“What?”
“Would you be my mommy until my mommy stops being an angel?”
Tears stung her eyes as Anne hugged Haley tight and kissed the top of head. “I’ll be your mommy for as long as I can be,” she whispered. “How about that?”
Haley nodded and squirmed around onto Anne’s lap, and stuck her thumb in her mouth, suddenly tired.
“Are you ready for a nap, sweetie?” Anne asked softly.
“No.”
“No? You look pretty sleepy.”
“No!” she whined.
“Why not?”
“Bad Daddy will come!”
“What if I stay right with you so Bad Daddy can’t get you?”
The tears started with two big drops. “No! Bad Daddy will get you too!”
“No, baby, that won’t happen. We’re safe here. Remember?”
Haley was unconvinced, sniffling and crying a little, all around her thumb.
“You know what?” Anne said. “We’re not going to think about Bad Daddy now. We’re going to play a game. Do you want to play a game?”
“W-w-w-hat game?”
“We’re going to play Imagine That. Do you know that game?”
Haley shook her head.
“You know what Bad Daddy looks like,” Anne said. “What color are his clothes?”
“B-b-b-black.”
“Not anymore,” Anne said. “We’re going to make them white. White with big pink polka dots. Can you imagine that?”
Haley hiccupped and nodded.
“And he has big huge floppy clown shoes on. Can you imagine that?”
She nodded a little quicker this time.
“And does he have a big round red nose?”
Another nod.
“And it honks like a horn when you pinch it. Can you imagine that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s not Bad Daddy anymore. He’s just a silly clown. Can you imagine that?”
No answer this time. Anne peeked down. Sound asleep.
She scooted back on the banquette to a more comfortable position with Haley sleeping against her. It was almost one o’clock. Sara Morgan had called and asked if she could bring Wendy over, a visit that would be good for both Haley and Wendy.
Anne knew Wendy was struggling, and Sara sounded stressed down to her last nerve. She and Steve probably weren’t going to make it. That was going to be especially tough on Wendy. Anne wanted her to feel like she had a safe haven if she needed it in the future.
Damn. She wasn’t going to have time to get to Dennis today. She would have to call and let the nurse supervisor know. And she would call Dr. Falk as well.
Guilt swept over her in a cold wave. She hated missing a session with him, especially when she had made a promise. She had stopped at the bookstore and picked out a couple of comic books for him for his reward. Of course, the odds that he had done the assignment she had given him were long. Still, she hated not being able to keep a promise to him. He had had too many people let him down in his short life.
You can’t save everybody every day, Anne, she told herself.
60
“What do you mean Marissa Fordham isn’t the little girl’s mother?” Dixon asked.
Most of the detectives had come into the war room for lunch, to have a little ham and cheese with their homicide. Eight-by-tens of the Marissa Fordham crime-scene photos were plastered all over one wall.
Vince showed Dixon the photograph of Gina and Marissa in Cabo San Lucas in March 1982, and explained about the significance of the dates.
At the end of the story, Dixon just stared at him, dumbfounded.
“I’m confused,” he said at last. “If Haley isn’t Marissa’s child, then whose child is she?”
“I don’t know,” Vince said. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You think Marissa was blackmailing the supposed father, but the kid’s a ringer?” Dixon said. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I thought I’d heard everything.”
“Haley was an infant when Marissa moved here,” Mendez pointed out. “No one here ever saw her pregnant.”
“And yet everyone would assume the child was her child,” Dixon said. “Huh. So ... where did she get the baby?”
“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” Vince said. “You can’t just walk into a store and buy a baby.”
“But you can always steal one,” Mendez suggested. “Or she could have adopted.”
“The murder might not have anything to do with blackmail at all,” Hamilton said, flicking pickles off his tuna salad. “We haven’t really come up with any solid evidence to support the theory. There’s nothing fishy in her bank records. She could have been stashing money elsewhere, but everything looks legit so far.”
“Besides,” Trammell said, “in this day and age, who would pay blackmail without proof the kid was really his kid? A paternity test is a lot cheaper than paying someone to keep their mouth shut.”
“Blackmail is a poker game,” Vince said. “If you really didn’t want a big scandal attached to your name, would you call the woman’s bluff? Maybe she’s got pictures of you and her together in a compromising position or two. She can for sure prove to God and everybody you were having sex with her. If you don’t pay, the majority of the shit hits the fan whether the kid is yours or not.”
“Then everyone assumes the kid is yours anyway,” Mendez said.
“By the time the paternity test is done, who gives a shit?” Vince said. “All the damage to your reputation, your marriage, your career, whatever, has been done.”
“Maybe Bruce Bordain has a point,” Dixon said. “If you’re the kind of guy who’s so inclined, pay up front.”
He heaved a sigh and let his shoulders sag for a moment while he thought.
Vince sat back in his chair wondering how this was going to impact Haley’s life. She’d just lost the only mother she’d ever known. Did she have a birth mother out there somewhere looking for her, wondering where she went and what became of her; wondering if she was even alive?
“Okay,” Dixon said. “Where Haley Fordham really came from is irrelevant with regards to the theory of the crime that Marissa was blackmailing a man who believed he was Haley’s father. It doesn’t matter if he really was or not. It matters what he believes.
“We proceed as planned,” he said. “If this crime was about blackmailing a man for having an illegitimate kid, we need that man to go on thinking that’s the case—and that we’re zeroing in on him. And if that’s not what the crime was about, it doesn’t matter at the moment.”
“It matters to whoever that baby really belongs to,” Hicks pointed out.
“The murder is our first priority,” Dixon said. “We wrap that up, then we’ll start looking back at infant abductions in the summer of 1982. We know now that Gina and Marissa both came up here from LA. We’ll start with abductions in LA County, Orange County, Riverside, and Ventura. But we need to catch a killer first.”
“Or,” Mendez said, “find Gina Kemmer alive.”
Dixon grabbed up the receiver as the phone on the table rang. His eyes went immediately to Mendez.
