BOOK 3

1

HARRISON COUNTY SHOOTING INCIDENT INQUIRY BOARD

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS: The matter before the Board is the death of a minor, Philip Arthur Halpern, 15 (the "Suspect"), who was shot and killed by County peace officers after an escape from New Lebanon town jail where the Suspect had been incarcerated following indictment on charges of murder, manslaughter, rape and sodomy.

On the afternoon of May 8 the Suspect was struck by shots fired by Thomas T. Ebbans, Chief Deputy, and Bradford Ellison, Sheriff, Harrison County. It was determined that Deputy Ebbans fired two shots, hitting the Suspect twice in the chest and Sheriff Ellison fired four times, hitting the Suspect once in the neck. All bullets were recovered. The Suspect was pronounced dead at the scene.

The facts surrounding the shooting are not in dispute. When shot, the Suspect was holding a loaded.38-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol which he had taken from a New Lebanon town deputy whom he had severely beaten when he escaped earlier in the day. The Suspect acted in a deranged manner and it apparently was his intention to shoot his father. Also present were the Suspect's mother, New Lebanon Detective William Corde and Charles Mahoney, a licensed and bonded private investigator from Missouri who was acting as consultant to the New Lebanon Sheriffs Department.

As Detective Corde was attempting to talk the Suspect into surrendering, Sheriff Ellison and Deputy Ebbans approached from the rear entrance to the house. Mr. Mahoney stated that the Suspect suddenly raised the gun and, according to Mr. Mahoney, "was about to discharge his weapon at Detective Corde and myself, causing me to fear for our safety." Mr. Mahoney fired two shots at the Suspect, missing both times. Sheriff Ellison and Deputy Ebbans heard these shots and assumed the Suspect, who had turned and was pointing his gun at them, had begun firing. They returned gunfire which resulted in the Suspect's death.

It is the conclusion of the Board that the shooting of the Suspect was justifiable and that both Sheriff Ellison and Deputy Ebbans acted within the boundaries of prudent law enforcement. Detective Corde testified that the Suspect had not been about to fire and we agree that Mr. Mahoney was perhaps premature in firing the shots that precipitated the killing. However, that was a judgment he made during an extremely stressful confrontation and this Board is prepared to accept that his behavior was justified under the circumstances.

Testimony was given by the Suspect's father that prior to the incident, he delivered to Sheriff Steven Ribbon of the New Lebanon Sheriffs Department a note purporting to be evidence casting doubt on the Suspect's guilt. Sheriff Ribbon testified that he felt the note was of such importance that he personally took it to the state laboratory for forensic analysis and through a miscommunication, none of the law enforcement officers at the scene of the shooting were made aware of the note's existence. However, the existence and authenticity of the note bear solely on the issue of the Suspect's innocence with respect to his prime indictments in one of the murders of which he was accused; they are irrelevant with respect to the escape and the incidents of assault that led to the shooting.

Therefore, THIS BOARD OF INQUIRY CONCLUDES that

l. The death of Philip Arthur Halpern was justifiable.

2. The death shall not be presented for inquest to the Grand Jury of the County of Harrison.

3. No grounds exist to dismiss, suspend, fine or in any way reprimand Sheriff Bradford Ellison or Deputy Thomas T. Ebbans on the basis of the events occurring in the house of Creth A. Halpern on May 8.


Here is Bill Corde.

He writes three parking violations – after turning the thick handles of the meters to make sure that the perpetrators are in fact out of time and didn't just forget to crank in their coins. This is not generosity on Corde's part; nobody argues with cops more vehemently than parking violators.

He stops Trudy Parson's '74 Gremlin to tell her that the blinker in her right turn signal is on the fritz and the left rear is low too.

He tanks up a Plymouth and sits in a speed trap for half the day, catching himself nothing but one salesman from Chicago. He gives the man a ticket – not a warning – because the driver is wearing a fish gray silk suit and a pinkie ring and has a dark tan and here it is just mid May.

Howdy, fells, that wouldn't be a beer you got in there, would it, reason I ask is neither of you look like you're eighteen, so if it is I sure hope you're going to tell me that you just found those cans in the street and are about to dump them out and take them to A &P for the nickel, is that right?

Corde has requested a hearing on the charge of destroying Jennie Gebben's letters. Because he has been reinstated and the inquest has been canceled the district attorney tells him a hearing would be moot. Corde looks up the word "moot", then he debates for a time and files another notice seeking the hearing. A day later he receives a call from the judge's clerk telling him that the application was rejected and they will be sending him a notice to that effect by registered mail return receipt requested.

Corde receives another official communication. This one is from the Missouri attorney general's office. It thanks him for his letter and says that someone from the office will be checking on the propriety of private investigation and firearm licenses issued to one Charles Mahoney, a resident of St Louis.

The County Sheriffs Department officially closes both the Gebben and the Rossiter cases. When Corde asks to see this note or whatever it is that Creth Halpern gave to Ribbon, Hammerback Ellison himself calls up Corde at home and reminds him that the cases have been disposed of. He uses those words. Disposed of. Corde says he understands but could he still see the note? Ellison says sorry it's been sent to the archive files.

Corde goes to one of Jamie's wrestling matches and watches the boy lose bad. The family was planning to eat out afterward but nobody is in the mood after the loss. Jamie says he's going out with some teammates and Corde and Diane and Sarah drive home for French toast.

Corde forms mixed feelings about Dr. Parker, who has just depleted exactly three-fifths of the Cordes' savings account and has turned Sarah into a story-telling fiend. The girl has used up four tape cassettes with her book. When Corde asks her how long the book will be, she tells him a million jillion pages, and Corde says that's pretty long, how long will it take to read? She answers forever. One day Corde finds her looking out over the backyard, long-faced. He asks her what's wrong, thinking her studies are troubling her. She says she's afraid that the Sunshine Man her wizard is gone for good. She hasn't seen him for a long time. Corde would like to console her but he does not know what to say. He tells her to get washed up, it's time for dinner, and she sadly complies.

Diane is glad that Sarah is off the Ritalin since she's just joined the Drug-Free America task force of the Sesquicentennial Celebration Committee and will be personally responsible for the Fourth of July Just Say No! float. One morning in their bedroom Diane paints on make-your-man-crazy red nail polish and Corde watches the color go on but what he thinks of is the smell, which reminds him of the dope he brushed on the balsawood airplanes as a boy to stiffen the paper wings. This in turn makes him think of Philip Halpern. He doesn't tell his wife this thought but just says my you look nice, oh, yes…

Diane is also his source of information about Sarah's tutor, Ben Breck. Corde still hasn't met him though he'd like to. Sarah has improved remarkably since they've been working together. Sarah talks about Breck often but Corde doesn't feel jealous of this displaced attention though he thinks of the months and months of agony he himself has been through as he worked with her and here this fellow turns her around in a couple of weeks. What can you do?

Corde goes fishing with Jamie. They get into their aluminum canoe and push off into the deep reservoir. Their permits are in order and Corde has with him a knotted length of string to make sure that the bass they take are legal. Corde hopes a big needle-nosed pike or musky has come south; he would like to trophy it for Jamie's wall. The boy continues to be morose and uncommunicative. Corde hashes it over with himself then finally asks bluntly if he wants to talk about Philip and Jamie says no he doesn't. Five minutes later though, out of the blue, the boy says he sort of thinks that Philip thought Jamie'd turned him in.

They beach the canoe and sit together on a slab of steel-color rock. Corde explains that he told Philip before he was shot that Jamie didn't turn him in at all, that Jamie got tricked. Philip understood and believed that. Corde puts thirty-nine years of sincerity into this speech. Jamie's expression doesn't change and they silently return to fishing. Five minutes later Jamie asks if Corde will be at the final wrestling match in two weeks and Corde says that nothing – hell or high water or a sale at Sears – will keep him away. The boy's face comes close to a smile and with the nod he gives his father Corde knows they're back on track.

