“Yes,” Anne replied. “I just don’t care. This isn’t about you.”

Bordain left the room without another word. Anne watched her through the glass wall as she marched up to Cal Dixon and Vince to file her grievance.

Later, Anne thought, she might feel a little guilty for being rude to the woman. But for now, she cared only about the child in her arms.

Chapter 22

22

It was well past midnight before Mendez climbed into his own car and drove out of the sheriff’s office parking lot. He and Hicks had hung around the ICU, hoping for a chance to have Haley Fordham make all their lives easy by simply telling them who had attacked her and killed her mother. No such luck. His clever call to bring Anne in had backfired on him in more ways than one.

Vince was pissed off at him. And once Anne had connected with Marissa Fordham’s daughter, there had been no getting near the child.

He should have foreseen that. Anne had been like a tigress with cubs protecting her students who had discovered the body of Lisa Warwick. She wouldn’t let anyone—not him, not Vince, not the kids’ own parents—push them. She would be no different with Haley Fordham. Her first priority would be the child, not the investigation.

Still, it seemed the smartest way to go—to keep Marissa Fordham’s daughter within the law enforcement family, a more controlled environment with the watchful eyes of trained professionals on her. If Child Services fostered her out, they would lose control of her to a certain extent.

Of course, the woman from Child Services who had finally showed up at the hospital had been furious at the breach of protocol, and had demanded a meeting with all concerned parties and a family court judge the next day regarding the placement of Haley Fordham. Dixon himself would go to represent the interests of the SO. Which meant Dixon was pissed off at him too.

All would be forgiven if Anne could get the little girl to tell them what they needed to know. In the meantime, Mendez was feeling restless and anxious for some kind of progress, some small lead, anything that could point them in a direction.

Instead of going home to crash for a few hours, he prowled the empty streets of Oak Knoll, thinking, reviewing the day, making a mental list of the people he needed to speak to the next day.

They had to find out the details of the death of Zander Zahn’s mother and what role he had actually played in it. Had he meant he literally murdered his mother with a weapon, or had he been speaking in the abstract? Maybe she died giving birth to him. Or maybe she had committed suicide when he was a child. Children often blamed themselves for things like the suicide of a parent or the divorce of parents.