Secrets to the Grave (53 page)

Mendez thought he could see her struggling to follow Vince’s instructions. Her brow knitted. A frown curved her mouth.

“Thatta girl,” Vince said. “You’re almost with us, Gina. Come on.”

She lifted her eyelids as if they weighed a hundred pounds apiece.

“Hey, there she is!” Vince said. “These are a bunch of ugly mugs to wake up to, huh?”

She parted her lips as if they had been stuck together. Mendez took a glass of water from the bed table and slipped the straw between her lips. She drew on it enough to get a little bit of moisture.

“You’ve had a rough few days,” Vince said. “Do you remember?”

She nodded slightly.

“Do you remember that someone shot you, Gina?”

She nodded again. Just that much effort was wearing her out. Her respiration had picked up a beat and seemed a bit labored.

“Do you remember who that was, Gina?” Vince asked.

She nodded again, then visibly worked at gathering her energy to say the name.

“Mark.”

92

Sundays in Oak Knoll were days for music. A concert by the McAster Chorale, chamber music on the Plaza downtown, a student playing the Spanish guitar in the bookstore.

Mark Foster had gathered his honors brass quintet at the old Episcopalian church for a special preview of the upcoming winter festival.

The pews were nearly full. Cultural activities were always well attended in Oak Knoll. Between the academic community of McAster and the large population of white-collar retirees, no performance of any kind went lacking for an audience.

The quintet was in the middle of “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” when Hicks and Mendez walked into the back of the church with a pair of uniformed deputies. The deputies made their way up the outside aisles. Mendez and Hicks walked up the center aisle and stood politely, waiting for the song to end.

Foster turned to bow to the crowd’s applause. His face dropped at the sight of them. The deputies came in from the sides.

“What’s going on here?” Foster asked.

Mendez stepped forward. “Mark Foster, you’re under arrest for the kidnapping and attempted murder of Gina Kemmer. You have the right to remain silent—”

Foster went chalk white and looked at the deputy approaching him with handcuffs.

“Don’t run,” Mendez warned him. “Don’t do it.”

But like any cornered animal, Foster’s strongest instinct was flight.

People in the audience gasped and shrieked as he bolted to the left of Hicks and dashed for a side door. Mendez sprinted after him, catching him by the back of the collar as he got the door open, and running him through the door and face-first into a stone pillar.

Slapping his own cuffs on Foster—now sporting broken glasses, a broken nose, and a split lip—he said, “I told you not to run.”

 

 

Vince was waiting for them in the interview room. He had made himself at home with a cup of coffee, a couple of file folders, a notepad he was scribbling on when they came in the door.

He glanced up at Foster over the top of his reading glasses.

“Mr. Foster,” he said, standing up and offering his hand—reminding Foster he was still in cuffs. “Vince Leone.”

“Mr. Foster had it in his head he might outrun me,” Mendez said, depositing Foster on a chair.

Vince frowned. “Oooh ... never run, Mr. Foster. It makes you look guilty.”

“I haven’t done anything.”

“Then why did you run?” Vince asked, taking his seat. “See how that works?”

“I’m being harassed.”

“No, I believe you’re being arrested. Which will follow with being booked and fingerprinted and deposited in the county jail.”

He made a couple of notes, referred back a few pages, took his glasses off and set them aside.

“Gina Kemmer regained consciousness this afternoon.”

“That’s good news,” Foster said.

“Not for you. Gina tells us you shot her and dumped her down an abandoned well and left her for dead.”

“That’s absurd!” Foster said, trying to laugh. “Gina is a friend! She’s confused. She must have a concussion or something.”

“No, actually, she doesn’t. She broke her leg during the fall, but she didn’t hit her head. There’s nothing but layers and layers of garbage down at the bottom of that well. A pretty soft landing.”

“Why would I do that to her?” Foster asked.

“Here’s another tip for you: Never ask a question you aren’t going to like the answer to.

“When Marissa was killed, Gina got scared, on account of she knows a lot of secrets,” Vince said. “She’s a sweet kid, Gina. She doesn’t have the stomach for secrets. She just wants to have her little store, and live in her little house, and have her friends. That’s all Gina wants.

