Secrets to the Grave

68

“We’ve finally got something,” Dixon said. “Hallelujah.”

“I’ve got deputies canvassing the area residents to find out if anybody saw anything Wednesday night,” Mendez said, shrugging out of his coat. “It’s the freaking wilderness out there, but maybe we’ll get lucky.

“Has there been any word on Gina Kemmer?” Hicks asked.

“She’s critical,” Dixon said. “It’s anybody’s guess if she makes it through the night.”

“She made it this far,” Mendez said. “She should have been dead out there three times over.”

“Let’s hope she’s still got some fight in her,” Dixon said.

“Do we have someone on her room?” Mendez asked. “The killer is the only one in the state who isn’t going to be impressed with her story of survival.”

“The state?” Dixon said. “Try the country. I’ve got the networks on my ass for interviews. I’m told there’s hardly a hotel room to be had in town. Between Marissa’s murder, Haley, Zander Zahn, and Gina’s story, the eyes of America are on us. Again.”

“Our killer is going to start getting twitchy now,” Vince said. “If he wasn’t already. It was one thing to leave a four-year-old behind with the potential to ID him. It’s something else to have a grown woman able to do it. He’s going to start feeling cornered now. He’s made too many mistakes.”

“Darren Bordain was pretty twitchy today,” Mendez said. “He refused a photograph, refused a polygraph. And his alibi for the night of the murder is Gina Kemmer, who has been conveniently missing.”

“He certainly didn’t like being in the spotlight today,” Vince said. “From his body language, I’d say he’s hiding something.”

“He could have been involved with Marissa,” Hicks said. “He could have believed he was Haley’s father. Maybe he found out he wasn’t. Maybe he found out Marissa never had a baby.”

“And she never would have a baby,” Dixon said. “I spoke to the pathologist today. She couldn’t say when, but Marissa Fordham had had a hysterectomy at some point in her life.”

“That would certainly piss me off,” Campbell said. “Finding out after four years of paying blackmail that not only is the child not mine, it’s not even hers?”

Mendez nodded, trying the scenario out. “Bordain finds out. He’s furious. He snaps. He kills her. His mother made a big deal out of Marissa—the daughter she never had. He sends her the breasts to say ‘Here’s the fucking daughter you never had. She was a fraud and I killed her.’”

“That fits well,” Dixon said. “Too well. Darren Bordain is a smart guy. Would he do something so obvious as send those breasts to his mother in the mail? I’m still leaning toward misdirection with the breasts. Someone’s playing with us.”

“Vince, what about Steve Morgan?” Mendez asked. “Did he talk to you?”

“Yeah, he did. He’s a cagey bastard,” Vince said. “I’ve known some tough nuts in my day, but this guy doesn’t crack. He gave me a couple little glimpses inside, then shut the door.”

“But could he be a killer?” Dixon asked.

“I’m not sure,” Vince admitted, still turning the interview over in his head. He was exhausted from the mental game. His brain hurt from the effort. He could feel himself flagging.

“There’s something in him that makes him want you to believe he could be that rotten,” he said. “A lot of self-hatred.”

“What did he say about knowing the number of stab wounds the vic had?” Hicks asked.

“Lucky guess.”

“My ass!” Mendez barked.

Vince shrugged and spread his hands, wishing he had something more definitive to say. “I don’t know. If he did it, if he knew that number—which would be unlikely—why would he say it?”

“To poke us in the eye,” Mendez said. “He knows we don’t have anything on him.”

“He admits he wasn’t where he said he was on the night of the murder,” Vince said. “But he wouldn’t tell me where he was, either. He was with another woman, but he isn’t going to give her name up unless he absolutely has to. And at this point, he doesn’t.”

“Let’s say he was with Marissa,” Mendez said.

“But why would he kill her?”

“She threatened to tell Sara.”

“So what?” Vince said. “Sara has been pretty well convinced for a year or more that he’s cheating on her. She got closer to Marissa to try to prove it. He knew that. What would be the point of him killing her?”

“He has a volatile temper,” Mendez said, his frustration beginning to show. “Maybe he just snapped. Maybe she called his mother a junkie whore.”

“That’ll get you punched in the kisser. We know that for a fact,” Vince said. “Morgan is a complicated guy. And he’s undergone a dramatic change in his personality in the last year. That’s a red flag. He’s become self-destructive in his relationships for a reason.”

“He was sleeping with two women who were both murdered,” Mendez said. “That tells me either he killed one or both of them, or he didn’t stop somebody else from killing them. If that was me, I would feel responsible either way.”

Mendez and his White Knight Syndrome. But was Steve Morgan really so different? Vince wondered. If his motives for helping disadvantaged women had been altruistic all along, then he was no different in that respect. He came to the rescue. His wife had gotten left out of the process because he didn’t see her as needing saving—or being sympathetic to his cause, for that matter. Sara was jealous of the time he donated to others.

“Peter Crane was his friend,” Vince said. “Lisa Warwick was his lover. He probably thinks he should have been able to prevent what happened, but he didn’t.

“Now—if he was seeing Marissa—Marissa is dead too. Let’s say he didn’t kill her. He sinks deeper into self-destruction. He picks a fight with a cop. He picks a fight with his wife, he tries to scare her off, letting her think he might be a murderer. Ultimately, to punish himself.”

“I still don’t think we can rule him out,” Dixon said.

“No,” Vince agreed. “You can’t rule him out. Not until we know where he was the night she was killed. Or where he was when Gina went missing.”

“I’ll tell you where he was when Gina went missing,” Mendez said. “He was AWOL. Bill and I were trying to track him down. He told his wife he was working late, but he wasn’t at his office. He told me later that he was having dinner with a client in Malibu. I’d say he pulled that out of his ass. He didn’t show up at home until the middle of the night. I was there waiting for him.”

“What about Bordain?” Dixon asked.

“He doesn’t account for every minute of every day,” Hicks said.

“Meaning he doesn’t have an alibi.”

“I would say so.”

“Mark Foster?”

“We were talking to him early that evening,” Hicks said. “Then he had a rehearsal. After that, nothing.”

“We know approximately when Gina left her house that afternoon,” Mendez said. “But we have no way of knowing when she met up with our bad guy. It could have been early, it could have been late.”

“Maybe this, maybe that,” Dixon complained. “This is giving me a headache. I want something we can take to the bank. Have we got that photo lineup put together for the little girl yet?”

“Bordain refused to have his photo taken, we don’t know where Zahn is, a big no on Steve Morgan,” Hamilton said. “But I was able to put something together with photos from other sources—the college, the local papers, Oak Knoll magazine. It’s not ideal. It won’t stand up in court. But it’s better than nothing.”

“Our witness is four. She won’t hold up in court either, but we need something to go on. It’s worth a shot.” Dixon looked at Vince. “Is Anne okay with this?”

“Yeah. I gave her the heads-up already. But if you want it tonight we’d better get on it, pronto.” He lifted his arm and tapped the face of his watch. “Four-year-olds have bedtime.”