Secrets to the Grave

44

Vince left Mendez to wait for the search warrant for Gina Kemmer’s house. He had given instructions to include photographs on the list of evidence to be searched for.

He liked the blackmail angle. It was neat and tidy in its own way. Simple cause and effect. Woman blackmails man. Man reaches breaking point, kills woman.

Why send the breasts to Milo Bordain? The answer that had rolled off his tongue for the sheriff made sense at a glance, but he wasn’t so sure it held up to scrutiny.

Sending body parts held an element of gamesmanship. It was usually done to intimidate the family of the victim and/or to taunt the police. A metaphoric nose thumbing. That didn’t fit into the neat and tidy blackmail scenario. Why would the perpetrator bother with it? He had a problem—Marissa—and he dealt with it. Why involve Milo Bordain?

He thought about the photograph on Gina Kemmer’s refrigerator. Gina, Marissa, Mark Foster, and Darren Bordain.

Mendez and Hicks had said Bordain hadn’t dated Marissa but had joked that he should have because it would have driven his mother crazy.

Vince only knew Darren Bordain from the television ads for the Bordain Mercedes dealerships. He must have been in his early thirties. Good-looking in a sort of androgynous way—not unlike his mother. In fact, quite like his mother. But where the masculine side of the trait tended to give Milo Bordain a masculine quality, the feminine side of the trait loaned the son a certain elegance to his features.

Mendez and his team needed to delve a little deeper into that relationship. If Darren Bordain had been involved with Marissa, had fathered her child, had been blackmailed by her, the ironic twist would have been his mother’s attachment to and support of Marissa. If the son resented the mother enough, sending her a box of body parts wouldn’t have been a big stretch.

People would have a hard time imagining a man like Darren Bordain—the elegant, privileged son of a well-respected family; the man who came into their homes every evening during the local news broadcast to promise them a better life if they would drive a Mercedes—being capable of doing the things that had been done to Marissa Fordham. Just as they had had a hard time with the idea of their handsome, friendly, family-man dentist as a serial killer.

Even with Peter Crane awaiting trial for the kidnapping and attempted murder of Anne, there were people in town who simply refused to accept the idea of Crane as a murderer.

Vince knew from long experience that killers hid behind all kinds of masks and came from all walks of life and all socioeconomic groups. Most people didn’t want to believe that their next-door neighbor or their insurance man or day care provider could be a killer. They wanted killers to look like Gordon Sells.

Gordon Sells, the uneducated owner of a salvage yard outside of town, had been a person of interest in the See-No-Evil cases. He was a rough-looking, dirty person. He had done time for child molestation. The public would have gladly accepted Sells as the perpetrator.

In fact, human remains had been found on Sells’s property, and Sells had since been charged with homicide on a former missing persons case in another jurisdiction where he had been tried and convicted. But the point was, Peter Crane had been just as guilty of crimes just as terrible, if not worse.

The face of evil could be handsome just as easily as it could be frightening.

Vince remembered when Ted Bundy had been sitting in jail in Colorado awaiting trial for the murder of Caryn Campbell, a number of influential political people in his home state of Washington had raised money for his defense.

Despite the fact that Bundy had already been convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in a Utah penitentiary for the kidnapping of Carol DaRonch—one of the lucky few Bundy victims to survive—and had also been conclusively connected to the disappearance of a seventeen-year-old high school girl, Debby Kent, Bundy’s supporters couldn’t believe the Ted they knew—smart, charming, handsome, articulate; a volunteer on a suicide hotline; and up-and-comer in local conservative politics—could possibly have committed a vicious sexual homicide.

Now those well-meaning people had to live with the idea that after escaping jail Bundy had probably used the money they had sent him to fund his trip to Florida where he had brutally attacked five female students at Florida State University, killing two, and days later abducted and murdered a twelve-year-old girl.

Evil made its home wherever it could, wherever the conditions were right, wherever that elusive toxic mix of nature and nurture curdled a soul and warped a mind.

What had that cocktail done to Zander Zahn? Vince wondered. A family history of mental illness. A known history of physical and psychological abuse by his mother. A brain that was hard-wired in a way that complicated his attempts to relate to other people. What might all those ingredients produce if the conditions were wrong? A flashback? A rage? A memory of betrayal? A need for revenge?

While Zahn was certainly respected in his field, Vince suspected people would have been happy to peg him as a murderer because he wasn’t like other people. There was something wrong with him. A person like that might do anything.

Zahn had murdered his mother. He had killed her by stabbing her repeatedly in the abdomen.

There was no denying that possible connection, Vince conceded. He thought of the photograph Mendez had pulled out of Gina Kemmer’s trash. Marissa Fordham, stabbed in the abdomen so many times the area had been shredded into bloody hash.

Zahn had idolized Marissa. Perhaps deep in his psyche she had represented the gentle, loving mother he never had. If he had felt she had betrayed him in some way, could that have caused the psychotic break necessary to kill in the manner Marissa had been killed?

Yes, he thought so.

A call to Arthur Buckman had confirmed Vince’s suspicion that Zahn would not be teaching. He had taken the rest of the week off due to his extreme grief over the death of his friend. Rudy Nasser had taken over Zahn’s classes.

Vince drove the scenic route to Zahn’s home by himself. He hadn’t called ahead. He was pretty certain Zahn would have told him not to come, then he would have spent the fifteen minutes it took Vince to get there anyway winding his strange little psyche into knots of anxiety.

