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  Deeper Than the Dead

  ( Oak Knoll - 1 )

  Tami Hoag

  Bestseller Hoag (_Kill the Messenger_) ventures into serial killer territory with results sure to please her many fans, though unresolved plot threads, both intentional and inadvertent, may put off veteran readers of the genre.

  One fall day in 1985 in Oak Knoll, Calif., fifth-grader Tommy Crane and his sidekick, Wendy Morgan, are fleeing the class bully, Dennis Farman, through a local park when Tommy stumbles over the head of a dead woman buried up to her neck. Two hours from Los Angeles, Oak Knoll is not the sort of town where major crime is a problem, but a serial killer is on the loose who's already murdered and tortured several women and has another on deck in his secret lair. Fifth-grade teacher Anne Navarre, who counsels Tommy and Wendy, is soon at the center of the investigation being led by a hunky FBI agent, Vince Leone. This is serial killer lite with Hoag's romance roots dictating both the prose style and the unveiling of the killer.

  ALSO BY TAMI HOAG

  The Alibi Man

  Prior Bad Acts

  Kill the Messenger

  Dark Horse

  Dust to Dust

  Ashes to Ashes

  A Thin Dark Line

  Guilty as Sin

  Night Sins

  Dark Paradise

  Cry Wolf

  Still Waters

  Lucky’s Lady

  Sarah’s Sin

  Magic

  Copyright © 2010 by Indelible Ink, Inc.

  All rights reserved

  For Gryphon.

  My first effort without you, old friend.

  I hope it measures up.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My first heartfelt thanks go to Jane Thomas, whose generosity to the cause of the United States Equestrian Team Foundation won her a place in this book. I hope you enjoy your character as much as I enjoyed creating her.

  And to a true character and dear friend: Happy birthday, Franny lein! Ich liebe dich.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Do you remember 1985?

  In 1985, I was working at the Bath Boutique in Rochester, Minnesota, selling designer toilet seats and ceramic rabbit toothbrush holders. I was two years away from selling my first book (The Trouble with J. J.), and three years away from its publication.

  In 1985, Ronald Reagan was in the first year of his second term as president of the United States. Real women wore shoulder pads, permed their hair, and lusted after Tom Selleck and Don Johnson. Cell phones were the size of bricks and had to be carried around in a case with a handle. The Go-Go’s disbanded, Madonna was the hot new thing, and Bruce Springsteen was Born in the U.S.A.

  As I began to develop the idea for Deeper Than the Dead, I knew the book would be set in the past. I thought this would be fun. Maybe I would dredge up some nostalgia for leg warmers and heavy metal hair bands (as in Van Halen and Mötley Crüe). It wasn’t until I got into the book that I realized something very inconvenient about 1985: In terms of forensic science and technology, it was the freaking Stone Age.

  Imagine a sheriff’s department without computers on every detective’s desk. I can actually remember seeing law enforcement agency wish lists in the late eighties longing for such exotic items as fax machines and photocopiers.

  Imagine no DNA technology. The first case adjudicated in the United States in which DNA evidence was presented was in 1987, and the science was considered controversial still for years after that. That’s hard to grasp today, in the days of the CSI effect, when juries expect DNA evidence and are often reluctant to convict without it.

  In 1985, fingerprint examples were still matched by the human eye.

  Now, I am by no means gifted in the technological sense. If it had been left up to me to harness electricity, we would all still be reading by oil lamps. I have no clue how my computer works. I still haven’t figured out how all those tiny little people get inside my television.

  And yet, compared with the 1985 Tami, I am a technology junkie. I am never without my iPhone or iPod. “Have laptop, will travel” is my motto. My DVR records every rerun of House. I even occasionally tweet on Twitter.

  So, used to all this modern convenience, I found it a major inconvenience when I couldn’t have my detectives jump on the information superhighway to gather information. And no cell phones for instant contact? How did we live?

  In fact, criminal profiling—so commonly used today and so familiar to law enforcement and civilians alike—was still something of a fledgling science in the mid-eighties. That was what we think of now as the golden age of the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit. Those were the days of the Nine: nine legends in the making (Conrad Hassel, Larry Monroe, Roger Depue, Howard Teten, Pat Mullany, Roy Hazelwood, Dick Ault, Robert Ressler, and John Douglas) who came together in three or four different groups over that time span to bring profiling and the BSU to the forefront of law enforcement.

  In 1985, the unit was housed at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, in offices sixty feet belowground—ten times deeper than the dead—in what agents referred to as the National Cellar for the Analysis of Violent Crime.

  Setting Deeper Than the Dead in 1985 gave me the opportunity to write about those days and to insinuate a character into that mythical circle of the Nine. It also gave me a chance to walk down memory lane and remember the days of Dallas and Dynasty, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and Members Only jackets.

  We were all happenin’ in the eighties, and if anyone would have suggested then that we were living in an age of innocence, we would have thought them crazy. So much has happened in the decades since. Not all for the better, to be sure. Still, I’ll definitely take the advances made in forensic sciences, and I’ll definitely take my cell phone.

