Secrets to the Grave

23

The lead story on the local morning TV news was the murder of Marissa Fordham. Immediately following the report was a live interview with Milo Bordain.

“What the fuck?” Mendez demanded, stopping halfway to his seat, coffee in hand.

Dixon’s expression said the same thing.

They were gathering in the war room with the first coffee of the day to go over what they had, what they needed, who would do what. Someone had turned on the TV they mostly used to look at video of crime scenes and interviews with suspects.

Mendez looked at Vince, who was shaking his head and pinching the bridge of his nose, pained literally and figuratively.

Bordain looked like she was about to get on a horse and go foxhunting in her brown tweed riding jacket and dark brown gloves. She was making an appeal for any information that might lead to the arrest of Marissa Fordham’s killer. She was personally offering a reward of $25,000.

“Who told her she could do that?” Mendez asked, looking at Dixon.

“Don’t look at me,” the sheriff said. “I specifically told her we would handle everything.”

“Did she say anything about a reward last night?” Vince asked.

“She offered to do it,” Dixon said. “I told her we’d discuss it and get back to her.”

“I guess that shows how much she values your opinion,” Hicks said.

“It would never occur to her that she needed permission to do anything,” Vince said. “She thinks she’s being helpful.”

A reward was a tool. If they offered one, when they offered one, what amount was offered, were all decisions that had to be made carefully with many different factors taken into consideration. Too large a reward offered too soon invited the greedy, vindictive people in the county to give up whoever they hated most in their life on the off chance that they might end up collecting some cash. With $25,000 at stake, the phones would be ringing off the hook with leads that would lead nowhere.

“What do you think, Vince?” Dixon asked.

Leone dragged a hand back through his salt-and-pepper mane and heaved a big sigh. He looked like shit—pasty and haggard. It had been a long night. Anne had refused to leave Haley Fordham. Vince had refused to leave Anne. He had spent the night on a chair in the corner of the little girl’s room.

Feeling like a heel, Mendez sank down into a chair at the other end of the table from Vince, who spread his hands and shrugged.

“There’s nothing you can do about it now,” he said. “Put some extra personnel on the phones and be prepared to chase your tails.”

“How will this sit with our perp?” Hamilton asked.

“Hard to say. As far as we know, we’re not dealing with a habitual predator,” Vince said. “A serial killer might take it as a challenge or a chance to gloat. We must be desperate, throwing all that money around. Maybe he should taunt us, play with us, toss us another victim.

“But if Marissa Fordham’s murderer was someone known to her, someone who had a grudge against her and lost their mind in the heat of the moment—and that’s the way I’m leaning—that person is either going to be quiet and try not to attract attention, or he might come forward and try to insinuate himself into the investigation and be overly helpful in the hopes of keeping tabs on what you’ve got.

“The thing to be afraid of with that perpetrator is that there’s a good chance he’s going to get skittish and paranoid, and might strike out at a perceived threat—say, an acquaintance who might know or suspect something.”

“A tipster looking for the reward,” Dixon said.

“We could have another murder on our hands,” Trammell said.

“That’s a possibility,” Vince agreed. “You’d better hope the perceived threat drops a dime before your UNSUB turns on them.

“With a killer known to the victim, someone who hasn’t done this kind of thing before, he’s not going to know how to handle the emotions that come with the deed. Friends could see a change in personality. He may become erratic, short-tempered, depressed. He may alter his appearance—grow a mustache, shave a beard—”

“Like a disguise?” Hicks asked.

“In a way,” Vince said. “A disguise to himself. My personal theory on this is that this person literally can’t look at himself in the mirror after he’s committed the act, so he changes the way he looks. Or sometimes the change is made to look more the part. If he’s a killer, maybe he should try to look like a badass.

“I know of a case where the perpetrator was a clean-cut college kid with no history of violence. He ended up killing an elderly man during the course of a burglary. Next thing you know, he’s moved five hundred miles away and he’s suddenly a tattooed skinhead with a bad attitude.

“It depends.

“You might also see him start drinking heavily or start abusing substances. On the flip side of that, there may be a sudden interest in religion.”

With a possible profile in mind, they discussed what they had and what they needed. Bank and phone records would be available that morning. Marissa Fordham did not have a safe deposit box at any bank in Oak Knoll.

The autopsy would take place later in the day in Santa Barbara. There was no forensic pathologist in their own county, just an undertaker who served as coroner and was comfortable signing death certificates for deaths by natural causes, but happily stepped back from anything more complex.

Santa Barbara County—which had a larger population—had a sheriff-coroner and a morgue with a forensic pathologist who performed autopsies, a sergeant supervisor, three coroner’s investigators, and an administrative assistant. With Oak Knoll growing—and the murder rate rising—a movement was already underway to institute a similar office in their county.

