The Lesson of Her Death

by Jeffery Deaver

  "You spelled sacrificial wrong and also it doesn't sound like a newspaper story. They write things different. Smoother or something."

  "Well, I don't care about that. They'll doll it up. What do you think about what it says?"

  Ebbans read it again. He shrugged. "I think you hedged pretty good--at least so's Ribbon won't get too bent out of shape. But you know one thing, Bill. If we keep playing it up that we're after a cult killer the real perp might be, you know, lulled into thinking he's safe. He won't be as likely to carry out those threats against you. You run this, well, he may come looking for you."

  Corde had not considered this. He smoothed the copy of his release in front of him. "It's a risk, true. But it's my risk and I think I have to take it. We've got to get ourselves some witnesses."

  Returning to work from lunch Corde parked in the Town Hall lot and saw Steve Ribbon climbing out of his cruiser.

  The sheriff grinned a vacuous smile and motioned to him. Corde walked over to the car. They leaned butt-first against the fender.

  "Howdy, Steve."

  The sheriff nodded.

  The sunlight hit Ribbon's face and revealed a speckle of red on his cheeks. It reminded Corde that Ribbon volunteered every Christmas to play a Jaycee's Santa and slogged around in the snow and mud on New Lebanon's east side, visiting trailers and maimed bungalows occupied mostly by single parents and their kids.

  Whenever he formed opinions about Steve Ribbon, like the one he'd shared with T.T. Ebbans that morning, Corde tried to temper them with the memory of how the man spent December 24.

  "Say, Bill, there's a situation I've got to let you know about." The Register was tucked under Ribbon's solid arm.

  "Shoot."

  "I was just over at County. Hammerback's office. Last night he got a call from Dean Larraby over at Auden. You know her, right?"

  Corde grunted affirmatively.

  "Well, here's the scoop." Ribbon cleared his throat. "I seen that report on the burnt-up letters. The Gebben girl's letters?"

  "Yup."

  Ribbon exhaled long through closed teeth, stopping the breath with his tongue every second or so. Thup thup thup ... When his lungs emptied he took another breath and said, "Somebody saw you coming out of her room the day they were stolen."

  Corde looked down at the pebbly asphalt.

  "Wednesday afternoon," Ribbon said. "The day after she was killed."

  "Wednesday. I was there, yeah. I wanted to talk to Jennie's roommate."

  "Well, you didn't say anything about it. When Lance told us the letters were missing and--"

  "Steve, I was there without a warrant. The door was unlocked and people knew the girl was dead. I was afraid evidence would start to disappear. I took a fast look around the room and that was it."

  "Did you see--"

  "The letters weren't there, no."

  "Well, Jesus, Bill." Ribbon chose not to mention the most serious offense, the one that would be filling an uneasy ninety percent of his thoughts--that Corde had destroyed the letters himself. Instead he said, "Anything you'd picked up wouldn't've been admissible. That would've thrown the case all catercorner."

  "If I'd found anything I would've phoned in for a warrant then just baby-sat until Lance or T.T. showed up with it. All I was worried about was evidence disappearing."

  "Which is just what happened anyway."

  "Yes, it did."

  Ribbon's eyes swung like slow pendulums from Town Hall to a Chevy pickup and back. "I don't think this's a problem. Not yet. Hammerback's got more important things to worry about and the dean didn't know diddly about warrants or anything. She just had her tit in a wringer 'cause she doesn't like the way we're going after the school and not letting her know what we're about. But for Pete's sake, Bill, there's stuff about this case that could bite us in the ass we aren't careful."

  Corde held Ribbon's eye. "I didn't burn those letters, Steve."

  "Absolutely. I know you didn't. The thought never crossed my mind. I'm just telling you what some people who don't know you as good as me might think. Just, sort of, be on your guard, you know what I'm saying? Good. Now how 'bout we get back to the salt mines?"

  The front door of the Sheriff's Department office swung open and into the office strode Wynton Kresge. Corde had a permanent image of Kresge, walking into a room just this way, swaggering and carrying a manila folder. It was becoming a cliche. Kresge, dropping the envelope on a desk and standing like a proud retriever that'd set a shot quail one inch from a hunter's boot.

