by Tami Hoag
No one would save her, and no one would find her. Coyotes would eat her body.
She was turned roughly and marched off the path a few feet. The skeletons of a couple of long-abandoned buildings were like modern sculptures in the near distance. On the ground in front of her were what looked like old storm cellar doors.
She hadn’t thought of it in years, but now she had the clearest memory of the storm cellar doors at her grandmother’s house back East. She had been nine years old. She remembered her brother opening the doors and daring her to go down into the dark, dank cellar. She hadn’t wanted to, but he dared her, and she walked down the stone steps only to have him close the doors behind her.
Her killer stepped in front of her, still holding the gun on her, and reached down to open one side of the door, revealing a large hole in the ground.
There was no such thing as a storm cellar in California.
Her killer turned to open the other door.
Gina bolted, spinning and running back toward the fire road. She tripped and fell. Unable to break her fall with her hands, she hit face-first, crying out as small rocks tore the flesh of her cheek as she skidded.
A hand tangled in her hair and yanked hard, pulling her half up off the ground. She never regained her feet. She refused to. She wouldn’t make it easy. She had to be dragged and kicked and shoved back to the hole as she cried, “No, no, no, no!”
She tried to dodge sideways at the same time the gun went off and the bullet penetrated her body.
She was falling before she realized she’d been pushed.
She was gone before she hit the bottom of the well.
37
“What do you mean she’s gone?” Mendez asked stupidly. He sat at his desk writing up his notes from the day, eating a burrito from the vending machine and drinking a Mountain Dew.
“She’s gone, man,” Trammell said. “She was gone when we got there. We hung around in case she was just out to dinner or shopping or something, but she never came back. I walked around the house. Nothing looked out of place. No forced entry or anything like that. Looks like she left of her own accord. There’s a team of deputies sitting out in front of her house now in an unmarked vehicle. They haven’t seen her, either.”
“Shit,” Mendez said, checking his watch.
It was just 11:37. Gina Kemmer could have gone out with friends. She could have gone to stay with a friend. That made sense. She had been so distraught when he and Vince had left, she might have wanted support and a sympathetic ear.
Or she might have bolted. If she had been caught up in something with Marissa Fordham and Marissa Fordham was now dead, she might have decided the smartest thing she could do would be to get out of Dodge.
“Let’s get a BOLO out on her car,” he said. “Say she’s wanted for questioning in relation to a murder.”
He dug his notebook out of his coat pocket and pulled out the sheet where he had written down Gina Kemmer’s license plate number and the make, model, and color of her car. He handed it to Trammell, who went to make the call to dispatch.
“Damn,” Mendez said. “We didn’t leave her alone for that long.”
“She’s probably with a friend,” Hicks said.
Their gray metal desks sat front to front. Both were awash in paperwork.
“She just lost her best friend,” Hicks said. “You said she was a mess. She probably wanted a shoulder to cry on.”
Mendez thought about it. “I don’t know. I’ve got a bad feeling. If she knows what got Marissa Fordham killed, then she’s a target.”
“There’s not much else we can do about it now.”
“I want to get into her house.”
“You’ll never get a warrant.”
“She’s a material witness in a murder investigation. She’s gone missing—”
“That’s a liberal idea of a material witness: She knew the deceased woman. She hasn’t admitted to witnessing anything,” Hicks said, playing devil’s advocate. “It’s a free country. She’s an adult woman. She’s free to go and do whatever she wants. We don’t know that she’s missing. We’ve got no one to report her missing. Who’s going to write you a search warrant?”
“No one,” Mendez said, scowling. He hated being wrong. “If we were on television, I would get a warrant.”
Hicks laughed. “If we were on television, we could just go bust into her house without one.”
“And we could wear T-shirts and jeans to work, and we’d all drive Porsches,” Mendez said.
“And we’d have hot babes all over us,” Campbell said.
Mendez looked at him with a straight face. “You don’t have hot babes all over you? Man, that’s sad.”
Campbell fired a wad of paper at him, laughing. “Screw you!”
Mendez sighed. “Damn, I want in that house.”
“Hey, man,” Hicks said. “I’m just trying to save you from a certain death. If you go knocking on ADA Worth’s door at this time of night with what you’ve got, she’ll have your ass.”
True enough, Mendez thought. “I’d have to have my fingers crossed while I typed my affidavit.”
Every unit on the streets of town and the roads out in the county would be looking for Gina Kemmer’s car. If she was parked at the home of a friend in town, it shouldn’t take that long to find her.
Mendez tossed the last of his bad burrito into the trash and stood up.
“Where are you going?” Hicks asked.
“I’m going to drive around and look for her.”
This was one of the benefits of not having a life: He could feel free to drive around town in the dead of night, looking for a needle in a haystack.
Hicks had opted to go home to his wife, who was pregnant with their third child.
No pregnant wife for Mendez, much to his mother’s dismay. Why you don’t marry, Anthony? Why you don’t give me any grandchildren? she would ask practically every time he talked to her, and certainly every time he went to see her. His sisters were no better.