“But her best friend gets killed, and she’s afraid maybe she knows who did it. She figures to get out of Dodge before something bad can happen to her. But she should take a rack of cash with her—just in case. So she calls a friend—you. You’ll give her a little ‘loan,’ she thinks.

“The next thing she knows, she’s in the trunk of your car.”

Foster shook his head. “That never happened.”

“I can tell you haven’t done this a lot, Mr. Foster,” Vince said. “Tip number three: Don’t deny what can be proved absolutely.”

“We’ve impounded your vehicle, Mark,” Mendez said. “It’s in our garage, and as we sit here, evidence technicians are going through that trunk with a fine-toothed comb—literally. All they need to find is one hair.”

“Do you own a handgun, Mr. Foster?” Vince asked.

“No.”

“If you do, and it’s registered, we’ll find out,” Mendez said.

“I don’t own a gun.”

“Does Darren Bordain own a gun?”

“You would have to ask him.”

“Oh, we will,” Mendez said.

“You don’t strike me as the kind of guy who reacts aggressively to situations as a rule, Mark,” Vince said. “You must have felt very threatened by Gina. You must have thought she could cause you to lose something or someone very important to you. Your career, for instance.”

“She threatened to tell Bruce Bordain about you and Darren, didn’t she?” Mendez said. “Bruce sits on the board at McAster. If he wanted you gone, you’d be gone.”

“You define yourself by your career, don’t you, Mark?” Vince said. “You’re proud of what you’ve achieved. People your age don’t reach the status you’ve reached in your world, do they?”

“Or did you do it for Darren?” Mendez asked. “If Gina let that secret go ... Bye-bye, political career. I wouldn’t be surprised if the old man disowned him, either. Even if Haley Fordham is his kid.”

Foster sighed. “You might notice I’m not participating here. I don’t have anything to say—other than that I didn’t do it.”

“We have a victim ID,” Mendez said. “You’re not going to come out on the right side of this, Mark. You need to think about how you can salvage something out of this mess. If Darren killed Marissa—”

“Darren didn’t kill Marissa.”

“How can you know that—unless you were with him that night.”

“I know because I—”

Dixon rapped on the door and opened it, grim faced. “Mr. Foster’s attorney is here. Courtesy of Darren Bordain.”

93

“He was going to confess!” Mendez exclaimed. “Ten more seconds and he would have confessed! He was going to say he killed Marissa. Ten more seconds!”

They had adjourned to the war room while the Bordain attorney consulted with his new client.

Vince tuned out Mendez’s rant. He went to the whiteboard and made a new entry on the timeline for Wednesday evening.

Gina’s explanation had been sketchy and piecemeal. She hadn’t been able to give them more than a few words at a time before exhaustion pulled her back under. The doctor had finally intervened and kicked them out of her room.

“Let’s think this through,” Vince said, turning away from the board. “Go back to Wednesday. Gina is scared. We’ll assume because she knows who killed Marissa. She decides she needs to get out of town before something happens to her. She goes to Mark Foster. If she thought Mark Foster killed Marissa, she would never have gone to him.”

The excitement drained out of Mendez’s expression, leaving just the frustration. “But he was about to say—”

“What you wanted to hear?” Vince asked. “He could have just as easily been about to confess to having been with Darren Bordain.”

“Why else would Foster have tried to kill her?” Hicks asked.

“She threatened him,” Vince suggested. “She knew about him and Bordain. She and Marissa facilitated the relationship. They were together as a foursome a lot. Foster and Bordain both gave Gina as their alibi for part of Sunday night.”

“She was a beard,” Hicks said.

“So she’s desperate for cash to get out of town. If he hesitates, that’s the thing she has to hang over his head. Maybe it’s like I said to Foster: She threatened to expose them to Bordain’s father. He sits on the board at McAster. Bruce Bordain can ruin Mark Foster’s career. Gina can ruin Mark
and
Darren. The next thing Gina knows, she’s in the trunk of a car.”

“And Foster just happens to dump her in the same abandoned well Marissa’s killer dumped the bloody sweatshirt?” Mendez said, skeptical.