  "Thankya, Wynton." Corde sat in a chair at an unoccupied desk, opening the envelope. Still stewing about what Ribbon had told him, he added dismissingly, "That's all."

  Kresge went from hangtail to a pit bull in less than a second. Ebbans saw it coming and winced. Corde was caught completely off guard.

  "I'm just curious 'bout something, Detective," Kresge said loudly in a James Earl Jones baritone.

  Corde looked up. "I beg your pardon?"

  "What would you like me to call myself?"

  "How's that?"

  "I was just hoping you could provide some en-lightenment. Should I call myself Messenger?"

  "Oh, boy," Ebbans muttered.

  Kresge said, "Maybe Step-'n'-fetch-it?"

  Ebbans said again, "Oh, boy."

  Corde blinked. "What're you talking about?"

  "I'm talking about I don't work for you. I don't get a damn penny of town money, so everything I do for you's gravy and you treat me like I'm delivering pizza."

  Corde looked at Ebbans for help but the county deputy's face was a mask. Corde asked Kresge, "What are--

  "This girl gets herself killed and I say, 'Let me help you interview people.' I say, 'Let me help you look for clues.' I say, 'Let me help you put up fliers.' And you treat me like a busboy. You say--"

  "I didn't--"

  Kresge shouted, "You say, 'No, Wynton, no thanks, you're a black man! I don't need your help.'"

  "Oh, boy," Ebbans said.

  "You're crazy!" Corde yelled.

  "I don't see so many deputies working for you. I don't see so goddamn many suspects lined up you can cart 'em off in a bus. I offer you some help and what do you say? You say, 'That's all. Run 'long now. I'll call you when I need some im-poh-tant pay-pahs.'" Menace was deep on his brow.

  Work throughout the department had stopped. Even the 911 dispatcher had walked into the doorway of her office, leaning sideways, her head held captive by the plugged-in headset.

  Corde stood up, red-faced. "I don't have to listen to this."

  "I'm just curious what you've got against me?"

  "I don't have anything against you."

  "You don't want my help 'cause I'm black."

  Corde waved his arm angrily. "I don't want your help 'cause you don't know what you're doing."

  "How would you know? You never tried me out."

  "You never asked me if you could help."

  "Hell I didn't!" Kresge looked at Ebbans. "Did I ask to help? Did I volunteer?"

  Ebbans said to Corde, "He did ask, Bill."

  Corde glared.

  Kresge said, "I wish you lots of luck, detective. You need any more help from the university Security Department, you talk to one of the guards. They wear uniforms. They make seven twenty-five an hour. They'll be happy to pick up things for you. You can even tip, you want."

  Ebbans and Corde both squinted, waiting for the rippled glass window in the door to explode inward from the concussion of Kresge's slam. Instead, he closed it delicately and stomped off down the serpentine path to the driveway.

  Ebbans started laughing. Corde, his face red with anger, turned on him. "This isn't goddamn funny."

  "Sure it is."

  "What's with him? What did I do?"

  Ebbans said, "Don't they teach community relations in these here parts?"

  "That's not funny." They heard a car squeal away from the curb outside. Corde said, "Goddamn! I don't understand what I did."

  Ebbans said, "He
could be helpful. Why don't you apologize?"

  "Apologize?" he roared. "For what?"

  "You weren't taking him seriously."

  "He's a security guard."

  "You still weren't taking him seriously."

  Corde said, "I don't care if he's black. Where did he get that idea?"

  "Don't get so riled."

  "Son of a bitch."

  Ebbans said, "He might sue you. Discrimination."

  It took Corde a minute to realize that Ebbans was joking. "Go to hell."

  "You take everything else seriously. Just not him."

  Corde shook his head in anger then stood. He walked to the coffee vending machine and returned a minute later, sipping the burnt-tasting liquid. He grabbed the envelope Kresge had delivered. Without seeing them he looked at the half dozen resumes it contained for a few minutes then said, "I hope he does sue. I'd like the chance to say a few things to him in court."

  Ebbans said, "Bill, simmer down."

