Secrets To The Grave Part 5

"Yeah. She's an artist too. Marissa Fordham was teaching her some technique for painting on silk, whatever that means. She showed up this morning for her lesson."

Vince c.o.c.ked half a smile. "My uncle Bobo from the South Side used to have a silk tie with a painting of Wrigley Field on it. If that's coming back, I've got an inside track. Put your orders in now, fellas."

They all chuckled.

"Let's get one for Trammell," Hamilton suggested. "With a picture of Einstein on it."

"Anyway," Mendez said, "Sara said Zahn would sometimes just show up and hang around. He gave her the creeps, but Ms. Fordham didn't seem bothered at all."

"She was comfortable with him," Vince said.

"Apparently."

"I'd like to see him in his natural environment," Vince said. "I'm curious. And I think he definitely knows more than he told us this morning. I'll take Junior here," he said to Dixon, hooking a thumb in the direction of Mendez. "He makes the guy nervous."

"I hear his dates have the same reaction," Trammell said.

"If he didn't always have to read them their rights ... ," Hicks said.

"I thought it was the handcuffs," Mendez joked.

Dixon cleared his throat. "And do we have any names of friends to start checking out?"

Mendez read off the short list he had gotten from Sara Morgan.

"No boyfriends?" Vince questioned.

"Not that Mrs. Morgan knew of."

"But they were friends."

Mendez shrugged. "She said they never talked about it."

"I've never known a woman who could stop herself from blabbing on and on about what guy she's sleeping with," Trammell said.

"Unless the guy she's seeing belongs to someone else," Vince suggested.

"A married lover?" Dixon said. "Always a possibility-and a motive. Let's talk to the other women on that list and see what we can come up with. It's tough to keep a secret in a town this size-especially a juicy one.

"I know most of you are already working other cases," he went on, consulting his notes, reading gla.s.ses perched on the end of his nose. "But I need all of you on this initially. The press is going to have a field day with a gruesome murder in Oak Knoll practically on the anniversary of the See-No-Evil cases. I want to clear this one before they can get up a head of steam."

"We've got a vic with forty stab wounds, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s missing, and a knife sticking out of her v.a.g.i.n.a," Mendez said. "Somehow, I don't think they're going to let this one go."

Dixon turned to Vince. "What are your impressions so far, Vince?"

Vince shrugged. "Obviously, it's a s.e.xual homicide, but what's it about? Rage, yes. Rage over what? She done him wrong? She must have done him way way wrong. wrong.

"Taking the b.r.e.a.s.t.s sometimes suggests a kind of envy," he said. "b.r.e.a.s.t.s are symbolic of a woman's beauty, her power."

"Take her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, take her power," Mendez said.

"Right. And sometimes removing body parts is about possession, possessing the victim by keeping a part of them."

"Like Ed Gein."

"Like Ed Gein."

The notorious 1950s Butcher of Plainfield. The Wisconsin man had made lampshades and chair seats out of the skin of his victims, and bowls out of their skulls, to name but a few of his atrocities.

"Only Ed not only wanted to keep his female victims with him," Vince said. "He wanted to be be them. He made himself a 'woman suit' out of the skin and parts of corpses." them. He made himself a 'woman suit' out of the skin and parts of corpses."

"Man, that's disgusting," Hicks said.

"You think that's disgusting. I can tell you about a couple of cannibals and what possessing their victims meant to them."

"Maybe after lunch," someone suggested sarcastically.

"Sometimes the body parts can be strictly a trophy," Vince went on. "We'll hope to G.o.d that's not the case, because that would suggest he's a hunter, and hunters don't stop hunting."

"Jesus, that's all we need," Dixon said. "Another serial killer. One was more than enough."

"The odds of you having another serial killer on your hands are about as long as they can get," Vince said. "We're talking about an extremely rare animal, no matter how many of them appear every week on television.

"In my opinion, the attack on Marissa Fordham was personal. That many stab wounds is personal. But that butcher knife looks to have belonged to the victim, which makes this seem more like a crime of opportunity, of the moment. Someone got angry, grabbed that knife and used it. I think the knife protruding from the v.a.g.i.n.a is the killer making a personal statement about the victim."

"Don't f.u.c.k her, she's dangerous?" Trammell asked.

"Exactly."

"All right," Dixon said. "Let's get out there and find out who felt the need to send that message."

9.

"How is Mrs. Morgan?" Vince asked as they climbed into the car.

Mendez looked over at him as he stuck the key in the ignition. "Not happy to see me. I can tell you that."

"She went through a lot last year," Vince said. "Anne gets together with her and Wendy every so often. She really wants to maintain that contact with the kids. Wendy has had some trouble coping. She's withdrawn a bit. It's a sad thing."

"Is the husband still in the picture?"

"As far as I know."

"I don't get that." Mendez shook his head. "The guy cheated on her with a woman who ended up dead, lied about it, withheld information from a murder investigation. He's a Cla.s.s-A p.r.i.c.k and she stays with him. What's wrong with women? She's a beautiful, talented lady. She deserves better."

"He's the father of her child," Vince said. "I'm sure Wendy loves her dad. Given the choice, kids want their parents to stay together. Tension in a marriage is a scary thing for a child, but not as scary as losing one of the two most important people in their life."

"You were married before. How did your kids take it?"

Vince made a face. "I was an absentee father most of their lives. My girls already knew what it was like to live without me. Their day-to-day didn't change all that much when I moved out."

