“You can’t pick and choose,” Vince argued. “He’s either crazy or he’s not. And if he went into a dissociative state and killed Marissa, it’s unlikely he would have had any memory of it after. He wouldn’t try to cover up something he didn’t know he did.”

“He had to know it when he found his bloody clothes the next day,” Mendez argued. “He knew he killed his mother. He told us about it.”

“And who told him? The cops, the psychiatrists, the social workers.”

“Maybe he’s not crazy at all,” Dixon ventured. “Maybe crazy is an act. It got him off before. Why not use it again?”

“You never met him. You never talked to him,” Vince snapped. “He isn’t an act.”

“Why are we chewing each other’s tails about this?” Dixon asked.

“Because it doesn’t fucking make sense, that’s why,” Vince said, irritated. “Why all the bullshit with Milo Bordain?”

“Maybe he doesn’t like her,” Mendez said. “Maybe to make it look like her son did it.”

“We’re talking about a guy who finds it too overwhelming to go to Ralph’s to buy groceries, but he would pack human breasts in a box and drive all the way to Lompoc to perpetrate a conspiracy on the Bordain family?” Vince said, incredulous. “What is in your fucking head?”

“He practically said he did it!” Mendez said.

“But he didn’t say it, did he?”

“He stabbed himself with an eight-inch chef’s knife!”

“And what happened to ‘Steve Morgan did it’?”

A stout red-haired nurse in scrubs pulled the door open and stuck her head in. “Shut the fuck up! People in Milwaukee can hear you!”

Mendez held a hand up. “I know. If Zahn mailed the breasts to Milo Bordain, somebody in that post office is going to remember him. You don’t meet that guy and then forget about him. Bill and I will go up to Lompoc and show them the photo of Zahn.”

“Good,” Dixon said. “It would be nice to have something besides conjecture to give the district attorney—if Zahn lives.”

“We’ll probably have his blood on that sweatshirt,” Mendez said.

“If he cut himself,” Vince came back, “then where are the wounds? He didn’t have any wounds on his hands.”

“If Gina Kemmer makes it, we’ll have an ID.”

“What’s the latest on her?” Dixon asked.

Mendez frowned. “Not very good. She’s fighting infections. They can’t seem to keep her blood pressure stable, and they don’t know why.”

Still agitated, Vince slid off the table and moved with purpose toward the door.

“Where are you going?” Mendez asked.

“To call Rudy Nasser. He should know what happened.”

Chapter 76

76

“Anne? Why does life suck so much?”