“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 going to be easy or pleasant, and she wasn’t going to have the patience for it.
One of the aftereffects of her ordeal was an extreme intolerance of people’s bullshit. Life was too precious to waste time pretending to be diplomatic in the face of overinflated egos.
Anne was the last to arrive to the meeting. On one side of the conference table were Vince and Cal Dixon, who had come to represent the interests of the sheriff’s office and the investigation.
On the other side of the table, wearing her perpetual sour expression, sat Maureen Upchurch from Child Protective Services, a woman built like the corner mailbox. A bad home permanent made her look as if she were wearing a wig made out of an apricot poodle.
To the right of Upchurch was Anne’s CASA supervisor, Willa Norwood, decked out in one of her vibrant African caftans, her head wrapped in a matching turban. To the left of Upchurch, in all her designer glory, sat Milo Bordain, perfectly coiffed, perfectly made up, perfectly dressed, and pointedly avoiding eye contact with her.
Anne cringed a bit inwardly. She had made a mistake being so short with the woman the night before. Bordain had sponsored Marissa Fordham, had apparently thought of her as a surrogate daughter, had thought of Haley as a granddaughter. Now Marissa was murdered and Haley’s future was uncertain. Anne realized she should have been more sympathetic. If she had made it to the meeting sooner, she would have approached Milo Bordain and apologized.
To Bordain’s left, at the head of the table sat the Honorable Judge Victor Espinoza from family court. Anne was thankful to see Espinoza would be hearing the issue. He had proven somewhat sympathetic in several matters involving Dennis Farman.
He was a practical man in his fifties with more hair on his upper lip than on his head. He wore a thick black mustache threaded with gray, and polished his bald head with wax every morning in his chambers before court started—or so said his longtime clerk.
Anne nodded in his direction and took a seat next to her husband. She snuck her hand under his on the arm of his chair, and he gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze.
“All right,” Judge Espinoza began. “I’ve got the gist of the situation. The little girl likely witnessed the murder of her mother. No relatives have been located?”
Dixon shook his head. “We’ve been told Marissa Fordham was from the East Coast, possibly Rhode Island, but that she was estranged from her family. We’ve contacted the authorities in Rhode Island to see if they might be able to help us. No one seems to know who the little girl’s father is, and we have yet to locate a birth certificate.”
“I’m as close to family as she has, Your Honor,” Bordain said. “Her mother was like a daughter to me. I’ve known Haley since she was a baby. I’ll make sure her every need is taken care of.”
“Did Ms. Fordham make any legal arrangements for you to become her daughter’s guardian in the event of her death?” Espinoza asked.
“No. We had been talking about that, but Marissa was so young. She just didn’t see the need. Of course she expected to outlive me. But if I’m willing to take the child and take care of her and raise her—and I certainly have the means to do so, as you well know—I don’t see why this should be an issue.”
“It’s a matter of law, Mrs. Bordain,” Espinoza said. “If there’s no document relating the decedent’s wishes for you or anyone else to have custody of the minor child, she is essentially—for the time being, anyway—a ward of the state.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“That’s the law.”
“Which means my department should have been notified immediately.”
Maureen Upchurch was the kind of person who believed everyone in the world was a potential member of a conspiracy against her. Always aggressive in attitude, defensive by nature, she had a chip on her shoulder the size of Iowa. Her mouth was carved into her doughy face in a permanent frown, and her eyes were perpetually narrowed in suspicion. Anne had run afoul of her from day one of her advocacy for Dennis.
“I alerted you myself, Ms. Upchurch,” Dixon said.
“I was on my way to a court date,” the woman said defensively. “I couldn’t do anything about it then.”
“Nevertheless, don’t say I didn’t call you,” Dixon said. “It’s hardly the fault of my office or my detectives that you were too busy to deal with the situation.”
“The girl was in a coma,” Upchurch said. “You told me she was in a coma. How was I to know she would come out of it so quickly?”
“Everyone in this room knows I am more than qualified to raise this child,” Milo Bordain announced, drawing the attention back to herself.
“But Lady Justice is blind, Mrs. Bordain,” Espinoza pointed out. “She can’t see that you’re wearing Armani and driving a Mercedes.”
“I knew I liked him,” Anne whispered. One side of Vince’s mustache twitched.
Bordain was offended by the judge’s statement. “It isn’t just a matter of money. I practically brought Marissa to this community. I set her up with contacts, gave her a place to live and work. I’ve done nothing but nurture and support her and her daughter.”