“Maybe he didn’t like the side effects. Maybe he didn’t trust his doctor not to poison him. Maybe the OCD just wouldn’t let him.”

Whatever the reason, the result wasn’t good.

With no sign of Zahn on the property, the search disbanded. Vince got back in the car with Mendez, who waited his turn as the others maneuvered their vehicles around and negotiated their way through the gridlock of news trucks and reporters.

“Let’s go back to Marissa’s place,” Vince suggested.

“Why?”

“The continuation of my hunch,” Vince said. “We needed extra bodies to get through Zahn’s place. If he’s over there, better it’s just you and me.”

The crime scene having been fully processed, and the press having moved on to more immediate matters like Gina Kemmer and the missing Zander Zahn, attention had fallen away from Marissa Fordham’s home. A deputy was still stationed at the end of the driveway to chase away the morbidly curious, but Dixon had pulled the sentry that had been stationed under the pepper tree in Fordham’s front yard.

In the setting of fog and dead grass, Marissa Fordham’s house looked like it had been abandoned for a long time. Funny how that happened when people left a place. Suddenly the paint looked dull and chipped, and the windows that had been filled with light looked like gaping black holes. The flowers Marissa had tended dutifully when she was alive were weedy and in need of care.

They went inside the house and stood in the living room silently for a moment, looking around. Very slowly, Mendez turned the knob on the coat closet in the entry, and opened it. No Zahn.

They moved through the house methodically and quietly, checking closets and cupboards, finally coming to Marissa’s bedroom, where the initial attack had taken place and the walls and ceiling had been spattered with cast-off blood from the killer’s knife.

Vince put a finger to his lips and motioned for Mendez to stay back.

“Zander,” he said, moving toward the closet. “Are you in here? It’s me, Vince.”

No reply.

Vince closed his fingers around the old white porcelain doorknob and slowly, slowly turned it.

“I’m going to open the door, Zander,” he said. “Don’t be afraid. I just want to see you and make sure you’re okay.”

He eased the door open inch by inch.

Naked and wild-eyed, Zander Zahn was crouched, coiled like a spring on the floor of the closet, clutching the handle of a very large knife.

Later, Vince would remember thinking I should have seen it coming, but in the next instant, as Zander Zahn leapt at him, there was no time to think at all.

Chapter 72

72

“He did what?”