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The bodies had been taken to Orrison Funeral Home: both Farmans, Mr. and Mrs. Vince figured it was a safe bet the funeral home had never had a more macabre tableau laid out in their embalming room.
Sharon Farman’s body bag was opened, and Vince steeled himself against the violence that had been done to her both before and after her death.
“I only want you to look at the cutting wounds,” Vince said. “Look at the placement of the wounds, the length, the depth, the way the edges look.”
He had brought along his Polaroids from the Lisa Warwick autopsy. Also his drawing of the placement of Lisa Warwick’s wounds, and the sketch he had made earlier that evening of Karly Vickers’s identical wounds. Each mark was precisely placed, precisely sized.
Now he made a sketch of Sharon Farman’s wounds on the simple human outline on another one of his forms. When he had finished, he laid out everything on a clean stainless steel embalming table, placing the drawings side by side by side.
None of them spoke as they studied the sketches: two exact matches, one sloppy forgery. The cutting wounds on Sharon Farman varied in length and depth. The placement didn’t match the other victims. The wounds appeared random rather than deliberate.
“Frank Farman didn’t kill those women,” Vince said. “These cuts made on Warwick and Vickers mean something specific to the perpetrator. He makes them where and how he makes them for a reason. Sharon Farman is just hacked up.”
Mendez continued to stare at the sketches, seeing something more than what Vince had seen after staring at them for hours on end. He had looked for some kind of message in the placement of the wounds, in the length of the wounds, in the depth of the wounds. They meant something to their killer, but he still wasn’t sure what.
Mendez bummed a pen off his boss and co
It took some imagination, but the pattern was there: long legs, long neck, long head… and two wings.
“It’s a bird,” Dixon said.
The rush of realization went through Vince, but he let Mendez say it.
“It’s a crane.”
Peter Crane.
84
“Dr. Crane,” A
He smiled sheepishly. “A
“No, no, not a problem.”
Her mother had raised her to welcome guests, to be courteous. Of course she stepped back from the door, and allowed him to come in. Why wouldn’t she? He had been her hero earlier in the evening.
“Can I offer you something to drink?” Hostess with the most-est. That had been her mother’s role.
“No, thank you,” he said. “I don’t want to interrupt your evening more than I already have. What a lovely home you have. Is it original?”
Charming, disarming. Half the women in town would have killed to have him in their foyers.
“Nineteen thirty-three,” she said. “Renovated, of course.”
“But very true to the architecture,” he said, looking around, taking in the Craftsman detail… and seeing that she was alone.
“What can I do for you, Dr. Crane?”
Again the self-deprecating smile. Very Tom Selleck without the mustache. “This is a little awkward, but it’s about the gift Tommy gave you.”
“Oh?” The necklace she had tucked in her pants pocket before she opened the door. The necklace only graduates of the Thomas Center program owned.
Peter Crane had been the last person to see Karly Vickers before she disappeared.
“You can’t possibly think he’s involved,” she said to Vince. “He’s the nicest man.”
“Have you, by any chance, opened it?”
Something was not quite right. A
Without exactly knowing why, she opened her mouth and lied. “No, not yet. I haven’t. Is there a problem?”
He stepped a little farther into the house, very casually taking it all in.
“I’m afraid I have to ask for it back,” he said, perfectly apologetic, and yet goose bumps chased down her arms. “Tommy… misunderstood…”
“No, really, you don’t have to explain,” A
“I’m so sorry,” he said, his gaze sliding to the right, toward the living room, where the contents of her purse lay scattered on the big leather ottoman in the middle of the room…
“Not a problem.”
… with the small box and scraps of wrapping paper strewn over the pile…
“I’ll just go get it,” A
Her heart was beating like a drum in her chest as she turned and walked toward the kitchen. She would go through the swinging door and just keep on going. Her car keys were on the kitchen counter by the phone. She would pick them up and be out the back door. Her car was parked in the driveway.
Even with the alarms sounding in her head, there was still a part of her that told her she was overreacting, that she was just spooked by everything that had happened that evening…
She remembered what Vince had said to her about trusting those instincts.
Her step quickened just slightly as she pushed open the heavy, swinging door.
One word exploded in her brain: RUN.
Even as she bolted, he was charging through the door, slamming it back against the wall as he closed the distance between them.
A
Peter Crane swatted at her with one hand, trying to catch hold of her shoulder. A
He caught a handful of her hair and yanked her back toward him. A
Crane’s head snapped to the left, blood spraying from his nose onto the white cabinetry.
A
The air left her lungs in a painful gust. Stars burst before her eyes. But she kept her legs moving, kicking, trying to push herself out from under him. Squirming, twisting, she gained an inch, got one arm free, grabbed for whatever she could.
Her fingers closed on a small concrete relic, a painted green frog a little bigger than her fist. Her other arm came free. She pulled herself out from under him, twisted over.
In that split second she saw his face, she knew what it was. Even in the dim yellow light of the back porch she recognized the thing that wasn’t quite right. His eyes-as flat and cold as coins. His face was no longer handsome. It was the face of a monster.
She slammed him in the jaw with the frog.
He punched her full in the mouth, and her consciousness dimmed.
He held her down with a knee on her chest, his left hand pressing down on her throat, choking her. He fished for something with his right hand in his jacket pocket and came out with a small tube.
The glue.
A