by Tami Hoag
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 u
p 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.
It felt like someone was trying to ram a hot iron rod through her left shoulder. Gina cried out, fell back the few inches she had managed to raise her shoulders. This was what she got for ignoring her gym membership.
Do it again. On the count of three ...
Like a weightlifter straining to push the barbell over his head, she shouted as she fought for it. Her head was pounding with the physical struggle, her blood pressure spiking.
Fight for it! Fight for it!
The voice urging her on was Marissa’s.
Gina screamed out. Colors exploded behind her eyelids, squeezed shut against the strain. And then she was sitting up—dizzy, sweating, nauseous, weak, but she was sitting. She pulled up her good left leg, wrapped her good arm around it and pressed her cheek against her knee. She was shaking from the effort.
Damn you, Marissa. This is all your fault.
You went along with it, G.
No one was supposed to get hurt.
It didn’t matter now.
Gina took another look around her prison. She had never been in a well before. She was a city girl. She wouldn’t have even known what a well was if not for television and the movies.
There were serious cracks in the walls, and places where the concrete had fallen away completely. To her right was a series of iron rungs leading up to the top. It would have been an easy way out if she had two arms and two legs. To climb that high in the state she was in ... How could she? She had almost passed out just trying to sit up.
For now, all she wanted to do was get her back against the wall behind her so she could rest. This would involve pushing off with her good leg and scooting backward on her butt. An easy mission on the face of it, but the reality was she was on a heap of garbage, not a solid floor. Could she get enough leverage to push? And when she pushed she would then drag the right leg with its hideously broken ankle, and the pain would be blinding.
Stop whining, Gina. Just do it.
Shut up, Marissa.
She couldn’t have said how long it took her to work up the strength and the nerve to try. She looked around for something to help her effort, something to use like a crutch or a lever.
Discarded lumber was strewn amid the garbage, odd scrap pieces from someone’s home project. Within reach were several short stubs, butt ends of two-by-fours. Not helpful. To her left and away from her was a longer piece—narrower, thinner, but about three feet long.
She couldn’t reach it with her right hand. She might have reached it with her left, but her left arm hung limp. Gina flexed the fingers of her left hand, but she couldn’t lift the arm.
Slowly she stretched her leg back down and tried to get the toe of her shoe under the piece of wood and move it closer, but managed only to push it farther out of reach.
Exhausted, she brought her knee back up and rested her head.
She had no idea how long she had been in this hole. She hadn’t worn a watch. It might have been hours. It might have been days. She hadn’t eaten since hearing the news of Marissa’s murder. She hadn’t been able to keep anything down. She hadn’t had anything to drink since just after the detectives had left her house—after the older one had put that photograph in her hand.
The smell of the place kept her stomach turning over and over, but thirst was parching her throat. She looked at the garbage around her. Beer cans. Lots of them—most of them crushed. Soda cans. Empty liquor bottles. She was in the dumping ground of a party spot. Teenagers probably came out on the fire road for a secluded place to drink and smoke dope and do whatever teenagers did now.
Gina remembered a place like that when she and Marissa had been in school—a place out in the hills above Malibu. Her memory drifted back to an illegal campfire, cheap beer, and Boone’s Farm wine; “Smoke on the Water” and “Horse With No Name.”
They had thrown all their garbage into a cave. It had never occurred to her to imagine there might be somebody trapped in that cave, dying while they partied.
She picked up a half-crushed Pepsi can. The opening was crawling with ants. She shook the can and listened to maybe half an inch of liquid slosh in the bottom. Dreading the idea, she tried to scrape the ants away then closed her eyes and held her nose and raised the can to her lips.
It tasted terrible, but wet. She took one sip, then a second, then spat it out when a cigarette butt slipped between her lips and touched her tongue.
Gina let herself cry for few minutes. She was so tired. She hurt so bad. She knew no one would come here looking for her.
As her gaze settled on what looked like a pile of bloody clothing across from her, she had no way of knowing that above this hellhole and a hundred yards away stood Vince Leone.
47
Anne got out of her car in the parking lot of the mental health facility and took a deep breath—both to enjoy the fresh air and to clear her head before going in to deal with Dennis.
Clouds were gathering, gray and swollen and promising rain. She had always welcomed this time of year when the rai
ns came. After months of baking heat and relentless sun, it was nice to curl up at home with a blanket and a good book and listen to the rain come down.
That sounded like a good plan for the evening. Vince had come home to rest and watch Haley for her while she came to see Dennis. Maybe she would get lucky and have her husband home for the evening, and the three of them could snuggle up on the couch and they could read a book to Haley, or watch a video.
She tried to check herself at the thought. They hadn’t had Haley in their home for a day yet, and she was already getting too comfortable with the idea of her being there. Not smart, Anne.
She was in Haley Fordham’s life for a specific reason. She needed to remember that. At the end of this investigation into Marissa Fordham’s death, Haley would go elsewhere, hopefully to a relative who would take her in and love her. Although, from what Anne had gathered, Marissa Fordham had been estranged from her family. So far, no one had even been able to find out where they were.
If no relatives could be located, Milo Bordain would try to get custody. It wasn’t that Anne had no sympathy for the woman. If Marissa had been like a daughter to Bordain, then Haley was like a granddaughter. Milo Bordain probably loved the little girl in whatever way she was capable of loving her, but that didn’t necessarily make her a good candidate to raise a small child.
Bordain was in her fifties, very staid and proper. Anne didn’t have to visit the woman’s home to know there would be a long list of rules and things not to be touched by a four-year-old. She could imagine little Haley dressed up in Burberry and Hermès, accessorized like a fashion doll.
Haley had grown up in the home of an artist, an environment full of inspiration and imagination, and probably few boundaries. In going through the clothes Vince had picked up for her, Anne found tie-dyed T-shirts and a pink tutu, a tiny denim jacket hand-painted with baby jungle animals and a fairy costume complete with wings.
Anne set the subject to a back burner as she went into the hospital and signed in at the desk, exchanging pleasantries with the staff. She had to focus now on Dennis Farman.