“Or did you do it for Darren?” Mendez asked. “If Gina let that secret go ... Bye-bye, political career. I wouldn’t be surprised if the old man disowned him, either. Even if Haley Fordham is his kid.”

Foster sighed. “You might notice I’m not participating here. I don’t have anything to say—other than that I didn’t do it.”

“We have a victim ID,” Mendez said. “You’re not going to come out on the right side of this, Mark. You need to think about how you can salvage something out of this mess. If Darren killed Marissa—”

“Darren didn’t kill Marissa.”

“How can you know that—unless you were with him that night.”

“I know because I—”

Dixon rapped on the door and opened it, grim faced. “Mr. Foster’s attorney is here. Courtesy of Darren Bordain.”

Chapter 93

93

“He was going to confess!” Mendez exclaimed. “Ten more seconds and he would have confessed! He was going to say he killed Marissa. Ten more seconds!”

They had adjourned to the war room while the Bordain attorney consulted with his new client.

Vince tuned out Mendez’s rant. He went to the whiteboard and made a new entry on the timeline for Wednesday evening.

Apx. 6:00-6:30pm: G. Kemmer abducted by M. Foster.

Gina’s explanation had been sketchy and piecemeal. She hadn’t been able to give them more than a few words at a time before exhaustion pulled her back under. The doctor had finally intervened and kicked them out of her room.

“Let’s think this through,” Vince said, turning away from the board. “Go back to Wednesday. Gina is scared. We’ll assume because she knows who killed Marissa. She decides she needs to get out of town before something happens to her. She goes to Mark Foster. If she thought Mark Foster killed Marissa, she would never have gone to him.”

The excitement drained out of Mendez’s expression, leaving just the frustration. “But he was about to say—”

“What you wanted to hear?” Vince asked. “He could have just as easily been about to confess to having been with Darren Bordain.”

“Why else would Foster have tried to kill her?” Hicks asked.

“She threatened him,” Vince suggested. “She knew about him and Bordain. She and Marissa facilitated the relationship. They were together as a foursome a lot. Foster and Bordain both gave Gina as their alibi for part of Sunday night.”

“She was a beard,” Hicks said.

“So she’s desperate for cash to get out of town. If he hesitates, that’s the thing she has to hang over his head. Maybe it’s like I said to Foster: She threatened to expose them to Bordain’s father. He sits on the board at McAster. Bruce Bordain can ruin Mark Foster’s career. Gina can ruin Mark and Darren. The next thing Gina knows, she’s in the trunk of a car.”