Zahn nodded and looked down in his lap. He rubbed his hands together, rubbed his palms against his thighs. His legs were thin as rails.

“Of course, Tony. Of course, Tony,” he muttered.

“Detective Mendez spoke with another of Marissa’s friends,” Vince said, then raised his voice to a low boom. “Isn’t that right, Detective?”

“Yes,” Mendez said, straight-faced. “Sara Morgan.”

“Sara, yes. She doesn’t like me,” Zahn said. “That’s all right. I understand. She’s very sad, I think.”

“Why would you say that, Zander?” he asked, taking Vince’s cue to use Zahn’s name as if they were old acquaintances.

Zahn gazed off into the distance. “Because that’s what I think. I think she’s very sad. It’s in her eyes. She has beautiful eyes. Don’t you think so? Blue like the Aegean Sea. But sad. And frightened. She was frightened of me.”

“Why is that?”

“She thinks I might be dangerous, I think.”

“That’s ridiculous, Zander,” Nasser said.

“Not to her,” Zahn said. “Her perception is her reality. She doesn’t understand who I am. People fear what they don’t understand.”

“You’re world-renowned in your field,” Nasser said.

Zahn nodded, looking away from them. “But not in her context. Isn’t that right, Vince?”

“I suppose so. She doesn’t really know you.”

“I’m just the strange neighbor,” Zahn said. “I am unknown. People fear the unknown. I fear the unknown. What we don’t know can hurt us.”

He began to rock a little on his red vinyl chair, twisting his hands together, rubbing his palms on his thighs.

Nasser still seemed to feel the need to suck up. “Still,” he said, “you would never hurt a woman.”

“Oh, but I would,” Zahn said candidly, looking at his protégé.

Mendez felt every cop instinct in him come to attention. He cut a glance at Vince, who appeared not to react at all. Leone crossed his legs and picked at the crease in his trousers.

“I have,” Zahn said, looking Mendez straight in the eye. “I killed my mother.”

Chapter 11

11

No one moved, no one breathed

Rudy Nasser looked stunned, completely at a loss for words.

Zander Zahn sat wringing his hands and rubbing his palms against his thighs.

Blood, Mendez thought. He’s trying to wipe the blood off his hands.

He had to have been a boy at the time, Mendez reasoned—a juvenile at most. Otherwise he would be doing life somewhere. He sure as hell wouldn’t be teaching at McAster College in Oak Knoll, California. He wouldn’t be a world-renowned anything. Mendez wondered if Arthur Buckman knew.

“It’s difficult to be a child.” Zahn repeated exactly what he had said moments before, after he had considered Mendez’s cock-and-bull story about being rendered deaf by a blow from his mother. “I was a child once. It was difficult.”