If I can find enough strength—
You have to, G. You will.
If I can get up—
Get up! Don’t think about it. Get up!
I’m trying!
No, you’re not!
Shut up!
“Shut up!”
The sound of her own voice startled her, making her realize she had drifted off again. She had stopped worrying that she was hallucinating. Whatever dire condition hallucinations indicated, it was better to have company—even if the voice existed only in her mind.
The saltiness of the junk food had made her thirsty. She found a discarded water bottle with half an inch of dirty water in the bottom. Using her T-shirt over the mouth of the bottle, she filtered the water into her own mouth and drank it, grimacing at the taste, and fighting not to gag.
A rat scurried over her feet and disappeared into the empty McDonald’s bag, only its long naked tail sticking out. Gina shrieked and jumped, the pain exploding in her broken ankle and racing up her leg like a wildfire. She swung her stick at the McDonald’s bag and the rat shrieked and jumped and ran backward out of the bag, then leapt onto the thick vine hanging down the wall and disappeared into the crevice where the concrete had broken away.
Gina cursed and screamed—at the rat, at her predicament. But she quickly realized the favor the rat had done her. Adrenaline was pumping through her veins now, bringing energy, dulling pain.
She looked to her right, to the iron rungs cemented into the wall. Her only way out of this hole. She looked up at the doors above her. It had to be twenty-five feet. That didn’t sound like much if the distance was horizontal, but the distance was vertical and more than three times the height of the average household ladder.
Gina had the use of one arm and one leg. Her left arm hung useless at her side. Her right ankle was so badly broken the foot was turned perpendicular to the shinbone.
You have to do it, Gina.
I know.
You have to do it now.
I know. I know! I KNOW!!
Get mad!
I AM!!!
To prove her point, Gina lunged to the right with her upper body, caught hold of one rung, and pulled as hard as she could, a roar of fury and pain and frustration tearing her throat raw.
Her body moved a matter of inches. Her consciousness dimmed. She pulled in a deep breath that burned in her left shoulder and ribs, and pulled again at the rung as hard as she could. She swung her left leg to the side and with the toe of her foot pushed off the wall, shoving herself another few inches closer to the ladder.
She had moved herself a total of two feet. Exhausted, she let go of the rusty iron rung and fell against the filthy wall, banging the side of her head on the next rung down.
She was sweating and weak. All over her body tiny erratic electrical impulses were causing individual muscles to twitch and tick.
And she had twenty-five feet to go ... straight up.
55
Mendez stood in the middle of the road, hands on his hips as he stared at the skid marks. It was still raining enough to be miserable, though the storm system had blown out its worst effort during the night.
“Looks like just one car,” Vince said. “That’s a pretty good skid.”
“She definitely had an accident,” Mendez said. “Nobody doubts that. The question is why.”
“Where’s the vehicle?”
Milo Bordain’s car had been removed from the scene, but the marks where it had sunk into the shoulder of the road remained.
Mendez gave him a sly look. “I’m sure Mrs. Bordain had it moved so some Mexican wouldn’t come along and steal it.”
“Present company excluded,” Vince joked, “who would want to do her harm?”
“That’s the thing. She may be irritating, but that’s not a motive for murder—or for sending mutilated body parts to her in the mail.
“She had dinner with her husband and her son at Barron’s last night. She had a couple of glasses of wine with the meal—”
“How’d she do on the Breathalyzer?”
“She didn’t. She refused the deputy that was first on the scene.”
“Did they take blood at the hospital?”
“We don’t have it yet that I know of,” Mendez said. “She only wants to deal directly with Cal. He can have her. He didn’t say anything last night about a blood-alcohol level.”
“Anyways, we know she had some alcohol in her system,” Vince said.
“Some. She appeared sober—for what that’s worth. Her speech wasn’t slurred. Her eyes weren’t glassy. She was pretty upset, and very adamant about what happened.”
“And the son?” Vince asked.
“Showed up at the ER like a good son. He didn’t act like he’d just tried to run his mother off the road,” Mendez said. “He’s coming in today for an interview regarding Marissa and Gina.”
“I’ll want to watch that.”
Vince looked up and down the tree-lined stretch of road. No homes were visible. On one side of the road was a grove of lemon trees. On the other side of the road shaggy-haired red cattle with big horns grazed along the bank of a large man-made pond.
“That’s Bordain property,” Mendez said. “She told us she raises exotic cattle.”
“This property has to be worth a fortune,” Vince commented. “The way Oak Knoll is growing, there’ll be developments out here within the next ten years.”
“Bruce Bordain made his money in parking lots and strip malls, but the guy is a real estate mogul,” Mendez said. “If there’s money to be made out here, he’ll be first in line.”
“And if the missus doesn’t want to give up the Barbie Dream Ranch ... ?”
“Nobody brutally murders a woman just to be able to cut her breasts off and send them to someone as a scare tactic,” Mendez said.
“No,” Vince agreed. “There would be a lot more to the story. Whoever killed Marissa had it in for Marissa. Period. That murder was all about her. This other business ... I don’t know.”
He checked his watch. “Let’s go. I want to make sure Zahn is okay.”
He hunched his shoulders inside his trench coat as they walked back to the car. Rain ran off the brim of his hat. Who ever said it never rains in Southern California lied. It rained, it poured, and it was damn cold when these storms came in off the Pacific.
“I spent half the night reading up on dissociative disorders,” he said as they got back in the car. “Not surprisingly, there’s overlap with post-traumatic stress disorder. I want to make sure that in bringing back the memories of his mother’s murder I didn’t push Zahn into any kind of long-lasting break with reality.”
“You couldn’t have known that would happen, Vince,” Mendez said. “You said yourself: True dissociation is rare.”
“I know, but still, I feel responsible,” he admitted. “I certainly knew going in he’s a fragile individual.”
“Nasser was with him when you left yesterday.”
“Yeah, I know.”
I know, but ..., Vince thought. He hadn’t been able to shake the lingering sense of guilt. He had broken the lock on that small dark box in Zander Zahn’s mind that contained the memories of what had happened to his mother—what he had done to his mother. What if Zahn couldn’t get that box to close again?