  1

  My Hero

  My hero is my dad. He is a great person. He works hard, is nice to everyone, and tries to help people.

  His victim would have screamed if she could have. He had seen to it she could not open her mouth. There would have been terror in her eyes. He had made certain she could not open them. He had rendered her blind and mute, making her the perfect woman. Beautiful. Seen and not heard. Obedient. He had immobilized her so she could not fight him.

  Sometimes he helps me with my homework because he is good at math and science. Sometimes we play catch in the backyard, which is really fun and cool. But he is very busy. He works very hard.

  Her uncontrollable trembling and the sweat that ran down the sides of her face showed her terror. He had locked her inside the prison of her own body and mind, and there would be no escape.

  The cords stood out in her neck as she strained against the bindings. Sweat and blood ran in thin rivulets down the slopes of her small, round breasts.

  My dad tells me no matter what I should always be polite and respect people. I should treat other people the way I would like to be treated.

  She had to respect him now. She had no choice. The power was all his. In this game, he always won. He had stripped away all of her pretense, the mask of beauty, to reveal the plain raw truth: that she was nothing and he was God.

  It was important for her to know that before he killed her.

  My dad is a very important man in the community.

  It was important that she had the time to reflect on that truth. Because of that, he wouldn’t kill her just yet. Besides, he didn’t have the time.

  My dad. My hero.

  It was nearly three o’clock. He had to go pick up his child from school.

  2

  Five Days Later

  Tuesday, October 8 , 1985

  “You suck, Crane.”

  Tommy Crane sighed and stared straight ahead.

  Dennis Farman leaned over from his desk, ri
ght across from Tommy’s, his fat face screwed up into what he probably thought was a really tough look.

  Tommy tried to tell himself it was just a stupid look. Asinine. That was his new word of the week. Asinine: marked by inexcusable failure to exercise intelligence or sound judgment. Definition number two: of, relating to, or resembling an ass.

  That was Dennis, all the way around.

  He tried not to think about the fact that Dennis Farman was bigger than he was, a whole year older than he was, and just plain mean.

  “You suck donkey dicks,” Farman said, laughing to himself like he thought he was brilliant or something.

  Tommy sighed again and looked at the clock on the wall above the door. Two more minutes.

  Wendy Morgan turned around in her seat and looked at him with frustration. “Say something, Tommy. Tell him he’s a dork.”

  “‘Say something, Tommy,’” Farman parroted, making his voice really high, like a girl’s. “Or let your girlfriend talk for you.”

  “He doesn’t have a girlfriend,” Cody Roache, Farman’s scrawny toady, chimed in. “He’s gay. He’s gay and she’s a lesbo.”

  Wendy rolled her eyes. “Shut up, Cockroach. You don’t even know what that means.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Because you are.”

  Tommy watched the clock tick one minute closer to freedom. At the front of the room, Miss Navarre walked back to her desk from the door with a yellow note in her hand.

  If someone had tortured him, held fire to his feet, or stuck bamboo shoots under his fingernails, he would have had to admit he was kind of in love with Miss Navarre. She was smart and kind, and really pretty with big brown eyes and dark hair tucked behind her ears.

  “Twat,” Cockroach said, just loud enough that the bad word shot like a poisoned dart straight to Miss Navarre’s ear, and her attention snapped in their direction.

  “Mr. Roache,” she said in that tone of voice that cut like a knife. “Would you like to come to the front of the room now and explain to the rest of the class exactly why you will be staying in the room for recess and lunch hour tomorrow?”

  Roache wore his most stupid expression behind his too-big glasses. “Uh, no.”

  Miss Navarre arched an eyebrow. She could say a lot with that eyebrow. She was sweet and kind, but she was no pushover.

  Cody Roache swallowed hard and tried again. “Um . . . no, ma’am?”

  The bell rang loudly, and everyone started to bolt from their seats. Miss Navarre held up one finger and they all froze like they were in suspended animation.

  “Mr. Roache,” she said. It was never a good thing when she called someone Mr. or Miss. “I’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning at my desk.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She turned her attention to Dennis Farman, holding up the note in her hand. “Dennis, your father called to say he won’t be able to pick you up today, and you should walk home.”

  The second Miss Navarre dropped her hand, the entire fifth-grade class bolted for the door like a herd of wild horses.

  “Why don’t you stand up to him, Tommy?” Wendy demanded as they walked away from Oak Knoll Elementary School and toward the park.

  Tommy hiked his backpack up on one shoulder. “’Cause he could pound me into a pile of broken bones.”

  “He’s all talk.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. He hit me once in dodgeball and I didn’t breathe for like a week.”

  “You have to stand up for yourself,” Wendy insisted, blue eyes flashing. She had long, wavy blonde hair like a mermaid’s, which she was always wearing in the styles of rock stars Tommy had never heard of. “Otherwise, what kind of man are you?”

  “I’m not a man. I’m a kid, and I want to stay that way for a while.”

  “What if he went after me?” she asked. “What if he tried to hit me or kidnap me?”

  Tommy frowned. “That’s different. That’s you. Sure, I’d try to save you. That’s what a guy is supposed to do. It’s called chivalry. Like in the Knights of the Round Table or Star Wars.”