“That well is a public dumping ground by the sound of it,” Vince said. “It’s located equidistant between Marissa’s home and the Bordain ranch. Foster could have hiked out there in those hills. Or Darren could have told him. Or Darren could have been the one to take her there for all we know at this point.”

“Either way,” Mendez said. “I don’t think it was a coincidence that sweatshirt was down there. I think we’ve got to give a hard look at both Bordain
and
Foster now. Even if Gina didn’t suspect Foster, that doesn’t mean he didn’t do it.”

“At least we know the girl is going to make it now,” Dixon said. “As soon as she’s strong enough, we’ll get the whole story.

“Do we know if Darren Bordain owns a weapon?”

“We can’t find out until tomorrow,” Hicks pointed out.

“In the meantime,” Dixon said, “we’ll get a warrant to search Foster’s home and office. And we sit on Darren Bordain. I’ll get Trammell and Campbell to take the first watch.”

“It’s coming together, boys,” Vince said, almost satisfied ... but not quite.

 

 

He picked up dinner at Piazza Fontana on the way home, begging off from the glass of wine Gianni Farina wanted to share. All Vince wanted was to get home, back to Anne and Haley.

He had been loath to leave them that afternoon when he had gotten the call that Gina Kemmer had regained consciousness. Haley had been restless and out of sorts, acting out in little bursts of anger.

Anne felt she was probably struggling with the memories and emotions that had shaken loose when she had witnessed Anne being attacked by Dennis Farman. If those memories were starting to bubble up to the surface of Haley’s consciousness, an ID of her mother’s murderer could be forthcoming.

Meanwhile, Anne was struggling with her own feelings. Between the PTSD and her doubts and depression over how she had handled Dennis Farman, she was in a tough place, and Vince wanted nothing more than to be there for her as a sounding board, or to reassure, or just to hold her.

He knew how she was feeling. He still couldn’t help but wonder if he had handled Zander Zahn more carefully, if Zahn would still be alive.

As he turned into their driveway, his car filled with the aromas of lasagna and chicken piccata. He thought how different it was to come home to someone who could share his day, and he could share hers, instead of locking up his professional self at the end of the day and trying to be someone he wasn’t with someone who didn’t really know who he was.

“You’re a lucky man, Vince,” he said, and headed into the house to spend the evening with his wife.

94

“I want to see my kitties!” Haley whined.

They sat at the breakfast table trying to start the day in between Haley’s outbursts. First she hadn’t wanted to get out of bed, then she hadn’t wanted to get dressed. Anne had given in on that one for the moment, saving it as a bargaining chip for after breakfast. Next had come the raisin toast rebellion, now this.

Anne knew where the bratty attitude was coming from. The little girl was struggling with the memories and emotions that had been churned up because of Dennis’s attack. She was frustrated and afraid of those feelings, and didn’t have the tools to deal with them. Consequently, they came out in little fits of temper, and her attempts at taking some control over her environment came out in small acts of defiance.

Of course, understanding didn’t make it any easier on the nerves to listen to a whining child.

Vince gave Haley a look that made her sit down on the banquette. “Enough,” he said quietly. “Or you won’t be going anywhere, young lady.”

Big tears welled up in Haley’s eyes and she started to wail.

They both ignored the tantrum.

“Are you sure you’re feeling up to doing this?” Vince asked.

“No, but I think it will be a good diversion,” Anne said. “For both of us.”

As much as she didn’t want to spend time with Milo Bordain, Anne had decided it would be a good day to take Haley to see her kittens at the Bordain ranch. Let Haley get some fresh air and exercise, and focus on things that were external instead of trying to cope with the tangled ball of feelings inside her head.

The same went for herself. Fresh air and the chance to be around animals and the beauty of nature would do her a world of good.

“Don’t let that woman rattle you,” Vince warned. “She thinks she’s going to a-d-o-p-t. No one has told her yet that she has no standing because the paternity isn’t what she thinks it is.”

Vince had explained the situation to her as they knew it so far. Everyone was waiting to hear from Gina Kemmer, who was probably the only person involved who knew the true circumstances of Haley’s birth.