The Lesson of Her Death

1

With every passing mile her heart fled a little more.

The girl, nine years old, sat slumped in the front seat, rubbing her finger along the worn beige armrest. The slipstream from the open window laid a strip of blond hair across her face. She brushed it away and looked up at the unsmiling, gray-haired man of about forty. He drove carefully, with his eyes fixed beyond the long white nose of the car.

"Please," the girl said.

"No."

She put her hands into her lap.

Maybe when he stopped at a red light she would jump out.

Maybe if he slowed down just enough…

Would it hurt, she wondered, to leap from the car into the tall grass beside the road? She pictured herself tumbling through the green blades, feeling the cold sprinkle of dew on her face and hands.

But then what? Where would she run to?

The first click of the turn signal interrupted these thoughts and the girl jumped as if a gun had fired. The car slowed and rocked as it pulled into the driveway, aiming toward a low brick building. She realized that her last hope was gone.

The car eased to a stop, brakes squealing like a sob.

"Give me a kiss," the man said, reaching over and pushing the buckle release. The seat belt retracted. She held on to the nylon like a lifeline.

"I don't want to. Please."

"Sarah."

"Just for today? Please."

"No."

"Don't leave me."

"Out you go."

"I'm not ready!"

"Do the best you can."

"I'm scared."

"There's nothing to be -"

"Don't leave me!"

"Look -" His voice grew stony. "I'm going to be right nearby. Just over at Blackfoot Pond. That's hardly a mile away."

Her inventory of excuses was depleted. Sarah opened the car door but remained sitting.

"Give me a kiss."

She leaned over and kissed her father quickly on his cheek then climbed out of the car, standing in the cool spring air heavily scented with bus exhaust. She took three steps toward the building, watching the car pull out of the driveway. She thought suddenly about the Garfield toy stuck to the back window of the family station wagon. Sarah remembered when she'd placed it there, licking the cups before squeezing them against the glass. For some reason this memory made her want to cry.

Maybe he would catch a glimpse of her in the mirror, change his mind and return.

The car vanished behind a hill.

Sarah turned and entered the building. Clutching her lunch box to her chest she shuffled through the corridors. Although she was as tall as any of the children swarming around her she felt younger than them all.

Tinier. Weaker.

At the fourth-grade classroom she stopped. Sarah looked inside. Her nostrils flared and she felt her skin prickle with a rash of fear. She hesitated only for a moment then turned and walked resolutely from the building, buffeted and jostled as she forced her way through the oncoming stream of shouting, calling, laughing children.

Not thirty feet from where they had found the body last night, he saw the note.

The piece of paper, pierced by a wild rose stem the shade of dried blood, fluttered in the moist wind, sending out a Morse code in the low morning sunlight.

Bill Corde pressed toward the paper through a tangle of juniper and maple saplings and stubborn runners of forsythia.

Had they missed it? How could they?

He barked his shin on a hidden stump and swore softly but continued toward the scrap.

Corde was six foot two and his short hair was Persian-cat gray, which because he was just about to turn forty made him maybe seven-eighths premature. His skin was pale, the month being April and Corde having been fishing only twice so far that season. He looked lean from a distance but his belt curled outward more than he would have liked; Corde's most strenuous sport these days was gentlemen's softball. This morning as always his New Lebanon Sheriffs Department shirt was clean and stiff as a sheet of new balsa wood and his beige slacks had razor creases.

Corde was by rank a lieutenant and by specialty a detective.

He remembered this place not twelve hours before – last night, lit only by the deputies' flashlights and the edgy illumination of a half-moon. He had sent his men to scour the ground. They were young and austere (the ones trained in the military) or young and arrogant (state police academy grads) but they were all earnest.

Although they were virtuosos at DUI arrests and joyridings and domestics, what the deputies knew about murder they had learned mostly from pulp thrillers and TV, just like they knew about guns from stubbly autumn fields, not from the state pistol range up in Higgins. Still they had been ordered to search the crime scene and they had, doggedly and with fervor.

But not one of them had found the piece of paper toward which Bill Corde now struggled through thick brush.

Oh, you poor girl…

… who lies at the foot of a ten-foot-high earth dam.

… who lies in this chill wet dish of mud and low grass and blue flowers.

… whose dark hair is side-parted, whose face is long, whose throat thick. Her round lips curl prominently. Each ear holds three wire-thin gold rings. Her toes are lanky and their nails dark with burgundy polish.

… who lies on her back, arms folded over her breasts, as if the mortician had already done her up. The pink floral blouse is buttoned high. Her skirt extends so modestly below her knees, tucked beneath her thighs.

"We got her name. Here we go. It's Jennie Gebben. She's a student."

Last night Bill Corde had crouched down beside the body, his knee popping, and put his face next to hers. The pearlish half-moon was reflected in her dead but still unglazed hazel eyes. He had smelled grass, mud, methane, transmission fluid, mint from her lips and perfume like pie spices rising from her cold skin.

He had stood and climbed to the top of the dam, which held back the murky waters of Blackfoot Pond. He had turned and looked down at her. The moonlight was otherworldly, pale, special-effects light. In it, Jennie Gebben seemed to move. Not living, human movement but shrinking and curling as if she were melting into the mud. Corde had whispered a few words to her, or to whatever remained of her, then helped the men search the ground.

Now, in the morning brilliance, he pushed his way through a final tangle of forsythia and stepped up to the rosebush. With his hand inside a small plastic bag, Corde pulled the paper from the russet thorns.

Jim Slocum called, "The whole shebang?"

Corde did not answer him. The boys from the department had not been careless last night. They could not have found this scrap of paper then because it was a clipping from the morning's Register.

Slocum asked again, "The whole, uhm, place?"

Corde looked up and said. "The whole thing. Yeah"

Slocum grunted and continued unwinding yellow police-line tape around the circle of wet earth where the girl's body had been found. Slocum, after Corde, was the next senior New Lebanon town deputy. He was a muscular man with a round head and long ears. He'd picked up a razor-cut hairstyle in 1974, complete with sideburns, and had kept it ever since. Except for theme parks, hunting trips, and Christmas at the in-laws', Slocum rarely left the county. Today he whistled a generic tune as he strung the tape.

A small group of reporters stood by the road. Corde would give nothing away but these were rural news hounds and well behaved; they looked all filled up with reporters' zeal but they left the two officers pretty much alone, content to shoot snaps and study the crime scene. Corde figured they were sponging up atmosphere for tomorrow's articles, which would brim with adjectives and menace.

Corde lowered the newspaper clipping, now wrapped in the plastic bag, and looked around him. From the dam, off to his right, the ground rose to a vast forest split by Route 302, a highway that led to the mall then to a dozen other county roads and to a half-dozen state highways and to two expressways and eventually to forty-nine other states and two foreign countries where a fugitive killer might hide till the end of his days.

Pacing, Corde looked over the forest, his lips pressed tightly together. He and Slocum had arrived five minutes before, at eight-thirty. The Register started hitting stores and porches at about seven-fifteen. Whoever had left the clipping had done so in the past hour.

Listening to the hum of wind over a strand of taut barbed wire, he scanned the ground beneath the rosebush. It was indented by what seemed like two footprints though they were too smeared to help in identification. He kicked over a log that appeared newly fallen. A swarm of insects like tiny armadillos scurried away. Striding to the top of the dam, he placed his hands on green metal pipes sunk into the dirt as a railing.

He squinted deep furrows into his forehead as he looked through the morning sunlight that crackled off the wind-roughed water of the pond. The woods stretched away from him, endless acres encased in a piercing glare.

Listen…

He cocked his head and pointed his ear at the stream of light.

Footsteps!

He gazed once again into the heart of the forest. He lifted his hand to his eyebrows to shade the sun yet still the light dazzled. It stung his eyes. He could see everything, and he could see nothing.

Where?

When he lowered his palm it came to rest on the grip of his service revolver.

She ran most of the way.

The route from New Lebanon Grade School to Blackfoot Pond was three miles along 302 (which she was forbidden to walk on) but only a half-hour through the forest, and that was the path she took.

Sarah avoided the marshy areas, not because of any danger – she knew every trail through every forest around New Lebanon – but because she was afraid of getting mud on the shoes her father had polished the night before, shiny as a bird's wings, and on her rose-print knee socks, a Christmas present from her grandmother. She stayed to the path that wound through oak trees and juniper and pine beds of fern. Far off a bird called. Ah-hoo-eeeee. Sarah stopped to look for it. She was warm and took off her jacket, then rolled up the sleeves of her white blouse and unbuttoned the collar. She ran on.

As she approached Blackfoot Pond she saw her father standing with Mr. Slocum at the far end of the water, two or three hundred feet away through the thickest part of the forest. Their heads were down. It looked as if they were searching for a lost ball. Sarah started toward them but as she stepped out from behind a maple tree she stopped. She had walked right into a shaft of sunlight so bright it blinded her. The light was magical – golden yellow and filled with dust and steam and dots of spring insects that glowed in the river of radiant light. But this was not what made her hesitate. In a thicket of plants beside the path she saw – she thought she saw – someone bending forward watching her father. With the light in her eyes she couldn't tell whether it was a man or woman, young or adult.

Maybe it was just a bunch of leaves and branches.

No. She saw movement. It was somebody.

Her curiosity suddenly gave way to uneasiness and Sarah turned away, off the path, starting downhill to the pond where she could follow the shoreline to the dam. Her cautious eyes remained on the figure nearby and when she stepped forward her gleaming black shoe slipped on a folded newspaper hidden under a pile of dry leaves.

A short scream burst from her mouth and she reached out in panic. Her tiny fingers found only strands of tall grass, which popped easily from the ground and followed her like streamers as she slid toward the water.

Corde called to Slocum, "You hear anybody over that way?"

"Thought I might have." Slocum lifted off his Smokey the Bear hat and wiped his forehead. "Some footsteps or rustling."

"Anything now?"

"Nope."

Corde waited four or five minutes then walked down to the base of the dam and asked, "You through?"

"Yessiree," Slocum said. "We head back now?"

"I'll be taking a Midwest puddle jumper over to St Louis to talk with the girl's father. Should be back by three or so. I want us all to meet about the case at four, four-thirty at the office. You stay here until the Crime Scene boys show up."

"You want me just to wait, not do anything?"

"They're due here now. Shouldn't be long."

"But you know the county. Could be an hour." Slocum's way of protesting was to feed you bits of information like this.

"We gotta keep it sealed, Jim."

"You want." Slocum didn't look pleased but Corde wasn't going to leave a crime scene unattended, especially with a gaggle of reporters on hand.

"I just don't want to get into a situation where I'm sitting here all day."

"I don't think it'll -"

A crackle of brush, footsteps coming toward them.

The officers spun around to face the forest. Corde's hand again fell to his revolver. Slocum dropped the tape, which hit the ground and rolled, leaving a long thick yellow tail behind it. He too reached for his pistol.

The noise was louder. They couldn't see the source but it was coming from the general direction of the rosebush that had held the clipping.

"Daddy!"

She ran breathlessly toward him, her hair awash in the air around her, beads of sweat on her dirty face. One of her knee socks had slipped almost to her ankle and there was a thick streak of mud along a leg and arm.

"Sarrie!"

My sweet Lord! His own daughter. He'd had his hand on his gun and he'd been five seconds away from drawing on her!

"Oh, Sarah! What are you doing here?"

"I'm sorry, Daddy. I felt all funny. I got to school and I thought I was going to be sick." Rehearsed, the words stumbled out in a monotone.

Jesus Lord…

Corde crouched down to her. He smelled the scent of the shampoo she had received in her Easter basket not long ago. Violets. "You should never, never be where Daddy's working. You understand that? Never! Unless I bring you."

Her face looked puffy with contrition. She glanced at her leg then held up her dirty forearm. "I fell."

Corde took out his sharp-ironed handkerchief and wiped the mud off her limbs. He saw there were no cuts or scrapes and looked back into her eyes. There was still anger in his voice when he demanded, "Did you see anyone there? Were you talking to anybody in the woods?"

The fall had not bought the sympathy she'd expected. She was frightened by her father's reaction.

He repeated, "Answer me!"

What was the safest answer? She shook her head.

"You didn't see anyone?"

She hesitated then swallowed. "I got sick at school."

Corde studied her pale eyes for a moment. "Honey, we talked about this. You don't get sick. You just feel sick."

A young reporter lifted a camera and shot a picture of them, Corde stroking a slash of blond hair out of her eyes. Corde glared at him.

"It's like I have pitchforks in my tummy."

"You have to go to school."

"I don't want to! I hate school!" Her shrill voice filled the clearing. Corde glanced at the reporters, who watched the exchange with varying degrees of interest and sympathy.

"Come on. Get in the car."

"No!" she squealed. "I'm not going! You can't make me."

Corde wanted to shout with frustration. "Young lady, get in that car. I'm not going to tell you again."

"Please?" Her face filled with enormous disappointment.

"Now."

When Sarah saw her plan wasn't going to work she walked toward Corde's squad car. Corde watched, half expecting her to bolt into the forest. She paused and scanned the woods intently.

"Sarah?"

She didn't turn her head. She climbed into the car and slammed the door.

"Kids," Corde muttered.

"Find yourself something?" Slocum asked.

Corde was tying a chain of custody card to the bag containing the newspaper clipping he had found. He signed his name and passed it to Slocum. The brief article was about last night's killing. The editor had been able to fit only five paragraphs of story into the newspaper before deadline. The clipping had been cut from the paper with eerie precision. The slices were perfectly even, as if made by a razor knife.

Auden Co-ed Raped, Murdered was the headline.

The picture accompanying the story had not been a photo of the crime scene but was a lift from a feature story the Register had run several months ago about a church picnic that Corde had attended with his family. The cut line read, "Detective William Corde, chief investigator in the case, shown here last March with his wife, Diane, and children, Jamie, 15, and Sarah, 9."

"Damn, Bill."

Slocum was referring to the words crudely written in red ink next to the photograph.

They read: JENNIE HAD TO DIE. IT COULD HAPPEN TO THEM.

2

They climbed the stairs slowly, one man feeling the luxurious carpet under his boots, the other not feeling a single thing at all.

Outside the wind howled. A spring storm enveloped this lush suburb, though inside the elegant house the temperature was warm and the wind and rain seemed distant. Bill Corde, hat in hand, boots carefully wiped, watched the man pause in the dim hallway then reach quickly for a door knob. He hesitated once again then pushed the door inward and slapped the light switch on.

"You don't have to be here," Corde said gently.

Richard Gebben did not answer but walked into the middle of the pink carpeted room where his daughter had grown up.

"She's going to be all right," Gebben said in a faint voice. Corde had no idea whether he meant his wife, who was in the downstairs bedroom drowsy from sedatives, or his daughter, lying at the moment on a sensuously rounded enamel coroner's table two hundred miles away.

Going to be all right.

Richard Gebben was a crew-cut businessman with a face troubled by acne when young. He was Midwestern and he was middle-aged and he was rich. For men like Gebben, life moves by justice not fate. Corde suspected the man's essential struggle right now was in trying to understand the reason for his daughter's death.

"You drove all the way here yourself," Gebben said.

"No, sir, took a commuter flight. Midwest Air."

Gebben rubbed the face of his Rolex compulsively across his pocked cheek. He touched his eyes in an odd way and he seemed to be wondering why he was not crying.

Corde nodded toward her dresser and asked, "May I?"

"I remember when she left for school the last time she was home, Thanksgiving… I'm sorry?"

"Her dresser. I'd like to look through it."

Gebben gestured absently. Corde walked to the bureau but did not yet open it.

"Thanksgiving. She'd left the bedclothes all piled up. In a heap. After she'd gone to the airport, Jennie's mother came up here and made the bed and arranged it just like that…"

Corde looked at the three pink-and-white gingham pillows on top of the comforter, a plush dog with black button eyes sticking his head out from under them.

"My wife, she took a long time to arrange the dog." Gebben took several deep breaths to calm himself. "She… The thing about Jennie was, she loved…"

What was he going to say? Loved life? Loved people? Loved flowers kittens poetry charities? Gebben fell silent, perhaps troubled that he could at this moment think only of the cheapest clichés. Death, Corde knew, makes us feel so foolish.

He turned away from Gebben to Jennie's dresser. He was aware of a mix of scents. She had a dozen bottles of perfume on the mirrored dressing table. The L'Air du Temps was full, a bottle of generic cologne nearly empty. He lifted it, looked at the label and set it down. His hand would retain for days the sharp spicy smell, which he recalled from the pond last night.

The bureau contained nothing but clothes. Above it a hundred postcards and snapshots were pinned to a corkboard. Jennie's arm twined around the waists of dozens of boys, faces different, poses similar. Her dark hair seemed to be darker in summer though that might be a trick of Kodak convenience photography. She often wore it pinned back. Her sport was volleyball and a dozen pictures revealed her playing the game with lusty determination on her face. Corde asked if he could have one of these, a close-up of Jennie, pretty face glossy with sweat. Gebben shrugged.

How Corde hated this part of the job, walking straight into the heart of people's anguish.

Corde touched several recent snapshots of the girl with friends. Gebben confirmed that all of them were away at other schools – all except Emily Rossiter, who was Jennie's current roommate at Auden. Corde saw: her high school ID card. Ticket stubs from a Cowboy Junkies concert, a Bon Jovi concert, a Billy Joel concert, a Paula Poundstone show. A greeting card with a silly cartoon rabbit on the front offered her congratulations on passing her driving test.

Corde pulled the chair away from her desk and sat. He surveyed the worn desktop in front of him, nicked, scratched, marked with her doodlings. He saw a bottle of India ink. A framed picture of Jennie with a scruffy cocker spaniel. A snapshot of her coming out of church one recent spring, maybe at Easter, blue crocuses at her feet.

She died on a bed of milky blue hyacinths.

In a lopsided clay cup was a chewed yellow pencil, its eraser worn away. Corde lifted it, feeling beneath the thick pads of his fingers the rough indentations and the negative space of Jennie Gebben's mouth. He rubbed the wood, thinking that it had once been damp from her. He replaced the pencil.

He went through her desk, which held high school assignments, squares of wrapping paper, old birthday cards.

"No diaries or letters?"

Gebben focused on the detective. "I don't know. That's where they'd be." He nodded toward the desk.

Corde again looked carefully. No threatening letters, no notes from spurned boyfriends. No personal correspondence of any kind. He examined the closet, swinging aside the wealth of clothes and checking the shelves. He found nothing helpful and closed the double doors.

Corde stood in the middle of the room, hands on his hips, looking around him.

"Was she engaged? Have a steady boyfriend here?"

Gebben was hesitating. "She had a lot of friends. Nobody'd hurt her. Everybody loved her."

"Did she break up with anybody recently?"

"No," Gebben said and shrugged in such a way that Corde understood the man had no idea what he was saying.

"Anybody have a crush on her?"

"Nobody who knew Jennie would hurt her," Gebben said slowly. Then he added, "You know what I was thinking? Since I got the call I haven't told anybody. I've been working up courage. For all those people – her grandparents, her friends, my brother's family – Jennie's still alive. For all they know she's sitting in the library studying."

"I'll leave you now, sir. If you can think of anything that might help us I'd appreciate a call. And if you find any letters or a diary please send them to me as soon as you can. They'd be very important." He handed Gebben one of his cheap business cards.

Gebben studied the card. He looked up, sloe-eyed and earnest. "It's going to be all right."

He said this with such intensity that it seemed as if his sole purpose at the moment was to comfort Bill Corde.

Wynton Kresge sat in his office in the main administration building of Auden University. The room – high-ceilinged, paneled in oak – was carpeted in navy blue, pretty much the same color as that in his Cutlass Supreme though this pile was twice as thick. His desk was a large mahogany piece. Occasionally when he was on the phone listening to someone he had no desire to be listening to (which was pretty often), Kresge would imagine ways to get the desk out of the office without knocking a hole in the wall. On particularly slow days he actually considered trying to remove it. He would have been a good candidate for this project: Kresge was six foot four and weighed two hundred and sixty pounds. His upper arms measured fifteen inches around, his thighs were twenty-four, and only a minor percentage of those dimensions was fat. (He had never lifted a barbell in his life but had retained much of the muscle he cultivated when he was a college linebacker for the Tigers not the Missouri Tigers the Dan Devine Tigers.)

The top of the desk held one telephone with two lines, one brass lamp, one blotter, one leather desk calendar opened to this week, one framed photo of an attractive woman, seven framed photos of children, and one piece of paper.

The paper, held down by Kresge's massive hand as if he were afraid it would blow away, contained the following words: Jennie Gebben. Tuesday ten p.m. Blackfoot Pond. McReynolds dorm. Lovers, students, teachers, robbery? rape? other motive? Susan Biagotti? Beneath this was an awkward diagram of the campus and the pond and the road around it. Kresge touched his earlobe with the butt of his Schaeffer sterling silver ballpoint pen, which he had polished just the night before, and considered what he'd written.

Kresge drew additional lines on the paper, crossing off words, and adding others. He was drawing a dotted line from the campus to the pond when a knock on the closed door made him jump. By the time his secretary walked into the room without announcing herself further the piece of paper was wadded up and slam-dunked into Kresge's wastebasket.

"She wants to see you," said the secretary, a pretty woman in her late thirties.

"She does."

The secretary paused then said, "You're holed up in here."

"I beg your pardon?"

She said, "I used to think that that phrase was "hauled up." Like they hauled somebody up in a tower so he could escape from the police or something."

"The police?" Kresge asked.

"But then I found out it was "holed up." Like, go into a hole."

"I don't really know. Now?"

"She said now."

Kresge nodded. He unlocked his top drawer and from it took out a dark gray Taurus 9mm semiautomatic pistol. He looked to make certain there was a full clip in the grip of the gun then slipped it in a belt holster. He left the room with what the secretary sensed, though Kresge himself did not, was a look of intense, almost theatrical, determination on his face.

This was how she would build the house: She would find some land – there, that beautiful field with the gold and white flowers in it, there through the window, surrounded by green-silver trees. She could see, from her cell, the tall grass waving in a breeze soft as a kitten's lazy tail. Then she would call her friends the animals and -

"Sarah, are you with us?"

Her head snapped away from the window and she found thirty-two children and one adult staring at her. Her breath escaped in a soft snap then stopped completely. Sarah looked at their eyes and felt her heart shudder then start to beat at a fast gallop.

"I called on you. Come up here."

Sarah sat still and felt the pure heat from her face flood into her arms and chest.

Mrs. Beiderson smiled, her face as sweet as Sarah's grandmother's. Mrs. Beiderson smiled a lot. She never raised her voice at Sarah, never shouted at her, never took her hand and walked her to the principal's office like she did the boys that drew pictures on their desks or fought. Mrs. Beiderson always spoke to Sarah in a voice like a pussy willow.

Sarah hated her more than anyone in the world.

"Sarah, now come along. This is just practice. You're not being graded."

The girl looked at her desk. Inside was the pill her mother had given her. But it wasn't time to take it yet.

"Now, Sarah."

Sarah stood, her hands at her sides, too heavy to lift.

She walked to the front of the dungeon and turned to face the class. She felt Mrs. Beiderson's smile pelt the back of her neck like a whip of snakes. She glanced at the trees outside the window. Oh, the freedom of the trees! She could smell the bark, she could feel the fuzz on the bottom of an elf cap growing up through ivy, she could see the doorway to the secret tunnel in her house.

Looking out over her classmates' faces, she saw Priscilla Witlock laughing, Dennis Morgan twisting up his fat lips into a mean grin, Brad Mibbock rolling his eyes. Laughter roaring so loud it struck her face and stung. She saw boys holding fists above their you-knows and moving them up and down, she saw girls with long red fingernails and dangling bracelets, girls her age but with round perfect breasts and sleek makeup and high heels, girls taunting her…

And Mrs. Beiderson, who saw only the bored faces of her class and heard nothing but Sarah's whimpering, said, "Sarah, your word is 'clarify.'"

The sound hit Sarah with the jolt of a schoolyard punch. Her daddy had helped her with this word. But she knew it had several up-down letters, which were very hard for her. She began to cry.

"You've done it before," smiling Mrs. Beiderson said in her soft lying, cheating, snaky voice. "You're not trying, Sarah. We all have to try." Mrs. Beiderson touched the rose cameo at her throat. "'Clarify' is on the list. Didn't you study the list?"

Sarah nodded.

"If you studied the list then there's nothing to cry about."

Now everyone would know she was crying, even the students in the back.

"I can't."

"You don't want us to think you're being difficult, do you? 'Clarify.'"

Between sobs, Sarah said, "C."

"Very good." The snake smiled.

Her knees quivered. "I don't know. I don't." More tears.

"What's the next letter?"

"I don't know."

"Try."

"C-A…"

Mrs. Beiderson exhaled a sigh. "All right, Sarah. Sit -"

"I could do it at home -"

"- Down. Anyone else?"

And Priscilla Witlock didn't even rise from her seat but was staring right at Sarah, slinging out the letters, C, then L, then A, then R, spelling the word in the time it took Sarah to take a huge gulp of air to try to quench her fear.

And then she felt it. First a trickle. Then a flood, as her panties grew wet and she put her hand down-there to stop herself but knowing it was too late, the flowing warm moisture running around her leg and Mrs. Beiderson saying, "Oh dear oh dear," and some of the class looking away, which was as bad as the rest of the class staring, as bad as knowing the story would be all over town and everybody would know even her grandfather up in heaven would know…

Sarah threw her arms around herself and ran to the door, pushing it open with her shoulder. The glass burst into a spiderweb of cracks. She leapt down the stairs two at a time and ran blindly down the corridor to the front door of the school, leaving on the linoleum the swirls and drips of her shame, like fragments of the letters that had beaten her once again.

The woman said, "Whatever has to be done and I mean it."

Dean Catherine Larraby was fifty-five and, if you squinted, looked like Margaret Thatcher. Gray hair, round face, stocky. Reassuring jowls. Eyes tired but severe. A coolness around the edges that Bill Corde thought was permanent and had not arisen with the killing. She had not applied her makeup well and the powder had accumulated in the creases around her mouth and on her forehead.

He breathed deeply. He was still queasy from the bumpy flight back from St Louis and more so from the frantic drive from the county airport to make this meeting.

Through the windows of her breezy office Corde saw the manicured grass of the quadrangle, bordered with luminous green trees. Students walked along the sidewalks and paths; it seemed to Corde that they moved in slow motion. He remembered college as much more frantic. He was constantly hurrying, walking briskly into class, sweating, unprepared.

A man appeared in the doorway, a tall, heavyset black man.

"Ah," the dean said, "Detective Corde. Wynton Kresge, head of campus security." Corde shook his callused wad of hand and did a double take when Kresge's expensive suit coat swung open, revealing the no-nonsense automatic pistol.

The dean looked at Kresge but when she spoke it was to the sixteen thousand parents of her eight thousand wards. "We've got to catch this man. We're going to catch him."

Corde said, "I'd like to start interviewing Jennie's friends and professors as soon as possible."

The dean's stubby fingers aligned a pen three times. "Of course," she said after a moment. "Is that necessary?"

Corde took out a stack of blank three-by-five cards. "I'd like to ask some preliminary questions. I have an address for her. McReynolds Hall. That's correct?"

"Right. She was GDI," Kresge answered; the dean frowned.

Corde began to write. He printed his notes and used only capital letters, which with their many curved strokes gave a vaguely oriental appearance to his handwriting. "GDI? That's a sorority?"

"No," Kresge explained, "GDI is what the dormies call themselves. People who aren't in frat or sorority houses. It means God Damn Independents." The dean kept staring at him and Kresge said, "Well, that's what they say."

The dean said, "There are so many implications."

Corde said, "I beg your pardon."

"We may get sued," she said. "When I talked to her father last night he said he may sue the university. I told him it didn't happen on campus."

"It didn't," Kresge said. "Happen on campus, I mean."

Corde waited a respectful time for either of them to make some point then continued, "I'd like a list of all the residents and employees, handymen and so on, in that hall -"

"It's a very large dorm," the dean said. "That might cause, I don't know, panic."

"- and also her professors and students in all her classes." Corde noticed Dean Larraby wasn't writing any of this down. He heard rustling next to him. Kresge was jotting notes with a silver pen in a soft leather diary.

Corde asked, "I'd like to know if she was seeing a therapist or counselor. And I'd like a list of any employees of the school convicted of violent crimes."

As icily as a deposed prime minister, Dean Larraby said, "I'm sure we don't have any."

"You'd be surprised," Corde said.

"I'll find out," Kresge said.

"I'll guarantee you that we have no criminals on our staff."

"Probably not," Corde said agreeably. He turned to Kresge. "You're going to be my contact here?"

"Sure."

Corde shuffled his index cards. He said to Kresge, "If you could get this info to me ASAP?"

"No problem, Detective," Kresge said. "And I'd be happy to interview some of the students for you, or the professors. I know a lot of them personally and…"

Corde found he'd been ignoring Kresge. He looked up and smiled. "Sorry?"

When Kresge repeated his offer Corde said, "Not necessary, thanks."

"I'm just saying if you need a hand."

Corde turned to the dean. "I'd like a room of some kind."

Dean Larraby asked, "Room?"

"For the interviews. We'd prefer to do it on campus."

Kresge said, "The Student Union's got a lot of activity rooms."

Corde marked a note on one of his cards. "Book one for me, would you?"

There was a slight lapse before Kresge said, "Will do."

"Detective…" The dean's voice contained an element of desperation. Both men looked at her. She put her hands flat on the desk as if she were about to rise and lecture. Her fingers touched the wood with twin clicks and Corde noticed rings – a thick purple stone on her left hand, an even larger yellow one on her right. Presents to herself, Corde thought. "We have a contradictory problem here," she said. "You read the Register, you must know this school's in the midst of a fiscal crisis. Our enrollment is the lowest it's been in twenty-three years." She smiled humorlessly. "The baby boomers have come and gone."

Corde did read the Register. He had no idea what shape the finances of Auden University were in.

"It's of course in our interest to find the man who did this as fast as possible. But we don't want it to appear that we're panicked. I've already gotten a call from one of the school's benefactors. He's quite concerned about what happened." Corde looked at her blankly. "When benefactors get concerned, Detective, I get concerned."

Kresge said, "We've beefed up security patrols in the evening."

Corde said that was good.

The dean continued as if neither had spoken. "We're getting applications now for the fall term and they're running much lower than we'd expected." She caressed her cheek with her little finger and missed an uneven streak of prime minister makeup by a millimeter. "Isn't it most likely, Detective, that it was a drifter or somebody like that? Somebody not related to the school?"

Kresge said, "We can't assume anything, Dean."

The dean was ignoring Kresge too. She was his boss and could do a better job of it than Corde.

Corde said, "We just don't know anything at this point."

Kresge said, "One thing I wanted to mention. The Biagotti killing."

The dean clucked. "Wynton, Susan lived off-campus. She was killed in a robbery attempt. Isn't that what happened, Detective?"

"Susan Biagotti? It seemed to be a robbery, I recall."

The dean continued, "The school had nothing to do with it. So -"

"It was never solved, Dean," Kresge's baritone droned. "I was just speculating."

"- why bring it up?"

Corde said to both of them, "I don't think there's any connection. But I'll look into it."

"There was no connection," the dean said sourly.