"You regret that."

"h.e.l.l, yeah. They're my daughters. I love them. I blew it. My ex-wife is a great gal, but she got tired of being a single parent and eventually she found herself another partner. I picked my career over my family."

"But think of everything you've done in your career, man. You were a f.u.c.king pioneer. The Behavioral Sciences Unit wouldn't have evolved in the same way without you. Think of the cases you've helped solve, the killers you've helped put behind bars. That's worth a lot."

"It is. I don't discount that," Vince said. "I've made important contributions to the larger world. Unfortunately, those contributions cost me a big price. They cost me my marriage. I missed watching my daughters grow up. But we make our choices and we live with the good and the bad of them. I just know I'm not making the same mistakes twice, that's all."

"Yeah," Mendez groused with good nature, "rub my nose in it, why don't you?"

Vince grinned. He had beaten his protege to the punch where Anne was concerned-a fact that never ceased to please him. "You snooze you lose, Junior. But don't take it too hard. Maybe we'll name our first-born after you."

"a.s.shole."

"Ha!"

Their first stop was the administration building at McAster College. The school's campus was beautiful, impeccably maintained, shaded with huge old oak trees. Established in the 1920s, many of the buildings were original, a mix of traditional ivy-covered brick and Spanish Revival stucco.

The administration building would have looked just as at home on the campus of Princeton. Wide front steps led to a grand set of doors.

"What do you think that says?" Mendez pointed up to the inscription carved in stone above the doors.

"If I had absorbed any of the Latin the nuns tried to pound into me in school, I could tell you."

"I think it says, If you have to ask, you can't afford it."

They took the elevator to the third floor and walked down the hall to the president's office. Vince had met McAster's president, Arthur Buckman, nearly a year ago, after the press had finally gotten wind of Vince's role in the See-No-Evil cases. He had been swamped with requests for interviews and speaking engagements.

Still an agent at the time, he had to route all requests through the Bureau. The FBI was not keen on agents grandstanding or freelancing. Most of the requests had been denied. Vince had personally asked several people to hold off, pending his retirement. Arthur Buckman had been one of those.

"Vince!" Buckman greeted him, coming out of his office. A transplanted New Yorker, he was a vertically challenged, balding doughboy in wire-rimmed gla.s.ses and a three-piece suit. Always smiling. As the head of one of the top private colleges in the country, he had a lot to smile about.

Vince pumped his hand. "Art. This is Detective Mendez with the sheriff's office. Tony, Arthur Buckman."

Buckman motioned them into an impressive, wood-paneled corner office that boasted a view of the McAster quad, busy now with students crisscrossing from cla.s.s to cla.s.s. "You shouldn't be surprised to hear your lectures are already full, Vince. Our psych department is thrilled."

"I'll do my best to live up to expectations," Vince said, taking a seat. The scent of lemon furniture polish went up his nostrils and seemed to stab into the backs of his eyes. d.a.m.n bullet.

"What can I do for you gentlemen?" Buckman asked.

"Just a little background on a faculty member," Vince said.

For the first time the president lost his smile. "Has something happened?"

"Alexander Zahn," Mendez said, digging his notebook out of the inside breast pocket of his sport coat.

"Dr. Zahn? Has something happened to him?"

"No, no," Vince a.s.sured him, sitting back, squaring an ankle over a knee. The picture of relaxation. "He reported a crime against a neighbor of his this morning. We just want to get a feel for who he is. Someone told us he teaches here."

"Yes. Periodically," Buckman said.

Mendez glanced up at him. "He's not on the faculty?"

The president squinted behind his gla.s.ses, pained somehow. "It's ... complicated . . ."

"We met Dr. Zahn this morning," Vince said. "He's a complicated kind of guy."

"Yes. That's safe to say," Buckman agreed. "Zander is a genuine genius. We're very lucky to have him in any capacity. But he does have certain ... limitations."

"Some high-functioning offshoot of autism?" Vince asked.

"Good guess."

"And this guy can be a professor?" Mendez said. "Here?"

"He's not intellectually impaired," Vince explained. "He's socially challenged."

Mendez grimaced as he stared down at his notebook. "I'll say." "Of course, you understand I can't really discuss a faculty member's mental health with you," Buckman said.

"No, of course not," Vince said. "I'm just trying to get some insights on the man. Put some things into context."

"You said something happened to a neighbor of his?"

"A woman he was friends with was murdered," Mendez told him. "Zahn discovered her body."

"Oh my G.o.d," Buckman said. "Another woman murdered? Not again. It's not like the others-"

"No, no," Vince a.s.sured him. "Unrelated."

"That's not good news either, is it? You don't think Dr. Zahn-?"

"We don't have any reason to think that, sir," Mendez said. "He reported the crime and cooperated fully this morning."

"Thank G.o.d." Buckman sighed. "That explains why he hasn't come in today. He was supposed to give a lecture this morning. His a.s.sistant reported he wouldn't be able to make it, that he was terribly upset, but that he wouldn't say why."

"Does he do that often?" Vince asked. "Cancel?"

"Sometimes he cancels. Other times he becomes so absorbed in the subject matter he goes on with a lecture for hours over his allotted time. He's difficult, but he's a brilliant mathematician. The students are all aware of his issues, but his cla.s.ses are always full with a waiting list."

"He has an a.s.sistant?" Mendez prompted.