Secrets to the Grave (28 page)

“That’s quite a collection you have there, Zander,” he said about the filing cabinets as Zahn returned to the hall with a glass of water. Vince accepted it and took a long drink. “You keep a lot of paper documentation?”

“Yes. Yes, I do. I keep every paper filed accordingly.”

“You know, Tony tells me computers are the way of the future. You remember Tony, don’t you? He’s all about the high-tech. He says pretty soon we won’t need paper. Everything will be on computers.

“It’s starting already. Even in law enforcement. Old records are getting converted into computer files. Fingerprints are going into databases,” he went on. “Now me, I’m an old-fashioned kind of a guy. I’m a people person. I like to talk to people. Face-to-face if I can. But if I can’t—say if the person I want to talk to is in Buffalo, for example—I don’t hesitate to pick up the phone and call.”

At the mention of Buffalo, Zahn blinked as if he’d been hit in the face with a drop of water.

“Why don’t you have a seat, Zander?” Vince suggested, moving down to one end of the bench.

Zahn sat down on the opposite end and began rubbing his palms on his thighs, fretting.

“It’s okay, Zander,” Vince said softly. “I don’t judge, either. I understand sometimes people have to do what they have to do in order to save themselves. It’s okay. It isn’t always easy to be kid.”

Zahn said nothing. He had gone inward. He started rocking a little and kept rubbing his hands against his thighs—still trying to wipe the blood off all these years later.

Vince sat quietly, not wanting to push, letting Zahn absorb and process what he was saying. Nor did he want to wait so long the silence became uncomfortable.

“I know your story, Zander,” he said, in that same soft, nonthreatening voice. “I know about your mother. That was a tough time for you. She was hard on you. You were just a boy, trying to be good. I bet you tried really hard, didn’t you? You weren’t a bad kid. You’re just not like everybody else. You couldn’t help that.”

Zahn rocked a little harder and made a tiny sound in his throat, like a small, trapped animal.

“Nobody blamed you, Zander. It wasn’t your fault.”

Shaking his head, staring at the floor, Zahn said, “I don’t want to tell this story, Vince.”

“You don’t have to. I know what happened. She tried to hurt you. You protected yourself. Right?”

“I don’t want to tell this story, Vince. Stop telling this story. Stop it.”

“Being the one to find Marissa,” Vince said. “That had to be a pretty terrible shock. It probably brought back some bad old memories, huh?”

Zahn rocked harder, muttering to himself. “No more. No more.”

“All that blood,” Vince said, watching Zahn rub his hands harder against his thighs.

“You could imagine what happened to her, couldn’t you? The knife going into her body again and again. But Marissa was a friend. She didn’t have that coming to her, did she? She couldn’t have made someone so angry they would do that to her, could she?”

Zahn was perspiring now. His skin had taken on a waxy translucence, and his respiration had become quick and shallow.

Suddenly he stood up. “You have to go now, Vince,” he said quickly. “I’m terribly sorry. So sorry. You have to go now.”

Vince got up slowly. “Are you upset, Zander? I didn’t mean to upset you.”

He tried in vain to make eye contact with the man. Zahn shook his head, looking away, looking at the floor.

“No more. No more,” he said, his breathing picking up one beat and then another. “You have to stop. Stop now, Vince.”

“I’m sorry if I upset you, Zander,” he said. “I just want you to know that I know your story now. I understand why you had to kill her. I don’t judge you.”

That was it. In that instant Zahn went over the tipping point.

Vince watched as his eyes changed, his face changed. He seemed to suddenly get bigger, stronger, and dangerous. The rage erupted from him in a huge, hot explosion of emotion so big it seemed impossible that it had been contained within him.

Screaming, he lunged at Vince like a wild animal.

45

“NO MORE!! NO MORE!! NO MORE!!”

The first blow caught Vince hard on the cheekbone. The second one hit his collarbone. He had to shove Zahn backward to ward off another. He kept his arms pushed out in front of him, hands spread wide, establishing space between them.

“No problem, Zander,” he said. “No problem. I’ll go, but you have to calm down first. I’m not leaving until you calm down.”

