Tami Hoag - Deeper Than the Dead

“Out where?”

“I had dinner at O’Brien’s Pub, watched the American League Championship game. Around nine Steve came into the bar-”

“Steve Morgan?”

“Yeah. We sat around and cried in our beer until closing time.”

“What was his problem?”

“A fight with his wife. What else? She kicked him out.”

“Why did she throw him out?”

“She accused him of having an affair, which has gotten to be a routine thing with her.”

“Is he?” Mendez asked. “Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.”

He didn’t answer for a while, turning words over in his head, trying to choose them carefully. “Steve’s a complicated guy.”

“I don’t care,” Mendez said. “I want to know: Was he having an affair with Lisa Warwick?”

Peter Crane rested his elbows on the table and hung his head, looking defeated.

“Don’t fuck around with me, Dr. Crane,” Mendez said sharply. “The woman was murdered. Was he having an affair with her?”

“Yes.”

Dennis crept through the woods like a commando, crouched low, sometimes crawling on his belly. He had smeared dirt on his face for camouflage and tied a rag around his head like Rambo.

He could hear voices in the park. People talking, kids laughing. People with normal lives. He hated them.

He could see them from the edge of the woods, where he hid behind a tree. Little kids, bigger kids, a couple of adults. He crept a little closer.

They were having fun. They were happy. And there was Cody, who was supposed to be his friend, playing catch with a kid from the fourth grade.

“Hey, Cody,” he said, standing at the very edge where the park became the woods.

Cody glanced over at him and frowned.

“Hey, Cockroach, come ’ere.”

Cody pretended not to hear him.

“Come on,” Dennis said. “I have something cool to show you.”

Cody came a little closer, looking at him kind of suspicious through his stupid, crooked patched-together glasses. “I’m not supposed to play with you, Dennis. My mom said.”

Dennis rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on. I found something. It’s really cool.”

Cody glanced back at the people who had brought him to the park. The kid he had been playing catch with ran over to the swings.

“Come on. Don’t be such a wuss,” Dennis said as he took a step back into the woods.

“I’m not supposed to go in the woods.”

“You’re such a mama’s boy.”

“Am not.”

“Are so.”

Cody looked tempted but unsure.

“I thought we were friends,” Dennis said.

“You’re mean.”

“You’re stupid.” Dennis shrugged his shoulders. “Suit yourself. You’ll just miss it, that’s all.”

He turned sideways and started to walk away, back into the woods. Cody looked back at the playground, then back at Dennis, then back at the playground. Dennis took a few more steps, turning his back. Then footsteps came behind him in the fallen leaves.

Dennis glanced at Cody and started to jog. Cody broke into a trot. They went over a little rise and out of sight of the playground.

Dennis stopped, laughing. Cody ran up on his heels. He was laughing too. Then Dennis turned, still laughing, and plunged the knife into Cody Roache’s belly as deep as it would go.

Wendy sat on the park bench looking out into the woods. She had made a sketch in her notebook showing the scene of the crime-the hill they had jumped off and tumbled down, the rocks and trees, and the grave at the bottom. She was afraid to draw the head of the dead lady, like the drawing would somehow come to life and the head would start talking to her.

That was stupid, of course. If Tommy had been there, he would have told her what a stupid idea that was. Although it might be a good, really creepy thing in their movie: If the head of the dead lady haunted them and followed them around in ghost form, and talked to them about what had happened. And no one would be able to see her except Wendy and Tommy. Unless she wanted to be seen in order to scare people, like Dennis or the killer.

Or maybe, in the movie, Dennis would be the killer. THAT would be really weird. There was nothing scarier in a movie than an evil kid. Dennis wouldn’t even have to be acting, she thought.

She wished now she had called Tommy and prodded him into coming with her to the park. Now, in the full light of a beautiful day, the woods didn’t seem so scary, and she wanted to go back in and retrace their fateful journey from school that day. But it would have been much better if Tommy had been there to help her recount the tale.

It made Wendy mad that Tommy’s mom was so strict. He always had to go to this lesson or that recital. He couldn’t just be a normal kid and play. He had to be here by a certain time and there before dark, and he couldn’t this, and he couldn’t that.

And he wasn’t like Harlan Friedman, who pretended to be weak and allergic to everything so he didn’t have to do gym class or go on field trips. Tommy liked to do stuff. He just didn’t like to get in trouble.

Wendy was in no mood to be that careful. Her parents were already going to be mad at her because she had left the house without permission. She might as well do what she wanted before she got caught. And even when she got caught, what were they supposed to say to her? How could her father talk to her about not breaking the rules, when he was breaking the biggest rule of all himself?

Emboldened by her temper, Wendy hopped off the bench, tucked her notebook under her arm, and started walking. It wasn’t far before she veered off the path and into the part of the woods they had run through on Tuesday with Dennis and Cody chasing them. She remembered calling Dennis Fart man, and wondered if she would be allowed to put that in the movie. Probably so. They let people swear in movies-not movies she was allowed to see, but still…

Here she remembered looking back over her shoulder and Tommy yelling, “Jump!” And down the bank they went, skidding and sliding and tumbling. Wendy took the long way down this time then looked back up the bank. It was like they had fallen into a bowl, she thought, and she opened her notebook and scribbled that down, sticking her tongue out the side of her mouth as she tried to write and walk and look around all at the same time.

Tommy had rolled the farthest, stopping right-

The scream that split the air came so fast and so instinctively that Wendy didn’t even realize it had torn up from her own lungs. There in the grave, half-covered with dead leaves and branches, Cody Roache sat crying, with blood all over his hands and his stomach and his face.

He looked right at Wendy and sobbed, “Dennis killed me!”

Dennis bolted out from behind a tree. He grabbed at Wendy, catching hold of one braid and yanking her off her feet as she tried to run. Her notebook went flying. She landed on all fours and barely managed to dodge sideways enough that Dennis missed her back as he plunged down with the knife.

Scrambling to get up, looking over her shoulder at Dennis, she ran smack into Cody, and they both fell flat. Wendy was covered in blood as she rolled off him and started running, Dennis Farman right on her heels.

Dennis was bigger and stronger, but Wendy was quick. Every time he lunged for her, she managed to arch her back and evade his grasp-until the toe of her sneaker hit squarely on the exposed root of a tree.

She fell hard, the wind going out of her in one big, painful whoosh !

“I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” Dennis screamed over and over.

He fell to his knees on top of her, the knife flying out of his bloody hand as he drew his arm back to stab her. He didn’t seem to notice it was gone and kept bringing his arm down again and again, as if he was driving the knife into her, his fist thumping so hard against her chest she saw stars with each contact.