Corde calls Wynton Kresge at his office and is shocked to hear the secretary say that he's no longer with the school. Does that mean he's quit, Corde asks, or been fired? She says it means he's no longer with the school. He calls Kresge at home but he isn't there or he's told his wife to say he isn't. Corde leaves a message.

Here is Bill Corde, driving out to dark Blackfoot Pond the dark dam the dark trees the gray-green mud, getting out of the cruiser, walking through the tangled brush. There's nothing much to see thanks to the sightseers, the fishermen, two power-out rainstorms and one tornado that vaulted over New Lebanon the other day, spraying branches and a million just-born leaves all over the murder scene.

Here is Bill Corde, flipping a dull quarter over his fingers as he walks through the site of paired deaths over ground that for him fairly trembles beneath his feet.

The case is closed but here he walks, here he bends to the ground and kicks at twigs and leaves and the flattened disks of beer cans, here he pauses at times and squints into the deeper forest then moves on.

Here is Bill Corde.


"You know the one I mean?" the man was asking. "He was lean, bald and wore a blue suit whose polyester fibers glistened like mica. Down the front of his white shirt a red-and-black striped tie hung stiff as a paint stirrer. The plant out on 117?"

"Walt."

"I want to explain. Let me explain."

Professor Randy Sayles wasn't feeling well. Although he was tearfully relieved that the Gebben investigation was over and the Halpern boy was buried, he had learned that the financial situation of the university was worse than Dean Larraby had at first let on. She had called the day before to tell him an additional million was needed. To the man in whose office he now sat Sayles said patiently, "Go ahead. Explain."

"She was valued at nine, we loaned seven and when we foreclosed the market'd turned and it was worth five. That's a two-hundred-thousand bad loan and we ate up our reserve by February because of a dozen just like her. No, a dozen and a half."

The office did not much look like a bank president's. It was closer to a Tru-Value manager's. There was some blotchy modern litho up on the wall but Sayles saw a sticker on the side of the frame and knew he wasn't looking at the real article; you don't generally get much in the way of investment art at Walgreen's especially at a two-for-one sale.

Sayles pulled a packet of papers out of his briefcase. "I wouldn't be here hat in hand if it weren't serious, Walt. We're looking at a shortfall of close to thirteen million this year."

"Things're tough all over."

Sayles tried not to sound desperate. He pictured himself up in front of his class. Assured, smiling, humorous. Everything he'd learned in twenty years of teaching he brought to bear on this man. "We've got benefactor commitments of about seven. We're talking to -"

The banker too was used to theatrics. "Look out that window, what do you see?"

Sayles counterattacked. "I see a city that'll suffer to its very heart if Auden University closes."

"Nice try. The banker smiled and shook his head. I'm talking about that building not fifty yards up the street. Plainsman's S &L. The RTC's moved in and she's in conservatorship. They're going to sell it off. We're more solid but not a lot. The loan committee, no way'll it approve Auden a penny." The banker's voice remained a low calm monotone as he twisted his curly eyebrow with his thumb and ring finger. He dressed in pastel plastic cloth, he had yellow teeth and glistening see-through hair and under the veneer desk he kept a casual beat with crinkly black Monkey Ward shoes. Sayles knew however that Wall Street had nothing on this guy.

"Auden closes," Sayles said, "it'll be a tragedy."

"It'll be a tragedy but it'll be more of a tragedy if I write a bad loan and the US attorney up in Higgins indicts me."

"Oh, come on, Walt, it's not like you're buying yourself a Porsche. They're not going to arrest you for loaning money to a university."

The banker looked at Sayles and seemed to be taking his pulse. Sayles thought: I'm just like the farmers he disbursed loans to, loans written on the strength of bad collateral and their desperation facing the loss of two hundred years' worth of family land. Randy Sayles, associate dean of financial aid, knew that you never saw a person as clearly as when you hand him a large check.

The professor said, "What if we gave you a piece of the new dorm? It cost twenty-three million."

"Cost ain't worth. And if we foreclosed it'd be because the school went under. And what good's a dorm without a school to go with it?"

"Land alone'd be worth three million."

"Not with an empty dorm sitting on it."

"You got the parking lot right on the highway."

"I'm sorry."

These two words lanced Sayles's heart. He stood up and said with a despair that made both men extremely uncomfortable, "You were my last chance." Neither said a word for a moment. Sayles picked up his financials and put them into his battered briefcase.

He started out the door.

"Hold up, Professor…"

Sayles turned and saw in the man's face a debate. The banker arrived at a disagreeable conclusion. Writing a name and number on a piece of paper, he said, "I'm not doing this. You didn't get this from me. You don't know me."

Sayles looked at the scrawl. Fred Barrett. Next to the name was a phone number. Area code 312. Chicago.

"Who is he?"

After a pause the banker said, "I don't know what you're talking about."


He found it completely by accident.

Because Brian Okun had made up the rumor that Jennie Gebben and Leon Gilchrist were lovers, he had not bothered to do what he had promised the dean – look through the professor's office for evidence. He would have been content to tell her that he had made a futile search and let it go at that. Then when Gilchrist turned in Okun's scathing evaluation Okun would claim that Gilchrist was seeking retribution for his espionage.

A delightful symmetry to the whole matter.

The whole affair, you might say.

This was a good plan but he thought of a much better one when, placing a sheet of student grades on Gilchrist's desk, he noticed an envelope addressed in flowery script to the professor. The writer was a young woman student. Okun lifted the crinkly envelope and found to his huge amusement the paper was perfumed. Gilchrist, finally back from San Francisco, was at the moment lecturing his class, and the graduate assistant immediately sat down in the professor's chair and opened the unsealed envelope.

The poem scanned very badly, thought Okun the critic.

When the memory of you / swallows me the way I took / your lovely cock into my mouth

He decided he would have given it a D for form and a C minus for content (Your thinking is unoriginal, your meter too unvaried and honey is a hopelessly trite metaphor for semen.') This didn't matter however because he believed the poem would have at least one ardent reader.

Okun now sat in Dean Larraby's office, watching her flick the poem with a tough, wrinkled index finger. You didn't…" She hesitated. You didn't get it out of his mailbox?"

It wasn't stamped or postmarked, you stupid fool, how could it have been mailed? Okun said mildly, "I'd never do anything illegal. It was lying out on his desk."

"Who's the girl? Doris Cutting?"

"Student of his. I don't know anything about her."

"Do you know if he took her to San Francisco with him?"

I just said I don't know her. Senile already? Okun frowned. "I wonder."

"This is enough for me."

"It's hard for me to speak against him," Okun said. "He's taught me so much. But to sleep with a student… It's a very vulnerable time for young people. I used to respect him." His mouth tightened into a little bundle of disappointment.

"We'll fire him. We have no choice. It's got to be done. We'll wait till the semester's over. His last lecture's when?"

"Two days."

"I'll tell him afterward, after the students have gone. We'll want to minimize publicity. You'll keep this quiet until then?"

He nodded gravely. "Whatever you'd like, Dean." Okun stood and started for the door.

"Oh, Brian?" As he turned she said, "I just wanted to say, I'm sorry. I know this was difficult for you. To put the school above your personal loyalty. I won't forget it."

"Sometimes," Okun said, "as Immanuel Kant tells us, sacrifices must be made for a higher good."

2

"You said you'd polish them."

"I'll polish them."

"You said today."

"I'll polish them today," Amos Trout said, slouching in his lopsided green Naugahyde easy chair. He scooped up the remote control and turned the volume up.

His lean, wattle-skinned wife poured the Swan's Down cake mix into a Pyrex bowl and decided he wasn't going to get away with it. She set down the egg and said, "When I was to church Ada Kemple looked right down at my feet, there was nothing else for yards around, had to've been my feet, and if that woman didn't have a gleam in her eye when she surfaced I don't know what. I liked to die of embarrassment."

