assistant. With Oak Knoll growing—and the murder rate rising—a movement was already underway to institute a similar office in their county.
Not that the death of Marissa Fordham was a mystery. Both cause of death and manner of death were obvious. But a forensic pathologist would collect evidence from the body, trace evidence such as hairs and fabric fibers. A rape kit would be performed looking for foreign pubic hairs, semen, signs of sexual assault—after they extracted the butcher’s knife from her vagina.
Campbell and Trammell had interviewed Gina Kemmer, Marissa Fordham’s friend from the boutique called Girl.
“She freaked out when we gave her the news,” Trammell said. “Total meltdown.”
“We asked her about the vic’s love life,” Campbell said. “She said Fordham dated casually, there was no one serious, and she doesn’t know who the little girl’s father is.”
“She’s lying,” Trammell said. “She’s bad at it. She ran to the john right after.”
“Bring her in,” Dixon said. “We need to have a more serious conversation with her. Vince, maybe you would sit in?”
“Happy to.”
“I’ll tell her to wear her Depends,” Trammell said.
“What about the professor?” Dixon asked. “Do we have any background yet?”
“I made a couple of phone calls, called in a couple of favors,” Vince said. “We should hear something later today, tomorrow at the latest. But I think you should also take a closer look at his associate, Nasser. He’s very protective of his boss. And he didn’t like the victim. He all but accused her of being a whore.”
“You think he was jealous?” Hamilton asked. “Like a gay thing?”
“No, not a gay thing. Nasser is a doctor in his own right. He could be teaching at any top university in the country,” Vince said. “He chose to come to McAster to be Zahn’s underling. Zahn is Nasser’s mentor. Nasser is Zahn’s protector. He didn’t like Zahn’s obsession with Marissa Fordham. She was a distraction, the object of Zahn’s obsessive-compulsive attention.”
“Jeez,” Mendez said, half joking. “I just thought the guy was a jerk.”
“You don’t know everything, Junior,” Leone said with an edge in his voice.
“No, I don’t.”
“Good that you realize that. Remember it next time before you make a bad decision.”
Mendez ducked his head.
Dixon went to the whiteboard, marker in hand. “Who were her boyfriends?”
“Don Quinn, Mark Foster,” Hicks said.
Campbell glanced at his notes. “Add Roy Thatcher and Bob Copetti.”
“I think we should add Steve Morgan to that list,” Mendez said. “He knew her, he worked with her, he spent time with her, he cheated on his wife before.”
“Nobody has put them together romantically,” Hicks pointed out.
“Nobody put him with Lisa Warwick either, but who didn’t think he was doing her?” Mendez argued, irritated. “Morgan could have been Peter Crane’s accomplice, for all we know. There were a lot of coincidences—”
“No,” Vince said.
“Why not?” Mendez challenged. “What about Bittaker and Norris in ’79; Bianchi and Buono, the Hillside Stranglers; just last year—Ng and Lake—”
“I’m not saying Crane couldn’t have had an accomplice,” Vince said. “I’m saying it’s not Steve Morgan.”
“Why not? They were friends. They played golf—”
“Who was the dominant partner?”
“I don’t know,” Mendez said. He hadn’t thought about it. He should have. Now he was going to take a shot in the dark arguing with a profiling legend who wanted a piece of his hide this morning. “Crane.”
“Why?” Vince demanded. “They’re both successful professionals, leaders in the community, controlled, careful—”
“Okay,” Mendez said, frustrated. “Morgan.”
“Crane gave Morgan up,” Vince reminded him. “You interviewed him that Saturday afternoon before he took Anne. You asked him if Steve Morgan was having an affair with Lisa Warwick. He said yes.
“First of all, there are no partnerships with two dominant partners,” he said. “The egos wouldn’t allow it. There is always a dominant partner and one that will claim he just came along for the ride, or that he was coerced. Second, if there ever were partners that smart, one wouldn’t give the other one up on a point so unimportant,” he went on, happy to teach a lesson at the expense of Mendez’s pride. “If one cracks, they both go down. And third, if Morgan and Crane were partners, Morgan likely would have killed Marissa Fordham in the same manner as the See-No-Evil victims in order to cast doubt on Crane’s involvement—particularly now with Crane’s trial coming up.
“This is an entirely different kind of murder,” he concluded.
“Okay,” Mendez said on a sigh, sufficiently set down. “So they weren’t partners. I still say we should put Steve Morgan on the list.”
“Can we get back on point here?” Dixon asked. “Tony, if you find something concrete to link Steve Morgan to Marissa Fordham romantically, we’ll pursue it. If not, don’t go looking for a harassment suit. The guy’s a lawyer, for God’s sake.”
“Man, the old lion smacked you down,” Hicks said, chuckling as they walked to the car.
Mendez scowled. “I suppose I had it coming, but he didn’t need to be such an asshole about it.”
“Sure he did.”
“Thanks, partner,” Mendez said sarcastically.
“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
Mendez grinned then and laughed as it sank in. “Work my ass off to prove him wrong.”
24
At Anne’s insistence, they had scheduled the meeting in a conference room down the hall from the ICU. She had spent the night in her clothes, on the bed with Haley Fordham clinging to her, alternately sleeping then waking up to the little girl’s cries and whimpers.
Vince had spent the night in the chair in the corner of the room. She felt guilty for that. He should have been home, in bed, sleeping off his headache.
She worried about him. The doctors didn’t have any idea what the long-term effects might be to having a bullet fragmented inside one’s head. When the pain came on him suddenly, it always made Anne afraid that some piece of shrapnel was moving inside his brain, doing damage.
He had finally gone home to shower and change around six fifteen and had returned with a change of clothes for her.
He wasn’t happy about the decision she had made, but she hadn’t seen any alternative. Haley Fordham had likely watched her mother die, had probably witnessed her murder. She had been choked unconscious and left lying against her mother’s bloody corpse, left for dead for—what?—two days, Vince had thought.
Trauma didn’t begin to describe what this four-year-old child had been through. What she needed now was stability and consistency, and someone who had at least some training in how to help her through the aftermath of her ordeal.
Anne knew she fit the bill in a way no one else would be able to. She had been a victim of a violent crime herself. She knew the kind of fear Haley must have known and would continue to experience.
Haley was asleep and quiet when Anne finally left the room for the meeting. On her way out of the unit she told one of the nurses, “If you need me, come get me.”
Knowing what was waiting for her in that conference room, she half hoped for the interruption. This wasn’t
