Mendez spread his hands. “He assaulted me!”
Vince intervened. “If she was seeing Steve Morgan on the sly, she could have had other married lovers.”
“Gina Kemmer probably knows,” Hicks said.
“But Marissa Fordham didn’t move here until after the baby was born, right?” Dixon asked.
“Right,” Hicks said. “At this point, we don’t really know where she came here from. She told people Rhode Island, but for all we know she might have come here from Vegas—somebody’s drunken weekend indiscretion.”
“A threat’s not a threat unless it’s in your face,” Vince said. “Being here in the community is a constant reminder that revelation is just one missed blackmail payment away.”
“Has the little girl said anything about her father?”
“No, not specifically. She talks about ‘daddies,’ plural,” Vince said. “She asked me if I was ‘the daddy.’”
“Chances are even better that Gina knows who the father is,” Mendez said. “If she didn’t leave on her own ...”
“We need to get a helicopter in the air looking for her car,” Dixon said.
“You need to be able to go through her house with a fine-tooth comb,” Vince said. “If Gina has the birth certificate—or a copy of it—stashed somewhere, it’s got the killer’s name on it in big black letters.”
“The ADA wouldn’t give us a search warrant this morning,” Mendez complained. “There’s no evidence of foul play. There’s no evidence Gina Kemmer didn’t just leave of her own free will.”
“She’s got no family in the area to declare her a missing person?” Dixon asked.
“
“Then we issue a warrant for her arrest as a material witness,” Dixon said. “We’ll get our search warrant that way.”
“Bill and I talked about the material witness angle last night,” Mendez said. “It’s a little bit thin. What do we say she witnessed?”
“Get the affidavit started,” Dixon said. “I’ll call the ADA myself.”
“I’ll get on it,” Hicks volunteered. He hustled out of the room and down the hall to get the paperwork started.
“Do we have anything yet on the box with the breasts?” Dixon asked.
“Latent prints says the box is a mess,” Mendez said. “Covered in fingerprints. Prints on top of prints on top of prints. The thing has been handled by who knows how many people.”
Dixon blew out a sigh, letting his shoulders slump for just a second. “Nobody at that post office is going to remember one person mailing a plain brown box.”
“It’d be great if they had video surveillance in their lobby.”
Dixon looked at Mendez like he’d lost his mind. “Video surveillance at the post office? In Lompoc?”
“Someday it’ll be everywhere,” Mendez said. “Post offices, airports—”
“Right,” the sheriff scoffed. “For all those post office crime waves.”
Vince chuckled. “First the mini-marts, next the post office.”
“I can see it now.” Dixon laughed. “Blitz attacks led by rogue stamp collectors.”
“I’m telling you,” Mendez insisted, taking the ribbing in stride. “And I’ll come to the nursing home and rub your noses in it when technology takes over law enforcement.”
“You do that, Tony,” Dixon said. “Right now, we’ve got a case to deal with. Vince, why send the breasts to Milo Bordain?”
“The obvious reason would be basically putting an exclamation point on the murder. He destroyed Marissa and expressed his disdain for the woman who paid for her to live in this community.”
“You don’t think Mrs. Bordain is in any danger?”
“Marissa had to be the primary source of his hatred,” Vince said. “The brutality of the crime was intensely personal. Sending the breasts to Mrs. Bordain was something that happened from a distance, suggesting a certain amount of emotional detachment.”
“So the answer is no.”
“Never say never, but it seems unlikely. I know of a case in Spain where a disturbed man murdered a patron of a particular controversial artist because he believed the artist’s works sent satanic messages. He couldn’t get to the artist so he eliminated the artist’s source of support—a well-known figure in the art community,” Vince said. “Marissa Fordham’s work couldn’t be called controversial in any way.”
“Feminist, though,” Mendez said. “She did the poster for the Thomas Center for Women, celebrating the strength of women’s spirits. That might be considered controversial by some people.”
“Jane does say they get a certain amount of mail from strict ultra-conservative religious groups,” Dixon said.
“If this is supposed to be some kind of crusade, then you’d be looking at a very different UNSUB,” Vince said. “That would be someone more apt to want attention to get their point across. I think we would have heard from the killer either directly or through the press if that was the case.”
“So, we’re no farther along than we were,” Dixon concluded. “Lots of questions, not many answers.”
“We need to find Gina Kemmer,” Mendez said.
Detective Hamilton knocked on the door and stuck his head into the office. He was bleary-eyed and one ear was red from keeping the phone pressed to it for too many hours.
“What have you got, Doug?” Dixon asked.
“I got Marissa Fordham’s social security number from the bank yesterday,” the detective said. He came into the open doorway and propped himself sideways against the jamb. They were all exhausted. “It belongs to a woman named Melissa Fabriano. I’m running the name for a record, wants, and warrants in California.”
“So you were right,” Mendez said. “Marissa Fordham didn’t exist before 1981.”
“It looks that way. We don’t know if Melissa Fabriano exists either, though,” Hamilton said. “Could be another alias.”
“Only people with things to hide need an alias,” Mendez said. “What about Gina Kemmer?”
“What about her?”
“See if she has a record,” Dixon said.
“Can I sue the department for cauliflower ear?” Hamilton asked.
“We need computers,” Mendez complained.
“I need world peace,” Dixon said, pushing to his feet. “And for this case to be solved. If you all can deliver either of those things, get out there and do it.”
44
Vince left Mendez to wait for the search warrant for Gina Kemmer’s house. He had given instructions to include photographs on the list of evidence to be searched for.
He liked the blackmail angle. It was neat and tidy in its own way. Simple cause and effect. Woman blackmails man. Man reaches breaking point, kills woman.
Why send the breasts to Milo Bordain? The answer that had rolled off his tongue for the sheriff made sense at a glance, but he wasn’t so sure it held up to scrutiny.
Sending body parts held an element of gamesmanship. It was usually done to intimidate the family of the victim and/or to taunt the police. A metaphoric nose thumbing. That didn’t fit into the neat and tidy blackmail scenario. Why would the perpetrator bother with it? He had a problem—Marissa—and he dealt with it. Why involve Milo Bordain?
He thought about the photograph on Gina Kemmer’s refrigerator. Gina, Marissa, Mark Foster, and Darren Bordain.
Mendez and Hicks had said Bordain hadn’t dated Marissa but had joked that he should have because it would have driven his mother crazy.
Vince only knew Darren Bordain from the television ads for the Bordain Mercedes dealerships. He must have