"I said I'd polish them."

"Here." She handed him the navy blue pumps as if she were offering him dueling pistols.

Trout took them then looked at the TV screen. It wouldn't've been so bad if Chicago wasn't playing New York and it wasn't the bottom of the sixth and the score wasn't tied with Mets go-ahead on third and only one out.

But She had spoken. And so Amos Trout turned the sound up again and carried the shoes down to the basement. (Don't seem so scuffed that the toothless bitch Ada Kemple has anything to snicker about through her smear of cheap pasty makeup.)

"… a grounder to left… snagged by the shortstop, backhand! What a catch! There'll be a play at home… The runner -"

CLICK. The TV went silent. His wife's footsteps sounded above him on their way back to the kitchen.

Ah, it hurts. Sometimes it hurts.

Trout grimaced then snatched a newspaper from the huge stack that had accumulated while they'd been on vacation in Minnesota. He spread it out on the mottled brown linoleum. He stood slowly and got the paraphernalia – the blue polish, the brush, the buffing cloth – and set it all out in front of him. He picked up each shoe and examined the amount of work. He turned one upside down. A broken toenail like a chip of fogged ice fell out. He set the shoe down on the newspaper and as he applied polish he focused past the shoes to the paper itself.

Trout read for a moment then stood up. He tossed the shoes on top of the clothes dryer. One left a long blue streak on the enameled metal. He carried the newspaper into the kitchen where his wife sat cross-legged, chatting on the phone.

"The game was too loud," she said to him. "I shut it off." Then returned to the phone.

He said, "Hang up."

Her neck skin quivered at the command. She blinked at him. "I'm talking to my mother."

"Hang up."

She looked at the yellowed rotary dial for an explanation of this madness. "I'll call you back, Mom."

He took the receiver from her and pressed the button down to clear the line.

"What are you doing?"

"Making a phone call."

"Aren't you going to polish my shoes?"

"No," he said, "I'm not." And began to dial.


The Oakwood Mall. How Bill Corde hated malls.

Oh, the stores were clean, the prices reasonable. Sears guaranteed satisfaction and where in the whole of the world did you get that nowadays without more strings attached than you could count? Here you could buy hot egg rolls and tacos and Mrs. Field's dense cookies and frozen yogurt. You could slip your arm around your wife, walk her into Victoria's Secret and park her in front of a mannequin wearing red silk panties and bra and a black garter belt then kiss her neck while she squirmed and blushed and let you buy her, well, not that outfit but a nice sexy nightgown.

But malls for Corde meant the Fairway Mall in St Louis, where two policemen had died because of him and that was why he never came here.

He glanced at Toys "R" Us. In the window a cardboard cutout of Dathar-IV stood over an army of warriors from the Lost Dimension. Corde looked at this for a moment then walked on until he found Floors for All. He wasn't more than ten feet inside before a sports-coated man all of twenty-one pounced. "I know who you are," the kid said. "You're a man with a naked floor."

"I'm -"

"Floors are just like you and me. We want new threads sometimes, so does your floor. It gets tired of the same old outfit. What's in your closet right now? A double-breasted suit, slacks, Bermudas, Izod shirts, ha, a khaki uniform or two, ha, am I right? Think how jealous your floor is."

"No -"

"You don't know what a difference new carpeting makes. To your peace of mind. To your marriage." He was a pit bull with a feeble blond mustache. "Do you want to talk about stress? What color's your carpet now?"

"I'm not really interested -"

"Bare floors? Whoa, let's talk stress."

"No carpet. Just Amos Trout."

"You're not here to buy carpet?"

"No."

"Detective?" Trout came out from the back room. They shook hands.

"Hey, Sheriff," the kid said, "your police station have carpeting?"

Trout waved him away.

When they were seated by Trout's desk Corde said, "Eager."

"Haw. No. Pain in the ass. But he sells carpet. He'll be down at the Nissan dealership in three years and probably selling Boeings by the time he's twenty-eight. I can't keep boys like that long."

Corde asked, "You said you saw the ad in the Register?"

"The wife and I were to Minnesota on vacation for a while after that murder happened. Just a coincidence but I saw it when I spread out the paper to shine her shoes. You shine your wife's shoes, Officer?"

"They do love it, don't they? Now tell me, you were driving along Route 302 that night. That'd be Tuesday night, April 20?"

"That's right. I was driving home. It was about ten, ten-thirty or so. That Tuesday was our acrylic pile sale and we'd done so well I'd had to stay late to log in the receipts and mark down which're checks, which're charges, which're cash, you get the picture. So I got me a Slurpee and was driving past the pond when this man suddenly runs into the road in front of me. What happened was that my left high beam's out of whack. And I don't think he could see me coming because there was this bush hanging out into the road that the county really oughta take care of."

"You had a clear view?"

"Sure did. There he was in front of me, leaping like a toad on July asphalt. Then he saw me and just froze and I swerved out of the way and that was that."

"Was there a car nearby?"

"Yessir. But I didn't see what kind."

"Was it light or dark?"

"The car? Lighter more'n darker."

"You recall the plates?"

"Don't even know if it had plates or was a truck or sedan. I just didn't notice, I was so concerned with not running that man over. What was left of the Slurpee went onto the floor and for the first time I was glad I got the maroon interior."

"He was a man, not a boy?"

"Not a boy, nope. Probably late thirties, early forties."

"Could you describe him?"

"Solid build but not fat, short hair, not real dark, combed straight back. He was wearing dark pants and a light jacket but the jacket was covered with dirt."

"White?"

"Pardon?"

"What was his race?"

"Oh. Yeah, he was white."

"Jewelry, hats, shoes?"

"No, like I say, I swerved past him real fast."

"If you saw a picture of him would you remember it?"

"Like in a lineup or something? I could try."

"Anything else you remember?"

"No."

"Nothing unusual? Try to think back."

"No, nothing. Well, except I figured he was handy. I mean, he knew about cars. He was going to replace the ignition cable himself. Not everybody can do that. That's why I almost stopped. To help him."

"Ignition cable?"

"But it was late and the wife gets a bee in her bra I don't get home by eleven, sale or no."

"He was working on the car?"

"Not exactly, he was carrying that piece of wire over to it."

"Could you describe it?"

"You know, ignition wire. White, thick. Looked to be wrapped in plastic like from NAPA."

"Could it've been rope, like clothesline?"

Amos Trout went silent for a moment. "Could very well've been."


Diane walked into the living room and found Ben Breck cutting letters out of sandpaper. Sarah sat on the couch watching him. "I owe you a new pair of scissors," he said.

"Beg pardon?"

He said, "I only had coarse sandpaper. It pretty much ruined the blade."

"Well now, I wouldn't worry about it," Diane said. "What exactly are you doing?"

"'Storage'," Breck said solemnly and handed an E to Sarah. "Touch it, feel it."

Sarah ran her hand over the letter. "E," she said. The letter joined STORAG on the table. Sarah spelled the word out loud, touching each letter. Breck scooped them up and hid them behind his back and would hand her one at a time. Eyes closed, the girl would touch it then tell him which letter it was.

Diane watched, engrossed in the drill. After ten minutes he said, "That's it for today, Sarah. You did very well but keep working on the b and the d and the q and the p. You get those mixed up."

"I will, Dr. Breck." Sarah assembled the sandpaper letters and put them into her Barbie backpack, in which she kept her tape recorder, cassettes and exercises she was working on. Diane slipped her arm around her daughter.

Breck said, "Next Thursday?"

"Fine," Diane said, "I'll be home all day." Then she added, "We'll be home, I mean."

Sarah ran outside. "I'll be back later, Mom."

"Stay close to home."

