Secrets to the Grave

60

“What do you mean Marissa Fordham isn’t the little girl’s mother?” Dixon asked.

Most of the detectives had come into the war room for lunch, to have a little ham and cheese with their homicide. Eight-by-tens of the Marissa Fordham crime-scene photos were plastered all over one wall.

Vince showed Dixon the photograph of Gina and Marissa in Cabo San Lucas in March 1982, and explained about the significance of the dates.

At the end of the story, Dixon just stared at him, dumbfounded.

“I’m confused,” he said at last. “If Haley isn’t Marissa’s child, then whose child is she?”

“I don’t know,” Vince said. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You think Marissa was blackmailing the supposed father, but the kid’s a ringer?” Dixon said. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I thought I’d heard everything.”

“Haley was an infant when Marissa moved here,” Mendez pointed out. “No one here ever saw her pregnant.”

“And yet everyone would assume the child was her child,” Dixon said. “Huh. So ... where did she get the baby?”

“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” Vince said. “You can’t just walk into a store and buy a baby.”

“But you can always steal one,” Mendez suggested. “Or she could have adopted.”

“The murder might not have anything to do with blackmail at all,” Hamilton said, flicking pickles off his tuna salad. “We haven’t really come up with any solid evidence to support the theory. There’s nothing fishy in her bank records. She could have been stashing money elsewhere, but everything looks legit so far.”

“Besides,” Trammell said, “in this day and age, who would pay blackmail without proof the kid was really his kid? A paternity test is a lot cheaper than paying someone to keep their mouth shut.”

“Blackmail is a poker game,” Vince said. “If you really didn’t want a big scandal attached to your name, would you call the woman’s bluff? Maybe she’s got pictures of you and her together in a compromising position or two. She can for sure prove to God and everybody you were having sex with her. If you don’t pay, the majority of the shit hits the fan whether the kid is yours or not.”

“Then everyone assumes the kid is yours anyway,” Mendez said.

“By the time the paternity test is done, who gives a shit?” Vince said. “All the damage to your reputation, your marriage, your career, whatever, has been done.”

“Maybe Bruce Bordain has a point,” Dixon said. “If you’re the kind of guy who’s so inclined, pay up front.”

He heaved a sigh and let his shoulders sag for a moment while he thought.

Vince sat back in his chair wondering how this was going to impact Haley’s life. She’d just lost the only mother she’d ever known. Did she have a birth mother out there somewhere looking for her, wondering where she went and what became of her; wondering if she was even alive?

“Okay,” Dixon said. “Where Haley Fordham really came from is irrelevant with regards to the theory of the crime that Marissa was blackmailing a man who believed he was Haley’s father. It doesn’t matter if he really was or not. It matters what he believes.

“We proceed as planned,” he said. “If this crime was about blackmailing a man for having an illegitimate kid, we need that man to go on thinking that’s the case—and that we’re zeroing in on him. And if that’s not what the crime was about, it doesn’t matter at the moment.”

“It matters to whoever that baby really belongs to,” Hicks pointed out.

“The murder is our first priority,” Dixon said. “We wrap that up, then we’ll start looking back at infant abductions in the summer of 1982. We know now that Gina and Marissa both came up here from LA. We’ll start with abductions in LA County, Orange County, Riverside, and Ventura. But we need to catch a killer first.”

“Or,” Mendez said, “find Gina Kemmer alive.”

Dixon grabbed up the receiver as the phone on the table rang. His eyes went immediately to Mendez.

“He’ll be right there,” he said, and hung up. “Sara Morgan is here to see you.”

Mendez went out into the hall with Dixon on his heels.

“I don’t want you speaking to her alone,” the sheriff said. He held his hands up to forestall the objection rising in Mendez’s throat. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Tony, it’s that Steve Morgan is an attorney and you’re already skating on thin ice with him.”

He nodded, impatient to get to her. Something had to be wrong for Sara Morgan to bring herself to the sheriff’s office.

“Fine,” he said. “Vince knows Sara. Just let me ask her if she’s comfortable with that.”

He had already started down the hall before Dixon could answer.

The receptionist had brought Sara into the small waiting area outside of the detectives’ offices, where a sign on the wall instructed all detectives to turn their guns in at the desk. She looked like hell. His first impression was that she had two black eyes, and his temper had already begun to spike before he realized the dark around her eyes was from stress and lack of sleep. She looked thin and fragile, as if a man might be able to snap her in two.

If one had already tried, Mendez was going to kill Steve Morgan with his bare hands.

“Sara? Is something wrong?”

He could see she was trembling as she stood up.

“Can I speak to you privately?” she asked, her voice so small, he could hardly hear her.

“Is this about Steve?” he asked, putting a hand on her shoulder to steady her.

“Yes.”

“Okay. Because of what happened between Steve and me, I’m going to have to have someone else sit in with us. You know Vince Leone. Is it all right if he sits in with us?”

Head down, she nodded.

“All right. We’ll go back here,” he said, letting his hand fall to the small of her back to guide her gently through the office with its small sea of desks, and down the hall to the interview rooms.

“Are you all right?” he asked quietly.

“No,” she said.

“Is there something I can get you before we sit down? Would you like a glass of water or some really bad coffee?”

She tried to smile and shook her head.

“Where’s Wendy? Is she okay?”

“She’s with Anne.”

“Okay. Good. That’s good.”

He looked in the glass inset of the door to interview room one. Vince was already waiting. He stood up as Mendez opened the door and held it for Sara.

“Sara,” Vince said easily. “I understand from Anne that Wendy is visiting Haley this afternoon.”

“Yes.”

