by Tami Hoag
“So why pretend they didn’t?”
“That’s my question. If Marissa was running from someone in Los Angeles, came up here and changed her name, who would care if she and Gina knew each other?”
“Maybe Marissa wanted the whole new identity—needed it for whatever reason—but Gina didn’t want to be bothered with living a lie.”
“Maybe . . .”
Vince got up and stretched, picked up his sandwich and breathed in the aroma through the wrapper.
“I gave up pastrami ten years ago,” he said. “At the same time I quit smoking. The big midlife health kick.”
“And then?”
“I got shot in the head and lived. A little pastrami isn’t going to kill me.”
“You gonna take up cigarettes too?” Mendez asked, eyeing his meatball sub for a spot to attack it.
“I’m indulgent, not stupid,” Vince said. “So did Bordain want you fired?”
“No. He invited me to go golfing. He’s nothing like his wife.”
“You liked him?”
“He’s hard not to like. Charming, charismatic, accessible. He’s the guy guys want to hang out with and ladies want to hang on his arm. But he talks about his marriage like it’s a business arrangement.”
“It probably is. It looks like it works out for both of them.”
“That’s not the kind of marriage I want.”
“Mr. Romance.”
“And you’re not?”
“I am, absolutely. Guilty as charged, and happy as a half-wit at the county fair,” Vince confessed. “But not a lot of people get that lucky. Not everybody wants to. The highs are really high, but the lows suck. Middle of the road is safer.”
“Dixon asked him if he had a girlfriend who might want his wife dead. He said he’s learned to make sure that doesn’t happen. Pay now, not later. What do you think that means?”
“Hookers. Cash on the dresser. Cheaper than a mistress.”
“I guess.” Mendez shook his head and sighed wistfully. “The world’s an ugly place, Vince.”
“Not always,” Vince said, picking up a photograph of Gina Kemmer and Marissa Fordham in bikinis on a beach. He looked at the back. “Life’s a knockout in Cabo San Lucas, circa ...”
He stared at the back of the snapshot, turned it over, and stared at the front.
Mendez stopped chewing and talked with his mouth full of meatball sub. “What?”
“March 1982.”
“What about it?”
“Haley was born in May 1982.” He put the photo down and tapped a finger on the very flat belly of Marissa Fordham/Melissa Fabriano. “Does that woman look seven months pregnant to you?”
“Maybe the date is wrong.”
“Why would the date be wrong? Gina learned from her mother to always put the date on the back of the picture. Every photograph on this table has a date written on the back of it. Why would any of them be wrong?”
“But she’s obviously not pregnant.”
“Obviously not.”
“Wow.” Mendez shook his head as if he’d been dazed. “We’re busting our asses trying to find out who Haley’s father is. We don’t even know who her mother is.”
“Who’s the daddy?” Vince said, feeling a whiplash coming on. “Who’s the baby?”
59
“When is my mommy going to stop being dead?”
Anne brought a bowl of tomato soup to the kitchen table and sat down next to Haley on the banquette. Haley had tossed the question out like she was asking the time of day. Matter-of-fact in the way of small children whose lives drift in and out of fantasy. Death was unreal, but a unicorn might live in the bushes outside the house.
“People don’t stop being dead, sweetheart,” Anne said quietly.
Engrossed in her coloring, Haley didn’t even look up. “Yes, they do. They turn into angels.”
“Oh. Well, yes,” Anne said, once again feeling out of her depth. She had no way of knowing what belief system Marissa Fordham had subscribed to or what she had instilled in her daughter. “Then what happens?”
“They go to heaven and fly around, and they come for Christmas, and whenever we need them.” She looked up at Anne then. Some of the blood had left the whites of her eyes, but the effect was still startling. “How come you don’t know that?”
“I do,” Anne said. “I was just testing you. Have some of your soup, sweetie. It’ll feel good on your throat.”
Haley knelt on the cushion of the banquette and leaned over her bowl, blowing on the soup to cool it.
Anne glanced at the paper she had been drawing on. Oddly shaped cats and kittens of all colors ran along the bottom third of the page. She wondered how Vince would feel about having a kitten in the house. Or two.