Breck and Diane walked into the kitchen and Diane poured two cups from a Braun coffee maker without asking if he wanted any. Breck glanced at her red polished nails then his eyes slipped to her blouse, two buttons open at the chest. He seemed to enjoy the route his gaze followed. She reserved judgment on this reaction.

She reserved judgment on her own as well.

Breck spent a long moment studying a picture of Corde in uniform. It was taped to the refrigerator next to an eagle Sarah had cut out of construction paper.

"It must be exciting being married to a policeman."

"More of an inconvenience, I'd say. We get calls at all hours and our friends are always wanting Bill to do something about P &Z or fixing tickets or something. Ever been married, Ben?"

She had checked his heart finger at their first meeting.

"No. Never have been so lucky." He sipped the coffee. Diane watched him closely.

"That too strong, there's hot tap water. Our boiler gets it to about one forty-five."

"It's fine."

Diane said, "The thing about Bill is, he's obsessive. He -"

"You probably mean 'compulsive'."

"I do?"

"Compulsive is when you do something repetitively, obsessive is when you think about something repetitively."

"Oh. Well, then he's both." They laughed and she continued, "He just doesn't stop. He's a workaholic. Not that I mind. Keeps him out of my hair and when he's home he's pretty much home if you know what I mean. But once he gets his mind set he's like a terrier got hold of a rat. Last night I went to bed and he was still burning the midnight oil. Bill says a case is like building a brick wall. There are always plenty of bricks if you take the trouble to look for them."

"And he takes the trouble?"

"Whoa, that's true."

"I've been an expert witness in court a few times, testifying on the psychology of observation. How witnesses can see things that aren't there and miss things that are. The senses are extraordinarily unreliable."

"All I know is I don't get much involved in his cases. It's so, you know, grim. It's different when you watch it on television."

So why hasn't he been married?

"I've done research into violence," Breck said. "Two associates of mine have done work with sociopaths -"

"Is that like a psychopath? Like, you know, Tony Curtis in Psycho."

"Tony Perkins, I believe."

"Right, right." Forty-one and never married.

"They've worked with some pretty odious characters -"

Odious.

"- and their theory is that commercial entertainment does a disservice when it minimizes violence. That it tends to distort mental judgment and leads to situations where individuals act violently because they feel the impact in human terms will be inconsequential. We're seeing -"

Diane's palms moistened as she leaned forward, trying to follow what he said.

"- many cases of blunted affect on the part of young people in response to films and -"

"Uhm. Af-fect?"

He saw that he'd lost her and shook his head in apology. "Affect. It means emotion. Kids see people getting blown up and murdered on screen and it doesn't move them. They don't feel anything. Or worse, they laugh."

"I'd rather Jamie didn't watch those movies… Well, look at his friend. They got caught up in that Lost Dimension. Look what happened."

"That boy who killed the girls?" Breck asked. "He might have been influenced by the movie."

The corner of Diane's mouth hardened. "Well, even with him getting killed and all, Bill still doesn't think the boy did it."

"He doesn't?" Breck asked with surprise. "But your bodyguard is gone."

"Wait till the story hits the news."

"Story?"

"There's a new witness." She slung the words bitterly.

"But the papers all said the boy did it."

"The papers and just about everybody else in town. They were all too happy to close the case. But not my Bill, oh no. He's still investigating. He doesn't give up. He went charging off this morning after some new lead. He thinks he can prove the boy didn't do it."

Diane noted the anger in her voice as she gazed outside at the spot where Tom's cruiser had been parked all these long weeks. "When you're young, when you're Sarah's age, everything's clear, all the endings are tidy. You know who the bad guys are and if they get away at least they're still the bad guys. At our age, who knows anything?"

Breck finished the coffee. "You have a lovely home here."

It seemed to Diane that he said it wistfully but before she heard anything that confirmed that impression, he added, "Know what I'd like?"

"Name it," she said, smiling, coquettish as a barmaid.

"Let's go for a walk. Show me your property."

"Well, sure." She pulled a jacket on and they walked outside.

She showed him her herb garden then the muddy strip of potential lawn then the spots where the bulbs would've come up if the deer hadn't been at them. Breck muttered appreciative comments then strolled toward the back of the lot and its low post-and-rail fence. "Let's check out the woods."

"Uh-un," Diane said, leading him around to the side. "We have to go the long way."

"Around that little fence? We can jump it, can't we?" Breck asked.

"Uhm, see those cows?"

"What about them?"

"How expensive are those Shee-caw-go shoes of yours?" she asked.

"Oh," he said, "got it."

They both laughed as they walked around the pasture and into the strip of tall grass and knobby oak saplings that bordered the forest. Diane wasn't the least surprised when, out of view of the house, Breck took her hand. Nor was she surprised that she let him.


"Weren't the boy after all?"

"Uh-uh. They got a new witness."

Their eyes would make troubled circuits of the room, following the green-gray checkers of linoleum to their conclusion in the dark reaches of the County Building cafeteria. Then they'd turn back to watch the half-moons of ice slowly water their Cokes.

"Necessitates something." The man speaking was fat. Through a short-sleeved white shirt his belly worked on the elasticity of his Sears waistband. He had white hair, crisp with dried Vitalis, combed back. His name was Jack Treadle and in addition to other jobs he was supervisor of Harrison County. All aspects of his face had jowls – eyes, mouth, chin. He poked his little finger into his cheek to rub a tooth through skin.

"Suppose so," said the other man. Just as jowly though not so fat. He too wore short-sleeved white and on top of it a camel-tan sports coat. Bull Cooper was a real estate broker and the mayor of New Lebanon. These two were major players in the Oval Office of Harrison County.

"Way it sizes up," Treadle said, "the boy -"

Cooper said defensively, "He had a gun."

"Well, he may've. But I don't give two turds about the incident report. We shouldn'ta arrested him, we shouldn'ta let him get loose, we shouldn'ta shot him down."

"Well…"

"Hi ho the derry-o, somebody's gonna get fucked for this."

"Boy got shot bad," Cooper agreed.

"Got shot dead," Treadle snorted. Around them, slow-talking small-town lawyers and their clients ate liverwurst sandwiches and plates of $1.59 macaroni and cheese while they waved away excited spring flies. Treadle was a man who did best with ignorant friends and small enemies; he was in his element here and had nodded greetings to half the room during the course of this meal.

He said, "Hammerback and Ribbon were playing cute. I mean, shit, they were playing big-time sheriffs and they wanted press, they wanted a big bust and they wanted to tie that other co-ed killing last year in with all this serial killer, goat skinner fucking crap. Well, they got press, all right, which are now wondering why we let a innocent kid get killed. We got the SBI looking over our shoulder and we probably got some ethics panel up in Higgins about to poke its finger up our ass. We gotta give ' em somebody. I mean, shit."

"And you're thinking somebody from New Lebanon, I know you are." Cooper hawked and cleared his mouth with a thick napkin.

"Naw, naw, don't matter to me. If we pick a county man and I make the announcement then it looks good for me. If he's town and you make the announcement it's good for you. You know, like, it hurts us to do it but we're cleaning out our own. No cover-up."

"I didn't think of that." Cooper relaxed then added, "What about that Mahoney?"

"What about him?"

"Corde copied me on this letter he sent the Missouri AG. He wants Mahoney's nuts, Corde does. Whoa, Ribbon's got a feather in his ass over that, I'll tell you."

"What's the point?"

Cooper said, "Mahoney shouldn't've even been on the case. He's a civilian."

"Well." Treadle guffawed. "I don't give a shit about Mahoney. What's done's done. Things like Mahoney fall through the cracks and that's the way of the world."

"What's the options? Who bites the big one?"

"There's Ellison," Treadle offered casually, stating the obvious. "Then there's Ribbon. But if it's somebody too high up it'll look bad for us – like you and me weren't enough in charge."

Cooper said, "We had a couple county deputies working on the case. And Bill Corde was running the investigation for a while."

