The Lesson of Her Death Page 7

  "What're we going to do? She's taking the pills?"

  "Every day. But I don't think they're doing any good. They just seem to make her stomach upset." She waved vaguely toward the front yard. "Can you imagine she did that? Oh, my."

  Corde thought: Why now? With this case and everything, why now? He looked out the window at Sarah's bike, standing upright on training wheels, a low pastel green Schwinn, with rainbow streamers hanging pathetically from the rubber handle grips. He thought of Jamie and his high racing bike that he zipped along on fast and daring as a motocross competitor. Sarah still couldn't ride her tiny bike without the trainers. It embarrassed Corde when the family pedaled to town together. Corde tried to avoid the inevitable comparison between his children. He wished whatever God had dished out for them had been more evenly divided. It was difficult but Corde made a special effort to limit the pride he expressed for Jamie, always aware of Sarah's eyes on him, begging for approval even as she was stung by her own limits.

  A more frightening concern: some man offering a confused little girl a ride home. Corde and Diane had talked to her about this and she'd responded with infuriating laughter, saying that a wizard or a magic dog would protect her or that she would just fly away and hide behind the moon. Corde would grow stern, Diane would threaten to spank her, the girl's face became somber. But her parents could see that the belief in supernatural protectors had not been dislodged.

  Oh, Sarrie ...

  Although Bill Corde still went to church regularly he had stopped praying. He'd stopped exactly nine years ago. He thought if it would do anything for Sarah he'd start up again.

  He said, "It's like she's emotionally dis--"

  Diane turned on him. "Don't say that! She has a high IQ. Beiderson herself told me. She's faking. She wants to get attention. And, brother, you give her plenty...."

  Corde lifted an eyebrow at this.

  Diane conceded, "Okay, and so do I."

  Corde was testy. "Well, we've got to do something. We can't let that happen again." He waved toward the yard, like Diane reluctant to mention his daughter's mortality.

  "She's got her end-of-term tests in two weeks."

  "We can't take her out of school now," Corde said. "We can't hold her back another grade." He looked out the window. Why did the sight of a bicycle standing upright bother him so?

  It encouraged him that she could read some books by herself.

  It encouraged him that she had made and kept a few friends.

  It encouraged him that she was pretty.

  It destroyed him that she wasn't like Jamie.

  "There's something I ought to tell you," Corde said, hesitating, not knowing how she'd respond.

  He pointed to the Register, which rested with odd prominence on top of four cans of tomatoes in the middle of the table. It was open to the article about the murder.

  "Somebody left a copy of that story at the crime scene. It was saying that maybe we shouldn't be investigating this case too hard. Now it could be a prank and even if the killer left it I don't take it all that serious. But I'm going to have a deputy here at the house."

  This however seemed to be just another small burden on his wife's shoulders. Diane said matter-of-factly, "We shouldn't let Sarah play by herself then."

  "Not outside of the yard, no. We'll have to tell her somehow. But we don't want to scare her. She spooks so easy."

  Diane said, "You keep babying her. She's never going to grow up if you keep treating her that way."

  "I just think we have to be careful is all." Corde lifted his eyes to the post-and-rail fence two hundred feet away and saw a Hereford grazing in the field beyond. It reminded him of a picture Sarah had once tried to draw of a dalmatian. The drawing had been pathetic--an infant's scrawl. "It comes close to breaking my heart," he said. "It's like she's ..."

  "She isn't retarded," Diane hissed.

  "I didn't say that."

  "My daughter is not retarded." She turned her attention to the refrigerator. "I don't want to talk about it anymore."

  Rockets rising from grass from mud no no not mud servo rockets Dathar man he's great muscles ripping them all apart shooting with xasers.... Their bodies falling.... Falling into flowers.

  Falling. Into. Mud ...

  Philip Halpern sat behind the two-bedroom house, under the six-by-six back porch, which was for him at this moment the control room of his Dimensioncruiser. He listened. He heard footsteps from the house. They receded. Falling in mud, in flowers. No no no ...

