. They would say Dennis Farman already had well-established violent, antisocial behavioral tendencies. His artwork already showed sadistic fantasies-sadistic sexual fantasies in a child who had yet to reach puberty. There probably wasn’t going to be any fixing what was wrong with this kid.

But he wasn’t about to say any of that to Anne.

“You’re right in what you told his father,” he said instead. “The boy should have psychiatric counseling.”

“And what army is going to make his father believe that?” she asked. “Frank Farman probably thinks he can beat the bad out of Dennis.”

The strain of the day’s events was taking a toll on her. Vince reached across the table, put his big hand over her small one and gave it a squeeze.

“Don’t give up, Anne. Not yet. You fought for that boy today. You stood up to Mendez and me, you stood up to his dad. He needs someone on his side.”

One crystalline tear slipped over the edge of her lashes and down her cheek as she looked away from him, embarrassed.

“Hey, come on,” Vince cajoled, his voice soft. “No crying. You’ll ruin my reputation as a ladies’ man.”

He won a little smile for that one.

“Are you a ladies’ man?” she asked, visibly relieved for the distraction.

“That all depends on the lady,” he admitted.

Her cheeks bloomed pink and she glanced away, still harboring the little smile. She extricated her hand from under his, wiped the stray tear away and tucked a strand of brown hair behind her ear.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t usually fall apart that easily.”

“I’m betting you never fall apart at all,” he said. “But you don’t usually have a kid bring a severed human finger to your classroom either. I think you can cut yourself some slack.”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

Their food arrived. Her caprese salad, his baked ziti. Vince pushed his plate at her.

“Eat,” he ordered. “Have some ziti. My Italian mother’s cure for everything. She would tell you Avete bisogno della vostra resistenza! Ci e niente a voi!

She seemed pleased with his flamboyant Italian. “What does that mean?”

“You need your strength. You’re too skinny. My mother thinks everyone under two hundred pounds is too skinny. Never mind that I can pick her up with one hand.”

“How old is she?”

“Eighty-two. And your mother?”

“Passed away.” She dropped her eyes and picked at a piece of pasta. “A few years ago. Pancreatic cancer.”

“I’m sorry,” Vince said. The different turn Anne Navarre’s life had taken. Her mother died. She left school. “And your father?”

“Will outlive both of us, despite his alleged poor health.”

She didn’t seem especially happy about the prospect.

“You still haven’t told me how I’m supposed to help your investigation,” she said. Back to business.

He stuck a fork in his side of the pasta. “Tell me about Tommy Crane.”

She thought he’d thrown her a curve ball. She looked up at him, suspicious again. “Why would you want to know about Tommy?”

“We have to pursue all possible angles in a case like this,” he said. “Understand?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not saying the investigation is going in one direction or another at this point. We’re still trying to piece together the last day anyone saw Karly Vickers, the missing girl. Miss Vickers had a dentist’s appointment last Thursday. It was her last appointment of the day.”

“With Peter Crane.”

“So far, he’s the last person to have seen her-that we know of.”

“You can’t possibly think he’s involved,” she said. “He’s the nicest man. Tommy adores his father.”

“I didn’t say he was a suspect. He’s not even a person of interest at this point,” Vince explained. “But he is the last person to have seen this young woman. We have to account for his whereabouts that night. I would like to do that as discreetly as possible.”

“I can’t tell you anything about that,” she said. “But I can tell you he seems to be a wonderful father. Now Tommy’s mother, on the other hand…”

“Difficult?”

“The Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland . Ask Detective Mendez.”

“And what’s Tommy like?”

“He loves baseball, he plays the piano, and has a better head for math than I do,” she said with a crooked smile. “He’s smart, thoughtful, quiet. Every mother’s dream.”

“Outgoing?”

“No. Tommy is an observer,” she said, very much in her element talking about her student, analyzing what made him tick. They weren’t so different that way. She wanted to get into their little heads, figure them out. “He stands back and watches what’s happening before he decides on a course of action.”

“He got his butt kicked today.”

“He was coming to the rescue for Wendy-the girl Dennis attacked. And he did that knowing full well Dennis would kick his butt.”

Vince smiled. “Chivalry lives on.”

“That’s the kind of boy he is. And by Tommy’s accounts, that’s the kind of man his father is.”