"He hasn't told you he was with me," Foster countered. "There's nothing for me to back up. And there's nothing for either of us to gain by me saying I was there."

Frustrated, Mendez sat back and tapped a pen against the tabletop. This was what he got for getting into a chess match with a smart guy. It was so much easier with the average stupid criminal.

"All right," he said on a sigh. "Then this is going to get ugly, and there's nothing I can do about that except apologize in advance."

"You'll understand if I don't accept your apology, Detective," Foster said, getting up, "if you're going to drag my name through the mud and jeopardize my career by creating a scandal over something that doesn't exist."

"Yeah," Mendez said. "I guess it's easier for you to blame me for that than to accept responsibility for your own choice not to answer my questions or own up to who you are."

Foster gave him a cold look through his steel-rimmed gla.s.ses. "You don't have any idea who I am."

"No," Mendez agreed. "And you've been keeping that secret for so many years, I wonder if you know the answer yourself."

"I live with who I am every day," Foster said. He turned to Hicks. "If you don't mind, Detective, I'd like to go home now."

"Strike two," Mendez said, walking into the break room.

"Go home," Dixon said. "Tomorrow is another day."

"Any word about Anne?"

"Dennis Farman somehow found their house. He attacked her with a couple of wood gouges he stole somewhere. She's cut up, but she'll be fine."

"Jesus," Mendez muttered. "She's the only person on the planet who ever tried to do a kind thing for him. Where's the little s.h.i.t now?"

"In restraints at Mercy General. Apparently, the little Morgan girl was at the scene and clocked him a good one in the head with a fireplace poker."

"Way to go, Wendy."

"He'll be transferred to the juvenile detention center as soon as the doctor clears him to go," Dixon said. "As far as I'm concerned he can rot there until he's eighteen."

Mendez shrugged his sport coat on and headed for the door. "Be sure to tell them to hide all their matches."

86.

Dennis lay in his hospital bed, staring up at the ceiling. He couldn't move his hands because he had been tied to the bed. His head felt like a pumpkin that had been bashed with a baseball bat.

Stupid Wendy Morgan. He'd show her one day.

He would show them all.

It wasn't like he'd never been hit in the head before. One time his dad had knocked him in the side of the head with a beer bottle and he had gotten half knocked out and started puking and everything. He'd had a ringing in that ear for two weeks after.

Miss Navarre hadn't come to see him. He hoped that meant he had killed her and she was dead now. That would mean he had killed two people, and he wasn't even a teenager yet. n.o.body was ever going to mess with him again. He felt like a pretty tough guy thinking about that.

Then he thought about what would happen next, and he didn't feel so tough, after all. He wouldn't be sent back to the hospital on account of he had tried to burn it down. He would be sent to juvenile detention, and no one would ever come to see him. Ever.

n.o.body wanted to help him. n.o.body would ever care how he felt or what he thought ever again. He had killed the one person in his life who would have done those things-Miss Navarre.

He had no one. No one at all. And he never would again. He was rotten and bad and good-for-nothing like his dad had always said. And not one person in the whole world cared. He was all alone.

For the first time in a long time, Dennis Farman cried himself to sleep.

87.

"So, what's this all about, Cal?" Bruce Bordain asked.

He was irritated and making only a half-hearted effort to conceal it. The blindingly white smile had been downsized. There was certain tension in his body. He hadn't appreciated having a deputy interrupt his breakfast for a command performance at the sheriff's office.

"You couldn't just pick up the phone and talk to me?" he said to the sheriff. "I've got a plane to catch before noon."

"We'll try not to keep you, but this is a conversation we don't want to have over the phone, Bruce," Dixon said, leading the way back from his office, past the detectives' squad room.

"Do I get a heads-up as to what this is about?" Bordain asked. "I don't like surprises unless they're twenty-two with big t.i.ts and jump out of a birthday cake naked."

"Well," Dixon said, opening the door to interview room one and motioning Bordain in, "then it's a pretty safe bet that you're not going to like this one."

"And you're bringing me back here to the dungeons for this?" Bordain said. "Should I have brought my attorney with me?"

"I don't want someone walking into my office while we're having this conversation, Bruce. If you decide at some point that you'd be more comfortable with your attorney present, you're free to call him."

The last remnants of the bulls.h.i.t smile faded away. "I don't like the sound of this."

"Have a seat," Dixon offered.

Bordain took the chair facing the door with his back to the wall. Dixon took the seat at the end of the table. Mendez took the seat with his back to the door, but turned the chair sideways.

"Bruce," Dixon began. "I asked you the other day how well you knew Marissa Fordham-"

"And I told you, well enough to have a conversation."

"How intimate would that conversation be, Mr. Bordain?" Mendez asked.

