Secrets to the Grave (3 page)

They went around to the front of the house where Bill Hicks sat on a porch bench, forearms resting on his thighs as he talked to the man who had called in the crime. Tall, lanky, red-haired, Hicks was a cowboy in his free time. He was good in an interview, had an easygoing way about him that helped take the edge off in an otherwise tense situation.

Hicks looked up and allowed himself a lazy smile. “Hey, Vince. Good to see you. How’s married life?”

Vince took a seat on an old painted metal chair. “Great. How you doing, Bill?”

“No complaints.” Hicks tipped his head in the direction of the neighbor. “Vince, this is Mr. Zahn. Mr. Zahn, unfortunately, made the discovery this morning.”

Vince reached out to the man sitting beside Hicks on the bench. Zahn stared at his hand for a moment before looking up. His face was strangely blank.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a hushed, breathy voice. He clasped his hands together on his lap but couldn’t keep them still, wringing one over the other again and again. “I don’t shake hands. I’m ... a ... I have a problem with that. I’m terribly sorry.”

Zahn was maybe in his late thirties or early forties, but prematurely gray. His hair stood out around his head like a soft cloud. His face was long and narrow with sharp angles, his eyes wide, pale, translucent green, and vacant in the way of someone looking inward at a terrible memory.

“My condolences on your loss,” Vince offered softly. “I assume Ms. Fordham was a friend—you stopping by so early and all.”

“Yes,” Zahn said. “Marissa and I were friends.”

“Why so early?” Mendez asked. He stood, leaning back against a post, his arms crossed.

Too blunt, Vince thought. This was where his protégé lacked finesse. Zahn was already nervous. He almost flinched at the tone of the detective’s voice.

“I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” Zahn said. “Marissa is always up early. She likes the early light.”

“You’ve been friends for a long time?” Vince asked.

“As long as she’s been here. As long as I’ve been here. Four years?” he asked, as if Vince would know.

“Maybe you can help us then, Mr. Zahn,” Vince suggested. “What can you tell us about Ms. Fordham? Was she married? Divorced?”

“Single. She was single.”

“What about her little girl?”

“Haley. Please tell me Haley isn’t dead,” Zahn pleaded. “I couldn’t stand it if Haley was injured or dead.”

“She’s been taken to the hospital,” Vince assured him. “She isn’t dead.”

“Oh my God. Thank God.”

“What about Haley’s father? Is he ever around?”

“I don’t know him. I don’t know who he is. Marissa was very private.”

“Do you know if she has any family in the area?”

“Oh, no.” He shook his head. “They were estranged. She never spoke of them.”

“Do you know where she was from?”

“The East Coast, I think. From a good family, I’m sure.”

“Mr. Zahn—”

“Call me Zander, please.
Alex-zander
. I’ve always gone by Zander. That’s what people call me. Please call me that.”

“All right. Zander. I’m Vince. This is Tony,” he said, hooking a thumb in the direction of Mendez. “You already know Bill.”

“Vince and Tony,” Zahn murmured, wringing his hands. “Vince and Tony.”

“Do you know if Ms. Fordham was having trouble with anyone?” Mendez asked. “Had anyone been bothering her lately? Was she afraid of anyone?”

“Marissa was never afraid. She didn’t believe in fear. She embraced life. Every day. She had the most courageous spirit I’ve ever known.”

When he spoke of his deceased friend Zahn’s face took on a beatific, rapturous glow, as if he had seen an angel.

“Do you know of anyone who might have posed a threat to her?” Mendez asked.

“Detractors of her art,” Zahn said. “Detractors of her art threatened her creativity.”

“I meant more of a physical threat,” Mendez corrected himself.

Points for patience on that one, Vince thought. Zahn couldn’t seem to give a straight answer. The guy was socially off, his manner of speaking peculiar and often repetitive. He didn’t like to make eye contact, but once he made it, he went into a stare. A fascinating study if they hadn’t needed answers to jump-start a murder investigation.

Zahn looked away. “No,” he said, but Vince thought he didn’t mean it.