"Yes, ma'am. I'm sure that's the case. Now the sooner I get back to work, the sooner we'll catch this fellow. You'll get that information, William?"

"Wynton."

"Sorry."

"Uhn, Detective, I wanted to ask you something. About motives for this type of crime. I -"

Corde said, "I'm sorry. I'm running pretty late. If you could just get me as much of that information as you can in the next hour or so I'd appreciate it. And the room. Don't forget the room."

Kresge's spacious unsmiling face nodded slowly. "You'll get it when you want it."

Diane Corde pressed the phone tight against her ear. She still held a grocery bag in one muscular arm.

"Oh, no…" She listened for a moment longer then lifted the phone away from her mouth. She called, "Sarah? Sarah are you home?"

Silence, broken only by the click and whir of the refrigerator.

"No. She hasn't come back yet. When she's upset sometimes she hides in the woods."

Diane cocked her head as she listened to Sarah's teacher explain how concerned they all were. Mrs. Beiderson also added delicately that the girl had been daydreaming all morning before the practice test. "I sympathize, Mrs. Corde, I really do. But she simply must try harder. She's bringing a lot of these problems on herself." Diane nodded at the phone. Finally she said the words that seemed to end so many of these conversations: "We'll talk to her about it. We'll talk to her."

They hung up.

Diane Corde wore blue jeans and a burgundy cotton blouse. With her high school graduation cross gold and glistening at her throat she looked like a pretty, born-again country-western singer. Her husband said she had thisaway hair because she wore it moussed up and brushed back. Wide-shouldered and thin-hipped, Diane had a figure that had pretty much withstood two children and forty-three years of gravity. On her forehead was a small scar like a crescent moon, which mimicked by half the end of the iron pipe she'd run hard into when she was four.

Diane set the groceries on the counter and returned to the back door to get her keys from the lock.

No keys.

She tried to recall – she had hurried inside from the car when she heard the phone ringing. She looked on hooks, on counters, at the bottom of her purse, in the freezer (it had happened more than once). On the off chance that she'd left them in the station wagon she walked outside and ducked her head through the open window. They hung from the ignition. She shook her head at her absentmindedness and plucked them out. She started back to the kitchen. She stopped cold, one foot on the doorstep.

How had she gotten inside without the keys?

The back door had been open.

The dead bolt was the only lock on the door and it could be secured only with a key. Diane clearly remembered locking it when she left for the A &P. Somebody had entered the house and left without bothering to relock the door.

Bill had been a cop for twelve years and had made his share of enemies; he'd instructed the children a thousand times always to lock the door when they left.

But Sarah of course could ignore a thousand stern warnings.

The girl had probably returned home to wash up after the incident at school then run outside to hide in her magic woods, forgetting to lock the door. I'll have another talk with her… But then Diane decided, no, the girl had been through enough. No scoldings today. She returned to the kitchen, dropped the keys into her purse, and began to think about supper.

She sits in the woods, hugging herself, knees up to her lowered chin, in the circle of magic stones. Sarah Corde is now breathing slowly. It has taken hours to calm down. By the time she got here, running the entire two miles from the school, her dress and underpants were dry but still she feels dirty – as if a sorcerer had thrown a potion on her.

She is no longer crying.

Sarah lies back in the grass that she pulled out of the nearby field and spread in the circle like a bed. She lifts the hem of her dress up to her waist as if the sunlight will clean the poison completely away and she closes her eyes. Sarah is sleepy. Her head grows heavy as a stone and she feels that she is floating in the moat of an old castle. Beiderbug Castle …

Sarah looks up at the clouds.

A huge dog with wings big as the county, a chariot pulled by a flying fish, and there, there – a towering thunderhead – is a god carrying a fierce club. He wears golden sandals, magic shoes that carry him high above this terrible place, the earth…

As she falls asleep she pictures the god turning into a wizard.

When she wakes, an hour or more has passed. The chariot is gone, the flying fish is gone, the god with his club is gone.

But Sarah finds that she has had a visitor.

She sits up, pulling her skirt down, then reaches forward cautiously and picks up Bedford T. Redford the world's smartest bear, who sits beside her, the shaggy face staring at her with humorous, glassy eyes. She left him that morning propped on her bed after she hugged him a tearful good-bye and left for school. How he got here she has no idea. In the ribbon around his collar is a piece of paper. Sarah unfolds it, panicking for a moment as she sees that it contains words she must now read. But then she relaxes and takes one word at a time. After fifteen minutes of agonizing work she manages to read the entire note.

She is shocked and terrified by its message. Suspicious of words, she decides she must have read it wrong. She tries again and finds that, no, she read it correctly.

Her first thought is that she could never do what the awkwardly printed letters suggest.

But as the girl looks around her at the dense woods, where she has hidden so often after fleeing from school, the woods in which she feels more at home than in her own living room, that fear slowly fades.

And eventually becomes joyous anticipation.

Sarah rises to her feet, thinking that one part of the note certainly is true. There really is nothing left for her to do.

3

The New Lebanon Sheriffs Department was a small place. Four private offices – for the sheriff, for Detectives Corde and Slocum and for Emma, the radio dispatcher/secretary. The central room contained eight gray GI desks for the deputies. To the side was a long corridor that led to the two cells of the lockup. On the wall was a rack containing three shotguns and five black AR-15s. The room was filled with enough unread and unfiled paper to go head to head with any small-town law enforcement office in the country.

Jim Slocum – fresh back from the pond – looked up from his desk, where he was reclining in a spring-broken chair and reading the Register. Sheriff Steve Ribbon stood above him. Ribbon, solid and sunburnt red as the flesh of a grilled salmon, was slapping his ample thigh with a book. What's the Pocket Fisherman want now? Slocum raised an eyebrow. "Damn mess." He held up the paper like a crossing guard with a portable Stop sign. It was folded to the article on the Gebben murder.

Ribbon crooked his head to say, yeah, yeah, I read it. "Come on into my den, would you, Jim?"

Slocum followed the sheriff five feet into his office. Ribbon sat, Slocum stood in the doorway.

This's right clever, we just reversed positions.

"Bill here?" Ribbon asked.

"He flew over to St Louis this morning to talk to the girl's father -"

"He did what?"

"Flew up to St Louis. To talk to the girl's -"

Ribbon said, "The girl was killed? That girl? Why'd he do that for? He think we're made of money?"

Slocum chose not to answer for Bill Corde and said only, "He said he wants us all to meet about the case. At four, I think it was."

"We gotta watch our pennies, I hope he knows that. Anyway, I wanted to kick something around with you. This killing's got me bothered. I hear it wasn't a robbery."

"Doesn't seem to be."

"I was noticing there were some parallels between what happened and a couple other cases I'd read about. It occurred to me that we might have a cult killer problem here."

"Cult?" Slocum asked carefully.

The book dropped onto the desk. A paperback, fanned from bathtub or hammock reading. Bloody Rites. On the cover were three black-and-white photos of pretty girls over a color photo of a blood-spattered pack of tarot cards. "Whatsis?" Slocum picked it up.

"I want you to read it. I want you to think about it. It's about this Satanist down in Arizona a couple years ago. A true story. There are a lot of similarities between what happened here and that fellow."

Slocum flipped to the pictures of the crime scenes. "You don't think it's the same guy?"

"Naw, they caught him. He's doing life in Tempe but there are… similarities." Ribbon stretched out the word. "It's kind of scary."

"Damn, they were good-looking." Slocum gazed at the page of the book showing the victims' high school graduation pictures.

Ribbon absently stroked his black polyester tie and said softly, "What I'd like you to do is get yourself up to Higgins. The state police have a psychology division up there. Follow up with them on it."

"You think?" Slocum read a passage where the writer described what the Arizona killer had done to one co-ed. He reluctantly lowered the book and said, "I'll mention it to Bill."

"Naw, you don't have to. Just call up the boys in Higgins and get an appointment."

Slocum grinned. "Okay. I won't fly."

"What?"

"I won't fly up there."

"Why would you? – Oh, yeah, haw." The sheriff added, "We gotta make sure word gets around about this."

"How's that?"

Ribbon said, "Well, we should make sure the girls in town are warned about it."

"Wouldn't that kind of tip our hand?"

"It's our job to save lives too."

Slocum flipped through the pictures again. Ribbon leaned forward and tapped the book. "Hang on to that. You'll enjoy it. It's a real, what do they say, page-turner."

The Incorporated Town of New Lebanon reluctantly owned up to its mouthful of a name. By the time the village was chartered in the 1840s all the good names – the European capitals and harmonious-sounding biblical locales – had been taken. The final debate had pitted the New Lebanonites against New Luxemburgians. Because the former had a respectful ring of Old Testament, the vote was predictable.

The town was in Harrison County, named after William Henry, not because of his thirty-day term as president but for his tenure as Indiana Territory governor during which he decimated native Indian tribes (Tippecanoe, of campaign-slogan fame) and allowed counties like this his namesake to congeal into what they were today: mostly white, mostly Protestant, mostly rural. New Lebanon's economy floated on milk, corn, and soybeans, though it had a few small factories and one big printing plant that did a lot of work for Chicago and St Louis and New York publishers (including the ever-scandalous and – anticipated Mon Cher magazine, scrap bin copies of which flooded the town monthly thick as shucked cobs at harvest).

Also located in New Lebanon was the only four-year college for a hundred miles. Auden University goosed the town population up to fourteen thousand from August to May and gave locals the chance to sit through performances of second-tier orchestras and avant-garde theater companies, which they boasted about being able to attend but rarely did. The NCAA was about the only real contact between Auden and the natives, virtually none of whom could afford the seventeen-thousand-dollar tuition, which bought you, times four, just a liberal arts degree and what the hell good was that?

The residents had ambivalent feelings towards the students. The school was a bounty, no denying: thousands of young people with nothing to do but eat out, go to movies and redecorate their dorm rooms, and what's more there was a new brood of them every year just like hogs and veal calves. And some locals even felt a nebulous pride when Auden University Economics Professor Andrew Schoen appeared on Meet the Press or a book by English professor John Stanley Harrod was favorably reviewed in the New York Times, to which a grand total of forty-seven New Lebanonites subscribed.

On the other hand Auden was a burden. These money-shedding young people got drunk and puked and sneered and teepeed trees with toilet paper and broke plate glass. They shamelessly bought Trojans and Ramses in front of grade-school children. They walked around looking important as bankers. They burned effigies of politicians and occasionally a flag. They were gay and lesbian. They were Jewish and Catholic. They were Eastern.

Bill Corde was not a product of Auden though he was of New Lebanon. Born and reared here, he'd ventured away only for four years of service (standing guard with his M-16 over missiles in West Germany) and a few years in Missouri as a patrolman then detective in the St Louis Police Department. He returned to New Lebanon and after six months of feed and grain, teaching Sunday school and thinking about starting a contracting business, he applied for a job at the town Sheriffs Department. His experience made him a godsend to Steve Ribbon, whose closest approximation to police training had been the Air Force (he and his rifle had protected B-52s in Kansas). After a year as the department's oldest rookie Corde was promoted to detective and became the town's chief felony investigator.

On the neat wall above his neat desk in the hundred-and-four-year-old town building were some framed documents: a diploma from Southwestern State University and certificates from the ICMA's Police Business Administration Institute of Training in Chicago as well as one from the Southern Police Institute in Louisville. The proof was absent but he had also taken various FBI training seminars and courses in law and visual investigation analysis. He had just returned from Sacramento and a week-long session at the California Department of Justice.

The certificates he had proudly tacked up were simple vouchers of completion; Corde was a bad student. He collected words that described himself. He was persistent, he was industrious, he had sticktoitiveness. But Bill Corde was born C-plus material and that didn't change whether the subject was one he hated (English, social studies) or loved (criminal psychology or link-analysis-charting techniques). He wrote slowly and produced leaden meat-and-potato reports, and although as detective his official hours were pretty much eight to six he would often stay late into the night muscling through an article in Forensics Today or the Journal of Criminal Justice, or comparing the profiles of suspects in his cases with those in the NASPD's Felony Warrants Outstanding Bulletin.

Some people in town – that is to say, the people who worked for him – thought Corde took his job too seriously, New Lebanon being a place where the State Penal Code's thousand-dollar threshold between petty and grand larceny was not often crossed, and four of last year's six deaths by gunshot were from failing to open a bolt or breach when climbing over a fallen tree. On the other hand Corde's arrest-per-felony rate was a pleasure to behold – ninety-four percent – and his conviction-to-arrest ratio was 8.7:10. Corde kept these statistics in a thirdhand IBM XT computer, the department's major concession to technology.

He now finished reviewing the coroner's preliminary report on Jennie Gebben and stood up from his desk. He left the sheriffs office and strode across the hall to the lunchroom. As he walked a quarter materialized in his hand and he rolled it over the back of one finger to the next and so on, around and around, smooth as a poolhall hustler. His father had taught him this trick. Corde Senior made the boy practice it with his hand extended over an old well on the back of the family property. If he dropped a coin, plop, that was that. And his father had made him use his own two bits. Corde had seen a lot on TV recently about men's relations with their fathers and he thought there was something significant about the way his father had taught him this skill. He had learned a few other things from his old man: His posture. A loathing of second mortgages. An early love of hunting and fishing and a more recent fear of the mind's wasting before the body. That was about all.

Corde was real good at the coin trick.

He entered the lunchroom, which was the only meeting place in the town building large enough to hold five brawny men sitting – aside from the main meeting room, which was currently occupied by the New Lebanon Sesquicentennial Celebration Committee.

He nodded to the men around the chipped fiberboard table: Jim Slocum, T.T. Ebbans – the lean, ex-Marine felony investigator from the Harrison County Sheriffs Department – and New Lebanon Deputy Lance Miller. At the far end of the table, surrounded by two empty chairs, was Wynton Kresge. Corde thought, Antsy as a tethered retriever on the first day of season.

He dropped the quarter into his pants pocket and stood in front of a row of vending machines. He was about to speak when Steve Ribbon walked in. Corde nodded to him and leaned back against the Coke machine.

"Howdy, Bill. Just want to say a few words to the troops about this case, you don't mind." The sheriffs ruddy face looked out over the men as if he were addressing a crowd of a thousand. Ribbon scrutinized Wynton Kresge who represented two oddities in this office – he was black and he wore a suit.

Kresge took the look for a moment, realized he was being asked a question then said, "I'm from the college."

"Oh. Well." Ribbon's voice enlarged to encompass everyone. "I just want to put my two cents in. You all are the task force on this thing. Now Bill's in charge." He looked at Ebbans. "Which I think is what Sheriff Ellison's agreeable to."

"Yessir," said Ebbans, "I'm just a hired hand here."

"Now between all of you," Ribbon continued, "you got a flatbed full of investigating experience." His burdened gray eyes rose to Corde's. "And I'm busier'n a dog in a fire hydrant factory…"

Corde nodded sympathetically. You're running and there's an election come November.

"So I can't get as involved in the case as I'd like. But keep remembering, people're going to be watching us. They're going to be real curious how we do on this one so I want us to be pretty, you know, aggressive. Now I've been doing some research and I'm pretty bothered by this cult business."

Corde was silent. It was Ebbans who asked, "Cult?"

"What I want you to do is first come up with a profile of our killer."

Jim Slocum said, "In these situations that's what you always have to do."

Wynton Kresge wrote this down.

"Absolutely," Ribbon said. "I know we haven't had any of these kinds of killers here in New Lebanon before but I think it's important for us to get up to speed. What you have to do with cult murderers is peg them. Find out what makes them tick."

Kresge scribbled rapidly. Corde glared at him and he stopped writing.

Ribbon continued, "Now a profile should include two things. The physical description of our man, one, and what's going on in his mind, two. Stuff like is he sexually repressed, does he hate his mother, does he have trouble, you know, getting it up, was he beaten as a child…"

Corde, who had a well-used NCAVC criminal profiling flowchart tacked up on his wall, nodded solemnly and let the embarrassment for his boss trickle off.

"Sounds important," Miller said, and brushed his hand over his excessively short crew cut.

"Absolutely," Ribbon said. "I've been reading up on investigations like this. One thing that's troubling is this moon business. Think about it. She was killed on the night of the quarter moon. That could be lunar fixation for you. And this one's particularly troubling, you know why? Because we've got two quarters and a full and a new. So that's four potential strike windows -"

"What's that?" Wynton Kresge asked the question that Corde had been about to.

Ribbon said patiently, "That's the entire period when our man's likely to kill again. In this case I'd say it's from thirty-six hours in front of the full moon till thirty-six hours after."

Corde and Ebbans, who'd worked together on investigations for four years, got to play the eye-rolling game.

"Ah," Kresge said, and wrote.

Corde and Ebbans played the game again.

"Well, that's my two cents. I'll let you boys be. Do me proud and go catch this sickle." Ribbon left the room.

Corde took center stage. He searched for something politic to say. "All right, I suppose we might be looking at the possibility of a serial killing here but I wouldn't go spreading that around. We don't want to give anybody any ideas." Slocum seemed about to speak but remained silent and Corde continued, "Now I'm going to give us ten days to get a suspect under. And I want an ID within two or three." From his St Louis days Corde remembered the forty-eight/four rule in homicide investigations: If you don't identify the perp within forty-eight hours of a killing, the odds are it will take at least four weeks to find him.

"Also," Slocum said, "the full moon's coming up in seven days or so." He was scanning a Farmer's Almanac.

Corde said delicately, "I think Steve's got a good point. We've got to be aware of this moon business but we don't want to drop other leads because of it. It'll be something to consider, is all." Corde opened the envelope Kresge had brought and pulled out several sheets. "Wynton here was good enough to bring us some dope on the victim and I want to go over it now."

Corde also opened an envelope of his own. He shook out the glossy photograph of Jennie Gebben on the volleyball court. It showed clear eyes, a competitive smile, patches of sweat soaking her T-shirt, more throat than a girl that age would want. He noticed in the photo two metal hoops in each ear. When had the third hold been added? he wondered.

Corde handed the photo around. Miller glanced quickly then passed it on.

"No," Corde said solemnly. "Take a good look. Remember what she looked like."

Miller was flustered for a moment then did what he'd been told.

When the picture had made the rounds Corde said, "I flew over to see her father this morning and he wasn't much help. There were no diaries or letters I could find but he's going to keep looking. He says he doesn't know of anybody who might've wanted to hurt her but I put the bug in his ear and he might not know it but he's going to be looking at people at the funeral, who's there and who isn't. Maybe he'll remember a boyfriend or somebody who had a grudge against her."

Kresge said, "That's why you went this soon to see him? I was wondering why you did that."

"You were?" Corde asked absently. He turned to the files that Kresge had brought. "Jennie Gebben was twenty. She was a junior at Auden. No loans or scholarships, so I guess Daddy paid for most of it. She was an English lit major. GPA two point nine seven. Say, I'd like you to take notes on this." Slocum and Miller picked up pens. Corde continued, Treasurer of the Folklore Club. Meals on Wheels volunteer once a week early in the semester but she gave that up after a couple months. Worked three days a week in the office of the dean of financial aid.

"Her classes this semester were French Reading III. Her professor was Dominique LeFevre. The Civil War to the Centennial taught by Randolph Sayles. Contemporary Literary Criticism, by Elaine Adler-Blum. Chaucer, by Robert… Ostopowiscz. Well, that's a mouthful. And here's another one: The Relation Between Psychology and Literature: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Her teacher there, I mean, her professor was Leon Gilchrist. And a seminar group of that same class taught by Brian Okun. Finally The Roots of Naturalism, Charles Gorney."

Corde wondered momentarily what the courses were about. Corde had graduated in the top half of his class because his school had plenty of engineering courses. He shuffled through the file Kresge had brought him then stapled the class roster sheets together. He set them aside.

Kresge said, "Excuse me."

Corde glanced up. "Yes?"

"Just wanted to tell you, I checked with the clinic. She wasn't seeing a therapist and had only one visit this year. It was to get antibiotics for bronchitis."

"No therapist," Corde repeated. The fact was recorded neatly on a three-by-five card. He did not notice Slocum and Miller play a round of eye rolling.

"Also," the security chief added, "Personnel has a policy of never hiring ex-felons. So if there are any on staff they lied about it on their résumés."

Ebbans asked, "Was she ever up before the UDB?"

University Disciplinary Board. Kresge said she wasn't.

"Now," Corde said, jotting down these facts, "as for the murder: At around ten o'clock on Tuesday night she was raped and strangled, possibly by someone she knew."

"How could you tell that?" Kresge asked and Corde glanced at him with irritation.

"Look -" Corde began.

Ebbans answered Kresge. "Because she didn't run and because he got close enough to subdue her before she fought back."

"How do you know that?"

"If she'd fought there'd be tissue under her nails."

"Kleenex?"

Slocum laughed. Ebbans said, "Skin. The man's skin."

"Oh." Kresge added, "But then if she knew him, he probably wasn't a, you know, cult killer."

Slocum lectured, "Not so, Chief. A good percentage of sacrifice killers know their victims."

"Oh. I didn't know that."

The meeting was meandering away from Corde. He said emphatically, "We have a lot of unknowns here. Maybe robbery wasn't a motive. But maybe it was. Maybe he got scared before he could take her valuables."

Slocum laughed. "Bill, she had a diamond necklace. When he was through doing it to her he could've snatched it, just like that." He illustrated ripping a chain off his own neck. "Wouldn't take more than two seconds."

Ebbans said, "What's the coroner say about COD?"

"Just what it looked like. Traumatic asphyxiation. Pinpoint hemorrhages in the eyes. Fractured hyoid. Our man used his hands at first then he finished with a wire or rope. We didn't find any weapons. The coroner said the man was a foot or so taller than her. He wasn't so strong. He had to rearrange his grip on her neck several times. He did it from the front. Oh and the coroner guessed he wasn't married. Or he had a bad sex life with his wife."

"Why's that?" Miller asked.

"Quantity of the semen. Probably hadn't had sex for four, five weeks."

Jim Slocum said, "Then you mean he had a good sex life with his wife." Miller laughed out loud; the others except Corde snickered.

Corde looked at his cards, fanned some out. "Now what I want to do is focus on four areas. First, on the mall and on drivers along 302. I'd like you to handle that, Jim. It's a tall order. But that's a real busy road and we probably had some people coming home from the mall around ten that night," Corde jotted a note on an index card. "Oh, and check out if anybody picked up any hitchhikers."

"Now, second, T.T., I was thinking maybe you could hit the houses around the pond."

Ebbans nodded and Corde said, "Third, Lance and I'll set up shop at the school and start talking to students and employees."

"Yessir." Even sitting, Miller seemed to be at attention. He reminded Corde of a color guard Marine. "What exactly -"

"We'll go over it later. I also want you to talk to the phone company and find out what calls went out from the phones in the dorm from last Saturday through Tuesday night."

Miller whistled softly. "Must be a lot of students making a lot of calls, wouldn't you think?"

"You would," Corde said. "And we need a warrant for the dorm room. It'll be pro forma but you've gotta do the paperwork."

"Right."

"And finally I want all the prints on everything we found at the scene matched against known sex offenders in the county. T.T., if you could coordinate that with your office?"

"Will do. I'll order the printout."

"Wynton, I don't suppose you folk fingerprint students and professors?"

"Been my dream and desire but no we don't."

Corde referred to his notes again and started to say something to Kresge then paused. He scanned everyone's face. "One thing Steve said is right. The Register and WRAL are going to be looking at this thing real close. No talking to reporters. Refer everyone to me or Steve or Sheriff Ellison."

Echoes of "yup" or "uh-huh" filled the room.

Corde turned back to the security chief. "You get us a room, William? Uh, Wynton, I mean."

"In the Student Union. Off the cafeteria. Room 121. You got it all week, next too if you let me know by Friday."

"Predate it."

Kresge cleared his large throat with a snapping sound. "One thing I thought I should mention. I was driving past the pond on my way to work this morning. I just took a stroll around."

"What time?" Corde noticed something challenging in his own voice. He wished he'd used more of it.

"Six-thirty. I left about seven."

"You see anybody there?"

"Yessir," Kresge said enthusiastically. "A Con Ed tent up the road forty yards past the dam. You know, the kind they use for emergency repairs and -"

Corde said, "They weren't there last night. They set up at five a.m. Branch took down a line. I already checked."

"Oh," Kresge said with disappointment.

"You see anybody else?"

"No." He consulted his supple leather notebook. "There's a whole 'nother thing I wanted to bring up. What you and I and the dean were talking about. Susan Biagotti."

Corde and Ebbans exchanged looks but this time there was no eye rolling.

"Who's that?" Miller asked. "Rings a bell."

"Auden student killed last year."

"Ah, right."

Corde had been away on a joint county-state task force in Fredericksberg for a month. The case had landed in Ribbon's lap and by the time Corde returned to New Lebanon, many leads had gone cold. They had never even ID'd a suspect, let alone made a case.

"It's my intention to look into it," Corde said abruptly. "Like I told the dean."

"I've got my own file on the case," Kresge said. "You want, you can have a copy of it."

Corde smiled in a meaningless way. "I'll let you know if we need it."

As he rearranged his papers the plastic bag containing the clipping he had found that morning at the pond fell to the floor. He stooped and picked it up. He stood. His knee didn't pop. Thirty-nine years of knee, five of it popping. He wondered if he'd gone and cured himself. He passed the clipping around the table. "This is another thing we have to consider."

The deputies frowned with suitable concern as they read.

"I'm sending it up to Higgins for analysis today. Unless we find prints though or the rest of the paper it came from in somebody's back pocket I don't think it'll help. But you might want to keep an eye on yourselves and your families. You know most threats like this are just cranks but you never can tell."

"Most threats?" Kresge asked. "You mean this happens a lot?"

Corde hesitate then said, "Actually it's never happened."

Ebbans looked up from the note then slid it back to Corde. "I know something else about this guy," he announced.

"What's that?" Jim Slocum asked.

"Well, you could nearly see the girl from the road even if you weren't looking. Why didn't he drag her behind the truck at least? Then he came back in the morning to leave that note? It was like he didn't care if anybody saw him. That says to me he's a real gutsy fellow."

Corde lifted the plastic bag away from Miller. "Gutsy," he said. "Or crazy. Either way's a problem."

4

By the time she approached her house, Sarah had memorized the note, which now rested in her skirt pocket, along with the five twenty-dollar bills that had been wrapped in it.

Dear Sarah -

I heard you fighting with your daddy today, about school. I know he'll keep making you go back. I want to help. I'm just like you, we both hate school. You have to leave. Get away! Go to Chicago or, St Louis. There's nothing left for you to do. You'll be safe. I'll look out for you.

– Your friend

This idea is not new to her. Sarah had thought of running away a dozen times. Last March, the week before the arithmetic test, she had spent an hour at the Greyhound station, working up courage to buy a ticket to Grandma's place, before her courage broke and in tearful frustration she returned home.

Running away…

Sarah paused at the front doorstep. On tiptoe she saw her mother in the living room. She ducked. The motion made the paper in her pocket crinkle. While she waited for her mother to leave the room she pulled out the money and studied the bills, cautiously rubbing them as if they were pages from a book of witch's spells. She folded them tight again and put them back into her pocket.

Sarah Corde, nine years old, cared nothing for school, hopscotch, Simon Says, housework, Nintendo, sewing, cooking, cartoons on TV. But she believed fervently in magic and wizards, and she believed that this message was from a particular wizard who had been watching out for her for years. He was all-knowing and he was kind, and – with all the money – he was pretty darn rich too, it seemed.

Sarah was nobody's fool. She was going to do exactly what the wizard suggested. She also noted to her vast joy that although she would probably take this advice and go to Chicago, he had given her enough money to surely take her halfway around the world.

The front door slammed and the feet were up the six stairs in three fast thuds before Diane could get to the front hall.

She dried her hands as she continued to the stairs, pausing beside the coat rack and a wooden plaque of a goose wearing a blue bonnet and scarf. She straightened it absently and called, "Honey! Sarrie?"

There was no answer.

A moments later: "Honey, come on down here."

A weak voice said, "I'm taking a bath, Mommy. I'll be down before supper."

"Honey, Mrs. Beiderson called."

Silence.

"Sarah -"

"I want to take my bath, Mommy. Can we talk about it, you know, later? Like, please?"

"Come on out. She told me what happened at school."

They continued this tug-of-war for a few minutes, Diane slowly edging up the stairs toward the girl's room. There was no lock on the door but Diane was reluctant to invade her children's territory. "Come on, honey. You can help me make dinner."

"I don't want to!" Sarah answered shrilly.

In these words Diane heard reason start to shatter. This was the time to back down. No hysteria, please. Not that. Sarah's attacks nailed her mother with tearful pity. And they also made her seethe; unable to distinguish between the moments Sarah was truly panicked and the times she was faking, Diane invariably backed down.

Coward…

The phone began ringing.

She glanced at it. "All right, Sarah, we'll talk later."

As she walked into the kitchen Diane noticed that it was five p.m. She knew who the caller would be.

She was married to him.

Bill would ask about the kids and how Diane's day had gone and then he'd get suddenly sheepish and tell her he had to work late. Again. Every other day for the past month he skidded home just as supper was landing on the table and on more than a few occasions he had missed the evening meal altogether.

And worse news: he now had a murder case.

She remembered seeing the thick black type of the headline in the Register and reading the scant words about that poor dead student and feeling a wave of utter regret – for herself as well as for the poor parents of the murdered girl. She knew she was going to see even less of Bill until the man was caught.

She picked up the beige phone.

It was not her husband.

She heard odd sounds in the background, like eerie electronic rock music, the sort she chided Jamie for listening to. She assumed it was one of his friends.

"Corde residence," she said, wholly polite.

"This's Mrs. Corde?" The voice was tenor-pitched but it seemed smoother than an adolescent's, more confident. She knew all of Jamie's friends and this didn't sound like any of them.

"Yes, this is she. Who is this? Say, could you please turn that music down?"

The volume of the music diminished. "You're Jamie's mother?"

"You want to speak to Jamie?"

"I'm calling from New Lebanon High? I'm the senior advisor of the freshman section of the yearbook and – this is really a hassle – but we lost a bunch of the bio sheets of some of the students, you know. We're way past the deadline and I'm calling people and filling in the forms over the phone."

"Well, Jamie won't be home for another couple hours."

"Could you just give me some information about him?"

"Well, I don't know…" Diane said. She knew the risks mothers ran making decisions for their teenage boys.

"Today's the last day we can get anything typeset."

"What do you want to know?"

"Who's his homeroom teacher?"

"This seemed harmless enough." She said, "That'd be Mr. Jessup."

"And is he on any teams?" the advisor asked.

"Wrestling. He also does gymnastics but he doesn't compete. And he's going to do the triathlon next year."

"Triathlon. So he's a bicyclist?"

"You can't hardly keep him off it. He'd ride it to the dinner table if we let him."

The boy laughed overloud at what he must have thought was a stupid joke. He then asked, "What kind of bike does he have?"

"It's Italian. A fifteen-speed. I don't remember the name. Is it important?"

"No, I guess not. What clubs is he in?"

"Science Club and Latin Club. He was in Photo Club for a while but he quit that to spend more time working out. Say, will he have a chance to look this over?"

"Not really, no. We're going to press tomorrow. But he wouldn't want just a blank space under his picture, would he?"

"I guess not."

"What's his favorite music video?"