She reached over and brushed Haley’s hair back to keep the ends from dipping in the soup, and revealed the dark bruises that ringed her throat. They had faded to a mix of blue and yellow. She could almost feel Peter Crane’s hands close around her throat and had to swallow hard a couple of times to push the feeling away. She hadn’t been able to wear anything tight around her neck since, no turtlenecks, no scarves, no short necklaces.
“Where’s your mommy?” Haley asked. She scooped up a spoonful of soup and sipped at it, giving herself an instant tomato-soup mustache.
“She’s an angel in heaven,” Anne said.
“That’s good. Does she know my mommy?”
“Maybe.”
“Where’s your daddy?”
“He lives in a house in another part of town.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s his house.”
“How come you don’t live in his house?”
“Because this is my house. Vince and I are married and this is our house.”
Haley thought about that and ate some more soup. “I would live in my daddy’s house.”
“Would you?” Anne asked. “Where is your daddy’s house?”
“I don’t know.”
“What does your daddy look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he a big guy like Vince?”
“No.”
“Does he have a mustache?”
“No.”
“Does he have orange hair?”
Haley laughed. “No! That’s silly!”
“Does he have blue hair like a Smurf?”
“No!”
“Does he have no hair at all?”
The little girl fell into a fit of giggles, flopping down onto the cushion. Anne scooped her back up.
“Come on, silly, eat your lunch before it gets cold.”
Haley took a few more spoons of soup. Anne knew her well enough by now to see the little wheels of her mind turning as she thought hard about something.
“Anne?” she said at last.
“What?”
“Would you be my mommy until my mommy stops being an angel?”
Tears stung her eyes as Anne hugged Haley tight and kissed the top of head. “I’ll be your mommy for as long as I can be,” she whispered. “How about that?”
Haley nodded and squirmed around onto Anne’s lap, and stuck her thumb in her mouth, suddenly tired.
“Are you ready for a nap, sweetie?” Anne asked softly.
“No.”
“No? You look pretty sleepy.”
“No!” she whined.
“Why not?”
“Bad Daddy will come!”
“What if I stay right with you so Bad Daddy can’t get you?”
The tears started with two big drops. “No! Bad Daddy will get you too!”
“No, baby, that won’t happen. We’re safe here. Remember?”
Haley was unconvinced, sniffling and crying a little, all around her thumb.
“You know what?” Anne said. “We’re not going to think about Bad Daddy now. We’re going to play a game. Do you want to play a game?”
“W-w-w-hat game?”
“We’re going to play Imagine That. Do you know that
game?”
Haley shook her head.
“You know what Bad Daddy looks like,” Anne said. “What color are his clothes?”
“B-b-b-black.”
“Not anymore,” Anne said. “We’re going to make them white. White with big pink polka dots. Can you imagine that?”
Haley hiccupped and nodded.
“And he has big huge floppy clown shoes on. Can you imagine that?”
She nodded a little quicker this time.
“And does he have a big round red nose?”
Another nod.
“And it honks like a horn when you pinch it. Can you imagine that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s not Bad Daddy anymore. He’s just a silly clown. Can you imagine that?”
No answer this time. Anne peeked down. Sound asleep.
She scooted back on the banquette to a more comfortable position with Haley sleeping against her. It was almost one o’clock. Sara Morgan had called and asked if she could bring Wendy over, a visit that would be good for both Haley and Wendy.
Anne knew Wendy was struggling, and Sara sounded stressed down to her last nerve. She and Steve probably weren’t going to make it. That was going to be especially tough on Wendy. Anne wanted her to feel like she had a safe haven if she needed it in the future.
Damn. She wasn’t going to have time to get to Dennis today. She would have to call and let the nurse supervisor know. And she would call Dr. Falk as well.
Guilt swept over her in a cold wave. She hated missing a session with him, especially when she had made a promise. She had stopped at the bookstore and picked out a couple of comic books for him for his reward. Of course, the odds that he had done the assignment she had given him were long. Still, she hated not being able to keep a promise to him. He had had too many people let him down in his short life.
You can’t save everybody every day, Anne, she told herself.
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.
“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.”