“Have a seat, honey,” he said, pulling out a chair for her at the small table. “You look a little shaken up.”

Mendez took the chair on the far side of the table and planted his forearms on the tabletop to keep from reaching over to touch her. That didn’t stop Vince, who reached over and patted her hand.

“It’s okay, Sara,” he said in his quiet, almost fatherly voice. “You’re okay. You’re among friends here, right?”

She nodded, squeezing her eyes shut against gathering tears.

“Between me and Tony here, we’ve heard about every kind of wild story there is,” Vince went on, trying to put her at ease. “So nothing you come up with is going to shock us.”

Sara drew a shallow, shuddering breath. “I think my husband might have killed Marissa.”

Vince’s brows sketched upward ever so slightly. “What makes you say that, Sara?”

“I suspected he was having an affair with her,” she said. She was shaking so hard, she wrapped her arms around herself as if she were freezing.

Mendez stood up, took his sport coat off and draped it around her, giving her shoulders a comforting squeeze.

“When did you first start thinking that?” he asked, sliding back into his seat.

“Last winter when the project for the poster for the Thomas Center started. Then I found out she was a client—that she’d been a client for a while. Do we have to go over all of this now?”

Vince reached over and took one of her hands in his. “I’m sorry, honey. I know it’s hard. This is a tough time for you. You know you’re not alone, right? We’re here for you.”

Sara nodded and glanced at Mendez. “I told him to leave. I told him to get out.”

“You told Steve to get out?” Mendez said. “When did you do that?”

“Last night. He never called in the morning to tell us what had happened. Wendy saw his car in the driveway, but he wasn’t home, and there was blood ... We didn’t know what to think. Wendy thought he’d been killed.”

Mendez wanted to bang his head against the wall, feeling stupid and guilty. “Oh, Sara, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe he didn’t call you. I would have called you if I had known.”

“It’s not your fault my husband is a bastard,” she said. “Just like it’s not my fault his mother was a prostitute.

“Everything is somebody else’s fault where Steve is concerned. He didn’t used to be that way,” she said. “He’s changed so much in the last year and a half, I don’t even know who he is anymore.”

“His behavior has changed?” Vince asked. “How?”

“He used to be happy. He loved us being a family. We were his dream come true. And then he started working more hours and getting more wrapped up in his work for the women’s center, and he just started to change.

“I know you thought he was having an affair with Lisa Warwick when she was killed. And then, of course, Peter Crane was arrested. Peter and Steve were friends. That was hard on him. He just seemed to withdraw more and communicate less.”

“You and Marissa were friends, right?” Vince asked.

Sara shook her head. “I knew who she was. I didn’t try to get to know her until last April or May.”

“After you already believed Steve was involved with her?” Mendez asked.

“Yes. I wanted to know ... If he was in love with her, I wanted to know why. Why her? Why not me?” she asked, the pain in her voice so raw, Mendez wanted to take her in his arms and hold her.

Vince shifted his chair a little and leaned forward, still holding Sara’s hand, his knees now almost touching hers. She gave him her other hand, wanting the contact, needing to feel Vince’s strength.

“It’s okay, Sara,” he whispered. “You hang on to me as tight as you need to, honey, all right?”

She was almost doubled over from the emotional pain. Mendez left his chair and squatted down beside her so he could hear her. He braced a hand against the back of her chair. He wanted to reach up and wipe the tears from her cheek.

“Steve wasn’t in Sacramento last Sunday,” she said. “I don’t know where he was. I told him last night that I knew he wasn’t where he said he was. And he got really angry, and he said to me, ‘Do you think I was with Marissa? Do you think I was stabbing her forty-seven times and cutting her throat?’”

The hair went up on the back of Mendez’s neck. He and Vince locked eyes.

“Is that exactly what he said to you, Sara?” Mendez asked.

“Yes. He was trying to scare me. I didn’t even know who he was when he said those things.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“I just wanted him gone,” she admitted. “I just wanted him to leave. And Wendy was so upset—”

“Did Wendy hear him say that?” Vince asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what she heard. I thought she was upstairs in bed. Steve was shouting at me, and suddenly she came in the room and hit him and screamed at him that she hated him. It was awful. I just wanted him away from us.”

“And he left?” Vince said.

“Yes.”

“Do you know where he is now?” Mendez asked.

“I don’t know. He could be at work. He probably is. It’s raining. He can’t golf.”

Mendez got up and left the interview room, going across the hall to the break room where Dixon and Hicks stood watching the closed-circuit television showing the interview.

“Has that information been leaked to the press?” he asked. “The number of stab wounds?”

“Not officially,” Dixon said. “Multiple stab wounds is all we’ve released. If the press has a number, they might have gotten it from the morgue.”

“I can’t believe whoever did that to Marissa Fordham would have counted the number of times he stabbed her,” Hicks said. “He was in a rage, a frenzy.”

“I know,” Mendez said. “But forty-seven? That’s pretty damn close to right. We can’t discount that out of hand just because it seems unlikely. What do we know? Maybe that’s a significant number to him for whatever reason. We need to talk to him.”

“He’s not going to come in voluntarily,” Dixon said. “We’ve got no evidence of anything, Tony. Remember evidence? It’s what we use to prove guilt in a court of law. If we try to bring him in for an official questioning now and he lawyers up—which he’ll do because, hello, he’s a lawyer—we’re fucked.”

“He could be a killer.”

“You’re not going near him,” Dixon said calmly.

“No, because I would fucking kill him for what he’s putting her through,” he said honestly, pointing at Sara on the monitor.

“We need to get him to talk to Vince,” Dixon said. “And you need to calm down.”