Slowly her fingers peeled away from the handle. The knife fell to the ground. Bordain fell to her knees, emotions tearing through her. She opened her mouth to cry, but no sound came. She curled into a ball, her broad shoulders heaving as she sobbed silently.
Trying to suck in some air, Anne pushed herself up onto her knees. Haley flung herself into Anne’s arms, crying and crying.
“Mommy! Mommy!”
“It’s okay!” Anne panted, holding her tight. “We’re okay! We’re all right. It’s over.”
And then, somehow, Vince was there, holding them both, and they were safe.
102
“No one was supposed to get hurt,” Gina began. “We never meant for that at all. We were trying to do something good, really. It was all supposed to work out for the best for everybody, but most of all for Haley.”
“Let’s start at the beginning, Gina,” Vince said. “Tell us about you and Marissa.”
They had gathered in her hospital room—Dixon, Mendez, Hicks, and himself. She was strong enough for it now.
She would be sent home in another day or so, though her ordeal was far from over. Her ankle would require more surgery and physical therapy, and would probably always be a reminder of what she had gone through.
For now, though, the more superficial of her physical injuries had begun to fade from view.
“At the very beginning,” she started, “Marissa—she was Melissa then—she and I became friends in the seventh grade. We lived in Reseda. I had a normal family. Marissa grew up in the foster care system.
“Her mother was killed in a car accident when she was eight, and her father became an alcoholic and couldn’t take care of her. It was really sad. He died when we were seniors in high school.”
“So family was probably really important to Marissa,” Vince said.
“Yes. She loved to hang out with my family, and she was always taking care of the other kids in the foster homes she lived in. You didn’t know her, but Marissa was the kind of person who would just open up her heart and draw everyone in—especially little kids. She always said she was going to have a big family of her own one day.”
Vince offered her a tissue and patted her hand. “I wish I could have met her,” he said. “It sounds like she was a very special person.”
Who had also perpetrated blackmail and fraud, he knew. But then people were never only one thing.
Gina nodded and struggled for a moment with her emotions.
“So the two of you stayed friends through school and then ... ?” Mendez prompted.
“We both got jobs, got fired, got other jobs. But we always stuck together. I only had brothers growing up, and Marissa didn’t have anybody, so we became each other’s sisters.”
“And by 1981, where were you?” Dixon asked.
“We were living in Venice near the beach. I was working in downtown LA in the garment district. Marissa was a starving artist. She would sell her paintings at the beach on the weekends, but she worked as a hostess at Morton’s steakhouse to pay the rent. That’s where she met Bruce Bordain.”
“And they got involved ... romantically?”
“Marissa got involved romantically,” she corrected him. “I don’t know. Maybe it was because of her not having a dad or whatever. I mean, Bordain is old enough to be her father, but she really liked him. He made her feel special. He bought her gifts, took her places. He gave her the whole song and dance about not being in love with his wife, and how they didn’t even live together.”
“But it was just a passing thing for him?” Vince said.
Gina nodded. “She was just a toy for him. And then she got pregnant and that was the end for him. She called him and told him, and a few days later she got a check in the mail from him to go get an abortion.
“Can you believe that?” she said, disgusted. “ ‘Go take care of it,’ he said in his note. Like it was nothing. Like, like she was having a wart removed. Then he stopped returning her phone calls.”
“Did she have the abortion?” Vince asked.
“It was terrible,” Gina said. “She didn’t want to. She didn’t know what to do. She wanted to keep the baby. She wanted Bruce to love her. The stress literally made her sick. Then she miscarried and everything went wrong. She started hemorrhaging. I thought she was going to die!”
“That’s when she had the hysterectomy,” Dixon ventured.
Gina nodded. “It was worse than if he had killed her. Having kids was Marissa’s biggest goal in life.”
“She took it hard,” Vince said. Marissa would have been twenty-three years old at the time. Young, with no family to fall back on, working as a hostess, and her knight in shining armor had set off a series of events that had utterly destroyed her fantasy of a perfect life.
“So where does Haley enter into this?” Mendez asked.
“Once a week we both volunteered at a women’s shelter in Venice,” Gina said. “We met this girl our age. She was pregnant. She called herself Star, but we never knew her real name. She said she came to LA to become a movie star, but changing her name was as close as she ever got.”
“And the father of her baby?” Vince asked.
“We never knew. I don’t think she knew. One day she’d tell us it was her drug dealer, and the next day she’d say he was a struggling actor or a big-shot director.
“Star would talk about getting rid of the baby, having an abortion. Then she would decide she wanted the baby, and she would talk all this crazy talk about how she would raise the baby and have a really nice apartment and buy the baby everything. But she didn’t have any money. I mean, get real. She was a homeless drug-addicted prostitute. She didn’t have any way to support herself, let alone a baby.
“It bothered Marissa a lot. She was afraid of what Star would do to the baby, how she might have it and throw it in a Dumpster, or have it and drown it in a toilet. Or maybe she would sell it. Marissa said she had read about people selling babies to pedophiles and sick stuff like that. I didn’t even want to know that could happen!”
“So Marissa came up with a plan?” Vince said.
“She said, what if she got the baby and told Bruce Bordain it was his. The timing worked. He has tons of money. What would it be to him to pay for raising a baby? Nothing. And he should have been doing it anyway, for Marissa’s baby.
“The baby would be taken care of and so would Marissa. She would be able to concentrate on her art. She would have the child she always wanted. It would be good for everyone.”
“Except Bruce Bordain,” Mendez pointed out.
“Well ... neither one of us felt very sorry for him.”
“So Star had the baby and what? Marissa just took her?” Hicks asked.
“No, no. It wasn’t like that,” Gina said. “They made a deal. Marissa would pay for Star’s drug rehab and prenatal care for the baby. There would be one payoff when the baby was born, and Star would have the birth certificate made out the way Marissa wanted.”
“So it was like a private adoption,” Vince said.
“Basically. Marissa sold everything she owned and took a second job to do it. She couldn’t let Bordain see her because of course she wasn’t pregnant. So she had to quit her job at Morton’s. She told her boss she was quitting because she was pregnant, knowing Bruce would ask when she wasn’t there. She got a job at a seafood place in Santa Monica and worked days at a boutique.
“She waited until right before Haley was born to call Bordain and tell him she was having the baby. He sent another check, but he told her he didn’t want to hear from her again.”
“So she moved to Oak Knoll,” Mendez said.
“She knew his wife lived here part-time. It was the only place the Bordains had a home that we could afford to move to.”
“And what was your part in it, Gina?” Dixon asked.