"I have no idea."

"His favorite movie?"

"I couldn't say."

"How about his favorite groups?"

"Groups?"

"Music groups?"

Diane was disturbed to find how little of this she knew. She said abruptly, "Can you wait a moment?" then set the phone down and fled into his room. She picked up several handfuls of tape cassettes and hurried back to the kitchen. She read the labels into the phone. "Tom Petty… Uhm, Paul McCartney – well, I remember him of course."

"Ha."

"Then U2 and Metallica and Ice Cube and Run DMC, whatever that is. And he's got three tapes of this group Geiger. I guess they're from Germany."

"Everyone knows Geiger."

Well, excuse me…

She continued, "I don't know if those are his favorites. He's got a lot of tapes."

"Could you make up a quote for him?"

No way. "I think that'll have to be blank."

"I guess that's okay. You've been a big help, Mrs. Corde."

"When is the yearbook coming out?"

"Won't be long. Maybe I'll bring Jamie's by myself." The voice lowered a few tones. "I'd like to meet you."

Diane laughed but silently; she understood fragile adolescent pride. "Well, that would be very nice."

Hit on by a high schooler! Maybe you've got some of the old allure after all-even if it's just in your voice.

When he got the note he'd been saying:

"The phrase that some soldiers used was 'horizontal refreshment.' Medical records tell us that at the height of the war, nearly ten percent of Union troops suffered from some form of VD…"

Associate Dean Randolph Rutherford Sayles took the slip of paper from the teaching assistant. He recognized Dean Larraby's elegant scrawl, as distinctive as her ubiquitously disquieting choice of words summoning him immediately to her office.

Silence rose. He found he was looking past the paper, staring at the whorls and lines of the lectern, at an ink stain.

"… In Washington, D.C., the south side of Pennsylvania Avenue contained dozens of houses of prostitution – a locale where I believe a number of lobbyists now maintain offices…"

Sayles was in his trademarked posture: standing, both hands on the lectern, hunched forward. Sayles nurtured a classic professorial vogue, unkempt and preoccupied and tweedy, flaunting this style in the face of Brooks Brothers chic (passé on Wall Street but au courant in Cambridge, Hyde Park and Ann Arbor). He had sandy hair that he kept unruly and would grin like the absentminded scholar he had never been when it flopped into his face.

"… And more astonishing, there are hundreds of documented cases of women disguising themselves as soldiers and circulating among the men to provide sexual favors for a profit. Perhaps this is where the phrase 'military service' arose…"

These tidbits sounded frivolous but the students, who had waited in line since six a.m. on registration day to sign up for The Civil War to the Centennial, loved them. Sayles had worked hard at perfecting his lecturing skills. Nothing was more important to him than bestowing knowledge. He was tenured at thirty, two years after his doctoral thesis was published and one year after his book, the Economics of Freedom, garnered a favorable Times review and started its record six-month run as number one on the National Association of Historians' recommended list.

"As the war, which both Yanks and Rebs truly believed would last no more than six months, stretched on and on, the moral thread of the resoundingly Protestant and predominantly evangelical armies frayed…"

More problematic was Sayles's second job as an associate dean, which he did not enjoy at all. But he was sophisticated enough to know that he could not survive forever without the yoke of administrative duties and he had struggled to master the perversity of collegiate infighting. Besides, his bailiwick was the Civil War and what better metaphor could there be for a college campus? He was like Grant, marshaling forces and riding herd over a bunch of brilliant feisty generals – that is, students – who drank too much, whored too much (or who railed loud against drinking and whoring), while he somehow managed to fight a war. And like Grant, Sayles had happened to rise to this position at the most difficult time in the history of his institution.

"… But it wasn't until after the Dynamic Duo of Defeat – Gettysburg and Vicksburg- that the Southern troops embraced fundamentalist revivalism with a gusto…"

A warm spring breeze eased through the auditorium's huge windows, so high they could be locked and unlocked only with a twelve-foot-long pole. The class was half empty. Sayles considered the reason why attendance was poor and his eyes fell on a particular empty seat, surrounded by a blossom of other vacancies.

Ah, yes, the memorial service.

He had not had the strength to attend. The only place he could possibly be was here.

The bell – not an electronic wail but an old-fashioned clapper on steel – rang and Sayles dismissed the class. He stood at the lectern while the class departed then he reread the dean's note. He too left the room and walked along a broad sidewalk, campus buildings on one side, the five-acre quadrangle on the other, to the university's administration building.

On the second floor he entered a large anteroom. He walked past the room's only occupant, a secretary with whom he had long ago had an affair, a mousy woman with a bony face. He vaguely remembered breasts like fat pancakes.

"Oh, did you hear? Professor? A student was -"

Without answering he nodded and walked past her into the large inner office. He closed the door and sat in one of the oxblood leather chairs across from the dean's desk.

"Randy," she said, "we have a real problem."

He noticed her hand was resting on that morning's Register. The article about the murder was circled and above the headline was written: Dean Larraby. FYI. He looked at Bill Corde's picture then back to the dean. Sayles said, "She was in my class."

Dean Larraby nodded without expecting any further response. She closed whatever massive work she had been reading – it appeared more legal than scholarly – and pushed it to the corner of her desk. Her fingers caressed the edges of the purple stone on her left hand.

Sayles said, "Have you talked to the police?"

"What?"

"The police?"

She responded querulously, "Yes, there was a detective here. This man, in fact." She nodded at the paper. "He wanted to know all about the Gebben girl."

The Gebben girl.

Sayles, whose brilliance like that of many professors was in large part memory, recollected perfectly how the dean had greeted him a few moments ago and asked, "What kind of problem? What else did the police say?"

The Gebben girl. Student number 144691.

"The police? That's not what I'm talking about," she said. "This is serious. I've finished meeting with the Price Waterhouse people. There are no funds to move into the loans accounts."

"What do you mean?" Shock pummeled Sayles. The image of Jennie Gebben fell from his thoughts.

"None."

"But there was going to be an operating surplus this term," he whispered. "I thought we'd worked that out."

"Well," she said testily, "there isn't."

Oh, how he hated her. She'd told him, she'd promised him, there would be money. The shock yielded to a maelstrom of anger. He swallowed and looked out the window at the grassy quad whose sidewalks he had crossed perhaps ten thousand times.

"The fact is the money isn't there."

"What are we going to do?" His voice rose with panic. "Can we cover it up?"

"Cover it up? We're long past that point." She smiled but cruelly and he thought her face looked like a malicious tortoise's. "Randy, without that money, the school is going to close."

"What happened to it? We were supposed to have two and a half million."

She tossed her head at a question he himself knew the answer to. Why does a college lose money? Auden University had been skimming the surface of insolvency for ten years. Competition from cheaper state and trade schools, decreasing college-age population, escalating salary demands and costs…

"This murder, it's going to focus a lot of attention on the school and its problems. That's the last thing we need. Not now. We can't afford people pulling their children out. And for God's sake we don't need profiles of the school in the press." She did not look at the Register but her fingers absently tapped the grim headline.

Sayles said coldly, "Her death was most inopportune."

The dean missed his irony. She asked, "Does anybody know about our arrangement?"

Long dark hair. It often dipped down over one eye. Which? Her right eye. She would keen with passion. The Gebben girl. Student number 144691. She would cry at the scent of a forest filling with stiff fall leaves.

"Does anybody know?" he mused. Nope, not anymore she doesn't. Sayles shook his head.

The dean stood and walked to the window. Her back was to him. She had a solid figure, rubbery and strong; this was appealing – the severity and solemnity one wants in airline pilots and surgeons. A large, stern woman, hair going a little wiry, eyes puffy from wrestling with an injustice only partially of her own making.

Jennie Gebben. Who would grip his cock with her prominent teeth and rasp up and down along his swollen skin.

Who could not without prompting analyze European motives behind Civil War foreign relations but who had the far more enduring gift of pressing her knees into Sayles's midriff and with a stone-buffed heel square against his asshole force his pelvis against hers.

Student number 144691.

"Randy, we can expect an audit by mid-June. If you don't raise three million six hundred thousand dollars in cash by then -"

"How am I supposed to get that much money?" He heard his voice rise to a strident whine, which he detested but could not avoid.

"You?" she asked. Dean Larraby polished the purple stone against the fabric of her skirt then looked up at Sayles. "I think it's pretty clear, Randy. You, better than anybody, know what's at stake if you don't find that money."

She got the idea from a made-for-TV movie.

It had been a film about a thirteen-year-old girl, and her mother and stepfather hated her. Once, they locked her in the house while they went away to gamble and the girl ran away from home by jumping out a window then grabbing onto a freight train that went to New York City.

Sarah shut off the water running in the bathtub, which though it was filled with steamy water and fragrant violet bubble bath did not – as she had told her mother – contain her. She had run upstairs and taken a fast shower then dressed quickly. Now, wearing a T-shirt, overalls, Nikes and a nylon windbreaker – her traveling clothes – she listened to her mother fixing dinner downstairs.

In the film, when the girl ended up in New York she lived in the alley and had to eat bread somebody had thrown out and she smoked a cigarette and just before this big guy was going to take her up into his apartment and do something for her Sarah didn't know what, the girl's mom showed up and hugged her and brought her home and dumped the stepfather. And they showed an 800 number you could call if you knew any runaways.

What a stupid movie – about as real and interesting as a cereal commercial. But it solved a big problem for Sarah because it showed her how to save all of the wizard's money and still get to Chicago.

She was thinking of the railroad train.

There were no railroads in New Lebanon. But there was a truck. It was a big one that looked sort of like a train and it passed the house every afternoon. The truck had a platform on the back that she thought she could hold on to, and it went past the house real slow. She could catch the truck easily and then climb onto the back and sit there. When he stopped for the night she could ask the driver where to find another truck going to Chicago.

Sarah packed her Barbie backpack. She took Mr. Jupiter her shooting star bank, pairs of Levi's and sweatshirts and socks and underpants, her toothbrush and toothpaste, and a skirt and a blouse, her Walkman and a dozen books on tape. Of course Redford T. Redford the world's smartest bear would be traveling with her. And she took some things from her mother's dresser. Lipstick, mascara, fingernail polish and panty hose.

It was now five-thirty. The truck usually went past the house about six. Sarah walked around her room. She suddenly realized she'd miss her father. She started to cry. She'd miss her brother some. She thought she'd miss her mother but she wasn't sure. Then she thought of the wizard telling her, "I'll look out for you," and she thought about school.

Sarah stopped crying.

She lifted the window, which opened onto the backyard of their house. She tossed the backpack out, hearing the coins in Mr. Jupiter ring loudly. She climbed out, hanging from the ledge, her cheek pressed hard against the yellow siding, then she let go and dropped the few feet to the soft ground.

5

When he hung up the phone Brian Okun recognized a contradiction that would have made a tidy little philosophical riddle. As the black receiver started downward he thought, He's got no right to talk to me that way. As it settled in its cradle: He's got every right to talk to me that way.

Okun was lanky as a cowboy and his face was obscured by the strands of black beard that weaseled unevenly out of his wan skin. Inky Brillo hair hung over his ears like a floppy beret. He sat in his tiny cubicle overlooking the quad, his tensed hand still clutching the telephone, and developed his thought: He has no right because as a human being I'm entitled to a mutual measure of dignity. John Locke. He has every right because he's in charge and he can do what he fucking well pleases. Niccolo Machiavelli cum Brian Okun.

The man he was thinking of was Leon Gilchrist, the professor for whom Okun worked. When Gilchrist joined Auden two years before, the horde of eager PhD candidates seeking jobs as graduate assistants largely bypassed him. His reputation preceded him from the East – a recluse, a foul temper, no interest whatsoever in campus sports, politics or administration. While this put off most grad students it merely upped the ante for Okun, who was as intrigued by Gilchrist's personality as he was impressed by his mind.

Any doubts that remained about the professor were obliterated when Okun read Gilchrist's The Id and Literature. The book changed Okun's life. He stayed up all night, zipping through the dense work as if it were an Illustrated Classics comic book. He finished it at exactly three-ten in the afternoon and by four was sitting in Gilchrist's office, being obnoxious, insisting that Gilchrist hire him to teach the seminar sessions of his famous Psych & Lit course.

Gilchrist asked a few innocuous questions about the subject matter then grew bored with Okun's answers and silenced the grad student by hiring him on the spot.

Okun, almost as quickly, regretted the decision. The professor turned out to be more reclusive and odd and aggressively prickish than rumoured. Narcissistic and anal expulsive, Okun observed (he too, like Gilchrist, was dual-degreed: psychology and English lit). He gave the man wide berth and had to improvise his professor-handling techniques like a doctor developing new antibiotics to meet particularly virulent strains of bacteria.

Gilchrist was impossible to outflank. Okun was not surprised to learn that he was more savvy than he seemed and had pegged Okun early as having designs on his job. But by now, after two semesters of continual jockeying if not outright combat, Brian Okun, chic, moody, himself brilliant, an enfant terrible of the Modern Language Association, Brian Okun had nothing but wounds to show from the run-ins with his scholastic Wellington.

Today, for instance – the phone call.

The professor had left for San Francisco last week to read a paper at the Berkeley Poetry Conference and had been expected back tonight, in time for tomorrow's lecture. Gilchrist had called however to say he would be staying another week to do research at San Francisco State. He abruptly told Okun to have another professor prepare and deliver his lecture tomorrow.

The session was entitled "John Berryman: Self-Harm and Suicide Through the Poet's Eye." Okun considered himself a Berryman scholar and fervently wanted to deliver that lecture. But Gilchrist was on to him. He ordered Okun, with a tinny insulting laugh, to find a full professor. He used that phrase. Full professor, a painful reminder of what Okun was not. Okun agreed, extending his middle finger to the telephone as he did so. Then he hung up and the interesting philosophical dilemma occurred to him.

Okun now paced – to the extent he was able to do so in a cluttered eight-by-eight room. As his mind leapt backward, zigzagging through time, he found he was picturing vague scenes of Victorian tragedy (Charles Dickens had given a lecture in this very building as part of his US tour in the 1860s, a fact Okun had collected and cherished) but the image that he arrived at was not from one of Dickens's books; it was of a girl wearing a white layered nightgown, her long hair spilling like dark water on the pillow. A girl with a pallid face. Mouth curling outward. Eyes closed. Her name was Jennie Gebben and she was dead.

At only one point since his graduation from Yale had Brian Okun ever doubted that he would be a Nobel Prize winner. There was some question as to whether he would win for nonfiction writing – some quantum-leaping analysis of, say, the relation between Yeats's haywire obsession with Maud Gonne and his art. Or whether he would produce a series of showy, anxious quote Updike Coomer Ford quote New Yorker novels ridden with quirky characters and heavy with the filigree of imagery and dialect-laden talk. Either was fine. Only twenty-seven, on the verge of doctorhood, Brian Okun felt mastery of his scholarly self.

He also believed however that his right brain needed more life experience. And like many graduate students he believed that life experience was synonymous with fucking. He intended to fill the next five years with as many female students as he had the stamina to bed and the patience to endure afterward. Eventually he would marry – a woman who was brilliant and homely enough to remain utterly devoted to him. The nuptials would have happened by the time the Swedish girls, hair glowing under the blaze of the burning candle wreaths, woke him up in Stockholm on the morning of the award presentation.

But these dreams were disrupted by a particular individual.

Jennie Gebben had been a curious creature. When he'd first read her name in class he'd paused. His mind had tricked him and he misread it. He thought he'd seen Jennie Gerhardt, one of Theodore Dreiser's tragic heroines and a character that Professor Gilchrist discussed at length in his famous paper in which he psychoanalyzed Dreiser. Okun had looked at Jennie across the U-shaped classroom table and held her eyes for a moment. He knew how to look at women. After a moment he commented on the name error. Several people in class nodded in self-indulgent agreement to impress him with their familiarity with Naturalistic writing.

Jennie gave a bored glance at Okun and responded brashly that she'd never heard of her near namesake.

He asked her out three days later, a record in self-restraint.

At a university like Auden, located in a two-cinema, four-screen town, inappropriate liaisons cannot proceed as they would in an anonymous city. Okun and Jennie spent their time walking in the woods or driving out to the quarry. Or spending nights in her room or his apartment.

He brooded to the point of fetish. Why this fierce attraction? Jennie wasn't gifted artistically. She wasn't brilliant, she was a B-minus student with a solid Midwestern artistic sensibility (this meant that she had to be told what was valid and what was not). He was stung by these limitations of hers. When he inventoried what he loved about her he came up with shrinkage: the way she covered her mouth with her delicate hand at scenes of violence in movies, the way she let slip little murmurs from her throat as she looked at a chill spring wash of stars above them, the way she could drop her shoulder and dislodge a satin bra strap without using her fingers.

Of course some aspects of Jennie Gebben he loved intensely: her suggestions when they were making love that he might like to try "something different." Did he enjoy pain? Would he please bury his finger in her, no no not in my cunt, please, yeah, there all the way… Did he like the feel of silk, of women's nylons? And she would bind a black seamed stocking tight around his balls and stroke his glans until he came, forceful and hurting, on the thick junction of her chin and throat.

Several times she dressed him in one of her nightgowns and on those occasions he emptied himself inside her within seconds of fierce penetration.

These were the bearings of their relationship and as impassioned as Okun felt, he knew they could not be trusted. Not when your lover was Jennie Gebben. The murmurs and whimpers had taken on too great a significance for him. Out of control he crashed.

It occurred when one night he had blurted a marriage proposal to her. And she, less intelligent, a common person, had suddenly encircled him in her arms in a terrifying maternal way. She shook her head and said, "No, honey. That's not what you want."

Honey. She called him honey! It broke his heart.

He raged. Jennie was what he wanted. His tongue made a foray into the crevice of his lips and he tasted her. That was proof, that was the metaphor: he hungered for her. He cried in front of her while she looked on maturely, head cocked with affection. He blurted a shameful stream: he was willing to do whatever she wanted, get a job in the private sector, work for a commercial magazine, edit… He had purged himself with all the hokey melodrama of mid-list literature.

Brian Okun, radiant scholar of the esoteric grafting of psychology and literature, recognized this obsessive effluence for what it was. So he was not surprised when, in an instant, love became hate. She had seen him vulnerable, she had comforted him – this, the only woman who had ever rejected him – and he detested her.

Even now, months after this incident, a day after her murder, Okun felt an uncontrollable surge of anger at her, for her simpering patronizing Mutterheit. He was back on the Nobel path, yes. But she had shaken something very basic in his nature. He had lost control, and his passions had skidded violently like a car on glazed snow. He hated her for that.

Ah Jennie, what have you done to me?

Brian Okun pushed his hands together and waited for the trembling to stop. It did not. He breathed deeply and hoped for his heart to calm. It did not. He thought that if only Jennie Gebben had accepted his proposal, his life would be so unequivocally different.

The smell of the halls suggested something temporary: Pasty, cheap paint. Sawdust. Air fresheners and incense covering stale linens. Like a barracks for refugees in transit. The color of the walls was green and the linoleum flecked stone gray.

Bill Corde knocked on the door. There was no answer.

"Ms. Rossiter? I'm from the Sheriffs Department."

Another knock.

Maybe she'd gone to St Louis for the funeral.

He glanced behind him. The corridor was empty. He tried the knob and pushed the open door.

A smell wafted out and surrounded him. Jennie Gebben's spicy perfume. Corde recognized it immediately. He lifted his hand and smelled the same scent – residue from the bottle on her dressing table at home.

Corde hesitated. This was not a crime scene and students in dormitories retained rights of privacy and due process. He needed a warrant in hand to even step into the room.

"Ms. Rossiter?" Corde called. When there was no answer he walked inside.

The room Jennie and Emily shared had a feeble symmetry. Bookcases and mirrors bolted to opposite walls. The beds parallel to each other but the desks turned at different angles – looking up from a textbook, one girl would look out the small window at the parking lot; the other would gaze at a bulletin board. On one bed rested a stuffed rabbit.

Corde examined Jennie's side of the room. A cursory look revealed nothing helpful. Books, notebooks, school supplies, posters, souvenirs, photos of family members (Corde noticing that the young Jennie bore a striking resemblance to Sarah), makeup, hair curlers, clothes, scraps of paper, packages of junk desserts, shampoos, lotions. Sheer pastel underwear hung on a white string to dry. A U2 poster, stacks of cassettes, a stereo set with a cracked plastic front. A large box of condoms (latex, he noted, not the lambskin found at the crime scene). Thousands of dollars' worth of clothes. Jennie was a meticulous housekeeper. She kept her shoes in little green body bags.

Corde noticed a picture of two girls: Jennie and a brown-haired girl of delicate beauty. Emily? Was it the same girl in one of the pictures on Jennie's wall at home? Corde could not remember. They had their arms around each other and were mugging for the camera. Their black and brown hair entwined between them and made a single shade.

A clattering of laughter from the floor above reminded him that he was here without permission. He set the picture down and turned toward Jennie's desk.

He crested the rise on 302 just in front of his house.

Corde had ticketed drivers a dozen times for sprinting along this strip at close to sixty. It was a straightaway, posted at twenty-five after a long stretch of fifty, so you couldn't blame them for speeding, Corde supposed. But it was a straightaway in front of his house where his kids played. When he wasn't in the mood to ticket he took to leaving the squad car parked nose out in the drive, which slowed the hot-rodders down considerably and put a slew of brake marks on the asphalt just over the crown on the rise like a grouping of bullet tracks in a trap.

Setting a good example, Corde braked hard then signaled and made the turn into his driveway. He parked the cruiser next to his Ford pickup, which was fourthhand but clocked in at only sixty-seven thousand miles. He stepped out into the low sun and waved to Jamie, who was in the garage, lifting his bike up onto pegs in the exposed two-by-fours. In Jamie's hands, the bike seemed to weigh only a pound or two.

The boy was fair-skinned and slight but he was strong as sinew. He worked out constantly, concentrating on many reps of lighter weight rather than going for bulk. He waved back to his father and headed toward the backyard, where he would pitch a tennis ball onto the crest of the roof and snag the fly with all sorts of fancy catches. The expression on his face was the same one that Corde had puzzled over for over a year until he finally recognized it as a look of Diane's – contentment, Corde liked to think, though also caution and consideration. He was proud of his son – quiet and easygoing, a devoted member of the freshman wrestling team, a B-plus student without trying, good in Latin and biology and math, the secretary of the Science Club.

Corde believed his boy would grow up to be Gary Cooper.

Detouring through the Rototilled earth of the side yard, Corde turned on the sprinkler, which began to saturate the patch of mud that the seed package had promised four weeks ago would be luxurious green in six. Corde watched the wave sweep back and forth for a minute, then walked toward the split-level house, aluminum-sided bright yellow. Corde had an acre of land, all of it grass (or soon to be, Ortho assured him), punctuated with juniper bushes and saplings that in fifty years would be respectable oaks. The property bordered the panhandle of a working dairy farm to the north, beyond which was a forest. Surrounding houses, all modest split-levels or colonials, sat on similar plots along Route 302.

He heard a chug of a diesel engine. Up the road the driver of a White semi, hauling a Maersk Line container, started shifting down through his many gears as the truck rolled over the crest of the highway probably right on the posted speed. Corde watched the majestic truck for a moment then started toward the house.

A motion caught his eye and smiling still he glanced to the corner of his yard. Something nosing out of the bushes toward the road. A dog?

No!

"Sarah!"

His daughter stood up and looked at him in panic – a deer spotting a hunter. She turned and ran at top speed toward the truck, whose driver was oblivious to the girl.

"Sarah, stop!" Corde shouted in astonishment. "No!" He ran after her.

She was squealing with terror, running ahead of herself, tripping as her feet windmilled, her arms flailing in panic. She was aiming right for the truck's massive rear wheels, which were as tall as she was.

"Oh, honey, stop! Please!" he gasped, and ran flat out, the Mace canister and a Speedloader falling from his Sam Browne belt, handcuffs thwacking his back.

"Leave me alone!" Sarah wailed, and plunged ahead toward the truck's tires.

She dropped the backpack and made a frantic spring for the truck. It seemed like she was going to leap right for the huge thundering disks of tires, firing pebbles into the air behind the trailer.

Sarah was three feet from the wheels when Corde tackled her. They landed, skidding, in a pile on the messy shoulder as the truck rumbled past them, the stack burping as the engine revved and the driver upshifted, unaware of the struggle he left behind.

Sarah squealed and kicked. Panicked, Corde rolled to his knees and shook her by the shoulders. His hand rose, palm flat. She squealed in terror. He screamed, "What are you doing, what are you doing?" Corde, who had spanked Jamie only once and Sarah not at all in their collective twenty-four years on earth, lowered his hand. "Tell me!"

"Leave me alone!"

Diane was running toward them. "What happened? What happened?"

Corde stood. The panic was gone but it had left in its place the sting of betrayal. He stepped back. Diane dropped to her knees and held the child's face in her hands. She took a breath to start the tirade then paused, seeing the despair in her little girl's face. "Sarah, you were running away? Running away from home?"

Sarah wiped her tears and nose with her sleeves. She didn't respond. Diane repeated the question. Sarah nodded.

"Why?" her father demanded.

"Because."

"Sarah -" Corde began sternly.

The little girl seemed to wince. "It's not my fault. The wizard told me to."

"The wizard?"

"The Sunshine Man…"

This was one of the imaginary friends that Sarah played with. Corde remembered Sarah had created him after the family attended the funeral of Corde's father and the minister had lifted his arms to the sun, speaking about "souls rising into heaven." It was Sarah's first experience with death and Corde and Diane had been reluctant to dislodge the apparently friendly spirit she created. But in the past year, to the parents' increasing irritation, the girl referred to him more and more frequently.

"He made Redford T. Redford fly out to the forest and he told me -"

Diane's voice cut through the yard. "No more of this magic crap, do you hear me, young lady? What were you doing?"

"Leave me alone." The tiny mouth tightened ominously.

Corde said, "It's going to be okay, honey. Don't worry."

"I'm not going back to school."

Diane whispered in a low, menacing voice, "Don't you ever do that again, Sarrie, do you understand me? You could've been killed."

"I don't care!"

"Don't say that. Don't ever say that!" Mother's and daughter's strident tones were different only in pitch.

Corde touched his wife's arm and shook his head. To Sarah he said, "It's okay, honey. We'll talk about it later."

Sarah bent down and picked up her knapsack and walked toward the house. With boundless regret on her face, she looked back – not however at the ashen faces of her parents but toward the road down which the silver truck was hurrying away without her.

They stood in the kitchen awkwardly, like lovers who must suddenly discuss business. Unable to look at him, Diane told him about Sarah's incident at school that day.

Corde said contritely, "She didn't want to go today. I drove her back this morning and made her. I guess I shouldn't have."

"Of course you should have. You can't let her get away with this stuff, Bill. She uses us."

"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 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."

6

Rockets rising from grass from mud no no not mud servo rockets Datkar man he's great muscles ripping them all apart shooting with leasers…

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. Nonono…

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. "Phillip!" 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 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 and 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 arent' 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.

… Sheriffs 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 Sheriffs 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 BUI.

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 Sheriffs Department. It was painted beige and smelled of adolescent perfume and aftershave 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 for you?" 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 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."

"You can't go asking somebody that."

"Ask."

Miller turned fire red. "Can't we look it up somewhere?"

"Ask," Corde barked.

"Okay, okay."

Corde read one of Miller's notes: Roommate and JG just before dinner on Tuesday night. They had discussion – "Serious" (Fight?) Couldn't tell what was said. JG unhappy as she left. Roommate: Emily Rossiter.

Corde tapped it. "That's interesting, I want to talk to Emily. Get over there now and have her come in."

7

Bill Corde was irritated at the fluorescent tube that flickered frantically above his head and he was exhausted from sifting for hours through the goofy and theatrical attitudes of young people on their own for the first time. He was thinking of closing up for the day and returning to the office when a young man appeared at the door. He was in his mid-twenties. A squat mass of black crinkly hair was tied in a ponytail. His face was very narrow and he had high ridges of cheekbones, under which was a dark beard. He wore blue jeans and a black T-shirt. "You Detective Corde?"

"That's me. Come on in."

"I got a message that you wanted to see me."

"What's your name? Here, sit down."

"Brian Okun. Is this about Jennie Gebben?"

"That's right." Corde was flipping through the index cards. Slowly, card by card, reviewing his boxy handwriting. It took a long time. He looked up. "Now, how exactly did you know her?"

"She was in Professor Gilchrist's class. Psychology and Literature. He lectures. I teach the discussion section she was in."

"You're on the faculty?"

"I'm a graduate student. Ph.D. candidate."

"And what did you do in your section?"

"They're discussion groups, as I said."

"What do you discuss?"

Okun laughed, puzzled. "Do you really care?"

"I'm curious."

"The question last week was: 'How would John Crowe Ransom and the school of New Criticism approach the poetry written by someone diagnosed with bipolar depression?' Do you know what the New Criticism movement was all about, Officer?"

"No, I don't," Corde answered. "Do you know if Jennie was going with anybody?"

"'Going with'. What does that mean? That's a vague term."

"Was she seeing anyone?"

Okun asked in a voice crisp with irony, "'Seeing anyone'? Do you mean dating?"

It seemed to Corde that the boy wasn't hostile. He looked genuinely perplexed – as if the detective were asking questions that could not be answered in plain English. "I'd like to know about anyone Jennie may have had more than a passing friendship with."

Okun's eyes ricocheted off Corde's cards. "I suppose you know I took her out a few times."

Corde, who did not know this, answered, "I was going to ask you about that – do you usually date students?"

"This's a college town. Who else is there to ask out?" Okun's eyes met Corde's.

"Isn't it unusual for a professor to ask out his students?"

"I'm not a professor. I told you that. I'm a doctoral candidate. Therefore we were both students."

Corde rubbed his finger across a Styrofoam cup of cold coffee. He shuddered at the squeaky sound. "I'd appreciate you answering my questions in a straightforward way. This is a pretty serious matter. How long were you seeing her?"

"We broke up several months ago. We'd dated for three months off and on."

"Why did you break up?"

"It's not your concern."

"It may be, son."

"Look, Sheriff, we went out five or six times. I never spent the night with her. She was sweet but she wasn't my type."

Corde began to ask a question.

Okun said, "I don't feel like telling you what my type is."

"What were the circumstances of you breaking up?"

Okun twitched a shoulder. "You can't really call it breaking up. There was nothing between us, nothing serious. And neither of us saw any point in going on with it."

"Do you know who Jennie began seeing after you?"

"I know she went out. I don't know with whom."

Corde fanned through his three-by-fives. "That's interesting. Several of her other friends also told me they aren't sure who she was dating recently."

Okun's eyes narrowed and his tongue touched a stray wire of beard. "So, a mystery man."

Corde asked, "What kind of student was she?"

"Slightly above average but her heart wasn't in studying. She didn't feel passion for literature."

He pronounced it lit'rature. Corde asked, "Was there anybody in class she was particularly close to? Other than you?"

"I don't know."

"Did you see her personally in the last month?"

Okun blinked. "Personally?" he asked the ceiling. "I suppose I'd have to see her personally, wouldn't you think? How else can one see anyone? Do you mean did I see her intimately? Or do you mean socially?"

