Deeper Than the Dead

26

“Tell me about Deputy Farman,” Vince said before Mendez could ask him about his health.

They walked across the lot to a car parked under the shade of an oak tree. Vince got in and rolled the window down so he could continue to take in the fresh air and the smells of California nature.

“He’s an old-school tight ass,” Mendez said.

“You have a real grasp of the obvious there. And I could tell as soon as he stepped in the room you and him probably don’t spend a lot of time bowling and drinking beer together. I want to know who he is.”

“He’s army. Did a tour in ’Nam. He’s been on the job here a little longer than me. Dixon hired him out of LA County.”

“So they go back.”

“Yeah.”

“If Dixon brought him here, he must be a good cop.”

“Yeah. Commendations out the wazoo. He’s a hard-ass, though. If you’re two miles over the speed limit he’ll pull you over and write you up. No mercy. He’s all about the rules. All about the uniform.”

“Rigid.”

“Like a ramrod.”

Mendez started the car and cranked up the air-conditioning.

“He doesn’t like me,” he confessed. “He sees me as some arrogant affirmative action prick who jumped the food chain because I didn’t come up the ranks right before his eyes. And I don’t need to tell you, but he doesn’t like you either.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Vince said. “That’s nothing new. Every department has a Frank Farman. Some of them have nothing but Frank Farmans. We’re ahead of the game here.

“Profiling is still a relatively new tool, and it’s subjective. Guys like Farman want hard physical evidence. They don’t trust a guy like me who’s going to come in here and tell him the killer probably tortured squirrels as a kid and talks with a lisp. They need to see for themselves it’s a useful tool. The only way to do that is for me to do my job well.”

Mendez turned the car around and headed out of the parking lot.

“Let me tell you something, kid,” Vince said. “This will get you further in life and in this business than anything else anyone will ever teach you.

“Leave your ego at home and find a way to make it work with whoever you have to work with. Other cops, witnesses, vics, perps, whoever you’re dealing with—learn to figure out in a hurry what makes them tick. If you can do that, you can always get what you need. Even from the Frank Farmans of the world.

“When I was going around interviewing serial killers for the criminal personality research project, do you think I would have gotten anywhere with those creeps if I had gone in, looked them in the eyes, and told them what I really thought of them? Hell no. I had to figure out in five seconds what each of them was about and adjust my approach accordingly.

“What do I care if some serial rapist thinks I agree with his views that all women are whores? That’s his perception; it’s not my reality. Get it?”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“You may be shocked to know this,” he said sardonically. “I’m not by nature the first guy the Bureau goes looking for as an agent. But this is the work I wanted to do, and the Bureau is the place to do it. I learned to navigate the system. Remember that.”

Mendez gave him a curious look. “Why are you telling me this?”

“’Cause you’re good, kid. You’re sharp. I want you to be all you can be.”

“You sound like a recruiting ad. Here’s something interesting about Farman: His son was one of the kids that found the body. Frank won’t let me talk to him.”

“Is it necessary for you to talk to him?”

“Wendy, the little girl of the group, told me Dennis touched the corpse,” Mendez said, brushing the question aside. “Frank let the kid hang around the crime scene until Dixon told him he had to send the kid home.”

“That’s a little odd.”

“I mean, he made the boy stay outside the tape, but still. Frank said the kid had already seen the body, why not let him see how a crime scene gets processed.”

“How old is the boy?”

“Ten, eleven, something like that. He’s a fifth grader. And his teacher left a message for me last night that prior to finding this body, the kid had been talking about there being bodies buried in those woods.”

“And your pal Frank hasn’t mentioned that?” Vince said.

“No.”

“He probably figures the kid was just being a kid,” Vince speculated. “But in light of what’s happened . . . you need to talk to the boy.”

They pulled into a crushed stone parking lot and got out of the car. The sprawling white stucco building in front of them wore a discreet bronze plaque near the main entrance: THE THOMAS CENTER FOR WOMEN.

Inside, the main hall was cool and welcoming, the walls a warm shade of yellow, the old Mexican paver floors polished. They went to the front desk and Mendez asked for Jane Thomas.

“Nice place,” Vince said as they waited.

“It’s an amazing place,” Mendez said. “A lot of the women come from abusive backgrounds, some are coming out of drug rehab, or even jail. The center offers counseling, helps the women prepare themselves to enter the work force. Their program has gotten a lot of national attention.”

“With one dead former employee and one missing client, they’re about to get more,” Vince said.

A tall, well-dressed blonde woman around forty emerged from an office down the hall.

“Detective Mendez?” She glanced from him to Vince and back, clearly worried they were there to deliver bad news.

“Ms. Thomas, this is—”

“Detective Leone,” Vince said, offering his hand.

“Can we speak privately with you?” Mendez asked.

“Of course.” Now she was really worried. “Come into my office.”

They followed her into the spacious office that looked out on a large courtyard and a beautiful garden.

“Do you have news?” she asked, crossing her arms in front of her as if preparing to hold herself up.

“No, nothing,” Mendez said.

Jane Thomas sighed in relief. “Thank God.”

“We went through Ms. Warwick’s home this morning and found a photograph of Ms. Warwick with some friends. I made a photocopy of it,” Mendez said, digging the paper out of his coat pocket. “I’d like you to have a look and tell me who the rest of the people in the picture are.”

