Tami Hoag - Deeper Than the Dead

Suddenly the doctor was shouting at his staff to GO! and half a dozen people bolted into action, wheeling the gurney out of the exam room and down the hall. Mendez had to jump back out of the way.

The doctor pulled off his bloody gown and gloves and threw them on the floor in disgust.

“How does it look for him?” Mendez asked, holding up his shield.

“He’s lost a lot of blood and he’s still bleeding. I think the blade might have nicked his spleen.”

“Will he make it?”

“He’s on his way to surgery. He can live without a spleen. He can’t live with less than half his blood supply. We’ll know within the hour. Do you have any idea who did this to him?”

“Another kid,” Mendez said. “Where’s the other victim?”

“Room three. Another kid? What’s the world coming to?”

“Nothing good. Have you had any word on Karly Vickers?”

“She’s up in ICU. Stable.”

“Conscious?”

“Don’t get greedy. She’s in a coma. She should be dead.”

The big glass doors whooshed open and a panicked couple-Renee Roache and her husband-rushed in, Mrs. Roache sobbing hysterically.

“That’ll be the Roaches,” the doctor said. “I’d better go talk to them.”

Mendez turned to go down the hall.

“Frank’s not working today,” Hicks said, joining him. “Dixon’s got everyone looking for him. How’s the kid?”

“We’ll know within the hour. He’s on his way to surgery. The other vic is down here.”

Wendy Morgan sat on the table looking like a refugee from a horror movie with blood on her face, on her clothes, on her hands. Mendez showed his badge to the nurse standing beside her, holding her hand.

“Wendy,” he said with genuine concern. “How are you, sweetheart? Are you hurt?”

Big tears welled up in the cornflower blue eyes. “Dennis killed Cody!”

“No, honey. Cody’s hurt pretty bad, but he’s not dead.”

“Dennis had a knife!” she exclaimed. “He tried to stab me with it, but I think he dropped it or something because he was just hitting me over and over with his fist, and I couldn’t breathe, and then I saw-like-stars, and I thought I was going to die, but then somebody grabbed Dennis and dragged him away, and I really wish my mom would get here!”

“She’s on her way, honey,” the nurse said.

“And my dad too.”

“I don’t know if they’ve found him yet, Wendy,” the nurse said. “But your mom will be here any minute.”

“You hang in there, Wendy,” Mendez said, giving the little girl’s shoulder a squeeze. “We’ll check back with you later.”

“The world’s going to hell on a sled,” Hicks said as they went back out into the hall.

“Before it gets there, let’s go upstairs,” Mendez said. “Maybe we’ll witness a miracle and Karly Vickers can name our killer. I want that guy in hell before Armageddon.”

They took the elevator to the fourth floor and went through the glass doors into the intensive care unit. The only sounds were the beeps of monitors and the sighs of respirators. As they approached the nurses’ station, Mendez felt compelled to speak in a hushed whisper as if he were in church or the library.

They both held up their badges. Mendez said, “We’re here to check on Karly Vickers. Is her doctor available?”

“He’s with another patient at the moment.”

“We’ll wait.”

“Her room is right over there. You can wait with her friend.”

“Her friend?” Mendez asked, immediately thinking Jane Thomas.

But when they turned in the direction she indicated the person staring in at Karly Vickers through the glass partition was Steve Morgan.

“No law enforcement agent can legally talk to the boy without a parent or guardian present,” Dixon said. “I’ve got everyone looking for Frank, but no sign of him. And no sign of Mrs. Farman, either.”

They stood in the coffee room watching Dennis Farman on the monitor. The boy had not moved since he had been put in the room.

Anne stared at the black-and-white image of Dennis, thinking he looked very small from the point of view of the video camera high up on the wall. He sat drawing with his finger on the tabletop, looking strangely calm.

Vince had come for her, catching her just as she had been leaving the house to go grocery shopping. There she had been, trying to do one normal thing, and suddenly an FBI agent was asking her to come to the sheriff’s office to speak to her student who had allegedly knifed two kids in the park.

She was beginning to think she would never know “normal” again.

“I’ve called Child Protective Services, but Vince suggested you’re probably more qualified than anyone to try to communicate with him,” Dixon said. “You certainly know him better than anyone here.”

Detective Hicks had called with the names of the two children Dennis had attacked: Cody and Wendy. Cody had been taken to surgery. Anne could only imagine how terrified he must have been. Wendy had no life-threatening wounds. She had been lucky by comparison. But she had already been through an ordeal with Dennis trying to shove a dismembered finger down her throat. Now this.

“I’m not qualified for this,” she said. “I can handle a fight on the playground. But this…”

“You’re more qualified than any of the rest of us, Anne,” Vince said. “The boy needs someone to try to reach out to him. At least until his parents get here. He hasn’t said a word to anyone.”

Anne stared at the monitor, at Dennis. He was eleven years old and he had tried to murder two other children. “What if I say the wrong thing? What if I make it worse?”

“He knifed a ten-year-old boy,” Vince said. “How much worse could you make it?”

Anne thought back to Thursday-God, was that all? Two days ago?-to Dennis’s outburst and what she had told him as they sat together, alone in the classroom. She had told him she would be there for him. She knew he had no one else on his side.

“All right.”

She went into the hall with Vince, then took a deep breath and let it out as he opened the door to the interview room for her.

“I’m right out here if you need me,” he whispered.

Anne nodded and went into the room.

Dennis wouldn’t look at her. He stared down at the blank tabletop, drawing patterns on it with his finger. Anne studied him, wondering if she had ever really noticed that his hair was so red, or that his ears sat a little too low on the sides of his head. Someone had taken him out of his bloodstained shirt and jacket and put him in a man’s sheriff’s office T-shirt that swallowed him up.

“Dennis,” she said softly, carefully easing herself down onto the nearest chair as if she was afraid he might spook like a wild pony.

“I know something really bad happened today. I don’t know exactly why.” Her voice was gentle, quiet, the kind of voice she might use to tell a bedtime story or confess an innocent secret to a friend. “I won’t pretend that I understand what you’re going through. I don’t have any idea. I have a feeling you’ve seen things and been through things I wouldn’t want to imagine.”

He lifted his head then and looked at her. A bruise was spreading across his left cheek, blackening the skin beneath his eye. Coagulated blood knit together his swollen lower lip.

“When can I go home?”

The question was stunning. He wasn’t joking. He wasn’t being sarcastic. An hour ago he had stabbed a playmate so seriously the child could die, and Dennis just wanted to go home.

“Dennis, you won’t be going home,” she said. “You hurt somebody really badly.”

“Just Cody,” he said, as if Cody Roache was no more important to him than a toy he had broken.