“The apple didn’t fall far from that tree, did it?” Vince said. “What about Bruce Bordain? Have you spoken with him?”

“He’s been out of town,” Hicks said. “He was supposed to fly into Santa Barbara last night.”

“I’m just curious about the family dynamic,” Vince admitted.

“According to the son, Bruce and the missus live separate lives. They hardly ever live in the same house at the same time.”

Which could have explained, at least in part, Milo Bordain’s need to hang on to the people in her life, Vince thought. She was lonely. It was as simple as that. Being able to keep Haley in her life would fill the void left by losing Marissa, who had filled the void left by an inattentive husband.

“She was a beauty, wasn’t she?” Vince said of their victim as he looked at the photo.

“Vibrant” was the word that came to mind. With a wicked smile and dancing dark eyes, there was something about her that just made her seem more alive than anyone else in the picture.

Funny, Vince thought, they were supposed to be looking at Gina Kemmer. She was the one missing. Her situation was urgent. Yet they were all drawn to Marissa. She had definitely been the dominant person in the friendship.

Gina was pretty, but in a quieter way. Blond and fair, she paled in comparison to her friend—physically as well as in terms of her presence. He had never met Marissa in life, but even after death he could feel the strength of her spirit. Gina didn’t have that. She had been the shy one hanging on to her friend’s coattails.

Mendez had glanced away to look in the trash. He reached into the receptacle and came out with a long-handled tongs at the end of which was the Polaroid of Marissa Fordham, stabbed, her throat slashed, dead eyes half open.

He held it up next to the happy snapshot.

“She was a beauty,” he said.

She was no more.

They could only hope her friend had not met the same fate.

Chapter 42

42

I’m dead.

But if she were dead, should she have been able to have that thought?

Gina drifted for a time in the blackness with no answer. She couldn’t feel her body. It was as if her soul had abandoned it, as if it were no longer of any use to her.

That was the definition of dead, wasn’t it? The body died and the soul went on. If a person believed in the soul, then that belief extended to include an afterlife. Heaven and hell.

Was she in hell?

Should she have been?

She wasn’t a bad person. She hadn’t done a bad thing. But she hadn’t stopped a bad thing from happening either.

Maybe that meant she was in purgatory.