“Is that what you want, Zander?” he asked. “Do you want us to leave? Or do you want to help us find who killed Marissa?”
“He doesn’t know who killed the woman,” Nasser said, getting his back up. “Why aren’t you out talking to people who had a reason to kill her? Why aren’t you out talking to her boyfriends?”
“You know who they are?” Mendez asked, poising pen against paper.
Nasser backtracked, looking away. “Well ... I ...”
“You don’t know,” Mendez said, his patience slipping away. “You’re just shooting your mouth off.”
“She didn’t buy that place with the proceeds of her art,” Nasser came back. “Someone was footing the bills.”
“But you don’t know who.”
Nasser didn’t answer.
“Mr. Nasser,” Vince said calmly. “If you have something useful to contribute here, then you should say so. If all you want is to cast aspersions on a woman who can’t defend herself in order to distract us, then you should shut up.”
“She wasn’t like that,” Zahn said, rocking himself harder. “She wasn’t like that.”
Nasser closed his eyes. “Zander, for God’s sake. She had a child. Who was the father? Where is he?”
“You don’t know. You don’t know her. You don’t know anything.”
“You know she wasn’t a saint.”
Zahn came to his feet suddenly and shoved Nasser backward with all his might, shouting, “YOU DON’T KNOW HER!”
Taken by surprise, Nasser staggered backward, tripped himself, and sat down hard on the crushed stone.
Zahn shook his hands as if they were wet, horrified that he had touched another living being.
“Oh my God. Oh my God,” he muttered. “I’m so sorry. So sorry. I have to go now. I have to go. It’s time to go.”
He turned and ran back to the house as he had run away from Marissa Fordham’s house that morning, with his arms straight down at his sides.
Mendez and Vince both got up from their chairs. Mendez glanced from the professor to his protégé struggling to his feet, and back at Leone. “If I had a kid at that college, I’d be asking for my money back.”
12
Kathryn Worth might have been a queen in a past life. She had that kind of bearing: straight, proud, regal, with a mane of golden hair swept back from her face. Disapproval was a statement made with an ice-blue stare down her patrician nose—a look that could make grown men cringe and cower.
In this life Kathryn Worth’s title was Assistant District Attorney. At forty-two, she had worked hard to achieve a position of prominence in what was still a male-dominated field—and she made no secret of her desire to go higher up the food chain. She was capable, clever, and ruthless, three traits that would take her far in her chosen profession.
All these qualities and her gender had landed her the plum role of lead prosecutor in the matter of State of California v. Peter Crane.
District Attorney Ed Benton, a man who had not prosecuted a case himself in twenty years, had quickly assigned the case to Kathryn Worth, who had an impressive résumé of wins in the courtroom. Appointing a woman to prosecute a heinous crime against a woman had won him praise in the press and in the minds of the broad base of liberal constituents of Oak Knoll.
Anne had no argument with Benton’s choice. She found Kathryn Worth to be smart and tough, and by no means intimidated by Peter Crane’s big-name defense attorneys.
She entered Worth’s office on the second floor of the county courts building and settled into the now-familiar ancient leather chair opposite the desk. As were many of Oak Knoll’s prominent buildings, the main county courts building had been constructed in the 1930s and was a gem of Spanish style with a twist of Art Nouveau thrown into the décor. The courtrooms and offices were full of heavy oak furniture in the Stickley mission style. The hallways boasted original Malibu-tile wainscoting and hand-painted borders. It was the kind of solid, substantial place that made a person believe Lady Justice was on his side.
Kathryn Worth smiled at her as she pulled off her oversize reading glasses. “Anne. How are you?”
“Fine, I hope,” Anne said. “I guess it depends on what you have to tell me.”
Worth made a little shrug, trying to minimize the significance of what she was about to say. “They’ve filed a motion to try to exclude some evidence. They’ll lose, of course.”
Anne sat up a little straighter. Her heart beat a little harder. “What evidence?”
“The tube of superglue.”
“On what grounds?” she demanded.
“They’re claiming it was planted.”
“He was going to put it in my eyes!” Anne said, the upset quickly building a head of steam inside her.
She flashed on the image as if it were a scene from a movie: Peter Crane looming over her, holding her down with a knee on her chest, his left hand pressing down on her throat, choking her. He fished for something with his right hand in his jacket pocket and came out with a small tube. The glue.
All of his victims had had their eyes and mouths glued shut.
“I saw it!” she exclaimed. “I knocked it out of his hand!”
“I know. And you’ll testify to that.”
“Not if they get it thrown out!”
“Anne, calm down,” the ADA said quietly. “There’s no way they’ll get it thrown out.”
“There must be some reason they think they can.”
“Michael Harrison thinks he could part the Red Sea if he needed to. It’s hubris. He’s full of shit. It’s just another tactic to delay the inevitable.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“You’re not telling me everything.”
Worth scowled. “You would have made a hell of a prosecutor yourself,” she muttered. “There are no useable fingerprints on the tube. I can’t explain why. Because the tube is small. Because one of the CSIs smudged it when they collected it. Who knows? It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” Anne said. She was beginning to feel sick to her stomach.
“Anne, you need to keep your eye on the big picture here. There is not a jury in Southern California that is going to acquit Peter Crane of kidnapping and trying to kill you. There’s no way. The glue isn’t even relevant. It’s not important.”
“It links him to the murders of Julie Paulson and Lisa Warwick. And to the attempted murder of Karly Vickers.”
“He’s not going on trial for those murders. He’s going on trial for what he did to you. And there is no way he’s getting out of it.”
“Then why am I so afraid he will?” Anne asked. Tears welled in her eyes. She pressed a hand across her mouth and felt assaulted by her own fear. Anger would follow—anger that she should be made to feel this way, then anger at her own inability to fight the feeling off.
Kathryn Worth leaned her arms on her desk and sighed. “Because that’s a part of it, Anne. Peter Crane made you a victim, and that doesn’t stop. It doesn’t go away.”
“Thanks,” Anne said. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”
“I’m not trying to make you feel worse, Anne. I’m not. But I’ve sat across this desk—and other desks—from a lot of victims. I know how it works.”
“I hate it,” Anne whispered, her throat tight around a hard lump of despair.
“I know. I know you do. I’m so sorry,” Worth said. “Are you still seeing your therapist?”
“Twice a week.”
“It takes time. My mother always likes to say time heals all wounds.”
“Your mother is full of shit,” Anne said bluntly.
Worth nodded. “Yes, she is. The best we can hope for is that the wounds scar over well enough we don’t feel them all the time. And we move on. We have to. Otherwise, the bad guys win.”