“I know,” Mendez said, still staring at the monitor screen. It irritated him that Vince was touching her. Just as it irritated Vince when Mendez came within two feet of Anne. Hmmm ...

“Come on,” Hicks said, sliding off the table. “Let’s go see what the Golden Child has to say for himself.”

Darren Bordain sat in the interview room impeccably dressed in a pinstriped suit that looked like it might cost more than Mendez’s car. He smiled easily as Mendez approached the table and stretched out his hand.

“How is your mother doing today?”

“She’s been busy telling everyone about her harrowing brush with death last night,” Bordain said. He sat back in his chair, relaxed, with his legs crossed. A pack of cigarettes and a lighter lay on the table in front of him. “I’m sure you’ll see it on the news at eleven.”

“Do you not believe her?” Hicks asked.

“My mother isn’t given to lying.”

“But you don’t seem very concerned about it if someone really did try to kill her.”

“They didn’t succeed,” Bordain pointed out.

“You all left the restaurant last night around ten thirty, right?” Mendez asked.

“Yes.”

“And you went straight home?”

“Yes.”

“Were you alone?”

“Yes,” Bordain said, getting annoyed. “I thought I was here to help you build some kind of timeline to do with Marissa.”

“We need to do the same thing with your mother’s case,” Mendez said. “Might as well kill all the birds with one stone, right?”

“I suppose, but I don’t like the implication,” Bordain said. “AmIa suspect in what happened to my mother?”

“We just need to have a clear picture of everything that took place last night, Mr. Bordain,” Hicks said.

“Well I didn’t run my mother off the road,” he said. “I don’t know how much clearer I can make that picture.”

“We’re paid to be suspicious of everyone, Mr. Bordain,” Mendez explained. “Most interpersonal crime is committed by people who know their victims. Family is always one prong of an investigation like this. It’s not personal on our part.”

“It’s difficult not to see it as personal from where I’m sitting,” Bordain said.

He shook a cigarette out of the pack on the table before him and lit up, blowing smoke at the acoustic tile ceiling.

“I know I make a lot of sly remarks about my mother,” he said. “But I wouldn’t kill her, for God’s sake.”

“We aren’t accusing you, Mr. Bordain,” Hicks said.

“Think of it this way,” Mendez said. “Our questions might be an irritation to you, and you might feel like we’re being insulting or insensitive, but the person we’re working for is usually injured or dead and she won’t ever have the luxury of feeling irritated again.”

Bordain conceded the point with a nod of the head. “Well put. I’ll stop my whining now.”