Secrets to the Grave

52

“You’re a lucky bastard,” Campbell commented.

With the exceptions of Vince and Hicks, the guys had gone back to their desks after the brainstorming session to try to put a dent in their paperwork and check messages that had come in during the day regarding other cases they were working.

“How so?” Mendez asked.

“You don’t have to hear it from a wife how you’re never home, you work too much, or you pretend to work too much but you’ve probably got a girlfriend on the side.”

“I don’t know how anybody has time for a girlfriend on the side,” Mendez said. “I don’t have time for a girlfriend right in front of me.”

“Tony wouldn’t have a girlfriend on the side,” Trammell said. “That arrow is way too straight.”

“Right,” Campbell said. “Tell the truth. Did you really pop Steve Morgan because he screws around on his wife?”

“I hit him because he hit me,” he said, staring down at his pink message slips.

His mother was cooking dinner on Sunday. His victim in a domestic assault case wanted to talk to him. ADA Worth wanted to prep him for trial for a case he had worked six months prior.

Sara Morgan had called.

A little rush of something went through him. Excitement? Nerves? What was he—fourteen years old?

The call had come in at 7:20 P.M. No message.

He wasn’t supposed to go near Sara Morgan or any other Morgan. The boss hadn’t said anything about phone calls. But he didn’t want to make the call from his desk with the peanut gallery sitting all around.

Stupid. It wasn’t like he was involved with her. He wouldn’t have any trouble being completely professional. Yet he still had the feeling he would hang up the phone and the chorus “Tony’s got a girlfriend” would fill the air.

He wouldn’t get the chance to suffer, as it turned out. Dixon walked into the room and pointed right at him.

“Tony, come with me,” he said. “Someone just tried to run Milo Bordain off the road.”

The rain was coming down in sheets. On the country road to Bordain’s ranch, there was little in the way of light. Sizzling road flares put out by the deputy who had answered the call, and the red and blue lights atop his cruiser, gave warning to slow down.

The headlights flashed on Milo Bordain’s massive white Mercedes sedan. The car sat almost perpendicular to the road, the back end dropped down in the ditch, the headlights pointing slightly upward into the night.

“She picked a hell of night to have this happen,” Dixon said as he pulled the hood of his storm jacket up over the top of his cap.

Mendez followed suit, wishing he had left the office with Vince and Hicks. Maybe if he had a wife and kid waiting at home for him, he wouldn’t have been hanging around his desk to get buttonholed for this call on this shitty night.

It was a cold, nasty rain, pelting down like tiny daggers from the sky. Gusts of wind redirected it inside the hood of the jacket and down the neck. The legs of his pants and his socks were wet in a matter of minutes.

“She said she was on her way home!” The deputy had to shout to be heard. He pointed in the direction they had been coming from. “She became aware of a car coming up behind her, too close on her tail. She touched her brakes to back him off. He came alongside her about there and swerved toward her. She panicked, hit the brakes, the car went into a skid, and that’s where it stopped.”

“Where is she now?” Dixon yelled.

“Emergency room.”

“What?”

“Emergency room!”

“How bad?” Mendez asked.

The deputy shook his head. “Didn’t look too bad. She banged her head,” he said, pantomiming banging his head against his hand. “And a bloody nose.”

Mendez jogged over to the Mercedes and shined his Maglite in on the driver’s side. The airbag had deployed and there was blood on it. The cause of the nosebleed, he guessed. There didn’t appear to be any other damage done inside the car. He shined the light at an oblique angle down the side of the car. There seemed not to have been any contact between the two vehicles.

“Gotta hope she got a tag number!” he shouted at Dixon. “Are there skid marks?”

“Who can see in this?” Dixon turned to the deputy again. “Did she give you a description of the other car?”

The deputy shook his head.

“Could just have been an asshole,” Mendez said as they got back in the Taurus. He started the car and turned the heat on full blast. “She pissed him off when she hit her brakes.”

“That would just be too easy,” Dixon said. He pulled his hood back and pulled the wet cap off his head. “She’s convinced herself she’s a target.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Mendez said. “Like her son said, if somebody had it in for her, why not just kill her? Why kill Marissa Fordham with forty-some stab wounds and the mutilation and leaving the knife protruding from the vagina? All this perp did to Bordain is send her a gruesome surprise in the mail.”

“Until tonight.”

For Mendez, it didn’t sit right. The amount of rage in the killing of Marissa Fordham ... she had to have been the primary target. Little Haley was collateral damage. This business with Milo Bordain was like a game. That was a different kind of killer altogether. One he’d hoped they wouldn’t see again in Oak Knoll.

He drove them to Mercy General Hospital and parked under the ambulance canopy at the ER entrance. The triage nurse led them back to the exam rooms.

