Dixon scowled at him. “No. He’s a man who’s going to sue the department.”

Mendez spread his hands. “He assaulted me!”

Vince intervened. “If she was seeing Steve Morgan on the sly, she could have had other married lovers.”

“Gina Kemmer probably knows,” Hicks said.

“But Marissa Fordham didn’t move here until after the baby was born, right?” Dixon asked.

“Right,” Hicks said. “At this point, we don’t really know where she came here from. She told people Rhode Island, but for all we know she might have come here from Vegas—somebody’s drunken weekend indiscretion.”

“A threat’s not a threat unless it’s in your face,” Vince said. “Being here in the community is a constant reminder that revelation is just one missed blackmail payment away.”

“Has the little girl said anything about her father?”

“No, not specifically. She talks about ‘daddies,’ plural,” Vince said. “She asked me if I was ‘the daddy.’”

“Chances are even better that Gina knows who the father is,” Mendez said. “If she didn’t leave on her own ...”

“We need to get a helicopter in the air looking for her car,” Dixon said.

“You need to be able to go through her house with a fine-tooth comb,” Vince said. “If Gina has the birth certificate—or a copy of it—stashed somewhere, it’s got the killer’s name on it in big black letters.”

“The ADA wouldn’t give us a search warrant this morning,” Mendez complained. “There’s no evidence of foul play. There’s no evidence Gina Kemmer didn’t just leave of her own free will.”

“She’s got no family in the area to declare her a missing person?” Dixon asked.

“Nada. She told us she came up here from LA.”

“Then we issue a warrant for her arrest as a material witness,” Dixon said. “We’ll get our search warrant that way.”

“Bill and I talked about the material witness angle last night,” Mendez said. “It’s a little bit thin. What do we say she witnessed?”

“Get the affidavit started,” Dixon said. “I’ll call the ADA myself.”

“I’ll get on it,” Hicks volunteered. He hustled out of the room and down the hall to get the paperwork started.

“Do we have anything yet on the box with the breasts?” Dixon asked.

“Latent prints says the box is a mess,” Mendez said. “Covered in fingerprints. Prints on top of prints on top of prints. The thing has been handled by who knows how many people.”

Dixon blew out a sigh, letting his shoulders slump for just a second. “Nobody at that post office is going to remember one person mailing a plain brown box.”

“It’d be great if they had video surveillance in their lobby.”

Dixon looked at Mendez like he’d lost his mind. “Video surveillance at the post office? In Lompoc?”

“Someday it’ll be everywhere,” Mendez said. “Post offices, airports—”