It had been a damned strange revelation for Zahn to make no matter what the truth was. Why tell homicide detectives he had killed before?
Arthur Buckman had been as shocked at the revelation as Mendez and Vince had been. There was nothing in Zahn’s personnel file to indicate he had ever been in prison. If it had happened when Zahn was a juvenile, the records would likely be sealed. A court order would open them.
Zahn seemed to think of Marissa Fordham as some kind of perfect, ethereal creature. But Marissa Fordham had dated a number of men, according to Don Quinn. Zahn might have gotten jealous, might have seen his perfect woman turning into something else before his eyes.
Disappointment and rage could drive people to do terrible things.
He drove down the Morgans’ street, parked the car and killed the lights. The landscaping lights were on, casting a soft amber glow. The windows were dark. Steve Morgan’s black Trans Am was parked in the driveway.
It was a pretty yellow house with white trim and blue shutters, the kind of house the ideal American family should live in. But despite the fact that they were beautiful, successful people with a beautiful, bright child, the Morgans did not have the ideal family. The perfect picture was skewed and out of focus.
He didn’t like Steve Morgan. He had never liked Steve Morgan. The guy was a little too calm in the face of accusation. He had been that way during the investigation of Lisa Warwick’s murder.
Morgan had known Lisa Warwick. He had worked closely with her on several family court cases for the Thomas Center. Mendez would have bet the farm Morgan had been sleeping with her, but they had never gotten him to admit to anything. When confronted with their suspicions, Morgan had been as cool as a cucumber. He never blew up, never got nervous, never really reacted.
That wasn’t normal. Innocent people are usually quick to react in outrage to a false allegation. Not Morgan.
For a while, Mendez had liked him for See-No-Evil. Steve Morgan had been woven into the stories of those murder victims almost as well as Peter Crane had been. Crane and Morgan were friends and golfing buddies. There had been more than a little speculation that Peter Crane had an accomplice ...
When they had told Morgan they had semen on the sheets of Lisa Warwick’s bed and would be able to get a blood type from it, he hadn’t reacted at all. In the analysis of the semen they had discovered the donor was a nonsecretor. His bodily fluids did not contain the antigens of the ABO blood group. They couldn’t get a blood type. Had Steve Morgan known that would happen? Was that why he had been so calm?
Lisa Warwick’s sheets were still in the property room at the SO. If they could get DNA analysis on the semen. What? The science wasn’t as sophisticated as it would eventually become. They would need a blood test or another semen sample from Morgan to get a match. They had no legal reason to compel him to give them samples.
Morgan had known Marissa Fordham, had worked with her on the project for the Thomas Center and on the 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.”