Tami Hoag - Deeper Than the Dead

Vince took a deep breath and let it out. “I understand,” he said quietly. “I get it, Frank.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Farman whispered, a terrible pain carving deep into the lines of his face.

“Let’s not make it worse,” Vince said, taking another half step toward him. “Let the man go.”

He kept his eyes on Farman, not flicking so much as a nanosecond’s glance at the door easing open behind him.

Mendez slipped into the room, holding his breath. Three quick strides and he was behind Frank Farman, gun to the back of his head, just as Farman said, “I can’t go to prison.”

“Drop the gun, Frank,” he said. “Right now. It’s over.”

Three things happened simultaneously: Cal Dixon dropped, dead weight, straight down to the floor; Vince Leone shouted NO; and Frank Farman put the barrel of his.38 in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

The bullet traveled on an upward trajectory through the roof of his mouth, through his midbrain, and exited out the back of his skull, two inches right of center, slicing a shallow groove along the outermost edge of Mendez’s cheek and traveling on to bury itself in the wall.

Farman dropped where he stood like a sack of bones, falling across Cal Dixon’s legs, the entire back of his head shattered like an egg.

According to the handsome reporter from LA, THE SIEGE AT THE SHERIFF’S OFFICE was coming to some kind of conclusion. Shots had been fired. The sheriff’s department tactical squad had stormed the building.

Anne was shaking. The conclusion wasn’t guaranteed to be everyone’s happy ending. She wouldn’t relax until she knew Frank Farman had been subdued, one way or another, and that everyone else was safe. That Vince was safe.

Needing something to busy her hands, she brought her purse into the living room and dumped the contents on the ottoman. She actually managed to smile as Tommy’s gift tumbled out. This was what she needed-a sweet surprise.

The box was about the size and shape a ring might come in. Tommy had obviously wrapped it himself. Anne opened it as carefully as if it might contain a Fabergé egg.

Inside the box was a small puddle of fine gold chain. A necklace, she thought, a little bemused. Where did a ten-year-old boy get the money to buy his teacher a necklace? And what would she do if the gift was too extravagant? It would break his heart if she gave it back.

She emptied the box into her hand and carefully sorted out the ends of the chain, lifting it up and letting it unfurl like gold thread.

A simple gold figure dangled from the chain.

A figure of a woman standing with her arms raised in victory.

The necklace Karly Vickers had been wearing in her photo on the MISSING poster.

Anne’s blood ran cold.

Her heart was beating so fast she felt faint. Her hands were trembling so the small golden figure danced this way and that, catching the lamplight.

Where could Tommy have possibly gotten this? Could there be any reasonable explanation that he would have access to a piece of jewelry given only to the women who made it through the Thomas Center program and graduated to independent living?

Her brain stalled as she tried to make sense of it. Had he found it in the woods? Would Lisa Warwick have had one too? It could have fallen in the dirt and leaves. Tommy could have picked it up during that time he and Wendy had been sitting waiting outside the yellow crime-scene tape-the time between finding the body and when she had gotten there.

That didn’t ring true, but her brain wanted to believe it anyway. Funny how the mind would willingly twist itself into a pretzel trying to make sense of something using just the incomplete information it had, filling in its own blanks.

If Frank Farman was the killer, as the newspeople were speculating, maybe Dennis had the necklace, and Tommy somehow had gotten it from Dennis.

Right. Like Dennis would give Tommy anything. Dennis would have beat up Tommy to get the necklace from him. There was no version of that story that worked in the reverse.

Wendy’s father did a lot of work for the center. Maybe somehow Wendy had come by the necklace and Tommy got the necklace from Wendy.

Peter Crane donated his services to the center.

But only women who graduated the program got the gold necklace. Not even Jane Thomas herself wore a gold one.

Of course there would be a perfectly reasonable explanation for it, she thought. There was no reason to find it troubling… and yet she did.

She gathered the necklace into one hand and walked around with it in her fist, as if she thought it might speak to her somehow.

She would have to ask Tommy. Or maybe she would bring it up to his father. There would be an answer.

Sooner rather than later, she thought, as the doorbell rang, and she opened the door to Peter Crane.

“You’re going to have a scar,” Vince said.

“Just one?” Mendez asked.

“The ladies will find that one sexy,” he said, pointing to the angry red line that creased the detective’s cheek. “The ones they can’t see…”

He shrugged and sat down on the stone bench beside Mendez, and leaned his forearms on his thighs.

They sat outside, neither of them noticing the damp chill of the night air. It smelled like lavender and rosemary with a hint of the ocean that stretched beyond the small mountains to the west. It didn’t smell like gunpowder or death.

The media had given up for the night, Dixon shutting them down and sending them on their way. What had happened inside the sheriff’s office might have made for compelling news, but it was also a family tragedy, and enough was enough for one night.

The paramedics had come and gone. Mendez had refused the ride to the hospital. Once he had showered the blood and brain and bone fragments off, a little cut on the cheek didn’t seem like anything to lose time over. He could have just as easily been as dead as Frank Farman.

“You want to share some of that pharmacy you’re carrying around on you?” he asked.

Vince dug the pill bottle out of his jacket pocket and shook a few into his hand.

“I recommend the long white one,” he said. “Unless you’re thinking about having a seizure. Then I’d go for the pink one.”

Mendez arched a brow. “A seizure?”

“The bullet went in right here,” Vince said, pointing just beneath his right cheekbone where an odd smooth shiny patch of new skin smaller than a dime marked the spot. People rarely noticed the scar for what it was. The mustache he had grown since Mendez had last seen him was a far more noticeable feature.

“Bullet?”

“Do I need to call the paramedics back here?” Vince asked. “You’re repeating me.”

“What bullet?”

“If only I’d seen it coming,” he said wistfully. “I could have turned my head a little, maybe got a nice razor line like you. Or maybe ended up with an eye patch. My ex-wife used to have a thing for pirates in the romance novels.”

“What happened?”

“The Reader’s Digest version: a junkie mugger with a cheap.22. That’s the thing about those small caliber handguns-what goes into the vic doesn’t always come out.”

“You’re walking around with a head full of lead?” Mendez said, incredulous.

“Explains a lot, doesn’t it?”

“Actually, yeah.”

“I’m officially on a medical leave.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“Uh… because I don’t want anyone to know,” Vince said. “Call me paranoid, but I think people treat a guy different when they know he’s got a bullet in his head.”

“You should be dead.”

“Yeah. But I’m not,” he said with a shadow of the big white grin. “Life’s a funny old dog. Don’t take it for granted, kid.”