Secrets to the Grave

24

At Anne’s insistence, they had scheduled the meeting in a conference room down the hall from the ICU. She had spent the night in her clothes, on the bed with Haley Fordham clinging to her, alternately sleeping then waking up to the little girl’s cries and whimpers.

Vince had spent the night in the chair in the corner of the room. She felt guilty for that. He should have been home, in bed, sleeping off his headache.

She worried about him. The doctors didn’t have any idea what the long-term effects might be to having a bullet fragmented inside one’s head. When the pain came on him suddenly, it always made Anne afraid that some piece of shrapnel was moving inside his brain, doing damage.

He had finally gone home to shower and change around six fifteen and had returned with a change of clothes for her.

He wasn’t happy about the decision she had made, but she hadn’t seen any alternative. Haley Fordham had likely watched her mother die, had probably witnessed her murder. She had been choked unconscious and left lying against her mother’s bloody corpse, left for dead for—what?—two days, Vince had thought.

Trauma didn’t begin to describe what this four-year-old child had been through. What she needed now was stability and consistency, and someone who had at least some training in how to help her through the aftermath of her ordeal.

Anne knew she fit the bill in a way no one else would be able to. She had been a victim of a violent crime herself. She knew the kind of fear Haley must have known and would continue to experience.

Haley was asleep and quiet when Anne finally left the room for the meeting. On her way out of the unit she told one of the nurses, “If you need me, come get me.”

Knowing what was waiting for her in that conference room, she half hoped for the interruption. This wasn’t going to be easy or pleasant, and she wasn’t going to have the patience for it.

One of the aftereffects of her ordeal was an extreme intolerance of people’s bullshit. Life was too precious to waste time pretending to be diplomatic in the face of overinflated egos.

Anne was the last to arrive to the meeting. On one side of the conference table were Vince and Cal Dixon, who had come to represent the interests of the sheriff’s office and the investigation.

On the other side of the table, wearing her perpetual sour expression, sat Maureen Upchurch from Child Protective Services, a woman built like the corner mailbox. A bad home permanent made her look as if she were wearing a wig made out of an apricot poodle.

To the right of Upchurch was Anne’s CASA supervisor, Willa Norwood, decked out in one of her vibrant African caftans, her head wrapped in a matching turban. To the left of Upchurch, in all her designer glory, sat Milo Bordain, perfectly coiffed, perfectly made up, perfectly dressed, and pointedly avoiding eye contact with her.

Anne cringed a bit inwardly. She had made a mistake being so short with the woman the night before. Bordain had sponsored Marissa Fordham, had apparently thought of her as a surrogate daughter, had thought of Haley as a granddaughter. Now Marissa was murdered and Haley’s future was uncertain. Anne realized she should have been more sympathetic. If she had made it to the meeting sooner, she would have approached Milo Bordain and apologized.

To Bordain’s left, at the head of the table sat the Honorable Judge Victor Espinoza from family court. Anne was thankful to see Espinoza would be hearing the issue. He had proven somewhat sympathetic in several matters involving Dennis Farman.

He was a practical man in his fifties with more hair on his upper lip than on his head. He wore a thick black mustache threaded with gray, and polished his bald head with wax every morning in his chambers before court started—or so said his longtime clerk.

Anne nodded in his direction and took a seat next to her husband. She snuck her hand under his on the arm of his chair, and he gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze.

“All right,” Judge Espinoza began. “I’ve got the gist of the situation. The little girl likely witnessed the murder of her mother. No relatives have been located?”

Dixon shook his head. “We’ve been told Marissa Fordham was from the East Coast, possibly Rhode Island, but that she was estranged from her family. We’ve contacted the authorities in Rhode Island to see if they might be able to help us. No one seems to know who the little girl’s father is, and we have yet to locate a birth certificate.”

“I’m as close to family as she has, Your Honor,” Bordain said. “Her mother was like a daughter to me. I’ve known Haley since she was a baby. I’ll make sure her every need is taken care of.”

“Did Ms. Fordham make any legal arrangements for you to become her daughter’s guardian in the event of her death?” Espinoza asked.

“No. We had been talking about that, but Marissa was so young. She just didn’t see the need. Of course she expected to outlive me. But if I’m willing to take the child and take care of her and raise her—and I certainly have the means to do so, as you well know—I don’t see why this should be an issue.”

“It’s a matter of law, Mrs. Bordain,” Espinoza said. “If there’s no document relating the decedent’s wishes for you or anyone else to have custody of the minor child, she is essentially—for the time being, anyway—a ward of the state.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“That’s the law.”

“Which means my department should have been notified immediately.”

