Tami Hoag: Secrets to the Grave

Marissa Fordham was dead, she realized. She would never know the woman. There would be no more beautiful artwork to help raise money for charities.

“What happened?”

“Found dead in her home by a neighbor. She and her daughter. The little girl is at Mercy General.”

“How old?”

“Four.”

“Oh my God. What—”

She started to ask the question then caught herself. Did she really want to know what some sick bastard might have done to a four-year-old child?

“It was a bad scene,” Vince conceded. He brushed her hair back again. “I needed to see you as much as you needed to see me. I knew you’d be here.”

“Was it a random thing, or do you think it was someone who knew her?”

Anne wasn’t sure which was worse, really. A random crime put everyone into a state of panic. Better if the killer was someone who had a problem with the victim. Unless that someone turned out to be somebody like Peter Crane. The serial killer next door.

“It seemed personal,” Vince said.

So had Peter Crane’s first murder ... until he committed another, and another.

“I’m on my way to the hospital to see about the little girl,” he said. “I just wanted to stop and see you first.”

To check on her. The victim wasn’t the only one to suffer the aftereffects of crime. What had happened to her had left its mark on Vince, as well. He had shown up at her house within an hour of her abduction. If only he had gotten there earlier. If only he had figured out the puzzle sooner. He was one of the top men in his field in the entire world. How could he not have prevented it from happening?

All these thoughts had plagued him in the year since. As a result, he kept close tabs on her, made sure he knew where she was going and whom she was seeing. He still didn’t like having her out of his sight.

They were both damaged. Fortunately, they had each other to confide in and support as they worked through the aftermath. Not all victims were so lucky to have that shared understanding with someone close to them.

Anne slipped her arms around her husband and hugged him tight for a moment. Vince held her and kissed the top of her head.

“I should go back inside,” she said. “I’m adding to Dennis’s abandonment issues.”

“I have to get on with it too.”

Neither of them moved.

“What’s the rest of your day?” Vince asked.

“I have a class at one thirty, then an appointment with the ADA. I’m meeting Franny for a glass of wine at Piazza Fontana. I’ll be home by six thirty.”

“Me too, then,” he said. He brushed his lips across the shell of her ear. “And after dinner, I am going to make such sweet love to you, Mrs. Leone ... Remember that the next time you start to feel a little tense.”

Anne smiled up at him. “Do you know how much I love you?”

He shook his head, a grin tugging up one corner of his mouth. “I think you’ll have to show me later.”

“That’s a promise.”

Vince walked her back to the front door of the hospital and kissed her good-bye. Anne watched him walk back to his car, then went back inside, ready to face Dennis Farman for Round Two.

6

Mendez was on his fifth cup of coffee by the time the hearse crept down the long driveway with the body of Marissa Fordham inside. It was after ten. He had been on the scene more than three hours.

Dixon had overseen the processing, asking for extra photographs, video of every room of the house. It wasn’t his habit to take over a scene, but for something like this there was no question. He had worked homicide for the LA County Sheriff’s Office for years. He had run more homicides than Mendez hoped to ever see.

The struggle between victim and perpetrator appeared to have started in Marissa Fordham’s bedroom, where lamps had been toppled, furniture shoved around and tipped over. Dresser drawers had been pulled open, the contents vomited out onto the floor.

A large bloodstain dyed the flowered sheets of the bed. Cast-off blood stippled the ceiling, indicating the viciousness of the stabbing.

Some of the dresser contents had fallen on top of blood streaked on the floor.

“He came back and looked for something,” Dixon muttered, directing the deputy with the camera to get a close shot.

“Hell of a vicious attack for a robbery,” Bill Hicks commented.

“He killed her first,” Mendez said. “Anything that happened next was an afterthought. He took too much time with the body for the murder not to have been his priority.”

“And he left the jewelry,” Dixon said, pointing at some expensive-looking pieces casually strewn across the top of the dresser. “He was looking for something in particular.”

“I wonder if he found it,” Hicks said.

“I don’t know, but he cleaned himself up before he looked for it. There’s no blood on the stuff that came out of the drawers. He washed up before he looked.”

“That’s cold, man,” Mendez said. “The little girl was laying in there half dead while he was cleaning up, having a look around.”

“He probably thought she was dead. No witness, no hurry to leave.”

Dixon gave the directive to clean out all the drain traps in the bathrooms and kitchen, in case they might yield some trace evidence that might later be matched to a suspect.

Mendez believed someday the DNA markers of convicted felons would be stored in a giant database available to law enforcement agencies all over the country. They would have only to run DNA on a hair left behind at the scene, a drop of the killer’s blood, a piece of skin, and a search of the database would give them the name of their perp.

Unfortunately, it was 1986 and that day was still a long way off. For now, they would collect evidence and hang on to it, hoping they would be able to match it to a suspect when they had one.

Somehow, the victim had made it out of the bedroom. The trail of blood and overturned chairs and lamps was easy to follow.

Mendez couldn’t help but picture it in his mind: Marissa Fordham, bleeding profusely as she tried to get away. Her hands had been covered in blood, as if she had tried desperately to stem the gushing from her wounds. Her heart would have been pounding. She would have been choking on panic.

Where had her child been during all of this? Had the little girl seen it happen? Had she been roused from her own bed by the commotion? Had she stumbled, sleepy eyed, out of her own bedroom to witness her mother fighting for her life?

Hell of a thing for a little kid to have to see.

At last check with the hospital, the child was still alive.

What kind of witness would she make?

The 911 operator had reported the call to Dixon. “My daddy hurt my mommy .”

If it was that simple, they had only to go in search of the child’s father. Maybe Zander Zahn didn’t know who that was, but someone would. Women didn’t keep secrets like that. Marissa Fordham would have confided in a girlfriend. They just had to find out who her friends were.

The deputy who had been first on the scene came in through the kitchen door, looking to Mendez.

“There’s a woman here who had an appointment with the victim.” Mendez followed him outside and around to the front yard of the little ranch house.

The local media had come to camp out shortly after Vince had gotten there. A TV news van had arrived from Santa Barbara before nine. Bad news traveled fast.

The deputies had kept them at a respectful distance down at the end of the driveway. A lone blue Chrysler minivan had been allowed to pass. The woman sitting behind the wheel stared at Mendez now as he approached her door.

Sara Morgan.

He recognized her instantly. The cornflower blue eyes, the tousled mermaid’s mane of blond hair. Her daughter, Wendy, had been one of four children to stumble upon the body of murder victim Lisa Warwick the year before.