Even Dixon, who had seen his share of abject violence, looked undone by this. He turned away, shaking his head. The idea that Lisa Warwick had been literally locked inside her own head with a terror of something so evil was too much to fathom.

Vince would have said a prayer for the girl, born and bred Catholic that he was. But he had not been on speaking terms with God in a very long time. He found a stool off to the side of the autopsy bay and sat down on it, tuning out as Mikado’s assistant turned on the oscillating saw to pop the cap off Lisa Warwick’s brain.

Over the years he had seen so many cases as brutal as this one, and every one of them left him feeling like ten years had been drained from his life. He felt as old as Methuselah, as brittle as bone. He felt as if he would turn to dust and fall to the yellow-tiled floor to be swept up later with the medical waste.

“How do you get used to it?” Mendez asked quietly.

“Kid,” Vince said. “The day you get used to this, turn in your shield and your gun. You won’t belong to the human race anymore.”

Chapter 20

20

“So what are you thinking, darling?” Franny asked. He handed her a glass of white zinfandel and sat down beside her on her back porch steps. “Are you harboring a fugitive in your fifth-grade class?”

Anne drank a good third of the glass. The evening was chilly. They were both wrapped in thick sweaters. They sat close together to share body heat while Franny’s basset hound and cocker spaniel sniffed their way around the backyard, drifting in and out of the pale back porch light.

“Of course not. I just find it unnerving that Dennis may have seen something going on in the woods before yesterday. Are there other bodies out there? What the hell is going on? Now another woman is missing ...”

“It’s like yesterday we woke up in a Disney movie, and tonight we’re in a John Carpenter movie,” Franny said. “Maybe Jamie Lee Curtis will play you in our movie.”

Anne looked at him from the corner of her eye. “Will you be my sidekick?”

“Honey, I AM your sidekick.”

“Who will play you in the movie?”

“Richard Gere, of course,” he answered without hesitation. “He’s secretly gay, you know.”

“You think every good-looking man on the planet is secretly gay.”

“No, I don’t. The hot detective from this morning? Definitely not gay.”

“You didn’t see him. How do you know he’s hot?”

He grinned like the Cheshire Cat. “You just told me.”

Heat rushed to Anne’s face. She blamed the wine.

“You should definitely take a run at him.”