“Fuck that!” Franny said. “Fry his ass!”
Vince patted him on the shoulder. “I like how you think, my friend. If that was an option . . .”
“But the murders?” Anne said. “And Karly Vickers?”
“Right now, there’s just not enough physical evidence. In fact, there’s almost no physical evidence. He didn’t make a mistake—until he went after you,” he said. “How did you get the necklace?”
Anne sighed at the sad irony of it. “Tommy gave it to me. He must have found it in their house. He thought he was doing something special, something sweet.”
His sweet gesture had set off the chain of events that led to his father being revealed as a monster. The Greeks couldn’t have come up with a better tragedy.
“Have you talked to Tommy?” she asked.
She knew the answer by the tension in his face.
“The mother won’t let us near him.”
He read her distress just as easily and closed his hand gently around hers. “There’s nothing you can do, honey. Let it go.”
A deep sense of sadness settled in Anne’s heart, almost as if she had lost a loved one. In a way, she supposed she had. Somehow she knew right then that she wouldn’t see Tommy Crane again. She didn’t say it. No one would have believed her, but she knew it in her heart. He was gone from her life.
“I brought you a get-well present to cheer you up,” Franny said, setting a colorful gift bag on the bedside tray.
Anne peeked into the bag, suspicious. She reached in with the hand not burdened by an IV catheter and plucked out a scrap of black silk and lace.
“Some people give flowers or candy. My friend gives lingerie.”
“Nothing says ‘Get well’ like a negligee,” Franny said.
“Always makes me feel better,” Vince confessed.
“See?”
Anne would have rolled her eyes if they hadn’t hurt so much.
Franny leaned down and found a square inch of cheek to kiss without causing her pain. “I’m going to let you rest,” he said, then gave Vince a big comic wink.
“He’s something,” Vince said, chuckling, as Franny made his exit.
Anne managed to arch a brow at the negligee. “Yeah, the two of you.”
“Seriously, now,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
She felt no need to try to be brave or analytical with him. The tears came high in her eyes as the emotions flooded through her, leaving her trembling. “I’ve never been so afraid in my life.”
Vince eased a hip onto the bed so he could put his arms around her.
“You should have seen me,” he murmured. “When I knew that bastard had you . . .”
“Will you just hold me for a while?” Anne asked him in a small voice.
“I’ll hold you all night long,” he murmured, stroking her hair.
“I don’t think they’ll let you stay past nine.”
“Let them try to get me out of here,” he said. “God hasn’t made a nurse mean enough to get me away from you. And that’s saying something.”
He kissed her forehead, and she felt herself let go some of the tension still trembling through her.
“I mean it, Anne,” he said quietly. “I’m not going anywhere. I might be a big dumb lummox from Chicago, but I know the real deal when I see it. I love you. I want to spend my life with you. Is that all right with you? Or is there a restraining order in my future?”
Anne smiled and shook her head. He was right. After looking death in the face, all of life’s other choices became so much simpler and cleaner.
Vince leaned down and kissed her lips, and she had never felt more safe or loved in her life.
94
In the days that followed, properties Peter Crane might have accessed using his wife’s lock-box key were searched, but no madman’s lair was discovered. Wherever Crane had tortured and killed his victims remained a mystery—along with any physical evidence that might have tied him to the crimes.
Karly Vickers had begun to recover from her ordeal. She had been taken off the ventilator and was breathing on her own, but communication with her was difficult. While she could speak a few words at a time in a hoarse whisper, she could neither see nor hear. She had not indicated that she knew the identity of her attacker.
Doctors had expressed hope of repairing some of the damage to her ears and possibly giving her back at least partial hearing. While that was good news, it was a long shot, and would be a long time coming.
Vince doubted the young woman would have much to tell them at any rate. He didn’t believe for a minute Peter Crane had made the mistake of leaving a victim alive. Karly Vickers was his masterpiece, his living tribute to his own criminal cunning and brilliance. She was Peter Crane saying, Look how much smarter I am than the cops. I give them a victim back and they still don’t know who I am.
Crane might have given her back, but he would have damn well made sure she wouldn’t be able to tell them anything.
It was chilling to think how long Crane might have gone on with his killing career. And just as chilling to imagine how long it had gone on to that point. His crimes were too sophisticated, his fantasies too finely honed for the three victims they knew of to have been his first.
The Bureau was thoroughly involved at that point, Vince being officially assigned to pursue the case and investigate Peter Crane’s past. It would be his last case as an agent. And while he had had an illustrious career, he was focused on what would come: his life with Anne.
Dixon had given him a desk in the war room. He sat now reviewing videotape, playing the interview forward, rewinding, replaying.
Mendez came in with lunch.
“Jane Thomas had Karly Vickers taken out on the hospital lawn in a wheelchair this morning so she could pet her dog. That’s going to be the first seeing-eye pit bull in history,” he said, putting the bags down on the table. He nodded at the television. “Why are you looking at that?”
“Come sit down.”
It was Dixon’s interview of Janet Crane the night her husband had abducted Anne. Vince watched, fascinated, as Peter Crane’s wife led Cal Dixon around in circles.
She had collapsed in hysterical tears after Vince had left the room that night, supposedly driven to panic by the idea of her son in the hands of a madman. Dixon had offered her comfort, coffee, to call a doctor. She had refused all, preferring to carry on intermittently.
Dixon had continued with the interview. They needed answers from her. Where did Peter like to go? Was there a particular place he might feel safe to hide? Were there vacant properties she knew of that he could get into using her key? Places that were hidden, out of the way, forgotten?
Around and around they went. Dixon got nothing. Janet Crane got attention.
It probably wasn’t even conscious on her part. That was just how she operated and had since childhood, Vince suspected.
She couldn’t believe this was happening to her.
To her. Not to her son, not to Anne, not to any of the other lives her husband had wrecked and ruined.
“What a bitch,” Mendez said.
“What a case study,” Vince corrected him. “She’s a textbook narcissist. Everything in her world revolves around her. The rest of us are just actors in her play.”
He paused the tape, rewound it again, found the bit he wanted Mendez to watch: the point in the interview when he had laid out Lisa Warwick’s autopsy photo in front of Janet Crane.
Mendez said nothing.
Vince rewound and replayed.
He turned to his protégé and said, “She doesn’t look away. She doesn’t look away, and she doesn’t become hysterical for a full two minutes.”
“She’s in shock,” Mendez offered.