"Corde's a smart guy and he, he…" Treadle stammered as he groped for a thought.

"Found this new witness."

"He found this witness," Treadle agreed. "And he…"

"He doesn't take any crap," Cooper offered.

"No, he doesn't take any crap."

"But," Cooper said slowly, "there's the trouble."

"What trouble?"

"Didn't you hear? He may've accidentally on purpose lost some evidence. There was word he'd been fucking the Gebben girl. She was a regular little c-you-know-what. Anyway, some letters or shit got burnt up that may've connected her with Corde. They dropped the investigation -"

"What investigation?"

"What I'm saying. About Corde, about him eighty-sixing the evidence. But he wasn't ever found innocent. They just dropped it."

Treadle's eyes brightened. "Think that's something we can use?"

"I suppose that depends," Cooper said, "on whether we want to use it or not."


Bill Corde was talking on the pay phone to Diane. It was after dusk and he was in front of Dregg's Variety, perilously close to Route 117. Every sixth or seventh car whipped by so fast he felt his uniform tugged by the slipstream as if the drivers were playing a fun game of cop-grazing.

"Jamie?" Corde asked, "What's the matter with him?"

"He got home late. He didn't call or anything. I want you to talk to him. It's the second night in a row."

"Well, I will. But I'm…" Corde let the cyclone from a Mack eighteen-wheeler spin past then continued, "But I'm a little busy right at the moment. This lead on the Gebben case. He's okay?"

Diane said testily, "Of course he's okay. I just said he's okay."

"I'm out here on the highway," Corde said to explain his distraction. Then he added, "I'll talk to him tonight."

"I don't want you to talk to him. I wanted…"

"What?"

"Nothing."

Corde ignored the brittleness and asked, "How's Sarah?"

"She had a good session with Ben and she said she did two more chapters of her book. The insurance money didn't come again today. I was thinking maybe you should call…"

I'm out here in the middle of the highway.

Diane continued, "It's over two thousand. Mom had her ovaries out for three thousand five. I'm so glad Ben's only twenty an hour. That's a lifesaver."

"Right." Who's Ben? Oh, the tutor. "Well," Corde said, "that's good. I better go."

"Wait. One more thing. The team can't get a bus for the match in Higgins. Jamie wants to know if we can drive him and Davey?"

"I guess. Sure."

"You won't forget? It's the last match of the season."

"I won't forget."

Another car was approaching. This one didn't speed past. It stopped. Corde looked up and saw Steve Ribbon and Jack Treadle looking at him. Ribbon was solemn.

Oh, brother.

It was Jack Treadle's car – a bottom-of-the-line Mercedes though it had a big fancy car phone. They pulled in front of Corde's cruiser and parked. The two men got out. He realized Diane was saying something to him. He said, "Gotta go. Be back around eight." He hung up.

Treadle stayed in the car. Ribbon walked toward Corde. They nodded greetings. "How's that lead of yours panning out, Bill?" he asked with no interest.

"Slow but we're making progress."

Ribbon said, "How about we walk over that way?" He pointed to a shady spot of new-cut grass beside an enormous oak.

Something familiar here. Haven't we done this before?

Corde walked along under the tree's massive branches, studying Ribbon's expression then focusing on Treadle's. He fished a nickel out of his pocket and did the coin trick.

There were many things to think about but the one concern he settled on was purely practical: how he was going to break the news to Diane that he'd been fired.

3

"We could sell the car."

Diane Corde had been cleaning out the cupboards. There were cans and boxes covering the counters and tabletop. Corde pulled off his shoes and sat at the kitchen table. A pork-and-beans can rolled toward him. He caught it as it fell off the table. He read the label for a moment then set it down again.

"The car?" he asked.

Diane said, "You got the axe, ain't the end of the world. We can sell the second car, don't need it anyway, and that'll save us the insurance and upkeep."

He looked back at the bottle. "Why you think I got fired?"

"You looking as mournful as you do presently got something to do with it."

Bill Corde said, "They offered me the job of sheriff."

After all these years of marriage there were still a few times when she couldn't tell when he was joking. She put away two cans of pinto beans, reached for a third then stopped.

Corde said, "I'm serious."

"I'm guessing there'd be a little more to it."

"They bailed Steve Ribbon out. He blew the case bad but he's in tight with Bull Cooper and Jack Treadle so they're moving him up to some plush job with the county. I'm sheriff. Jim Slocum takes over on felony investigations. T.T. got fired. With this new witness, we know that Philip was innocent. They needed somebody to blame for the boy's death. T.T. took the hit."

"But I thought there was an inquiry?"

"He's not been charged with anything. He's just been fired."

"That's too bad. I always liked him. He's a good man."

"He's a damn good man," Corde said vehemently.

She sat on the kitchen chair that Corde held out for her. They'd refinished these chairs themselves. A memory smell of the sulfury Rock Magic stripper came back to him.

She said, "And it's T.T.'s the reason you're upset?"

"Partly. And I'd have to give up investigating."

"So what you're worried about is sitting behind a desk?"

"Yeah," Corde said. Then figuring he shouldn't be lying to her at least when it was so clear a lie: "No. What it is is Slocum'd take over the Gebben case."

"Well?"

Corde laughed. "Honey, I've worked with Slocum for years. God bless him but Jim could catch a killer liming the body with the victim's wallet in his hip pocket and the murder knife in his teeth and he'd still screw up the case."

Diane stared at the groceries for a long moment as if looking for something good about the deputy. She said, "I guess."

"I'm not inclined to let go of this one."

Diane said, "You won't like my question but I suppose they'd be paying you more money."

"Some."

"How much?"

"Five."

"Hundred?"

"Thousand."

"Ah." There was enough reverence in her voice to send a bristle of pain all the way through Corde. Diane stood up. The third bean can joined its siblings on the shelf and then she started on the spices. "You haven't eaten. What should we have for dinner? You interested in burritos?"

"I don't want this fellow to get away."

"Slocum taking the case doesn't mean he's going to get away. Jim won't be the only one working on it, will he be?"

"There'll be some rookie from the county probably. The case's an embarrassment now. They just want it to go away."

Diane gave up on the packaged goods. "Just let me ask you. Say this fellow hadn't left those pictures of Sarrie for us. Would you still be this hot after him?"

"Maybe not."

"That hadn't happened you'd take the job?"

Corde said, "I always wanted to be sheriff."

"Well, he didn't do anything to Sarrie and he's gone now. He's scooted, hasn't he?"

"Maybe. Not necessarily."

Diane paused for a moment. "You've wanted this for a long time. Everybody in town thinks more of you than Steve Ribbon. You could get yourself elected as often as you want."

"I can't tell you I don't want it bad… And I better say it: With Steve gone, they need a new sheriff. It'll be either me or Slocum. We're senior."

Diane said, "Well, honey, I don't think you should pass it up. You can't be working for Jim. I just can't see that at all."

Corde smiled in frustration. "It'd be hard to do that to New Lebanon. Believe you me."

She ripped open a cello pack of beef chuck cubes. They fell out glistening and soft on the cutting board. She picked up a knife and began to slice the cubes smaller. She wished she could talk to Ben Breck about this. Not ask his advice but just tell him what she felt. Without looking at her husband she said, "I've got to be honest with you, Bill…" She rarely used his name. Sometimes in connection with expensive presents he'd just given her, more often in connection with sentences like that one.


"Jamie's coming up on college age in a few years and you know all about Dr. Parker's bills."

"Five thousand'd go a long way," Corde said.

They were silent for a long time. Diane broke the stillness. "Okay, I've said what I wanted to. Why don't you go talk to Jamie? He's got to call if he's going to be out past suppertime. He just came back then went into his room without saying hello or anything and he's listening to some gosh-awful rock music that's got screams and howling on it."

"Well, maybe that means he's feeling better."

