Brian Freeman - Stripped

Stride and Serena looked at each other. “ Reno,” they said.

I get to see you twice in one week,” Jay Walling said, as Serena got out of her rental car outside the retirement home near downtown Reno. He was wearing his black fedora at a cocky angle. “How blessed I am.”

“Stuff it, Jay,” Serena said pleasantly.

She zipped up her leather jacket. It was cold in the city, with a stiff wind off the mountains and snow flurries in the air. A fall heat wave was firing up the temperatures in Las Vegas, but up here it felt like winter. The sky overhead was a somber charcoal, and the mountains looked angry.

“His name’s William Borden,” Walling said. “Alice Ford’s brother.”

Once they knew about Blake’s connection to Reno, it hadn’t taken them long to find what they had been missing from the beginning-something to tie the murder of Alice Ford at her Reno ranch to the deaths in Las Vegas. They discovered that Alice ’s brother had spent thirty years as executive director of a nonprofit organization that delivered family services in the northern half of the state. That included arranging confidential adoptions for knocked-up showgirls like Amira.

“Did you find out any more about the agency?” Serena asked.

“They’re saintly, as far as the folks in Carson City are concerned. Modest budget, lots of small annual gifts, no significant complaints. They do good work.”

“Was Borden running the agency when Amira Luz had her baby?”

Walling nodded. “He took over in 1960. Ran it until he retired. He’s terminal now, with a heart condition. Moved into this place last year.”

Serena studied the three-story senior facility, a concrete box in dirty white, and felt herself getting depressed. They weren’t far from the huge old homes that looked down on the rushing waters of the Truckee River, but they might as well have been in another universe. It got worse when they went inside. The nurses tried hard, decorating the walls with children’s art and wearing wide smiles, but it was still a place where used-up people went to die. They passed a diabetic man with amputated limbs. A woman trembling in the grip of severe Parkinson’s. People with empty stares, their minds gone. Serena felt a sense of claustrophobia.

They found William Borden in the lounge on the second floor. There was a television in one corner, and a dozen people were on sofas and in wheelchairs around it, watching a rerun of Friends. A nurse pointed out Borden for them. He was off by himself in an armchair on the far side of the room, a book in his lap.

They introduced themselves and pulled over chairs to sit in front of him. Serena took off her coat. The room was a furnace.

“I’m very sorry about your sister,” Serena told him. She noted that the book in his hands was titled Families Making Sense of Death. She wondered how anyone ever did make sense of it. Particularly violent death. Borden’s eyes were far away.

“I feel terrible guilt,” Borden replied. He had a professorial voice, self-reflective and somewhat pompous. He was a small man, with a gray beard and silver hair badly in need of a cut. He wore light blue pajamas and slippers. “I guess that was this man’s intention all along. To inflict guilt and pain. I haven’t seen Al yet. I wonder if he’ll even visit me now, since I took his wife away from him.”

“You didn’t do that, Mr. Borden,” Walling pointed out.

Borden shrugged “Didn’t I?”

“We’d like to see if you can identify the man we think may have killed your sister” Serena said. She began to hand him a copy of the police artist’s sketch, but Borden waved it away.

“No need. I know who it is. When Mr. Walling called me, I knew exactly who it had to be.” Despite the warmth in the room and a wool blanket over his legs, Borden shivered.

“He calls himself Blake Wilde,” Serena said.

Borden shook his head. “That name doesn’t mean anything to me, but I’m sure he’s changed it many times over the years. When I knew him, he was Michael Burton. That was more than twenty years ago.”

“I really would like you to look at the sketch,” Serena said.

Borden sighed. He took it and stared at it with obvious discomfort. Finally, he closed his eyes and nodded. “He was only sixteen when I last saw him, but it’s definitely him. Those eyes. The rest of his face is older, but those eyes are just as they were.” He heard a titter of laughter from the crowd gathered around the television set. He frowned. “This is what it comes down to, you know, this place. Gather the dying like cattle and wait for them to peel off one by one. It’s ironic. I spent my whole career trying to better the lives of children. I never found time to get married and have kids myself. Instead, I wind up here with a decaying heart, no one to visit me except my sister. Now she’s gone. Thanks to the mistake I made. One terrible mistake in thirty years.”

“Was Blake-or Michael-the son of Amira Luz?” Serena asked.

“I really don’t know. I never did. I never met the mother.”

“Tell us what happened,” Walling suggested gently.

“A man came to me,” Borden explained. “This was spring of 1967. It was after hours. He had a baby with him, very young, no more than a few days old. He told me that the mother was unable to care for him and asked if I could find a home for the boy.”

“Do you know who the man was?”

Borden shook his head, “He didn’t give a name. He was big, neck like a redwood tree. Intimidating.”

Serena thought it sounded like Leo Rucci, although there were plenty of musclemen working for the casinos in those days. “You took a baby, just like that? No questions asked?”

“Things like that happened all the time back then. Girls in Vegas had relationships with high rollers and got pregnant. They wanted it to go away quietly. No papers. No inheritance problems. Every month it seemed there was another girl, another baby. Everyone has such nostalgia for the Rat Pack times, but that was mostly if you were rich and white. Nobody wanted to look at what was behind the curtain. Virulent racism. Women abused. Children thrown away.”

“So you took the baby?” Serena asked.

Borden nodded.

Walling leaned in and whispered, “Not that I don’t think you’re a fine citizen, Mr. Borden, but did any money change hands?”

Borden looked up at the ceiling. “Yes, yes, there was money, too. These people always paid handsomely. But I assure you, not a dime of it went into my pocket. It all went into the agency. It pulled us through some difficult times.”

“What about the family?” Serena asked. “Didn’t they ask questions?”

“Everything was anonymous back then. To them, there was nothing unusual. It’s not like today, where many birth mothers stay in touch with their children long after they’ve been adopted.”

Walling smoothed his fedora as he held it in his hands. “I’m a little confused, Mr. Borden. If you didn’t know where the baby came from, and the family didn’t know either, how did this man figure out that Amira Luz was his mother? And why did he start this nasty little game by murdering your sister?”

Borden looked pained. He took a few deep breaths, and Serena noticed that they didn’t come easily. “How he found out about Amira, I don’t know. The vendetta-well, that began a long time ago.”

“Explain,” Walling said crisply.

“I told you I made a mistake. An awful mistake. I don’t mean accepting the baby or taking the money. If I had it to do over again today, I would do the very same thing. My mission was protecting children.”