Secrets to the Grave

9

“How is Mrs. Morgan?” Vince asked as they climbed into the car.

Mendez looked over at him as he stuck the key in the ignition. “Not happy to see me. I can tell you that.”

“She went through a lot last year,” Vince said. “Anne gets together with her and Wendy every so often. She really wants to maintain that contact with the kids. Wendy has had some trouble coping. She’s withdrawn a bit. It’s a sad thing.”

“Is the husband still in the picture?”

“As far as I know.”

“I don’t get that.” Mendez shook his head. “The guy cheated on her with a woman who ended up dead, lied about it, withheld information from a murder investigation. He’s a Class-A prick and she stays with him. What’s wrong with women? She’s a beautiful, talented lady. She deserves better.”

“He’s the father of her child,” Vince said. “I’m sure Wendy loves her dad. Given the choice, kids want their parents to stay together. Tension in a marriage is a scary thing for a child, but not as scary as losing one of the two most important people in their life.”

“You were married before. How did your kids take it?”

Vince made a face. “I was an absentee father most of their lives. My girls already knew what it was like to live without me. Their day-to-day didn’t change all that much when I moved out.”

“You regret that.”

“Hell, yeah. They’re my daughters. I love them. I blew it. My ex-wife is a great gal, but she got tired of being a single parent and eventually she found herself another partner. I picked my career over my family.”

“But think of everything you’ve done in your career, man. You were a fucking pioneer. The Behavioral Sciences Unit wouldn’t have evolved in the same way without you. Think of the cases you’ve helped solve, the killers you’ve helped put behind bars. That’s worth a lot.”

“It is. I don’t discount that,” Vince said. “I’ve made important contributions to the larger world. Unfortunately, those contributions cost me a big price. They cost me my marriage. I missed watching my daughters grow up. But we make our choices and we live with the good and the bad of them. I just know I’m not making the same mistakes twice, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Mendez groused with good nature, “rub my nose in it, why don’t you?”

Vince grinned. He had beaten his protégé to the punch where Anne was concerned—a fact that never ceased to please him. “You snooze you lose, Junior. But don’t take it too hard. Maybe we’ll name our first-born after you.”

“Asshole.”

“Ha!”

Their first stop was the administration building at McAster College. The school’s campus was beautiful, impeccably maintained, shaded with huge old oak trees. Established in the 1920s, many of the buildings were original, a mix of traditional ivy-covered brick and Spanish Revival stucco.

The administration building would have looked just as at home on the campus of Princeton. Wide front steps led to a grand set of doors.

“What do you think that says?” Mendez pointed up to the inscription carved in stone above the doors.

“If I had absorbed any of the Latin the nuns tried to pound into me in school, I could tell you.”

“I think it says, If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.”

They took the elevator to the third floor and walked down the hall to the president’s office. Vince had met McAster’s president, Arthur Buckman, nearly a year ago, after the press had finally gotten wind of Vince’s role in the See-No-Evil cases. He had been swamped with requests for interviews and speaking engagements.

Still an agent at the time, he had to route all requests through the Bureau. The FBI was not keen on agents grandstanding or freelancing. Most of the requests had been denied. Vince had personally asked several people to hold off, pending his retirement. Arthur Buckman had been one of those.

“Vince!” Buckman greeted him, coming out of his office. A transplanted New Yorker, he was a vertically challenged, balding doughboy in wire-rimmed glasses and a three-piece suit. Always smiling. As the head of one of the top private colleges in the country, he had a lot to smile about.

Vince pumped his hand. “Art. This is Detective Mendez with the sheriff’s office. Tony, Arthur Buckman.”

Buckman motioned them into an impressive, wood-paneled corner office that boasted a view of the McAster quad, busy now with students crisscrossing from class to class. “You shouldn’t be surprised to hear your lectures are already full, Vince. Our psych department is thrilled.”

“I’ll do my best to live up to expectations,” Vince said, taking a seat. The scent of lemon furniture polish went up his nostrils and seemed to stab into the backs of his eyes. Damn bullet.

“What can I do for you gentlemen?” Buckman asked.

“Just a little background on a faculty member,” Vince said.

For the first time the president lost his smile. “Has something happened?”

“Alexander Zahn,” Mendez said, digging his notebook out of the inside breast pocket of his sport coat.

“Dr. Zahn? Has something happened to him?”

“No, no,” Vince assured him, sitting back, squaring an ankle over a knee. The picture of relaxation. “He reported a crime against a neighbor of his this morning. We just want to get a feel for who he is. Someone told us he teaches here.”

“Yes. Periodically,” Buckman said.

Mendez glanced up at him. “He’s not on the faculty?”

The president squinted behind his glasses, pained somehow. “It’s ... complicated . . .”

“We met Dr. Zahn this morning,” Vince said. “He’s a complicated kind of guy.”

“Yes. That’s safe to say,” Buckman agreed. “Zander is a genuine genius. We’re very lucky to have him in any capacity. But he does have certain ... limitations.”

“Some high-functioning offshoot of autism?” Vince asked.

“Good guess.”

“And this guy can be a professor?” Mendez said. “Here?”

“He’s not intellectually impaired,” Vince explained. “He’s socially challenged.”

Mendez grimaced as he stared down at his notebook. “I’ll say.” “Of course, you understand I can’t really discuss a faculty member’s mental health with you,” Buckman said.

“No, of course not,” Vince said. “I’m just trying to get some insights on the man. Put some things into context.”

“You said something happened to a neighbor of his?”

“A woman he was friends with was murdered,” Mendez told him. “Zahn discovered her body.”