  Corde started reading the resumes. He looked up a moment later, was about to speak, then closed his mouth and went back to reading. A half hour later he'd calmed down. He asked Ebbans, "These things say CV on them. What does that mean?"

  "I don't know. Where?"

  "At the top. Oh, wait, here's one it's spelled out. Curriculum Vitae. What's that?"

  "Maybe it's Greek for resume."

  Corde said, "Professors ..." And went back to reading.

  After he finished he read them again and then said to Ebbans, "May have something here. Interesting."

  "What's that?"

  Corde handed Ebbans a copy of Randolph Sayles's CV. "What's this tell you?"

  Ebbans read carefully. "Got me."

  "He's one of Jennie's professors. Over the last twelve years he's been a visiting professor at three other schools. Two of them were for one-year terms. But at that one, Loyola, in Ohio, he left after three months."

  "So?"

  "After Loyola, it says, he spent the next nine months researching and writing a book before he came back to Auden. Nine months. That's the rest of the one-year period, after you subtract the three."

  Ebbans said, "Well, these professors travel around a lot, don't they? Maybe he took time off."

  "But he hasn't published any books since he's been back from Loyola. That was four years ago."

  "Maybe it's about to come out."

  "Well, let's speculate. Doesn't it seem possible, let's just say, he got dumped from Loyola and didn't want to come back here right away. It would look strange. He'd have to explain why he got kicked out."

  "That's a reach, Bill."

  Corde picked up the telephone. He dialed long-distance directory assistance, then the number he'd been given. As he did, Ebbans continued, "I don't know. Getting fired's pretty thin grounds to make him a suspect, isn't it?"

  Not if he was fired because he slept with a student then assaulted her when she threatened to report it.

  The dean at Loyola College outside of Columbus, Ohio, took some convincing before he would tell Corde this and even then he did so only after he'd patched in the school's lawyer, on an extension, to tell the dean what questions to answer, which turned out to be all of them.

  After he hung up Corde said to Ebbans, "The assault charges were dropped. Nothing ever came of them but Sayles agreed to resign. What do you think now?"

  "I think there's something else." Ebbans pointed at the resume. "Randy Sayles is the associate dean in charge of financial aid."

  "Rings a bell."

  "Jennie Gebben worked for him."

  They were outside in the yard, lapped by bands of cool air then hot. As Corde and Diane sat pressed together on the picnic blanket, he remembered this phenomenon from his teenage days. They called it hotcolds. Waves of warm breeze alternating with waves of cold, drifting through fields around the New Lebanon High School at dusk. A schoolmate had an explanation: when a man and a woman did it, the air around them got real hot and stayed that way for hours; what the boys felt was proof that somewhere upwind a dozen girls had just gotten laid.

  Corde and Diane had come outside to watch what was advertised as a meteorite shower. After the threatening photo he had made an extra effort to get home early and once there stay put for the evening. He'd noticed the story about the meteorites and, after Sarah and Jamie were in bed, asked his surprised wife if she'd like to have a date in the backyard. Diane had spread the blanket down and with half a bottle of wine beside them they sat close together, fingers twined, listening to crickets and owls and feeling the hotcolds wash over them.

  The sky was clear and dominated by the near-full moon. They'd seen only one meteorite in fifteen minutes, though it had been spectacular--a long pure white streak covering half the sky. The afterimage remained in their vision long after the burning rock disintegrated.

  "Do you wish on 'em?" Diane asked.

  "I think you can. I don't know."

  "I don't know what to wish for."

  "If you decide," Corde said, "don't say it out loud. Meteors're probably like birthday candles and wishbones."

  She kissed him, gripping his lip with her teeth. They lay on the dew-moist blanket, kissing hard, sometimes brutally, for almost five minutes. His hand slipped up under her sweater and into her bra. He felt her stiffen as her nipple went instantly hard.

  "Passion," he whispered, grinning.

  "Cold," she said, exhaling a laugh. "I know a place where it's warmer."

  "So do I." His hand started down toward her jeans.

  Diane grabbed it with both of hers. "Follow me." She stood up and pulled him toward the house.

  "Does this have anything to do with your wish?" he asked.

