“Nobody has put them together romantically,” Hicks pointed out.

“Nobody put him with Lisa Warwick either, but who didn’t think he was doing her?” Mendez argued, irritated. “Morgan could have been Peter Crane’s accomplice, for all we know. There were a lot of coincidences—”

“No,” Vince said.

“Why not?” Mendez challenged. “What about Bittaker and Norris in ’79; Bianchi and Buono, the Hillside Stranglers; just last year—Ng and Lake—”

“I’m not saying Crane couldn’t have had an accomplice,” Vince said. “I’m saying it’s not Steve Morgan.”

“Why not? They were friends. They played golf—”

“Who was the dominant partner?”

“I don’t know,” Mendez said. He hadn’t thought about it. He should have. Now he was going to take a shot in the dark arguing with a profiling legend who wanted a piece of his hide this morning. “Crane.”

“Why?” Vince demanded. “They’re both successful professionals, leaders in the community, controlled, careful—”

“Okay,” Mendez said, frustrated. “Morgan.”

“Crane gave Morgan up,” Vince reminded him. “You interviewed him that Saturday afternoon before he took Anne. You asked him if Steve Morgan was having an affair with Lisa Warwick. He said yes.

“First of all, there are no partnerships with two dominant partners,” he said. “The egos wouldn’t allow it. There is always a dominant partner and one that will claim he just came along for the ride, or that he was coerced. Second, if there ever were partners that smart, one wouldn’t give the other one up on a point so unimportant,” he went on, happy to teach a lesson at the expense of Mendez’s pride. “If one cracks, they both go down. And third, if Morgan and Crane were partners, Morgan likely would have killed Marissa Fordham in the same manner as the See-No-Evil victims in order to cast doubt on Crane’s involvement—particularly now with Crane’s trial coming up.

“This is an entirely different kind of murder,” he concluded.

“Okay,” Mendez said on a sigh, sufficiently set down. “So they weren’t partners. I still say we should put Steve Morgan on the list.”

“Can we get back on point here?” Dixon asked. “Tony, if you find something concrete to link Steve Morgan to Marissa Fordham romantically, we’ll pursue it. If not, don’t go looking for a harassment suit. The guy’s a lawyer, for God’s sake.”

“Man, the old lion smacked you down,” Hicks said, chuckling as they walked to the car.

Mendez scowled. “I suppose I had it coming, but he didn’t need to be such an asshole about it.”

“Sure he did.”

“Thanks, partner,” Mendez said sarcastically.

“Well, what are you going to do about it?”

Mendez grinned then and laughed as it sank in. “Work my ass off to prove him wrong.”

Chapter 24

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