“Oh my God,” Buckman said. “Another woman murdered? Not again. It’s not like the others—”

“No, no,” Vince assured him. “Unrelated.”

“That’s not good news either, is it? You don’t think Dr. Zahn—?”

“We don’t have any reason to think that, sir,” Mendez said. “He reported the crime and cooperated fully this morning.”

“Thank God.” Buckman sighed. “That explains why he hasn’t come in today. He was supposed to give a lecture this morning. His assistant reported he wouldn’t be able to make it, that he was terribly upset, but that he wouldn’t say why.”

“Does he do that often?” Vince asked. “Cancel?”

“Sometimes he cancels. Other times he becomes so absorbed in the subject matter he goes on with a lecture for hours over his allotted time. He’s difficult, but he’s a brilliant mathematician. The students are all aware of his issues, but his classes are always full with a waiting list.”

“He has an assistant?” Mendez prompted.

“Rudy Nasser,” Buckman said. “Brilliant young man. He has advanced degrees in physics and mathematics from USC. He could have a very good position at any top school in the country. He came up here to work with Dr. Zahn. He’s probably one of a handful of people in the world who can truly follow the density of Zahn’s reasoning. He probably understands the man better than anyone. You’ll want to talk to him.”

“Marissa Fordham is dead?”

Mendez went instantly on guard. All he had said was that Dr. Zahn’s neighbor had been killed.

“It has to be Marissa,” Nasser explained. “She’s the only neighbor Dr. Zahn ever visits.”

Rudy Nasser sat back against the edge of the desk. The lecture hall had emptied out except for a couple of students still copying notes from the big chalkboard. It looked like Aramaic to Vince. The students—both cute girls—seemed more interested in stealing glances at their teacher than his mathematical concepts.

“Did you know her?” Mendez asked.

Nasser pulled in a deep breath and blew it back out as he processed the information and whatever it meant to him.

“This is bad, man.”

In his mid-twenties, he looked like a beatnik with the black goatee and soulful dark eyes, and dressed like a Miami Vice drug lord in a slouchy charcoal suit over a black T-shirt and loafers with no socks. He was undoubtedly as socially smooth as his mentor was socially awkward.

“Yes, I knew her,” he said. “Dr. Zahn ...”

He shook his head and left the thought unfinished.

“Dr. Zahn what?”

Nasser shrugged, not wanting to say too much. “Was fond of her. He found her body?”

“Yes,” Vince said. “He called nine-one-one.”

“He didn’t tell me. When he called this morning I knew something had happened. He was so agitated. But he wouldn’t tell me.”

Vince could see him planning damage control, how to get his eccentric boss away from the fray of a murder investigation.

“How well did you know her?” Mendez asked.

“Well enough to have a conversation. I gave her my number to call if she needed me.”

“Needed you to what?”

“To come get Dr. Zahn. He doesn’t always know when he’s worn out his welcome. When he gets manic he loses all sense of time.”

“Does that happen often?” Vince asked, trying to imagine Zahn in a manic state. He had seemed closer to catatonic that morning.

“Not often.”

“Recently?”

“A couple of weeks ago.”

“How is he during these episodes?” Vince asked.

“Happy,” Nasser said. “Euphoric, in fact. Like he’s in the throes of some kind of rapture. He becomes animated, can’t stop talking about whatever idea has taken hold of him. He’s done some of his best work in that state of mind.”

“How did Ms. Fordham react when this happened?” Mendez asked. “Was she afraid?”

Nasser shook his head. “No. Marissa took it in stride. She’s been his neighbor for several years. She knows Dr. Zahn isn’t a violent man. I can’t imagine him ever hurting anybody. He doesn’t like touching people or having people touch him. I’m sure it never entered Marissa’s mind that he might hurt her somehow.”

“Were they involved?”

“Sexually?” Nasser laughed, flashing an array of brilliantly white teeth. “No. God, no. Like I said: Dr. Zahn doesn’t like touching anyone. If you shake his hand, he’ll go open a fresh bar of soap and scrub like a surgeon.”

“He’s obsessive-compulsive?” Vince said, not surprised to hear it. He thought back to Zahn wringing his hands over and over as they asked him questions.

“To the tenth power.”

“What about you, Mr. Nasser?” Mendez asked. “Ms. Fordham was a beautiful woman.”

“Yes, she was. But my first obligation is to Dr. Zahn. I would never jeopardize my position with him. The man is fucking brilliant. He has one of the brightest minds of our time.”

“And you’re one of the few people who can understand it,” Vince said.

“I’ve been a disciple for a long time. I realize how fortunate I am to be working with him.”

“What exactly is your role here?” Vince asked.

“Dr. Zahn doesn’t like to interact with people,” Nasser said.

“That must make it difficult for him to teach.”

“That’s where I come in,” Nasser said. “Mathematics is his world. He’s most comfortable with numbers, not people. And he loves trying to open that world to others, but he’s socially awkward. I’m here to do the actual interaction with the kids, sort of a liaison, if you will.”

“That makes sense.”

“And Ms. Fordham?” Mendez asked. “What was your take on her?”

Nasser glanced away and shrugged. “She seemed nice enough. I wasn’t a fan of her art. Too sweet, too idyllic for my tastes.”

Vince thought of the scene in Marissa Fordham’s retro-ranch kitchen. There had been nothing sweet or idyllic about that—except perhaps in the eyes of the person who had wanted her dead.

“We have some additional questions for Dr. Zahn,” he said. “Can you give us directions to his house?”

“I’m finished here,” Nasser said. “I’ll take you.”