trust for her daughter. She was a beautiful, sexy, single woman. If he had been tempted before—and succumbed —
True, this murder was different from the others. The See-No-Evil victims had been held somewhere and very systematically tortured. Eyes glued shut, mouth glued shut, eardrums pierced. The wounds had been identical from body to body—very specific cutting wounds of the same length and the same placement. The women had ultimately been strangled to death, each in exactly the same manner.
Marissa Fordham’s death had been frenzied, not studied; full of rage, not systematic. But then if Crane had an accomplice, the accomplice was now free to kill however he wanted. Maybe the ritual had been strictly Crane’s.
Could he picture Steve Morgan slicing a woman’s breasts off?
He thought of Sara Morgan and her reactions that morning. She had been upset. Marissa Fordham had been a friend. He tried to recall her face and her body language when he had asked her if Marissa had a boyfriend or an ex-boyfriend or a lover.
She hadn’t looked at him. She had looked down at her hands and said no. It was none of her business. She wasn’t one to pry. But they had been friends. Women talked about men—even if only to say they didn’t need or want one. Mendez had sisters, his sisters had friends. He was around women enough to know the subject of men was always a hot topic.
He wondered how long Sara Morgan had been friends with Marissa Fordham. Had that friendship begun before or after Fordham had gotten to know Steve Morgan?
Sara didn’t look well, he thought. She was thinner than a year ago. Pale. Drawn. There were dark smudges beneath the cornflower blue eyes. She seemed preoccupied, though a murder scene did have that effect on people who weren’t cops.
He would go see her in the morning. Just checking on her. How was she doing? After her husband left for work and Wendy had gone to school. He would press her a little bit. See what happened.
He didn’t like Steve Morgan ...
23
The lead story on the local morning TV news was the murder of Marissa Fordham. Immediately following the report was a live interview with Milo Bordain.
“What the fuck?” Mendez demanded, stopping halfway to his seat, coffee in hand.
Dixon’s expression said the same thing.
They were gathering in the war room with the first coffee of the day to go over what they had, what they needed, who would do what. Someone had turned on the TV they mostly used to look at video of crime scenes and interviews with suspects.
Mendez looked at Vince, who was shaking his head and pinching the bridge of his nose, pained literally and figuratively.
Bordain looked like she was about to get on a horse and go foxhunting in her brown tweed riding jacket and dark brown gloves. She was making an appeal for any information that might lead to the arrest of Marissa Fordham’s killer. She was personally offering a reward of $25,000.
“Who told her she could do that?” Mendez asked, looking at Dixon.
“Don’t look at me,” the sheriff said. “I specifically told her we would handle everything.”
“Did she say anything about a reward last night?” Vince asked.
“She offered to do it,” Dixon said. “I told her we’d discuss it and get back to her.”
“I guess that shows how much she values your opinion,” Hicks said.
“It would never occur to her that she needed permission to do anything,” Vince said. “She thinks she’s being helpful.”
A reward was a tool. If they offered one, when they offered one, what amount was offered, were all decisions that had to be made carefully with many different factors taken into consideration. Too large a reward offered too soon invited the greedy, vindictive people in the county to give up whoever they hated most in their life on the off chance that they might end up collecting some cash. With $25,000 at stake, the phones would be ringing off the hook with leads that would lead nowhere.
“What do you think, Vince?” Dixon asked.
Leone dragged a hand back through his salt-and-pepper mane and heaved a big sigh. He looked like shit— pasty and haggard. It had been a long night. Anne had refused to leave Haley Fordham. Vince had refused to leave Anne. He had spent the night on a chair in the corner of the little girl’s room.
Feeling like a heel, Mendez sank down into a chair at the other end of the table from Vince, who spread his hands and shrugged.
“There’s nothing you can do about it now,” he said. “Put some extra personnel on the phones and be prepared to chase your tails.”
“How will this sit with our perp?” Hamilton asked.
“Hard to say. As far as we know, we’re not dealing with a habitual predator,” Vince said. “A serial killer might take it as a challenge or a chance to gloat. We must be desperate, throwing all that money around. Maybe he should taunt us, play with us, toss us another victim.
“But if Marissa Fordham’s murderer was someone known to her, someone who had a grudge against her and lost their mind in the heat of the moment—and that’s the way I’m leaning—that person is either going to be quiet and try not to attract attention, or he might come forward and try to insinuate himself into the investigation and be overly helpful in the hopes of keeping tabs on what you’ve got.
“The thing to be afraid of with that perpetrator is that there’s a good chance he’s going to get skittish and paranoid, and might strike out at a perceived threat—say, an acquaintance who might know or suspect something.”
“A tipster looking for the reward,” Dixon said.
“We could have another murder on our hands,” Trammell said.
“That’s a possibility,” Vince agreed. “You’d better hope the perceived threat drops a dime before your UNSUB turns on them.
“With a killer known to the victim, someone who hasn’t done this kind of thing before, he’s not going to know how to handle the emotions that come with the deed. Friends could see a change in personality. He may become erratic, short-tempered, depressed. He may alter his appearance—grow a mustache, shave a beard—”
“Like a disguise?” Hicks asked.
“In a way,” Vince said. “A disguise to himself. My personal theory on this is that this person literally can’t look at himself in the mirror after he’s committed the act, so he changes the way he looks. Or sometimes the change is made to look
“I know of a case where the perpetrator was a clean-cut college kid with no history of violence. He ended up killing an elderly man during the course of a burglary. Next thing you know, he’s moved five hundred miles away and he’s suddenly a tattooed skinhead with a bad attitude.
“It depends.
“You might also see him start drinking heavily or start abusing substances. On the flip side of that, there may be a sudden interest in religion.”
With a possible profile in mind, they discussed what they had and what they needed. Bank and phone records would be available that morning. Marissa Fordham did not have a safe deposit box at any bank in Oak Knoll.
The autopsy would take place later in the day in Santa Barbara. There was no forensic pathologist in their own county, just an undertaker who served as coroner and was comfortable signing death certificates for deaths by natural causes, but happily stepped back from anything more complex.
Santa Barbara County—which had a larger population—had a sheriff-coroner and a morgue with a forensic pathologist who performed autopsies, a sergeant supervisor, three coroner’s investigators, and an administrative
