Secrets to the Grave

by Tami Hoag

  “Yeah, that’d be nice.” Vince got up and threw his coffee in the trash.

  “You’re not still thinking you pushed him over the edge?” Mendez asked. “He’d already killed two people before you ever met him, Vince. The guy is a wack job.”

  “Forgive me if I’m not happy about that,” Vince said.

  The doors whooshed open, and Cal Dixon came in, trailed by a dozen reporters all shouting questions at the same time. Dixon ignored them and motioned to Mendez and Vince. The three of them went into an exam room while deputies and hospital security chased the riffraff back outside.

  Mendez told the story. Dixon stood with his arms crossed over his chest, intent on every detail. Vince sat on the exam table with his forearms on his thighs, and said nothing.

  “So that’s it?” Dixon said. “Zahn went crazy and killed her.”

  “And then he went crazy again and tried to kill Gina Kemmer,” Vince said. “And then he went nuts again and sent a box of breasts to Milo Bordain. And one more time when he tried to run her off the road for no real reason.”

  Mendez sighed his frustration. “He lost it and killed Marissa, and tried to kill Haley. Then he had to try to cover it up, so he shot Gina and dumped her down that well. He walked that fire road every day.”

  “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.”

  76

  “Anne? Why does life suck so much?”

  Needing to escape the pall of misery at her own home, Wendy had begged for another visit with Anne and Haley. Sara Morgan, no doubt as at a loss for explanation as her daughter, had dropped her off.

  They sat on the couch side by side not watching the movie blabbering to itself on the television. Haley had curled up on one end of the couch pretending to be a cat and had fallen sound asleep.

  “I know it seems like it does sometimes,” Anne said.

  “Sometimes? All the time,” Wendy said dramatically. “Look at all the bad stuff that’s happened! Tommy’s dad and Dennis Farman and the space shuttle and Chernobyl. And Haley’s mom, and now my mom and dad are getting divorced, and Dennis killed somebody!”

  It was hard to make an argument against all of that, but Anne tried to find something positive.

  “I’ve had a lot of bad stuff to deal with in the last year,” she said. “But I also met Vince, and we fell in love and got married.”

  “I’m never getting married,” Wendy declared. “I don’t know why people bother when they only get divorced in the end anyway. Marissa wasn’t married, and she was way cool. And she had Haley.”

  “It’s not easy to be a single parent,” Anne said. “It’s a big job for two people to do it well. What does Haley talk about all the time?”

  “Kittens.”

  “Besides kittens.”

  “Daddies.”

  “She’s never had a dad, but she wants one so badly she calls every man Daddy,” Anne said.

  “She’ll learn they’re not all they’re cracked up to be,” Wendy said. “I used to think my dad was so cool, but he’s just a jerk. He’s so mean to my mom.”

  “Mean in what way?”

  “He’s always mad and says mean things and makes her cry.”

  “I’m not going to try to make excuses for your dad,” Anne said. “I don’t know what his problem is, but I think it’s safe to say he has one.”

  Wendy rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Duh. Like his affairs with other women. I hear them argue. I’m not deaf and I’m not a little kid. I watch Dynasty. Mom thinks he had an affair with Marissa. I hope that’s not true.”

  “I hope so too.”

  “Marissa was so cool!” Wendy said. “She just loved life and did what she wanted to—but in a good way. She was so nice. She used to ask me about my dreams and what I want to be and all that. And when I told her, she was just like ‘Wow, Wendy! That’s so great! You go for it!’”

  “I wish I had met her,” Anne said.

  “And she did all this really beautiful art and helped my mom with her art,” Wendy went on. “I don’t want to know if she did bad things. My mom liked her. How could my mom like her if she thought Marissa was having an affair with my dad?”

  “I don’t know,” Anne said. “It doesn’t seem like they could have been friends if that was the case.”

  It seemed so strange and wrong to be talking about affairs with an eleven-year-old, but Wendy clearly knew what she was talking about—at least to a point. Anne wanted her to feel like she could bring up any subject at all when they talked. If they talked about affairs when she was eleven, what would twelve bring?

  “People make life so complicated,” Wendy said on a wistful sigh.

  They sat quietly for a moment, Wendy toying with the half-dozen cheap silver bracelets she wore on one arm.

  She looked up at Anne again. “Can I sleep over? Please? I don’t want to go home. You and Vince are cool. I could sleep with Haley.”

