Secrets to the Grave

49

“There’s no sign of Gina Kemmer, no sign of her car,” Hicks said. “One neighbor said she saw her leave her house sometime between five and six o’clock last night. She was alone. She didn’t have a suitcase. Everything looked normal.”

Back in the war room for the end of the day, someone had ordered pizza and sodas. Chicago-style pizza. That meant Vince had put the call in. Mendez was glad. He was starving. He couldn’t remember the last meal he’d had—or decent night’s sleep for that matter.

They sat on all sides of the long table eating like they would never see food again. The room was filled with the aroma of herbs and tomato sauce—almost, but not quite drowning out the smell of frustration.

“If she left town of her own accord, she did it without taking so much as a change of clothes or a makeup bag,” he said. “What woman does that?”

“None,” Dixon said. “If she was snatched from the supermarket parking lot, her car would still be there. If she went to stay with a friend, her car would be parked on the street or in a driveway.”

“She could have gone off the road into a canyon,” Hamilton suggested. “Or just plain got out of town. Maybe she has a friend in Santa Barbara or someplace else.”

“Or somebody has her,” Trammell said.

“Or she’s dead,” Mendez said. “To me this strengthens the blackmail angle.”

“Even if there was no blackmail,” Hicks said, “Gina probably knows something someone doesn’t want her to.”

“What do her bank records look like?” Dixon asked, swiping a napkin across his chin to catch a dribble of tomato sauce.

“She has her accounts at Wells Fargo, same as Marissa Fordham,” Hamilton said. “The only odd thing is every month she deposits a check for a grand from Marissa Fordham.”

“Payoff?” Dixon said. “Or was Marissa just a generous friend sharing her good fortune?”

“A payoff could give Kemmer a motive,” Campbell said. “If the generous friend tried to cut her off.”

Mendez shook his head. “You had to see this girl yesterday. She was a nervous wreck. She’d never have the cojones to stab anyone, let alone do what was done to her best friend. And then put those breasts in a box and send them to Milo Bordain? She couldn’t even look at a crime-scene photo without puking.”

“Do we have her phone records?” Dixon asked.

Hamilton shook his head. “Not yet.”

“What have we found out about Marissa Fordham’s alias?” Mendez asked.

“Melissa Fabriano?” Hamilton shook his head as he consulted his notes. “Nothing. No criminal record in the state of California. I went back to the authorities in Rhode Island—on the off chance she really was from there. They didn’t have anything on that name.”

“So the vic had no criminal record on either of her names,” Trammell said.

“Not that I’ve found so far.”

“Why would a person with no criminal record need an alias?”

“She had to be hiding from somebody,” Mendez said. “If not the baby’s father, who?”

Nobody had an answer for that.

“Damn, this job’s a lot harder than it looks,” Campbell complained, breaking the tension with a laugh.

“What about Gina Kemmer?” Trammell asked. “Is that her real name? Does she have a record somewhere? If the two of them go back some years, maybe that’s how we find out about our vic.”

“I’ll see what I can find out,” Hamilton said. He looked to Dixon. “When are we going to get computers?”

“When they become necessary and free,” Dixon said. “There’s nothing wrong with your ear and your finger. Use the damn phone.”

“Speaking of phones,” Vince said. “Any hot tips on the reward line?”

“Oh, yeah,” Campbell said. “There are at least five women in the county who believe the killer was their ex-husband, ex-boyfriend, ex- married lover.”

“A psychic called to say she would find Marissa’s killer for us if we would only pay her the reward up front,” Trammell said.

“If she was really psychic, she would have known better than to call,” Dixon said.

“It’s a big waste of time, but Mrs. Bordain got one of her civic groups to man the phones,” Hamilton said. “It’s not costing us anything in man hours—unless we get a lead that’s worth chasing down.”

“Anything from any of Ms. Fordham’s gentlemen friends?” Dixon asked.

“Most of them had alibis for the night of the murder,” Campbell said.

“Who doesn’t?”

“Mark Foster was home alone. Bob Copetti was out of town—we haven’t corroborated that yet.”

“Steve Morgan was allegedly out of town,” Mendez said. “Has anyone followed up on that?”

No one had.

“What about Darren Bordain?” Vince asked. “He knew the victim and Gina Kemmer.”

“What’s his motive supposed to be?” Dixon asked.

Vince shrugged. “Maybe he’s Haley’s father. Or maybe he resented Marissa for her relationship with his mother.”

Dixon tried to dismiss the idea. “Darren Bordain is the golden child of that family. He’s had everything he ever wanted handed to him—an education, a career. He’s being groomed for the political arena.”