  Wendy flashed a smile and wound one blonde braid into a shape like a cinnamon roll pressed against her ear. “Does that make me Princess Leia?” she said, batting her eyelashes.

  Tommy rolled his eyes. They turned off the sidewalk and onto a trail that cut through Oakwoods Park.

  Oakwoods was a big park with part of it clipped and cleared and set up with picnic pavilions and a bandstand and playground. The rest of it was more wild, like a forest with simple trails cut through it.

  A lot of kids wouldn’t cut through the park because there were stories about it being haunted and homeless weirdos living in it, and someone claimed they once saw Bigfoot. But it was the shortest way home, and he and Wendy had been going this way since they were in the third grade. Nothing bad had ever happened.

  “And you’re Luke Skywalker,” Wendy said.

  Tommy didn’t want to be Luke Skywalker. Han Solo had all the fun, blasting around the galaxy with Chewbacca, breaking the rules and doing whatever they liked.

  Tommy had never broken a rule in his life. His day-to-day existence was orderly and scheduled. Up at seven, breakfast at seven fifteen, to school by eight. School let out at three ten. He had to be home by three forty-five. Sometimes he walked. Sometimes one of his or Wendy’s parents picked them up, depending. When he got home he would have a snack and tell his mother everything that happened that day. From four until six fifteen he could go out and play—unless he had a piano lesson—but he had to be cleaned up and at the dinner table at six thirty sharp.

  It would have been a lot more fun to be Han Solo.

  Wendy had moved on to other topics, chattering about her latest favorite singer, Madonna, who Tommy had never heard of because his mother insisted they only listen to public radio. She wanted him to grow up to be a concert pianist and/or a brain surgeon. Tommy wanted to grow up to be a baseball player, but he didn’t tell his mother that. That was between him and his dad.

  Suddenly, behind them, came a blood-curdling war cry and what sounded like wild animals crashing through the woods.

  “CRANE SUCKS!!!!”

  “RUN!!” Tommy yelled.

  Dennis Farman and Cody Roache came leaping over a fallen log, their faces red from shouting.

  Tommy grabbed Wendy’s wrist and took off, dragging her along behind him. He was faster than Dennis. He’d outrun him before. Wendy was fast for a girl, but not as fast as he was.

  Farman and Roache were catching up to them, their eyes bugging out of their heads like a gargoyle’s. Their mouths were wide-open. They were still yelling, but Tommy could only hear the pounding of his heart and the crashing sound they made as they bounded through the woods.

  “This way!” he yelled, veering off the trail.

  Wendy looked back, yelling, “FART-MAN!!”

  “JUMP!!” Tommy shouted.

  They went over the edge of an embankment and flew through the air. Farman and Roache came flying after them. They landed like so many stones, hitting the ground and tumbling.

  All the colors of the forest whirled past Tommy’s eyes like a kaleidoscope as he rolled, until he finally came to a stop on a soft mound of dirt.

  He lay still for a moment, holding his breath, waiting for Dennis Farman to jump on him. But he could hear Dennis moaning loudly somewhere behind him.

  Slowly Tommy pushed himself up on his hands and knees. The ground he was on had been turned over recently. It smelled like earth and wet leaves, and something else he couldn’t name. It was soft and damp and crumbly like someone had dug it up with a shovel. Like someone had buried something . . . or somebody.

  His heart jumped into the back of his throat as he raised his head . . . and came face-to-face with death.

  3

  At first, all Tommy could see was that the woman was pretty. She looked peaceful, like in The Lady of the Lake. Her skin was pale and kind of blue. Her eyes were closed.

  Then slowly
other things came into focus: blood that had drizzled down her chin and dried, a slash mark across one cheek, ants marching into and out of her nostrils.

  Tommy’s stomach flipped over.

  “Holy shit!” Dennis exclaimed as he came to stand beside the grave.

  Cody Roache, dirt on his face, glasses askew, screamed like a girl, bolted, and ran back the way they had come.

  Wendy was as white as a sheet as she stared at the dead woman, but, as always, she had her wits about her. She turned to Dennis and said, “You have to go call your dad.”

  Dennis wasn’t listening to her. He got down on his hands and knees for a closer look. “Is she really dead?”

  “Don’t touch her!” Tommy snapped as Dennis reached out a grubby finger to poke at the woman’s face.

  He had only ever seen one dead person in his whole life—his grand-mother on his father’s side—and she was in a coffin. But he knew it just wasn’t right to touch this woman. It was disrespectful or something.

  “What if she’s just asleep?” Dennis said. “What if she was buried alive and she’s in a coma?”

  He tried to push up one of the woman’s eyelids, but it wouldn’t budge. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the woman’s face.

  To Tommy it looked as if something had been digging at the grave. One of the woman’s hands was out of the dirt, as if she had been trying to reach out for help. The hand was mangled, like maybe some animal had chewed on her fingers, tearing flesh and exposing bones.

  He had fallen right on top of a dead woman. His head swam. He felt like someone had just poured cold water over him.