Corde thought of the time he managed to cuff and hogtie George Kallowoski after the man had spent ten minutes swinging a four-by-four, trying in his drunken haze to cave in Corde's skull. He thought a lot better of Kallowoski than he did of this boy. "Outside of class, I meant."

"I hadn't seen her socially for a month. I assume you remember that I told you I didn't see her intimately at all."

"Do you know if there was anybody who had a gripe with her? Anybody she'd fought with recently?"

"No."

"Did she get along well with her roommate?"

"I guess. I don't know Emily that well."

"But you knew Jennie well enough to know that Emily was her roommate."

Okun smiled. "Ah, ratiocination! Does this mean you've trapped me?"

Corde fanned his cards like a Las Vegas blackjack player. "Now, Emily…" He looked up, frowning. "I thought you told me you never stayed overnight in Jennie's room?"

Okun, observing the interrogation from a different plane, sighed. He descended to say, "Emily has a big mouth… I was being euphemistic when I mentioned spending the night."

"Euphemistic?"

Okun said, "It means I was not being literal. I was being metaphoric."

"I know what euphemistic means," said Corde, who did not.

"I mean I didn't have sexual relations with her. We stayed up late discussing literature. That was all. Officer, it seems to me like this is some kind of personal vendetta."

"I don't believe you're right about that."

Okun looked out of the small window as if he were stargazing then said, "I don't know whether you went to college or not but I imagine you don't have a lot of respect for what I do."

Corde didn't say anything.

"I may look like a, what would you call it? Hippie? That's your era. I may look like a hippie. But it's people like me who teach half this illiterate world to communicate. I think that's a rather important thing to do. So I resent being treated like one of your local felons."

Corde asked, "Will you submit a blood sample?"

"Blood?"

"For a genetic market test. To compare with the semen found in Jennie Gebben's body?"

Brian Okun said, "Fuck you" Then he stood up and walked out of the room.

Do You Drive Your Man Crazy?

Diane Corde sat in the paneled office and flipped through a Redbook.

A. Taking skydiving lessons together.

B. Making love outdoors.

C. Going skinny-dipping

D. Taking ballroom dancing classes.

Diane didn't like the place. It reminded her too much of the office of the vet who spayed their puppies and dispensed worm drops. It was nothing but a cheap paneled waiting room and a sliding glass window, behind which was a gum-chewing receptionist, who seemed about to ask, "Time for Fluffy distemper shot, is it?"

Diane swallowed, dry-mouthed, and returned to the magazine.

Question 7. How surprised would your mate be if you called him up one afternoon and told him to meet you after work in a ritzy hotel room, where you would have champagne and caviar waiting for him?

A. Not surprised at all.

B. Somewhat surprised.

C. Very surprised.

D. Astonished.

Corde and Diane had met at a Methodist church singles supper sixteen years before, held in the boathouse on Seever Lake. Corde had shown up with only bags of potato chips, getting mileage out of a bad joke ("Sure I know it's a pot luck supper – y'all're lucky I didn't bring a pot"). Corde then spotted Diane Claudia Willmot arranging pickles in a Tupperware bowl and asked her if she'd like to go for a walk. She said she would, only wait a minute she wanted to get her purse, which she did, and they wandered around in the park until, thank you Lord, a roaring cloudburst forced them into a little shack and while the other pot-luckers were eating beans and franks and making forty-days-and-forty-nights jokes, Corde and Diane kissed, wet and hot, and she decided she was going to marry him.

She was four years older than Corde, which is a big difference between people at only one age – their mid-twenties, which is where the two of them happened to be. Crying, Diane asked him, "What are you going to do when I turn thirty? You'll still be young." And Bill Corde, who was in fact worried about the age difference (but because he thought she might leave him for an older man), told her something that turned out to be completely true: that he didn't think she'd go too ripe before he himself went gray.

One problem he hadn't counted on, though. Diane was divorced, married two years to a salesman up in Fredericksberg. They'd split up before Corde met her and when she'd confessed the marriage, nervous about the response, he'd smeared on the nonchalance real thick. But later he got to thinking about Diane and Stuart together and he claimed it turned his stomach. into a cloverleaf. Diane was tolerant at first but then Corde's insecurity began to wear on her. She didn't know how to placate him. It didn't even seem to make him feel better when she repeated over and over the partial truth that she and Stu hadn't had a good sex life. Although she didn't dwell on it she assumed that Corde had had his share of women and hoped it was true so that he had sowed all the wild grains he had in him. But it wasn't the sex that tormented Corde; it was something trickier – jealousy that the woman he wanted to marry had confessed secrets to another man, that she had cried in front of him, that she had comforted him. Corde could not be allayed, looking sheepish and sorrowful at this retroactive betrayal. "But it was before I even knew you," Diane snapped, and he got a look at her spirited side, as she'd intended. Corde brooded plenty and finally Diane called the bluff. "You gonna mope like that, go find yourself a virgin you think is worth all this heartache you're making for yourself."

Their wedding, the following month, was appropriately punctuated by an inundation to match that of the day they'd met. They both took this as a good omen, which had proved to be pretty accurate. Sixteen years of marriage and when they called each other darling, they more often than not meant it. Diane said the secret to their success was that they had faulty memory circuits and tended to forget rather than forgive the transgressions. The closest either of them had come to an affair were unpure thoughts – along the lines of those about Susan Sarandon and Kevin Costner when Corde and Diane made love the night they'd rented Bull Durham.

They had weathered a near-bankruptcy, the deaths of Diane's father and Corde's mother, a stroke that made Corde's father forever a stranger and then the old man's death, and some bad problems when the family was living in St Louis.

Lately Corde was spending more and more time on cases, away from home. Yet oddly the brooding sense of threat she felt did not come from his long hours or moody obsession with his work. Rather, Diane Corde felt that for some reason it was the trouble with Sarah that was driving them apart. She did not understand this at all but she sensed the momentum of the rift and sensed too, in her darker moments, its inevitability.

She looked at her watch, felt a burst of irritation at having been kept waiting then looked at the receptionist, who moved the gum around in her mouth until she found it a comfy home and continued addressing bills.

Question 11. Does your husband…

The door to the inner office opened and a woman in her late thirties stepped out. She wore a beautiful pink suit, radiant, vibrating. Diane studied the dress before she even glanced at the woman's face. That is a tart's color. A formal smile on her lips, the woman said, "Hello, I'm Dr. Parker. Would you like to come in?"

Ohmagod, she's a fake! Here she is just a Mary K rep who won the Buick and is on to better things. As she stood, Diane thought hard how to escape. Vet's office, pink suit and the woman's only references had been the yellow pages. But despite the misgivings Diane continued into the office. She sat in a comfortable armchair. Dr. Parker closed the door behind them. The room was small, painted yellow and – another glitch – contained no couch. All psychiatrists' offices had couches. That much Diane knew. This office was furnished with two armchairs across from a virtually empty desk, two answering machines, a lamp and a clean ashtray on a pedestal. A cube box of Kleenex.

The doctor's thick gold bracelet clanked on the desktop as she uncapped a pen and took a notebook from the desk.

On the other hand, the doctor passed the wall test. One side of the room was filled with somber, stout books like Psychodynamics in the Treatment of Near-Functioning Individuals and Principles of Psychopharmacology. On the facing wall were the diplomas. Dr. Parker had graduated from the University of Illinois, cum laude, from Northwestern Medical School and from the American College of Psychiatrists. Three schools! Diane, who had limboed out of McCullough Teachers' College with a B-minus average, looked at the squirrelly proclamations full of Latin or Greek phrases and seals and stamps then turned back to find the doctor gazing expectantly at her.

"Well," Diane said, and folded her sweating hands in her lap. She felt the wave of tears slosh inside her. She opened her mouth to tell the doctor about Sarah and said instead, "Are you new in town?"

"I opened my practice a year ago."

"A year," Diane said. "New Lebanon a little quiet for you?"

"I like small towns."

"Small towns." Diane nodded. A long moment of silence. "Well, it is a small town. That's true."

Dr. Parker said, "When you called you mentioned your daughter. Why don't you tell me about her."

Diane's mind froze. "Well."

The doctor's pen hovered, ready to scoot along the paper, dragging the eighteen-karat bracelet behind.

Diane blurted, "Our Sarah's been having some problems in school."

"How old is she?"

"Nine."

"And how many months?"

"Uh, six."

"That's fifth grade?"

"Fourth. We held her back a year."

"Tell me about her problem."

"She's a smart girl. She really is. Some of the things that come out of her mouth…" Examples vanished from Diane's mind. "But she has this attitude… And she's lazy. She doesn't try. She won't do her homework. She fails her tests. I was reading this book? Your Hidden Child." She paused, waiting for Dr. Parker to approve the paperback. The doctor lifted her eyebrows quizzically, which gave Diane the impression she didn't think much of the book. "It said that children sometimes behave badly because they want attention."

"You said she's smart. Do you know her IQ?"

"I don't remember," Diane said, flinching. This was something she should have looked up. "I'm sorry. I -"

"It doesn't matter. We can get it from the school."

"But she acts hostile, she acts stupid, she has temper tantrums. And you know what happens? She gets attention. I think that's a lot of why she seems to be slow. We have another child – Sarah's the second – so we think that she feels jealous. Which is crazy because we spend lots of time with her. Much more than we do with Jamie. I don't let her get away with it. I don't put up with any nonsense from her. But she doesn't listen to me anymore. It's like she tunes me out. So what I'd like you to do is talk to her. If you tell her -"

"Has she ever seen a therapist or counselor about this?"

"Just a counselor at her school. The New Lebanon Grade School. He recommended that book to me. Then I talked to our pediatrician about it. Dr. Sieving? He's an expert with children?"

Dr. Parker apparently did not engage in the practice of confirming parents' opinions. She looked at Diane pleasantly and said nothing.

"Anyway we went to Dr. Sieving and he prescribed Ritalin for her."

"For attention deficit?"

This gave Diane a burst of relief, thinking that at least dottering old Sieving had diagnosed the problem correctly.

Dr. Parker continued. "Was she behaving in an unruly way, overly active? Any compulsive behavior – like washing her hands frequently?"

"Oh, she's restless a lot. Jittery. Always running around. Nervous. She drives me to distraction."

"Did Dr. Sieving give her any psychological testing?"

"No. He took a blood sample." Diane was blushing and looked away from the doctor. "But he's known her all her life… I mean, he seemed to think it was the best form of treatment."

"Well," said stern Dr. Parker, "if attention deficit is the diagnosis what brings you to see me?"

"I think the medicine's working." Diane hesitated. "But not too well. In fact sometimes I don't think it does any good, to be honest with you. It makes her very, I don't know, spacy at times. And it upsets her stomach and seems to make her more jittery. She says it gives her the tummy squabbles." She looked down at her hands and found to her astonishment her knuckles were white as ivory. "The truth is she seems to be getting worse. Her grades are still terrible. Yesterday she tried to run away. She's never done that before. And her temper tantrums are more violent too. She talks back more than she ever did. She also talks to herself."

"Let me ask you a few things…"

An avalanche of questions followed. Diane tried to understand where the doctor was headed. But it was useless; just when Diane would think she understood what the doctor had in mind, she would throw a curve.

"Does she watch much TV?"

"Two hours in the evening, only when her homework's done. Actually she likes movies more. She thinks most sitcoms and commercials are stupid. She calls them yucky."

A miniature smile made a reappearance. "I'm inclined to agree. Go on."

"She pretends she doesn't learn things quickly… I know she's, I don't want to say, faking…" Diane realized she just had. "Well, she picks up some things so fast that when she acts stupid, it rings false."

"What's easy for her?"

"Remembering movies and stories we've read to her. And the characters in them. She can act out scenes perfectly. She can remember dialogue. Oh and guessing the ending of movies. Dressing up in costumes. She loves costumes. But it's all things like that – pretend things. Anything having to do with real life – school, cooking, gym, bike riding, games, sports, sewing… All that seems beyond her." Diane looked away from the doctor's eyes. "The other day she wet her pants in front of the class."

Dr. Parker's mouth tightened and she shook her head. Diane watched her record in a tiny, cold notation a fact that would probably dog her daughter for the rest of her life. Diane took a Kleenex and pretended to blow her nose then twined the paper between her strong fingers and slowly shredded it into confetti.

More questions. This was hard. Diane tried, oh she did, but her way was to keep family flaws hidden like her mother's jewelry – anything real, anything diamond, anything gold was to be trotted out only on rare, vital occasions. It took all her strength to give this sleek, chic-suited stranger these facts – about Bill, about Jamie, about the grandparents, about Sarah's shyness and her wily manipulation. Dr. Parker glanced at her watch. Is she bored?

The doctor asked, "When you were pregnant did you drink or take any kind of medication?"

"I didn't drink, no. Occasionally I took a Tylenol. But only a couple of times. I knew it wasn't good."

"How is your relationship with your husband?"

"Excellent. Good."

"Do you quarrel openly? Have you ever talked about divorce?"

"No. Never."

"Do either of you drink now or take drugs?"

"We drink socially is all," an offended Diane said. "We never do drugs. We go to church."

There was a pause while the doctor's hand sped along the page. Diane said. "So we were thinking that if somebody like you, a doctor, told her she should cut out this nonsense and get down to work, well, then…" Her voice tapered off.

The doctor chewed her thin lower lip, lifting off a fleck of lipstick. The expensive pen got capped. The teeth released the lip and the doctor leaned back in her leather chair. "I've worked with learning disabled children before -"

"But she's not disabled," Diane said quickly. "I told you, her IQ -"

Dr. Parker said, "A learning disability isn't a function of IQ. It's -"

"Doctor," Diane explained patiently. "Sarah is a smart, shy little girl. She's learned a…" Diane remembered a phrase from the Hidden Child book. "… pattern of behavior to get attention from my husband and me and her teachers. We've played into her hand. Now we need an expert like you to tell her to buckle down and get to work. She's gotten away with too much from us. She'll listen to you. That's why I'm here."

Dr. Parker waited a moment then spoke. "I want to say something to you and you can think about it and talk it over with your husband. First, I should tell you – based on what you've told me – I'm not sure your daughter suffers from attention deficit disorder. Some psychiatrists feel that ADD is a condition different from hyperactivity. From my own research I think they're intertwined. If I understand correctly, Sarah doesn't show general overactivity – what we call hyperkinetic behavior. Her restlessness may be secondary; she has other problems and they in turn make her jittery and anxious. Ritalin is a temporary measure at best."

" But Dr. Sieving said it would help her to learn now and that she'd retain what she did learn."

"I understand and there's something to be said for that. But with all respect for your internist, I feel doctors are prescribing Ritalin a little too quickly. Many parents prefer a diagnosis of ADD because they'd rather see a physical than a psychological explanation for their children's troubles."

"Sarah is not crazy," Diane said icily.

"Absolutely not," the doctor said emphatically. "A developmental disability is a common and treatable problem. In our days it translated as stupid or lazy or recalcitrant. Professionals don't think of it that way anymore. But a lot of people do."

Diane felt the sting of criticism coming from the doctor's placid face. She said abruptly, "Why, how can you say that? You should see all the work Bill does with her. And every day I march her downstairs and make her do her homework. Sometimes I spend an hour before breakfast with her."

The doctor said in a soothing voice, "I'm sure it's been very difficult for you and your husband. But if s important to put aside our thoughts that she's lazy or stupid or just ornery."

"It was very hard to come here in the first place," Diane blurted angrily. "I just want you to tell her to buckle down, to -"

Dr. Parker smiled. "I know this is difficult for you, Mrs. Corde. You'd like a quick fix for your daughter's troubles. But I don't think we're going to find one. If she has a developmental problem, as I think she does, then the treatment requires the parents to expect less from the child, not more. We want to reduce the stress and pressure on her."

"But that's just what she wants."

Dr. Parker lifted her hands and although she was smiling Diane believed the gesture meant the doctor had won this round. She boiled at this woman, who was making the meeting into a contest over her daughter's fate. She didn't grow any calmer when the doctor said, "First, I'll do a series of tests to determine exactly what the problems are."

Oh, I can psyche you out, honey. The dollar signs are looming.

"Then I'll have her come in for regular sessions and we'll treat her – probably in conjunction with learning specialists."

"Well," Diane said coldly, still stupefied by what she saw was a dressing-down.

Dr. Parker asked, "Shall we schedule an appointment?"

Diane summoned sufficient etiquette to say politely, "I think I should talk it over with Bill."

She stood up and watched the pink-suited bitch also rise, smile warmly and extend her hand, saying, "I look forward to hearing from you. It's been a pleasure."

For you maybe. Unsmiling, Diane shook the doctor's hand, then walked out the door.

Outside the office, in the parking lot, she tore the doctor's card in four pieces and smiled them into the breeze.

Corde and T.T. Ebbans stood over a desk in the main room of the Sheriffs Department, poring over the computer printout that Ebbans had ordered from the county data base. It was headed: Known Sex Offenders, Convicted, By Offense.

In the past three years the district attorney had prosecuted or pled out eleven rapists, four aggravated sexual assaulters, three child molesters, three exhibitionists ("Hell, flashers, you mean…"), a couple of peepers, and three excessively embarrassed residents whose offenses involved livestock.

"We got ourselves a relatively unperverse community," Ebbans commented, noting that these numbers – except for the sheep – were considerably lower than the state average per thousand residents.

Corde and Ebbans had just learned that every one of the rapists and the assaulters was accounted for. Ebbans said he'd do an informal check of the exhibitionists and peepers. He was not enthusiastic about the prospect.

"It'll be a waste, I know," Corde said. "But we gotta do it."

Ribbon had come up and was tugging at an earlobe as he looked over the list and chuckled. Lance Miller walked into the office, just returned from the dorm. Corde noticed that he was vastly uncomfortable.

"Whatcha got, Lance?"

The young man plunked his hat onto a rack beside the door and buffed his crewcut with his pink fingers. He walked to the cluster of senior officers. His eyes fished around the office. "Well, Bill, I went over there to that McReynolds place, the dorm, with the Crime Scene fellows. Like you asked."

Corde motioned impatiently with his hand. "She coming in to be interviewed? Emily?"

"Well, I just talked to her for a minute. She's real pretty."

"Who's that?" Ribbon asked.

Corde said, "Jennie's roommate."

"She was damn upset," Miller continued. "She said it seems somebody broke into the dorm and stole all of Jennie's letters. She -"

Well, well, well…" the sheriff said. That's interesting."

"She went to a memorial service they had for Jennie over at one of the churches yesterday and left the door unlocked. When she got back somebody'd stolen this folder with all Jennie's letters and important papers."

Corde was nodding.

"I asked around but almost everybody was at the service and nobody had any leads on the break-in."

"Members of the cult maybe," Ribbon offered, looking eyebrows-up at Corde.

Miller said, "There's something else too." His eyes had fallen to the desk and had focused on the phrase that said in green computer type, Incidents of forcible sodomy to date.

"Emily gave me a few things that this guy hadn't stolen."

"Good," said Corde.

"One of them was a calendar from last year." Miller cleared his throat.

"And?" Ribbon said.

"A pocket calendar thing? It was in Emily's desk and that's why it wasn't stolen."

"What about it, Lance?" Corde was growing impatient.

Miller seemed relieved that he could now rely on visual aids. He flipped the battered gray booklet open to the prior year, January. Written in the square for a Saturday night toward the end of the month were the words: Bill Corde. Nine p.m. My place.

8

"I interviewed her."

"Part of a case?"

"The Biagotti case," Corde said. His eyes were on the rumpled page of Jennie's calendar for the last week in January. On Thursday she had to pick up her dry cleaning. On Friday she was going to the drugstore for shampoo, Tampax and Sudafed.

On Saturday she'd seen Bill Corde. Nine p.m. Her place.

Neither Ebbans, with his affection for Corde, nor Miller, with his inexperience on the job, wanted any part of this.

Ribbon's eyes looked into Corde's, which were two uneasy pools of green.

The sheriff squinted memories back into his thoughts and said, "That was after you got back from the task force, sure. It would've been around the end of January." He seemed measurelessly relieved at this. "You didn't know her otherwise?"

"No."

Then Ribbon's face clouded again and his eyes fell to the calendar. "She called you Bill. What do you make of that?"

Ebbans wandered away to his temporary desk and sat down to make a phone call, real or imaginary.

Corde said calmly, "When I called Jennie up to see when I could interview her about the Biagotti case, she and I got to talking and it turned out we'd lived near each other in St Louis. We, you know, chatted for a while about that. By the end of the conversation I called her Jennie. I guess she wrote down Bill."

"You knew each other in St Louis?"

"What exactly are you getting at?"

"Nothing, Bill. I'm not suggesting a single damn thing. I just have to keep an eye out for this sort of situation."

"What sort of situation?"

"I just want everything on the table."

"Everything is on the table."

"Good. But while your dander's up I'm just gonna ask one more question and then we'll say good-bye to it. In the Biagotti file you've got a record of that conversation you had with Jennie?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I didn't write anything down. I stopped by the dorm that Saturday. Nine o'clock. Jennie and I talked about fifteen minutes. She knew the Biagotti girl a little but that was it. Jennie was one of maybe fifty students I talked to about the case."

"You didn't talk to fifty of them on Saturday night."

"But I talked to a lot of them then. And on Sunday morning too. And on Sunday night. And -"

"That's a good answer."

"That's the true answer," Corde shot back.

"Okay, Bill, don't get riled. If I don't ask, somebody else might. Let's forget the whole thing."

Ribbon tapped the sex offender printout. "This was a good idea, this sex stuff. I'd also check out, you know, occult bookstores and that sort of thing. I think there's one of them not far from the campus on Waverly Street or Stinson. They've got a bulletin board in the doorway. See if they have announcements for cult… What do cults have? Services or meetings or something?"

"Probably services," Miller said helpfully. "Being religious, I mean."

"Well, I'd check that out. Absolutely." Ribbon returned to his office. The floor wheezed under his solid footsteps.

Corde found Ebbans and Miller staring at him. Ebbans punched a number into the phone. Corde handed Jennie's calendar to Miller. "Log that into evidence, Deputy. And let's get back to work."

For a time after he'd met with Dean Larraby he felt like General George Thomas who in 1863 earned his nickname the Rock of Chickamauga by preventing Braxton Bragg's counterattack from becoming a total rout of the Union forces. Faced with overwhelming odds and bowed under losses but infinitely confident and strong.

By now though Professor and Associate Dean Randolph Rutherford Sayles is pierced with a despair as sharp as any triangular musket bayonet. He sits where he has sat for the past three hours, smoking his thirteenth cigarette of the afternoon, in the Holiday Inn on the Business Loop with four Auden University trustees from the East Coast. Their transcripts he is not familiar with, but this he has finally concluded about them: they are men who view Auden as a trade school. Two are lawyers, one is the director of a large nonprofit philanthropic organization and one is a doctor. Their interest in the school derives from the Poli Sci Department, the business school, the Biology Department.

They never glean of course that Sayles holds them in patient contempt for their philistine perspective on education. He can't afford for them to catch on; either personally or through their fund-raising efforts these four are responsible for close to eleven million dollars a year of funding for the school. Sayles the history professor thinks they are rich fools; Sayles the associate dean of financial aid, immersed presently in hot fucking water, charms them effusively as they indulge in dishes of bad fruit salad in the Riverside dining room.

Occasionally they seem to grow tired of Professor Sayles and their eyes dip toward a five-page document, which the professor prepared earlier in the day and which he views the way FAA inspectors might study the jagged remains of a 747.

"Gentlemen, Auden University is a qualifying not-for-profit corporation, which exempts the institution under the Internal Revenue Code Section 503(c) from paying federal income tax and from a parallel section in the state revenue code from paying state tax. Being a not-for-profit corporation, however, does not mean that it can lose money with impunity." Ha ha ha. He catches each of their eyes seriatim. "So while the terms red and black don't have the same meaning they might for, say, GM, or IBM, we are seriously considering changing the school's colors from black and gold to crimson…"

He is passionate and funny, teasing his audience in the manner of a toastmaster, a serendipitous skill he has learned from years of lecturing to twenty-year-olds with attitudes. Yet these Easterners are immune and actually seem embarrassed for Sayles. One says, "We've got to start thinking more global on this. Let's start a law school or hang some balls on the MBA program. Move up into the Wharton frame of mind."

"Hmm. High capital expense for that," Sayles offers. Try fifty million minimum.

"Maybe a noncredit continuing education program?"

Sayles nods gravely, considering. You stupid prick. Farmers and Kmart checkers aren't going to pay good money to study Heidegger at night. "Hmm. Small market for that," he says.

One trustee, a trim, golf-playing lawyer, who turned down even the fruit cup as too caloric, says, "I don't think we should be too fast to give up on Section 42(f) aid." Under the state education law private colleges can qualify for grants if they admit a large number of minority students, regardless of their academic record.

The others gaze at him in puzzlement. At least here Sayles has allies. The lawyer says, "It was just a thought."

"Three point six million," Sayles says slowly, and the discussion goes round and round again. Sayles begins to understand something. These men court clients and patients and chief executive officers who routinely write them checks often twenty a hundred thousand dollars. They live with streaked-haired, face-lifted wives and are limoed to art museums and restaurants and offices. Aside from semiyearly meetings at Auden, Palm Springs and Aspen, they are never seen west of Amish country. He decides their interest in their alma mater is just that – an interest, nothing more. He is sickened by their suggestions, which are paltry and, worse, obvious; they are student responses to the assignment "How to Save Auden University."

By the time the last dots of syrup have been sucked out of the fruit cups, Randy Sayles senses with a feeling of terrible waste that he is alone in this struggle to keep the school afloat. The school. And his own career. And perhaps his freedom.

The Easterners promise to keep their thinking caps on. They promise to increase their personal pledges. They promise to mount a campaign among their peers in the East. Then they shake Sayles's hand and climb into the limo (university-financed, fifty-six dollars an hour) for the ride to Harrison County Airport.

Sayles is in terrible despair. He returns to his office and, with the help of one of the school's lawyers, fills out a Section 34 form requesting emergency state aid for private educational institutions. Too little. At best, Auden might receive six hundred thousand. But Sayles urges the lawyer to file the application anyway and to do so by fax. In a daze he watches the gray-suited lawyer leave his office and he has a vivid image from one of his own lectures – not of George H. Thomas rallying his troops to a bloody defiant stand but rather of Union General Irvin McDowell at Manassas Junction, watching in confused despair the spirits of his many men fly to heaven under the shocking clatter of Jackson's guns.

Special to the Register – The carcass of a recently killed and skinned goat was found in a fourth-grade classroom in the New Lebanon Grade School yesterday.

The carcass was discovered by a janitor at six a.m. and had apparently been left after the school was closed at midnight. The vandal gained access to the school by breaking through a ground-floor washroom window. No one was in the building at the time.

A large quantity of blood – believed to have come from the animal – was smeared on the walls of the classroom.

The room will be closed for cleaning for several days. Fourth-grade students will attend class in the school's recreation room.

Investigators feel this incident may be related to the rape and murder of an Auden University coed by the so-called "Moon Killer" on the night of April 20. School officials reported that the vandal wrote the word "Lunatic" on the classroom wall in blood.

This word comes from the Latin "Luna," meaning moon.

Board of Education officials approved emergency funds to hire a security guard who will be at the school during school hours through the end of the term.

Meanwhile, the teachers' union and officials of-the PTA have contacted the office of John Treadle, Harrison County Supervisor, with a request for a town curfew and for additional police to help investigate the crime. One PTA official, who insisted on anonymity, said that if the killer is not found within the next few days, parents should consider keeping children home from school.

The next full moon will occur five days from now, on the night of Wednesday, April 28.

"This is getting out of hand," Bill Corde said.

Steve Ribbon brushed the newspaper delicately. He seemed to decide not to reply to Corde's tight-lipped comment. The sheriff instead asked, "A goat?"

"This kind of stuff…" Corde shook his head. "I mean, people read this. People believe it…"

"We can't control the press, Bill. You know that. What was the handwriting like? On the classroom wall?"

"What was it like? I don't know. You want to get a graphoanalyst -"

"'Lunatic.' It's Latin for -"

"This moon thing is making people crazy," Corde protested. "There's some no-fooling hysteria out there."

"Can't deny the facts."

"Steve, it was kids."

"Kids?"

"A prank or something. High school kids."

"I don't know, Bill."

"Even if it was Jennie's killer, all he did was leave some showy clues making it look like this was related to the moon somehow."

"Well, if the shoe fits…"

"Naw," Corde said. "He'd do it to throw us off. I mean, why kill a goat? Why not another victim?"

"Not killing anybody don't mean anything. Maybe the strike window was narrower than I guessed."

Corde debated for a moment. "Well, Steve, isn't it possible that this wouldn't've happened if the guy hadn't read that story in the Register about cults?"

"My interview the other day, you're saying."

Corde could think of no response. He shrugged. "We didn't find any evidence of cult or Satanic stuff around Jennie's body."

"The knife. You're forgetting the knife."

Corde pulled at his lip for a moment. "I don't know what to make of the knife, that's true."

He could see no reason to pursue this line of talk with Ribbon. He said, "Another thing I want to do – I want to take out an ad and ask for witnesses. Tell them everything'll be confidential."

The sheriff said, "What'll it cost?"

"The Beacon won't be much but we'll have to do it in the Register too, I think. It'll be about four hundred for the week. We get a discount."

"We haven't got that in our budget. It's already dented from you taking that flight to St Louis."

Corde said, "I think we've got to. Nobody's come forward. We need some help."

"Do the Beacon but I can't afford the Register," Ribbon said. "I've got another idea though. You ought to ask all the county shrinks about their patients. And all releases for the past month from Gunderson. That's an approach a lot of investigators take in serial killings."

"A low-security mental hospital, two hundred miles away?" Corde asked.

"A lot of crazies go through Gunderson."

"And every one of them shrinks is going to plead privilege."

"I don't much care about that. At least it'd be on record that we asked and we'd keep ourselves covered pretty damn good."

"We don't have the manpower to do what we're doing now let alone send somebody around to every therapist in the county."

The men looked at each other for a lengthy moment and finally Corde said firmly, "I'll take responsibility for the way I'm handling the case."

Ribbon stroked his bulbous red cheek with a raw knuckle. "No need to have words over it, Bill." He smiled. "You're absolutely right. It's your case. And your responsibility. You do what you think you ought."

The low late afternoon sun fell on her desk and onto the piece of paper she had in front of her. Sarah reached forward and the square beam of light seemed to warm her hand. Specks of dust floated along the beam and Sarah had this image: If she were no bigger than a bit of dust she could float away, sail right through the open window and outside. Nobody would see her. Nobody would know.

She hunched over and smoothed the paper, which was all crinkly and limp. She felt some slight disappointment; it looked just like red ink on typewriter paper. She was hoping that he'd leave messages in stone or on a big sheet of brown burnt paper.

A comma of tongue touched the dimple in her upper lip and she leaned forward in concentration. Sarah found reading harder than writing because even though she had a terrible time remembering spelling and how the letters were supposed to go, at least she decided which words to use.

Reading was the opposite. You had to look at words somebody else had picked and then figure out what they were.

This was torture.

She sighed, lost her place and started over. Finally after twenty minutes she finished. A wave of happiness swept over her – not just because she managed to complete the note but at what the words themselves said.