“How is she?” Dixon asked.

The nurse, a short woman with smoker’s skin and dyed-black hair, waved a hand in dismissal. “She’s insisting on a CT scan, but she’ll be fine. She’s shaken up. More scared than hurt. She’ll have a good goose egg on her forehead tomorrow, but there’s no sign of a concussion.”

She motioned to a door and left them. Dixon knocked twice and opened it.

Milo Bordain sat on the exam table, an unimpressed nurse tending to a small cut and abrasion on the left side of Bordain’s forehead.

“Cal! Thank God you’re here! Someone tried to kill me!”

She did look worse for wear, Mendez thought. Her blond hair was escaping the usually perfect tight bun she wore, and her makeup was mostly gone, showing her age in the harsh fluorescent lighting. In a hospital gown and wearing a paper blanket for a stole, she seemed much less formidable than in her usual layers of designer wear.

“We’ll do our best to get to the bottom of it, Mrs. Bordain,” Dixon said.

“Ouch!” she cried out and snapped at the nurse who was dabbing something at the cut on her forehead. “That stings!”

“Yeah,” the nurse said, unapologetic. “Good thing you don’t need stitches.”

“If I need stitches, I’m calling my plastic surgeon. I’m not letting anyone here touch my face.”

“Can you tell us what happened, Mrs. Bordain?” Mendez asked, pen in hand.

“I came in to town this afternoon to see how things were going with the tip line. Then I came to the hospital to try to see Haley, and she’d been released.

“Nobody told me she was being released today,” she complained, irritated. “I wanted to have a chance to see her and tell her I’m thinking about her. And I brought her a little present—”

“About the accident ... ,” Mendez prompted.

Bordain turned to Dixon and spoke as if Mendez weren’t there. “He is so rude. I don’t understand why you would bring him here with you, Cal. You know he upsets me.”

“I can step outside if you’d like to talk about me,” Mendez said.

“I need him to take notes,” Dixon said smoothly. “So you were on your way home?”

“Yes. And I was already upset about Haley, and still thinking about what happened yesterday, and about Marissa. I want to have a memorial service for her, but I don’t know when her body will be released. Then someone told me only a relative could claim the body, but Marissa has no relatives here other than Haley—”

“And the car ... ,” Mendez said pointedly.

She huffed another sigh.

“Suddenly I see these bright headlights coming up behind me,” she said. “I knew the car was going too fast for that road in the rain. People drive like maniacs out there—especially the Mexicans.”

Mendez exchanged a glance with the nurse, who was also Hispanic

“The car came right up behind me,” Bordain went on. “I thought it was going to hit me! You hear all the time about those insurance scams where some uninsured illegal gets you to rear-end them and then bilks the insurance company and sues the law-abiding citizen—”

“But there was only one car,” Dixon said.

“Yes. I was angry that he was right on my tail, so I tapped my brakes to tell him to back off. Then he pulled up alongside me and swerved toward me. My heart was in my throat!”

“Do you know what kind of car it was?” Mendez asked.

“No. I’m sorry but I don’t know anything about cars.”

“What about the driver?”

She closed her eyes, pained and in pain. “I don’t know.”

She would know if it was a Mexican, Mendez thought.

“Was it a car or a truck?” Dixon asked.

“A car.”

“Dark- or light-colored?”

“Dark. Everything was dark. And it was raining so hard I could barely see the road.”

“Did you get a look at the driver at all?”

“Just a glance. I was terrified. I was trying to stay on the road.”

“But it was a man,” Dixon said.

“Yes, I think so. He might have been wearing a watch cap pulled down low, or maybe his hair was black. I didn’t get a good look,” she said. “He swerved at me. I swerved to miss him. The next thing I knew my car was out of control. I thought I was going to be killed!”

“We saw your airbag deployed,” Dixon said.

“I thought it broke my nose! Those things are dangerous!”

“Try putting your face through a windshield,” the nurse muttered—more as a suggestion than a comment, Mendez thought. He cleared his throat and rubbed a hand down over his mustache to hide his smile.

“The car didn’t stop,” Dixon said.

“No. I didn’t see it stop.”

“You didn’t see the license plate?” Mendez asked.

“No. For God’s sake, I was trying to stay alive!”

“Were there any other cars on the road at the time?” Mendez asked. “Anyone who might have seen what happened?”

“You don’t believe me?” Bordain said, incredulous. Tears filled her eyes. “Oh my God. You think I’m making this up?”

“It’s not that, Mrs. Bordain,” Dixon said. “Another driver might have a better description of the other vehicle or of the driver, or may have even gotten a plate number.”

“No,” she said, calming down marginally. “One of my neighbors came along a few minutes later. He’s the one who called nine-one-one.”