“I doubt any of that comes without strings attached,” Vince said. He looked to Hicks and Mendez. “You said he made some wisecrack about he should have had a fling with Marissa.”

“Yeah,” Mendez said. “He was on the sarcastic side when he talked about his mother, but ...”

“But what?” Vince asked. “He’s too smooth? Too good-looking? Too privileged?”

Mendez thought about it carefully. He did know better than to be fooled by appearances. “No. That’s just a big leap from resenting your mother to cutting a woman’s breasts off and sending them to Mom in the mail. I just didn’t get that vibe from him.”

“There’s a reason vibes aren’t admissible in court,” Vince said. “He should get a good look like every other guy who knew the victim. Don’t you think so, Cal?”

Dixon raked a hand back through his silver hair and sighed, no doubt weighing the cons of having Milo Bordain coming down on his head.

“Bring him in for a conversation,” he said. “But don’t make a big deal about it. Very low-key. Tell him we’re trying to build a more extensive picture of Marissa’s life and a timeline leading up to her death. We want to know who saw her when, who spoke to her, who has a solid alibi so we can eliminate those people from the suspect list.”

“That’s not a bad idea anyway,” Mendez said. “Let’s follow all the way through on that. We’ve got Steve Morgan in jail already. Let’s bring him over.”

Dixon gave him the eagle eye. “We do not have Steve Morgan in jail.”

“He assaulted me!” Mendez said, pointing to his fat stitched lip.

“You broke his nose and damn near fractured his eye socket. He wanted to file harassment and assault charges. I talked him out of it.”

“You talked a lawyer out of filing charges?” Trammell said. “You’re the man, boss.”

“He admitted to hitting you first,” Dixon said to Mendez.

“So he’s a cheat but not always a liar,” Mendez said. “Good to know he has something going for him. We should still bring him in to talk.”

Dixon stuck a finger at him. “You will have absolutely nothing to do with it. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I mean it.”

“Yes, sir. I know, sir.”

“Stay away from his house. Stay away from his family.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I paid a visit to Zander Zahn this afternoon,” Vince said, taking the spotlight off Mendez.

Mendez thanked him mentally. He had been waiting to hear Dixon say “stay away from his wife,” sure he would have looked guilty, despite the fact that he had not crossed a line with Sara Morgan. A part of him had certainly wanted to.

“He wasn’t happy that I knew about his mother’s death,” Vince went on. “I pressed him a little. He flipped out on me. Total meltdown.”

He proceeded to tell the story, complete with an explanation of a dissociative state, and how Zahn could have killed Marissa Fordham and have no conscious memory of it.

“That sounds like something a defense attorney would come up with,” Trammell said.

“They’ll certainly latch on to it if they can,” Vince said. “But true dissociation is rare. It’s a mind’s way of reacting to overwhelming psychological trauma.”

“Like having stabbed your own mother to death,” Hamilton said.

“More like a reaction to whatever his mother did to him to precipitate the murder. Say she burned the soles of his feet with a cigarette. His mind goes into a dissociative state to escape the abuse. While he’s in the dissociative state, he kills her. When he comes out of it, he may not remember a thing.”

“The mind is trying to protect itself by repressing the memories,” Mendez said.

“Right.”

“So he could have been capable of killing Marissa Fordham,” Dixon said.

“Based on what we know now and what I saw this afternoon, yes.”

“It looked like a crazy person did it because a crazy person did do it,” Campbell said.

“I asked Haley if she was ever afraid of Zahn,” Vince said.

“She’s talking?” Dixon asked.

“When she feels like it. But she ignores questions that might take her back to what happened. Either consciously or subconsciously she doesn’t want to get near those feelings.”

“What did she say about Zahn?” Mendez asked.

One corner of Vince’s mouth quirked upward. “That he’s weird.”

“Sharp kid,” Mendez said, laughing. “But why would Zahn ransack the house? He can’t be Haley’s father. You have to actually touch a woman to get her pregnant.”

“How would you know?” Campbell asked.

“Shut up.”

“And why would he send the breasts to Milo Bordain?” Hicks asked. “That box was postmarked Monday. The murder took place Sunday night. He would have been out of that dissociative state by Monday, wouldn’t he?”

“Not necessarily,” Vince said. “I admit the breasts in the box don’t seem to fit, but they don’t seem to fit any scenario we’ve had so far other than Darren Bordain.”

“Maybe that’s exactly why they were sent,” Dixon suggested. “Because it doesn’t make any sense. While we’re running around in little circles trying to connect that dot, someone is getting away with murder.”