“No. I’m sure he didn’t,” she said. “Peter doesn’t go out that much.”
“Except to golf and play cards with people you don’t know in places you have no idea about,” Vince said, his own tone of voice becoming harder, colder. “Now that seems odd to me, Mrs. Crane, because you strike me as the kind of woman who would keep a short leash on a man.”
The whites of her eyes showed all around the iris. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’re controlling,” he said without rancor. “You want to be in charge. I’ll bet if I go into your kitchen or laundry room you’ll have a big whiteboard calendar and everything on it will be color-coded. Am I right?”
She was getting angrier by the second now. “There’s nothing wrong with being organized.”
“Not at all. Controlling, however, is a different thing,” he said. “Controlling is getting pissed off at people who don’t toe your line, people who don’t follow your script, people who ask questions you don’t want to answer.”
He let the last shred of the Mr. Nice Guy act fall away. “That’s the flip of the switch that sets you off and makes you think you can scream at people and threaten them, and be a Class A bitch to anyone who crosses you.”
Her jaw dropped, astonished anyone would speak to her that way. “I beg your pardon?” she said again.
“You don’t want my pardon,” Vince scoffed. “You want to kick me in the balls right now, don’t you? Because I won’t do what you want, and I won’t believe what you want me to believe just because that’s your agenda.
“I’m bigger than you, and meaner than you, and I’m not going to take your bullshit,” he said. “I’m not some little fifth-grade teacher you can push around and try to intimidate.”
Janet Crane’s face was nearly purple, her eyes popping. Vince expected her hair to stand straight up. She pointed to the door.
“Get out! Get out of my house!”
Vince laughed at her. “Or what? You’ll call a cop?” He hooked a thumb at Mendez. “I brought a cop with me. Where’s your witness? Who’s going to testify on your behalf? The child you drugged to make him sleep so he won’t bother you?”
She turned on Mendez. “Aren’t you going to do something?”
Mendez was the picture of disinterest, so unconcerned with her needs he couldn’t be bothered to raise more than one shoulder to shrug. “He outranks me.”
“I’m calling my husband,” she announced, storming down the hall to a beautiful study with two desks and white bookshelves that climbed to the ceiling.
“So you
She glared at him as she snatched up the receiver of the phone. “He has a cellular telephone in his car.”
“Really? What for? So he can be available for all those urgent emergency teeth cleanings?” Vince asked. “That’s an extravagant toy—”
“So what?” she snapped back at him, punching numbers.
“So he works all day in an office ten minutes away from here. Why does he need a cellular telephone? You’re telling us he rarely leaves the house if he’s not working. When is he not at your beck and call?”
“But he’s not here now,” Mendez pointed out.
“True,” Vince said. “But I doubt he and his cronies are playing cards in his car, and why would he lug that phone into his card game with him? You have to carry the damn things around in a suitcase.”
“Doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Mendez agreed. “Unless he’s just that whipped.”
“Is that it?” Vince asked, depressing the plunger on the phone and disconnecting her call. “Do you have your husband that cowed, Mrs. Crane?”
She was so angry now there were tears in her eyes and her mouth was quivering as she tried to hold back the vitriol she wanted to spew at him. She made a strangled gurgling sound in her throat.
“Because that kind of domineering, controlling behavior can create some pretty nasty recoil on the other end of a relationship,” Vince said.
“Edmund Kemper,” Mendez offered.
Vince nodded. To Janet Crane he said, “Edmund Kemper endured so many years of domination by his mother, he ended up murdering college coeds and cutting their heads off to relieve his psychological pressure.”
“My husband is NOT a MURDERER!” she screamed.
“You’re that sure?” Vince asked quietly. “He was the last person to see Karly Vickers the day she disappeared. He knew Lisa Warwick from the Thomas Center. And it turns out he was arrested in Oxnard for soliciting Julie Paulson for sex. Those women are all dead or missing.”
Janet Crane slammed the receiver down on the phone and stood absolutely rigid beside the desk. “You’re lying. My husband is a pillar of this community. He is well respected. He is admired. He is the perfect husband and father.”
“Is he?” Vince said. “Because down in Ventura County he’s just another john that comes to Oxnard to fuck hookers.”
“That’s outrageous! How dare you say that!”
“And if I opened one of his desk drawers here and showed you newspaper clippings from all three of these cases, what would you say then, Mrs. Crane?”
“Get out of my house,” she said. “Get out of my house or I’m calling our attorney.”
Vince exchanged a look with Mendez.
“You’d better be on good terms with that attorney,” Vince said. “You never know how soon you might need his services.”
He let the silence between them hang for a moment. She was breathing hard, starting to hyperventilate. Even clenched into fists at her side, her hands were shaking. Good.
“Think about that, Mrs. Crane,” he said quietly. “Every time he’s out of your sight. Every time he doesn’t answer that cellular telephone. Every minute he doesn’t have to listen to you harping and harping and harping. Where is he? Every time he brings you a little gift of jewelry, where did he get it? Every time he goes out to be a part of the search for Karly Vickers or man the phones on the hotline. Why is he
She said nothing, just continued to stare at him, glassy-eyed and trembling with rage.
“One more thing,” Vince said, taking a step toward her, and then another. He lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “If I hear you’re trying to take your son out of Anne Navarre’s class, or that you’re going to sue her, or that you accosted her on the street, you’ll answer to me, Mrs. Crane.
“All I have to do is make one hint to a reporter that you know something you shouldn’t about that murder victim in the park, or that your husband has a predilection for prostitutes, and all that status you prize so highly comes tumbling down,” he said.
“You’re threatening me?”
“No,” he said, taking another step into her personal space, leaning toward her so that she had to tilt her head back to look him in the eye. “I’m telling you how it is.
He didn’t wait for a reaction from her. He had accomplished exactly what he had set out to do. How she reacted now was irrelevant. He turned his back on her and walked out.
He didn’t realize how hot he’d gotten until he stepped out into the cold. He was sweating and breathing hard. He felt more than a little primitive. The male of the species defending his mate, testosterone running like a flood through his veins. His pulse pounded in his head, and he worried for a second he might have a stroke.
Jesus H.
When they reached the car, Mendez opened his door and paused to look across the roof at him.
“Man, just so you know,” he said. “I am NEVER getting on your bad side.”
Vince forced half a grin. “Like we say in Chicago: She had it coming.”
49
As Detective Mendez and the other man went out the door, Tommy scurried back up the stairs—just far enough to be out of sight. His heart was beating so fast he thought it might burst and send blood gushing
