Deeper Than the Dead

55

Mendez abandoned his car at the curb in a red zone and ran into the ER at Mercy General Hospital. An ambulance had delivered Karly Vickers ahead of him. There was a chance she might be alive.

He held his badge up to the staff, not listening to them and not speaking.

It was plain where the action was. Half a dozen people in surgical scrubs swarmed around the bloody, filthy, naked woman on the table in the first exam room. The doctor in charge was shouting orders like a field general. Hang this, push that, get labs stat. The girl had been hooked up to an array of beeping, buzzing machines. She had tubes and wires coming and going. One person stood squeezing the big blue ball of a ventilator bag, sending air into her lungs via the hole that had been cut in her throat. The floor of the room was awash with debris—bloody gauze, discarded packaging, tubing, syringes.

“She’s in V-fib!”

“Paddles! Charge! Clear!”

BAM! Her body jumped on the table.

“Charge! Clear!”

BAM!

The process was repeated again and again with the staff swearing and begging in between jolts.

“Come on, damn it!”

“Hang on, Karly!”

BAM!

“We’ve got a sinus rhythm!”

“All right, Karly, don’t die on us now!” the doctor shouted. “I’ve got money riding on you. Stats!”

Pulse. Blood pressure. Respiration. Numbers all too low.

“We need another liter of ringers, wide-open!”

Mendez turned to one of the EMTs standing at the nurses’ station, scribbling on paperwork.

“Is she going to make it?”

“I doubt it,” the guy said. “But she shouldn’t have been alive when we picked her up, either. Guess it depends on whether or not she wants to fight for it.”

Not an easy answer to that, Mendez thought. He had yet to get a close look at Karly Vickers, but if their killer had followed form, she had been blinded and her eardrums destroyed. She would have multiple stab wounds. She would have been sexually tortured and mutilated. Would she want to live? He hoped so. At least long enough to tell them who killed her.

Dixon was in the next exam room with Jane Thomas, who sat on the exam table wrapped in a blanket and shaking like a seizure victim. If she had been any paler she would have become invisible.

“What happened?” Mendez asked, pulling his notebook out of his coat pocket.

“The girl was buried in Jane’s garden,” Dixon said. “Same as Lisa Warwick, with just her head exposed.”

“Jesus.”

“Lucky for the girl Jane didn’t just assume she was dead.”

“The dogs were barking,” Jane Thomas said, her voice soft and tremulous. She looked at the floor as if that might help her concentrate. “Last night. Petal woke me up. I looked at the clock. It was three twenty-three. She was beside herself, howling and wanting out. I thought it was just that there were coyotes in the arroyo. I never imagined . . . If only I had gone to look—”

“Jane, we’ve been over this,” Dixon said, his hand on her shoulder. “You couldn’t have known, and you sure as hell shouldn’t have gone out to look.”

“I could have called you,” she said, big teardrops tumbling down her cheeks. “But I didn’t do that, either.”

“It’s not your fault, Miss Thomas,” Mendez said. “This is the fault of the man who took her and abused her, no one else’s.”

“Thank God I had to get up early to meet Steve,” she said. “Where is he? Did he come?”

She looked around as if he might suddenly materialize in the room.

“Steve Morgan?” Mendez asked.

“Yes. He came over at seven. We had a meeting scheduled to plan the press conference.” Her eyes went round. “Oh my God. The press conference! What time is it?”

“I wouldn’t worry about the press,” Dixon said. “Whenever you’re ready, they’ll come running. It’s more important for you to be here. Right? If Miss Vickers comes around, you’ll want to be the first to know.”

“Yes, right,” she murmured, shivering inside the blanket again. “But someone will have to call them.”

“It’ll be taken care of, Jane. And I want you looked at,” he said, giving her a warning eye.

She didn’t object as another tremor rattled through her. “He didn’t help me,” she said.

“Who didn’t help you?”

“Steve. It was like one of those nightmares where you’re trying to tell somebody something, but they don’t understand you. He just stood there.”

Dixon stepped away from her. Mendez moved with him.

“I want everyone in the war room in an hour.”

Mendez nodded. “The media is going to be in a feeding frenzy over this.”

“And we’ve got nothing to tell them. Do we?”

“Is that a question or an order?”

“A question.”

“Leads are being followed. We have no comment to make on persons of interest at this time,” Mendez said. “Vince was right. This guy wants credit for his work.”

“He wants to make us look like fools.”

“So far, he’s succeeding.”

“She didn’t have her necklace,” Jane said, seemingly talking to herself.

Dixon looked at her. “What?”

“Karly,” she said. “She didn’t have her necklace. Her graduation necklace from the center. She would never have taken it off. I have to get her another one. I have to go to the office.”

“That can wait.”

She shook her head and climbed down off the table. “No. No, it can’t. I have to go get her another one.”

“You have to sit down, Jane. You fainted.”

“I can go pick it up,” Mendez offered. “If you can call someone to have it at the desk.”

Dixon sighed. “Thanks, Tony.”

“De nada. That’s the least I can do for the heroine of the day.”

On his way back out to his car, Mendez spied the front page of the Saturday LA Times. The headline read: CASE CLOSED? SUSPECT ARRESTED IN OAK KNOLL HOMICIDE.