The rest of them had reproduced prodigiously enough he didn’t really feel like he had to be in a hurry. He had been too focused on his career to devote much time to looking for a wife.
He had goals. He was still thinking seriously about making the move to a career with the FBI. He wanted to see Peter Crane put away for his crimes first, then he would go after it. It didn’t make sense to put roots down deep only to have to pull them up again and relocate to the other coast.
In the meantime, he didn’t have any trouble getting a date when he wanted one. But he never let a relationship get too serious.
His thoughts turned to Sara Morgan as he turned down another street, scanning for Gina Kemmer’s blue Honda Accord. He had been surprised to hear her say her marriage to Steve Morgan was over. Not because he thought she should have stayed with the bastard, but because it seemed out of character for her to be so candid about something so private.
She looked so wrung out, so fragile, like she was hanging on by a thread.
Her husband was nowhere to be found. Mendez and Hicks had cruised past Morgan’s office where he was allegedly working late. No sign of him. They knew him to frequent O’Brien’s Pub, but he wasn’t there either. Nor had there been any sighting of his black Trans Am in any hotel parking lot. Just like there was no sign of Gina Kemmer’s car anywhere.
He would bag it for the night, but not before swinging past the Morgan house to see if Steve Morgan had ever gone home.
There was still no Trans Am in the driveway, but a light burned bright in the garage. It was 1:41 A.M. The house was dark.
He didn’t like that. Sara Morgan was depressed, her marriage was failing, she’d just lost a friend to a violent death.... It wasn’t beyond reason that she could be in that garage with the minivan running, putting an end to her pain.
He parked at the curb, got out and drew his weapon. This was a nice neighborhood—all the more reason for a thief to come calling. Quietly he made his way around the side of th
e garage where the windows were full-size. Without revealing himself, he peeked inside.
Sara Morgan sat on a tall stool in front of what was apparently the sculpture she had been working on—a tall contraption made of iron and wire and steel mesh. But Mendez didn’t think she was even seeing it. She sat with her arms wrapped around herself, and a thousand-yard stare haunting her eyes.
He could have just left. It was none of his business why Sara Morgan was sitting in her garage at one forty-five in the morning. But if she was sitting there contemplating turning that minivan on and sucking down some carbon monoxide ...
Instead of walking away, he went around to the front of the garage and knocked on the service door.
“Mrs. Morgan? It’s Detective Mendez. Are you all right in there?”
It took a moment, but she opened the door and stood back.
“Still looking for my husband?” she asked wearily.
“I was driving by and saw the light,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
She smiled to herself, a small, slightly bitter smile.
“Thank you,” she said. “I would say I’m fine, but I think you probably won’t buy that.”
“No, ma’am,” Mendez admitted, following her back into the garage.
Her Dodge Caravan was parked on the side of the garage nearest the entrance to the house. The far stall was taken up by an artist’s nest of tools and materials and hand torches, with the sculpture at the center of it.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” he admitted.
“For what?”
“I’m sorry you have to be stuck in the middle of another investigation. It’s not your fault, but you have to deal with it. I’m sorry for that,” he said. “I don’t really know you, but I think you probably don’t deserve to have to go through all of this.”
She put her head down and her wild mane fell around her face. She swept it back with both hands and looked up at him.
“I don’t know anymore what I deserve,” she said. “But thank you. I know it’s not part of your job to feel bad for me.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked, not sure what he could possibly do to make her life easier, but he wanted to offer—needed to offer—just to let her know she could have some support. “Is there someone I can call to come stay with you? A friend?”
But instead of helping, his offer of kindness seemed to be her undoing. She pressed her hands over her nose and mouth, and squeezed her eyes shut hard. The tears came, nevertheless. A dam had broken somewhere inside her and the pain came rushing out.
Mendez went to her just to put a hand on her shoulder and steady her—or steer her toward the stool she had been sitting on earlier. But at his touch Sara Morgan turned to him, and then she was in his arms, crying her heart out on his shoulder.
He wasn’t quite sure what to do with that—what was proper, what was not; what was procedure and what was human. He went with his gut and held her, and let her release the pain and the sadness. He couldn’t help but feel compassion for her. And when she looked up at him through those impossibly blue eyes magnified by tears, he couldn’t help but feel something more.
He wanted to lean down and kiss her. The invitation was on her softly parted swollen lips. Instead, he pulled a clean handkerchief from his hip pocket and pressed it into her hand.
“You should try to get some rest,” he murmured.
She nodded as the moment slipped away.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, embarrassed, dabbing the handkerchief against her cheeks.
“No, don’t be. Don’t be,” he said softly, resting a hand between her shoulder blades. “Come on. You’re going to bed.”
“And what are you doing?” she asked as they walked toward the door.
“I’m spending the night on your sofa.”
38
“Would you like a cup of tea or coffee or something?” she asked him as she led the way through the house to the kitchen.
