"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 gla.s.s 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, b.a.l.l.s 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 gla.s.s of water. Vince accepted it and took a long drink. "You keep a lot of paper doc.u.mentation?"

"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.

"n.o.body 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.

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 s.p.a.ce 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 G.o.d, 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 antic.i.p.ated. 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 a.s.sociate the b.l.o.o.d.y 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 Na.s.ser 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 Na.s.ser 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?"

Na.s.ser 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?" Na.s.ser 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," Na.s.ser 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, Na.s.ser 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 Na.s.ser 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.