Deeper Than the Dead

31

Mendez stared down at the decayed human finger lying in the dirt near the end of the bench on the third-base line. Flies buzzed around it and crawled on it. The thing was so rotten, the skin had split and started coming off.

He glanced sideways at Vince, who had taken a seat on the bench. They had picked up the call as soon as they made it back to the car from Crane’s office. Go to Oak Knoll Elementary immediately. It seemed like an unlikely place for crime. And the crime didn’t seem like anything to call the cops over—one kid beat up another kid in gym class.

A severed human finger, Vince conceded, made all the difference. He shook a couple of pills out of a small white bottle and tossed them back.

“You all right?” Mendez asked.

“Headache,” he said. Like someone-had-put-an-axe-through-his-head headache.

“What do you make of this?”

“Your vic’s missing an index finger. There’s an index finger. We don’t need Sherlock Holmes for this one.”

Hicks bent over the finger too. He shooed the flies off it. They were back on it in two seconds. “Man, that’s gross. The Farman kid must have picked it up at the scene Tuesday night.”

“The girl told me he touched the body,” Mendez said. “She didn’t say he broke off a finger and stuck it in his pocket.”

“Bag the finger and let’s go talk to the boy,” Vince said, pushing himself to his feet. “I can’t wait to hear what he has to say for himself.”

They convened in the conference room. Dennis was sitting in a chair, sullen, his lip split, his clothes dirty. He hadn’t spoken a word since he’d been dragged indoors by Mr. Alvarez. The gym teacher told Anne it had taken a good ten minutes for him to calm down out on the baseball diamond.

“He just kept swinging and fighting, spewing out the filthiest language I ever heard,” he said. “It was like he was possessed or something. I had all I could do to hang on to him.”

That in itself was frightening, Anne thought. Dennis was bigger than the rest of her students, but he was still a little boy. Paco Alvarez was built like a fireplug with massive arms.

“I think if I hadn’t been there to stop him, he would have killed Tommy Crane,” he whispered, glancing over at Dennis as if he were expecting him to leap over the table and charge like a wild animal.

Dennis lifted his head and glared at them, as if to say, “What are you looking at?” then looked down once more at the tabletop.

“That’s some serious rage issue,” Alvarez said. “The kid had blood in his eye, you know? Like a fighting dog.”

Anne knew nothing about fighting dogs. She was beginning to think she didn’t know much about anything. Shouldn’t she have seen warning signs in Dennis Farman? Or had the warning signs been written off to the easy excuses: Dennis is insecure, Dennis is jealous, Dennis is a garden-variety bully? Maybe there was no such thing.

“I don’t know what to say, Paco,” she said softly. “He’s got bigger problems than I’m equipped to deal with.”

The door opened and Principal Garnett came into the room with Detective Mendez and two other men—a redheaded man in his thirties with a badge clipped to his belt, and a tall man in his late forties with chiseled good looks, an air of command, and dark eyes that set their gaze squarely on her.

He broke away from the others and came toward her, holding out his hand.

“You must be Miss Navarre,” he said. His hand was big and warm, and swallowed hers whole. “I’m Detective Leone.”

Anne turned her head to introduce Alvarez, but the gym teacher had moved on to speak with Mendez. They looked as if they knew each other.

“Detective.”

“You’ve had quite a shock today,” he said, still holding her hand.

She didn’t object. He was a big man—on the lean side, but still there was a solidness about him that seemed reassuring. Like he was here to take care of everything—a quality that was very appealing to her at the moment.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m a little shaken up,” she admitted.

“Were you on the field when all this went down?”

“No,” she said, finally slipping her hand from his. “As it happened, I was in Mr. Garnett’s office, having a conversation with him about Dennis. He spent the morning drawing this.”

She angled herself so Dennis couldn’t see the notebook she had been clutching. She opened it to the page of violent drawings.

Detective Leone frowned darkly as he studied the picture. “He drew these today?”

“This morning,” she said. “He’s been agitated all day. He’s one of the children who found the body.”

“Deputy Farman’s son.”

“Yes. I suppose you know him.”

Leone hummed an acknowledgment, but his focus was entirely on the drawing.

“How old is this boy?”

“Eleven. He was held back in the third grade.”

“Has he said anything about where or how he got the finger?”

“No. He hasn’t spoken at all since Mr. Alvarez brought him in from gym class.”

“This is very disturbing,” he said softly. Finally he raised his eyes from the drawing to her face. “And it was a young lady he attacked initially this afternoon?”

“Yes. Wendy Morgan. Then Tommy Crane.”

“Has he demonstrated violence against girls before?”

“No more than the average fifth-grade boy,” she said. “At least not that I’ve been aware of. But he had quite an outburst with me this morning.”

She told him about what had happened in her classroom and what had gone on the evening before when she had stopped at the Farman home.

“I’m afraid he might be blaming me for getting him in trouble,” she said. “His parents weren’t aware he had skipped school. I think he might have gotten a spanking for it. He wouldn’t sit down all morning.”

“Could I have a photocopy of this page, Miss Navarre?” Leone asked. “A couple of them, please?”

“Yes, of course.”

“The other children who found the body are in your class as well?”

“Yes. This has been a very challenging week.”

“I’d like to sit down and talk with you about the kids,” he said. “Are you free this evening?”

“Um . . . uh . . . Yes, sure,” she said, instantly thinking that Franny would kill her. Thursday was their standing date for Chinese.

“Good. Dinner at seven? Piazza Fontana?”

“Are you asking me on a date, Detective?” she asked, a little shocked at his audacity . . . and a little something else.

“That would be improper of me,” he said.

But he didn’t say no.

“I’ve been away,” he said. “Just got back last night. I’d like to get a clearer picture of what happened Tuesday. Your insights would be appreciated. Your pleasant company would be a bonus,” he added.