"He could celebrate feeling better by getting home when he's supposed to and listening to the Bee Gees or Sinatra."

"I'm not in the mood for giving him a talking-to tonight. Maybe tomorrow I will."

She wiped her hands, full of dust and old flour. Corde was studying the ingredients of Budweiser and didn't see her wrench her lips into a narrow grimace or tighten her hand into a fist.

He doesn't want to do anything at all for those two girls dead by the pond – who wouldn't be dead if they hadn't been where they shouldn't've, campus sluts both of them. No, no, he wants to save those cops he thinks he laid out on the concrete floor of Fairway Mall, laid them out like the broken dolls they seemed to be on the front page of the Post-Dispatch.

Well, it's too late for them, Bill. It's too late.

Diane said to her husband, "Quit looking so glum. You think about it tonight and whatever you decide we're still going to have my special burritos for dinner. Then we'll watch that Farrah Fawcett movie and I'll let you guess who the killer is. Now go water that new strip of lawn, whatever the birds've left."

And she turned back to the sink, smiling brightly and scalded with anger at herself for this complete cowardice.


At eight-thirty in the morning Bill Corde walked into the Sheriffs Department and hung up his blue jacket and his hat. Then he went into Steve Ribbon's office where he saw assembled the whole of the department except for the two deputies on morning patrol. They all nodded to him. He paused in the doorway then sat down among them – across the desk from Jim Slocum who was sitting in Ribbon's old high-backed chair.

Resting on the desk prominently was that morning's Register. The headline read: "Sheriffs Dep't Reopens Auden Slay Case". A subhead: "Youth's Death Termed 'Tragic Accident'."

"Well, gentlemen," Slocum said, "welcome. You've all heard the announcement about Steve's move up and we're real happy about that situation. I've asked you here to chew the fat a little and tell you about some of the changes I'm going to institute. And I want to say, if there are any questions, I want you to interrupt me. Will you do that?"

Lance Miller, his volume hampered by the surgical tape around his ribs, said, "Sure we will."

"Good. First off nothing I'm going to do is too, you know, radical but I've been thinking about the department and there are some things we can do different that'll be helpful." He looked down at a sheet of paper. "Well, number one, we're going to change the radio codes. We're used to a lot of casual talk on the radio and I don't think we should be doing that. You can get yourself into some real unprofessional situations that way. From now on we're going to be using the Associated Public Safety Communications Officers' Codes. That's like you see on TV. Ten-four. Ten-thirteen. All that. There are thirty-four of them and you'll have to learn them all. Oh and I don't want you to say A, B, C, you know. I want Adam, Boy, Charles and so on. We're not going to use the military ones. I know some of you boys learned Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta. We're civilian and there's no reason for us to be ashamed of it."

Two deputies nodded to show that they weren't ashamed.

God bless you but… Bill Corde shifted his weight and crossed his arms.

Slocum said, "Ten-four?"

The deputies smiled politely.

"Another thing, I don't want you to worry about calling me by my first name. I've been Jim to you for years, and I don't want you all going grandiose on me and calling me 'Sheriff' or especially 'sir' or anything. Promise me that?"

"Yessir!" one of the deputies saluted sharply, and they all laughed.

"I've also been seeing about getting you boys walkie-talkies. Mayor Cooper thinks it's a good idea but where the money's going to come from is a whole 'nother thing so you may have to wait a while on those. But I just want you to know they're on our wish list. Now let's get down to brass tacks."

Over the next ten minutes Corde tried his best to pay attention as Slocum described his plans for dividing New Lebanon into precincts and the special drug task force he was going to establish.

One deputy frowned and said, "I don't think I ever arrested anybody for real drugs, Jim. Not more'n a little pot. Or coke at Auden." He turned to another deputy. "Anybody?"

The other deputies said they rarely had.

"Ain't been don't mean won't be," Slocum said and held up a Time magazine cover about crack in small towns.

It was then that Corde, mentally, left the room.

A half hour later the deputies departed, carrying their photocopies of the new radio codes that they'd be quizzed on next week. Corde scooted his chair closer to the desk.

"Glad you stayed, Bill. There's some things I wanted to talk to you about."

"Me too."

Slocum said, "I've been doing some thinking and I'd like to tell you what I've decided. This is a pretty odd situation, you being senior to me and me getting the job. So I've come up with something I think you're going to be pretty pleased with."

"Go ahead."

"I'm going to create a new job here. It'll be called vice sheriff." Slocum paused and let Corde taste the full flavor of the words. When he didn't respond Slocum said, "And guess who's going to be appointed it?… You bet." Slocum beamed. "Sounds real nice, don't you think?"

"What exactly does it mean?"

"Oh, don't think I'm doing you a favor. No sir. The fact is you're going to work for it. I've been thinking about where your talents are, Bill. And it's pretty easy to see you're a better administrator than me. I'm going to throw a lot of stuff at you. Scheduling, overtime, personnel problems, payroll. So what do you say to that, Mr. Vice Sheriff?"

Corde got up and closed the door then returned to the chair. He easily held Slocum's eye. "Jim, you're the sheriff now and I think you'll probably run the department pretty good. But I'm doing one thing and one thing only and that's tracking down Jennie Gebben's killer. I'm finding him whether he's in New Lebanon or Fredericksberg or Chicago or Mexico City and I'm bringing him back for trial. Now, tell me, what's the budget for deputies?"

"What?" Slocum was too surprised to frown.

"The budget?" Corde asked impatiently. "Didn't Steve show you the department budget?"

"Yeah, somewhere…" He inspected the desk for a moment, looking for something he had no desire to find. "But, Bill, the thing is I don't know I can have you assigned to just one case. We're down one man already, what with Lance's broken ribs and all. This's a pretty big request. I'll have to think about it."

"I believe that's it there, that computer printout."

Slocum pulled it out and opened it up. "What, is it this column? It says 'Personnel'."

Corde said, "That's actual. I need to know budgeted."

"What's that?"

"Here, gimme." Corde scowled. "That's what I was afraid of. We've hardly got enough left for raises. Not enough for a new man."

"Raises? Should I give the men raises?"

Corde was making notes on his index cards. He said, "We've got about five thousand in travel and equipment left for the rest of the year… Well, I'd like you to leave that alone. I'm going to need a good portion of it if not everything."

"Equipment? But I told you I was having trouble getting money for the walkie-talkies. And I was going to buy us all Glocks. They cost over four hundred each."

"Glocks? Jim, we don't need fifteen-round automatics."

Slocum didn't speak for a minute then he said quietly, "I'm the sheriff, Bill. I said I'd consider your request but I can't promise anything."

Corde dropped the sheet on the desk. "Okay, Jim, there's no nice way to say what I'm about to." He paused while he honestly tried to think of one. "The only thing I'll add to take the sting out of it is that whether it was you or Steve or Jack Treadle himself sitting where you are, I'd say exactly the same thing. Which is: You got yourself a plum job and you know it and I know it and I'm happy for you. But you got appointed because I turned it down. And the price for that is me getting the Cebben case and all of the travel and equipment budget, every penny of it. After this is over I'd be glad to help you with all this administrative stuff and I'll even learn your radio codes but until then what I just said is the way it is."

Corde looked back at the shock on Slocum's face, which froze slowly to a chill. Corde wondered if this talk might actually do some good, toughening the man's flaccid way.

"You don't have to be like that, Bill."

The buffoonery was gone and Corde now saw in Slocum's eyes the too-vivid knowledge that he had advanced by default and he saw too the man's depleted hope, which could have very well been Corde's own broken ambition had life moved just a little different. This stung him – for his own sake as well as Slocum's – but he did not apologize. He stood and walked to the door. "I'm counting on you to leave that money just where it is until I need it."


