“You don’t know,” Mendez said, his patience slipping away. “You’re just shooting your mouth off.”

“She didn’t buy that place with the proceeds of her art,” Nasser came back. “Someone was footing the bills.”

“But you don’t know who.”

Nasser didn’t answer.

“Mr. Nasser,” Vince said calmly. “If you have something useful to contribute here, then you should say so. If all you want is to cast aspersions on a woman who can’t defend herself in order to distract us, then you should shut up.”

“She wasn’t like that,” Zahn said, rocking himself harder. “She wasn’t like that.”

Nasser closed his eyes. “Zander, for God’s sake. She had a child. Who was the father? Where is he?”

“You don’t know. You don’t know her. You don’t know anything.”

“You know she wasn’t a saint.”

Zahn came to his feet suddenly and shoved Nasser backward with all his might, shouting, “YOU DON’T KNOW HER!”

Taken by surprise, Nasser staggered backward, tripped himself, and sat down hard on the crushed stone.

Zahn shook his hands as if they were wet, horrified that he had touched another living being.

“Oh my God. Oh my God,” he muttered. “I’m so sorry. So sorry. I have to go now. I have to go. It’s time to go.”

He turned and ran back to the house as he had run away from Marissa Fordham’s house that morning, with his arms straight down at his sides.

Mendez and Vince both got up from their chairs. Mendez glanced from the professor to his protégé struggling to his feet, and back at Leone. “If I had a kid at that college, I’d be asking for my money back.”

Chapter 12

12

Kathryn Worth might have been a queen in a past life. She had that kind of bearing: straight, proud, regal, with a mane of golden hair swept back from her face. Disapproval was a statement made with an ice-blue stare down her patrician nose—a look that could make grown men cringe and cower.

In this life Kathryn Worth’s title was Assistant District Attorney. At forty-two, she had worked hard to achieve a position of prominence in what was still a male-dominated field—and she made no secret of her desire to go higher up the food chain. She was capable, clever, and ruthless, three traits that would take her far in her chosen profession.

All these qualities and her gender had landed her the plum role of lead prosecutor in the matter of State of California v. Peter Crane.