  “What about your mom?” Anne asked. “She’s feeling pretty down right now. Don’t you think you should stay home with her and keep her company? She’s hurting too, and I’m sure she’s feeling very alone.”

  Wendy frowned and pulled at a loose thread on her purple leg warmers. “I know.”

  Anne put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug. She remembered all too well being the one who comfor
ted her own mother when her father was so rotten to her. It had been Anne her mother leaned on in the face of Dick Navarre’s incessant infidelities. Anne remembered thinking how unfair it was that she had to be the adult when she was really just a kid. She had blamed her father mightily. She still did.

  She made a mental note to call and check on him just the same—because that was what her mother would have wanted her to do. Dick was never happy whether she called or didn’t call. Finding fault was his specialty. Thank God he had Ling, his nurse, to spar with now.

  “Maybe we can try to talk your mom into coming and staying here for a few days,” Anne said.

  Wendy brightened at the idea. Thank God there were moments when she still seemed like the child she deserved to be instead of the small adult her world was forcing her to be.

  “That would be awesome!” she said. “It would be like we were having a big slumber party—except for Vince.”

  “Vince would deal with it.”

  Haley stirred on her end of the couch. Anne reached over and pulled her blanket up around her shoulders.

  “Are you going to get to keep Haley?” Wendy asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where else would she go? She wouldn’t get sent to an orphanage or something, would she?”

  “No, that won’t happen. First the authorities have to find out if she has any relatives.”

  Wendy made a face. “That awful Mrs. Bordain. I pretended not to know her yesterday. She is such a word I’m not supposed to say.”

  “You know her from Marissa?”

  Wendy nodded. “But she doesn’t know me ’cause I’m just a kid and I might as well be a rock for all she could care.”

  “She cares about Haley, though,” Anne said. “Haley is practically a granddaughter to her.”

  “What-ever,” Wendy said. “She was always in Marissa’s face. ‘Do this, do that. Don’t do this. Don’t do that.’”

  “Really?” Anne said, trying to reconcile what Wendy was saying with Milo Bordain’s portrayal of the grieving near-mother.

  “I heard her yelling at Marissa once. She’s all, like, ‘I could take this all away from you!’” she said, doing a wicked impersonation of Milo Bordain. “And then Marissa was, like, ‘So could I, and you know it!’”

  “I wonder what that meant,” Anne said.

  Wendy shrugged. “I don’t know. Mrs. Bordain saw me then and yelled at me for eavesdropping.”

  So could I, and you know it.

  What could Marissa have taken away from her sponsor? Herself? Haley?

  “How about some warm apple cider?” Anne suggested. “With cinnamon sticks. It’s such a nasty day.”

  Anne got up and pulled her sweater around her as she went to the kitchen. The rest of the house was not enjoying the warmth of the fireplace in the family room.

  She turned on just the light above the stove and moved around the room gathering what she needed. Even though it was still afternoon, the gloom outside was almost nightlike. The fog had never lifted all day, and the sky seemed only to get heavier and closer to the ground.

  She wondered where Dennis was, if he had found a place out of the elements. The sheriff’s office was supposed to call her if they picked him up. How the hell was she supposed to help him now? Twelve or not, he would almost certainly be sent to a juvenile facility now until he was eighteen. She would try to get him sent to one with a good psychiatrist on staff ...

  She turned and looked out the bank of windows, a chill going through her. She hated having the shades up when it was getting dark out. More often than not she felt like someone was out there looking in at her.

  It didn’t occur to her as she lowered the blinds that someone actually was.

  77

  “Did you know he wasn’t taking his medication?” Vince asked.

  Nasser shook his head. “He’s very secretive about personal things. I picked up the prescriptions for him, but what happened after that was not my business.”

  They stood in the ambulance bay, in the damp cold. Nasser had needed a cigarette. He wore the collar of his pea coat turned up against the chill. It made him look a little sinister with his dark features and razor-trimmed goatee.

  “Did he ever mention a woman named Bordain to you?”

  “I don’t recall. Why would he?”

  “She was Marissa’s patron. She owns the property where Marissa lived.”

  “Oh ... ,” he said. “I know who she is. Zander was afraid of her.”

  “Afraid?”

  “She intimidated him, made him feel small.”

  “Do you think Zander is the kind of guy who would try to get back at somebody for something like that?”

  “Zander? What would he do?” Nasser asked. “Cast an evil mathematical equation on them? He won’t even go in a convenience store to buy gum.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  They were quiet for a moment. Nasser finished his smoke and stubbed out the butt in the giant sandpit atop an equally giant trash receptacle by the door.

