“Until tonight.”
For Mendez, it didn’t sit right. The amount of rage in the killing of Marissa Fordham ... she had to have been the primary target. Little Haley was collateral damage. This business with Milo Bordain was like a game. That was a different kind of killer altogether. One he’d hoped they wouldn’t see again in Oak Knoll.
He drove them to Mercy General Hospital and parked under the ambulance canopy at the ER entrance. The triage nurse led them back to the exam rooms.
“How is she?” Dixon asked.
The nurse, a short woman with smoker’s skin and dyed-black hair, waved a hand in dismissal. “She’s insisting on a CT scan, but she’ll be fine. She’s shaken up. More scared than hurt. She’ll have a good goose egg on her forehead tomorrow, but there’s no sign of a concussion.”
She motioned to a door and left them. Dixon knocked twice and opened it.
Milo Bordain sat on the exam table, an unimpressed nurse tending to a small cut and abrasion on the left side of Bordain’s forehead.
“Cal! Thank God you’re here! Someone tried to kill me!”
She did look worse for wear, Mendez thought. Her blond hair was escaping the usually perfect tight bun she wore, and her makeup was mostly gone, showing her age in the harsh fluorescent lighting. In a hospital gown and wearing a paper blanket for a stole, she seemed much less formidable than in her usual layers of designer wear.
“We’ll do our best to get to the bottom of it, Mrs. Bordain,” Dixon said.
“Ouch!” she cried out and snapped at the nurse who was dabbing something at the cut on her forehead. “That stings!”
“Yeah,” the nurse said, unapologetic. “Good thing you don’t need stitches.”
“If I need stitches, I’m calling my plastic surgeon. I’m not letting anyone here touch my face.”
“Can you tell us what happened, Mrs. Bordain?” Mendez asked, pen in hand.
“I came in to town this afternoon to see how things were going with the tip line. Then I came to the hospital to try to see Haley, and she’d been released.
“Nobody told me she was being released today,” she complained, irritated. “I wanted to have a chance to see her and tell her I’m thinking about her. And I brought her a little present—”
“About the accident ... ,” Mendez prompted.
Bordain turned to Dixon and spoke as if Mendez weren’t there. “He is so rude. I don’t understand why you would bring him here with you, Cal. You know he upsets me.”
“I can step outside if you’d like to talk about me,” Mendez said.
“I need him to take notes,” Dixon said smoothly. “So you were on your way home?”
“Yes. And I was already upset about Haley, and still thinking about what happened yesterday, and about Marissa. I want to have a memorial service for her, but I don’t know when her body will be released. Then someone told me only a relative could claim the body, but Marissa has no relatives here other than Haley—”
“And the car ... ,” Mendez said pointedly.
She huffed another sigh.
“Suddenly I see these bright headlights coming up behind me,” she said. “I knew the car was going too fast for that road in the rain. People drive like maniacs out there—especially the Mexicans.”
Mendez exchanged a glance with the nurse, who was also Hispanic
“The car came right up behind me,” Bordain went on. “I thought it was going to hit me! You hear all the time about those insurance scams where some uninsured illegal gets you to rear-end them and then bilks the insurance company and sues the law-abiding citizen—”
“But there was only one car,” Dixon said.
“Yes. I was angry that he was right on my tail, so I tapped my brakes to tell him to back off. Then he pulled up alongside me and swerved toward me. My heart was in my throat!”
“Do you know what kind of car it was?” Mendez asked.
“No. I’m sorry but I don’t know anything about cars.”
“What about the driver?”
She closed her eyes, pained and in pain. “I don’t know.”
She would know if it was a Mexican, Mendez thought.
“Was it a car or a truck?” Dixon asked.
“A car.”
“Dark- or light-colored?”
“Dark. Everything was dark. And it was raining so hard I could barely see the road.”
“Did you get a look at the driver at all?”
“Just a glance. I was terrified. I was trying to stay on the road.”
“But it was a man,” Dixon said.
“Yes, I think so. He might have been wearing a watch cap pulled down low, or maybe his hair was black. I didn’t get a good look,” she said. “He swerved at me. I swerved to miss him. The next thing I knew my car was out of control. I thought I was going to be killed!”
“We saw your airbag deployed,” Dixon said.
“I thought it broke my nose! Those things are dangerous!”
“Try putting your face through a windshield,” the nurse muttered—more as a suggestion than a comment, Mendez thought. He cleared his throat and rubbed a hand down over his mustache to hide his smile.
“The car didn’t stop,” Dixon said.
“No. I didn’t see it stop.”
“You didn’t see the license plate?” Mendez asked.
“No. For God’s sake, I was trying to stay alive!”
“Were there any other cars on the road at the time?” Mendez asked. “Anyone who might have seen what happened?”
“You don’t believe me?” Bordain said, incredulous. Tears filled her eyes. “Oh my God. You think I’m making this up?”
“It’s not that, Mrs. Bordain,” Dixon said. “Another driver might have a better description of the other vehicle or of the driver, or may have even gotten a plate number.”
“No,” she said, calming down marginally. “One of my neighbors came along a few minutes later. He’s the one who called nine-one-one.”
“Have you been drinking at all this evening, Mrs. Bordain?” Mendez asked.
“What? Of course not! I had a glass of wine with dinner. That was hours ago!”
“It’s just a routine question, ma’am,” Mendez said. “We have to ask.”
The nurse elbowed Mendez from behind and whispered in Spanish, “If she was a Mexican, she would be drunk.”
Mendez coughed into his hand.
“What’s going to happen next?” Bordain asked Dixon.
Dixon sighed and tipped his head like he was about to ram it into a wall. “There isn’t much we can do, Mrs. Bordain. With no license plate and no witnesses, there isn’t anything to go on.”
“Someone tried to kill me!” she said, tears spilling over her lashes.
“I understand that you’re upset.”
She turned toward the door. “Darren! Thank God you’re here!”
Darren Bordain came into the room with rain beading up on his blond hair and on his expensive trench coat. He looked at Dixon and Mendez.
“Gentlemen, we have to stop meeting this way. People will talk,” he said. “Are you finished grilling my mother? I’m sure she’d like to go home.”
“I have to have a CT scan,” his mother said. “I hit my head on the side window, and the airbag almost broke my nose. Someone tried to kill me, but no one is taking it seriously!”
While Dixon reassured her that wasn’t the case, Mendez nodded Darren Bordain into the hall.
“Why wouldn’t you take that seriously?” Bordain asked. “Someone sent her human body parts in the mail yesterday.”
“It’s not that we aren’t taking it seriously, Mr. Bordain,” Mendez said. “There just isn’t much for us to go on. She didn’t get a good look at the other driver or the license plate of the other vehicle. No one else saw the accident.”
Bordain’s perfect brow knit. “Do you think she’s lying?”