  Philip was blond, five feet eight, and he weighed two hundred and forty-five pounds. He was the second heaviest person in his freshman high school class. Tonight, in size forty-four Levi's and a dark green shirt, he sat in a pile of leaves that had drifted under the porch. The boy lowered his head and stared at the bag at his feet. It was small, a sandwich bag, the sort that would contain lunch, when his mother made his lunch, of bologna sandwiches smeared with Hellmann's and potato chips and bananas and Oreos and eighty cents in dull-clinking coins for chocolate milk. Although what the bag contained tonight was small his hand moved slowly when he picked it up, as though the contents were very heavy.

  "Phathar!" a nearby voice whispered.

  Philip jumped then answered, "Jano, that you?" He squinted and saw a boy his age crawling through a secret gate they had built together in the chicken-wire fence that surrounded the Halpern property. "Jano, shit, be quiet."

  Between themselves, Philip and his friend had taken the names of characters in a recent science fiction film they'd seen four times. It was like a code, a secret that bound them together in this alien world.

  "Phathar, I've like called you ten times." Jano's voice was agitated.

  Phathar whispered harshly, "Just chill, will you? Shut up."

  Jano--full name Jano-IV of the Lost Dimension--climbed through the lattice gate of the porch. He said, "Why didn't you call me back? I thought you'd been arrested or something. Man, I almost puked this morning. I mean, like really."

  "Chill ... out. Okay?" Although Phathar-VII, also a warrior from the Lost Dimension, was calm and in control, Philip Halpern, young and overweight, was close enough to panic without his friend's adding to it. He said, "So what is there to do?"

  "I don't know. I almost puked." Jano repeated, looking as if he had. His mouth was wet and his eyes red and though it was too early in the season for serious freckles, the brown dots stood out on his face in sickly contrast to his pale skin.

  Phathar said, "How can they even find us?"

  "Oh, Jesus."

  "You're like a total pussy."

  "I am not!" Jano's eyes blazed.

  Philip, whom Jano could have pounded to the dirt floor with a single fist, backed off. "All right, dude, all right."

  Jano said, "We've got to destruct the files."

  "You know how long it took us to make those up?"

  Jano said, "We've got the names of half the girls in class on them. All the codes, all the pictures."

  "I've got them in a secret file. If anybody tries--"

  "But the pictures--" Jano whined in a voice that wasn't at all the voice of a Dimensional warrior.

  "No, listen," Phathar said. "If anybody tries to open the drawer everything self-destructs. It's automatic."

  Jano gazed into the night. "Oh, man, I wish we hadn't done it."

  "Stop talking that way," Phathar whispered ruthlessly. A fleck of saliva shot onto Jano's arm. The boy's revulsion showed in his face but he didn't brush the dot away. Phathar continued, "We did do it! We. Did. It. We can't bring her back to life."

  "Dathar could," Jano sniveled.

  "Well, we can't so quit like crying about it."

  "I almost puked."

  Above them: A squeak of opening door. A low voice snapped, "Phil!" Both boys froze. "Phil-lip!" His father's voice stabbed through the night like a Dimensioncruiser's engine kicking into antimatter mode. "The fuck are you? You got school tomorrow."

  Philip wondered if he himself was going to
puke. Even Phathar was trembling.

  "You can hear me, you got ten minutes. I have to come looking for you it'll be with the handy man."

  When the screen door slammed Phathar said, "You gotta leave. He finds you here he'll whip me."

  Jano stared at the underside of the porch above them then said, "Tomorrow." He left silently. To his shadowy, receding form, Phathar lifted his arm and closed his fingers in a Dimensional warrior salute.

  Oh, she struggled. She wrote the words a dozen times, careful always to tear up the ruined note and drop it into a garbage can. She'd failed him once. She wasn't going to make it worse by letting her mother and dad find out about him.

  Sitting at her desk she hunched over the tricky letters, willing her pen to move one way then watching it move the other. She would tell it to go up to make the top of a b and instead it went down and became a p. Left instead of right.

  Is this how an S goes? No. Yes.

  Sarah Corde hated S's.

  She heard the crickets playing their tiny squeak-fiddles outside in the cool night, she heard the wind brushing the trees. Neck and back cramped with tension she wrote for another half hour then looked at her work.