“Have you been drinking at all this evening, Mrs. Bordain?” Mendez asked.

“What? Of course not! I had a glass of wine with dinner. That was hours ago!”

“It’s just a routine question, ma’am,” Mendez said. “We have to ask.”

The nurse elbowed Mendez from behind and whispered in Spanish, “If she was a Mexican, she would be drunk.”

Mendez coughed into his hand.

“What’s going to happen next?” Bordain asked Dixon.

Dixon sighed and tipped his head like he was about to ram it into a wall. “There isn’t much we can do, Mrs. Bordain. With no license plate and no witnesses, there isn’t anything to go on.”

“Someone tried to kill me!” she said, tears spilling over her lashes.

“I understand that you’re upset.”

She turned toward the door. “Darren! Thank God you’re here!”

Darren Bordain came into the room with rain beading up on his blond hair and on his expensive trench coat. He looked at Dixon and Mendez.

“Gentlemen, we have to stop meeting this way. People will talk,” he said. “Are you finished grilling my mother? I’m sure she’d like to go home.”

“I have to have a CT scan,” his mother said. “I hit my head on the side window, and the airbag almost broke my nose. Someone tried to kill me, but no one is taking it seriously!”

While Dixon reassured her that wasn’t the case, Mendez nodded Darren Bordain into the hall.

“Why wouldn’t you take that seriously?” Bordain asked. “Someone sent her human body parts in the mail yesterday.”

“It’s not that we aren’t taking it seriously, Mr. Bordain,” Mendez said. “There just isn’t much for us to go on. She didn’t get a good look at the other driver or the license plate of the other vehicle. No one else saw the accident.”

Bordain’s perfect brow knit. “Do you think she’s lying?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“She’s usually a good driver.”

“She’s had a lot of bad things happen this week,” Mendez said. “She’s been upset. I’m sure she’s distracted, and she’s probably exhausted. Things happen. People get embarrassed. They don’t want to admit they just went off the road on their own or that they might have had a drink or two. The deputy should have done a Breathalyzer test on her at the scene, but he didn’t.”

“She had a couple of glasses of wine with dinner,” Bordain conceded, “but she was by no means impaired.”

“All right. We have to check every angle,” Mendez said. “There’s no offense intended.”

“I understand.”

“You had dinner together?”

“Yes, at Barron’s Steak House. My parents and I.”

“What time did your mother leave the restaurant?”

“Around ten thirty. We all left at the same time.”

“You came in separate vehicles?”

“Yes. I went home—to my house. My father had to go back to Montecito. Mother headed back to the ranch.”

“She’s staying out there alone?”

“No. Hernando and his wife—the caretakers—live on the property. And of course my father will come back now.”

Mendez jotted his notes. Despite the fact that Milo Bordain was a racist snob, he couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for her. Her husband didn’t seem to be giving her much in the way of support after all she’d been through this week.

“Is everything all right with your parents’ marriage?” he asked.

“Their marriage is no different than it’s ever been. You don’t think my father had something to do with this?”

“Like I said: We have to look at all possibilities.”

Darren Bordain shook his head. “They have their arrangement. Neither of them complains about it.”

“What arrangement is that?”

“They lead their own lives. My father has his businesses, he plays golf, he probably has a girlfriend here and there—although he is completely discreet. My mother makes a career of being Mrs. Bruce Bordain. She has her social circle and her causes. They still enjoy each other’s company when they’re together. It works for them.”

He looked across the hall as an orderly arrived with a gurney to take his mother for her CT scan.

“You know Gina Kemmer, don’t you?” Mendez asked.

“Yes, why?”

“When was the last time you spoke to her?”

“She left a message for me yesterday afternoon to ask if I know anything about a funeral date for Marissa. She’s a mess,” Bordain said. “Marissa was like a sister to her.”

“Did she say anything about going out of town?”

“No, why?”

“We’ve been trying to get hold of her, that’s all,” Mendez said. “We want everyone who had contact with Marissa in the last week or so to come in and give us an interview so we can build a fuller, more accurate picture of the last week of Marissa’s life. I’d like to schedule a time with you, as well.”

“Sure,” Bordain said. “Call me tomorrow. I’d better go be a good son now and do some hand-holding.”

When he was halfway across the hall he turned back. “Is there anything new in Marissa’s case?”

“No, sir. Not at this time.”

“You’ll keep my mother apprised, though, won’t you? She may be a pompous snob, but she really is beside herself over Marissa’s death.”

“Sheriff Dixon will personally see to it,” Mendez said as Dixon came out of the room and Bordain went back in.

“I will personally see to what?”

“Mrs. Bordain,” Mendez said as they started down the hall.

Dixon gave him a look. “Jesus, Tony. What did I ever do to you?”