Stuck in his rage, Zahn wasn’t listening to him, and just kept shouting, his face red, the cords in his neck standing out. He now held his arms stiff and straight down at his sides, his hands balled into white-knuckled fists. It was as if his whole body were in a state of spasm, jerking and trembling.

“Zander! Zander!” Vince shouted, trying to break through the grasp of Zahn’s inner demon.

He grabbed Zahn by the upper arms and tried to hold him still, surprised at the strength in the man’s slight frame.

“NO MORE!! NO MORE!! NO MORE!!”

“Zander! Stop it! Listen to me! Listen to me!”

Vince gave him a hard shake. Zahn looked at him then with shock, as if seeing him for the first time.

“Calm down,” Vince said quietly, his own heart beating like a trip hammer. “Calm down. You’re all right. It’s all right. Just take a deep breath.”

He felt the tension drain out of Zahn from the top down until he all but went limp.

“You’re all right, Zander. Let’s just have a seat. You’re fine.”

He steered Zahn to the bench and continued holding on to him until he was seated. He looked stunned, like he had just awakened from a nightmare.

“I’m very tired now,” Zahn said in a small, weak voice. “I have to rest now. I’m very tired. I don’t know why. Why am I so tired, Vince?”

“It’s okay, Zander,” Vince said. “You should rest. It’s been a rough time for you.”

“I’m sorry you have to go now, Vince,” he murmured. “I’m very tired.” He looked at his watch. “Rudy will be coming soon.”

Thank God, Vince thought. He didn’t want to leave Zahn alone now. He seemed exhausted and confused almost in the way of someone who had had a violent grand mal seizure.

“I’m just going to sit right outside, Zander, until Rudy gets here.”

“Rudy is bringing my groceries,” Zahn mumbled. “I can’t go shopping. I can’t do that. I find that very upsetting to go shopping. Rudy does that for me.”

“That’s good,” Vince said. “You should lie down now, Zander.”

“Yes, I’ll lie down, thank you. Thank you very much, Vince,” Zahn murmured.

He lay down right there on the bench, curling into a ball and going instantly to sleep.

Vince went out onto the front step and sat down. For the first time in ten years he wished he had a cigarette. Zahn’s meltdown had been much bigger than he ever would have anticipated. It bothered him to think he had pushed too hard. His instincts were usually better than that.

He cursed the bullet in his brain for knocking his timing off. A little frontal lobe damage. He wasn’t as patient as he used to be.

Then again—to cut himself a break—he had never encountered anyone quite like Zander Zahn before. It was difficult to know how far to go with a mind as intricately complex and closed to the understanding of “normal” people as Zahn’s. It was one thing to goad a psychopath into an outburst, and something quite different to do the same thing to a fragile individual like Zander Zahn.

At the same time, seeing Zahn lose it was valuable information. Could Marissa Fordham have done something to trigger that kind of mental break in him? Could she have lost her patience with him, made a remark that cut him in the same way his mother might have done years ago?

Now that he had seen Zahn in a full-on rage, it wasn’t as difficult to picture. He could have snapped, gone into a dissociative state, gone after Marissa with the knife. He may not have been consciously aware of any of it.

Despite the many times Vince had seen that used as a defense in a murder trial, a true dissociative state was a rare, rare thing to have happen—but it did happen.

He pieced that scenario together, frame by frame in his mind: the horrific murder, Zahn walking home afterward, still in a daze. At some point he would have become aware of this blood-soaked clothing—which would have been a trauma in itself for Zahn. He may or may not have realized how that had happened. He would have disposed of the clothes and scrubbed himself clean.

Zahn’s mind may never have allowed him to associate the bloody clothing with what had happened to Marissa and Haley. The human brain has amazing ways of protecting its owner. Zahn’s had no doubt compartmentalized many of the traumas of his life, closed the doors on those compartments, and locked them.

“Detective Leone? What are you doing here?”

Vince looked up to see Rudy Nasser at the gate. He had already punched in the gate code, and the gate was rolling back, revealing him standing there with two bags of groceries from Ralph’s.