“No, thank you, ma’am,” Mendez said, taking in the surroundings: cream-painted cupboards and a hand-painted border of grapes dripping from vines around the ceiling. Her handiwork, he imagined. Down along a right-angled crease where a cabinet met a wall, she had painted a bright-eyed mouse peeking out of a hole in the baseboard—so realistic he almost startled when he first saw it.
“Please, call me Sara,” she said as she filled a mug with water and stuck it in the microwave oven that seemed to take up half the counter. “I’ll feel less embarrassed about having a nervous breakdown in front of you.”
“Sara, then,” he said, thinking it maybe wasn’t such a good idea to blur that line. “Do you have any family nearby?”
“I’m from the Seattle area. My parents are there. And my sister.”
“Are you close?”
“We used to be,” she said. She hit the Cancel button on the microwave before the timer could go off. “She’s got a family and a career. She’s busy. I’m busy.”
“You know, it’s none of my business—what’s going on in your marriage—but it just seems to me you shouldn’t try to go through it alone,” he said, then felt like an ass. “I should have stopped at ‘It’s none of my business.’”
She shook her head and dunked her teabag—something herbal by the scent of it—into the mug of water as she took a seat at the breakfast bar. “It’s okay. I’m sure I would say the same thing if I was watching from the outside. From the inside ... it’s not so simple.”
“I’m sure it’s not.”
“I come from a perfect family,” she said. “I’m supposed to have a perfect family. I thought I did. What did I do wrong?”
Mendez felt a rush of anger. “You didn’t—”
“You don’t know that.” She smiled at him as if he were a sweet but dimwitted boy. “Nothing happens in a vacuum.”
He wanted to say at least ten derogatory things about her husband, but he bit his tongue.
“Maybe I’m too insecure,” she said. “Maybe I wasn’t paying attention. Maybe—”
“Maybe your husband is a son of a bitch.”
So much for his self-control.
“That too,” she said, and took a careful sip of her tea. “It’s hard on Wendy. I feel guilty for that. I’m the mom. I’m supposed to make her life ideal and shelter her from life’s unpleasant side. Instead, her father and I are wallowing there.”
“Then you need to change that.”
“I know,” she admitted. “It’s scary.”
“Do you think he’ll make it hard for you?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I hope not.”
The bastard was a lawyer. He would know every way possible to screw her over in a divorce. He had probably been stashing assets for the past year. Keeping secrets seemed to be his specialty.
“Are you married, Detective?” she asked.
“No, ma’am—uh, no,” he said. He didn’t invite her to call him Tony. “No, I’m not.”
She seemed to think about that for a minute, as if she might have had a different idea about him.
“We used to be happy,” she said. “Not that long ago. And then something changed and neither one of us seemed to know what to do about it. It’s hard to explain. It was like one minute we were standing toe to toe, and then all of a sudden there was a chasm between us.”
She sipped her tea and shrugged to herself. “Maybe I wasn’t needy enough. And now that I am, it’s too late.”
“When did he become so involved with the Thomas Center?” Mendez asked, steering away from the too-personal details. He didn’t need more reasons to want to put his arms around her and protect her. That wasn’t his job. It was his White Knight Syndrome, as his sister Mercedes called it.
“Steve has always been involved in women’s rights causes. He had a single mother. It was a tough situation for him growing up. She passed away when he was in law school, and he dedicated himself to helping disadvantaged women in her honor.”
She smiled
an ironic little smile. “That dedication was one of the first things that attracted me to him.”
Dedication was one thing, Mendez thought. Lobbying in Sacramento for women’s rights was terrific. Donating services to the Thomas Center was admirable. But that dedication also put Steve Morgan in a target-rich environment of women to take advantage of.
Sara sighed and slid down off her stool. “And now that you know more about my life than you ever wanted to know, I’m going to take your advice and go to bed. I have car pool in the morning.”
Mendez watched her dump her tea in the sink and rinse out the mug.
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “You don’t have to stay. Really. I’ll be fine.”
He didn’t believe her—or he didn’t want to believe her.
“You should take your own advice,” she said. “Go home and get some rest.”
The hell he would, he thought. Her husband had as good a reason to kill Marissa Fordham as anybody. And he had even more motive to kill the wife who was about to divorce him and take half of everything he had—plus alimony, plus child support.
But he said none of that to Sara.
“You’ll lock your door behind me,” he said as they went down the hall to the front of the house.
“Yes, sir.”
She gave him a little salute as he turned to say good night.
“And thank you,” she said sincerely. “For stopping to check on me, and for listening to me rattle on.”
“That’s okay,” he said with half a smile. “That’s a nice switch for me. In my line of work, most people don’t want to talk to me.”
“Too bad. You’re a good listener.”
An awkward little tension sprang up between them. It was like the end of a first date. Who should say what? Should he kiss her? No. Absolutely no.
“Thanks. Well, good night,” he said abruptly, and he turned and walked away.
He should have taken her up on the coffee, he thought two hours later. His eyelids felt like they were lined in sandpaper, and his mouth tasted like a dirty sock. He ran his tongue over his teeth and grimaced.
