Anne leaned toward him and reached out a hand to stroke his head. “I’m sorry, Dennis. You can be as angry as you want with me. We’ll work it out. I’m here to help you, if I can.”

And just how would she do that? If she could get him to tell her what had happened, then what? If his father had given him the beating she suspected was the reason he wouldn’t sit down, then what? She would report Frank Farman to the authorities and open an industrial-size can of worms for Dennis and his family.

“You’re safe here, Dennis,” she said softly. “I want you to know that. You can come to me and tell me anything you need to, anything at all. I won’t get mad at you. I won’t punish you. I’ll just listen, and then we’ll figure out what to do about it.”

His sobs quieted slowly to hiccups and sniffles. He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his already dirty sweatshirt. He was embarrassed now. At eleven-a year older than the rest of her charges-he was already edging into that awkward space between childhood and adolescence, further complicating his emotions.

“It’s okay,” Anne said. “This is between you and me. Nobody else. If anybody asks what went on in here while the rest of the class was out, tell them I yelled at you and gave you extra homework. Does that sound like a plan?”

He didn’t look at her, but he nodded. Anne stood up and put her chair back at Cody’s desk. “Good. Now go to the lavatory and wash your face, then go to lunch.”

All the aggression had gone out of him. He put his notebook back in his desk and walked away.

She would leave it at that, Anne decided as she watched him go out the door. She wouldn’t force the issue. He could think about it, hopefully decide to trust her, and come spill his story when he was ready.

Either that was a great plan, or she was a coward. She didn’t know which. If she never pressed him, if he never told her, what happened the next time his father punished him for something?

She wished Mendez would return her calls. He could deal with Frank Farman, and it would be out of her hands.

Almost as an afterthought she turned and looked at Dennis’s desk. Guilt scratched at her nerves, but she lifted the desktop anyway, and glanced down at Dennis’s notebook, still opened to the last page he had scribbled on.

The paper was tear-stained and some of the ink had smeared on drawings of what looked like thick, angry lightning bolts. Then she turned the page back to the one he had been working on all morning, and her blood ran cold.

He had almost filled the page with childish drawings of naked women with knives in their chests.

“Tell me about Deputy Farman,” Vince said before Mendez could ask him about his health.

They walked across the lot to a car parked under the shade of an oak tree. Vince got in and rolled the window down so he could continue to take in the fresh air and the smells of California nature.

“He’s an old-school tight ass,” Mendez said.

“You have a real grasp of the obvious there. And I could tell as soon as he stepped in the room you and him probably don’t spend a lot of time bowling and drinking beer together. I want to know who he is.”

“He’s army. Did a tour in ’Nam. He’s been on the job here a little longer than me. Dixon hired him out of LA County.”

“So they go back.”

“Yeah.”

“If Dixon brought him here, he must be a good cop.”

“Yeah. Commendations out the wazoo. He’s a hard-ass, though. If you’re two miles over the speed limit he’ll pull you over and write you up. No mercy. He’s all about the rules. All about the uniform.”

“Rigid.”

“Like a ramrod.”

Mendez started the car and cranked up the air-conditioning.

“He doesn’t like me,” he confessed. “He sees me as some arrogant affirmative action prick who jumped the food chain because I didn’t come up the ranks right before his eyes. And I don’t need to tell you, but he doesn’t like you either.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Vince said. “That’s nothing new. Every department has a Frank Farman. Some of them have nothing but Frank Farmans. We’re ahead of the game here.

“Profiling is still a relatively new tool, and it’s subjective. Guys like Farman want hard physical evidence. They don’t trust a guy like me who’s going to come in here and tell him the killer probably tortured squirrels as a kid and talks with a lisp. They need to see for themselves it’s a useful tool. The only way to do that is for me to do my job well.”

Mendez turned the car around and headed out of the parking lot.

“Let me tell you something, kid,” Vince said. “This will get you further in life and in this business than anything else anyone will ever teach you.

“Leave your ego at home and find a way to make it work with whoever you have to work with. Other cops, witnesses, vics, perps, whoever you’re dealing with-learn to figure out in a hurry what makes them tick. If you can do that, you can always get what you need. Even from the Frank Farmans of the world.

“When I was going around interviewing serial killers for the criminal personality research project, do you think I would have gotten anywhere with those creeps if I had gone in, looked them in the eyes, and told them what I really thought of them? Hell no. I had to figure out in five seconds what each of them was about and adjust my approach accordingly.

“What do I care if some serial rapist thinks I agree with his views that all women are whores? That’s his perception; it’s not my reality. Get it?”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“You may be shocked to know this,” he said sardonically. “I’m not by nature the first guy the Bureau goes looking for as an agent. But this is the work I wanted to do, and the Bureau is the place to do it. I learned to navigate the system. Remember that.”

Mendez gave him a curious look. “Why are you telling me this?”

“’Cause you’re good, kid. You’re sharp. I want you to be all you can be.”

“You sound like a recruiting ad. Here’s something interesting about Farman: His son was one of the kids that found the body. Frank won’t let me talk to him.”

“Is it necessary for you to talk to him?”

“Wendy, the little girl of the group, told me Dennis touched the corpse,” Mendez said, brushing the question aside. “Frank let the kid hang around the crime scene until Dixon told him he had to send the kid home.”

“That’s a little odd.”

“I mean, he made the boy stay outside the tape, but still. Frank said the kid had already seen the body, why not let him see how a crime scene gets processed.”

“How old is the boy?”

“Ten, eleven, something like that. He’s a fifth grader. And his teacher left a message for me last night that prior to finding this body, the kid had been talking about there being bodies buried in those woods.”

“And your pal Frank hasn’t mentioned that?” Vince said.

“No.”

“He probably figures the kid was just being a kid,” Vince speculated. “But in light of what’s happened… you need to talk to the boy.”

They pulled into a crushed stone parking lot and got out of the car. The sprawling white stucco building in front of them wore a discreet bronze plaque near the main entrance: THE THOMAS CENTER FOR WOMEN.

Inside, the main hall was cool and welcoming, the walls a warm shade of yellow, the old Mexican paver floors polished. They went to the front desk and Mendez asked for Jane Thomas.

“Nice place,” Vince said as they waited.

“It’s an amazing place,” Mendez said. “A lot of the women come from abusive backgrounds, some are coming out of drug rehab, or even jail. The center offers counseling, helps the women prepare themselves to enter the work force. Their program has gotten a lot of national attention.”

“With one dead former employee and one missing client, they’re about to get more,” Vince said.