Mendez thanked him mentally. He had been waiting to hear Dixon say “stay away from his wife,” sure he would have looked guilty, despite the fact that he had not crossed a line with Sara Morgan. A part of him had certainly wanted to.

“He wasn’t happy that I knew about his mother’s death,” Vince went on. “I pressed him a little. He flipped out on me. Total meltdown.”

He proceeded to tell the story, complete with an explanation of a dissociative state, and how Zahn could have killed Marissa Fordham and have no conscious memory of it.

“That sounds like something a defense attorney would come up with,” Trammell said.

“They’ll certainly latch on to it if they can,” Vince said. “But true dissociation is rare. It’s a mind’s way of reacting to overwhelming psychological trauma.”

“Like having stabbed your own mother to death,” Hamilton said.

“More like a reaction to whatever his mother did to him to precipitate the murder. Say she burned the soles of his feet with a cigarette. His mind goes into a dissociative state to escape the abuse. While he’s in the dissociative state, he kills her. When he comes out of it, he may not remember a thing.”

“The mind is trying to protect itself by repressing the memories,” Mendez said.

“Right.”

“So he could have been capable of killing Marissa Fordham,” Dixon said.

“Based on what we know now and what I saw this afternoon, yes.”

“It looked like a crazy person did it because a crazy person did do it,” Campbell said.

“I asked Haley if she was ever afraid of Zahn,” Vince said.

“She’s talking?” Dixon asked.

“When she feels like it. But she ignores questions that might take her back to what happened. Either consciously or subconsciously she doesn’t want to get near those feelings.”

“What did she say about Zahn?” Mendez asked.

One corner of Vince’s mouth quirked upward. “That he’s weird.”

“Sharp kid,” Mendez said, laughing. “But why would Zahn ransack the house? He can’t be Haley’s father. You have to actually touch a woman to get her pregnant.”

“How would you know?” Campbell asked.

“Shut up.”

“And why would he send the breasts to Milo Bordain?” Hicks asked. “That box was postmarked Monday. The murder took place Sunday night. He would have been out of that dissociative state by Monday, wouldn’t he?”

“Not necessarily,” Vince said. “I admit the breasts in the box don’t seem to fit, but they don’t seem to fit any scenario we’ve had so far other than Darren Bordain.”

“Maybe that’s exactly why they were sent,” Dixon suggested. “Because it doesn’t make any sense. While we’re running around in little circles trying to connect that dot, someone is getting away with murder.”

Chapter 50

50

Two bad things came at once: darkness and rain.