She recognized the photograph right away. “Oh, yes, this was our celebration after one of our clients won her custody battle. The courts had given her children to the parents of her abusive husband temporarily while she went through court-ordered drug rehab, then wouldn’t give them back to her when she had finished not only rehab, but our program as well. Lisa was her advocate. She did a lot of hand-holding on that one. In the end Steve was able to persuade a judge to set things right.”

“Steve? This is Steve?” Mendez asked, tapping a finger below the man in the photograph.

“Yes. Steve Morgan. Quinn, Morgan and Associates. He donates a lot of time to us.”

“Was there anything going on between him and Ms. Warwick?”

“Lisa and Steve?” she said, almost amused at the idea. “Of course not. Steve is happily married. He has an adorable daughter. She must be about ten years old.”

“Wendy?” Mendez asked.

“I don’t remember her name,” she said, handing the paper back to him. “The woman to Lisa’s left is Nora Alfano, our client.”

“Did Ms. Warwick spend a lot of time working with Mr. Morgan on her various cases?” Vince asked.

“She spent some time with him in client meetings, that kind of thing. But Steve would never cheat. He’s not that kind of man.”

Mendez said nothing but put the picture back inside his pocket.

“Are you trying to disillusion me for the second time in one day, Detective?”

“No, ma’am. I’m just following leads. Most of them will go nowhere, but we have to follow them to the end.”

“I’ve been out of town,” Vince said by way of an excuse, “so I’m not quite up to speed. Have we looked at any hate mail yet?”

“So far nothing has stood out,” Mendez said.

“This custody case you talked about—how long ago was that?” Vince asked.

“About nine months ago,” Jane Thomas said. “The ex-husband in question is doing a year in county jail.”

“We’ll check out his friends and family,” Vince said. “Just in case one of them is bent on revenge on his behalf.”

“Of course.” She went to her desk and buzzed her assistant to get the file.

“Then we’ll let you get on with the rest of your day,” Vince said with a soft smile.

Jane Thomas looked worn-out and stressed out. The Thomas Center was her namesake, her baby by the looks of the framed photos on the walls: Jane Thomas receiving awards from women’s groups, photos with politicians, photos with various members of her staff and clients. Her work was being attacked via Lisa Warwick and Karly Vickers, and she had to be worried what—or who—might be next.

“My day is consisting of fretting,” she confessed.

With good reason, Vince thought. The center’s clients made for a perfect victim pool: women with patterns of abuse in their backgrounds, vulnerable women, women with self-esteem issues. These were the kinds of women predators sought out as being easy to prey on, easy to control. A sufficiently twisted mind would see these women as being less than women living in traditional settings with traditional families, and therefore it was not a loss to society to dispose of them.

Vince had interviewed a number of serial murderers of prostitutes. They had all felt that they had practically done a public service in taking whores off the streets.

“Do you really think this Alfano guy could be behind these murders?” Mendez asked as they walked down the hall to the front doors. “I can see him targeting Lisa Warwick because she helped his wife get the kids back. But we have two other victims before Lisa Warwick.”

“It’s not likely,” Vince said. “But, like you said, follow all leads to the end. I know of a case where an estranged wife’s parents stalked and murdered her husband to ensure she would get custody of their granddaughter. “

“Or the guy doing life for a freeway shooting, and his mother builds a pipe bomb, sends it to the key witness against him, and blows half the family to kingdom come,” Mendez said.

“People are un-fucking-believable,” Vince said, and like every cop he’d ever known, segued from talk of murder to food. “Where are we going? Lunch, I hope.”

“The beauty salon,” Mendez said. “I thought we could get manicures and bond.”

“Very funny.”

“Karly Vickers had an appointment the day she went missing,” Mendez said. “And there’s a sandwich place down the block.”

Karly Vickers had spent three hours at Spice Salon on the afternoon in question. She had a haircut and a perm, a manicure and a pedicure. One of the “beauty technicians,” as they called themselves, had spent half an hour showing her the latest makeup tricks.

Three hours of listening to disco’s biggest hits pumping over the speakers, Vince thought as he sat in a vacant stylist’s chair. The woman had probably killed herself afterward.

Karly had been excited about the whole process of her makeover, but in a shy kind of way, the hairstylist said. She had talked about the new job she was starting. She hadn’t said anything about a boyfriend, had in fact gotten quiet when the stylist had brought up the subject.

Vince observed Mendez at work. The owner of the salon came over to trim his mustache and flirt with him. Vince asked about their hours and the new addition to the salon—a tanning parlor.

“Vickers left here around three that afternoon,” Mendez said as they walked down the street to the sandwich place with tables out front. A waitress took their order and scurried off. “She said she had one more appointment for the day—the dentist.”

“How would you like that?” Vince said. “You get nabbed by a serial killer and your last memory of your normal life is going to the dentist.”

“Wouldn’t be my choice.”

“What would be your choice?”

Mendez considered. “Hmmm . . . Heather Locklear. How about you?”

Vince thought about it for a moment. What would he want his last memory to be? Would it even matter? Once you were dead, where did your memories go? He had technically been dead for three minutes when he was shot. He didn’t remember anything about it.

“Well?”

“Pitching a perfect game for the Cubs to win the World Series,” he said.

Mendez laughed. “Like that will ever happen.”

“What? Me pitching in the bigs?”

“The Cubs winning the World Series.”

“Hey!” Vince protested with a grin. “A guy’s gotta dream. Dream large!”