Deeper Than the Dead

77

Farman had Dixon in a chokehold, the nose of his .38 pressed to the sheriff’s temple.

It had happened so quickly, so easily. No one had seen it coming—but they should have, Vince thought.

Frank Farman defined himself by his career, by his uniform. More than a decade in law enforcement with a sterling record, he could have worked in any area he chose. He could have made detective. He could have worked narcotics. As straight an arrow as he was, he was tailor-made for the Bureau or even Secret Service. But Frank Farman chose to remain in a uniform because he was the uniform.

Vince had known plenty of Frank Farmans over the years, going back to his days in the Marine Corps. Rigid. By the book. Humorless. It wasn’t difficult for guys like that to grow a chip on their shoulder. It was almost inevitable that they became hyperfocused on every tiny aspect of the job, right down to the nuances of speech of their coworkers and superiors.

If the job was everything, then everything in their lives was about the job. And if the job was threatened, the sense of self was threatened, and guys like Frank Farman ended up in watchtowers with sniper rifles, or holding a gun to someone’s head.

In a matter of a few days, Frank Farman’s carefully structured world had begun to fall apart, and that buck stopped—in Farman’s mind—with his old friend, Cal Dixon.

They must have arrived one right after the other, coming in the side door down the hall from the war room—Dixon first, Farman behind him. Dixon, just returning from what had to have been a taxing few hours at the hospital with Jane Thomas and Karly Vickers’s mother, wouldn’t have been paying attention. He was tired, preoccupied. He wouldn’t have even glanced over his shoulder as he walked into the building, but Farman had to have been just a few steps behind him.

As Dixon opened the door to the conference room, Farman was on him—arm around his throat, gun to his head—pushing him into the room and getting a wall to his back.

That was how they stood now.

Vince had just called Anne back when it happened. Never taking his eyes off Farman, he disconnected the call, put the receiver down, and punched 911 on the keypad, just in case no one out in the hall had seen what happened.

The operator came on the line. “Nine-one-one. What is your emergency please?”

“Frank,” Vince said loudly. “This is a conference room. You don’t come to the sheriff’s office and bring a gun in a conference room. Why don’t you put the weapon down? We can talk.”

Farman looked right through him.

“Everybody up against that wall,” he said, indicating the wall with the only door in or out. He wanted to be able to see through the glass into the hall.

Vince stayed where he was—opposite the door. Hamilton and Hicks followed his lead and stayed where they were, spreading Farman’s attention over more of the room than he wanted to watch.

“Up against that wall or I blow his fucking head off!”

“Looks like that’s the plan, anyway, Frank,” Vince said. “You want to take the sheriff out.”

He purposely didn’t use Cal Dixon’s name. He didn’t use the word “friend.” Even though Farman and Dixon had been friends for years. In Farman’s eyes Dixon had betrayed him. No sense fanning that fire.

“We’ve all of us got guns, Frank,” Vince said. “You can’t shoot all of us at once. You plug the sheriff and you’re done, we drop you right where you stand. Is that what you came here for? Suicide by cop? The coward’s way out?”

“I’m no coward,” Farman said.

“Shoot the sheriff and you’re worse than a coward. You’re a coward and a killer. All these years in the uniform, Frank. All these years building your rep. You want to blow it all away because you’re pissed off?”

Farman didn’t seem to know what to say. This wasn’t going the way it had in his head when he’d been driving over, fantasizing about going out in a blaze of glory, Vince imagined.

His eyes were glassy and a little unfocused. He’d probably been drinking—probably a lot—just as he had been the night before—the night his wife went missing.

For a man who needed to be in control, losing control was a hell of a scary thing that called for a lot of alcohol to numb the fear and the pain.

“Talk to us, Frank,” Vince said, moving a little to his left. Half a step, no more. “You’ve got something to say or you wouldn’t have come here.”

Dixon’s face was almost purple, either from lack of oxygen or an impending stroke. It wouldn’t have been the worst thing if he passed out, Vince thought. Dixon might have been thinking the same thing, but his judgment would be complicated by the fact that he and Farman went back. He wouldn’t want to see Farman shot. He would want him disarmed.

“Come on, Frank,” Hicks said. “Put the gun down. You’ve had a little too much to drink. Nobody’s going to hold that against you.”

Hicks shifted a little to his left.

Farman shuffled his feet, moving to his left. He still had a clear enough view of the door if he turned his head a little.

Mendez had to be in the coffee room, watching this drama unfold on the monitor, Vince thought. He had gone to use the restroom not half a minute before this mess started.

“What is it you want to tell us, Frank?” Vince asked.

Farman said nothing, but Vince could see him chewing on the words in his head. He just had to get him to spit them out. If he was talking, he wasn’t shooting.

“You don’t know me,” he said at last, his voice as tight as a drum, vibrating with the tension within him. “My record was spotless.”

“I know that, Frank,” Vince said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, moving another two inches to the left. “I looked you up. I checked you out. Your service record is impeccable. You’ve always been a righteous stand-up guy. So why are you doing this?”

“It doesn’t count for anything,” he said. “Sixteen years. It all comes apart because I wrote some whore a traffic ticket, and the man I go back with all those years turns on me without blinking an eye.”

“I know from where you’re looking at it that wasn’t a fair shake, Frank,” Vince said. “But you’re not helping yourself here. Put the gun down.”

“It’s too late.”

“No, it’s not. You’ve been under a lot of stress, Frank,” Vince said. “Stress at work, stress at home. Everybody gets that. Put the gun down. We’ll work it out. You’ll take some time off, get a little help with that stress. Sixteen years with a spotless record. This night is just a blip on the screen, Frank.”

Farman shook his head. “You don’t know . . . It’s too late.”

“Your son is right down the hall, Frank. He’s eleven years old. He’s in trouble. He needs you, Frank. He needs his dad. You can put the gun down now. We can straighten this out so you can be around for him.”

“I tried to raise him right,” Farman said. “Same as my old man raised me. I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

“He’s got some problems, Frank,” Vince said, shifting over another step. “It happens. Who knows why? You’re the one who can still help him. A boy needs his dad.”

The color came up in Farman’s face again. He adjusted his hold on Dixon’s throat, flexed his fingers on the grip of his weapon.

“Yeah? Well that bitch called Child Protective Services on me,” he said. “Now I’ve got that on me.”

A bad feeling ran through Vince’s stomach as Anne’s words played through his head: . . . on my way home something really scary happened with Frank Farman.

“It doesn’t matter, Frank,” he said. “That’s just a misunderstanding. You’ve done your best. You’ve been a fine example to your son, Frank. Everybody here knows that. So, come on. Put the gun down and we’ll sit and work this out. Your arm has to be getting tired by now.”

“No,” Farman said, but he was sweating like a horse, and his gun hand was trembling.

Vince hoped for Dixon’s sake it had a heavy trigger.