Mrs. Barkow hadn’t known Dennis’s father beat his wife, beat him. Dennis had always believed his father was a good guy, anyway, that there had to be something wrong with him that he made his father so angry. He was bad, he was stupid, he was brain damaged, and his mother was just a drunk, stupid cunt, and she deserved whatever happened to her.
Maybe that was all true, but he didn’t think the same way about his father anymore.
His backpack was heavy with stuff he had taken out of the kitchen—cans of soup, tuna, beans—stuff he needed to live on his own. He trudged along, kicking through the fallen leaves, thinking of nothing but his destination.
The yellow tape had started to fall down, making it look like a place nobody cared about anymore. That was good. Then no one would come there and bother him. Dennis dropped his backpack on the ground and sat down on the rock where the dead lady had put her head.
It was time for lunch, and this was where he wanted to have it: in a grave.
Wendy didn’t go into the woods. She stayed in the park where the grass was mowed and there were no fallen branches or thornbushes, or graves. She sat on a bench with her legs crossed, doodling in her notebook.
It was quiet here, the kind of quiet with birds in the background and the sound of running water from the fountain across the path. Not the kind of quiet at home.
She wondered if her dad would move away or just out of their house. It seemed like he was going to Sacramento a lot, but maybe that was just what he said when he went to have his affair. She wondered if the Other Woman had kids, and if she had kids, did Wendy already know them? What if they were kids in her school? What if they were kids she didn’t like? What if Dennis Farman was going to be her step-brother?
These were things adults never considered, things that didn’t matter to them.
Of course, she would live with her mother. They would stay in their house. Maybe her mom would have to get a job. She had had a job before Wendy was born. There was a picture in their family room of her mom and dad in graduation caps and gowns, getting their diplomas from college. That meant she could get a good job.
Or, Wendy thought as she looked out into the woods, she could write her book about her and Tommy finding the dead body, and it could get made into a movie, and she would be rich. Her father would be sorry then.
Cody flipped himself around the monkey bars, pretending he was really a monkey. Monkeys had it good. They were always his favorite animals at the zoo in Santa Barbara—especially the white-handed gibbons with their long, long arms, swinging them from limb to limb. He pretended now that he was a white-handed gibbon, and he started making loud monkey noises as he negotiated the bars.
The thing he wanted to do most in the world—next to being an astronaut—was to go to the San Diego Zoo. His mother had told him maybe next summer they could have a real family vacation and go there. The San Diego Zoo had every kind of monkey there was, he bet.
Cody was glad he had come to the park. He didn’t feel nervous anymore. Hopping down from the monkey bars he ran over to the tetherballs and started a game with a younger kid from down his street.
Yep. He was glad he had come to the park.
Out in the woods, Dennis dug a can of beans out of his backpack and got out his pocketknife. He couldn’t figure out how to work the piece that was supposed to be the can opener.
It didn’t look like any can opener he had ever seen. He tried and tried to work it, but all it did was make a dent then slip off to the side. And every time that happened, he became more aware of being hungry. And then he began to feel something else.
He began to feel.
Fingers fumbling, he cut himself closing the can opener. Bright red blood welled up out of his finger. He stared at it for a minute, then licked it off.
He opened the big blade on the knife, and stabbed it hard into the top of the can. He stabbed it again, and liquid from the beans squirted out through the holes.
He stabbed it again and he began to feel something bigger growing in his chest. All the pain, all the anger started coming out as he stabbed the can with the knife.
So he stabbed it again and again and again . . .
62
“Oh God, this is embarrassing,” Peter Crane groaned, looking at the arrest report—complete with mug shot—Mendez had put down on the table in front of him. He sighed and looked away.
“What you do in your free time is your business, Dr. Crane. I don’t want an explanation,” Mendez said. “I’m not going to tell your wife. I don’t need another homicide to investigate. You seem like a nice enough guy.
“My problem with this is that on that same night, in that same vice sweep, Julie Paulson was arrested.”
“Who’s Julie Paulson?”
“Julie Paulson was a prostitute. Not long after her arrest in Oxnard, she turned up at the Thomas Center. And not long after that, she turned up dead.”
“I don’t know anything about that!” Crane said, shocked.
Mendez made a pained face. “But you do, Doctor. Actually, you brought that murder up the first day we spoke.”
Crane looked confused for an instant. “The girl that was murdered last year? The one found outside of town? I read about that in the newspaper!”
“I have a hard time with that,” Mendez said. “I don’t believe in coincidences—especially not when they start to pile on top of each other.
“Julie Paulson was a prostitute in Oxnard. You were arrested for soliciting a prostitute in Oxnard. Julie Paulson comes to Oak Knoll. You live in Oak Knoll. She gets in the program at the Thomas Center. You work with the women at the Thomas Center. She ends up dead. Karly Vickers goes missing. You knew Lisa Warwick . . .
“Can you see where all these things might lead me, Dr. Crane?”
Crane rubbed his hands over his face. “Oh my God.”
Mendez let him stew for a minute, tapping his pen on the tabletop slowly as the seconds ticked past.
“I didn’t know Julie Paulson,” he said at last. “The girl I got arrested with in Oxnard, Candace, I used to see her from time to time.”
“You were a regular customer is what you’re saying?”
Crane closed his eyes like he had a bad headache. “I’m not proud of it. And it’s not that I don’t care about my wife. It’s just . . . Janet has some . . . issues—”
“I really don’t want to know about that,” Mendez said. “Really.”
“I know you’ve only seen the worst of her,” Crane said. “This week has been a nightmare. She’s really not a bad person. I don’t cheat on her in the truest sense of the word—”
“Don’t care. Really.”
If Peter Crane wanted absolution he was going to have to consult a priest. Mendez had no interest in arguing the definition of adultery. The man was fucking women other than his wife—that pretty much defined the word for him.
Crane sighed. “After I got arrested, I stopped going down there.”
“And Julie Paulson moved here,” Mendez said. “You’re not helping yourself here, Dr. Crane.”
“I’m telling you what happened,” he said, exasperated. “I can’t help it that that girl moved here. It’s a free country. Maybe she had a friend here, but it wasn’t me.”
“And you stopped going to Oxnard.”
“Yes.”
“And . . . ? What? You gave up prostitutes? You gave up sex?”