Deeper Than the Dead

Nothing overlapped.

What the hell would he do about the boy?

The car was going slowly now. He would stop soon, Anne suspected. Time would run out. She wondered if Vince would have stopped by the house, or if he would have been too exhausted after the ordeal at the sheriff’s office. The difference would be either people looking for her or no one missing her.

Where would they look? How would they find her?

Half-buried in the ground?

She thought about dinner, about the Peter Crane who smiled and laughed with his son. So charming, so easy to be with. She thought of him stopping to come to her rescue when she thought Frank Farman might hurt her. How could he do that, then turn around and do this? How could that man be this monster?

The car slowed again and turned from a smooth road to a rougher one. He would stop soon. He would try to kill her. He had all the control.

She needed a plan.

90

“I can’t believe you’re asking me these questions, making these allegations when my son is missing!” Janet Crane shouted.

“The alert has gone out to all personnel—county and state,” Cal Dixon assured her. “And to the media. Everyone will be looking for Peter’s car. Where would Peter go?”

“Why do you think Peter took Tommy? Why would he take Tommy? That doesn’t make any sense! Peter is a GOOD MAN!”

Mendez shook his head as he watched the monitor. “Could she really be that ignorant?”

Vince watched her, studied her. “People are as ignorant as they want to be. Do you think that woman wants to know that her husband is a monster? Do you think she wants to own that? She’ll go to her grave saying he’s a good man if we don’t prove otherwise beyond all doubt.”

He walked out of the room with a file folder under his arm, went across the hall, and knocked on the door. Dixon came out.

“Let me come in for minute.”

“You think that’s a good idea?” Dixon asked. “Can you keep your cool?”

“I can do what I need to do,” Vince said quietly. “I’m in and out. You stay with her.”

“Okay.”

Vince walked into the room and placed his file folder on the table. Janet Crane glared at him. She was on her feet, arms crossed.

“Please have a seat, Mrs. Crane,” he said, his tone quiet, civil, formal, respectful.

She hesitated.

“Please,” he repeated in the same quiet tone.

Janet Crane sat. Perched might have been a better word—her back straight, her arms still crossed.

“I apologize for my outburst earlier,” he said, taking a seat himself. “I’ve been belligerent and disrespectful to you, and I apologize for that. I let my emotions get the better of me. I’m sure you can appreciate that now, as you have to deal with the emotions of not knowing where your son is.”

She lifted her chin like a queen and looked him in the eye. “I am choking on my emotions right now.”

Vince nodded, looking down. “I know. Over my years in the Bureau, I’ve sat with many parents of missing children. It’s a terrible thing to know someone you care about is out of your sight, out of your influence.

“I’m quite fond of Miss Navarre,” he admitted. “I’m very upset that she’s missing—and that your son, Tommy, is missing. I believe that they are both probably with your husband, and that they are both in grave danger.”

“Peter would never hurt Tommy,” she said, lifting a forefinger for emphasis. “Never.”

“Not the Peter you know,” Vince said. “The Peter you know is a fine, upstanding family man. A really nice guy. I’ve met him, spoken with him. Heck of a nice guy.”

“Yes.”

He nodded earnestly, agreeing with her. “Yes. But that’s not who we’re talking about now, Mrs. Crane. We’re not talking about your husband. The man we’re talking about—you don’t know him. You’ve never met him. Your son doesn’t know him.”

She said nothing. The lack of response in and of itself spoke volumes.

“The man we’re talking about did this,” Vince said.

From the file folder he removed a full-body photograph of Lisa Warwick taken at autopsy, which he placed on the table in front of Janet Crane.

She didn’t look away, but every drop of color drained from her face, and her eyes seemed to double in size, the white showing all the way around. Her whole body began to jerk and shake.

“The man who did this,” Vince said in the same calm, measured tone. “Not your husband. The man who did this has your son. If you have any idea at all where that man might have gone, please tell Sheriff Dixon. Thank you, and please excuse me, Mrs. Crane.”

Vince walked out of the room with the same calm. He walked down the hall to the men’s room and went in. He just made it into a stall before his legs buckled under him and he vomited until he nearly blacked out.

The man who did those terrible things to Lisa Warwick, and to Julie Paulson, and to Karly Vickers, and to Christ knew how many others—that man had absolute control of the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

91

The boy had finally stopped crying. The loud sobs he had started with had subsided to a constant, almost whispered crying that seemed to go on and on. Finally, silence. Peaceful silence.

He would kill the boy first. That was the kindest thing he could do. He would hold him, comfort him, and suffocate him with the blanket he was lying on.

It would be over quickly. The boy would struggle hardest for the second and third minutes of the suffocation—while his brain was being starved of oxygen and panic set in—but he would quickly lose consciousness, and that would be all. It would be over.

In another part of his mind, in another self, he would be devastated. But there was no other choice to be made.

This meant his own life would now change forever, and he was quite angry about that. He would lose everything he had worked so hard to build. If only everything had simply gone on according to plan. Law enforcement had nothing on him with regards to the other women. Nothing. He knew that because he had made certain of it. Even though he signed his work, they had no concrete forensic evidence linking him to any crime.

A slice of moon cast a smoky glow over the country landscape of tree-studded rolling hills. He turned off the dirt road and into the field, gaining access to the property through the same open gate he had come through before. No one would be watching it. No one would think he would use it again.

Now that the search for the last woman was over, the field had been cleared of the tents that had offered shade and shelter for the volunteers and backgrounds for the TV newspeople. They would all be back here in a day or two, but no one was watching Gordon Sells’s field of junkers tonight.

He pulled the Jaguar in at the end of the back row. He would leave it here with the bodies in it, then hotwire something that could get him to Mexico.