“Marissa was an artist?” Vince asked.

“Oh, yes. You didn’t know her? She was quite well-known. I’m surprised you didn’t know
of
her.”

“I’m new to the area,” Vince explained.

Zahn nodded. “Quite well-known. She was.”

“What do you do for a living, Zander?”

He seemed to think about his answer before saying, “I’m an artist as well. My life is my art.”

“You like the early morning light too,” Vince said, smiling like an old friend.

“Yes. I also meditate. I meditate very early. And then I come to see Marissa and Haley. We drink mimosas. Not Haley, of course,” he hastened to add. “Marissa is an excellent mother.”

“But this morning no mimosas,” Vince said. “Tell us your story, Zander. How you came here, what you saw along the way.”

“My story,” Zahn said, rolling the concept around in his labyrinth mind. He liked it. “I meditated until five twenty-three and then I walked here.”

“Where do you live?” Mendez asked.

“Over the hill. Off Dyer Canyon Road.”

“That’s a long walk.”

“I enjoy walking.”

“Did you see anything out of the ordinary as you approached the house?” Mendez asked.

“Not at all. It was quite dark.”

“What happened when you got here?”

“I went to the kitchen door. It was open, as always. I called out to Marissa. There was no coffee on. I couldn’t smell the coffee, but something else ... And then I saw them.”

Zahn stood up so abruptly they all startled.

“I’m finished telling my story now. I can’t tell this story,” he said, agitated, rubbing his palms hard against his thighs, as if trying to wipe off something greasy. “I’ll be leaving now. I have to go. This is very disturbing. I’m so disturbed by this.”

Vince rose slowly from his chair and put a hand out toward Zahn, as if to steady him, but very careful not to touch him.

“It’s all right, Zander. You’ve had a terrible shock,” he said quietly. “Someone here can drive you home. We’ll talk more another time.”

“I’m very disturbed,” Zahn said. “I would prefer to walk, thank you. Good-bye.”

They watched him cross the yard on his way to the path he had come on. He walked very quickly, his arms straight down at his sides as if bound to him.

“He’s disturbed,” Vince said.

Mendez rolled his eyes. “I’ll say.”

4

“How are you doing today, Dennis?”

“I hate this fucking place. Everybody here is a fucking nut job.”

Anne ignored the profanity designed to get a rise out of her. Dennis Farman was a disturbed little boy. He stared at her now as she sat across from him at the white Melamine table in the visitor’s room. He was a slightly odd-looking boy with his shock of red-orange hair and ears set a little too low on his head. His small blue eyes held either anger or emptiness, depending on his mood. Seldom anything in between.

He was twelve now. Anne had met him at the start of the school year in 1985 when she had been teaching fifth grade at Oak Knoll Elementary.

She had known from the first day Dennis would be trouble. She had been forewarned by his fourth-grade teacher. Having been held back in the third grade, Dennis was a little bigger than the rest of the boys in her class, and he had the look of a bully—which he was. But she’d had no idea at the time just how disturbed Dennis Farman was.

“Are you hating anyone in particular today?”

He jutted his chin out at her. “Yeah. You.”

“Why do you hate me?” she asked evenly. “I’m the only person who comes here to see you.”

“You get to leave,” he said, fidgeting on his chair. “I don’t. I have to stay here with the freaks.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Why?” he asked bluntly. “You think I’m a freak.”

“I never said that.”

Anne never considered herself naïve. She had firsthand knowledge that not every child grew up in an ideal environment. But no one had suspected the horror Dennis’s life had been. He had been physically and emotionally abused, and had been made an orphan a year ago by the murder of his mother and the suicide of his father, a deputy sheriff.

Just hours before his father’s suicide, Dennis had stabbed a class-mate, a little boy who had been his only friend. The boy, Cody Roache, had survived. It remained to be seen if Dennis would survive to live any kind of life.

Vince said no. In his experience, children as broken as Dennis Farman were beyond fixing. Anne wanted to hope that wasn’t true.

Maybe she was a little naïve after all.

Hopeful, she preferred to call it.