  They lay in the same pose as in the yard. Now though they were naked and atop a hex-pattern quilt Diane's mother had begun the year of the Iran embassy takeover and finished the year of the Challenger explosion. The three-way light was on dim and Corde had licked off the last bit of her lipstick. He rolled her over on her back.

  "Wait a minute," she said, bounding up. "Let me put it in."

  The promised minute passed. Then several others. He heard running water. He heard a toothbrush. He rolled over on his back, gripping himself and squeezing to keep hard.

  He heard the toilet flush. He squeezed harder.

  He heard the medicine cabinet opening and closing. He stopped squeezing; he was firm as a teenager.

  For about ten seconds.

  "Ohhhh, Bill ..."

  The heartsick cry, the alto moan of Diane's voice, was pitiful. A scream would have been less harrowing. Corde was on his feet and running into the bathroom, thinking only when he arrived that he should have taken the time to unlock the bedside table and pull his pistol from the drawer.

  The blue diaphragm case lay at her feet. The rubber disk itself rested like a pale yellow blister on the sink.

  Diane was sobbing, her arms around herself, covering her nakedness even from her husband.

  Bill saw a small white square on the floor at her feet. He picked it up while Diane pulled her red terrycloth bathrobe off the back of the door and slipped it on, tying the belt tightly around her. "It was inside," she whispered, spinning a stream of toilet paper off the roll and using it to pick up the diaphragm. She carried it like a crushed wasp to the wastebasket and dropped it in. She did the same with the plastic case, then began scrubbing her hands with soap and hot water.

  This Polaroid had been taken at the same time as the one left on the back steps. The scene was of Sarah, or whoever the girl might be, lying in the grass, her skirt still up to her waist. The angle was about the same, so was the lighting. There were in fact only two differences. The photographer was now much nearer--only several feet from the girl.

  And the message in red marker on the back was different. It said: GETTING CLOSER

  Corde unlocked the gun rack and lifted out his long, battered Remington. He slipped three shells into the tube and from a desk drawer took a cylindrical chrome lock. He separated it
and fitted the two parts on either side of the trigger guard. He squeezed them together with a soft ratchety sound. He put one key on his keychain and carried the other key and the gun itself into the living room, where Diane sat staring at the floor. Her mouth was a thin line.

  "How is he doing this?" Diane's voice broke in frustration.

  "I don't know, honey."

  "How does he get past the deputy?"

  "I think he might've left that note the same time he left the other one. He's probably long gone by now."

  "Might've ... probably ... Doesn't anybody know anything about this man?"

  Corde kneaded the key absently. No, we don't. We don't know a damn thing at all.

  After a moment he said, "I'll talk to Tom tomorrow. Have him make trips around the house and into the woods."

  Corde set the gun in the corner. "I didn't chamber a round. You'll have to pump it once. The safety's off. Just pump and pull. You know how to do it. Aim low." He handed her the key and she stood up and put it in her purse. She seemed calmer now, seeing the gun, having some control.

  "Wait a minute," Corde said. He took the key out of her bag and walked into their bedroom. He returned a moment later with a thick golden necklace. He slipped the key over the end and then clasped it behind her neck. He kissed her on the forehead.

  She said, "This's the chain you gave me when you gave me your class ring."

  "Figured that was the right length to let everybody know to keep their hands off." The key rested at the shadow of her cleavage.

  She smiled and hugged him and cried some more.

  Corde said, "It's plate, you know. The chain."

  "Isn't a girl alive can't recognize plate from solid. But it was the ring I was most interested in."

  Corde held her face. "We're going to get through this just fine. Nothing's going to happen to you or the kids. He's just doing this to rattle me. I promise."

  Diane dried her eyes and walked toward the bedroom. She said, "God give me strength."

  At first no one in town paid much attention; it was mostly little things. Like when the Register came out, more people than usual bought it. And what they turned to first was the almanac page, which showed the phases of the moon for the next thirty days.

  Sales of shotgun shells and rifle ammunition were running twice what they usually did this time of year (being nowhere close to season yet). The sporting goods section of Sears, which normally sold tons of Ted Williams baseball gear this month, was doing most of its dollar volume in low-cost .22s, .30-'06s, and even Crossman CO2 air pistols.