He parked outside the gate and pushed the intercom button on the keypad, hoping Zahn would answer. Nothing happened. He tried again. Again nothing.

He looked at the stucco privacy wall that must have been about six feet high. Maybe in his heyday he could have gotten over it without a ladder.

He tried the intercom again. No luck.

He looked from the wall to his car and back. In his heyday he would have scaled the wall somehow. Now he was older and wiser. He maneuvered the car into place beside the wall, climbed onto the hood, then onto the wall, and lowered himself to the other side.

“Not bad for an old man, Vince,” he said, dusting off his palms and his clothes.

He had dressed casually for the day in tan slacks and a black polo shirt. The beauty of working for himself: no dress code but his own. He found people didn’t always want to talk to the suit and tie he had been required to wear in the Bureau. There were times he wanted people as relaxed as possible when he sat down with them so he could more easily steer them where he wanted them to go psychologically.

He took a moment to just stand there and look around the yard at Zahn’s odd collection of things. Coming from a childhood in poor circumstances, both financially and psychologically, Zahn probably derived security from the ownership of things and more security from the orderly placement of those things. And the way Zahn’s mind worked, he could probably list every single item and would know exactly where each item was.

What must it be like to live inside a mind like that? Vince wondered. He couldn’t find his car keys half the time.

He went to Zahn’s front door and pressed the buzzer, pretty sure the professor was watching him from one window or another. The speaker on the intercom clicked, but no one spoke.

“Zander? It’s Vince. Are you okay in there? I’m worried about you. I came to see how you’re doing.”

Silence. Then the sound of a deadbolt turning. The door opened a crack and Zahn peered out.

“Vince. I wasn’t expecting you, Vince. I’m not prepared, Vince.”

“Hey, Zander, it’s just me,” Vince said with his most disarming grin. “I’m not the queen of England. You don’t need to do anything special for me. I just wanted to make sure you’re all right, see how you’re doing today. I know this is a rough time for you, Zander, and you’re all alone out here.”

Zahn inched the door open to the width of his narrow face. His green eyes were huge, the pupils dilated almost to the last edge of the irises. He wore black slacks and a black turtleneck that blended into the dark background and made it look as if his head with its cloud of gray hair were floating free of his body.

“Oh. That’s very kind of you, Vince,” he said in his hushed, breathy voice. “This is a very bad time. I’m terribly upset. Terribly.”

“I know. You’ve lost your dear friend.”

“Yes. And Haley. Where is Haley? How is Haley?”

“Haley is going to be fine,” Vince assured him. “Would you like to visit her?”

Zahn’s mouth rounded in surprise. “Oh, my. Could that be possible, Vince? Could I see Haley? Could I speak to her?”

“I can arrange that,” Vince said, trying to see deeper into the house, curious as to what collections were contained within. “Would you like that? I can do that for you.”

“That would be wonderful,” Zahn said. “Haley is so sweet, so pure, such a perfect child. Small children don’t judge, you know. They haven’t yet been taught to judge or to hate. They simply accept what is. Isn’t that wonderful? Small children are like Zen masters. They accept what is.”

“I never thought of it that way, Zander. You’re right. Small children are pure of heart. Life hasn’t broken them yet. That comes later, doesn’t it?”

Zahn frowned as he considered the question. Looking inward, Vince thought.

“You know, Zander, I’m dying of thirst here. Would it be all right if I came in and got a drink of water?”

“Come in? Come inside? Come inside my home?”

“Yeah. I mean, I know you’re a very particular sort of man, and you don’t want people touching your stuff. I get that. But I’m thirsty and I’m not feeling too great to tell you the truth,” Vince said. “You know I had something terrible happen to me. Did you know that?”

“No. I’m sorry, Vince. I don’t know.”

“Yeah, well, I got shot about a year and a half ago. Someone tried to kill me.”

“Oh my goodness! That’s terrible. How terrible.”

“Anyhow, I survived, but sometimes I still don’t feel so good. I need to sit down and have a glass of water. Would that be okay? I mean, I think of us as friends now, Zander, going through this whole murder thing together.”

Zahn looked caught. He didn’t want anyone coming into his sanctuary, but neither was he a man with many—if any—friends.

Slowly, and with no small amount of anxiety in his expression, he took a step back from the door, then another.

“Thanks,” Vince said, slipping inside. “Thanks a million.”

The entry hall was crowded with unopened boxes of Christmas ornaments and decorations of all descriptions—artificial trees and wreaths, balls and tinsel, Santa Claus figures, angel tree toppers. Immediately, Vince took a seat on a bench along a wall to minimize his size and not physically intimidate Zahn in his own home.

Zahn seemed to hold his breath for a moment, as if he were waiting for something catastrophic to happen now that he had let someone breech his boundary.

“I’ll get you a drink,” he said at last. “Please wait here, Vince. I’ll bring it here.”

“No problem.”

He kept his seat, figuring Zahn might duck back around the corner to make sure. From his vantage point he could see an office crowded with bookshelves that were absolutely packed tight with books. There was a desk, spotless, devoid of clutter.

One wall was entirely covered in whiteboard where Zahn had scribbled math equations that might as well have been Sanskrit as far as Vince was concerned. He could figure his odds at the racetrack. That was as much math as he cared to keep in his head.

In the other room he could see from the bench were file cabinets of all descriptions—metal, wood, new, antique—lined up against the walls and in rows across the floor, stacked as high as five feet with no more than two feet between them. Zahn would know exactly what was in each and every one of them.

“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.