While Zahn was certainly respected in his field, Vince suspected people would have been happy to peg him as a murderer because he wasn’t like other people. There was something wrong with him. A person like that might do anything.

Zahn had murdered his mother. He had killed her by stabbing her repeatedly in the abdomen.

There was no denying that possible connection, Vince conceded. He thought of the photograph Mendez had pulled out of Gina Kemmer’s trash. Marissa Fordham, stabbed in the abdomen so many times the area had been shredded into bloody hash.

Zahn had idolized Marissa. Perhaps deep in his psyche she had represented the gentle, loving mother he never had. If he had felt she had betrayed him in some way, could that have caused the psychotic break necessary to kill in the manner Marissa had been killed?

Yes, he thought so.

A call to Arthur Buckman had confirmed Vince’s suspicion that Zahn would not be teaching. He had taken the rest of the week off due to his extreme grief over the death of his friend. Rudy Nasser had taken over Zahn’s classes.

Vince drove the scenic route to Zahn’s home by himself. He hadn’t called ahead. He was pretty certain Zahn would have told him not to come, then he would have spent the fifteen minutes it took Vince to get there anyway winding his strange little psyche into knots of anxiety.

He parked outside the gate and pushed the intercom button on the keypad, hoping Zahn would answer. Nothing happened. He tried again. Again nothing.

He looked at the stucco privacy wall that must have been about six feet high. Maybe in his heyday he could have gotten over it without a ladder.

He tried the intercom again. No luck.

He looked from the wall to his car and back. In his heyday he would have scaled the wall somehow. Now he was older and wiser. He maneuvered the car into place beside the wall, climbed onto the hood, then onto the wall, and lowered himself to the other side.

“Not bad for an old man, Vince,” he said, dusting off his palms and his clothes.

He had dressed casually for the day in tan slacks and a black polo shirt. The beauty of working for himself: no dress code but his own. He found people didn’t always want to talk to the suit and tie he had been required to wear in the Bureau. There were times he wanted people as relaxed as possible when he sat down with them so he could more easily steer them where he wanted them to go psychologically.