  He nodded toward the building. “It’s taking a long time.”

  “It was a long knife,” Vince said.

  “Do you think he’ll make it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He’s such a fragile soul,” Nasser said. “It’s like he was never meant for this world, you know?”

  “He’s had a tough row to hoe.”

  “Do you think he killed Marissa?”

  “No. I don’t,” Vince said. “Let’s take a ride. Maybe we can prove it.”

  They sailed out the dark country road in Nasser’s old 3 Series BMW. The muffler needed some help, and the ragtop quaked like it might fly off at any moment.

  Zahn’s place was creepy in the gathering gloom, the fog slithering around the old refrigerators and rows of strange garden statuary. The house was black and unwelcoming. Coyotes yipped and howled in the distance.

  Nasser let them in and turned on the hall lights.

  Vince went into the room with the collection of filing cabinets that were stacked so close together he could barely fit between the rows.

  I keep every paper, Zahn had told him.

  It hadn’t occurred to him when they were searching the place in the morning because they were searching for a man, not a document. Not even Zander Zahn would have attempted to hide himself in a filing cabinet.

  When it came to him, it seemed so simple he wanted to kick himself. If Marissa had wanted to put Haley’s birth certificate someplace nobody would look, what better place than in the home of a hoarder? And who better to trust it to than her strange friend Zander? Zander, so devoted to her, so enamored of her. Of course he would hide it and never tell a soul. His loyalty to Marissa was absolute.

  The cabinets were jam-packed with files on every subject imaginable. One entire row that had to be fourteen feet long and five feet high held nothing but math papers. It looked like every math paper Zahn had ever completed in his life.

  Cabinet after cabinet after cabinet was crammed with the paper detritus of Zahn’s life, and everything he had ever found odd or interesting or pertinent or relevant. All of it alphabetized or otherwise organized, of course. There was just so much of it. Cabinets of financial records, copies of medical records, articles on the nature of genius and the mysteries of autism and its cousins.

  “Can I help?” Nasser asked.

  “I’m looking for any kind of a file pertaining to Marissa or Haley Fordham.”

  “Okay. I’ll start over here.”

  They worked quietly for what seemed like hours. Finally, just when Vince thought his eyes were going to give out in the poor light, he found it. The file was simply marked M. He pulled the folder out of the drawer and studied the document.

  “What is it?” Nasser asked, trying to get a look.

  Vince closed the folder. “Motive.”

  He carried the folder into the hospital with him and went in search of Mendez, finding him in the ICU, staring
through the glass wall into Gina Kemmer’s room with Darren Bordain standing beside him.

  “How is she?” Vince asked.

  “No change. No better. No worse,” Mendez said. “We tracked down her family in Reseda. Her parents are on their way.”

  “Good. That might make a difference if she can hear their voices.”

  “I wanted to go in and talk to her,” Bordain said.

  “Family only,” Mendez said.

  “My friends are my family. Gina and Marissa were part of the group.”

  “Rules are rules,” Vince said. He locked eyes with Mendez and tipped his head away from Bordain.

  They took three steps to the side before Mendez spoke quietly. “Zahn didn’t make it.”

  Vince sighed.

  “The surgeon said they would get one leak plugged and another would spring. That was a hell of a big knife. Between the damage to the organs, the blood loss and sepsis, he just wasn’t strong enough to pull through.”

  “Maybe he’ll find some peace now.”

  Vince thought of what Nasser had said: He’s such a fragile soul. It’s like he was never meant for this world, you know.

  Maybe he would find more compassion in the next one.

  Mendez’s eye finally caught on the manila file folder tucked under Vince’s arm. “What’s that?”

  “This?” Vince asked, as if he had forgotten about it. He handed the folder to Mendez. “A little light reading.”

  Mendez flipped it open and looked the document over from top to bottom twice, his eyes going wide.

  “Ho-ly shit.”

  “Yeah.” Vince nodded. “I thought you might say that.”

  78

  Vince had called to say he would be late again and to go ahead with dinner. Anne brought the girls into the kitchen to “help” and to keep her company.

  “What are we having?” Wendy asked.

  “Macaroni and cheese—and not the kind that comes out of a box,” Anne said, gathering ingredients from the refrigerator and putting them on the island. “The real deal, like my mother used to make. Haley, do you like macaroni and cheese?”