"What's that supposed to mean? Are you asking me if I was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g her? You think I was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g my wife's pet artist right under her nose? Do you think I have a death wish?"

"We're more interested in the year prior to when Milo began sponsoring Ms. Fordham," Dixon said.

"In 1981," Mendez specified. "You would have met her in Los Angeles. Her name was Melissa Fabriano then."

Bordain didn't even blink. "Never heard of her."

"We've come to find out she spent some time working at Morton's downtown," Dixon said, "as a hostess. You're a steak man, aren't you, Bruce?"

"I like a great cut of beef," he said. "And I'll admit it: I like a great piece of a.s.s too. But I never laid eyes on Marissa until Milo introduced me to her."

Mendez tapped the edge of the file folder against the tabletop and exchanged a meaningful look with Dixon.

"Have you spoken to your son recently, Mr. Bordain?" Mendez asked.

"I spoke to Darren yesterday. He came out to the ranch to check on his mother. We had breakfast."

"Do you know if Darren had a relationship with Ms. Fordham prior to her moving here?"

"I wouldn't know. Darren doesn't share the details of his love life with me. What is any of this getting at?"

"We spoke with Darren last night," Dixon said. "He also denies knowing Marissa prior to her moving here in 1982."

"Well I'm glad we've cleared that up," Bordain said, getting up out of his chair. "Neither my son nor I knew Marissa Fordham before she became Marissa Fordham."

"The problem with that," Dixon said, "is that we've come into possession of a doc.u.ment that suggests otherwise."

Bordain's eyes went straight to the file folder. He sat back down.

"Which is what?" he asked.

Mendez opened the file and moved it across the table.

"This is a photocopy," Dixon said. "We have the actual doc.u.ment in safekeeping."

Bordain pulled a pair of reading gla.s.ses out of the chest pocket of his pale yellow shirt and perched them on his nose. Mendez watched him for any sign of an emotional reaction as he read the doc.u.ment. There was none. Bruce Bordain hadn't gotten where he was by not being able to play poker.

"It's a lie," he said, and shoved the file back across the table.

"It's a pretty convincing lie," Dixon said, "by all appearances."

"It's still a lie."

"Marissa Fordham moved up here with her infant daughter in 1982," Mendez said. "Your wife began to sponsor her almost immediately-"

"Milo is an art lover."

"-paying her a monthly amount of five thousand plus providing her with a place to live and work. That seems to be the coup of the century according to professionals in the art world."

"Somebody has to win the lottery."

"And this incredibly lucky young woman also just happens to have a birth certificate naming one Darren Bruce Bordain as the father of her child?" Dixon said. "Are we supposed to believe that's a coincidence, Bruce? Because I have to tell you, in case you didn't know it, I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday."

Bordain rubbed a hand across his face and scratched behind one ear, looking off to the side and at the floor.

"And we still haven't gotten to the heart of this, have we?" he said.

"Was she blackmailing you?"

"That's not it," Bordain said. "Come on. Go for the big one, Cal."

"Mr. Bordain, where were you on the night Marissa Fordham was murdered?" Mendez asked.

"I was in Las Vegas the entire weekend." He pulled his wallet out and withdrew a business card. "If you'd like to speak to my companions for that night, call this number."

Mendez took the card and looked at it. Pinnacle Escorts. "Pay up front," Mendez said, "not later."

"Apparently, my son needs to learn that lesson."

"You're going to leave your son hanging out to dry on this, Bruce?" Dixon asked. "I didn't peg you for that."

"He has to take responsibility for his own actions."

"Oh, he has," Mendez said.

"Then there you have it."

"Last night he owned up to being gay."

Bordain came halfway out of his chair and jabbed a finger at Mendez. "That's a f.u.c.king lie!"

"It would be if it wasn't true," Mendez said.

"My son is not a f.a.ggot! He's-He's-He's just trying to get out of this!" he said, pointing to the file folder. "It's his kid. The woman called him and told him she was pregnant. He sent her a check to get an abortion. She didn't do it. Then she showed up here with the baby. I'm not having my son marry some hippy artist with a love child. He's got a future to think about."

"So you paid her off," Dixon said. "Does Milo know why she's writing those checks?"

"Of course she knows."

"And she's fine with that?"

"Milo knows her job. She's protecting her son."

"That'll be the best spin you can put on the story," Dixon said. "Darren got a woman pregnant. Boys will be boys. And that definitely proves he's a boy's boy. Then the family took the woman and child in to support them. Very magnanimous. Definitely the right thing to do.

"The problem is, Bruce, the girl is dead."

"I didn't do it," Bordain said. "I was in Vegas."

"With access to a private jet and a bevy of handsomely paid alibi witnesses," Mendez said. "Is that going to hold up?"

"Like the f.u.c.king Hoover Dam," Bordain said. "Because it's true."