Sarah:

I got your note. I was real glad to get it. Don't worry about your spelling. It doesn't matter to me how well you spell. I'm watching you, I'll come visit very soon. I'll leave a surprise for you in the garage.

And yes I am -

The Sunshine Man

Happy, yes, although she felt a bit of disappointment – he had left the note while her mother had been out, Tom the deputy had been reading on the front porch and Sarah herself had been watching an afternoon movie.

Why, she wondered, hadn't the Sunshine Man waited for her and given her this message in person, instead of leaving the note where she found it – under the pillow of her bed?

Whoa…

Diane Corde paced through the kitchen.

"She was a four-star, flaming you know what."

"Whoa," Corde said. "Hold on here." He opened his first of two after-work beers. This one was his favorite and he really enjoyed the sound of the tab cracking. Today the ritual wasn't giving him any pleasure.

Diane tore open the freezer door, pulled out a four-pound pack of ground round and tossed it loud into the sink. Frost flew like shrapnel. Corde stepped back. He said, "I just asked how it went."

"How it went is it cost us a hundred and ten dollars – one hundred and ten! – for this woman, you should've seen, a doctor wearing a pink dress, no you shouldn't've seen, for this woman to tell me about my own daughter. Honestly!"

"Simmer down now and tell me what she said."

"I was perfectly civil with her. I was polite. I tried to make a few friendly jokes." Diane turned to her husband. "I think she's from the East."

"Tell me what she said," Corde repeated patiently.

"She insulted Dr. Sieving and she talked to me like I was keeping Sarrie from getting help because I was afraid people'd say she was crazy."

Corde squinted, trying to work this out.

"I mean, what she wants to do is for us to pay her a hundred and ten dollars – my word, a hundred and ten dollars – an hour just -"

"I got my insurance."

"… to give Sarah some tests…" She crossed her arms and paced some more. "I mean, she was practically looking me in the eye and saying she's got learning disabilities."

"Does she?" Corde asked. Diane stared at him. He added, "Have learning disabilities, I mean?"

"Oh, okay!" Diane thundered. "You're taking her side? Fine."

Corde sighed. "I'm not taking sides." He retreated. "You'd think a hundred ten dollars'd buy you more than that."

"I'd say you would." Two potatoes crashed into the sink.

Sarah appeared in the doorway and Diane's pacing slowed. The little girl watched her and said cautiously. "Mommy, it's time for my pill."

Two more potato hand grenades were lobbed into the sink. "No," Diane said. "You're not taking them anymore. Give me the bottle."

"I'm not?"

Corde asked, "She's not?"

"No."

"Good, I don't like them. They taste pukey and they give me tummy squabbles."

"Now you and your father are going to work on your spelling for the test next week and -"

"I'm not going to take -"

"You'll do as you're told, young lady!" Diane pulled onions out of the refrigerator. Thunk, into the sink. "And on Saturday I'm taking you to see Dr. Parker. She's a nice lady and she's going to help you in school."

"Okay." Sarah caved, fear of tests having a heavier specific gravity than fear of an angry mother.

"Honey," Corde told her, "you run into the den. I'll be there in a minute." When she left, Corde cocked his head and said to his wife, "Excuse me?"

Diane looked exasperated. "Excuse me what?"

"I thought. I mean, what you just said. I thought you weren't going to take Sarah to see her."

"Meat loaf?" Diane asked.

"Uhm, sure."

"Of course I'm taking her." Diane aimed a bunch of carrots at him and whispered harshly, "That woman is a bitch and she's a fashion plate and if she doesn't help my daughter then heaven help her."

Philip Halpern nervously carried the paper bag as he wound through the cluttered backyard to a greasy stone barbecue pit piled high with cinders and burnt steak and chicken bones. The boy set the bag in a cone of ashes and dug through pockets compressed by his fat body. Finally he took a book of matches from his shirt pocket. He did this with the reverence of someone who's afraid not of the fire itself but of unguessed risks that he's been warned fire holds. The match ignited with a burst of pungent sulfur. He lit the bag. It began to burn. Philip wondered if the smoke would be poisonous. He wished he had asked his friend Jano to do this -

Oh no…

Philip heard the footsteps. He looked up and in the dusk he saw the vague form of his father, a heavy man with a crew cut, wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt. The only distinct thing about the lumbering shape was the red dot of his cigarette held between his fingers at his side. Philip felt his heart freeze.

"Whatcha doing, son?" asked the benign voice.

"Nothing."

"You ask me if you could burn something?"

"No, sir."

"You lit the matches yourself?"

"I was just fooling around."

"Fooling around with matches?"

"It's in the barbecue," Philip said, trying to keep his voice steady.

"I can see it's in the barbecue. Did you ask me if you could light a match?"

"No, sir."

"What'd it be?"

"Huh?"

"What'd I say about answering me that way? You forget the rules?"

"I'm sorry," Philip said quickly.

"So what is it? That you're burning?"

"Just some paper I found."

"More of those magazines?"

"No, sir." Please, please, please. Just leave me be. Please. Philip felt tears dribbling down his cheek. He was thankful for the darkness; the surest way to get smacked was to cry. "Just some paper."

"Where d'you get those magazines?"

"It wasn't magazines."

The bag flared suddenly as the contents caught fire. Philip believed he sensed a terrible smell. A human smell. He had an image of a small space creature enveloped in swirls of flames. He swallowed. In the flickering light he saw his father's face, a frown etched into the matte skin.

"You were out Tuesday night," the man said. "I looked in your room and you were out."

Philip's voice clogged. His heart beat like a roaring car engine and shoved all the blood out of his chest and into his face and temples.

"Weren't you?"

Philip nodded.

His father said, "A man answers, a girl nods."

"Yessir, I was out."

"Where?"

"Just went for a walk."

"Uhm," his father said. "All right. Handy man."

"Please, Dad…"

"Don't whine."

"I just… I'm sorry. I was just…"

Just what? Philip didn't know what he could say. He couldn't tell the truth about the bag. He wanted it to burn to silent ash, he wanted his father to die, he wanted to be thin. He wanted to stop thinking about breasts about girls about mud…

"Please."

"Hold out your hand."

"Please." But even as he was saying this, his hand rose. He found that it hurt less when he looked and he now stared at his own knuckles.

"You get one for the matches, one for the magazines, one for lying."

"I'm not -"

"Two for lying."

His father raised his fist and brought down his knuckles hard on the back of Philip's hand. The boy wheezed in pain.

Philip knew how he would kill his father. It wouldn't be strangulation, the way the Honons had killed Princess Nanya. It would be with some kind of gun. He wanted to pierce his father's body. He fantasized on this as the man's thick knuckles rose and fell, bone like iron, bone like xaser torpedoes.

Again, the searing pain. Philip pictured his father lying by the roadside, blood easing from deep wounds.

The flames in the barbecue flickered in the cool breeze. The radiation of heat ceased. His father's hand rose a final time.

Philip pictured his father lying by the roadside.

He pictured his father dying in a bed of blue flowers, dying in a patch of mud.

Bill Corde shudders once and wakes. It is two a.m.

He is a man whose dreams are anchored in logic, a man with a solid belief that images in sleep are replays of the week's events as sensible and sure as spark plugs firing according to the electricity sent to them by a new-scraped distributor. Dreams are not omens from wily gods, they are not inky-dark desires long ago snuffed.

Tonight however Bill Corde lies awake with trembling heart and legs so wet that he wonders for a horrid moment if he let go of his control as did his father every night of the last two months of his life. He reaches down and feels with meager reassurance the sweat along his thigh.

The dream was this:

Corde was sitting on a porch, the one he remembers from childhood. Only he was now an adult full grown and gray as the paint on the split oak of the floorboards.

There had been a terrible mistake, a misunderstanding so shocking that Corde was crying with agony. "I know," he answered the unseen person inside the house who had just told him the news, "I know I know I know… But I thought different all these years. I believed different…"

Oh no, oh no…

How could he have been wrong?

What the bodiless voice had told him and what Corde finally and tragically acknowledged was that although he believed that he had two children, he in fact has but one – the other being just a bundle of cut grass hunched up in the backyard of his house.

In his dream he sobbed and then he woke.

Now, lying in his damp pajamas, listening to the tick of Diane's breath, he feels the slam of his heart. He supposed the dream itself lasted no more than five or ten seconds. Yet he thinks he will carry with him for the rest of his life the memory of those dream tears he cried for his lost child – and for himself, because half his joy all these long years with his family has been false.

The burgundy Cadillac Eldorado pulled into the parking lot and eased into a slot painted in black letters: Mr. Gebben.

The driver of the car looked at the sign for a moment and thought of the parking space he had just left – one at the Stolokowski Funeral Home up the road. The sign there, which read Families and Guests, had been painted not in black but in bright blue. Richard Gebben thought there was sad irony in this; the blue of the sign at the funeral home was the exact shade of his company's corporate logo.

He climbed out of the car and, slouching, walked into the low pebble-walled building. An airliner's roar filled the sky for a moment and a jumbo jet began its takeoff roll at nearby Lambert Field. As the thick glass door swung shut behind him, the sound diminished to a whisper. "Oh," the receptionist said, and looked at him with a surprised stare. Neither spoke as he walked past.

In his outer office Gebben accepted the hug of his tearful secretary.

"You didn't…" she began. "I mean you didn't need to come in today, Mr. Gebben."

He said softly, "Yes I did." And then escaped into his own sanctum. He sat in a swivel chair and looked out over a weedy lot surrounded by razor-wire-topped chain link and an abandoned siding.

Gebben – this stocky bull of a man, a Midwesterner with a pocked face, founder from scratch of Gebben Pre-Formed Inc., a simple man able to make whip-crack decisions – today felt paralyzed. He needed help, he had prayed for it.

He now spun slowly in his chair and watched the man who was going to provide that help walk up to his office door. A man who was cautious and respectful but unafraid, a man who had an immense physical presence even among big men. This man stood in Gebben's doorway, patient, his own huge shoulders slumped. This was the only man in the world Gebben would leave his daughter's wake to meet. The man entered the office and, when invited to, sat in an old upholstered chair across the desk.

"I'm very sorry, Mr. Gebben."

Though Gebben did not doubt the sincerity of those words they fell leaden from the man's chapped lips.

"Thank you, Charlie."

Charles Mahoney, forty-one years old, was six three and he weighed two hundred and eighty pounds. He had been a Chicago policeman for thirteen years. Five years ago a handcuffed felony-murder suspect in Mahoney's custody had died when two of the man's ribs broke and pierced his lung. A perfect imprint of the butt of a police service revolver had been found on the suspect's chest. Mahoney couldn't offer any suggestions as to how this freak accident occurred and he chose to resign from the force rather than risk letting a Cook County grand jury arrive at one very reasonable explanation.

Mahoney was now head of Gebben Pre-Formed's Security Department. He liked this job better than being a cop. When people were found inside the chain link or in the warehouse or in the parking lot and they got impressions put on their chests and their ribs broken, nobody gave a shit. Except the people with the broken ribs and Mahoney could tell them point blank to shut up and be happy that their ribs were the only things broken. They were rarely happy. But they did shut up.

Richard Gebben, who by fluke of age had missed military service, knew the Chicago story about Mahoney because the security chief was Gebben's surrogate platoon buddy. They drank together on occasion and told war stories and travel stories, though most of them involved Mahoney talking and Gebben saying, "It must've been a fucking great time," or "I've really gotta do that." Gebben always picked up the check.

Gebben now held Mahoney's eyes for a moment. "I'm going to ask you to do something for me, Charlie."

"Sure, I'd -"

"Let me finish, Charlie."

Mahoney's eyes were on a toy truck that Gebben's Human Resources Department passed out at Christmas. On the side of the trailer was the blue company logo. Mahoney didn't have any kids so he'd never been given a truck. This irked him in a minor way.

"If you agree to help me I'll pay you ten thousand dollars cash. Provided -"

"Ten thousand?"

"Provided that what I'm about to tell you never leaves this room."

9

She put the words one right after another in her mind. She said them aloud. "'As virtuous men pass mildly away / And whisper to their souls to go…'"

The girl lay in the single bed, on top of a university-issue yellow blanket, under a comforter her mother had bought at Neiman-Marcus. The room lamps were out and light filtered through the curtains, light blue like the oil smoke of truck exhaust. Tears escaped from her eyes, saliva dripped onto the blanket beneath her head.

She remembered the last thing Jennie Gebben had said to her. "Ah, kiddo. See you soon."

Emily Rossiter spoke in a frantic whisper. "'Whilst some of their sad friends do say, / The breath goes now and some say no.'"

They weren't working. The words were powerless. She rested the book on her forehead for a moment then dropped it on the floor. Emily, who was twenty years old and intensely beautiful, had a large mass of curly dark hair, which she now twined compulsively around her fingers. She recited the poem again.

At the knock on the door she inhaled in shock.

"Emily Rossiter?" A man's voice was speaking. The doors were thin. She felt the knocking resonate upon her heart. "It's Deputy Miller? I was by before? We were wondering if you could come in and speak to Detective Corde for a bit? He's pretty anxious to see you."

A woman's voice, that of the housemother, asked, "Emily? Are you there? This gentleman wants to talk with you."

"I'll drive you over."

She heard their voices speaking to one another. She couldn't make out the words. She -

Oh no. The key! The housemother has a key. Emily flipped off the covers. She scooted off the bed and stood in the middle of the room like a child, knees together, panicked. Another knock.

Emily stepped into her closet and sat on the floor, which was strewn with fallen hangers and dust balls and tissue from the dry cleaner's. She quietly pulled several of her winter coats off the hooks above her and covered herself entirely.

"Emily?"

Breathe slowly, breathe slowly. They can't get you here… You're safe with me, kiddo.

But there were no keys in the door. After a moment she heard footsteps walking away, the jangle of the awful police equipment receding. It would be safe to climb out but there was something so comforting about lying under satin and cashmere so hidden that she was compelled to stay. "'Such wilt thou be to me, who must / Like the other fool obliquely run…'"

She wrapped the coats tighter about her.

They took Jennie away.

They took her letters away.

And now they want me too…

Ah, kiddo… Emily lay her head on the thick hump of a suede jacket.

"'Thy firmness makes my circle just, / And makes me end where I begun.'"

The green Schwinn bicycle sat in the garage, standing upright. Twined around and around the small bike were little lights, a string of Christmas lights from the indoor tree. Wound around the handlebars, the fenders, the training wheels. The lights were on and the bike glowed like a city seen from an airplane landing.

They glowed too in reflection on the surface of the puddle of water on the garage floor.

Sarah stood in the doorway and looked at the spectacle in awe. It made her think of the movie E. T., which she'd seen five times, the scene where the creature makes the bikes fly through the sky.

She walked around it, studying the lights with fascination. This bicycle had terrified her when she'd received it two years ago. At her mother's insistence she had tried riding it several times without the training wheels and nearly fell headlong onto the concrete of the driveway. She'd leapt off and run into the house screaming in panic. Even with the wheels on she avoided riding it when other children or Jamie, who rode his tall fifteen-speed so fast, might see her.

But what she was looking at now didn't scare her. It was a bike but it was also something else. Something more. Something pretty and something mysterious. With the cord plugged into the wall socket to light the bulbs she couldn't ride it of course. But she could sit on it and pretend she was pedaling – riding through the sky.

She could fly to the Sunshine Man's cottage and thank him…

She could be the queen of the sky, as if the dots of yellow lights were the stars in her own constellation…

Stepping forward into the puddle of still water, she reached for the handlebar.

"Sarrie, like what are you doing?"

Jamie stood in the doorway, pulling on his brown leather biking gloves. He slipped off his Styrofoam helmet and set it on a shelf. He stood with his hands on his hips for a moment then walked toward the bike.

"Nothing." She stepped away, looking down.

"Did you do that?"

She didn't answer.

"That's like totally stupid."

"I'm not stupid," she said meekly.

He walked to the outlet and yanked the plug out of the wall then began unwinding the lights.

"No, don't!"

He shouted, "Look! Look at this!" He held up a portion of wire that had been wound around the frame of the bike. The plastic insulation was missing and several inches of copper wire were exposed and wrapped around the foot pedal. He pointed at the floor beneath the bike. "And there's water spilled there."

"Don't yell at me!"

"If you do stupid things you're gonna get yelled at."

"Stop it! Stop it!"

"Don't lay one of your effing tantrums on me! It won't work," he shot back.

He wound the electrician's tape around the exposed wire, then carefully rolled the wire into a circle and replaced it in the box marked X-mas Lights.

She muttered ominously, "You shouldn't've done that."

Diane appeared in the doorway. "What is going on out here? I heard you all the way in the bedroom."

Jamie said, "Sarah was playing with the Christmas lights."

"Sarah, were you?"

The little girl puckered her lips into an angry pout. "He called me stupid."

Diane turned on him. "Jamie?"

"Well, she was being stupid. She could've like electrocuted herself or something."

"It was pretty and he ruined it."

"Mom," he said, utterly exasperated.

Diane turned to her daughter. "You know to leave the decorations alone. If you broke any it'll come out of your allowance."

"I didn't do anything!" Sarah shrieked then stormed out of the garage.

Jamie pulled his bike off the pegs stuck in the garage wall and lifted it down. Diane walked over to him and spoke in a menacing whisper, "How many times have I told you not to call her stupid."

"She was playing with -"

"I don't care what she was doing. It's the worst thing in the world for her. Don't do it."

"Mom."

"Just don't do it."

"You don't under -"

"Did you hear me?"

His strong hands squeezed the brake levers on his bike. Diane repeated her question. "Yes," he grumbled formally.

Diane's voice softened. "If you see her doing something like that again come tell me. Your sister's going through a very rough time right now. Little things are really hard on her."

"I said all right."

He angrily wheeled his bicycle back and forth.

Diane wiped her hands on her skirt. "I'm sorry I lost my temper."

"Okay," he muttered. "No problem."

"You have the match tonight, right?"

"Yeah."

"We'll be there."

"You and Sarah."

"Your father's going to be working. It's a very important case."

He leapt on the high bike and rolled down the driveway.

"I wish you'd let the deputy take you to school. Your father doesn't want you two going places alone."

He shrugged.

"Jamie," she shouted, looking on the shelf beside the door. "Wait! Your helmet…"

But the boy seemed not to hear and leaned sharply into the turn as he sped out of the driveway and into the road.

He thought it was a skull but he couldn't be sure. "You Watkins?"

"That I am."

Now, couldn't be. Jim Slocum walked into a small, windowless office in the State Building in Higgins, He introduced himself. He wasn't impressed; his own office in the New Lebanon Sheriffs Department was bigger and had a window to boot. This room smelled of onions and was filled with books and telexes and photocopies of memos. He glanced at some and thought how boring they must be. Justice Department Monthly Homicide Demographics Report. Intrafamily Violence Review – Midwest Edition.

Slocum squinted at the glass-enclosed bookcase behind Watkins. No, it was a grapefruit the guy had put in there and forgotten about. Maybe an ostrich egg.

Earl Watkins was short and round and wore a tight blue button-down dress shirt. Round metal-rimmed glasses hung on his nose. His mouth was a squooshed O above a deep cleft chin. "Take a pew."

Slocum settled onto the hard oak chair. "Say, what is that?"

He followed the deputy's finger. "That? It's a skull. See the bullet hole?" Watkins, a huge Capitol rotunda of a man, with flags of sweat under his arms, was a special agent, Violent Crime Division, State Police.

Slocum said, "We're hoping you could shed some light on this situation we've got ourselves. Help us out with a profile of the killer. I'll tell you, there's some spooky stuff involved."

Watkins asked slowly, "Spooky stuff?"

Slocum gave him a summary of the Gebben murder then added, "Happened on the night of the half-moon and underneath her was this cult knife." He handed Watkins a photocopy.

The large man looked at it briefly, without emotion. "Uh-huh. When was her birthday?"

Slocum blinked. He opened his near-empty briefcase and looked into then closed it, remembering the exact spot where he'd left the rest of the file on his desk. "Uhm, I've got somebody compiling all that stuff. I'll get you a copy."

Watkins then asked, "Multiple perpetrators?"

"Don't know. Were a lot of footprints around. Mostly men's. I had pictures taken of them. Ill get you copies if you want."

"Naw." Watkins studied the photocopy of the knife. "Oh-huh, uh-huh. Did he cut her?"

"No. Strangled."

Watkins said, "I don't know what this insignia is. You have any idea?"

"They look sort of German. Like the Nazis, you know."

"It's not a swastika."

"No," Slocum said. "I don't mean that. I saw this TV movie. The Gestapo had these insignias -"

"Not the Gestapo. The SS. The Schutzstaffel."

"That's it, yeah. Lightning bolts."

"Only those were parallel. These are crossed." Watkins waved the sheet. "Knife have any manufacturer?"

"No. Just " Korea " stamped into the end."

"The hasp," Watkins said. "When the guy raped her, how much come was there?"

Slocum sought the answer in the ceiling of the office. He thought that Watkins asked this too eagerly and he wondered if Watkins, who wore no wedding ring, was gay. "The ME estimated three ounces."

"Uh-huh," Watkins said. He linked his fingers and cradled the back of his head. He asked Slocum dozens of questions: whether restraints were used, if the killer found the victim or kidnapped her, if there was evidence of alcohol, how Jennie's body had been arranged in the flowers, whether foreign objects had been inserted into her anus or vagina, how attractive she was, if there were lip marks or other evidence that the killer had drunk her blood or urine.

"That's pretty damn gross," Slocum said, offended at the question.

"Any fingerprints?"

"On the knife, yeah. Then a mess of'em other places too. I'm having somebody check those against known sex offenders."

"That's a good place to start."

"I'm making damn sure this situation isn't gonna happen again," Slocum said with relentless sincerity.

"Are you now?" The state detective seemed amused. He scratched at the photocopy then gazed absently at the black toner that came off on his thumb. Watkins interrupted Slocum's account of the goat found in the grade school by saying, "Tell me about number two."

"Only one goat I heard about."

"The other victim?"

"We've got no other victim. Just the Gebben girl."

"When you called," Watkins said, examining a slip of paper, "you said killings."

"Did I? There's only one now. But we're worried that we'll have a repeat in the next week. With the full moon, you know."

"Steve Ribbon's your sheriff, right?"

"Yep, sure is."

"And Hammerback Ellison, he's Harrison County sheriff? They're both up for reelection next fall."

The dividing line between what he should say and what he shouldn't had always been blurry for Jim Slocum. "Yep. I believe so. I'm not sure they're running."

Watkins wiped a wave of sweat off his forehead. That was the smell, Slocum recognized. Sweat. Not onions. Watkins grinned. "Lotta folk say Steven Ribbon's bubble's a little off-plumb."

Slocum's eyes weaseled away from Watkins's and he studied the spine of Modern Sociopathology. "I don't know about that."

"Naw, I suppose you wouldn't." Watkins smiled like he'd hit a hole in one. "Well, you want to make this more'n what it is -"

"Hey -"

"That's your all's business." Then the smile left his face and he said, "With only one killing and on these facts it's way too early to know what you've got. You need more information."

"Can't you give us some idea, going on the assumption it's a cult?"

"I can give you the textbook profile for a classic cult killer if you want. But don't take it to the bank. I've got no idea whether it applies or not."

"I understand that. Sure."

"That said, you want me to go ahead?"

"Shoot." Slocum straightened up and flipped his notebook open. As he did so he glanced at the skull and had a passing thought. Where could a man get himself one of those?

"Dogit," Amos Trout said. "Why'd it have to happen just now?"

"Always the way. You oughta -"

"Can't afford a new one. You gotta patch her."

Trout stood with the mechanic in the left bay of the Oakwood Mall's Car-Care Centre, looking down at the tub of water so grimy it might have come from Higgins Creek downstream of the old paper mill. In the tub was a Goodyear tire and out of its side was escaping a steady stream of greasy bubbles.

Trout, forty-four, was wearing dark slacks and a short-sleeved white shirt. He had thinning hair, cut short and combed back. In his plastic pocket protector were three pens, a tiny calculator and a sales tax chart. Trout sold carpeting at Floors for All. He looked sadly at the bubbles. "What'll it cost for a patch?"

"Five seventy-five."

"I could do it myself, I was home," Trout said.

"You ain't home."

"Looks to be a pretty slow leak and she got me all the way here this morning. I could just pump her up and take my chances."

"You could. You wouldn't want to do that, without you had yourself a good spare. That's my opinion."

Trout wouldn't have been so concerned about the tire if after he closed up tonight he and the wife weren't driving up to Minnesota to catch big lazy muskies and sit in lawn chairs while they drank cocktails out of the back of their beige accordion Travel-All. And it was going to be four weeks before he got back to thirteen-ninety-five acrylic pile your choice of colors pad included free if you buy today.

"Plug her," he said. "And do a good job. I'm about to put some road under that Buick."

Four blessed weeks thank you Lord though I'm sorry about the wife part.

The tire man went to work. After a moment he held up a piece of glass like a Dodge City doctor who'd just extracted a bullet from a gun-slinger's arm. "There she be. You had steel belteds it wouldn't even've dented 'em."

Trout studied the glass. "I knew I picked up something. Tuesday night I was coming back late on 302. And you know that curve by the dam? Blackfoot Pond? Where everybody fishes?"

The mechanic slicked a plug with glue and began driving it into the puncture. "Uhn."

"Well, I went around the curve and this fellow comes running up right into my lane."

"Maybe your lights're on the blink. I could check -"

"They're fine except one high beam's out of whack."

"I can just -"

That's okay. And so I went off the road so's not to hit him. Wham bam just like that. He froze. I went over a beer bottle. You know it's those fishermen, they leave all kinds of crapola around. "They don't do that in Minnesota."

"They don't?"

Trout said, "Scared the living you know what out of me, seeing that fellow. He looked scared as I was."

"Don't blame him. I wouldn't wanta be Buick feed myself."

"Yessir." Trout looked at his watch. It was two o'clock. He paid for the plug. "You sell propane?"

"You got a tank, you can fill it."

"No, I mean for a Coleman."

"Naw, gotta go to the Outdoor Store for that."

"Guess I better. Long lunch hour today. But, hell with it, I'm almost on vacation."

The sound of the gears buzzing was just audible over the wind that hissed past his ears.

Jamie Corde upshifted as he came to the crest of the hill on Old Farm Road. Below him, a hazy mile away, the school sat in a field – tar-topped brick buildings squatting in a couple of acres of parking lots and lime-green grass.

This was his favorite stretch of road – a sharp decline of smooth asphalt, which if you caught it at the right time of day was pretty much traffic free. Although he now rode a fifteen-speed Italian racing bike, the boy often surged down this road on his old three-speed Schwinn, which was mounted with a speedometer. On a summer day with tires fat from the heat inflation he could hit fifty miles per hour before he had to brake for the stop light where Old Farm crossed Route 116.

He started downhill.

Jamie Corde loved to run and he was a ragingly fast runner, but he knew that nothing could beat the feeling of speed not of your own making – flying down a mountain of snow in Colorado or racing down a slope like this one, effortlessly, the gears ratcheting beneath your toe-clipped feet. As if the powers of nature were taking you someplace you couldn't find by yourself.

The bike was steady under his strong arms as the dotted centerline became a single gray blur. He leaned forward to cut the drag and concentrated on nothing but steering around patches of pebbles. He did not think of his mother or his sister, he did not think of his father. With the exception of a few images of Greg LeMond in the Tour de France, Jamie Corde thought of speed and speed only.

Halfway down the incline, to his enormous delight, he passed a car. True, it was an old Volkswagen diesel and it was being driven by someone who resembled Mrs. Keening, his antiquated Latin teacher. But it was nonetheless a car and he had outraced it, feeling with utter ecstasy the motion of the driver's head as she glanced at him with disapproving awe.

A half mile ahead at the foot of the hill lay the intersection. He noticed with disappointment that he had timed his assault on the slope wrong. If he had waited three or four minutes at the top and started his descent just as the stoplight had turned red, he might have arrived when it was green and he would have swept smoothly through. But the light was now changing to yellow. Route 116 was heavily trafficked and was favored by this particular light, which kept drivers on Old Farm Road waiting impatiently for long minutes.

He slowly squeezed the rear brake lever. Thonk. A sudden sensation. Something had struck his right calf. He believed he had hit a small animal – a field mouse or chipmunk – and it had been flung up against his leg by the hissing wheel. Almost simultaneously his hand on the brake lever began to cramp. He glanced at the handlebars and noticed that the lever was all the way to the metal.

Jamie looked down at the rear wheel. What had struck his leg had not been an animal. It was the rubber pad of the rear brake shooting from its housing. The metal seemed slightly bent and he realized with horror that when he had lifted the bike onto the pegs in the garage last night, he must have hit the steel jacket that held the pad, loosening it. His father had warned him a dozen times to be careful when he placed the bike on the wall; he continually ignored the advice.

He was two hundred yards from the intersection and still accelerating, approaching forty-five or fifty. The bike began to vibrate. He gripped the handlebars with trembling fists as he swept over stones and branches; he was going too fast to maneuver around them. Sweat of panic burst from his neck and under his arms. He felt the icy chill as the moisture evaporated in the slipstream. Jamie gently squeezed the front brake. No effect. He squeezed harder and the rear end of the bike rose suddenly, nearly sending him tumbling head-forward over the front wheel. He was now a hundred yards from the intersection. He kept as much pressure on the front brake as he dared but still the bike continued to speed up.

A stand of tall oaks flashed into his vision and vanished. A roadside truck, some fence posts. The shoulder here was narrow. Paralleling his mad course was a barbed wire fence that would lacerate him if he were to set the bike down in the gravel beside the road.

Jamie Corde, an A-minus science student, knows that terminal velocity in earth atmosphere is approximately one hundred and thirty miles an hour, he knows that human organs cannot withstand instant deceleration from any speed about fifty. He glances up at the cross-traffic along Route 116, trucks and cars whizzing past. Tears – from the wind, from his panic – streak from his squinting burning eyes and disappear into his hair. He sits up to increase wind resistance. He remembers a prayer from Sunday school. He drags his feet on the asphalt but shreds the running shoes' nylon toes quickly. He lifts his feet to the pedals and the bike hurtles forward once again.

10

Seventy-five yards…

The hill had bottomed out but the bicycle tore along the road at close to sixty, the noise of the wheels and gears wholly obscured by the howl of the slipstream. Several bugs died against his face with sharp stings. The lightweight frame of the bike shuddered painfully with every stone.

Jamie eased onto the center-line of Old Farm Road where there was less debris. A fragment of bottle or a smear of grease could kill him.

Fifty yards from the intersection…

He believed he heard a horn behind him, maybe the Volkswagen driver trying to warn him.

Forty yards…

The man in a car waiting at the light glanced in his rearview mirror and Jamie saw astonishment in the glossy rectangle that reflected the man's eyes.

Thirty…

Two Japanese imports and a Buick dashed through the intersection on 116 going north. A tanker truck rumbled south.

And Jamie Corde began to pedal.

He couldn't stop in time. That was clear. Either he was going to dart between cars or he was going to get nailed. He lowered himself into his best aerodynamic huddle, clicked into his highest gear, released the front brake lever and pedaled as he never had before. He felt a warm sense of calm envelop him. The cars were on a different plane. The wind, the barbed wire, the road too. The bike itself. The fear vanished. He was above all of these things. The blue-haired woman piloting the Volkswagen, the driver whose eyes gaped in the mirror, the trees, the birds startled and fleeing from Jamie's own speed – nothing was of the least importance. He smiled and struggled to pedal fast enough to keep up with his trilling wheels, propelling himself faster and faster.