  Im sorry. I cant' go awya, they wont let me anb a police man is coomign comming in the mourning to watch us. Can you help me? You can have yor mony back. You are the Sunshine Man aren't you? Can I see you?

  She signed her name carefully.

  She felt a moment of panic, worrying that the Sunshine Man might not be able to read the note. Then she decided that because he was a wizard he could probably figure most of it out.

  Sarah folded the paper and wrote his name on the outside. She put on her jacket then she paused. She opened the note and added some words at the bottom.

  Im sorry I dont' spell good. Im realy sorry.

  Then she snuck out the back door into the windy night and ran all the way to the circle of rocks.

  The deputy showed up at eight-thirty almost to the second. He was young pink-scrubbed beefy eager and he wore on his hip a combat-gripped .357 Colt Python with a six-inch vented barrel. He was, in short, everything a husband could want to protect his wife and kids.

  "Morning, Tom." Corde picked up the Register from the driveway and held the screen door open for the deputy.

  "Howdy, Detective. Nice house you got here."

  Corde introduced him to the family. Diane offered him some coffee. He declined regretfully as if this were a slap at her cooking.

  The deputy retreated to the comfort of his Dodge watchtower parked in the driveway and the family sat down to breakfast. Jamie and Diane were talking about something, animated, near to an argument. Sarah sat quietly but was overjoyed at the news that she could stay home from school today. ("Only today, mind you, one day, just one, but no more absences for the rest of the year, you understand, young lady?"--Oh, yes, and how many times had they said the same thing?)

  Corde wasn't listening to his wife and son and he wasn't observing his daughter's elation because he was reading a short article in the Register and he was shocked.

  Cult Suspected in Auden Co-ed Murder

  He set his coffee on the table and knocked the syrup over. He didn't notice it fall. Diane glanced at him, frowning, and righted the bottle.

  ... Sheriff's Department investigators are looking into the possibility that a cult or religious killer may be stalking the town of New Lebanon....

  His eyes jumped through the article.

  ... and robbery was not a motive. Because she was killed on the night of the first quarter of the moon, there has been speculation that Miss Gebben may have been a sacrifice victim, possibly one in a chain of such killings. Sources close to the Sheriff's Department also disclosed that death threats have been made against its personnel....

  Threats plural?

  ... Sheriff Steve Ribbon stated emphatically, however, that they would in no way impede the investigation. "We aren't going to be bullied by these people, whoever they are, however sick they might be," Ribbon said. "We have some strong leads and we're pursuing them real hard."

  "Damn," Corde muttered, bringing an end to breakfast table arguments and meditations on freedom. He looked over the paper to find his family staring at him.

  "What is it, hon?"

  He handed Diane the article and told the children it was nothing. Jamie glanced over his mother's shoulder as she read.

  "A cult?" he asked.

  Diane finished the article. Jamie picked it up and continued to read.

  His wife asked him, "What's wrong with the story? I don't get it."

  "Too much publicity," he muttered. "I think it's best to play cases like this close to your chest."

  "I suppose," she said, and began clearing away dishes.

  Corde stood to fetch his gunbelt but before he left the kitchen he glanced at his wife. She was intent on dishes and seemed to have missed what was so troubling to him--that this story was a huge sign for the killer, which said, in the vernacular of Steve Ribbon, You may've threatened Corde but no matter. He's going ahead full steam and he don't give a good goddamn about your threats. You do your worst, you aren't stopping our boy Bill.

  They wouldn't go so far as to blurt out, "I was at a frat party" or "I was on a date the night it happened" or "You can ask anyone, I didn't even see her that night" even though that's what they wanted to blurt. But they were defensive and they were scared. Dodging Corde's cool green eyes, the boys glanced from his face to his gun, the girls to the floor. Some of them seemed inconvenienced, some were near tears. Often they did cry.

  Room 121 in the Student Union had never been put to such a sorrowful purpose.

  The room was worse than any interrogation cubicle at the New Lebanon Sheriff's Department. It was painted beige and smelled of adolescent perfume and after-shave lotion, chalk, poster paints, bitter bad coffee and food cooking in grease. Corde sat at a lightweight metal desk he could lift: with his knees by flexing his toes and he felt ridiculous. Lance Miller was in the opposite corner of the room.

