Deeper Than the Dead

72

“They had to restrain and sedate her,” Mendez said. “She was so combative there was a chance of her disconnecting the respirator. She has too much swelling in her throat from the strangulation. The doctor doesn’t think she would get enough oxygen on her own.”

“Jesus,” Dixon whispered, shaking his head. “Restraints. I’m sure Jane was happy about that.”

“No, but she got it. She and the girl’s mother are going to take turns sitting with her. They aren’t going to risk her waking up alone or with a stranger again.”

“I guess we should just be relieved she’s out of the coma,” Dixon said. “But how the hell are we supposed to get answers from her if she can’t hear the questions?”

Mendez shrugged.

They had taken over a corner of the family waiting area down the hall from the ICU—Mendez and Hicks, Dixon and Vince.

“So she’s out right now?” Vince asked.

“Yes.”

“I want to take a quick look at her, if that’s possible. I want to see if she has the same pattern of cutting wounds as Lisa Warwick. If the pattern is consistent, then it means something specific to the offender. If we can figure out what it means, it could lead us somewhere.”

“Have at it,” Dixon said. “If you can get past guard dog Jane.”

Leone left the room. Mendez wanted to follow him, to pick his brain as he gathered details from looking at the victim, but there was still an issue to discuss with Dixon.

“Why didn’t you tell us Miss Thomas had complained to you about her clients being stopped for traffic violations?” he asked.

Dixon looked at him, taken a little off guard by the question, as if the subject was something he filed away long ago.

“There was nothing to it,” he said.

“She told us she’s had this discussion with you on more than one occasion. How is that not significant to us?”

“If I thought there was anything to it, I would have said so, Detective,” he said, getting irritated. But he got up from the arm of the sofa he had been sitting on and started to pace, arms crossed over his chest—which told Mendez he wasn’t comfortable with the subject.

“Did Jane bring this up to you?” Dixon asked.

“Actually, Steve Morgan brought it up,” Hicks said.

“Don’t you think Jane would have been the first person to say something about it if she felt it was significant?” Dixon said.

“Except that she trusts you. She trusts your judgment,” Mendez said.

Dixon glared at him. “And you don’t?”

“Don’t jump on me, boss. I’m doing the job you hired me to do.”

“A couple of the deputies seem to have a written a lot of stops on women from the center,” he conceded. “But they’re deputies who write a lot of tickets across the board. The numbers didn’t bother me. And I’m sure as hell not going to tell them to treat Thomas Center clients any differently from the rest of the population.”

“I just want to know one thing,” Mendez said, dreading asking the question, already knowing the answer. “Is one of those deputies Frank?”

Dixon sighed heavily. “Yes. Of course. Frank leads the league in traffic citations—and in complaints from the people he’s written up. That’s hardly news.”

“I want to see his file,” Mendez said.

“I’ve reviewed his file.”

“Yeah, well, I want to see it.”

“You think I’m trying to protect him?”

“I think you and Frank go way back, and it’s not appropriate or fair to you to make a call on him. Sir.”

He half expected Dixon to blow a gasket. His boss was a by-the-book kind of guy, and he had toed that line so far with Frank Farman, but friendship and history could make that line blur, even with men like Cal Dixon.

But Dixon held his temper. He stopped his pacing, staring down at the gray industrial-grade carpet on the floor.

“Frank’s wife is missing,” he said quietly. “His son is saying Frank killed her.”

Mendez felt all the blood in his body free-fall to his feet. Hicks got up from the arm on the other end of the sofa and said, “What?”

Dixon filled them in on what had transpired that afternoon while they had been at the hospital with Wendy Morgan and Cody Roache.

“Where is he now?” Mendez asked.

“Home,” Dixon said. “We don’t know that Sharon is dead or even missing. I’ve got Trammell and Hamilton calling her friends and relatives. Frank claims she left on her own. And the boy is less than reliable. I don’t even know if he has a firm grasp on reality. He seems almost catatonic for the most part.”

“Except the part where he said his father killed his mother,” Mendez said.

“Frank let me have a look around his house. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.”

“Or he wouldn’t have consented,” Mendez pointed out.

“It’s a catch-twenty-two,” Dixon conceded. “And you know damn well I wouldn’t cut him any slack on a charge like this. We simply have nothing to indicate a crime has been committed. We’ve got nothing to hold him on.”

Mendez put his hands on his head and turned around in a circle. “What a fucking mess.”

Vince approached Karly Vickers’s room with the same kind of quiet respect he would have used in church. Jane Thomas sat beside the girl’s bed, holding her hand, the gold necklace laced through fingers entwined.

“She’s lucky to have you on her side,” he said softly.

“I don’t know how she’s going to make it through this,” Thomas confessed. “She’d been through so much before she ever came to the center.”

“She wants to live,” Vince said. “Or she wouldn’t be here now. She’ll find a way to make it, and you’ll find a way to help her.”

Tears glittered in her green eyes as she looked up at him as if he might actually have an answer. “Why does it have to be so hard?”

“I don’t know. I only know my part, and that’s helping find the animal who did this to her. Can you help me with that?”

Jane Thomas helped him catalog the wounds Karly Vickers’s tormentor had carved into her, and Vince left her with a promise to do everything in his power to bring a madman to justice.

And he walked out of the room and away from the ICU thinking the same thing she had asked him: Why does it have to be so hard?