Fifteen yards…

The car waiting for the green light was a Nissan and its license plate number was DRT 345.

Ten…

An old skid mark in the shape of a sine curve crossed both lanes.

Pedal pedal pedal pedal!…

A wooden crate that had contained Rock Island peaches lay shattered by the roadside, wads of blue tissue paper bleeding into the ground.

… faster than light…

The southbound Taurus station wagon, doing about sixty-five, began its skid thirty feet from where the bike was entering the intersection. The gray vehicle's end drifted to the left as the frozen wheels howled. The driver steered into the skid expertly, which had the effect of moving the car into the oncoming lane and aiming the grille precisely at where the speeding bicycle would cross the highway.

The front-seat passenger lowered her face below the dashboard.

The baritone Detroit horn blared.

The driver flung an arm over his eyes.

Ping .

Jamie Corde had an impression of fingers snapping beside his head as he passed in front of the station wagon. The bumper missed his rear tire by no more than six inches. Their combined speed was close to one hundred ten miles an hour.

His ears filled with the horn and the endless scream of the locked wheels. Then he was past Route 116, dancing over what was otherwise a risky patch of pebbles and transmission fluid as confidently as if the road were a smooth, banked racetrack. He relaxed his numb legs and coasted. Horns shrieked behind him and he knew he was getting cussed out by at least one station wagon full of people.

But what could he do except keep going, leaving them far far behind?

Jamie Corde continued to pedal – furiously to keep his speed up. As he approached the school he stood high on the pedals. He gazed up into the sky and breathed in hot oily air, waving a fist above his head, laughing and howling like a desert-loco cowboy.

Jim Slocum opened the candy bar and took a bite, pressing the candy up against the roof of his mouth. He dropped a dollar on the counter.

"Be right with you, Officer," the young woman behind the counter said.

"Take your time."

Slocum leaned against the counter in the Sweets 'n Things shop at the Oakwood Mall. He took another bite of Milky Way, which was still his favorite candy bar. Always had been, always would be. The door to the candy store opened and Slocum watched a teenage boy enter. Fat. Wearing grimy clothes. Blond hair long and stiff with spray or grease. Slocum recognized him as Philip Halpern. The boy glanced at Slocum in unconcealed surprise. He walked to the wall of glass canisters of penny candy and began to fill a bag.

Slocum was put off. He felt angry at the boy for his weight and his lack of willpower. He wanted to say, "You keep eating like that you're gonna stroke out by the time you're twenty, son." He kept these thoughts to himself though. Like all New Lebanon deputies Slocum had answered domestic violence calls at Creth Halpern's shabby bungalow. The father could be frightening – his eerily confused eyes as much as his temper. The ex-sailor would slouch on the couch picking at a flap of skin from his right-hook knuckle and smiling at the bloody streaks on the dented front of the Kelvinator.

His wife, pungent with gin, holding ice to her pretty face, would look up with a drunk's sincerity and say, "We was fooling around is all." Philip, himself sometimes bruised, usually hid in the bedroom. There was a daughter too. Slocum bet she'd be knocked up and Remington-married by the time she was sixteen.

Boy, you stay that fat, they won't let you join the Army and what're you gonna do then? Jim Slocum was convinced that all emotional troubles could be cured by varsity football or basic training.

The clerk's customer left the store.

"Miss," Slocum said to her, "I'm asking all the merchants here in the mall if they were open late on Tuesday night."

"This have to do with the student girl who got killed?"

"Yep, sure does."

"Is this fellow, you know…" Two furrows of concern appeared on the young woman's brow.

"How's that?"

She touched her heavily moussed brown hair. "What I heard was, Debbie Lipp told me, who's ever behind that killing? He's looking for brunets. I bought some Clairol yesterday. I mean, I had my colors done and going blond would throw it all off but…"

Slocum watched a tear center in her eye and roll over the edge of the eyelined lid.

"I wouldn't go doing that, miss. He's not looking for brunets that we know about. Your hair looks real nice just the way it is." He smiled. "Sexy too."

"I'm scared, Officer." Her brittle voice cracked. "I gotta drive home at night and Earl he's my husband's shift's not over till eleven. Sitting there in the trailer for three hours! By myself… I can't watch TV, for the noises outside. I can't read. I just sit. I'm too addled to even knit and I'm going to miss my niece's birthday with the vest I promised her." She cried, grim and silent, for a moment.

"We're doing everything in our power to get this son of a gun. Now I was asking about Tuesday?"

"I can't help you, I'm afraid. We close at seven on Tuesday."

Well, there you have it. Dead end. "Tell you what, give me a quarter pound of those jelly beans. What flavor'd they be?"

"The watermelon ones?"

"Yeah." Slocum paid. He took the change and smiled a flirt at her. "I get by here on occasion. Ill look in on you and see how you're doing."

She swallowed and lifted away a tear with a corner of her sleeve. "I'd rather you was out catching him."

"Well, we're doing that too," he said stonily and took the candy, walking to the door. He glanced at the Halpern boy. "You want a snack, eat apples," he snapped.

Slocum ambled through the recession-battered wasteland of the mall until he came to the last store on his list. Floors for All. Inside a young man with trim hair sat at a desk, carefully writing in an order book. "Afternoon," Slocum said.

"Howdy, Officer, what kind of carpet you interested in today? We got a special -"

"This place here open late on Tuesday?"

"Yessir. Lot of carpet stores close down weeknights but we're number one with carpet, number one with service. Nights're important. We get men come in after work to check out the carpet their little ladies've chose earlier in the day."

"You working this last Tuesday?"

"No sir, that'd be Mr. Trout. Amos Trout."

"Will he be coming in today?"

"Oh, he's in. He's not here right now because he got car problems. He took a late lunch. Should be back any time."

"I'll stop back later."

Slocum left the store and halfway to the exit nearly walked into Adeline Kraskow. "Well, well, well." Slocum circled her.

"Hey, Jim," she said in her husky voice. She was young and might have been pretty if she'd forced her salt-and-pepper hair into staying put. The strands reminded him of BX cable. She also needed to move some of the boob weight down to her toothpick legs (a rearrangement Slocum never thought he'd recommend to any woman). Addie had dry skin and high cheekbones and she wore little makeup. This made Slocum think that she was desperate for a man.

He asked, "What's happening?"

"Doing a story on how this cult murder thing is affecting business."

"Bad?"

"Yep. People're scared. Staying home and not spending money. What are you doing here?"

"I can't really talk about it."

They stood for a minute, silent. Slocum had a fast series of thoughts: that he'd been promising to bring the wife to the mall, that he could do that on Sunday and that while she did her shopping he could talk to this guy Amos Trout at the carpet store. He asked, "I'm taking kind of a break. You interested in getting a drink?"

Adeline Kraskow said, "Sure. I guess." And she stuffed her notebook into her huge purse and together they strolled through the mall.

They had known each other for exactly one year, ever since she started covering the police beat for the Harrison County Register. The top-heavy Ms. Kraskow didn't know that Slocum regularly had acrobatic sexual intercourse with her and had been fellated by her dozens of times – each instance of course in his Technicolor imagination while he was engaged in considerably more mundane sexual activity with his wife of eleven years, or with his right hand. He supposed that if in real life Addie had ever stubbed out one of her chain-smoked cigarettes and unzipped his fly he'd have gone limp as month-old rhubarb but still he liked to sit with his knee pressed accidentally on purpose up against her thigh while she asked her reporter's ever-serious questions. Now he maneuvered her into a dark corner booth of the mall's only full-fledged restaurant, T.K. Hoolihan's.

"You're on duty?" she asked.

"I'm undercover. I can drink."

"You're wearing a uniform. How can you be undercover?"

"Well, I'm wearing Jockey shorts. No, that's underwear not undercover." He laughed to show it was a joke. Addie smiled with flirtatious contempt. They ordered neat scotches and he paid.

"Thank'y." She lit a cigarette, inhaled and shot out a stream of smoke at the plastic Tiffany lampshade decorated with robins. "So, you got any leads yet?"

"I told you -"

"Is there a connection with the Susan Biagotti killing?"

"Bill wouldn't want me talking on that."

"I'm sure he wouldn't. But I can't ask only questions people want me to ask. The Biagotti killing never got solved. Here Steve Ribbon's revving up for reelection and he flubbed that case bad. Now there's a second girl dead."

"Addie."

She said, "You don't know how persistent I am. Tell me something. Anything. I promise your name won't appear anywhere in the story."

Slocum sighed.

Addie leaned forward, strategically, and whispered, "Cross my heart."

The warmth she denied the parents she spent on the children.

Diane Corde could at least say that for the woman.

"Hello, Sarah," the woman said ebulliently. "I'm Dr. Parker. How are you today?"

In the silence that followed, the three of them standing in the veterinarian waiting room, Diane said, "Honey, you know how to answer."

"I'm not going to take the spelling test," Sarah said in a dour, snappy voice. "And I'm not going back to school."

"Well, now Sarah," the doctor said cheerfully, "We've got some other things to talk about. Let's not think about your spelling test today, all right?"

"Sarah," Diane barked, "I won't have you behaving this way."

Dr. Parker didn't intrude between mother and daughter; she simply kept the smile and extended her hand. Sarah shook it abruptly then stood back, looking, Diane thought sadly, like the little brat she'd become.

"Come on inside," the doctor said. "I've got some things I'd like to show you." She motioned the girl into her office. Diane looked through the door and noticed a number of dark green boxes on her desk. The letters WISC-R were stamped into them.

She then glanced at Dr. Parker to appraise today's fashion choice. A close-fitting red silk dress. With dark stockings. In New Lebanon! Didn't some famous gangster's moll wear a red dress when she turned him in?

Diane stepped forward after Sarah. But Dr. Parker shook her head and nodded to the couch in the waiting room. "Just Sarah and me today."

"Oh. Sure."

Diane, feeling chastised, retreated to the couch and watched the receptionist open a pack of Trident and slip a piece into her mouth. The woman noticed Diane staring at her and held up the package.

"I don't chew gum, thank you."

As the doctor's door closed Diane caught a glimpse of her daughter's face staring fearfully down at the boxes. The door latch clicked. Diane sighed and aimlessly picked through a basket of wilted magazines. She lifted one to her lap with substantial effort and turned the pages.

A few minutes later Diane closed the unread magazine and slumped on this rec room couch, awash with defeat.

Defeated by her husband, in whose presence Sarah relaxed and laughed – her husband who could speak Sarah's flawed, tricky language while Diane could not.

Defeated by Sarah herself with her wily tactics of tears and panic.

By this harlot of a shrink, who was taking their scarce money so eagerly.

And by her own guilt.

Diane Corde gazes with unseeing eyes at a glossy magazine peppered with giddy photos of models while her legs shake with the terrible anguish of retribution. Diane Corde, fairly good Methodist, has been taught to believe in divine justice, taught to believe that revenge is fair and cleansing. But it is not. Because the person who is paying the exacted price for the sins is not the mother who committed them but the daughter.

Did you drink while you were pregnant?

No. Of course not,

What a question! No one drank when they were pregnant. No one took sleeping pills. No one took aspirin. All you had to do was read the science and health section of the Post-Dispatch or Register or even Reader's Digest, for heaven's sake, and you knew how to behave when you were pregnant.

Drinking liquor? No sane pregnant woman would drink.

Unless, unless…

Unless, for instance, someone you loved had perhaps done something very bad. Your husband maybe. And after word got out – in the newspapers – the neighbors would look at you funny or not look at you at all. And people would call late at night and just listen for a moment before hanging up as if they were curious to hear if your breathing was more monstrous than theirs.

Unless that person, your husband maybe, kept doing nothing and saying nothing nothing nothing until the money ran out and the only solution was to move from a nice shipshape suburb to a small, tired rural town and start life over again.

His life.

And yours, in the process.

So even if you were pregnant wasn't that reason enough to take a drink now and then? Just to kill the silence of a man doing nothing, the heaviest silence that there is? A pill now and then. A few more drinks. And a few more… To break the mournful web surrounding the seven a.m. breakfast table? To help you sleep, even if you woke up with a dogjaw pressure in the back of your head every other morning? Nobody drinks when they're pregnant.

Oh, Sarah…

Diane Corde looked at the cheap door separating herself from her injured daughter and focused on the magazine again. She read every word of an article about a boat trip down the Loire as if she were going to be tested on the subject in the morning.

"I don't like her," Sarah announced in the car on the way home.

"Why not?"

"She gave me all this stupid stuff to do. Drawing pictures and answering questions. I did it at school already."

"Wasn't she nice to you?"

"Mrs. Beiderbug -"

"Beiderson."

"Mrs. Beiderson's nice to me and she makes me feel all yucky. I felt yucky when I did those tests in Dr. Parker's office."

"She's trying to help you."

"I hate her!"

"Sarah, don't talk that way."

"She's going to make me take the spelling test at school. I saw you talking with her after. That's what she told you, isn't it?"

Yes, it was. Diane hesitated then said, "Dr. Parker wants you to keep studying. Next time you see her she's going to give you some tricks to help you take tests."

"I'm not going back to school."

Diane's patience had just about evaporated and she said nothing.

"I hate it. I feel stupid in school. The Sunshine Man…" Her voice faded.

"We all hated school. That's what your father and I keep telling you. Everybody does." This was spoken through firmly clenched teeth. "You remember what a good job you did on your story this spring? About the birds."

Sarah got a C plus, her highest grade ever in English, and had written a single page. Other students had filled four or five.

Sarah whined, "I don't want to take the tests. Don't make me!"

"'I'm going to work with you on the words tonight. Then we're going to Jamie's match."

"No," she announced. "I want Daddy to help me."

"Your father's working late." Diane pulled the car into the driveway. She waved at the deputy in the cruiser parked in front of the house. He nodded back and returned to the newspaper. Diane braked to an angry stop.

Sarah said, "He's always working."

They got out of the car and walked through the garage to the back door.

"No, he isn't. He spends a lot of time with you. He's missing Jamie's match too tonight."

"Wrestling's stupid."

"Don't criticize your brother! He's doing just fine in school…" Diane was horrified at these words. She glanced at Sarah surreptitiously but the girl hadn't notice the unintended slight.

"Mommy, look, there's something on the back steps."

Diane saw a small white envelope. Sarah scooped it up eagerly and looked at it. She frowned then handed it to her mother. They continued into the house. Diane paused in the hallway, the sunlight pouring through the open door. It fell on her hands, turning them blood red. "Go on upstairs and get your books." The little girl gave an extended sigh and clomped the stairs.

The envelope was addressed to Officer Corde. Red ink, sloppy handwriting. Diane tore it open, lifted out the contents.

"What is it?" Sarah yelled.

Diane jumped. "Nothing, honey."

She dropped the glossy square Polaroid back into the envelope, which she shoved into her pocket. She called the Sheriffs Department. She got the dispatcher. "Emma, it's Diane Corde. Find him and tell him to get home. Tell him we're okay but I need him and I need him now."

She hung up and started toward the front door to summon the deputy. She got only as far as the living room before she paused, leaned against the wall and surrendered to her tears.

11

Bill Corde crouched casually in front of Sarah. He measured his words then said, "Honey, I have to ask you something and you'll tell me the as-you-love-me truth?"

"Sure, Daddy." The girl returned his gaze cautiously. "Did I do something wrong? I'm sorry."

"No, no, honey." Corde's heart cried as he looked into her penitent eyes. "I'm just curious to know something. Has anybody maybe taken your picture in the last couple days?"

"My picture? No."

"Or maybe just asked if he could take your picture? Some stranger on the way home from school?"

"No."

"You're sure?"

"Did I do something wrong?" She seemed about to cry.

"No, nothing. It's okay. You didn't do anything wrong. I was just curious. You run get washed up for dinner."

Corde returned to Steve Ribbon and Tom, who were walking in slow paces around the fence behind Corde's property. "Nothing, Bill," Ribbon said. "Not a footstep."

"Dry grass. What do you expect?"

The deputy said, "I was here all afternoon." He was defensive. "I can't be both at the front and the back at the same time."

"I'm not blaming you, Tom."

Ribbon shielded his eyes like a Plains warrior's and gazed off into the forest. "Anybody live thataway?"

Corde leaned on a cockeyed, termite-chewed fence post, squinting against the sunset light. "Five hundred acres of forest, mostly private. A few houses. Beyond that's the river and the other way's the preserve and the university and downtown beyond that. He could've come from anyplace. He could've parked on 302 by the bridge and walked. None of the neighbors saw anything."

Corde examined the photograph again, through the plastic bag in which it now rested. It was of a girl about Sarah's age – the face wasn't visible – lying in grass. Her skirt was pulled up to her waist and the V of white underwear filled the center of the shot.

On the back was printed in red marker: YOU'RE WORKING TOO HARD, DETECTIVE

"Hell." He winced as if the message brought him physical pain. "I don't think it's her. She says nobody took her picture recently and I know she wouldn't lie to me. But goddamn…"

The deputy said, "We should get a handwriting analysis. The newspaper clipping at the pond and this."

"I'm sure they're the same," Corde said. "Even I can see the similarity."

"Nobody saw nothing? Your son?"

"Nope. Nobody was here."

"Brother, I'm sorry about all this, Bill," Ribbon offered.

"You're sorry?" Corde muttered, walking inside.

Diane was sitting on the couch, her hands together. Corde sat beside her and cradled her hands in his. "This could be just a prank, maybe it has nothing to do with the case."

"A prank? It was our daughter!" she whispered violently.

"We don't know that for sure. It could be anybody. She tells me nobody took her picture."

"She tells you? Oh, Bill, you know Sarah. Half the time she's off in her own world."

"He's trying to spook me is all. Look, if that was Sarah in the picture and he'd wanted to hurt her, why didn't he?"

She pressed her eyes closed. Wrinkles blossomed into her face and for a moment she seemed ten years older than she was.

"If anybody's at risk, it's me," Corde said.

"That sure makes me feel damn better," she shot back at him.

"Honey, this fellow isn't stupid. Murdering a law enforcement officer's a capital crime."

"Does he know that?" she blurted.

"Diane."

She stormed into the kitchen.

There was nothing more to do. Corde went back outside to talk to Ribbon. Ten minutes later Diane poked her head out the door and told him in an ominous monotone that dinner was ready. Corde asked Steve Ribbon and the deputy if they wanted to stay but they couldn't or more likely didn't want to. They left. Corde walked into the dining room, then Jamie and Sarah joined their parents and the family sat down to dinner.

Corde told the children with gentle words that there might be some people who weren't real happy with what he was doing to solve this case, so not to go anywhere by themselves and to stay close to home. Don't talk to strangers. Then Corde somehow found the strength to turn the conversation funny and talked about a sports blooper tape he'd seen recently. The only time a pall filled the room was when Corde realized he had stopped talking in mid sentence and was staring out the black window at the backyard. He stood up fast and closed the drapes. Everybody looked at him. Then he sat down and ate a huge third helping of string beans even though he didn't want them but it seemed like a comic thing to do and the evening returned more or less to normal.

T.T. Ebbans's practice was to question people at home at night. He'd try not to conduct interviews during business hours at offices, where guards are up and minds instinctively think up lies and excuses – for bosses, for fellow workers, for clients, for creditors.

Ebbans also happened to enjoy the evening. It reminded him of a wholly different era of his life, years before. The oily smell of night, the stillness, the bleaching to monotone of the deep colors of the day and the feel of his heartbeat quickening – a prelude to the five-man search-and-destroy night missions that were both the peak and the valley of his life.

At ten-thirty he came to the last house, a colonial on one acre sloping down to Blackfoot Pond. This hour was usually postbedtime in New Lebanon for anybody under fifteen and over thirty. But lights shone in the windows of this house. He thunked the brass lion's-head knocker once and the door swung open almost immediately. He found the couple waiting for him. Communication was good among Blackfoot Pond homeowners.

They all introduced themselves church-social formal. Tall, paunchy, bushy-haired Hank said, "Come on in, Officer. Get you anything?"

"Maybe if I could trouble you for a glass of water."

"Surely." Lisa, still in her real estate broker's white blouse and trim red skirt, vanished like a spooked mouse.

Hank motioned Ebbans into a living room spotless as an operating theater. Plush white carpet, a cream-color sofa covered with clear plastic. The furniture was antiqued white and gold. Lisa walked into the room and handed the water to the deputy. They both stared at him as he drank it all down. He wasn't so thirsty as this but he didn't know where to set down the glass. He handed it to her. "Thank you." She returned a moment later. They sat. Plastic crinkled loudly.

Hank said, "You're here about the murder."

"I'm asking everyone in the area if they saw or heard anything around the time of the killing. That would be ten o'clock."

"That was Tuesday, right?" Lisa asked, gesturing, moving her fingers in a circular motion to count back on an invisible calendar.

"Nothing! Hank said. We didn't see anything."

"No," Lisa echoed. "Not a thing. Sorry we can't be more help." Hank said he wished they could but, well, Ebbans knew how it was.

The deputy let them stew in a lengthy silence then asked Lisa, "But do I understand that you saw something another night?"

Lisa's busy hands spread apart for a moment. Ebbans noticed they had left sweat stains on her crimson skirt. "Pardon?"

Hank said, "We didn't see -"

Ebbans said to his wife, "You asked if it was Tuesday. I was just wondering if that meant you saw something some night other than Tuesday."

She stared for a minute then gave a fast burst of a laugh. "Oh, I see what you mean. No. The only reason I asked if it was Tuesday was to, you know, orient myself. Because of Sean. He…" She blinked. Hank's head turned slowly to her. Ebbans figured they had debated all evening about keeping their secret. Lisa began to tremble. Ebbans wondered how loud the discussion between these two would be after he left.

"Sean is…?" Ebbans asked.

"Our son," Hank muttered.

Lisa said, "He was here on Tuesday. That's right. I'd forgotten." She swallowed hard and Ebbans wondered if she was going to cry. "Sean got home from a Rifle Club practice late."

"What time would that have been?"

She looked at her husband and decided not to lie. "About ten."

Ebbans asked, "Is Sean here now?"

"Well, he is," Hank conceded. "But I doubt he can help you."

Lisa said, "It was pretty dark. I don't think he saw much."

"Anything you tell me is confidential. Nobody'll know he gave us any information."

Hank walked to the stairs and called his son. A tall boy in jeans and a T-shirt appeared in a minute, looking assured, smiling, staring Ebbans right back in the eyes. Ebbans, who had two daughters and had never for one minute regretted that, thought he would love to have a son like Sean. "You heard about the girl was killed over by the dam."

"Yessir. We heard the next day."

"I understand you got home about ten. From the Rifle Club. What kind of gun you shoot?"

" Winchester 75. With a target barrel."

"That's a good gun. What's your rank?"

"Sharpshooter. All positions."

Ebbans jutted out his jaw, impressed, and asked, "You were outside about ten on Tuesday?"

"After I dumped the garbage bags in the bin I saw this raccoon and I chased him off, down toward the lake. I saw two people sitting on the other side of the dam."

"What were they doing?"

Lisa said, "Don't be afraid to say you don't know, if you don't."

"Looked like they had tackle but it might just have been gym bags or something. They weren't fishing."

"Can you describe them?"

"Sorry, sir. Not too good." He nodded vaguely toward where the dam must have been. "It's a ways. All I could see was their, you know, outlines. Silhouettes."

Ebbans said, "Could you tell if they were men or women, boys? White or black?"

"Well, I got the feeling they were guys. Kids from school, I mean." He added formally, "I don't believe they were African-Americans."

"What did you see them do?"

"After a couple minutes they stood up and picked up whatever they were carrying and walked to the dam. There was this flash from one of their hands. I thought it was a knife. The way he held it."

Ebbans said, "Might it have been a bottle or a soda can?"

"Yessir, could've been. They sat on the dam for a while then I saw one of them point and they ducked down and ran off into the bushes. I thought they might be hatters so -"

"Hatters?"

"You know, like geeks or something. So I put the bikes in the garage."

"And you didn't see them again?"

"Nosir. But I did see someone who walked by close to them. An old guy. He was fishing. He was about sixty, I'd guess. About my grandpa's age. He was casting spoons but he had a fly fisherman's hat on. A red one."

"You haven't seen him since?"

"Nosir. You want me to keep an eye out for him, I'll be happy to do that."

"No, honey," Lisa said. "I mean, you've done plenty."

With the authoritative voice of a middle manager, Hank said, "That's not our job, son."

"You won't use his name, will you?" Lisa asked. "You won't talk to reporters?"

"All names are confidential. I promise you that." Ebbans looked at his watch and said he had to be going and thanked Lisa for the water and Hank for the time. He said to the boy, "I sure appreciate your help. It was a brave thing to do. And I'd appreciate anything else you can do for us."

At the door, the only hand he shook was Sean's.

In the dark they talked.

Brian Okun said, "Think about what you're saying. What you're calling melancholia was cynicism."

The young woman considered this then said, "No, I don't think so."

"How much of Wallace Stevens have you read?"

They were in Okun's apartment in downtown New Lebanon, a half mile from the quadrangle. This was the town's sole urban tenement neighborhood, which consisted of one block of three-story walk-ups, eighty years old.

"Enough to know that he was sad," Dahlia answered.

"Sad men don't write poetry like his. Skeptics do. There's a power about him."

"What about 'Sunday Morning'?" she asked. "You call that power? The woman has no energy. She's almost paralyzed at the thought that there's no God."

"'Sunday Morning' is the most…" Okun found a word that conveyed contempt. "… accessible poem. It doesn't count. But since you've brought it up I maintain that only a cynic would create that imagery in the first place."

Dahlia was from Wichita but was of Eastern Indian ancestry. She was short and voluptuous (Okun called her "plump" – another nod to Dickens). He wished she knew more about the Modern poets. He said, "You forget Stevens was a lawyer for an insurance company. A businessman. Wait! Wait…"

Okun, who was lying naked between Dahlia's dark smooth thighs, tensed for a moment, slipped his penis out of her and came generously on her black fur of pubic hair. He squeezed against her and lay still for a moment.

He kissed her breast and said, "Are you okay?"

By which he meant did she have an orgasm. When she said a hesitant "I'm fine," he rolled off her and began reciting from memory the Stevens poem "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction."

They had been dating off and on for a year when Okun fell in love with Jennie Gebben. After the breakup with Jennie, Okun and Dahlia continued to see each other on occasion and more rarely to have lethargic sex. Not a word was ever spoken about marriage, monogamy or even vaguer commitments.

Although he was more frank with her than with anyone else at Auden, tonight she was unknowingly taking part in an experiment Okun was just about to commence.

He turned on the overhead light and lit a cigarette. He stared at a flap of paint on the ceiling, a flap that for some reason always made him think of the severed portion of Vincent van Gogh's ear. "I was in Leon Gilchrist's office today."

"He's off someplace, isn't he?"

" San Francisco. Poetry conference at Berkeley."

"He doesn't seem like the UCB sort."

"I have no idea what sort he is. The strange sort."

Dahlia said, "He's brilliant."

"Stating the obvious diminishes you," Okun said, a homemade aphorism he used often.

"He's cute," she said.

"Cute? Bullshit."

"Well, I don't know. Maybe not. He's intense. I have trouble picturing him. He's nondescript."

"Oxymoron. How can he be intense and nondescript at the same time?"

She blotted her sable groin with his sheet. "I don't know."

"He had a draft of my evaluation for the faculty committee in his desk."

"You went through his desk?"

"Do you know what he wrote on it?"

She asked, "How could you burgle his desk?"

"He said he did not want to work with me next semester. And he recommended that my advisor look long and hard at my dissertation."

She was shocked. "He what?"

"He said I was arrogant and lacked sufficient depth to be a talented professor. He said if the school insisted on hiring me after conferring the degree, it should be as a librarian."

This was all true. When Okun had first read the words on Gilchrist's evaluation form he had felt physically ill. He now had some distance, but reciting the professor's scathing critique made his hands quiver with rage.

"Brian! Why did he say that?"

"He's a vengeful prick is why. I'm as smart as he, I have more social skills and I want his job. He's figured that out."

"Why were you going through his desk?"

Okun barked, "I'm his graduate assistant. If I can't have access to his desk, who can?" He then added coyly, "Can you keep a secret?"

"Brian."

"It's something I've been wrestling with. I've got to confide in somebody. It's about him. Gilchrist."

"You're dying to tell me."

"I shouldn't."

"Tell me."

"Did you know that he and Jennie Gebben had an affair?"

"The girl who was killed? Ohmagod!"

"From almost the first week in September."

"No!"

"He's into S and M."

"I knew that," Dahlia said, surprising Okun, who had fabricated this detail – as he had the fact of the affair itself. He asked where she'd heard this. She shook her head. "Don't know."

Okun continued, "He used to tie her up and whip her tits. Oh and he'd piss on her. I think she pissed on him too."

"God."

Her wide-eyed expression of shock was delicious. Okun smiled then chuckled silently. Dahlia frowned across the pillow at him then grimaced and slapped his arm. "You're making this up, you fuck."

He laughed hard. "I doubt Gilchrist knew Jennie from, excuse the expression, a hole in the wall. But you swallowed it raw."

"Prick. So you going to start a rumor, are you?"

Okun. said, "He's not going to crater me with a bad evaluation. He's dumped on the wrong person."

"But he could be arrested!"

"Divorce yourself from simplicity, darling… He was in San Francisco when she was killed. They'll find that out soon enough. I don't want him to go to jail. I just want to make him sweat."

"You know what I think?"

"I'm vindictive and petty?" he asked, curious.

"I think you should cut out the part about getting pissed on. That's too sick for words. Nobody around here'd buy that."

"Good point," Okun said, always willing to take good advice. "A little paraphilia goes a long way. Kiss me."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because you scare me, Brian."

"Me?"

"Yes, you."

"Kiss me."

"No."

"Yes," he commanded. And she did.

The security guard led Corde and Ebbans through the garbage room of Jennie's dorm to an emergency exit.

It was early the next morning and the air was humid and filled with smell of lilac, dogwoods and hot tar from roofers forty feet above their heads.

Corde and Ebbans had returned to the dorm to see if they could find Emily. Corde thought they might catch her before she left the dorm. She wasn't there although her bed had been slept in and the bar of Camay in the cream-color soap dish was wet. The detectives had waited in her room for nearly twenty minutes but she never returned. Just as the antsy guard seemed about to complain, Corde glanced out the window into the parking lot.

"Huhn."

He'd written a note to Emily on one of his business cards and had left it on her desk. He then had said to Ebbans, "Follow me."

Ebbans did, trailed by the guard, a man with a huge swelling of latticed nose, who hadn't smiled at the men all morning.

Bill Corde pushed the stained bar on the gray fire door and stepped into the parking lot behind the dorm. The three men walked along a small grassy strip that separated the building from the parking lot. Grass and weeds. And oil drums painted green and white. Corde asked the guard, "Are those the school colors?"

"Nope. They'd be black and gold."

"Ugly," Ebbans said.

"You salute it, you don't wear it," the guard grumbled. "Least, I don't."

They saw however that not all the oil drums were green and white.

One was black.

