“Except the part where he said his father killed his mother,” Mendez said.
“Frank let me have a look around his house. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.”
“Or he wouldn’t have consented,” Mendez pointed out.
“It’s a catch-twenty-two,” Dixon conceded. “And you know damn well I wouldn’t cut him any slack on a charge like this. We simply have nothing to indicate a crime has been committed. We’ve got nothing to hold him on.”
Mendez put his hands on his head and turned around in a circle. “What a fucking mess.”
Vince approached Karly Vickers’s room with the same kind of quiet respect he would have used in church. Jane Thomas sat beside the girl’s bed, holding her hand, the gold necklace laced through fingers entwined.
“She’s lucky to have you on her side,” he said softly.
“I don’t know how she’s going to make it through this,” Thomas confessed. “She’d been through so much before she ever came to the center.”
“She wants to live,” Vince said. “Or she wouldn’t be here now. She’ll find a way to make it, and you’ll find a way to help her.”
Tears glittered in her green eyes as she looked up at him as if he might actually have an answer. “Why does it have to be so hard?”
“I don’t know. I only know my part, and that’s helping find the animal who did this to her. Can you help me with that?”
Jane Thomas helped him catalog the wounds Karly Vickers’s tormentor had carved into her, and Vince left her with a promise to do everything in his power to bring a madman to justice.
And he walked out of the room and away from the ICU thinking the same thing she had asked him: Why does it have to be so hard?
73
When Anne saw Tommy waiting outside the pizza place it was all she could do not to break into a big smile. He had dressed up in what had to be his best outfit: smart gray pants with a buttondown shirt and a navy blue sweater under his open Dodgers jacket. If he’d worn a tie he would have looked like a miniature prep school candidate. Only the black eye Dennis Farman had given him spoiled the image.
“You look very nice tonight, Tommy.”
“Thank you. So do you, Miss Navarre,” he said, terribly serious.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He had run out of things to say. He sighed and tried not to fidget. Anne looked up at his father, handsome and relaxed, a pleasant smile curving his mouth. “Dr. Crane, I want to thank you for making this possible.”
“Not a problem,” he said. “I appreciate your concern for setting the record straight. Why don’t we go inside? The smell of that pizza is too much to resist.”
They went into the restaurant and found a booth. The place was booming with Saturday night customers—college kids, families, teenagers traveling in packs. Video games bleeped and growled in their own alcove at the rear of the place. Tommy was wide-eyed, taking it all in.
“We don’t get to come here very often, do we, Tommy?” Peter Crane said.
Tommy shook his head.
“Tommy’s mom is a member of the food police,” Crane explained. “All healthy, all the time.”
“And as a dentist, you must agree with that,” Anne said.
“I don’t think the occasional pizza is such a bad thing. Tommy and I sneak in some fun stuff every once in a while, don’t we, Sport?”
Tongue-tied, Tommy nodded.
“What do you like on your pizza, Tommy?” Anne asked.
“Cheese.”
“Me too. What about pepperoni?”
The shy smile tucked up one corner of his mouth as he nodded again.
“What about Brussels sprouts?”
“No!” he said emphatically, shaking his head so hard his whole body swung from side to side.
Anne laughed. “All right. No Brussels sprouts.”
A waitress came and took their order for pizza with no Brussels sprouts. When she had gone, Anne looked across the table at Tommy, growing serious.
“Tommy, after seeing your mom last night, I just want to make sure you don’t have the wrong idea about something,” she began. “When I asked you those questions I never meant for you to think that your father might be involved in what happened, or that I might think that. Do you understand?”
“I guess,” he said in a tone of voice that was less than convincing.
“You know the detectives have to ask a lot of questions when they’re investigating a crime,” Anne said. “They ask questions of a lot of people. That doesn’t necessarily mean they believe everyone they talk to might be guilty. But they have to ask a lot of questions to try to get a clear idea of where people were when a crime was being committed. They want to know who couldn’t have committed the crime as well as who might have.
“Detective Leone asked me to find out from you if your dad was home that night. And you told me he was. That’s all they wanted to know.”
Tommy’s brow furrowed. “But why didn’t they just ask my dad?”
“They did ask me,” Peter Crane said. “But not everybody tells them the truth. They need to get confirmation from other people—like you or Mom.”
“My dad would never kill anybody,” Tommy said. “He’s a good person. He doesn’t even ever yell—not even at my mom. And even if he wasn’t home, that doesn’t mean he would kill somebody.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Anne agreed even as she found his statement odd. Even if he wasn’t home . . .
“My dad helps people,” Tommy said. “That’s what he does. Even when he doesn’t have to.”
“That’s great,” Anne said. “Your dad is a really good example for you.”
“My mom says he’s a pillar of the community,” he said, not exactly sure what that meant, but certain it was something very admirable.
“I’m sure he is. And I’m sure you will be too, when you grow up,” Anne said. “You’ve been through a lot this week, and you’ve handled it all with a lot of courage. I’ve been very proud of you and Wendy.”
At the mention of his friend’s name, Tommy’s face went very sober. “Dennis Farman attacked Wendy and Cody in the park today.”
“Yes, I know,” Anne said, wishing they could have gotten through the evening without this conversation. She had decided it would take her until Monday to come up with a way to explain to her students what had happened to Wendy and Cody, and what would happen to Dennis. She couldn’t make sense of the senseless to herself. How was she supposed to make sense of any of this madness in a way ten-year-old children would understand?
“Wendy called and told me,” Tommy said. “She said Dennis had a huge knife and he tried to cut Cody’s heart out!”
“He had a knife,” Anne said. “And he hurt Cody with it, but Cody is going to be all right. So is Wendy,” she added, in case Wendy had taken the opportunity to embellish her part in the story as well.
“My mom says Dennis is evil and he should be locked up like an animal.”
“Dennis has done a lot of bad things,” Anne said. “He’s a very troubled boy, Tommy. As easy as it is for us to just be angry with Dennis, we need to feel bad for him too.”
“Why?” Tommy said with all the brutally honest incredulity of a child.
“Son, we can’t know what makes other people do bad things,” his father said. “We can’t make excuses for them, but we have to understand that there are probably a lot of complicated reasons Dennis is the way he is.”
Tommy made a face. “I just don’t want him to be around me, that’s all. If he was a grown-up and he tried to cut somebody’s heart out, he would have to go to prison, wouldn’t he?”