Not that the death of Marissa Fordham was a mystery. Both cause of death and manner of death were obvious. But a forensic pathologist would collect evidence from the body, trace evidence such as hairs and fabric fibers. A rape kit would be performed looking for foreign pubic hairs, semen, signs of sexual assault—after they extracted the butcher’s knife from her vagina.

Campbell and Trammell had interviewed Gina Kemmer, Marissa Fordham’s friend from the boutique called Girl.

“She freaked out when we gave her the news,” Trammell said. “Total meltdown.”

“We asked her about the vic’s love life,” Campbell said. “She said Fordham dated casually, there was no one serious, and she doesn’t know who the little girl’s father is.”

“She’s lying,” Trammell said. “She’s bad at it. She ran to the john right after.”

“Bring her in,” Dixon said. “We need to have a more serious conversation with her. Vince, maybe you would sit in?”

“Happy to.”

“I’ll tell her to wear her Depends,” Trammell said.

“What about the professor?” Dixon asked. “Do we have any background yet?”

“I made a couple of phone calls, called in a couple of favors,” Vince said. “We should hear something later today, tomorrow at the latest. But I think you should also take a closer look at his associate, Nasser. He’s very protective of his boss. And he didn’t like the victim. He all but accused her of being a whore.”

“You think he was jealous?” Hamilton asked. “Like a gay thing?”

“No, not a gay thing. Nasser is a doctor in his own right. He could be teaching at any top university in the country,” Vince said. “He chose to come to McAster to be Zahn’s underling. Zahn is Nasser’s mentor. Nasser is Zahn’s protector. He didn’t like Zahn’s obsession with Marissa Fordham. She was a distraction, the object of Zahn’s obsessive-compulsive attention.”

“Jeez,” Mendez said, half joking. “I just thought the guy was a jerk.”

“You don’t know everything, Junior,” Leone said with an edge in his voice.

“No, I don’t.”

“Good that you realize that. Remember it next time before you make a bad decision.”

Mendez ducked his head.

Dixon went to the whiteboard, marker in hand. “Who were her boyfriends?”

“Don Quinn, Mark Foster,” Hicks said.

Campbell glanced at his notes. “Add Roy Thatcher and Bob Copetti.”

“I think we should add Steve Morgan to that list,” Mendez said. “He knew her, he worked with her, he spent time with her, he cheated on his wife before.”

“Nobody has put them together romantically,” Hicks pointed out.

“Nobody put him with Lisa Warwick either, but who didn’t think he was doing her?” Mendez argued, irritated. “Morgan could have been Peter Crane’s accomplice, for all we know. There were a lot of coincidences—”

“No,” Vince said.

“Why not?” Mendez challenged. “What about Bittaker and Norris in ’79; Bianchi and Buono, the Hillside Stranglers; just last year—Ng and Lake—”

“I’m not saying Crane couldn’t have had an accomplice,” Vince said. “I’m saying it’s not Steve Morgan.”

“Why not? They were friends. They played golf—”

“Who was the dominant partner?”

“I don’t know,” Mendez said. He hadn’t thought about it. He should have. Now he was going to take a shot in the dark arguing with a profiling legend who wanted a piece of his hide this morning. “Crane.”

“Why?” Vince demanded. “They’re both successful professionals, leaders in the community, controlled, careful—”

“Okay,” Mendez said, frustrated. “Morgan.”

“Crane gave Morgan up,” Vince reminded him. “You interviewed him that Saturday afternoon before he took Anne. You asked him if Steve Morgan was having an affair with Lisa Warwick. He said yes.

“First of all, there are no partnerships with two dominant partners,” he said. “The egos wouldn’t allow it. There is always a dominant partner and one that will claim he just came along for the ride, or that he was coerced. Second, if there ever were partners that smart, one wouldn’t give the other one up on a point so unimportant,” he went on, happy to teach a lesson at the expense of Mendez’s pride. “If one cracks, they both go down. And third, if Morgan and Crane were partners, Morgan likely would have killed Marissa Fordham in the same manner as the See-No-Evil victims in order to cast doubt on Crane’s involvement—particularly now with Crane’s trial coming up.

“This is an entirely different kind of murder,” he concluded.

“Okay,” Mendez said on a sigh, sufficiently set down. “So they weren’t partners. I still say we should put Steve Morgan on the list.”

“Can we get back on point here?” Dixon asked. “Tony, if you find something concrete to link Steve Morgan to Marissa Fordham romantically, we’ll pursue it. If not, don’t go looking for a harassment suit. The guy’s a lawyer, for God’s sake.”

“Man, the old lion smacked you down,” Hicks said, chuckling as they walked to the car.

Mendez scowled. “I suppose I had it coming, but he didn’t need to be such an asshole about it.”

“Sure he did.”

“Thanks, partner,” Mendez said sarcastically.

“Well, what are you going to do about it?”

Mendez grinned then and laughed as it sank in. “Work my ass off to prove him wrong.”