somewhere.”
“Darling, it’s always five o’clock somewhere,” he said, producing a glass of red wine from behind the lamp on the end table.
Anne took a sip, savored it, swallowed, and sighed. “I love you, Franny.”
“I know, sweetheart,” he said. “Everyone does.”
64
Vince sat in his car for a while just looking at the offices of Quinn, Morgan and Associates: Attorneys at Law. Theirs was a well-respected practice, specializing in family and civil law.
Steve Morgan hadn’t made partner by being reckless or an idiot. On the contrary. Vince knew him to be very intelligent, very closed, and very careful.
He had sat down across from Steve Morgan a couple of times during the See-No-Evil cases. The cops had all but had a photo of him having sex with victim Lisa Warwick, but he had never cracked. Not even the threat of DNA technology—which they didn’t exactly have yet, but made for a good bluff—not even that had rattled him. He never admitted the affair.
What he knew about Steve Morgan was this: He had come from a difficult background. Prostitute mother, no father figure in his life.
He professed a great love for his mother, which Vince had sometimes found in men with such backgrounds to be a veil to cover a deep hatred. Boys growing up in that situation with no positive male role model in their lives often felt vulnerable and unprotected by their only parent, their mother. They grew up watching their mother degrade herself, and watching other men degrade and objectify her. This generally led to the boys having a disdain and lack of respect for women and to harboring a seething anger, which could erupt into violence with the right trigger.
Steve Morgan was intelligent, had done well in school, had graduated at the top of his class from the University of California at Berkeley, where he had met Sara. Then came law school at the University of Southern California. Top honors. Next: a couple of good jobs in the greater Los Angeles area. Marriage, a baby, a move to Oak Knoll for a better quality of life and a job with Don Quinn, whom he had met on his first job out of law school.
And during all of this, he had been an active advocate for the rights of underprivileged women. Admirable.
But the wheels had started coming off the tracks for Steve Morgan, and the question was, why?
Inasmuch as he had shot down Tony’s theory of Steve Morgan being involved with Peter Crane in the See- No-Evil murders, it wasn’t a stretch to take a man with Morgan’s psychopathology and put him in the role of killer.
And that type of killer’s victimology? Prostitutes, disadvantaged women ... free-spirit single moms with lots of boyfriends.
What were the odds of having two highly intelligent, organized, sexually sadistic serial killers in a town the size of Oak Knoll—at the same time, no less? Astronomical. And that the two would have been friends? Vince would have to have the mathematical mind of Zander Zahn to calculate those numbers.
That was something that would only happen in Hollywood on a movie screen, like Jack the Ripper and the Marquis de Sade teaming up to take on one town.
Not that Vince didn’t know of teams of killers. He had interviewed both Larry Bittaker and Roy Norris, notorious for the incredibly brutal torture killings of five young women in Los Angeles in 1979. And Kenneth Bianchi and his cousin Angelo Buono, who had also gone down in LA in 1979 for killing ten young women in the infamous Hillside Strangler cases.
But a team took the exact right two people with the exact right mix of bad chemistry. One partner was always dominant, the other a follower. And when the chips were down in a police interview room, invariably one would turn on the other one in a heartbeat in order to secure a more lenient prison sentence. Because psychopaths care only about themselves and their own well-being, they possess no loyalty to a partner.
Vince was confident Morgan had not worked in concert with Peter Crane in the See-No-Evil murders. Crane’s killings had been the highly methodical and ritualistic work of a man with a very specific sexually sadistic fantasy.
Marissa Fordham’s murder had been a rage killing, pure and simple. She had been stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed until her killer’s rage was spent. The removal of her breasts and the placement of the knife protruding from her vagina had been postmortem statements.
Now Vince had to find out if Steve Morgan possessed that kind of rage.
He got out of his car and flipped up the collar of his coat against the continuing drizzle, and walked across the street to the office of Quinn, Morgan, et al. He greeted the receptionist with his most charming smile.
“Vince Leone to see Mr. Morgan,” he said.
The young woman frowned and whispered, “I’m sorry, Mr. Morgan isn’t seeing clients today.”
“Please just let him know I’m here,” Vince whispered back. “I think he’ll see me.”
He helped himself to a butterscotch from the candy dish on the counter while the woman called Morgan.
The outer office was very tastefully done in shades of gray with touches of teal and burgundy. It said MONEY, but quietly, and established a feeling of calm and trustworthiness one would want from a family attorney.
“You can go right in, Mr. Leone,” the receptionist murmured.
“Thank you.”
Steve Morgan sat behind his big desk looking like the losing side of a prizefight. Mendez had popped him good. Both eyes were black—one more so than the other—and his nose was a mushy purple lump taped to his face. That the guy wasn’t going to sue the department suggested to Vince a big whopping dose of self-loathing. On some level Morgan must have thought he had it coming.
“I must really be a suspect now,” Morgan said. “They’ve brought out the Big Gun.”
Vince held his hands up. “No tricks up my sleeves. I’m not a cop anymore. I’m retired from the Bureau.”
“I will argue that you’re acting as an agent of the sheriff’s office.”
“Nothing you say here can or will be used against you in a court of law.”
“So you’re just here for the hell of it?”
“I saw Sara today.”
“Oh.”
Vince helped himself to a seat. They looked at each other for a moment. Each trying to read the other’s mind before the chess match began.
“Is she having me arrested?”
“For what? Have you broken the law?”
“She was pretty upset when she threw me out of my own house last night.”
“Sounds like you had a pretty big helping of upset yourself.”
“I don’t like being accused of things I didn’t do,” Morgan said. “Especially by my wife. You know, I took those vows pretty seriously.”
“Until when?” Vince asked. “You and I both know you cheat on her, Steve. Don’t bother with the big show on my account.”
Morgan sighed. “I suppose it won’t matter if I tell you my marriage is none of your business.”
“No, because it is now—seeing how Sara came and talked to me about it.”
Morgan narrowed his good eye. “Why would Sara talk to you?”
“Sara and Anne have gotten to be friends over the last year. You might not know that—you being so busy and all with other women and whatnot.”
“Then why wouldn’t she talk to Anne instead of you?”
Vince smiled. “Because Anne can’t get your ass thrown in jail if need be.”
Morgan was unfazed. “Which brings me back to my original question: Is Sara having me arrested for
