He looked sharply at Nasser again. “Did you hear that, Rudy? Vince’s thought? Contextual mathematics. This is another verbal approach to help us articulate how we want our students to open their minds to our subject. Don’t you agree, Rudy?”
Nasser looked a bit pissed, Mendez thought. Or maybe “jealous” was a better word. His mentor had found favor in someone else. Interesting.
But he covered it well and replied, “It’s brilliant. We should use that in orientation.”
“Brilliant,” Zahn said, tasting the word in his mouth like something buttery and smooth. “And you didn’t think you knew that, did you, Vince?”
“No, I didn’t,” Vince admitted. “See? It’s like I said: You may have some piece of knowledge that—unknown to you—could help Marissa.”
Zahn didn’t seem quite so pleased at having the idea turned around on him, but he couldn’t argue with the logic.
“I have chairs,” he said. But instead of inviting them into the house, he gestured like a bad public speaker at the collection of chrome and vinyl kitchen chairs lined up in five rows of five on his gravel yard.
As Zahn led the way down the path, Mendez leaned toward Vince and muttered, “Do you think he’ll offer us refreshments from one of those refrigerators?”
Leone gave him an elbow.
They sat down in a row like they were going to watch a play. Nasser, Zahn, Vince. Mendez very deliberately picked up an orange chair, pulled it out of line and sat it down facing the others. Zahn looked at him like he was the devil incarnate, but said nothing. Vince watched him, reserving his reaction.
“I’m sorry,” Mendez said, ducking his head contritely. “This is embarrassing, but I’m a little hard of hearing, Dr. Zahn. I had an accident when I was nine. Actually ... my mother struck me in the side of the head. It left me a little deaf. It’s been a problem my whole life.”
Vince arched an eyebrow.
Zahn studied him for a few seconds, letting his story sink in. “I’m so sorry, Tony. It’s difficult to be a child. I was a child once. It was difficult. Haley will find it difficult now. Not for the same reasons, though.”
“I’m not looking for people to feel sorry for me or anything,” Mendez said. “I’ll put the chair back when we’re finished. I just didn’t want you to think I’m trying to intimidate you. That’s not my intent at all.”
Zahn nodded and looked down in his lap. He rubbed his hands together, rubbed his palms against his thighs. His legs were thin as rails.
“Of course, Tony. Of course, Tony,” he muttered.
“Detective Mendez spoke with another of Marissa’s friends,” Vince said, then raised his voice to a low boom. “Isn’t that right, Detective?”
“Yes,” Mendez said, straight-faced. “Sara Morgan.”
“Sara, yes. She doesn’t like me,” Zahn said. “That’s all right. I understand. She’s very sad, I think.”
“Why would you say that, Zander?” he asked, taking Vince’s cue to use Zahn’s name as if they were old acquaintances.
Zahn gazed off into the distance. “Because that’s what I think. I think she’s very sad. It’s in her eyes. She has beautiful eyes. Don’t you think so? Blue like the Aegean Sea. But sad. And frightened. She was frightened of me.”
“Why is that?”
“She thinks I might be dangerous, I think.”
“That’s ridiculous, Zander,” Nasser said.
“Not to her,” Zahn said. “Her perception is her reality. She doesn’t understand who I am. People fear what they don’t understand.”
“You’re world-renowned in your field,” Nasser said.
Zahn nodded, looking away from them. “But not in her context. Isn’t that right, Vince?”
“I suppose so. She doesn’t really know you.”
“I’m just the strange neighbor,” Zahn said. “I am unknown. People fear the unknown. I fear the unknown. What we don’t know can hurt us.”
He began to rock a little on his red vinyl chair, twisting his hands together, rubbing his palms on his thighs.
Nasser still seemed to feel the need to suck up. “Still,” he said, “you would never hurt a woman.”
“Oh, but I would,” Zahn said candidly, looking at his protégé.
Mendez felt every cop instinct in him come to attention. He cut a glance at Vince, who appeared not to react at all. Leone crossed his legs and picked at the crease in his trousers.
“I have,” Zahn said, looking Mendez straight in the eye. “I killed my mother.”
11
No one moved, no one breathed
Rudy Nasser looked stunned, completely at a loss for words.
Zander Zahn sat wringing his hands and rubbing his palms against his thighs.
Blood, Mendez thought. He’s trying to wipe the blood off his hands.
He had to have been a boy at the time, Mendez reasoned—a juvenile at most. Otherwise he would be doing life somewhere. He sure as hell wouldn’t be teaching at McAster College in Oak Knoll, California. He wouldn’t be a world-renowned anything. Mendez wondered if Arthur Buckman knew.
“It’s difficult to be a child.” Zahn repeated exactly what he had said moments before, after he had considered Mendez’s cock-and-bull story about being rendered deaf by a blow from his mother. “I was a child once. It was difficult.”
“Your mother abused you, Zander?” It was more of a statement than a question from Leone.
“I’m finished telling that story now, Vince,” Zahn said calmly. “It’s not a story I like to tell.”
Then why had he told them at all? Mendez wanted to ask. He wanted to pounce on the opportunity and press for more answers. But Leone was watching him from behind the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses, and Zahn was starting to rock on his chair as memories and old emotions churned inside him. Now was not the time to push.
“I’m sure those memories are upsetting,” Mendez said quietly. Patiently. “I know they are. That had to make it all the more shocking for you to find Marissa the way you did,” he said. “All that blood.”
“Terrible, terrible,” Zahn murmured, rocking, looking off to the side as he rubbed his hands. “So much blood. So much blood.”
Mendez wondered which scene he was replaying in his head: the murder of his mother or of Marissa Fordham. What had been the manner of his mother’s death? Had he used a knife? Could he have had some kind of mental break or flashback and gone after Marissa Fordham, somehow relating her to his mother, or maybe confusing the two women?
“Did you touch Marissa’s body?”
“No, no, no.” Zahn wagged his head. “I couldn’t. I didn’t. I couldn’t. I didn’t.”
If that was true, that explained why he hadn’t realized the little girl was still alive. He hadn’t touched her, hadn’t tried to find a pulse. He couldn’t bring himself to touch the blood.
Rudy Nasser stirred at last, his brain racing to catch up to the moment and rescue his mentor.
“This is starting to sound a lot like an interrogation,” he said. “Zander, I think you shouldn’t say any more until you talk to an attorney.”
“Why would he need an attorney?” Vince asked. “We don’t consider Zander a suspect.”
Nasser stood up, ready to give them the bum’s rush out the front gate. “Let’s keep it that way.”
Leone didn’t move. He was sitting a little sideways on his green vinyl chair, leaning against one arm on the chair back. He was a big man and took up a big space, and didn’t look like anyone was going to move him until he was good and ready.