Secrets to the Grave

64

Vince sat in his car for a while just looking at the offices of Quinn, Morgan and Associates: Attorneys at Law. Theirs was a well-respected practice, specializing in family and civil law.

Steve Morgan hadn’t made partner by being reckless or an idiot. On the contrary. Vince knew him to be very intelligent, very closed, and very careful.

He had sat down across from Steve Morgan a couple of times during the See-No-Evil cases. The cops had all but had a photo of him having sex with victim Lisa Warwick, but he had never cracked. Not even the threat of DNA technology—which they didn’t exactly have yet, but made for a good bluff—not even that had rattled him. He never admitted the affair.

What he knew about Steve Morgan was this: He had come from a difficult background. Prostitute mother, no father figure in his life.

He professed a great love for his mother, which Vince had sometimes found in men with such backgrounds to be a veil to cover a deep hatred. Boys growing up in that situation with no positive male role model in their lives often felt vulnerable and unprotected by their only parent, their mother. They grew up watching their mother degrade herself, and watching other men degrade and objectify her. This generally led to the boys having a disdain and lack of respect for women and to harboring a seething anger, which could erupt into violence with the right trigger.

Steve Morgan was intelligent, had done well in school, had graduated at the top of his class from the University of California at Berkeley, where he had met Sara. Then came law school at the University of Southern California. Top honors. Next: a couple of good jobs in the greater Los Angeles area. Marriage, a baby, a move to Oak Knoll for a better quality of life and a job with Don Quinn, whom he had met on his first job out of law school.

And during all of this, he had been an active advocate for the rights of underprivileged women. Admirable.

But the wheels had started coming off the tracks for Steve Morgan, and the question was, why?

Inasmuch as he had shot down Tony’s theory of Steve Morgan being involved with Peter Crane in the See-No-Evil murders, it wasn’t a stretch to take a man with Morgan’s psychopathology and put him in the role of killer.

And that type of killer’s victimology? Prostitutes, disadvantaged women ... free-spirit single moms with lots of boyfriends.

What were the odds of having two highly intelligent, organized, sexually sadistic serial killers in a town the size of Oak Knoll—at the same time, no less? Astronomical. And that the two would have been friends? Vince would have to have the mathematical mind of Zander Zahn to calculate those numbers.

That was something that would only happen in Hollywood on a movie screen, like Jack the Ripper and the Marquis de Sade teaming up to take on one town.

Not that Vince didn’t know of teams of killers. He had interviewed both Larry Bittaker and Roy Norris, notorious for the incredibly brutal torture killings of five young women in Los Angeles in 1979. And Kenneth Bianchi and his cousin Angelo Buono, who had also gone down in LA in 1979 for killing ten young women in the infamous Hillside Strangler cases.

But a team took the exact right two people with the exact right mix of bad chemistry. One partner was always dominant, the other a follower. And when the chips were down in a police interview room, invariably one would turn on the other one in a heartbeat in order to secure a more lenient prison sentence. Because psychopaths care only about themselves and their own well-being, they possess no loyalty to a partner.

Vince was confident Morgan had not worked in concert with Peter Crane in the See-No-Evil murders. Crane’s killings had been the highly methodical and ritualistic work of a man with a very specific sexually sadistic fantasy.

Marissa Fordham’s murder had been a rage killing, pure and simple. She had been stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed until her killer’s rage was spent. The removal of her breasts and the placement of the knife protruding from her vagina had been postmortem statements.

Now Vince had to find out if Steve Morgan possessed that kind of rage.

He got out of his car and flipped up the collar of his coat against the continuing drizzle, and walked across the street to the office of Quinn, Morgan, et al. He greeted the receptionist with his most charming smile.

“Vince Leone to see Mr. Morgan,” he said.

The young woman frowned and whispered, “I’m sorry, Mr. Morgan isn’t seeing clients today.”

“Please just let him know I’m here,” Vince whispered back. “I think he’ll see me.”

He helped himself to a butterscotch from the candy dish on the counter while the woman called Morgan.

The outer office was very tastefully done in shades of gray with touches of teal and burgundy. It said MONEY, but quietly, and established a feeling of calm and trustworthiness one would want from a family attorney.

“You can go right in, Mr. Leone,” the receptionist murmured.

“Thank you.”

Steve Morgan sat behind his big desk looking like the losing side of a prizefight. Mendez had popped him good. Both eyes were black—one more so than the other—and his nose was a mushy purple lump taped to his face. That the guy wasn’t going to sue the department suggested to Vince a big whopping dose of self-loathing. On some level Morgan must have thought he had it coming.

“I must really be a suspect now,” Morgan said. “They’ve brought out the Big Gun.”

Vince held his hands up. “No tricks up my sleeves. I’m not a cop anymore. I’m retired from the Bureau.”

“I will argue that you’re acting as an agent of the sheriff’s office.”

“Nothing you say here can or will be used against you in a court of law.”

“So you’re just here for the hell of it?”

“I saw Sara today.”

“Oh.”

Vince helped himself to a seat. They looked at each other for a moment. Each trying to read the other’s mind before the chess match began.

“Is she having me arrested?”

“For what? Have you broken the law?”

“She was pretty upset when she threw me out of my own house last night.”

“Sounds like you had a pretty big helping of upset yourself.”

“I don’t like being accused of things I didn’t do,” Morgan said. “Especially by my wife. You know, I took those vows pretty seriously.”