What Wynton Kresge owed: $132.80 to GMAC. $78.00 to Visa. $892.30 to Union Bank and Trust (the mortgage). $156.90 to Union Bank and Trust (the bill consolidation loan). $98.13 to Consolidated Edison. $57.82 to Midwestern Bell. $122.78 to Duds 'n Things for Kids. $120.00 to Corissa Hanley Duke, the housekeeper. $245.47 to American Express. $88.91 to Mobil (goddamn Texans, goddamn Arabs). $34.70 to Sears.

And that was just for the month of May.

He didn't have the heart to tally the numbers up for the year and he didn't dare calculate the brood's budget for makeup, burgers, ninja outfits, skateboards, air pump Nikes, gloves, basketballs, piano lessons, potato chips, Apple software, Spike Lee and Bart Simpson T-shirts, Run DMC tapes, Ice-T tapes, Janet Jackson, Paula Abdul, The Winnans tapes, gummy bears, white cheddar, popcorn, Diet Pepsi and whatever else got sucked into the black hole of childhood capitalism.

Darla came to the door of his den and told him the plumber had just finished.

"Oh, good," Kresge said. "How much?" He opened the checkbook and tore off a check. He left it blank and handed it to her.

"It's a hundred twenty-four, doll."

"How much?"

"You can't take a bath in cold water." She was gone.

He marked down: Check 2025. Amount $124. For SOB, MF'ing Plumber. Why, he wondered, was it that the more you get the more you spend? When he and Darla had first been married they'd lived in a trailer park south of the Business Loop in Columbia, Missouri. He'd been an assistant security director for the university, making nineteen thousand dollars a year.

They'd had a savings account. A real savings account that paid you interest – not very much, true, but something. You could look at the long line of entries and feel that you were getting somewhere in life. Now, zip. Now, debt.

This was too much. Thinking about the bills, about hungry children, about a wife, about his lack of employment, his palms began to sweat and his stomach was doing 180s. He recalled the time he talked a failing student down from the Auden Chancellory Building. Sixty feet above a slate walk. Kresge, calm as could be. No rope. Standing on a ledge fourteen inches wide. Like he was out looking for a couple buddies to shoot pool with. Talking the boy in by inches. Kresge had felt none of the terror that assaulted him now as he lined up the fat white envelopes of bills and pulled toward him his blue-backed plastic checkbook, soon to be emasculated.

The telephone rang. He answered it. He listened then looked at his watch. Wynton Kresge said, "Well, I don't know." He listened some more. "Well, I guess." He hung up.

4

"Wynton, come on, get the lead out of your cheeks. You look like a walking tombstone."

Corde spun the squad car around the corner and pressed the accelerator down. The four-barrel engine, factory-goosed so it could catch 'Vettes and Irocs, pushed both men back in the vinyl seat. Come on Wynton cheer up cheer up cheer up.

"What you got there?" Kresge looked at the seat under Corde's butt. "What you're sitting on?"

A backrest of round wooden balls strung together. It looked like a doormat "Good for the back," Corde said. "It's like it massages you."

Kresge looked away as if he'd already forgotten he'd asked the question.

"You like to fish?" Corde asked him.

"I don't want to today."

"You don't what?"

After a moment Kresge resumed the conversation. "Want to go fishing."

"We're not going fishing," Corde said. "But do you like to?"

"I like to hunt."

"I like to fish," Corde said. "Hunting's good too."

They drove past the pond where Jennie Gebben and Emily Rossiter had died. Corde didn't slow down and neither of them said a word as they sped on toward the Fredericksberg Highway.

After ten minutes Kresge touched the barrel of the riot gun lock-clamped muzzle-up between them.

"What's this loaded with?"

"Double-ought."

"I thought maybe it was rock salt or plastic bullets or something."

"Nope. Lead pellets."

"You don't have to use steel? I thought with the wetlands and everything you had to use steel."

Corde said, "It's not like we shoot that much buckshot at people 'round here."

"Yeah, I guess not. You ever used it?"

"Drew a target a couple times. Never pulled the trigger, I'm mighty pleased to say. You got a pretty wife."

"Yep."

"How many kids you got, all told?"

"Seven. Where we going?"

"Fredericksberg."

"Oh. How come?"

"Because," Corde said.

"Oh."

Twenty minutes later they pulled into a large parking lot and walked into the County Building. They passed the County Sheriffs Department. Corde noticed an empty office being painted. It was T.T.'s old one. There was no name on the plate next to the door. He could picture a nameplate that said S.A. Ribbon. Corde and Kresge continued on, to the office at the end of the hall. Painted in gold on rippled glass a sign read, County Clerk.

Kresge stopped to study a Wanted poster in the hall. He said to Corde, "You got business, Detective, I can wait out here."

"Naw, naw, come on in."

Corde walked through a swinging gate and into a dark, woody old office presided over by a dusty oil painting of a judge who looked like he'd spent the entire portrait session thinking up cruel and unusual punishments.

From a desk under the window, a grizzled bald man, wearing a wrinkled white shirt, bow tie and suspenders, waved them over.

"Rest your bones, gentlemen." The county clerk dug through the stacks of papers on his desk. "What've we got here, what've we got here… Okay. Here we go." He found a couple of sheets of paper, dense with tiny type. He set them in front of him. "You're a crazy son of a bitch, Corde, to pass up that chance."

Corde said, "I probably am."

"They were good and pissed, I'll tell you. Nobody wanted it this way."

"Uh-huh."

"In case you hadn't guessed."

"I had."

"What's he mean?" Kresge asked Corde.

The clerk added loudly, as if he hoped to be overheard, "And nobody here is real happy we inherited you know who."

Corde supposed he meant Ribbon. "You can't pin that on me."

The county clerk grew solemn then spread the papers out in front of him. He flipped through a three-ring binder. He stopped at one page and began speaking rapid-fire toward the book. "Okay raise your right hand by the power vested in me…"

Corde was looking at the sour portrait above their heads. Kresge followed his eyes. The clerk stopped reading and looked at Kresge. "You gonna raise your hand or what?"

"Me?" Kresge said.

"You're the one being deputized."

"Me?" The man's baritone rose nearly to a tenor.

"Raise your hand, Wynton," Corde said. Kresge did.

"By the power vested in me by the County of Harrison, you, Wynton Washington Kresge, are hereby appointed as special deputy pursuant to Revised State Code Title 12 Section 131.13. Repeat after me. 'I, Wynton Washington Kresge…'."

Kresge cleared his throat, looking with astonishment at Corde. "What is this?"

Corde said, "Do what the man's telling you."

"I, Wynton Washington Kresge, do swear to uphold the laws of this state and to tirelessly and faithfully serve and protect the citizens of the County of Harrison and the municipalities located therein…"

"If you don't want to say 'so help me God,'" the clerk concluded, "you can say. 'upon my solemn oath'."

Kresge said, "So help me God."

Corde shook his hand. The clerk gave him three pieces of paper to sign.

"You didn't tell me." Kresge whispered this to Corde.

"I need you, Wynton. I figured if I just drove you here you'd be less inclined to say no and go looking for a cushy office job someplace else."

"Look, Detective, I'm grateful. I really am. But there's no way I can afford to do this."

Corde smiled cryptically. "You can't afford not to. Talk to that pretty wife of yours. You'll find some way to work it out."

The clerk was impatient. "You two talk about this later, will you?" He finished the paperwork and folded a couple of sheets like a subpoena. He handed one to Kresge. "Go over to County Central Booking and get fingerprinted on the same form and have a picture ID taken in Personnel. The same building. Bill'll tell you where it is. Have both these copies notarized. Lucy can do it if she's not at lunch, and if she is go to Fanner's Bank. Ask for Sally Anne. Bring me back one copy."

"But I haven't even thought about it."

"You're a special deputy, which sounds good but don't let it go to your head, it's the lowest rank we've got. You have a pistol permit?"

