Secrets to the Grave

death of her surrogate daughter. The tension was showing in her manner and in the fine lines across her forehead and around her mouth. She was probably feeling threatened. Marissa had been taken away from her, now her son ... She would want more than ever to maintain her connection to Haley.

Haley ran ahead of them into the barn.

“She’s struggling a little bit with the memories that are coming back to her,” Anne said. “That’s manifesting in some difficult behavior.”

“She’s remembering more?”

“Yes. At first she was very vague. Now she’s starting to talk in more detail about what happened.”

“Really? But she hasn’t named the killer.”

“No.”

“Well, I wish she would so the detectives would stop trying to blame my son. It’s ridiculous to think Darren would want to harm Marissa. It’s absolutely ludicrous,” she insisted, anger rising. “I have to say I’m very disappointed in Cal Dixon.”

Haley came racing out of the barn. “Mommy Anne! Hurry up! Come and see my kitties!!”

Thankful for the interruption, Anne picked up her pace, reaching out her hand. Haley grabbed hold and tugged at her, dragging her toward the barn and the promise of kitties.

95

Gina was awake and alert when Vince got to the hospital. Though she still looked worse for wear, there was some color in her face, and her eyes were clearer.

“I hear they’re moving you to a regular room today,” Vince said. “That’s a big improvement. We thought we’d lost you, young lady.”

“I guess I’m tougher than I look,” she said, but she didn’t sound strong. She still sounded weak and fragile, and Vince knew what energy she had would be quickly spent.

“I think you’re probably tougher than you ever imagined,” he said. “That’s good to know, huh?”

“But I wish I hadn’t had to find out,” she confessed. “Did you arrest Mark?”

Vince nodded. “That had to be a terrible shock for you. I’m sorry.”

“It still doesn’t even seem real. I would never have done anything to hurt him or Darren. We were friends! I was just so scared. All I could think about was running away. I thought Mark would help me. When he told me no ... I was already in a panic. I said the first stupid thing that came into my head.”

“You threatened him,” Vince said.

Gina nodded, tears squeezing out of her closed eyes. “I never, never, never would have followed through. He should have known that. I can’t believe he reacted the way he did. He was always such a nice guy—I thought.”

“We can know people really well, Gina, and never know what they’re truly capable of when they’re cornered. Mark has held that secret inside him most of his life. He’s feared it, feared what it could do to everything he’s worked so hard to achieve.”

“Why can’t people just be who they are?” she asked. “It’s not like there aren’t gay men in the music world. He wasn’t going to be the only one.”

“He was going to be the only one named Mark Foster,” Vince said, “with his parents and his upbringing— whatever that might have been. He was going to be the only one involved with Darren Bordain, who’s supposed to have a big political future ahead of him.”

“I guess so,” she said quietly, her emotions already taking a toll on her strength. The color was fading from her cheeks. “It was the most horrible moment of my life—when he turned on me like that. It was like—I can’t even describe it. It was like he was someone I’d never seen before in my life. That was the worst moment—worse than when he shot me.”

Vince could see her energy flagging. She was still fighting an infection, to say nothing of her emotional and psychological exhaustion.

“Gina, I know you’re tired, and we’ve got a lot to talk about, but we won’t try to do it all now. I just need to ask you, do you know who killed Marissa?”

She was quiet for a moment as she looked inward, not liking what she saw. “I thought I did. Now ... I don’t know.”

“Who did you think it was?”

“Bruce. Bruce Bordain.”

96

“Hell of a deal,” Hicks said. “Can you imagine either one of those men—Foster or Bordain—doing what was done to Marissa Fordham?”

“No, but one of them did.”

“A person has to be out of their head to do something like that and then just walk around like nothing ever happened.”

“I don’t know,” Mendez said. They were creeping around the streets of Lompoc, trying to find the post office. “The other night Anne was talking about when Crane attacked her, how he didn’t look like the man she knew. It was like he was a monster inside and the mask came off when he went after her. Maybe there’s something to that.”

“When I first made detective I worked a rape case,” Hicks said. “A guy posing as a gas company employee got this gal to let him into her apartment. Normal-looking guy. Friendly enough. She wasn’t suspicious of him at all until he set his toolbox down and turned around.

“She said it was like he had turned into a different person. He turned around and just looked at her and she instantly became terrified. He beat her in the head with a claw hammer and raped her, and she said, during the rape every once in a while, he would pause and lick her like he was a dog or a wolf. And she said she could see in his eyes then that he wasn’t human.”

“Did you catch him?”

“Yeah. The guy managed a lamp store, had the wife and kids, the whole deal. Looked as normal as could be.”

“There it is,” Mendez said, pointing to the right.

They parked and went inside. Two people were working the desk: a surfer burnout with a bleached stand-up hairdo, and a large woman with bright blue eye shadow and long claw fingernails.

They waited their turn behind a woman buying stamps and a man picking up his mail after a long vacation. When they got to the male clerk Hicks introduced them and explained what they were there for. Mendez placed the photo array—such as it was: a mishmash of actual photographs and pictures cut from Oak Knoll magazine—on the counter.

“He would have been in probably a week ago today,” he said.

“Dude, I don’t know,” the surfer clerk said. “They all look familiar to me. Do you know how many faces come through here every day? I don’t remember.”

He seemed like remembering his own name might sometimes have been a struggle for him.

“It’s very important,” Hicks said.

“What was in the box, man?”

“Human body parts,” Mendez said.

Surfer clerk stared at them. “No way.”

“Way,” Mendez said.