The judicial system didn’t know what to do with Dennis. He was considered to be too young to go to a juvenile facility, let alone prison, even though he was guilty of assault at the very least, and a case could certainly have been made for attempted murder. He had no relatives willing to take responsibility for him. No families in the foster care system would take him.

The temporary solution had been to house him in the county mental hospital. Partly her fault, Anne thought. She had been the one fighting to keep him out of the juvenile system by arguing that he was sick and needed help.

She had quit teaching to finish her degree in child psychology in part because of Dennis Farman. She had taken the training course to become a court-appointed special advocate for children specifically because of Dennis. Someone had to act as his voice in the court system and try to explain to him what was going on.

Troubled as he was, guilty as he was, he was still a little boy lost with no one in his corner. Anne had stood up and taken the job.

It wasn’t that she wanted the job. It wasn’t that she held any affection for Dennis Farman, personally. He was inherently unlikeable. The crime he had committed was shocking and terrible. It wasn’t even that she believed he could be salvaged or saved. She simply couldn’t stand by and watch a child be cut adrift for the rest of his life.

Vince wasn’t particularly happy about it. He worried she would only be disappointed at the futility of her battle and would, in the end, be heartbroken. Since her husband was one of the world’s leading experts on the criminal mind, it was difficult to argue with him on the subject. Anne had known only one homicidal child.

There was no doubt Dennis exhibited classic signs of being a sociopath with no ability to empathize with others. He was filled with rage at the rough hand life had dealt him. Anne suspected he had attacked Cody to make someone else hurt as much as he did. And to further complicate and twist his profile, Dennis had been harboring dark, sexually tinted fantasies for a long time—especially troubling in a child so young.

“You think I’m a freak. I know you do. Everybody does. Everybody hates me.”

“I don’t hate you, Dennis. Nobody hates you. Everybody hates what you did to Cody.”

He scowled and looked down at the table, pretending to draw on it with his thumb. Anne wondered what he was imagining. She would never forget the day she had discovered Dennis’s notebook masterpiece depicting naked women with knives in their chests. It was the first time she had ever really understood the concept of a person’s blood running cold.

“He didn’t die,” Dennis said. “What’s the big deal?”

“How would you feel if he had died?”

He shrugged with a nonchalance that would have been stunning if they had never had this conversation before. “Why did you do it, Dennis?” she asked.

Dennis rolled his eyes. “You keep asking me that. I keep telling you: just because. I just wanted to see what it felt like.”

She had never asked him to describe what it had felt like to plunge a knife into the stomach of his only friend. “Have you done your homework?” she asked.

“Why should I?” he challenged. “What are you gonna do to me if I don’t? Put me in jail? Put me in the loony bin?”

“I’m not going to do anything to you. But you would be helping yourself if you did it. Do you want to repeat the fifth grade when you get out of here?”

She had taken it upon herself to tutor him. No one else was interested in the job.

“I’m never getting out of here,” he said. “Or I’ll go to prison. Prison might be cool.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because there’s killers in there.”

Anne sat for a moment with her chin in her hand. This was like a chess game. How did she know she was making the right move? She felt way out of her league.

“You think killers are cool?” she asked. “Why?”

Now there was something like excitement in his eyes. Anne’s stomach twisted.

“Because,” he said, “if they don’t like somebody, they just kill them. Then they never have to see them again.”

What should she say to that? That killing is wrong? Who would he like to kill? She tried never to take the bait with him, thinking he mostly said these things for the shock value. What if she was wrong? For a moment she felt like she was drowning.

Dennis was watching her from the corner of his eye as he turned and sat sideways on his chair.

“I would kill Tommy Crane,” he said.

Anne didn’t react. It was no surprise. In fact, it was nothing he hadn’t said before.

“I know you don’t like Tommy,” she said. “You think he has a perfect life, but he doesn’t, Dennis. His father is going to go to prison.”

“Yeah. He’s a killer. That’s so cool.”

So was yours,
Anne was tempted to say. What would he do? Would he react? Would that crack the hard shell? Would he break down and cry?