Maureen Upchurch was the kind of person who believed everyone in the world was a potential member of a conspiracy against her. Always aggressive in attitude, defensive by nature, she had a chip on her shoulder the size of Iowa. Her mouth was carved into her doughy face in a permanent frown, and her eyes were perpetually narrowed in suspicion. Anne had run afoul of her from day one of her advocacy for Dennis.

“I alerted you myself, Ms. Upchurch,” Dixon said.

“I was on my way to a court date,” the woman said defensively. “I couldn’t do anything about it then.”

“Nevertheless, don’t say I didn’t call you,” Dixon said. “It’s hardly the fault of my office or my detectives that you were too busy to deal with the situation.”

“The girl was in a coma,” Upchurch said. “You told me she was in a coma. How was I to know she would come out of it so quickly?”

“Everyone in this room knows I am more than qualified to raise this child,” Milo Bordain announced, drawing the attention back to herself.

“But Lady Justice is blind, Mrs. Bordain,” Espinoza pointed out. “She can’t see that you’re wearing Armani and driving a Mercedes.”

“I knew I liked him,” Anne whispered. One side of Vince’s mustache twitched.

Bordain was offended by the judge’s statement. “It isn’t just a matter of money. I practically brought Marissa to this community. I set her up with contacts, gave her a place to live and work. I’ve done nothing but nurture and support her and her daughter.”

“And who called Mrs. Leone into the situation?” the judge asked.

“Detective Mendez,” Dixon said.

“Detective Mendez isn’t aware of proper protocol?”

“He has a connection to Anne through Vince. He knows Anne has a gift with children. When the little girl came out of the coma, she was extremely agitated. Detective Mendez called Vince, who is consulting with us on this case, and asked if Anne couldn’t come with him. He knew personally she could handle the situation.”

“Does it really matter now who was called first?” Willa Norwood asked, always the voice of reason. “Can we just get on with it?”

Upchurch glared at her. “Of course it matters, Willa. She came in here last night and convinced the child she’s her mother.”

“That’s absolutely not true,” Anne said, her focus more on the judge rather than her accuser. She knew from experience there was no winning an argument with Maureen. The woman was as tough and unyielding as gristle, as unmovable as a city bus.

She was also so red in the face she seemed in danger of having a stroke. “When I got here last night, she was calling you Mommy. How do you explain that?”

“It’s a simple case of transference,” Anne said calmly. “Haley’s last moments of consciousness before she lapsed into the coma were spent with her mother’s dead body. She regained consciousness in totally unfamiliar surroundings, in a room with strangers, hooked to monitors and machines. Who is the first and only person she really wants to see? Her mother—alive.”

“And you just happened to look like her mother,” Upchurch said.

“No, Maureen, I planned that in my mother’s womb,” Anne snapped. “I knew it would come in handy one day.”

There goes the patience, Anne thought. She could feel it sliding through her mental grasp like a very short satin ribbon.

“The girl’s mother had dark hair and dark eyes,” Dixon said to the judge. “Anne has dark hair and dark eyes. It only makes sense. The poor kid was terrified. She needed someone to be Mommy. Anne was there.”

“I would have been there if Detective Mendez had called me sooner,” Upchurch griped. “It was already too late by the time I got there. And she made no effort to put a stop to it.”

“What was I supposed to do, Maureen?” Anne asked. “Rip the sobbing child from my arms and tell her I wasn’t her mother because someone cut her mother’s head off?”

“Oh my God!” Milo Bordain cried out, pressing a gloved hand to her throat. Tears rose up in her eyes.

“Mrs. Leone, did you at any time try to tell the little girl you aren’t her mother?” the judge asked.

“No,” Anne admitted. “She was terrified and hysterical. My only concern was calming her down. I certainly didn’t encourage her. I didn’t tell her I’m her mother. I just let her call me what she wanted.”

“Now the girl has attached to her,” Upchurch said. “How am I supposed to place her with a family?”

“Maybe you won’t have to, Ms. Upchurch,” Judge Espinoza said pleasantly.

“She should be placed with me,” Bordain argued. “She knows me.”

Upchurch didn’t like the judge’s tone. “But she’s a ward of the state, Your Honor. Her case clearly falls under the auspices of CPS.”

“But I’m the judge,” Espinoza explained calmly. “And what I love about being a judge is that what I say goes.”

He turned to Dixon. “What’s your position on this, Sheriff?”

Dixon sighed. “Obviously, what’s best for the little girl is most important. She’s the only witness to a brutal homicide. At this point, we have no idea who the killer is, if he’s someone known to the girl, if he’s still in the area. The child was strangled and left for dead. If the perpetrator knows she’s alive ...”

“She’s potentially still at risk.”

“Yes, Your Honor. And, therefore, whoever has custody of her.”

