Deeper Than the Dead

How could it? Why would it? He was a little boy who loved his dad like he was a god. What would be the point of him understanding it now or ever?

Anne didn’t think about how she would handle it. She thought only about getting to the sheriff’s office on the last little drop of adrenaline trickling through her veins. She was beginning to feel her physical injuries in a serious way. All other injury would have to wait its turn.

She pulled the car into the parking lot—not up to the doors of the building. Once they went inside, everything would change. She wanted this one moment alone with Tommy.

She got out of the car and went around to the other side to take Tommy’s hand—the same way she had the day he and the other kids had found the body, and she had taken him home to face his mother.

She knelt down and looked at his face, his eyes, trying to read him, feeling that in the snap of a moment his soul had aged a thousand years. Her heart ached for him and for herself as if God had taken it from her chest and wrung it out like a sponge.

“You are so precious,” she whispered, tears filling every part of her. “And this is going to be so hard. I wish I could change it for you, Tommy.”

“I’ll be all right,” he said, as if to reassure her.

Anne nodded, knowing that he wouldn’t be. He wouldn’t be all right. And there was nothing she could do about it.

She touched his cheek like touching an angel. “You’re my hero, you know,” she said, tears falling.

Anne gathered him to her and held him tight, and he held her back. Then they both dried their eyes, and she held his hand, and they went up the sidewalk together.

And when they walked through the doors, everything changed.

People swarmed them, meaning well, wanting explanations, needing statements, demanding answers. With everybody added to the crowd, Anne watched Tommy drift away from her. His mother emerged from somewhere and flung herself at him, hysterical and grasping.

His eyes met Anne’s for just a fleeting second, and she knew exactly what he was feeling—like he had been dropped into space as the safety net was pulled out from under him. He had no one. And no one had him.

Anne turned to Vince. Taking the gold necklace from the pocket of her torn, dirty pants, she pressed it into his hand, then pressed herself into his arms and turned herself over to him. As he held her tight and told her everything would be all right, she just pressed her ear to his chest and listened to his heart beat. For those few moments, everything else was just noise.

Closing her eyes, she slipped away from consciousness. The last thing she remembered in her mind’s eye: Tommy standing alone in a little red boat, his hand to his heart as he drifted out of view until all that remained was the faintest memory of his sad little smile.

93

Anne came to to the sound of hushed voices in the hall outside her hospital room.

“. . . broken ribs . . . collapsed lung . . .”

“... oh my God . . . we’re lucky she’s not d-e-a-d ...”

“I can spell.”

Her voice was rusty and dry and didn’t carry very far, but it carried far enough.

“Hey, look who’s back,” Vince said with a soft smile as he came to her bedside.

“Oh, Anne Marie!” Franny exclaimed with a pained expression. “You look like a raccoon!”

Anne raised the head of the bed with the remote control, catching a glimpse of herself in the small mirror on the wall. Two black eyes. A fat lip. Stitches in her chin. Raccoons would have been offended by the comparison.

“Hey,” Vince objected. “You should see the other guy. They had to airlift him to LA. Our girl got a couple of good licks in. She knocked his eye out with a tire iron!” he said proudly.

Franny was horrified. “Oh my God!”

“Gave him a skull fracture, broke his nose . . .”

“Who are you?” Franny asked her, as if perhaps she had been possessed by some much-tougher entity than the one he thought he knew.

“I’m alive,” she said simply.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he said, melting. “I don’t even know what to say.”

“I’ll be sure to mark this day on my calendar,” Anne said dryly.

“I want to hug you, but I’m afraid you’ll hurt me. I was going to say that the other way around, but you beat a man’s head in with a tire iron, so . . .”

Anne tried to smile. She hurt everywhere. Her ribs hurt, her head hurt, her lungs hurt. She felt like she’d been run over by a truck.

“My dentist,” Franny said as it dawned on him. “A serial killer put his hands in my mouth!”

Anne looked at Vince. “Has he confessed?”

He shook his head. “He got a lawyer. We can’t touch him.”

“But he did this to Anne,” Franny said with his trademark outrage. “I don’t care if he hires F. Lee Bill-Me- Out-the-Ass. He won’t get off for this!”

“No,” Vince said. “He’s a slam dunk for this, and he knows it. I think he’ll try to cut a deal.”

“Fuck that!” Franny said. “Fry his ass!”

Vince patted him on the shoulder. “I like how you think, my friend. If that was an option . . .”

“But the murders?” Anne said. “And Karly Vickers?”

“Right now, there’s just not enough physical evidence. In fact, there’s almost no physical evidence. He didn’t make a mistake—until he went after you,” he said. “How did you get the necklace?”

Anne sighed at the sad irony of it. “Tommy gave it to me. He must have found it in their house. He thought he was doing something special, something sweet.”

His sweet gesture had set off the chain of events that led to his father being revealed as a monster. The Greeks couldn’t have come up with a better tragedy.

“Have you talked to Tommy?” she asked.

She knew the answer by the tension in his face.

“The mother won’t let us near him.”

He read her distress just as easily and closed his hand gently around hers. “There’s nothing you can do, honey. Let it go.”

A deep sense of sadness settled in Anne’s heart, almost as if she had lost a loved one. In a way, she supposed she had. Somehow she knew right then that she wouldn’t see Tommy Crane again. She didn’t say it. No one would have believed her, but she knew it in her heart. He was gone from her life.

“I brought you a get-well present to cheer you up,” Franny said, setting a colorful gift bag on the bedside tray.

Anne peeked into the bag, suspicious. She reached in with the hand not burdened by an IV catheter and plucked out a scrap of black silk and lace.

“Some people give flowers or candy. My friend gives lingerie.”

“Nothing says ‘Get well’ like a negligee,” Franny said.

“Always makes me feel better,” Vince confessed.

“See?”

Anne would have rolled her eyes if they hadn’t hurt so much.

Franny leaned down and found a square inch of cheek to kiss without causing her pain. “I’m going to let you rest,” he said, then gave Vince a big comic wink.

“He’s something,” Vince said, chuckling, as Franny made his exit.

Anne managed to arch a brow at the negligee. “Yeah, the two of you.”

“Seriously, now,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

She felt no need to try to be brave or analytical with him. The tears came high in her eyes as the emotions