“It’s a roller coaster. Children Haley’s age think death is temporary, and they haven’t developed psychologically to a place where they have the tools to think through a grieving process like adults do—and it’s difficult for us. We can only imagine how confusing those feelings are to a child.
“So one minute Haley might be upset that her mother is gone, and the next minute she’s engrossed in a cartoon or talking about becoming a fairy princess. As she grows up and begins to comprehend more, she’ll likely go through different stages of grief at different ages. It’s a long process.”
“And has she said anything about what happened or who attacked them?” Maureen Upchurch asked, planting herself in Vince’s Man Chair.
“She’s having nightmares about a figure all in black,” Anne said. “Bad Daddy. No name. She may never say a name. Her subconscious mind may never let her.”
“Poor little thing,” Bordain said, distressed. “Her whole life has been turned upside down!”
Haley came back with her new toy tucked under her arm. “Where are my real kitties?”
“I had Hernando bring the mother cat and kittens to my house so we can feed them and take care of them,” Bordain said. “They’re living in the barn with the horses and the chickens. You should come visit them sometime soon.”
Haley lit up and turned to Anne. “Can we, Mommy Anne? Can we, please?”
Anne felt sucker punched, and there was nothing she could do but sit here and take it on the chin. Consciously or unconsciously, Milo Bordain had set her up.
“Mommy Anne?” Bordain arched a brow.
“That’s what Haley likes to call me,” Anne explained. “It gives her a little sense of security.”
“That seems completely inappropriate,” Maureen Upchurch said.
“She’s four,” Anne returned. “Let her have that if she wants it.”
Haley, impatient with the grown-ups, hopped up and down. “Can we, please, please, please?”
“I would love it if you would bring Haley out to see them!” Milo Bordain said, recovering from her instant reaction of disapproval. “Haley would so enjoy that. She loves all the animals. Don’t you, sweetheart? We have cattle and horses and sheep and goats and chickens.
“You should bring her,” she said to Anne. “I’ll have Hernando and Maria set up a picnic for us by the reservoir.”
Before Anne could draw breath for an excuse, Haley was right there with the big eyes and hopeful little cherub face.
“Mommy Anne! Can we go? Can we go, pleeeeeeeeeze?”
“We’ll see,” Anne said.
“Uh-oh,” Haley said, looking at her auntie Milo. “That means no.”
“It means we’ll wait and see,” Anne said.
“I don’t see why you wouldn’t bring her,” Bordain said, getting irritated.
Franny saved her from the awkward moment, emerging from the kitchen with a tray laden with drinks and cookies, calling, “Tea time for all the kitties! I mean kiddies!”
Anne took the two women on a tour of the house to satisfy Maureen Upchurch’s jealous curiosity, then herded them out the front door with an excuse about nap time and a promise to call Milo Bordain about the possible trip to the ranch.
When she came back into the family room, the girls were tucked side by side on the couch watching a purple dinosaur on television, Haley with her thumb in her mouth and her eyelids at half-mast. Anne dropped down in her leather chair by the window and looked at Franny.
“I didn’t see that coming,” she said. “I should have, but I didn’t.”
“You’re a parent now. You’re officially sleep deprived.”
“How can I compete with a ranch?”
“You can’t, but you’ve got it all over that one in the warm fuzzy love department. The only thing fuzzy about that old tranny cow is her whisker stubble.”
Anne laughed wearily at the terrible remark. “She’s a what?”
Franny rolled his eyes. “Oh, please, Anne Marie. You ruin all my best lines by being tragically un-hip. T-r-a-n-n-y as in t-r-a-n-s-v-e-s-t-i-t-e! If she doesn’t have a set of balls under that skirt, she’s hiding them somewhere.”
“You are just awful.”
“Honestly!” He laughed. “How she hatched that gorgeous son of hers is beyond me.”
“Who’s her son?”
“Darren ‘You deserve a Mercedes’ Bordain! Don’t you watch television? He does all the ads. He’s gorgeous! And so well-dressed.”
“He sounds like the man for you.”
“Of course he’s totally in the closet. He’s so deep in the closet even last year’s fashion can’t see him in there.”
“That could mean he’s straight,” Anne argued.
“You want to spoil all my fantasies.”
“You think every good-looking man is secretly gay.”
“I don’t think Vince is gay.”
“Thank God,” Anne said. She breathed a big sigh. “Oh, Franny ... Please tell me it’s five o’clock 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.