“How do you expect to place this child into foster care, Ms. Upchurch?” Espinoza asked. “You’d be putting your foster family at risk.”

“There doesn’t need to be any foster care!” Milo Bordain insisted. No one seemed to be listening to her.

“If you aren’t willing to award custody to Mrs. Bordain at this time, I have a foster family willing to take her temporarily. The Bessoms.”

Willa Norwood rolled her eyes to look at Upchurch. “Are you serious? The Bessoms already have five foster children and run a day care center. You seriously think that’s an environment for this little girl, as psychologically fragile as she is?”

“Being around other children will take her mind off what happened,” Upchurch said, as if witnessing a murder and nearly being murdered were no more traumatic than losing a tooth or scraping a knee.

“She’ll be lost in the shuffle,” Anne said. “How can she get the kind of attention she needs? Is Mrs. Bessom trained in child psychology? Does she have any experience grief-counseling children?”

“A stable environment is just as important as any of that,” Upchurch declared. “Mrs. Bessom runs a tight ship. Those kids say ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and ‘No, ma’am.’ They toe the line and do their chores—”

“Great,” Anne said sarcastically. “Why don’t we just send Haley to a military school? They can drill the grief out of her.”

Upchurch glared at her. “I don’t appreciate your smart mouth.”

“And I don’t appreciate that, so far, all your concern has been about pissing on fences,” Anne shot back.

Milo Bordain stood up, red faced, shouting, “LISTEN TO ME! I WANT HER WITH ME! SHE SHOULD BE WITH ME!”

“Mrs. Bordain.” Judge Espinoza stood up and tried to put a hand on Milo Bordain’s arm in attempt to calm her. She jerked away.

The uncomfortable silence embarrassed her back to her senses. Tears squeezing from her eyes, she sat down and dug a linen handkerchief out of her Hermès bag.

“I’m sorry,” she said tersely. “I’m so distraught. I’ve lost Marissa, now Haley ... I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Mrs. Bordain could apply to become a foster parent,” Upchurch suggested. “If Mr. and Mrs. Bordain became foster parents, I have the authority to place the child—”

“The circumstances here are extraordinary, Your Honor,” Dixon said. “The child needs to be in protective custody with people trained to help her through the nightmare of what happened to her. Both Mrs. and Mr. Leone have degrees in psychology. Anne was a teacher. She dealt with the grief of her students last year—”

“She’s not even an employee of the state, Your Honor,” Upchurch argued. “She’s a volunteer. And they’re not licensed foster parents. Their home hasn’t been screened—”

“Are you kidding me with that?” Anne said. “You’re objecting on the basis that I haven’t filed the proper paperwork? That you haven’t come to my home to see if I have dust bunnies under my bed?”

“There’s much more to it than that.”

“Yes, there is,” Anne said passionately. “There’s what’s best for Haley. She’s a victim of a violent crime. Do you know what that’s like, Maureen? Mrs. Bordain? Because I do. I know exactly what that’s like.

“I know exactly what it’s like to wake up screaming in the night, to be terrified to walk around a corner, or to turn your back even to someone you know, let alone a stranger.

“Do either of you know how that feels? Do you know what it is to suddenly, inexplicably, be filled with so much fear you think you’ll choke on it? To break out in a cold sweat in the middle of a crowded room? I do. I’ve had those experiences. I know exactly what Haley is going to face. I can help this child in ways no one else can.”

“Have you thought this all the way through, Anne?” Willa Norwood asked. “You know our policy as advocates is never to take a client to our homes. There’s a reason for that. I don’t want you to put yourself at risk.”

“My husband is a former Chicago police detective and a former agent for the FBI. Our lives are filled with law enforcement personnel. You can’t swing a stick at my house without hitting a cop.”

“That’s not the only kind of risk I’m talking about.”

She was talking about the risk of becoming too emotionally involved, Anne knew. She had already chosen to ignore that risk.

The judge turned to Vince. “What about you, Mr. Leone? You’ve been awfully quiet through all of this. Do you have an opinion to contribute?”

Anne tensed. Vince was against the idea of her fostering Haley Fordham or being attached to this case in any way. He was afraid it would upset her, set her back, put her in danger physically and psychologically.

He looked down at her and said, “Honestly? I have to say ... there is no one more uniquely qualified to help this child than my wife.”

Anne let the air out of her lungs and her chest flooded with warmth. Tears rose up behind her eyes. Still holding her hand, Vince gave her fingers another reassuring squeeze.

Judge Espinoza nodded and placed his palms down on the tabletop, pushing up out of his chair. “Then, as far as I’m concerned, it’s all over but the paperwork. Anne will be appointed guardian. When the little girl is released from the hospital, she’ll stay with the Leones. We’ll revisit the issue if a relative turns up.”