Secrets to the Grave

77

“Did you know he wasn’t taking his medication?” Vince asked.

Nasser shook his head. “He’s very secretive about personal things. I picked up the prescriptions for him, but what happened after that was not my business.”

They stood in the ambulance bay, in the damp cold. Nasser had needed a cigarette. He wore the collar of his pea coat turned up against the chill. It made him look a little sinister with his dark features and razor-trimmed goatee.

“Did he ever mention a woman named Bordain to you?”

“I don’t recall. Why would he?”

“She was Marissa’s patron. She owns the property where Marissa lived.”

“Oh ... ,” he said. “I know who she is. Zander was afraid of her.”

“Afraid?”

“She intimidated him, made him feel small.”

“Do you think Zander is the kind of guy who would try to get back at somebody for something like that?”

“Zander? What would he do?” Nasser asked. “Cast an evil mathematical equation on them? He won’t even go in a convenience store to buy gum.”

“That’s what I thought.”

They were quiet for a moment. Nasser finished his smoke and stubbed out the butt in the giant sandpit atop an equally giant trash receptacle by the door.

He nodded toward the building. “It’s taking a long time.”

“It was a long knife,” Vince said.

“Do you think he’ll make it?”

“I don’t know.”

“He’s such a fragile soul,” Nasser said. “It’s like he was never meant for this world, you know?”

“He’s had a tough row to hoe.”

“Do you think he killed Marissa?”

“No. I don’t,” Vince said. “Let’s take a ride. Maybe we can prove it.”

They sailed out the dark country road in Nasser’s old 3 Series BMW. The muffler needed some help, and the ragtop quaked like it might fly off at any moment.

Zahn’s place was creepy in the gathering gloom, the fog slithering around the old refrigerators and rows of strange garden statuary. The house was black and unwelcoming. Coyotes yipped and howled in the distance.

Nasser let them in and turned on the hall lights.

Vince went into the room with the collection of filing cabinets that were stacked so close together he could barely fit between the rows.

I keep every paper, Zahn had told him.

It hadn’t occurred to him when they were searching the place in the morning because they were searching for a man, not a document. Not even Zander Zahn would have attempted to hide himself in a filing cabinet.

When it came to him, it seemed so simple he wanted to kick himself. If Marissa had wanted to put Haley’s birth certificate someplace nobody would look, what better place than in the home of a hoarder? And who better to trust it to than her strange friend Zander? Zander, so devoted to her, so enamored of her. Of course he would hide it and never tell a soul. His loyalty to Marissa was absolute.

The cabinets were jam-packed with files on every subject imaginable. One entire row that had to be fourteen feet long and five feet high held nothing but math papers. It looked like every math paper Zahn had ever completed in his life.

Cabinet after cabinet after cabinet was crammed with the paper detritus of Zahn’s life, and everything he had ever found odd or interesting or pertinent or relevant. All of it alphabetized or otherwise organized, of course. There was just so much of it. Cabinets of financial records, copies of medical records, articles on the nature of genius and the mysteries of autism and its cousins.

“Can I help?” Nasser asked.

“I’m looking for any kind of a file pertaining to Marissa or Haley Fordham.”

“Okay. I’ll start over here.”

They worked quietly for what seemed like hours. Finally, just when Vince thought his eyes were going to give out in the poor light, he found it. The file was simply marked M. He pulled the folder out of the drawer and studied the document.

“What is it?” Nasser asked, trying to get a look.

Vince closed the folder. “Motive.”

He carried the folder into the hospital with him and went in search of Mendez, finding him in the ICU, staring through the glass wall into Gina Kemmer’s room with Darren Bordain standing beside him.

“How is she?” Vince asked.

“No change. No better. No worse,” Mendez said. “We tracked down her family in Reseda. Her parents are on their way.”

“Good. That might make a difference if she can hear their voices.”

“I wanted to go in and talk to her,” Bordain said.

“Family only,” Mendez said.

“My friends are my family. Gina and Marissa were part of the group.”

“Rules are rules,” Vince said. He locked eyes with Mendez and tipped his head away from Bordain.

They took three steps to the side before Mendez spoke quietly. “Zahn didn’t make it.”

Vince sighed.

“The surgeon said they would get one leak plugged and another would spring. That was a hell of a big knife. Between the damage to the organs, the blood loss and sepsis, he just wasn’t strong enough to pull through.”

“Maybe he’ll find some peace now.”

Vince thought of what Nasser had said: He’s such a fragile soul. It’s like he was never meant for this world, you know.

Maybe he would find more compassion in the next one.

Mendez’s eye finally caught on the manila file folder tucked under Vince’s arm. “What’s that?”

“This?” Vince asked, as if he had forgotten about it. He handed the folder to Mendez. “A little light reading.”

Mendez flipped it open and looked the document over from top to bottom twice, his eyes going wide.

“Ho-ly shit.”

“Yeah.” Vince nodded. “I thought you might say that.”