“She was never a client at your facility? She never worked at your facility?”
“Not that I remember. What does she have to do with . . . ?” She turned her head in the direction of the embalming room, unable to say the victim’s name.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, shaking. “Karly. You think she’s with the—the animal that did that to Lisa, don’t you?”
Cal Dixon put a reassuring hand on her knee. Mendez mentally raised an eyebrow.
“Jane,” Dixon spoke quietly, as if he were talking to a nervous horse. “Chances are Karly is with someone she knows. She probably just went—”
Jane Thomas steeled herself, sitting up a little taller. “Don’t you dare patronize me. We’ve been over this. Karly did not just anything.”
“Miss Thomas?” Mendez tried to bring her attention back to him, a little irritated at his boss for bringing an obviously personal note into the proceedings. “Julie Paulson was a woman found murdered outside of town in April last year. I’m wondering if she might have had a connection to the center.”
“April ’84? I was in Europe for several months. My parents own horses. Their top horse was competing in Germany and Holland. I went with them . . .”
Mendez knew why people in this situation rambled and digressed. If Jane Thomas was thinking of her parents’ show horses, she couldn’t be thinking about the horror she had seen in the room down the hall.
“Have there been any threats against the center recently?” Dixon asked.
“The usual kooks and religious fanatics.”
“What does ‘usual’ mean?” Mendez asked.
“The a-woman’s-place-is-barefoot-and-pregnant crowd. The whores-should-turn-to-Jesus-or-burn-in-hell crowd. The right-to-lifers, though I’ll never figure that one out. We provide our women with access to medical care. We don’t advocate abortion.”
“Do you keep hate mail?”
“Yes. In a file at the office.”
“We’ll need to see it.”
“Of course.”
“You said the victim—Lisa Warwick—used to work for you. When was that?”
“A few years ago. She was an administrative secretary and she volunteered as a victim’s advocate in her spare time, hand-holding clients who had to deal with the court system. She still does—did—that from time to time.”
“Any cases lately?”
“A few months ago. A client with a drug history was trying to get visitation rights to her children.”
“Was there an angry father involved?”
“No. Actually, in the end the father was so impressed with the progress his ex-wife had made, he withdrew his objection.”
“Why did Ms. Warwick leave the center?” Mendez asked.
“She went back to college to finish her degree in nursing.”
“She left on good terms with everyone?”
“Yes. Absolutely. You can’t think someone at the center could have done this.”
“We have to explore all possibilities,” Mendez said.
“It’s standard investigative procedure, Jane,” Dixon said. “We never know where leads might come from.”
“We’ll need to interview the staff,” Mendez said. “And the women—your clients.”
He could see that was the last thing Jane Thomas wanted.
“These women are fragile,” she said. “They’ll be scared to death.”
“They may have a right to be,” Mendez said bluntly.
“That’s a little premature, Detective,” Dixon said, giving him a steely look. “But we have to err on the side of caution.
“What do you know about Lisa Warwick’s background?”
“She’s from Kansas originally. I probably have a contact number for her in the old personnel files.”
“Ex-husbands? Bad boyfriends?” Mendez asked.
“None that I remember. Lisa was a very private person.”
“Did she engage in any risky behavior? Frequent bars? Drinking? Drugs?”
“I can’t imagine that she did. She liked to knit.”
“When was the last time you had any contact with her?”
“We spoke on the phone from time to time. She dropped in at the center a few weeks ago to say hi.”
“Do you know where she was working?”
“The ER at Mercy General, here in town.”
She put a hand over her eyes as she started to cry. Dixon got up from the couch and tipped his head toward the door. Mendez followed him out into the hall.
“I’ll go to the hospital and see what I can find out about Warwick,” Mendez said, still scribbling in his notebook. “I figure I’ll send Hamilton and Hicks to the Thomas Center.”
“What did your connection at Quantico say?”
“He’s coming out.”
“He’s coming here?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not the usual protocol.”
Mendez shrugged.
Dixon didn’t look happy. “I don’t want a circus here, Tony. I don’t want this guy talking to the media. I don’t want anybody talking to the media.”
“That doesn’t need to be an issue.”
“That includes you,” Dixon said, thrusting a finger at him. “Dial it down. I know this is a big case for you, and you’re excited about it. That’ll make you sharp. But I don’t want you running off the rails. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Mendez said, falling back on tried-and-true marine respect for rank.
“I don’t want anything said about there being a possible connection between these victims.”
“No, sir.”
“I’ve seen a couple of those BSU guys grandstand and shoot their mouths off. I won’t have it.”
“No, sir. Absolutely not, sir.”
Dixon stepped back, sighed, looked around. “Go radio for a uniform to pick you up. I’m going to take Jane home.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dixon looked a little sheepish. “We’re friends.”
“Not my business, sir,” Mendez said.
“No, it isn’t.”
16
The Roache home was a modest bungalow in a slightly shabby part of town. The house could have used a coat of paint, but the place was otherwise neat. Someone had put a pot of rust-colored mums on the front step, adding a splash of fall color to the picture.
Anne rang the doorbell and waited. Cody’s mother had called the school that morning to say that Cody was ill and wouldn’t be in class. Anne had found her thoughts drifting to him off and on all day. He was the only one of the four children who had discovered the body she hadn’t seen for herself. At the end of the school day, she got in her car and drove directly to the Roache home.
A small dog yapped its way through the house, followed by Renee Roache. Cody’s mother was small and weedy with limp brown hair and a pale complexion. She worked days as a waitress at a diner near the college where the pace was hectic and the tips pathetic. Her husband was a maintenance man who worked nights at Mercy General.
“Mrs. Roache, I hope I’m not imposing,” Anne said. “I just wanted to check on Cody to see how he’s doing.”
Renee Roache looked perplexed, as did the dog at her feet, a fat brown-and-white terrier, tipping its head quizzically from one side to the other. “That’s beyond the call of duty, isn’t it? It’s just a stomach bug.”
It was Anne’s turn to look puzzled. “Um, well, I had a feeling, after what happened yesterday . . .”
“What happened yesterday? Did something happen at school?”
“Didn’t Principal Garnett’s office call you?”
“Not that I know of. I ran out to get something for Cody’s stomach this morning. Maybe they called then. We don’t have an answering machine.”
“Oh,” Anne said, at a loss. Cody had obviously not told his mother about finding the body in the woods. It was a hard idea to grasp that a child would keep that kind of information to himself.