Secrets to the Grave

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.