“The boy was never charged or convicted of anything,” Vince went on, peering down through his reading glasses at his notes. “There was a documented history of child abuse. The mother was severely manic-depressive. She couldn’t deal with her son’s condition—the investigator used the word ‘autism.’ She blamed the boy, ridiculed him, punished him, tormented him. She reportedly locked him in a closet for days at a time and just left him. He was put into foster care on three separate occasions, but was always returned to his mother once she went back on her medication and her moods evened out.”

“What about the father?” Hamilton asked.

“The father was never in the picture,” Vince said. “The mother was known to self-mutilate when she was depressed, so it isn’t out of the question that she might use a knife to kill herself. But I would have expected her to cut herself, not stab herself. It’s extremely rare for a woman to stab herself. She reportedly had three stab wounds to the abdomen.

“Apparently the boy was covered in blood when officers arrived and had sustained injuries consistent with a beating.”

“Now we know why nothing showed up in a routine background check,” Mendez said. “He doesn’t have a record. But he told us he killed her. Where did you get this information?”

“I found out Zahn grew up in a suburb of Buffalo, New York,” Vince said. “As it happened I worked a child abduction up there ten years ago. The lead detective on that case is their chief now. He was in a uniform at the time of Nanette Zahn’s death. He actually remembered the case on account of the boy.”

“What was his take on it?” Hicks asked.

“If the boy did it, it was self-defense. The kid was in a near-catatonic state when the police arrived, and stayed that way for months afterward. No one ever pressed the issue because they knew the family history, and I think they basically felt like the mother had it coming.”

“Where does that leave us considering Zahn as a suspect?” Dixon asked.

“Milo Bordain said the victim complained to her about Zahn,” Hicks pointed out.

“Everybody else has said she got along with him, didn’t mind him hanging around,” Mendez said. “I think Mrs. Bordain doesn’t like Zahn. He’s not her kind of people.”

“Vince?” Dixon asked.

“We have to keep him on the list, but he would have had to have had some kind of psychotic break to do what was done to the victim,” he said. “He’s not psychotic. He has plenty of issues, but he’s not psychotic.”

“But he may have killed a woman with a knife before,” Dixon said.

“Yes.”

“If Marissa Fordham had made him angry somehow, said the wrong thing and triggered a memory ...”

“It’s possible.”