"Fire?" Corde asked now as he walked up to the drum.

"Pranks." The guard rubbed his great crosshatched nose and muttered, "That the way they be. Think they own the world, the students, you know what I'm saying? Be spoiling stuff for everybody."

Corde peered into the drum.

"Let's get it over. But slow."

Together they eased the heavy drum to the ground. A small avalanche of ash puffed up gray cloud. Corde and Ebbans went onto their knees and probed carefully, trying not to shatter the thin pieces of ash. There were two blackened wire spirals that had been the spines of notebooks. The rest was a mostly unrecognizable mound of ash and wads of melted plastic.

Corde found several fragments of unburnt white paper. There was no writing on them. He eased them aside. He then found half a scrap of green accounting printout paper filled with numbers.

"What's this?"

Ebbans shrugged. "I don't do brainy crimes."

Corde put the scrap in a plastic bag.

Ebbans plucked a small pair of tweezers from the butt of a Swiss Army knife and reached forward. He gently lifted a bit of crinkly purple paper. All that remained was the upper lefthand corner.

March 14, 1

Jennie Ge

McReyn

Aude New

"Her letters," Ebbans said. There was triumph in his voice. "There you go, Bill."

"A pile of ash is all they are."

Ebbans often worked like a dog on scent. "Maybe, maybe not. Let's keep going and see what we can find."

Together the men crouched down and began their search again. When they finished, an hour later, they had nothing to show for their effort but the scraps of paper they had found right off, and two uniforms filthied, it seemed, beyond saving.

Even from the distance he sees fear in their eyes, in their posture, in their cautious gait.

Driving along Cress Street, a shortcut to the Sheriffs Department, Bill Corde watches people on the sidewalks of New Lebanon. Shades are drawn. More than the usual number of stores had not yet opened this morning although it is a glorious spring day in a town that has wakened early for a hundred and fifty years.

The people are skittish. Like cattle in thunder. Corde drums the steering wheel and wishes he hadn't compared his good citizens to fed-out slaughter animals.

Ace Hardware, Lamston's, Long's Variety, Webb's Lingerie and Foundations… Stores or the descendants of stores identical to them that have been here forever. Stores he has walked past for years, stores he has shopped in and answered 911 calls at, stores whose owners he sees at PTA meetings. But today, as he cruises slowly in and out of elongated morning shadows, Corde hardly recognizes the street and its occupants. He feels what a soldier feels in an occupied foreign city. He thinks of his own time in uniform – when he once got lost in an old quarter of Berlin.

Corde stops his cruiser at the Main Street light.

A sudden crack on the window makes him jump.

Gail Lynn Holcomb – a high school class mate of his – knocks again with red knuckles. He cranks the glass down and looks up at her frowning overly powdered face.

"Bill, how's this thing going?" There is no need to be more specific. She continues, "Should I keep Courtney out of school? I'm thinking I ought to."

He smiles to reassure her and says she doesn't have to worry.

But he sees that the words are pointless. She is worried. Oh, she's terrified.

And as he tells her that he thinks the Gebben killing is an isolated incident he observes something else too. He sees that she resents him.

Corde has been a small-town deputy for nine years, which is about eight years longer than it takes to understand the ambiguous status of cops in towns like New Lebanon. People here respect him because they've been taught to, and what small-town people are taught when young stays with them forever. People knock on his windows with fat, nervous hands and ask his advice and invite him to Rotary Club lunches and buy peanuts from him at the PTA fall fund-raiser. They josh and nod and shake his hand and cry against his solid shoulder.

But there's a distance that's real and it's big and it never shrinks. Because if Bill Corde stands for anything it's that the long arm of malice can reach into the center of this safe little town, where it ought not to be; New Lebanon doesn't deserve the same fate as East St Louis or the South Side of Chicago or the Bronx, and Bill Corde is uniformed proof that its fate is different in degree only, not kind.

What Corde sees now in this agitated blond bundle of Gail Lynn, gone heavy on potato chips and cola and cello-wrapped cookies, unskilled with the makeup brush, but a good mother and a good wife, is this very rancor.

Oh, how she resents him!

Because she now must fight daily, amid the noise of soap operas and sitcoms, with her husband and daughter about locking doors and latching windows and chaperoning dates and which routes to take to and from jobs and shopping centers and schools…

Because tomorrow morning Courtney with her thick wrists and bright blue eye shadow might walk uncautiously into a Middle School girls' room, where a man waits in a stall, holding a narrow wire destined for a young girl's throat…

Because life for Gail Lynn Holcomb is already a relentless series of burdens, and she surely doesn't need this one too: this murmur of utter fear that grows louder and louder each day that Bill Corde, sitting calmly in his safe and secure black-and-white Dodge, fails to catch this lunatic.

"We're doing everything we can," Corde concludes.

The light changes.

"Don't you worry now," he adds, and pulls into the intersection. She does not respond beyond pressing her flecked lips together and staring at the car as it turns onto Main Street.

12

Special to the Register - Investigators from the New Lebanon and Harrison County Sheriffs Departments have developed a profile of the so-called "Moon Killer," who raped and murdered a 20-year-old Auden University co-ed on April 20, the Register has learned.

Criminal behavior experts have reported that the man, whose motive may have been to sacrifice the victim as part of a cult ritual, is probably in his late teens or early twenties and white, and he lives within ten miles of the murder site.

The man might be obsessed with occult literature, much of which will be pornographic in nature. He may have a history of sexual problems and may himself have been abused as a young child.

He may come from a broken home, and at least one parent was a hostile disciplinarian. He is a loner.

There is no known religion or cult in which human sacrifice to the moon is or was practiced. This means that the "Moon Killer" might have created his own "religion," as did Charles Manson or Jim Jones. The moon may be significant because in mythology and certain religions it represents the female. It is women that the killer fears and hates.

Investigators are considering the possibility that the recent murder is related to the beating to death last year of another Auden co-ed, Susan Biagotti, 21, a resident of Indianapolis.

It is believed that the killer may act again on the night of the next full moon, Wednesday, April 28. Deputies and Auden campus security police have intensified patrol efforts and are urging young women to avoid going outside alone.

Corde dropped the Register on Jim Slocum's desk and said, "How'd this happen?"

Slocum rubbed his cheek. "You got me. Steve had an idea to have me go up to Higgins and talk to the state boys. Just a spur-of-the-moment thing."

"Didn't you check out the roads and the mall, like I asked?"

"Did that too. Put nearly two hundred miles on the cruiser. Didn't find diddly."

"Well, did you talk to a reporter?"

"Why would I talk to a reporter?" He frowned and slapped the newspaper with his hand. "Where I was maybe a little careless was I wrote up a memo after I talked to the State Police and circulated it to everybody on the case. It's in your in basket. Didn't you see it? You know what I'll bet happened is something got leaked from the state."

Corde was angry. He shouted throughout the office, "No reporters! Nothing goes to the press without clearing it with me. Understood?" Four deputies nodded, stiff-faced with unjust accusation.

"But Bill," Slocum said, "there's a lot that adds up. Look at this moon thing. The 'lunatic' message, the knife -"

Corde snapped, "Damned coincidence."

"Everybody knows about the full moon. Remember Ed Wembkie?"

Corde said, "This is not some guy got foreclosed out of his farm and went crazy."

"Ed killed that banker on the night of the full moon."

"Was also the day the marshal tacked up the auction notice. And what's this talk about Biagotti? Who brought that up?"

Slocum shrugged. "We are looking into it. Or at least you said you were going to."

"Jim, I don't care that it's accurate," Corde said in a low voice. "I care that it's being talked about in the press." He punched the newspaper. "There's nothing we can do about it now. But in the future -"

"In the future I won't trust them state boys," Slocum said earnestly. "That's for damn sure."

Corde stared at the article for a moment. He clicked his tongue. "Okay, what's done's done. Now, I'd like you to get out to the truck stops and along 116, put up some fliers asking for witnesses. That route's a feeder for the interstate if you're coming from Hallburton."

"That town's mostly dead, Bill. I doubt there'd be any truck traffic."

"Do it just the same. Fast-Copy's delivering them this afternoon."

"Uhn," Slocum said.

Corde continued into his office. He cracked open the window. Before he could sit down T.T.

Ebbans walked up to his desk, carrying his own Register.

Ebbans said angrily, "We've got ourselves a leak, looks like."

Corde snorted and swung his door shut. "It's not a leak if the sheriff doesn't mind." He dug into his in box and found Slocum's memo. It presented most of the same information that was in the article. Across the top Slocum had scrawled: Something to think about. Corde handed the memo to Ebbans, who read it and said, "Watkins knows what he's about but it's too darn early for this sort of profile. He should know better."

Corde nodded toward Ribbon's office. "You know something, T.T.," he whispered. "Steve'd look like a genius, he stops a cult killer in his tracks, don't you think? Especially if he could tie the Biagotti killing to this guy."

"I guess," Ebbans said, "but he wouldn't, you know, hurt the case just to do something like that."

Corde shrugged. "We catch this guy, five'll get you ten Ribbon mentions Biagotti at the same press conference. Also with this Moon Killer poop he's taking a lot of focus off the school, which is where he doesn't want the focus to be."

"Why not?"

"You don't live in New Lebanon, T.T. Hell, the school damn near pays our salaries. If Auden goes, what've we got? Precious little. Farms. A few dealerships. Insurance."

Corde tossed the Register into the trash. He began pacing slowly and then stopped abruptly. "You know, I can't let that go."

Ebbans looked at him quizzically.

"Woman came up to me today and she was mighty spooked, like she had the killer on her trail. Some paperboy or milkman comes to somebody's front door and he's going to get himself shot. Who's going to come forward with evidence if they think they're going to get gutted by a werewolf or something?"

Ebbans said, "The stories've run already, Bill. There's nothing you can do about it."

"Yeah there is."

Corde picked up the phone. He called the Register and then WRAL, the local TV station in Higgins. He asked them about deadlines and if they'd be interested in a statement about the Auden co-ed case by the chief investigator. He took down some information then hung up. After Corde hung up Ebbans glanced toward Ribbon's office and raised an eyebrow. He sang, "He ain't gonna like it."

Corde shrugged and proceeded to spend an agonizing half hour composing a release. After a dozen rewrites he slipped it over to Ebbans.

New Lebanon Sheriffs Department investigators are following several leads in the rape and murder of an Auden University co-ed. Although it has been suggested that the murder was cult or sacrifttial, investigators have said that this is only one possibility and, they are also exploring the possibility that a friend or acquaintance of the victim's from Auden University may have been somehow involved. Anyone with any information is urged to immediately contact the New Lebanon Sheriffs Department in complete confidentiality.

"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 his 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 Sheriffs 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 cliché. 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 bangtail 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 enlightenment. 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 résumés 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 résumés. 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 résumé."

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 résumé. "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 toward her jeans.

Diane grabbed it with both of hers. "Follow me." She stood up and pulled him towards 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 near – only several feet from the girl.

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

13

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 Grossman CO, air pistols.

Business at the quad and HoJo's and Baskin-Robbins fell to nothing as parents refused to let their daughters go on dates after dark. Exam grades at Auden went up as students who would normally be outside groping under clothing or pledging fidelity over the long summer months stayed home and broke the spines of books. A number of students were taking incompletes and returning home three weeks early.

A lot of town dogs were kept hungry.

Corde's awkwardly phrased press statement, meant to reassure the people of New Lebanon, in short, had no effect on the hysteria.

Bob Siebert came home late to his trailer on Route 302. He opened the door and in the dark kitchen found himself staring at his five-year-old son, who was aiming Siebert's Ruger.225 deer rifle more or less at his father's heart. Standing silhouetted in the moonlight, afraid to speak, Siebert froze. It was only after the short click of the firing pin that he began to breathe again. He lifted the gun away, laughing madly and thanking the Lord that his son had not known how to chamber a round. His smile faded when he opened the rifle's bolt and the misfired shell spiraled out. Siebert's legs went slack, his pants went wet and he dropped sobbing to the floor. The boy said, "I thought you was the Moon Man, Daddy."

And on Tuesday, one day before the full moon, the first graffiti went up.

No one saw who'd done it and in fact hardly anyone recognized the drawings at first. Clara and Harry Botwell were returning home in their 1976 Buick Electra from the Shrimp 'n Salad Night at the Wrangler, Clara driving, being the less impaired. Harry pointed to the wall of the First Bank of New Lebanon and said, look, somebody had painted a big gumdrop on the side of the bank, and Clara studied the wall and asked, why was it on its side and anyway why would anybody paint a gumdrop?

"Sweet Mary," she said, "that's no gumdrop, it's a half-moon." In panic she gunned the big engine and shot through a red light, broadsiding a Celica. The couple escaped unhurt, though the driver of the Toyota went to Memorial with a broken arm.

The bank wasn't the only site of a half-moon. Three hundred citizens punched in 911 that night (most of them for the first time in their lives) to report a half dozen of the graffiti moons. The callers were all pretty shaken up; the paint the artist had used was blood.

This evening, Randolph Sayles, professor and dean, student of Union economics and apologist for the noble Confederate States of America, sat in his backyard smoking a cigarette and staring at the evening sky bright with moonlight. He held a drooping fax in his hand. Sayles tapped an ash to the ground in front of him and looked at it. Beside his muddy boots a tree root had grown out of the earth and then, only a few inches away, had returned underground as if even this short excursion into the world was intolerable. He heard footsteps. He recognized them.

Joan Sayles was an angular woman with short-cropped blond hair and abrupt hips and long breasts. Tonight she wore a white blouse, tied in the front & la Lana Turner, and skimpy, baggy shorts. She sat beside her husband. Dimpled bands of white flesh hung from her upper legs.

A full professor of sociology at Auden, she was one year older than Sayles and had an IQ two points higher than his, though they both fell in the ninety-ninth percentile. When they met, their last year of undergraduate school (on this same campus), one of them had been a virgin and it hadn't been Joan. Even as a grad assistant she had professorial drive and an instinctive grasp of institutional politics. He appreciated these talents in her although he realized too late that she used these to pursue not only tenure but Sayles himself. She was successful on both fronts; they were married the day after he sat for his doctoral orals. And if he'd never felt a moment of resounding passion for her – nothing close in fact to what he felt when he stood at the lectern – that was all right. He loved her (he believed). Anyway he needed a wife (he was pretty sure), stability and a brainy spouse being Doric columns of Midwest university success.

"What are you doing out here?" she asked, squinting in the violet moonlight. The gesture pulled the corners of her mouth up in a wet grotesque smile that Randy Sayles did not want to look at. She noticed a small muddy shovel next to him and her eyes dipped to his boots. "Moonlight gardening?"

He imagined that her question, which sounded simply curious, was in fact laced with mockery.

He thought: What does she know?

Taking in the air, he answered. "You had a meeting tonight?"

"Completed." She was holding a batch of white, stapled papers rubber-banded together. She had made many notes and marks on the first page of the top paper. He noticed C/C+. She was a bitch of a grader.

"What are you doing?" she repeated. When he did not respond she asked, "Are you ignoring me for a reason?"

He apologized with a sincerity that surprised them both, then handed her the fax. The state had rejected Auden's application for an emergency loan.

"Ah." She handed it back and lit a cigarette. It hung from the side of her lips and this made her mouth even sloppier and more lopsided. Joan inhaled then lifted a long finger to her tongue and touched away a fleck of something. "I'm sorry."

Sayles squeezed her knee in response. She said, "Do you know what one of my students wrote? The issue was whether a population center like New Lebanon had an inner city. He wrote that it didn't. Rather, he said, it had a wrong side of the tracks. I gave him an A minus, solely for that."

Sayles said, "Clever."

"You know, if I had it to do all over again I'd pick something frivolous. Romance languages or art appreciation. No, I know. Russian literature."

She touched the side of her tongue again, probing, as if she wanted to make sure it wasn't numb.

He said, "The police want to see me."

"About that girl in your class? The one who was killed?"

Sayles nodded.

"You were sleeping with her?"

This was not truly a question. So she does know.

His silence was an answer she could read. "Did you enjoy it?" she asked.

"On occasion."

"They don't think you had anything to do with it, do they?"

"Of course not."

How does she know?

Joan finished her cigarette and dropped it on the ground. She did not step on it. After a moment she shuffled the papers in her hand and said, "You know, I'm astonished at how college sophomores cannot put sentences together," and walked back to the house along a narrow patch stained red and purple by droppings from a row of mulberry trees.

Where T.T. Ebbans wanted to be: standing in the exact position of the man he was talking to, the man leaning on the bent branch beside the muddy Des Plaines and connected to a hook sunk in murky water by twenty feet of fishing line via a Sears rod and reel. The man in the red hat.

"Those're some flies," Ebbans said, nodding at the hat.

"Yessir."

Ebbans leaned over and looked into the Rubbermaid bucket where three pale catfish floated motionless. "A fly fisherman doesn't get bored feeding stinkballs to suckers?"

"I don't fly. S'only the hat. Was a present from my wife." A moment later he added, "I got a license. Only I left her at home."

"Uh-huh," Ebbans said. "You by any chance fishing on Tuesday evening down at Blackfoot Pond?"

"This is my evening."

"How's that?" Ebbans asked.

"I work owl at the container plant. Get off at seven in the a.m. Go to bed. Eat. Fish. Go to work. That's my life. Your evening's my day."

"Some fella there saw someone fits your description."

He grunted.

Ebbans said, "We had a girl killed over there on Tuesday."

"That was there? Shitabrick. I didn't know. Yeah, I was there on Tuesday."

"When did you leave?"

"Must've been nine-thirty or ten. Got off to a late start because of the storm."

"You see anybody else?"

"When I was leaving I seen two kids come up. They had tackle but they weren't fishing. I figured they maybe had a Delco or a hand-crank and were just going to jolt up some worms."

"They were kids?"

"Looked to be teenagers."

"You know them?"

"Didn't see 'em up close. They were down at the foot of the dam, walking up to the pond. One of them was fat so they were going slow. The fat one was wearing something dark. The other one was thin and was wearing a jacket may've been gray."

"How old?"

"High school. I dunno."

"Both white?" Ebbans asked.

"What else 'round here?"

"I'd like to have a talk with those boys or one of them. You see them I'd appreciate your letting us know."

"You bet."

"You do that I'll forget to tell Fish and Game about the license you left at home."

"I've been meaning to get me one," he said. "You know how it is. One thing after another."

The First Methodist Church of New Lebanon announced today that Sunday school classes will be canceled until further notice following the vandalism of the school by the man authorities are calling the "Moon Killer."

"Authorities" are calling?

A painting of a half-moon in blood was found on the door of the first-floor girls' room in the Sunday school building, located at 223 Maple Street, adjacent to the church.

The blood matched that from a goat whose carcass was found several days ago in the New Lebanon Grade School.

How do they know that? I didn't know that.

Attendance at the town's schools has fallen dramatically since the Moon Killer began stalking the streets of New Lebanon…

"Stalking" the streets?

Tonight will be the first full moon since the murder of the Auden co-ed…

Jennie. Her name is Jennie Gebben.

… and residents are urged to stay home from sunset to sunrise…

Bill Corde, sitting in Room 121 of the Auden Student Union, stared at that morning's Register for five minutes before pitching it out. He opened an envelope he had picked up at the office on the way over here. It contained a report from the county lab about the match between the carcass blood and the graffiti blood.

How did they know? I didn't.

A man appeared in the doorway. Corde looked up at him.

"Excuse me. I'm Professor Sayles. You wanted to see me?"

"Come on in. Sit down." Corde shoved aside the lab report and motioned with his palm toward the chair across from his miniature desk.

Sayles sat, folding his long legs slowly. He scooted the seat back. "This has to do with the Jennifer Gebben murder?"

Corde asked, "She was in your class?"

"Yes, she was." Sayles looked at his watch. A wrinkled, frayed shirt cuff appeared outside his blue blazer and stayed there. "And she worked part-time for me. In the Financial Aid Department."

"Did you know her well?"

"I try to know all my students."

"But you knew her better than the others," Corde said.

"The class she was in is large. The Civil War Centennial course is very popular. I try to know as many students as I can. I think it's important. Any personal attention in class can be very inspiring. Don't you remember?"

Corde, who had spent most of his school years trying to avoid the attention of teachers, said, "Why was she working for you? I assume she didn't need the money."

"Why do you assume that?" Sayles asked dourly.

"She wasn't in the work-study program and didn't have any student loans or scholarships. Seems she would've followed those routes before she'd get a part-time job paying five-ten an hour."

"There's something altruistic about disbursing money to needy students. Jennie helped organize last year's AIDS walkathon. And she was also a Meals on Wheels volunteer."

"For a month or two," Corde said.

"For a month or two."

"But how did she come to work for you?"

"We got to talking about how curious it was that I – a history professor – ended up in charge of financial aid and she asked if she could assist me."

"What were the circumstances of this conversation?"

"Officer." Sayles was riled. "I hardly recall."

"Was there anybody in class she was particularly friendly with?"

"I never paid any attention."

"Did you ever see her with anyone who wasn't a student?"

Sayles shrugged. "No."

"How often did you work together?"

"Several times a week."

"You see her socially?"

"No, not socially. We'd have dinner after work sometimes. Often with other people. That was all."

"You don't consider that social?"

"No, I don't."

Corde watched the man's dark eyes, which in turn studied three dirty fingernails on his right hand.

"Professor, were you asked by Loyola College to stop teaching there?"

Sayles started to reach for his red-and-blue striped tie. He stopped and tilted his head slightly, adjusting the needle valve on his indignation. "I was, yes."

"That was because you'd been involved with a student?"

"Involved with? Yes."

"And you assaulted her?"

"I did not. We had an affair. I broke it off. She wasn't happy about that and called the police to report that I'd assaulted her. It was a lie."

"Were you having an affair with Jennie Gebben?"

"No. And I believe I resent your asking me that."

"I have my job to do," Corde said wearily.

"And if you think anyone from the university had something to do with her death…" Sayles's voice grew harsh. "… you're badly mistaken. There are enough unfounded rumors about the murder already. It's hard enough running a school and raising money for it without spooking parents and benefactors. Read the paper. Your department said it was a demonic killing."

"We have to look at all possibilities."

The watch was again gravely consulted. "I have a class in five minutes."

"Where were you on the night she was killed, Professor?"

He laughed. "Are you serious?" Corde lifted an eyebrow and Sayles said, "I was home."

"Is there anyone who can verify that?" Corde glanced at the narrow gold ring. "Your wife maybe?"

His voice grew soft in anger. "I was by myself. My wife was doing research at the library until midnight."

"I understand that Brian Okun was seeing Jennie?"

"Seeing her? I'd say he was seeing her. He was sleeping with her."

In his Chinese handwriting Corde made a small notation on a three-by-five card. "Could you tell me who you heard that from?"

"I can't recall."

"What's your opinion of him?"

"Of Brian? You can't suspect Brian of hurting Jennie."

"Your opinion?"

"He's brilliant. He needs to temper his intelligence somewhat. He's a little arrogant for his own good. But he'd never hurt Jennie." Sayles watched Corde slowly write. "May I go now?"

Corde completed the card and looked up. "I -"

"Look, I can't help you. I have nothing more to say." Sayles stood and his grim surliness was at a high pitch now.

This anger seemed out of proportion to the circumstances of the questioning. At first this reinforced Corde's suspicion of the man. But one look into Sayles's face told another story. The source of the professor's indignation was contempt. Contempt at himself for loving Jennie Gebben. Whatever her talents in bed, which Corde guessed were pretty damn plentiful if both Sayles and Okun had risked their jobs to have her, Jennie was still nothing more than an average student, a suburban girl, fat at the throat, the daughter of a small-business man, a Meals on Wheels volunteer, a very ordinary young woman.

And here was Randolph Sayles, PhD, just blistered with humiliation for the love he'd spent on this common girl.

So Corde released him. And like a squirming cat escaping at last from his master's arms the professor stalked out of Room 121 neither dallying nor fast, absorbed with forgetting the prior moments of troubling captivity.

Returning to the office Corde found on Slocum's desk the stack of fliers from Fast-Copy, which were supposed to be tacked up thick as litter along Route 116. Slocum was out, he learned, looking into reports of missing goats.

The difficult night at home had now caught up with him – the second photo, his guilt at missing another of Jamie's wrestling matches tonight, a tempestuous dream that woke him at one. Unable to sleep he had sat for two hours in the back bathroom with the shotgun on his lap, scanning the forest for any sign of the intruder. Once, he was sure he'd seen a face-looking at the house and had gone so far as to chamber a shell and walk outside, hands shaking in anticipation as much as from the predawn chill. But as he stood shoeless on the slab back porch the image became a moonlit tangle of trees and leaves.

He'd turned to walk back into the house and Sarah had scared the utter hell out of him, bounding forward from the stairs. They stared at each other – Corde, shocked, the girl more disappointed than anything. She was headed for the back door and he'd thought for an instant that she was sleepwalking. But, no, she was only after a glass of water. "What's wrong with your bathroom?" Corde asked as his heart's gallop slowed. She had drunk the water, staring out the window, until he impatiently shooed her off to bed.

He did not get to sleep till five.

Then there'd been a fight at breakfast. Sarah had shrilly refused her mother's demand that she study before going to school. Corde had had to both comfort his wife and calm his daughter. He tried not to take sides and they both ended up mad at him.

Now, in his office, the door closed, Corde sat at his desk for ten minutes, arranging and rearranging the tall stacks of his three-by-five cards, fat and limber from all the shuffling. He spread them out until they covered his desk.

A dull bicentennial quarter appears in his hand and begins flopping over the backs of his fingers. He stares at the cards and after a few minutes Bill Corde is no longer in the Sheriffs Department but is on the Auden University campus and the day isn't today but is Tuesday, April 20. It is four-thirty p.m.

Corde pictures Jennie Gebben leaving Professor Sayles's lecture hall and walking to the university bookstore three blocks away to cash a check for thirty-five dollars. Her picture is taken by the cashier's security camera and the film shows her wearing a white blouse with a button-down collar. Her dark hair is straight, a thick strand sloping over her forehead. The shutter catches her with eyelids half closed. The time on the film is 16:43:03. Jennie continues to the dorm and arrives there at about five. She and Emily Rossiter remain in their room with the door closed for about an hour. The girls on the floor can detect the roommates having what seems to be an argument though no one hears enough to know the substance of their discussion.

Lance Miller's report on the phones shows that during the hours Jennie was at the dorm today, there have been no outgoing long-distance calls and most local calls are to innocent recipients. The only local call whose recipient can't be ascertained is to the Auden School of Arts and Sciences; which of the sixty-four extensions the call is transferred to cannot be determined. Both Randy Sayles's and Brian Okun's numbers are among those sixty-four, as is Emily's; she works as an assistant in the Sociology Department.

At about six-fifteen Jennie takes a shower and with hair still damp walks with three other girls to the cafeteria. They have asked Emily to join them but she moodily declines. The four eat dinner and talk. Jennie eats quickly and leaves early. She too is moody. Her dinner companions return to the dorm at seven-thirty and watch a TV game show for a half hour. Jennie enters the lounge and watches TV for a few minutes then looks at her watch. She seems distracted, edgy. At about eight-fifteen she leaves the lounge and tells one of the girls that she'll be back by midnight.

The next time Jennie Gebben is accounted for, it is ten-fifty-eight. She has been raped and strangled to death and her body is lying in a bed of blue hyacinths at the muddy base of Blackfoot Pond dam.

At the site of her death: Nineteen shoe and boot prints around the body, most of them men's or teenage boys' sizes. The Ford pickup, covered with 530 partial and 140 full fingerprints. Scraps of standard, virtually untraceable typing paper. Cellophane wrappers from several snack foods sold by Wise and Frito-Lay and Nabisco. Cigarette butts, beer and soda bottles and cans, a condom, the semen in which doesn't match that found in the victim.

And the knife (whose source even the FBI has not been able to identify, despite the assistance of the Seoul Prefecture of Police and faxed inquiries to twelve professors of religion, criminology and parapsychology around the country).

None of the fingerprints found at the crime scene matches those on file in Harrison County. The prints are now in Higgins and in Washington, D.C., for similar cross-checking in state and federal files. Fingerprinting the dorm room netted 184 partial and whole prints, sixty-two of which belonged to Jennie and other students on the floor. The others are as yet unmatched.

After reporting the theft of Jennie's letters Emily Rossiter has turned uncooperative. She still has not appeared at Room 121 and she has not returned his calls.

Corde has looked carefully through the file on the Biagotti case – the case that introduced him to Jennie Gebben. On January 15 of the previous year, Susan Biagotti was in her off-campus apartment when she was beaten to death with a hammer during a robbery. As Corde told Ribbon, Jennie could offer no insights into the crime. The girls did know each other but only casually. Susan lived two buildings away from Brian Okun's apartment but Corde can find no other connection between the two of them. The phase of the moon on January 15 was three days after new.

The burnt scraps found in the oil drum behind Jennie's dorm include three types of paper. Hammermill long-grain recycled white typing paper, Crane's laid stationery, tinted violet, and sprocketed green-and-white-striped computer paper whose manufacturer has not been determined. Ninhydrin analysis has revealed two partial fingerprints on the Crane's stationery and one complete print on the computer printout. All three are Jennie's. The county lab reports that the amount of ash in the drum would be equal to about fifty to seventy-five sheets of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch paper. The ash was so badly destroyed that no latent watermarks, writing or fingerprints are detectable.

The printing on the computer paper is of dollar amounts ranging from $2,670 to $6,800. The printer was a nine-pin dot matrix. The extreme faintness of the type suggests it was printed in the machine's highspeed mode or that the ribbon was old. Both county and State Bureau of Investigation technicians report that the papers and ink are too common to provide further leads unless matching samples are recovered.

Jennie died of traumatic asphyxia. The killer strangled her with his hands then used a rope or cord to make sure she was dead. The speed with which she died makes an erotic asphyxia interlude unlikely. She did not die standing up; the backs of her shoes kicked deep impressions into the mud before they flew off, and the soles of her feet were clean. The semen in and on her body is from a single individual and was serum-typed B positive. There is evidence of both vaginal and anal intercourse.

No one has found the murder rope though a technician noticed a fresh cut on a short piece of plastic-coated clothesline dangling from a tie-down cleat in the abandoned truck. The medical examiner said the injury to her neck was consistent with that type of rope. The cult knife contains no particle residue from the cord but that is not conclusive. Moreover, the blade of the knife is razor sharp and the county forensic lab reports that the clothesline on the Ford was cut with a sharp instrument. A particle of cotton fiber, matching Jennie's panties, was found on the stiletto. Of Jennie Gebben, Corde knows this: She dated frequently though these were not typical Burger-King-and-a-movie events. She simply vanished in the evenings, sometimes for the entire weekend. She rarely talked about her companions on these outings though what she did share caused considerable stir. Sex was Jennie's favorite topic. Not boys or dates or engagement rings. Sex. Jennie had been found masturbating in the dorm bathroom a number of times and she didn't mind being watched. She got pleasure from blunt talk ("One time Jennie and I we're in the study room, okay? And it's all quiet and she like looks up and goes, 'You ever take it up the ass?' and I'm like, 'Oh my God, did you really say that?'").

Her reluctance to discuss her lovers fueled the rumors that she slept with professors. Last year she supposedly went out with one professor for much of the spring term. They kept it intensely secret though it was believed that he was in the Education School and that they had contemplated marriage.