Mendez joined them then, and Leone had her show Dennis’s drawing to him.

“Jesus Christ,” Mendez said, then caught himself. “Sorry, ma’am.”

“Has the school notified the boy’s parents about this?” Leone asked.

“Deputy Farman is on his way,” she said, wishing the principal had called Dennis’s mother instead.

Mendez spoke to Leone. “I say we ask the kid about the finger before Frank gets here. If we aren’t going to charge him with anything, we don’t need a parent present to ask him questions.”

Vince shrugged. “Your call. The Cranes might want to press assault charges.”

“I’ll only ask him about the finger.”

He started toward the table then turned back in an afterthought. “Thank you, Miss Navarre. You’ve been very helpful.”

“I’m staying,” Anne said firmly.

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m staying while you talk to Dennis,” Anne said. “He’s my responsibility as long as he’s in this building.”

Mendez shrugged. “That’s fine.”

She grabbed hold of the sleeve of his sport coat as he started to turn away again. He swung back around and looked at her.

“And I don’t want you asking him about the drawings,” she said, keeping her tone low. “He doesn’t know I have the notebook. I don’t want him to know I betrayed his trust. I want to be able to help him—if I can.”

They went to the table together then and sat down to interview Dennis Farman. But Dennis had nothing to say. Not one word. He wouldn’t tell them how the finger came to be in his possession. He wouldn’t talk at all, and no amount of threats or cajoling could change his mind. He sat mute, staring down at the tabletop with God knew what churning around in his head.

Hicks headed back to the office to see if anything had come in on his background checks of the staff at the Thomas Center. Vince and Mendez walked out of the school and stood on the sidewalk waiting for Frank Farman to show up. The other kids were long gone before they had even made it to the scene—Tommy Crane picked up by his father and taken to the ER, Wendy Morgan picked up by her father also.

“Those are some violent fantasies that kid has running around in his head,” Vince said, offering Mendez a stick of Doublemint gum. “He’s got some deep-seated anger. Why is that? Kids don’t come out of the chute like that. It’s learned behavior. Who did he learn it from?”

“Frank’s wound a little too tight,” Mendez said. “But I don’t see him drawing pictures of women with knives stuck in their breasts.”

“That boy is a perfect candidate to go all wrong and end up really hurting someone. You’ll have to keep your eye on him for years to come.”

“Great. I hope the Cranes press charges. We can pack him off to a juvenile facility.”

“And he’ll be all straightened out when he comes out of there,” Vince said sarcastically.

They just stood there for a minute, taking in the momentary quiet, each turning their thoughts over in their heads.

“The teacher’s cute,” Vince said at last.

“Yeah.”

“She’s got spunk, sticking up for her kids. I like that,” he said. He looked at Mendez out the corner of his eye. “Have you asked her out?”

Mendez startled at the question. “What? No! I’m in the middle of a case.”

Vince shrugged. “A guy’s gotta eat.”

“I just met her yesterday.”

“So? I just met her an hour ago.”

Mendez stared at him. “You asked her out? She’s young enough to be your daughter!”

“Yeah,” he said, grinning. “But she isn’t.”

“I can’t believe you asked her out! In the middle of all of that, you asked her out.”

“We’re meeting for dinner. To talk about the kids,” he added.

“She doesn’t know it’s a date.”

“She knows she’s having dinner with a charming gentleman at a very nice Italian restaurant.”

“I can’t believe you asked her out,” Mendez said. “She’s part of the investigation.”

“She’s not a vic. She’s not a witness. And she’s not the perp,” Vince pointed out. “There’s no conflict of interest. Life is short, junior. Carpe diem.”

A county cruiser pulled up at the curb and Frank Farman got out, his face a mask of steel.

“I can’t believe this,” he said half under his breath. “He had a finger?”

“He had to have taken it off Lisa Warwick,” Mendez said. “She was missing an index finger at autopsy.”

“For God’s sake,” Farman said, jamming his hands on his hips. “I don’t know what’s wrong with that boy. I try to set him straight, and he does something like this.”

“He beat up the Crane kid pretty bad,” Mendez said. “They might want to press charges.”

“Jesus Christ.” He looked one way and then the other, as if he expected Christ to appear on command.

He didn’t get Christ. He got Anne Navarre. The teacher marched out of the building with all the determination of Napoleon.

“Mr. Farman, can I have a word with you?”

“I really don’t have the time—”

“You don’t have the time to discuss the fact that your son brought a human finger to school today? What could you possibly have going on more urgent than dealing with this?”

“I have a job to do, Miss Navarre.”

“Yes. It’s called parenting. It comes with having children. Does it not mean anything to you that your son is having serious problems here?”

Vince watched Farman’s face redden. The deputy wouldn’t take being dressed down in front of his peers. Anne Navarre seemed to have no regard. She stood up to him like an angry mouse taunting a lion.

“Dennis needs help. Professional help.”

Farman leaned toward her, trying to intimidate her with his size. “I don’t need you telling me how to raise my own kid. My wife is coming to deal with Dennis.”

“I should be glad,” she said. “At least the beating will be postponed.”

“How dare you,” Farman growled, taking a menacing step toward her.

Vince stepped between them. “Let’s take a break here, folks. Cool down.”

He herded Anne Navarre a few steps away just as Sharon Farman pulled to the curb behind the cruiser. Frank Farman took a deliberate breath and let it out slowly like releasing steam from a pressure cooker.

“My wife will deal with Dennis,” he said, turning to Mendez. “We have to go.”

“Where?”

“It just came over the radio,” Farman said. “The air search located the two cars: Lisa Warwick’s and Karly Vickers’s. Dixon wants us on the scene.”