Secrets to the Grave

22

It was well past midnight before Mendez climbed into his own car and drove out of the sheriff’s office parking lot. He and Hicks had hung around the ICU, hoping for a chance to have Haley Fordham make all their lives easy by simply telling them who had attacked her and killed her mother. No such luck. His clever call to bring Anne in had backfired on him in more ways than one.

Vince was pissed off at him. And once Anne had connected with Marissa Fordham’s daughter, there had been no getting near the child.

He should have foreseen that. Anne had been like a tigress with cubs protecting her students who had discovered the body of Lisa Warwick. She wouldn’t let anyone—not him, not Vince, not the kids’ own parents—push them. She would be no different with Haley Fordham. Her first priority would be the child, not the investigation.

Still, it seemed the smartest way to go—to keep Marissa Fordham’s daughter within the law enforcement family, a more controlled environment with the watchful eyes of trained professionals on her. If Child Services fostered her out, they would lose control of her to a certain extent.

Of course, the woman from Child Services who had finally showed up at the hospital had been furious at the breach of protocol, and had demanded a meeting with all concerned parties and a family court judge the next day regarding the placement of Haley Fordham. Dixon himself would go to represent the interests of the SO. Which meant Dixon was pissed off at him too.

All would be forgiven if Anne could get the little girl to tell them what they needed to know. In the meantime, Mendez was feeling restless and anxious for some kind of progress, some small lead, anything that could point them in a direction.

Instead of going home to crash for a few hours, he prowled the empty streets of Oak Knoll, thinking, reviewing the day, making a mental list of the people he needed to speak to the next day.

They had to find out the details of the death of Zander Zahn’s mother and what role he had actually played in it. Had he meant he literally murdered his mother with a weapon, or had he been speaking in the abstract? Maybe she died giving birth to him. Or maybe she had committed suicide when he was a child. Children often blamed themselves for things like the suicide of a parent or the divorce of parents.

It had been a damned strange revelation for Zahn to make no matter what the truth was. Why tell homicide detectives he had killed before?

Arthur Buckman had been as shocked at the revelation as Mendez and Vince had been. There was nothing in Zahn’s personnel file to indicate he had ever been in prison. If it had happened when Zahn was a juvenile, the records would likely be sealed. A court order would open them.

Zahn seemed to think of Marissa Fordham as some kind of perfect, ethereal creature. But Marissa Fordham had dated a number of men, according to Don Quinn. Zahn might have gotten jealous, might have seen his perfect woman turning into something else before his eyes.

Disappointment and rage could drive people to do terrible things.

He drove down the Morgans’ street, parked the car and killed the lights. The landscaping lights were on, casting a soft amber glow. The windows were dark. Steve Morgan’s black Trans Am was parked in the driveway.

It was a pretty yellow house with white trim and blue shutters, the kind of house the ideal American family should live in. But despite the fact that they were beautiful, successful people with a beautiful, bright child, the Morgans did not have the ideal family. The perfect picture was skewed and out of focus.

He didn’t like Steve Morgan. He had never liked Steve Morgan. The guy was a little too calm in the face of accusation. He had been that way during the investigation of Lisa Warwick’s murder.

Morgan had known Lisa Warwick. He had worked closely with her on several family court cases for the Thomas Center. Mendez would have bet the farm Morgan had been sleeping with her, but they had never gotten him to admit to anything. When confronted with their suspicions, Morgan had been as cool as a cucumber. He never blew up, never got nervous, never really reacted.

That wasn’t normal. Innocent people are usually quick to react in outrage to a false allegation. Not Morgan.

For a while, Mendez had liked him for See-No-Evil. Steve Morgan had been woven into the stories of those murder victims almost as well as Peter Crane had been. Crane and Morgan were friends and golfing buddies. There had been more than a little speculation that Peter Crane had an accomplice ...

When they had told Morgan they had semen on the sheets of Lisa Warwick’s bed and would be able to get a blood type from it, he hadn’t reacted at all. In the analysis of the semen they had discovered the donor was a nonsecretor. His bodily fluids did not contain the antigens of the ABO blood group. They couldn’t get a blood type. Had Steve Morgan known that would happen? Was that why he had been so calm?

Lisa Warwick’s sheets were still in the property room at the SO. If they could get DNA analysis on the semen. What? The science wasn’t as sophisticated as it would eventually become. They would need a blood test or another semen sample from Morgan to get a match. They had no legal reason to compel him to give them samples.

Morgan had known Marissa Fordham, had worked with her on the project for the Thomas Center and on the trust for her daughter. She was a beautiful, sexy, single woman. If he had been tempted before—and succumbed—

True, this murder was different from the others. The See-No-Evil victims had been held somewhere and very systematically tortured. Eyes glued shut, mouth glued shut, eardrums pierced. The wounds had been identical from body to body—very specific cutting wounds of the same length and the same placement. The women had ultimately been strangled to death, each in exactly the same manner.

Marissa Fordham’s death had been frenzied, not studied; full of rage, not systematic. But then if Crane had an accomplice, the accomplice was now free to kill however he wanted. Maybe the ritual had been strictly Crane’s.

Could he picture Steve Morgan slicing a woman’s breasts off?

He thought of Sara Morgan and her reactions that morning. She had been upset. Marissa Fordham had been a friend. He tried to recall her face and her body language when he had asked her if Marissa had a boyfriend or an ex-boyfriend or a lover.

She hadn’t looked at him. She had looked down at her hands and said no. It was none of her business. She wasn’t one to pry. But they had been friends. Women talked about men—even if only to say they didn’t need or want one. Mendez had sisters, his sisters had friends. He was around women enough to know the subject of men was always a hot topic.

He wondered how long Sara Morgan had been friends with Marissa Fordham. Had that friendship begun before or after Fordham had gotten to know Steve Morgan?

Sara didn’t look well, he thought. She was thinner than a year ago. Pale. Drawn. There were dark smudges beneath the cornflower blue eyes. She seemed preoccupied, though a murder scene did have that effect on people who weren’t cops.

He would go see her in the morning. Just checking on her. How was she doing? After her husband left for work and Wendy had gone to school. He would press her a little bit. See what happened.

He didn’t like Steve Morgan ...