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.

“She’s enjoying it.”

Mendez looked at him like he was crazy. “No way.”

Vince rewound the tape and played it again, and again. He wound it back to an earlier point in the interview.

“. . . your son, Tommy, is missing,” he said. “I believe that they are both probably with your husband, and that they are both in grave danger.”

“Peter would never hurt Tommy,” she said, lifting a forefinger for emphasis. “Never.”

“‘Peter would never hurt Tommy.’ She doesn’t say Peter would never hurt anybody. She doesn’t say he wouldn’t hurt Anne,” Mendez said, frowning. “And when we went to their house that night and told her her husband had abducted a woman, she never asked who.”

“Either she knew, or she didn’t care,” Vince said. “Or both.

“Janet Crane volunteers at the Thomas Center. She knows the staff wears the silver necklace. She knows only the graduates wear the gold necklace. The boy gave the necklace to Anne. He had to have found it in their house.”

“If Janet Crane knew that necklace was there . . . ,” Mendez started.

“She had to have known where it came from,” Vince said.

“Jesus,” Mendez muttered, staring at the video monitor, watching Janet Crane play Cal Dixon like a concert violin. “I spoke to her this morning. I’m trying to get her to bring Tommy in to speak with us.”

“She’ll never let it happen,” Vince said.

“She told me she was taking him today to see a psychiatrist in Beverly Hills. She should see if she can get a two-for-one discount.

“Do you really think she knew all along?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Vince said, shutting off the monitor. “And even if I said yes, what I think and what I can prove are two very different things.”

Chapter 95

95

Days passed Tommy in a kind of a blur, his mind turning reality just slightly out of focus. He felt numb, and that seemed like a good thing. He didn’t go to school. He didn’t go anywhere. He didn’t leave his mother’s side. She needed him now.

The day they left Oak Knoll, his mother told Detective Mendez she was taking him to a child psychiatrist in Los Angeles. But when they got to Highway 101, she turned the car north instead of south, and just kept driving.

They traveled all that night and all the next day, leaving behind everything and everyone Tommy ever knew. He hadn’t seen it coming, but he wasn’t surprised either. Nothing his mother did surprised him.