“I came by to check on Dr. Zahn,” Vince said as Nasser came up the narrow path that cut through Zahn’s mind-boggling array of junk.

“Is he all right?”

“He’s resting now. Have you ever seen Dr. Zahn lose his temper?”

Nasser frowned. “Not until the other day when he knocked me down. He’s ordinarily very mild-mannered. Meek, really. Why? Did something happen?”

“He’s fine,” Vince lied. “I was just wondering, that’s all. Have you seen him since that happened?”

“Yes, why?” Nasser asked, his dark eyes looking more suspicious by the second.

“Did you talk about what happened?”

“No. I was out of line. I upset him, he reacted. It’s water under the bridge.”

“He didn’t mention it? Didn’t say anything? Didn’t apologize?”

“No,” Nasser said. “Why are you asking me these things? You can’t possibly still be thinking Dr. Zahn had something to do with Marissa Fordham’s murder.”

Vince worked up a placid smile. “I just like to understand how people work, Rudy. I want to know what makes them tick. Details fill the picture in.

“I’m sure you want to get inside,” he said, nodding at the grocery bags. “Your ice cream is going to melt.”

Still suspicious, Nasser went to the door just the same and let himself in with a key. He turned back before he went inside.

“Should Dr. Zahn have an attorney?”

“Not on my account,” Vince said.

When Nasser had gone inside, Vince walked down into the yard and wandered through the maze of collections, just taking it all in. The privacy wall ran around the entire property, but a gate led out the side yard. The path going to it was well worn. This was probably the way Zahn had gone every morning to Marissa’s house.

Vince let himself out and followed the trail up a hill where it connected to a fire road. Fire roads were cut all through the California hills as access for firefighting equipment when brush fires ran rampant in the summer and fall. He followed the road up to the crest of a bigger hill.

The country that rolled out below him was gorgeous: the golden hills rising and falling as far as the eye could see, liberally dotted with the dark green canopies of oak trees. He had lived in Virginia for many years, where the fields were lush and green and tough to beat for the title of beautiful, but this landscape had its own appeal.

To the south he could see Marissa Fordham’s place, looking like an Andrew Wyeth painting—white and gray against the wheat color of the land surrounding it. A hundred yards to the west he could see what must have been a ranch at some time prior to wreck and ruin. The place looked like it had burned. Only charred matchsticks were standing here and there where buildings had once been. A desolate, lonely place.

After a while he turned and went back down the hill to Zahn’s, where he locked the side gate, then manually tripped the entrance gate and let himself out.

Drained to the bone, he got in his car and drove back to town, never knowing that he had been just out of shouting distance of Gina Kemmer.

46

The scream that tore up out of Gina was primal. The rat was unimpressed. It moved toward her, fearless, nose twitching, eyes beady and intent.

“Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod!”

With her right hand, Gina groped for something, anything, grabbing hold of a milk carton. She flung it at the rat, missing it, but getting her point across.

The rat scurried away and disappeared down into the layers of garbage.

Who knew how many years people had been throwing trash down this hole? Who knew what was living in it? Bugs. Worms. Mice. Rats. In Southern California, where there were rats and mice, there were snakes—rattlesnakes.

The idea that snakes might be slithering beneath her body nearly made her vomit again. Her fear was like a fist in her throat. What was she going to do?

With every shallow breath pain burned through her shoulder where she had been shot. Every time she tried to move she could feel her right foot and the lower part of her ankle pull away from the end of her shinbone. The pain was excruciating.

Panic overwhelmed her for a few moments, but quickly wore her out. She lay still on the stinking garbage, trying to think.

She had never been a brave person. She had never had a sense of adventure. She had never had the nerve to live life on the edge of disaster. Marissa had been the owner of those qualities, but Marissa was dead. Marissa couldn’t coax her through this, goad her into action, dare her to go beyond her limits. Yet that was what she needed if she wanted to have any hope of living through this.

The first thing she needed to do was sit up so she could better view her surroundings.

On the count of three
...

With her right hand behind her head, she blew out a breath and tried a sit-up.