A number of girls call Jennie's sexual behavior disgraceful but when they do, the disdain is transparent and there is envy beneath.

Many students say that they considered her a searcher, unsettled, unhappy. Several give similar versions of the same incident: Late one night Jennie was in the stairwell of the dorm by herself. She was crying and the echoes of her voice on the concrete walls made a terrible, mournful moan. "I'm so lonely…" one student believes she was saying. Another, on the floor below, heard, "If only I had him…"

She was not religious and had never attended a church in New Lebanon. She had some tapes by New Age musicians and several crystal necklaces but little interest in spiritualism or the occult. Students have given conflicting reports about her relationship with her parents. Jennie was cool toward her mother. Her connection with her father, on the other hand, was turbulent. On the phone she sometimes told him in oddly passionate terms that she missed and loved him. Other times she slammed the phone down and announced about him, "What a prick."

Bill Corde drops his quarter on the table and scoops up his index cards, considering all these facts, and he tries to picture the killer. But he sees woefully little. Far, far less than the profile in the Register (which infuriated him partly because he doubted he himself could ever create such a vivid image of a criminal). Corde's own profiling technique, that of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, is charted on the yellowed sheet of paper pinned on the corkboard behind his desk. It is a lengthy process of inputting voluminous facts, arranging them into models, assessing the crime and finally creating then fine-tuning the criminal profile. (He knows that the NCAVC procedure includes an optimistic sixth and final step: apprehension of the killer – a stage that seems despairingly unattainable at this moment, eight long days after Jennie Gebben's demure body was found in a bed of muddied hyacinths beside that gloomy, still pond.)

Corde knows many details about Jennie Gebben. He knows that Brian Okun has lied to him and that Professor Sayles might have. He knows that two boys were near the dam shortly before her death and one of them may have had a knife. The trail is cooling and there is so much more to learn. More interviews, more facts to unearth… Though he secretly wonders: Is he merely stalling, hoping for a picture of the killer to flutter down from heaven, a picture as clear as the portrait of Jennie taped inside his briefcase?

Bill Corde riffles the index cards.

He believes much and he knows little. A mass of information is in his hands but the truth is somewhere between the facts themselves, in the gaps of his knowledge, like the shadows between the flipping cardboard. For now, Corde sees only darkness as dense as the water in Blackfoot Pond. He sees no deeper than the reflection of double moons in the facets of a dead girl s necklace.

Corde hopes for startling illumination and yet he fears it will be a long, long time coming.

14

Her trouble came with the first asymmetrical block.

Resa Parker flipped through the green booklet, its cover printed with the large black letters VMI, Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration, and noted the exact point where Sarah Corde's abilities failed her: trying to copy a line drawing of an uneven rectangle.

Setting this aside the psychiatrist reviewed the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children – Revised, examining the snaky plot of the verbal and performance tests in the WISC-R profile blocks. The Revised Gray Oral Reading Test, which was strictly timed, showed Sarah – a fourth grader – reading at a first-grade level. Without the stress of a clock she was slightly better.

The scores were worse than the doctor had expected.

Sarah now sat in front of her, struggling through the last of the diagnostic tests – the Informal Test of Written Language Expression. Dr. Parker saw the anxious behavior, the darting eyes, the quivering knees, the frosting of sweat. The psychiatrist, who had at one time been in daily analysis for six years, continually confronted her own anger and insecurity and the coldness with which they were manifest; she struggled to instill serenity in the child. "Take your time, Sarah." Big smile. "There's no rush."

She noted the process of internalizing. Sarah didn't sound out unknown or difficult words. She stared at them without lip movement until she applied whatever phonetic skills she could muster and then wrote the words slowly in crude letters. Sarah leaned forward, an intense frown on her brow as she tried to conjure up the words. In her eyes the agony of repeatedly slamming into her limitations was clear.

Children of policemen have a higher incidence of learning disabilities than those of other parents and Dr. Parker noticed in herself a kernel of resentment toward Bill Corde. It was a rancor that she would never reveal but that he would have to go a long way in rebutting. Diane Corde refined much of what she said through a very complex series of filters and Dr. Parker wondered just how much the man actually helped his daughter, in contrast to how much Diane believed, or wished, he did.

The doctor also knew something else – how little the girl would ultimately improve and the immense effort and expense even that limited progress would require. "I'm afraid your time's up," Dr. Parker said, and took the notebook from the girl, who was sweating and nearly breathless. She examined the girl's sad attempt to write a story about a simple illustration in the test booklet – a boy with a baseball. Sarah had started: His naem was Freddie. And he watnted to play bsebale, baseball, only… The handwriting was abysmal. The story continued for a half page; an average child could easily fill three of four pages in that time. "All right, Sarah, very good. That's the last of our tests."

Sarah looked mournfully as the written language test was slipped into the file. "Did I pass?"

"You don't pass these tests. They're just to tell me about you so I can help you do better in school."

"I don't want to go back to school."

"I understand, Sarah, but it's not a good idea for you to stay back another year. You don't want all your classmates to advance a grade while you're left behind, do you?"

"Yes," Sarah answered without hesitation, "I'd like that."

Dr. Parker laughed. "Well, how about if I call Mrs. Beiderson and have her agree that you can take your tests out loud? Would that be all right?"

"So I wouldn't have to write out the answers?"

"Right."

"Would she do that?"

"I'm sure she would." The call had already been made.

"What about the spelling test? I'm ascared of spelling." The voice grew meek. Manipulatively meek, the doctor noted. Sarah had tried this technique before, with success.

"I'd like you to take it. Would you do it for me?"

"I'll be up in front of everybody. They'll laugh at me."

"No, you can do it by yourself. You and Mrs. Beiderson. That's all."

The child's instinctive sense of negotiation caught on that this was the best she could do. She looked at Dr. Parker and nodded uneasily. "I guess."

"Good. Now -"

"Can I finish the story at home?"

"The story?"

"Freddie and the baseball." She nodded at the booklet.

"I'm sorry, Sarah, that's all we had time for."

The girl's face twisted with enormous disappointment. "But I didn't get to write down the neat part!"

"No?" Dr. Parker asked. "What's the neat part?"

Sarah looked up at the same diplomas the doctor had watched Diane Corde scrutinize so desperately the previous week. The girl turned back, looked into the doctor's eyes and said, "What happens is Freddie hits the baseball into the street and it goes rolling down the sidewalk and into a drugstore. And there's Mr. Pillsit…" Sarah's eyes widened. "And he used to play for the Chicago Eagles. That was a ball team that had real eagles that would swoop down and grab the baseball and sail out over the grandstand and they won every game there was. And Mr. Pillsit says to Freddie -"

Dr. Parker held up her hand. "Sarah, did you read this story someplace?"

She shook her head. "No, I just made it up, like I was supposed to. I thought I was supposed to. I'm sorry…" The eyes lowered theatrically. "Did I do something wrong?"

"No, not at all. Keep going."

"'And Mr. Pillsit,' he says to Freddie, 'If you really want to play baseball, I can make you the best player that ever was, only you have to go find the tallest tree in the eagles' forest and climb up to the top. Are you brave enough to do that?'"

Freddie was of course up to the job, and Sarah enthusiastically continued with his adventures, not noticing the psychiatrist's braceletted hand reach forward and nonchalantly lift her gold pen, recording in rapid, oblique symbols of speed writing Freddie's quest for the magic baseball – fighting Hugo the Claw, the worst eagle that ever was, building a new clubhouse for the team after their original one burned down, running away from home and living in a big nest with a family of beautiful golden eagles. Freddie never returned home though he did become a famous baseball player. By the time Sarah finished, Dr. Parker had filled ten pages of steno paper. "That is a very interesting story, Sarah."

"No," Sarah said, sounding like a TV film reviewer. "But the picture was of Freddie and a baseball so I couldn't think of anything else."

The doctor flipped through her notebook slowly then said, "All right, I've got to look over all the work you've done for me and you've got to go study for your tests."

"I want my daddy to help me."

After a moment the doctor looked up. "I'm sorry, Sarah. What did you say?"

"I want Daddy to help me study. Is that okay?"

"That'll be fine," Resa Parker spoke absently. Her mind was wholly occupied by a boy and a baseball and a talking eagle.

"This is my federal firearm permit and this is my Missouri private investigator's license."

Sheriff Steve Ribbon studied the squares of laminated plastic in the man's wallet. He'd never seen a federal firearm permit. Or a Missouri private eye's license.

He said, "Looks in order."

Charlie Mahoney put the wallet back in his pocket. He wore a businessman's suit – in a fine, faint plaid that looked gray but up close was tiny lines of pink and blue. Ribbon liked that suit a whole lot. Ribbon nodded him toward a chair, observing that the man had two types of self-assurance: the institutional authority of a longtime cop. And the still confidence of a man who has killed another man.

Mahoney tossed an expensive, heavy tan raincoat onto an empty chair and sat down across the desk from Ribbon. He talked without condescension or interest about the beautiful spring weather, about the difficulty of getting to New Lebanon by air, about the ruralness of the town. He then fell silent and looked behind Ribbon, studying a huge topographical map of the county. During this moment Ribbon grew extremely uncomfortable. He said, "Now what exactly can I do for you?"

"I'm here as a consultant."

"Consultant."

"I'm representing the estate of Jennie Gebben. I was a homicide detective in Chicago and I have a lot of investigatory experience. And I'm offering my services to you. Free of charge."

"The thing is -"

"I've apprehended or assisted in the apprehension of more than two hundred homicide suspects."

"Well, what I was going to say was, the thing is, you're a, you know, civilian."

"True," Mahoney conceded. " Ill be frank. I can't tell you how upset Mr. Gebben is that this has happened. This has nothing to do with your ability to collar the perpetrator, Sheriff. Sending me here was just something he felt he had to do. Jennie was his only child."

Ribbon winced and felt genuine sorrow in his heart. "I appreciate what he must be going through. I've got kids myself. But you know how it is, regulations. You must've had those in Chicago."

"Sure, plenty." Mahoney studied the great blossom of Ribbon's face and added some shitkick to his voice as he said, "Can't hurt just to do a little talking. That can't hurt nothing now, can it?"

"No, I suppose not."

"You're in charge of the case?"

"Well, ultimately," Ribbon said. "But we got a senior detective here who's doing most of the legwork. Bill Corde. Good man."

"Bill Corde. Been doing this sort of thing for a few years?"

"Yessir, he has."

"What approach is he taking?"

"Well, he's thinking that it was somebody who knew her. Most likely somebody at the school."

Mahoney was nodding in a way that said to Ribbon he was troubled. "Playing the odds."

"Beg your pardon?"

"He's taking the cautious approach. Statistically most people are killed by somebody -"

"- they know."

"Exactly. But from what I've read about this case it's a little stranger than most. Some twists and turns, you know what I'm saying?"

"I hear you." Ribbon's voice lowered. "I've got a load of trouble with what's happening here. There are some, you know, cult overtones to the whole thing."

"Cult." Mahoney was nodding again, this time agreeably. "Like she was a sacrifice victim or whatever. Right. Those goats and that blood. The moon and everything. Whoever picked up on that idea was doing some good law enforcement work."

Ribbon's caution was on the ebb but he said, "I still have some trouble with you getting involved, Mr. Mahoney. I -"

"Charlie," Mahoney chided. "Charlie." He lifted his thick hands, with their yellow-stained index fingers, heavenward. "At least do yourself a favor and let me tell you about the reward."

"Reward."

"Mr. Gebben is a very wealthy man. He's offering twenty-five thousand dollars for apprehension of the killer."

Ribbon chewed on his cheek to keep the rampaging grin at bay. "Well, my, that's generous… Of course you can imagine that rewards like that generate a mess of bounty hunting. We got a lot of people in this county own guns and can carry them legally."

Mahoney frowned as he corrected himself. "Should've said: the reward is for professionals only. For law enforcers. That way there's no risk of people who don't know what they're doing getting hurt."

"Mr. Mahoney."

"I'm a cop, you're a cop…"

"Charlie. Charlie, it might not look good for… Well, politically is what I'm saying, to have an outsider here. It might look like we don't know what we're doing."

"It might also look like you thought so highly of the community that you had the foresight to call in some special help." Mahoney took a leisurely moment to study his watch. "Well. There you have it. Now, you can kick my ass out of here tomorrow if you want. But I'm stuck in town for the night at least and don't know a soul. How 'bout you and me get a drink and trade war stories. There's not much else to do in this town, is there?"

Ribbon almost made a comment about one pastime being raping co-eds by moonlight but caught himself. "Well, there are," he said, "but 'cept for fishing none of 'em's as fun as drinking."

She lifted the card off her desk with a trembling hand and stared at it, the little white rectangle. It was stiff and the corners were very sharp. One pressed painfully into her nail-chewed thumb, which left a bloody smear on the card. Emily Rossiter started to sit on the bed but then thought that they might have sat here. They'd probably looked between the mattress and the springs. They'd felt the pillow. They'd run their hands along the same sheets where she and her lover had lain. She dropped the card and saw, as it flipped over and over, the words Please call me… Det. William Corde flash on and off then disappear as the card landed in the wastebasket. She wondered if even the trash had been violated. Emily walked into the hall then into the telephone alcove.

She made a call and stiffened slightly when someone answered. "It's Emily… I have to see you. No, now." She listened for a moment to vehement protests then answered defiantly. "It's about Jennie." The voice on the other end of the line went silent.

"So I go like you are too much why don't you just sit on it and then Donna's like he is too totally much it's like you know like his eyes have this total hard-on and I go…"

Philip Halpern thought: Shut. Up.

In the room he and his sister shared there was one telephone. His sister, fourteen, used it most of the time.

The cool breeze of an April evening flowed through the window, rippling the green sheet that separated Philip's side from his sister's. Taped on the poorly painted walls were dozens of creased posters, the sort that come stapled in the centerfold of teen magazines. The wind momentarily lifted aside the Kmart sheet, studded with tiny red flowers, and for a brief moment Luke Perry and Madonna faced off against the Road Warrior and Schwarzenegger's Terminator.

In Philip's half of the stale-scented space: stacks of comic books, science fiction novels, drawing tablets, plastic figures of comic book heroes and villains. Hundreds of magazines, Fangoria, CineGore, Heavy Metal, many missing their covers; unable to afford them, Philip regularly swiped the unsold, stripped copies from trash bins behind New Lebanon News. On his dresser and desk rested elaborate plastic models of space ships perfectly assembled but coated with grime. In the corner, a hatrack project for shop class, partially completed, hid a massive dustball.

Dominating the room was a huge hand-printed sign. In oddly elaborate script it read: Entry Forbidden, the message surrounded by dozens of letters from the runic alphabet and tiny sketches of gargoyles and dragons.

Philip lay in his sagging bed on a mattress now dry but marred with a hundred old urine stains. He had told his parents that he had to study for a test and went into the bedroom. His father had seemed pleasantly surprised at this news then turned on Wheel of Fortune. Philip did not however study. He read Heinlein, he read Asimov, he read Philip K. Dick (he believed at times he was possessed by Dick's spirit), he lay on the bed, staring at flowers and mentally designing a laser, until his sister came into the room and made the phone call to her girlfriend.

Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

Their father opened the bedroom door abruptly and said, "Off the phone. Lights out. Now." His hand swept the light switch down. The door closed.

"… naw, my old man… gotta go. Yeah, tomorrow."

Philip turned the laser onto the afterimage of his father to see if it would work. It did, spectacularly. Philip invented very efficient weapons.

His voice hissed as he fired it again.

Rosy said, "Asshole."

"Say that to him."

"I'm talking to you," she said. He heard the zipper of her jeans. He wondered what she was going to wear to bed.

Philip said, "You're a 'ho."

She said, "You wish."

"Bitch."

"Fag."

The springs of her mattress squeaked as she flopped into bed. Philip lay unmoving for ten minutes – until he heard her steady breathing. Fully dressed, he sat up, feeling the cool air from the open window wash over him. He climbed through the window and as he fell to the spongy ground he slipped into the Lost Dimension; it was Phathar the warrior who staggered briefly then righted himself and strode confidently out of the moonlight-flooded backyard.

15

Professor Randolph Sayles wondered why there were no crickets or cicadas here. He listened. It was late April. Was it too early for them? He didn't know entomology. He'd struggled through life sciences, biology being the one course that had deprived him of a four-point grade average in undergraduate school. Twenty-six years later he still resented this.

He stood in the Veterans Memorial Park for ten minutes before she appeared. He thought Emily Rossiter was one of the most beautiful young women he'd ever seen. She had curly brown hair, surrounding a round face of Italian or Greek features, very pale. On her beauty alone he could have lived forever with her, sufficiently happy, sufficiently in love.

Yet as she approached him now – under a trestle of budding maples, the defiantly glaring moonlight silver against the riffling underside of the young leaves – what he saw shocked him. She was like a homeless woman, disheveled, her face puffy, her hair in tangles and unclean, her mouth slack, clothes dirty. Her eyes unfocused, her weak smile mad.

Yet despite her crazed demeanor, despite his anger toward her, despite his fear of her, Randy Sayles wanted nothing so much as to make love to her. Here, immediately, on the grass, on the dirt, hot flesh on flesh in a sea of cool spring air… He wanted to force her down and press on her, harder harder… He wanted to sample her vulnerability. He wanted her salty, unwashed flesh between his teeth…

He had once tried to seduce her, an incident that ended unconsummated and dangerously close to rape. She had finally repelled him with a slap, drawing blood. He had apologized and never approached her again. Curiously this scalding memory exponentially increased his hunger for her now.

He stood slouching, hands pocketed, as she stopped two feet away from him. They stood under a streetlight that seemed duller and more eerie than the light from the full moon. "Emily."

"You know what happened to her, don't you?" The words seemed to stumble from her mouth.

"What is it you want?"

"To Jennie. You know what happened to her?"

She began to walk, suddenly, as if she just remembered an appointment. Sayles followed, slightly behind. They moved this way, together, for five minutes then turned north along a path that led to a circle of brick surrounded by concrete benches and behind them a tall boxwood hedge. They would have three of four minutes' warning in case somebody walked toward them.

When speaking with female students Sayles automatically considered escape routes.

"Where are you staying," he asked, "in the room?"

"Ah, kiddo," Emily whispered to no one.

"You should think about going home. Take incompletes. Ill arrange it if you like."

"Kiddo."

"What were you trying to say on the phone? You didn't sound very coherent."

"I didn't know it would be this hard. It's so hard without her."

"What do you want?"

The moonlight shone on her cheeks in two streaks leading from her eyes to her mouth. Sayles stood with his hands still in his pockets, Emily with her arms crossed over breasts he had never seen. She asked, "You saw her the night she died, didn't you?" She spoke from some brink whose nature he couldn't fathom; was it resolution or resignation?

Sayles said, "No."

"I don't believe you."

They were in the small park off the quad, a place where lovers over the years had unzipped and unbuttoned all manners of fashions as they lay struggling on fragrant Midwest grass. Tonight the park was, or appeared to be, deserted. Emily said, "You know what happened to her, don't you?"

After a moment Sayles asked, "Why are you asking me?"

"Ah, kiddo," Emily muttered. "Ah kiddo kiddo kiddo…"

Sayles asked in a furious whisper, "What are you saying? What do you know?" He was engulfed with emotion and couldn't will his strong hands to stop as they grabbed her shoulders.

She seemed to waken suddenly and stood back, shaking her head, crying. "You're hurting me…"

"Hey, anybody there?" a gruff voice called. Footsteps behind them. Someone walking in the woods nearby, separated from view by the boxwood hedge. Emily broke away. Sayles started toward her. She waved her hand wildly, as if brushing away a riled bee.

"Tell me!" Sayles whispered viciously.

Emily walked quickly down the path. He started after her but the intruder, a security guard, shone his light in their direction. They both dodged it. Emily ran.

Sayles whispered, "Wait!" Then he stepped through the bushes, out of sight of the guard. He hurried through the darkness in the direction he believed she had gone.

Phathar jogged slowly down the path, gasping for breath. It reminded him of dreaded PE class tomorrow; the students were going to run the 880 – the purest form of Honon torture for him. He pictured himself plodding along, fat bouncing, as the others – who'd all finished – hooted and laughed. "Way to go, Phil. Hustle, Phil. Hustle!" His bowel churned.

He came out of the woods and walked for fifty feet before he smelled the water and the mud. He found himself at the foot of Blackfoot Pond dam. Phathar felt a stirring in his groin, and he painfully admitted to himself that despite the horror of last Tuesday night Phathar wished in his Dimensional soul he could relive the half hour he had spent here.

Lights. The sound of a speeding car. He crouched and ran to a low hemlock. The lights swept over his head like searchlights in a prison camp and the car disappeared with a hiss of tires, loud in the damp air. Phathar walked into the dish of mud and began his search for the knife that he had discovered to his horror had been lost that night. He was stung by this carelessness, not worthy of Phathar at all (but typical of a fat clumsy high school freshman). Back and forth, using a small penlight he'd wrapped with black construction paper to mask the light, he searched.

Phathar slowly grew serene. Smelling the mud and water, hearing the groan of bullfrogs reminded him of biology class – his best course. He remembered the time he had helped the teacher collect frogs from the banks of the Des Plaines one night and the man had thanked Philip in front of the class the next day. Philip's face had burned with rare pride at the compliment. He had felt bold enough to volunteer to pith frogs for anyone who didn't want to. He jabbed a probe into the heads of a dozen frogs that day. One girl thanked him and said he was brave. Philip had stared at her, dumbstruck.

After a half hour of futilely scanning the muck for the knife, he gave up. He couldn't stay any longer; his father might make an unexpected raid on the bedroom. He started for the path. Then: footsteps. The boy froze, sweat bursting on his forehead, his neck bristling with panic. He retreated to the hemlock. The steps grew closer and he cowered beneath the muffling boughs. He leaned out and looked.

A girl!

Philip calmed immediately and a thrill rippled through his plentiful body.

Another college girl, it seemed. About the same age as the first one. Only prettier. Not so horsey. He felt the stirring in his groin again. Almost a burning vibration. She was alone. He wondered what her tits looked like, hidden under the thick sweater. Her skirt was loose and flowing. Philip felt a painful erection. The girl walked right past the hemlock. She stood in the center of the clearing.

Pacing back and forth she stared at the ground until she came to a bed of blue flowers. She dropped to her knees, smearing her skirt with mud. She leaned forward. He couldn't see what she was doing. He heard her muttering to herself.

"Emily!" A man's breathless voice called from the road.

Philip's erection vanished and he crouched beneath the tree. The girl dropped lower and melted into the flowers. Ten yards away the man jogged along Route 302. He stopped and looked out over the pond. The moonlight was in his eyes and Philip could see him squinting. He was looking right at where the girl was hiding but didn't see her. He called once more then started back along the road. Soon he was gone.

The girl sat up. Philip heard a rustle of the leaves as she stood. He heard an owl close by. Philip pulled a branch down to see her better. He wondered what her ass was like. He wondered if her breasts smelled the way the other girl's had – like pumpkin pie spices. He wondered if she had blond hair or brown between her legs. The erection returned and pressed roughly against his taut jeans.

Slowly the beautiful girl stood and walked along the path. Philip saw she'd forgotten her purse. He let go of the branch. It snapped up and cut off his view of her. He stepped away from the tree and walked into the clearing, where he picked up the purse and without opening it, lifted it to his face. He smelled the scent of lemon perfume and leather and makeup. He slipped it inside his shirt and followed her.

The full moon is high above New Lebanon.

Most of the men are nearly invisible in their camouflaged hunting gear though you can see occasional glints off class rings and glossy blue-black barrels and receivers. They hide behind stands of bushes, dodging pricklers and feeling colder than they think they ought to, it being nearly May. They walk in clusters of two or three along trimmed streets. They cruise in cars. Some, veterans, have blackened their cheekbones and are consumed by a lust they have not felt for twenty-five years.

A number of men pad through fields where they figure there's not much chance of finding any killers but where, if they do, the spotlight of a moon will illuminate their target. Their guns are loaded with rock salt or buckshot or deer slugs and some of the hunters have tapped the bullets and filled the holes with mercury then waxed them over again to make sure that even if they just wing the killer he's not getting up ever ever again.

Some go out with beer and fried chicken and make a campfire, hoping their presence alone will deter the man. Some take the job of guardian more seriously and believe that the entire future of a wholesome New Lebanon depends on their vigilance. And their aim. Jim Slocum and Lance Miller, stripped of their indicia of police authority, are out with one such group.

There are no gunshots until eight p.m., almost exactly as Bill Corde turns onto Route 302, heading home. The first shooting is, not surprisingly, one of the hunters putting a load of buckshot into another one. Fortunately the shooter had his choke wide and the victim got stung by only five or six pellets. The second victim is a cat and the third is a movie poster of Tom Cruise, which may or may not have been an accident.

It isn't until nearly nine that Waylon Sinks, juggling a thirty-two-ounce bottle of Budweiser and a Browning 16-gauge, forgets to put the safety on as he goes over a fence and kills himself unpleasantly. The New Lebanon Sheriffs Department, as well as the county sheriffs dispatcher and 911 for most of Harrison County, have been taking dozens of calls. Mostly they are sightings of the Moon Killer, who is sometimes spotted carrying a long knife, sometimes a rope. Usually he's standing in backyards and looking in windows though sometimes he is climbing walls or scampering over roofs. There isn't much the deputies can do. Officers make their rounds, and under their spotlights the offending shadows vanish completely.

The moonlight beats down on the town of New Lebanon.

It beats down so hard you can nearly hear a buzz like a high-watt bulb or like the humming of blood in your ears when you hold your breath in fear. The moonlight beats down and throughout the town you can see uneasy faces in windows and you can hear dogs howling – though what they bay at isn't the white eye of the moon but the incessant forms of the prowling vigilantes, bleached yet black in the eerie wash of illumination.

Corde arrived home at eight-thirty. He sent Tom the deputy back to his uneasy wife and children. Diane and Jamie were at a wrestling match at the high school, where Corde himself oh so wanted to be. He walked into the house, half wondering if he should have tipped Tom something; the cheerful young man had been more a baby-sitter than a guard these past few days.

Corde pulled off his muddy shoes and hugged Sarah. He washed his hands and face in the kitchen sink then poured a Diet Coke for her and a seltzer for himself. Only the Warner Brothers glasses were clean and he kept the Road Runner glass for himself. He handed Sarah Porky Pig.

They got to work.

She was particularly edgy tonight. The study session went badly from the start. She panicked often and began talking nonsense, joking and giddy. This put Corde in a bad mood because Diane had told him that Mrs. Beiderson was making special arrangements for Sarah's tests and he thought the silliness measured up to ingratitude.

They were in the livingroom, on the couch, surrounded by a mass of papers. Sarah looked so small and overwhelmed by the mess that Corde picked up the papers and organized them into a single stack. They were Sarah's attempts at the practice spelling test. So far, twelve tries, her best score had been twenty-two out of fifty. Thirty-three was passing.

Corde had that day written a check to Dr. Parker for $880, which was exactly twice what it cost him to insulate the entire attic.

"Let's try again," he said.

"Daddy, I don't want to take the test. Please! I don't feel good."

"Honey, we've got to work on a few more words. We're only up to the M's."

"I'm tired."

Tired was the one thing his souped-up little daughter was not. At battle stations again, they sat with the spelling list between them.

"Okay, the M words." He joked, "The M for 'mouthful' words."

"I don't want to take the damn test," Sarah said sullenly.

"Don't cuss."

"It's a shitty test! I don't want -"

"Young lady, don't you use that word again."

"- to take it! I hate Dr. Parker."

"Just the M words."

"I'm tired," she whined.

"Sarah. Spell 'marble.'"

Eyes squinting, lip between teeth, back erect. She said, "M-A-R-B-L-E."

"Very good, honey. Wonderful." Corde was impressed.

"Marble" went on the plus side, joined by "make," "mark," "miss" and "milk." Sarah wasn't as lucky with "middle," "missile," "makeshift," "messenger," "melon" and "mixer." Dr. Parker hadn't suggested it but Corde took to drawing pictures of the objects next to the words. This seemed clever but didn't help.

Sarah's mood was getting progressively worse. Her leg bounced. Her tiny fingers wound together frantically.

"Now spell 'mother.'"

Sarah started to cry.

Corde was sweating. He'd been through this so many times and her defeats were always his. He wanted to shake her. He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and point her at Jamie and say, "You've got the same blood. There's no difference between you. Can't you understand that? Just work hard! Work hard! Why won't you do that?" He wanted to call up the psychiatrist and tell her to get her fashion-plate ass over here this minute. In a tired voice: "You're doing fine. A lot better than when we started tonight."

"No, I'm not!" she said. She stood up.

"Sit down, young lady. You've done the word before. Try it again. 'Mother.'"

"M-O-…"

Corde heard her hyperventilating and thought momentarily of Diane's long labor when the girl was born. Breathe, breathe, breathe…

"It's E-R. No, wait, M-O-T… I got lost. Wait, wait…"

Corde set the piece of paper on the table with the other failed tests and picked up a blank sheet. He began to write, "M-O-T-H…"

"No!" she screamed.

Corde blinked at the volume of the wail and the terror it contained. "Sarah!"

"I don't know it! I don't know it!" She was howling. Corde – standing up, sending a chair flying – believed she was having a seizure.

"Sarah!" he shouted again. His neck bristled in panic.

Corde took her by the shoulders. "Sarah, stop it!"

She screamed again and tipped into hysteria.

He shook her hard, her hair flying around her head like golden smoke. The glass tumbled over, a flood of brown soda poured onto the carpeting. She broke away from him and raced up the stairs to her room. Sheetrock throughout the house shook as her door slammed.

Corde, hands shaking, was mopping up the spilled soda with wads of napkins when the doorbell rang.

"Oh, Lord, now what?"

Steve Ribbon leaned on the doorpost, looking out over the lawn. "Talk to you for a minute, Bill?"

Corde looked toward Sarah's bedroom then back to Ribbon. "Come on in."

Ribbon didn't move. "Your family home?"

"Just Sarah. Jamie and Diane are at a meet. Should be home anytime."

The sheriff didn't speak for a minute. "Why don't you step outside here?"

Corde shook his head. "I don't want to go too far. Sarah's not feeling well." He stepped onto the porch. Ribbon closed the door behind him. Corde flicked spilled soda off his fingers. The sheriffs squad car was parked in the driveway. Jim Slocum was driving. In the back was a blond man, heavy, craggy-faced, eyes fixed on the headrest in front of him.

Ribbon's eyes scanned the moonlit ground, studying the perfectly trimmed grass. He said, "Bill, I've got to talk to you. They found Jennie's roommate. Emily Rossiter."

Corde crossed his arms.

They found… Not we found. Corde understood the difference.

It was his turn to stare at the neatly edged front lawn. From where he stood it was in some geometric shape whose name he couldn't recall – a rectangle pushed to one side.

"Somebody hit her over the head then threw her in Blackfoot Pond right by the dam. She drowned. And there's some pretty unpleasant stuff he did to her." Ribbon paused. "There's a tentative match between shoeprints nearby her and those found by the dam the night Jennie Gebben was killed. I know your opinion, Bill, but it looks like there probably was a cult killer all along."