“Until when?” Vince asked. “You and I both know you cheat on her, Steve. Don’t bother with the big show on my account.”

Morgan sighed. “I suppose it won’t matter if I tell you my marriage is none of your business.”

“No, because it is now—seeing how Sara came and talked to me about it.”

Morgan narrowed his good eye. “Why would Sara talk to you?”

“Sara and Anne have gotten to be friends over the last year. You might not know that—you being so busy and all with other women and whatnot.”

“Then why wouldn’t she talk to Anne instead of you?”

Vince smiled. “Because Anne can’t get your ass thrown in jail if need be.”

Morgan was unfazed. “Which brings me back to my original question: Is Sara having me arrested for something?”

“No.”

Vince scanned the desktop. Morgan had made no attempt to hide the fact that he was drinking. A heavy crystal tumbler sat to the left side of his blotter with three fingers of something in it. Jameson Irish whiskey from the bottle sitting on top of a book containing California divorce law.

“I like Sara,” Vince said. “She’s a nice gal. She’s smart, she’s talented. Beautiful—that goes without saying, right? And she loves you.”

“Hard to believe, huh?”

Vince shook his head. “Nah. I can see it. You’re a good-looking guy—usually. You’re a go-getter. You’re compassionate to the less fortunate in your community. You do good works. She tells me you’ve overcome a lot in your life. That’s admirable. Why shouldn’t she fall in love with you?”

Morgan gave a barely perceptible shrug.

“She had your baby,” Vince went on, “gave you a beautiful daughter. The two of you had it all.”

Steve Morgan took a stiff swig of the whiskey and sat back in his chair.

“And then I fucked it all up, right?”

Vince shrugged. “You tell me. The wheels started coming off the tracks somewhere along the line. Did you start to think she couldn’t really understand you? Her being from a nice family, how could she really get it?

“Or did you start to think you just really don’t deserve it? She’s out of your league. You might as well fuck it up and show her instead of waiting for her to figure it out on her own.

“Most women marry down, you know. It’s a known fact,” Vince said. “This is the voice of experience talking here. I’m one lucky son of a bitch, and I know it. I have to look over my shoulder every day, looking for the other shoe to drop. But I cut myself some slack and figure not to look a gift horse in the mouth, you know? Horses bite.”

It was a good sign, he thought, that he hadn’t been asked to leave. That meant something. Morgan was listening. Was he processing or was he just sitting there thinking how full of shit this jackass from Chicago was?

“Do you ask yourself these questions, Steve?” he asked quietly. “You’re a smart guy. Jesus, look at the diplomas,” he said, pointing to the wall at one end of the room. “How can such a smart guy be so fucking stupid? Do you ask yourself that?”

“Every day,” Morgan murmured, and took another sip of the whiskey.

A little jolt of excitement went through Vince. Score. He wasn’t just talking. He had given something up. He felt unworthy. Maybe he didn’t get it himself how he could have something so perfect and throw it away with both hands.

“Can I have a couple fingers of that?” Vince asked, gesturing to the bottle of Jameson.

Morgan shrugged. “Why not?”

He reached around to the bookcases behind him and came back with another tumbler, which he handed across the desk. Vince poured himself a drink and took a sip, savoring the smooth smoky quality of the liquor.

“That’s nice,” he said. “The Italians can stomp a grape, but you can’t beat the Irish for whiskey.”

Morgan lifted his glass in a toast to the sentiment.

“So,” Vince said. “What do you think? Have you broken it? Is it over?”

“You tell me. She talked to you.”

Vince gave him a pained expression. “It doesn’t look good.”

The barest hint of a sad smile creased Steve Morgan’s mouth. “I make a living persuading people to see things my way.”

On the face of it, that sounded as if he meant to try to win Sara back. But Vince had a feeling it meant he had already succeeded in convincing Sara she should leave him.

“You scared her pretty bad last night,” Vince said. “What was that? The coup de grace? Really drive it home what an asshole you are? Or do you really want her to think you might have killed that woman?”

“She already thinks it.”

“Might as well be true?” Vince asked.

Morgan said nothing, but poured himself a little more to drink.

“You were supposedly in Sacramento when it happened,” Vince said. “But you weren’t, were you? And don’t bother lying about it because Cal Dixon has a guy who can track that shit down like a freaking bloodhound.”

“I wasn’t where I said I would be.”

“You were with a woman.”

“I plead the fifth.”

“You’d rather get charged with a murder than admit you’re an adulterer when everybody who matters already knows you fuck around? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It might to the person I was with.”

“It does if that person was Marissa Fordham.”

“It wasn’t.”

“ ‘Do you think I was stabbing her forty-seven times and cutting her throat?’ That’s what you said. How did you pick that number, Steve?”

“Why? Was I right?”

“Damn close. Close enough to raise an eyebrow,” Vince said. “Not that most killers keep count when they’re going at it with a knife like that. But I can tell you, stranger things have happened.”

“If I did, I’d be crazy to say so,” Morgan said.

“Yeah,” Vince said. “Like a fox.”

Morgan slowly drank the last of his whiskey and set the glass down without making a sound. He looked Vince right in eye and said, “You have no evidence linking me to Marissa’s death because there is no evidence linking me to Marissa’s death because I didn’t kill her. I’d like you to go now, Vince. Thanks for stopping by.”