Deeper Than the Dead

94

In the days that followed, properties Peter Crane might have accessed using his wife’s lock-box key were searched, but no madman’s lair was discovered. Wherever Crane had tortured and killed his victims remained a mystery—along with any physical evidence that might have tied him to the crimes.

Karly Vickers had begun to recover from her ordeal. She had been taken off the ventilator and was breathing on her own, but communication with her was difficult. While she could speak a few words at a time in a hoarse whisper, she could neither see nor hear. She had not indicated that she knew the identity of her attacker.

Doctors had expressed hope of repairing some of the damage to her ears and possibly giving her back at least partial hearing. While that was good news, it was a long shot, and would be a long time coming.

Vince doubted the young woman would have much to tell them at any rate. He didn’t believe for a minute Peter Crane had made the mistake of leaving a victim alive. Karly Vickers was his masterpiece, his living tribute to his own criminal cunning and brilliance. She was Peter Crane saying, Look how much smarter I am than the cops. I give them a victim back and they still don’t know who I am.

Crane might have given her back, but he would have damn well made sure she wouldn’t be able to tell them anything.

It was chilling to think how long Crane might have gone on with his killing career. And just as chilling to imagine how long it had gone on to that point. His crimes were too sophisticated, his fantasies too finely honed for the three victims they knew of to have been his first.

The Bureau was thoroughly involved at that point, Vince being officially assigned to pursue the case and investigate Peter Crane’s past. It would be his last case as an agent. And while he had had an illustrious career, he was focused on what would come: his life with Anne.

Dixon had given him a desk in the war room. He sat now reviewing videotape, playing the interview forward, rewinding, replaying.

Mendez came in with lunch.

“Jane Thomas had Karly Vickers taken out on the hospital lawn in a wheelchair this morning so she could pet her dog. That’s going to be the first seeing-eye pit bull in history,” he said, putting the bags down on the table. He nodded at the television. “Why are you looking at that?”

“Come sit down.”

It was Dixon’s interview of Janet Crane the night her husband had abducted Anne. Vince watched, fascinated, as Peter Crane’s wife led Cal Dixon around in circles.

She had collapsed in hysterical tears after Vince had left the room that night, supposedly driven to panic by the idea of her son in the hands of a madman. Dixon had offered her comfort, coffee, to call a doctor. She had refused all, preferring to carry on intermittently.

Dixon had continued with the interview. They needed answers from her. Where did Peter like to go? Was there a particular place he might feel safe to hide? Were there vacant properties she knew of that he could get into using her key? Places that were hidden, out of the way, forgotten?

Around and around they went. Dixon got nothing. Janet Crane got attention.

It probably wasn’t even conscious on her part. That was just how she operated and had since childhood, Vince suspected.

She couldn’t believe this was happening to her.

To her. Not to her son, not to Anne, not to any of the other lives her husband had wrecked and ruined.

“What a bitch,” Mendez said.

“What a case study,” Vince corrected him. “She’s a textbook narcissist. Everything in her world revolves around her. The rest of us are just actors in her play.”

He paused the tape, rewound it again, found the bit he wanted Mendez to watch: the point in the interview when he had laid out Lisa Warwick’s autopsy photo in front of Janet Crane.

Mendez said nothing.

Vince rewound and replayed.

He turned to his protégé and said, “She doesn’t look away. She doesn’t look away, and she doesn’t become hysterical for a full two minutes.”

“She’s in shock,” Mendez offered.

“She’s enjoying it.”

Mendez looked at him like he was crazy. “No way.”

Vince rewound the tape and played it again, and again. He wound it back to an earlier point in the interview.

“. . . your son, Tommy, is missing,” he said. “I believe that they are both probably with your husband, and that they are both in grave danger.”

“Peter would never hurt Tommy,” she said, lifting a forefinger for emphasis. “Never.”

“‘Peter would never hurt Tommy.’ She doesn’t say Peter would never hurt anybody. She doesn’t say he wouldn’t hurt Anne,” Mendez said, frowning. “And when we went to their house that night and told her her husband had abducted a woman, she never asked who.”

“Either she knew, or she didn’t care,” Vince said. “Or both.

“Janet Crane volunteers at the Thomas Center. She knows the staff wears the silver necklace. She knows only the graduates wear the gold necklace. The boy gave the necklace to Anne. He had to have found it in their house.”

“If Janet Crane knew that necklace was there . . . ,” Mendez started.

“She had to have known where it came from,” Vince said.

“Jesus,” Mendez muttered, staring at the video monitor, watching Janet Crane play Cal Dixon like a concert violin. “I spoke to her this morning. I’m trying to get her to bring Tommy in to speak with us.”

“She’ll never let it happen,” Vince said.

“She told me she was taking him today to see a psychiatrist in Beverly Hills. She should see if she can get a two-for-one discount.

“Do you really think she knew all along?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Vince said, shutting off the monitor. “And even if I said yes, what I think and what I can prove are two very different things.”