Tami Hoag - Deeper Than the Dead

She had to try to help herself.

Having no idea how far it might be to the ground, she started to slide off the table, reaching downward with her toes. And there was the floor. It was cold. Pain bolted up her legs, up her spine to her brain. The soles of her feet had been cut numerous times. The half-closed wounds burst open as she put weight on her feet. It had been so long since she had been upright, her legs felt as if they didn’t really belong to her.

She gripped the edge of the table, fighting not to pass out or collapse to the floor. She couldn’t think about the pain. She had to fight.

Slowly, she began to walk. One step and then another. She clutched the edge of the table as she inched along. If she could make it to a wall, she would follow the wall around until she came to a door. When she found a door, she would go through it.

Without sight or hearing she had a difficult time trying to balance. Her head felt as huge and heavy as a bowling ball perched on top of her neck. As she moved it would feel as if the bowling ball began to roll one way and she would overcorrect and tip in the other direction.

She began to panic when she realized the table was not sitting against a wall. She would have to walk across open space.

Three steps and she couldn’t tell up from down. She stumbled and flailed with her arms, pitched forward. She didn’t realize she was falling until she hit the hard floor. Because she was disoriented, she didn’t even try to break the fall with her hands. She hit the floor head-first, her skull hitting so hard it bounced twice before she lost consciousness.

She didn’t know how long she had been out when she came around again. It didn’t matter. She had to get out. Maybe she would walk out a door into a neighborhood and someone would see her and call for help. Or she might walk out into the wilderness, wander aimlessly, and die of exposure. At least that would be on her own terms.

Karly pushed herself up onto her hands and knees and began to crawl. Better to stay on the ground, and still she lost her balance and fell again and again. She ran into a cabinet and slowly felt her way up the front of it until she was standing again.

Her hands swept over the surface-a counter, cluttered with things, tools maybe. Maybe she could find a weapon. Each object she picked up she carefully studied with her fingers until she found a screwdriver. That would do. She could stab someone with a screwdriver. Maybe she could gouge his eyes out, blind him as he had blinded her. Maybe she could sink it into his body and tear at his internal organs as he had torn at her.

Adrenaline came with the ideas of revenge. She began to feel giddy. Laughter bounced up and down inside her chest. The laughter segued into hysteria. She was losing it. She had to pull herself from that mental ledge. She had to keep going. She had to keep moving. She had to get out.

Now that she had found a wall, she lowered herself back down to the ground and began to crawl again. There had to be a door. And she had to get out.

Dawn was a pale sliver of color on the eastern horizon when Mendez pulled into Gordon Sells’s salvage yard. Despite the hour, the place was a hive of activity.

Crime scene teams from two counties and the state Bureau of Forensic Sciences were working over the property. Besides the trailer house, the place was cluttered with garages and sheds half falling down-all packed with machinery, parts, cars, and junk of all varieties. Behind the salvage business was a dilapidated barn and a pen full of twenty to thirty hogs. As if the place wasn’t disgusting enough to begin with.

Mendez went on in search of Dixon. In an hour the main investigative team would meet and they would be briefed as to what had been found so far during the search.

He walked down the field of cars, the dew-damp grass soaking his shoes and wetting the hem of his pants. A crowd had gathered at the end of the first rows. Deputies, people in street clothes, forty or fifty volunteers in search and rescue windbreakers, all milled around, waiting for something to happen.

Photographers and camera crews from half a dozen television stations recorded the event while on-air reporters stood in front of blinding portable lights relating the latest to viewers of the early morning news programs in LA and Santa Barbara and who-knew-where.

Jane Thomas and Steve Morgan stood in the flood of harsh light with Petal the pit bull sitting at Jane’s feet. Dixon stood behind the camera crew with his arms crossed over his chest. Mendez stepped up beside him.

“… as you can see,” Jane Thomas was saying to the blonde with the microphone, “a ground search has been organized and will be getting under way shortly. I encourage any of your viewers who might be able to join the search. Karly Vickers has been missing now for an entire week. It’s imperative that we do all we can to find her.”

“And I understand your center has posted a reward,” the blonde said.

“Yes, the Thomas Centers for Women have established a reward of ten thousand dollars for information leading to Karly’s recovery and to the conviction of the person who took her.”

“A tip line has been set up…”

“How’s she holding up?” Mendez asked quietly.

“She feels better doing something,” Dixon said. “She’s got the women at the center helping with the hotline, running off posters, helping organize food and beverages for the searchers.”

The reporter introduced Steve Morgan. He spoke about the importance of the Thomas Center to the community, and about the professionals-like himself-who donated their time and services to the center.

“I hope to God they don’t find a body out there,” Dixon said.

“The odds of finding this girl alive are getting longer by the day,” Mendez said.

“It’s not impossible. Maybe Sells-if Sells is our man-decided he had to lay low for a while and he’s got her stashed. Maybe he was enjoying this girl more than the other. Maybe he decided to keep her.”

None of that seemed very likely to Mendez but he kept that to himself for now.

“Sells hasn’t said anything yet?” Dixon asked.

“He told me to go fuck myself, but that’s not what you wanted to hear.”

“What a nightmare,” Dixon said. “I moved up here to get away from this kind of craziness.”

“Bad is everywhere, boss.”

The sky was brightening enough to see beyond the lights. The field beyond the cars was tinted green from rain they had had the week before, and studded with the big spreading oak trees the area was known for. It was a pretty place, a place where people might want to have a picnic, not to search for a corpse.

“Did you talk to Farman?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“How did that go?”

“About how you’d think,” Dixon said. “I assigned him to desk duty. He’s not a happy camper. But I didn’t have a choice. I can’t have any hint of impropriety in this investigation. When these cases go to trial, I’m not going to have some defense attorney get up and point out that we had a potential suspect working the investigation.”

“Are we supposed to consider him a suspect?”

“No, of course not.”

“His wife has a connection to the Thomas Center.”

Dixon looked at him. “How?”

“She’s a secretary at Quinn, Morgan.”

Dixon frowned darkly. “I asked him about the ticket he wrote Karly Vickers. He says he didn’t remember her, which is why he didn’t say anything about it.”

“He didn’t remember stopping a woman that we’re now looking for?” Mendez said. “We’ve all been looking at her picture for two days. We’re looking for a ten-year-old gold Chevy Nova. He stopped that car with that woman in it, and he didn’t remember?”