  Throughout the morning students and staff workers of the school gave Corde their version of the essay "The Jennie Gebben That I Knew." They put their words to many uses--exonerating themselves, pressing the wound of loss, putting their names into the public record.

  Some even tried to help him catch a killer.

  In the morning alone Corde filled two packs of three-by-five cards. At one P.M. they took a break. Corde opened his briefcase to get a new pack of cards. As he cracked the cellophane wrapping, Miller glanced into the briefcase and noticed Corde staring at a photo taped to the inside. It was the one of Jennie Gebben, face shiny with sweat. Corde was aware of Miller's watching him and closed the lid. Miller went to the cafeteria to buy sandwiches.

  After lunch Miller looked out the window and said, "Oh, boy, here he comes again." Corde looked up and saw Wynton Kresge coming up the sidewalk. "What's that man want?" Corde asked.

  The security chief entered the small room, carrying an envelope.

  "Hiya, Wynton," Corde said. "What can we do you for?" Kresge set an envelope on Corde's desk. "What'd this be?" the detective asked.

  "I don't know. I was over to Town Hall and I saw Detective Slocum there. I mentioned I was going to be nearby the Student Union and he asked me if I'd mind dropping this off and I said I'd be happy to." He stopped abruptly, looking pleased he'd given the explanation so smooth. On the outside was stamped: Forensic Lab Interoffice Use Only--Fredericksberg. Kresge asked him, "They have a division in the state that looks for clues?"

  "This's the county lab. Jim Slocum was in the office? He's supposed to be checking out the roads and the mall," Corde snapped.

  Kresge asked, "You want me to check out anything at the mall? I'd be happy to."

  "No." Corde was miffed. He walked out of Room 121 to a phone booth disfigured with innocuous messages. Kresge remained in the activity room for a moment looking awkwardly at the blackboard. Then he left, walking past Corde and waving good-bye. Corde,
the phone crooked under his neck, nodded and watched his broad trapezoidal back disappear down the corridor. A deputy in the office said that Slocum wasn't there. Did Corde want him to call in? Corde answered, "No," and hung up angrily. He returned to the room and looked inside the envelope Kresge had brought.

  "Oh, no."

  Miller looked at him.

  "We missed ourselves a knife."

  "At the crime scene?"

  "Yup." Corde was looking at a bad photocopy. The technician had merely laid the weapon on the copier platen. The edges were out of focus and the background was smudged black. It was a short folding stiletto with a dark handle and a thin blade, which looked about four inches long--two shorter than the state limit for concealed weapons. There was a design on the handle--an insignia of some kind--in the shape of crossed lightning bolts. It looked vaguely like a Nazi insignia, Corde thought.

  He read the brief report from the Harrison County Crime Scene Division. The knife had been found in the flowers beneath where Jennie Gebben had lain, the blade closed. It had not been used on her--there were no traces of blood or tissue on the blade--though it might have been used to cut the rope the killer strangled her with.

  Steve Ribbon had added a handwritten note. Bill--Offering? Sacrifice? More evidence of Cult action. You should follow up.

  "Stupid of us, Lance. Damn stupid, missing something like this. And I went over the site twice. Slocum and I both." Corde's skin felt hot from this lapse. He pulled another report from the envelope--about the newspaper clipping and its threatening message. There had been no fingerprints. The red ink, in which were found several marker fibers, was from a Flair pen, sold in millions of stores around the country.

  On the Analysis Request form he had filled out to accompany the threat Corde had asked, What was used to cut the clipping out of the paper?

  A technician had replied, Something sharp.

  Finally the envelope contained the warrant permitting them to search Jennie's half of the dorm room. He handed it to Miller and told him to get over there with a crime scene unit. As he did so he happened to glance at Miller's notes and he realized he should have been paying more attention to what the young deputy was doing. "You wrote down the score of the homecoming game she went to."

  "Shouldn't I've?"

  "No."

  "Oh. I thought you wanted specifics."

  Corde said, "And you're supposed to be asking the girls in her dorm when Jennie had her period."