"Yes, I do. I did the small-arms course at Higgins. My score -"

"You have to buy your own weapon but you can get reimbursed up to two hundred. Automatics are okay but you can only use accepted loads, the ones on here." He handed Kresge a badly photocopied sheet of paper. "Don't get caught with anything heavier. And if you file the trigger it can't be easier than a nine-pound pull."

Kresge nodded and Corde noticed that he'd stopped arguing.

The clerk continued, "Your pay is twenty-nine-five annual, prorated for however long you're with us. You'll be assigned to Bill for whatever he needs you for. Ha, ha, big guess. You folks finish up the Gebben case and get this sicko under, we can find a permanent place for you here at the county if you get certified by the state police academy.

"Now, you get benefits as long as you work more than twenty-five hours a week but you gotta take a physical. And for the family you gotta pay something. You got a wife and kids?"

"Seven."

Corde added, "That's the kids. He's only got one wife."

"Oh, one more thing…" He tossed Kresge a plastic-wrapped green vinyl notebook about six by nine inches, three hundred or so pages thick. "That's the state penal code and the Deputy's Procedural Guide. Read 'em. Learn 'em."

"Yessir." Kresge was lit up with modest pride. "Do I salute?"

"It's all in there." The clerk tapped the Guide.


Jennie -

You wanted someone to teach you about love, and

all you found was someone to teach you how to die.

Why did you go that night? You said it was over.

Do I believe you or not?

Not knowing is almost as hard as life without you.

Why, kiddo, why?

Till we meet soon,

Em

"It was where?"

"In Emily's purse the night she drowned."

Wynton Kresge said, "They thought the Halpern boy wrote that? A fifteen-year-old kid?"

Corde said, "Uhn."

Sitting in the New Lebanon's Sheriffs Department, wearing a uniform as spotless and pressed as Corde's, Kresge dropped Emily's plastic-encased note on Corde's desk while Corde read the report aloud. "'Graphoanalysis of Subject Document. My professional opinion is that there is no more than a 50 percent probability that the handwriting is that of Subject Emily Rossiter. Significant similarities are five-degree backslant and short ascenders and descenders and looped capital letters. Deviation from samples submitted are significant but may be attributable to inebriation, drug use, emotional disturbance or unsteadiness of writing surface.'"

"Why didn't Philip say anything about it?"

"Maybe he didn't see it. Maybe he saw it and it didn't mean anything to him." Corde looked at the letter for a long moment then said, "Let's assume it's really Emily's okay?"

"Okay."

"Does it tell us anything?"

"Well, it says two things. First, it's a suicide note. So it means -"

"Suggests," Corde corrected.

"Suggests that Emily killed herself. She wasn't murdered."

"Okay. What's the second thing?"

"That the Halpern boy didn't kill Jennie either. I mean, it implies that he didn't."

"Why?"

"Because the 'someone' Emily mentions is probably, well, maybe, the killer. Someone Jennie had an affair with, I'd guess. She sure didn't have an affair with Philip Halpern."

"Because of where she says she thought it was over?"

"Yeah. Like the affair was over."

Corde said, "And look at 'go that night'. Tuesday night, she might be talking about." He opened his attaché case. The now-tattered picture of Jennie Gebben fresh off the volleyball court stared down at stacks of plump, dog-eared three-by-five cards. He flipped through one pile and extracted a card.

"That your computer, Bill?"

"Computer, ha. Here we go. Between about five and six on the night Jennie was killed she and Emily had a serious discussion of some kind. Maybe an argument. And Emily was moody that night. She didn't join her friends for supper."

"So maybe Jennie was going to see her lover, or former lover, and Emily was ticked off."

"Could be."

"Wait," Corde said. He dug through another card. "The girl who told me that Jennie was bisexual also said that she'd had a fight with somebody the night before she was killed. She said, 'I love her, I don't love you.' What if she agreed to meet that man -"

"Or woman," Kresge added.

Corde raised an eyebrow, acknowledging the point. "Possibly. But Trout, the carpet guy, said he saw a man… What if she agreed to meet him one last time, and he killed her?"

"That's sounding pretty good."

"But what about the DNA match? It was Philip's semen found at the scene."

"Damn, that's right." Kresge frowned.

"Don't agree with me too fast."

Kresge considered for a minute and said, "Maybe the lover killed her. Then the boy actually came along and raped her -"

"Actually, if she was dead first, it wasn't rape. It was violation of human remains. Misdemeanor."

"Oh." Kresge looked troubled. "I've got a hell of a lot to learn."

Corde mused, "Well, why didn't Emily come to us and tell us what she knew? Wouldn't she want the killer arrested?"

"Maybe she didn't know his name. If the girls were lovers then somebody Jennie'd had an affair with'd be a sore point between them. Emily maybe didn't want to hear about him."

"Good point, Wynton. But she could still come in and tell us that somebody Jennie had an affair with had killed her."

Kresge had to agree with that.

Then Corde said, "Of course look what happened. Emily killed herself. She was pretty crazy with grief, I suppose. She wouldn't be thinking about police. All she knew was her lover was dead."

Kresge nodded. "That's good. Yeah, I'll buy that."

"We got our work cut out for us." He selected one stack of cards and tossed it to Kresge. "What we know about Jennie, there're a lot of people who might've had affairs with her."

"Well, there can't be that many who're professors."

"Professors?"

Kresge tapped the plastic. "Well, she's talking about a professor, isn't she?"

Corde stared for the answer in the note. He looked up and shook his head. "Why do you say that?"

"Well," Kresge said, "it says 'teach'. I just assumed she was talking about one of her professors."

"Well, Emily could've meant that like in a general sense."

"Could be," Kresge conceded. "But maybe we could save ourselves a lot of time by checking out the professors first."

Corde picked up the cards and replaced them in his briefcase. He said, "This time we get to use the siren, Wynton. And the lights."


You think they care? Oh, you'll learn soon. You think they want you, but the way they want you is cold as mother moon…

Jamie Corde listened to the lyrics chugging out of his Walkman headset. He was lying on his back, staring at the setting sun. He wanted to be able to tell the time by looking at where the sun was. But he didn't know how. He wanted to be able to tell directions by the way certain trees grew but he couldn't remember what kind of trees. He wanted to travel into a different dimension. Jamie zipped his jacket up tighter against the cool breeze and slipped down farther in the bowl of short grass to escape from the wind. It was probably close to suppertime but he was not hungry.

He turned the volume up.

So just do yourself, do yourself,

do yourself a favor and do yourself…

Jamie was curious where the tape had come from. He'd returned home this afternoon after ditching wrestling practice and found it sitting on his windowsill. Geiger's latest cassette – the tiny cover picture showing five skinny German musicians in leather with long hair streaming behind them, the lead guitarist wearing a noose around his tendony neck.

His parents would never have bought it for him. This particular album was totally fresh; it'd been banned in Florida, Atlanta and Dallas, and most of the record stores in Harrison County refused to carry it. Maybe the last time Philip was over he'd left it. One of the group's songs, from a different, less-controversial album, had been used in The Lost Dimension and the two boys had listened to the soundtrack album frequently.

You think they care?

He held the tape player in both hands, lifted it to his face, pressed it against his cheek.

Do yourself, do yourself, do yourself now…

He thought about school, about Science Club, which was meeting right at this moment. They'd maybe look around and ask where's Jamie? And nobody'd know and then somebody might say something about Philip but there wouldn't be much talk about him because this was the end-of-year party and you were supposed to be having fun, drinking Coke and jamming pretzels into your mouth and talking about the summer not about members of the club who were fat and weird and who'd been shot dead by the police.

And also you weren't supposed to talk about boys who cut school the evening of the party to sit next to a grave – friends who when they weren't around you'd joke about being fags so fuck you fuck you fuck you…

Just do yourself, do yourself, take a razor take a rope you don't have any hope except to do yourself…

Jamie looked at the tombstone and realized he hadn't known Philip's middle name was Arthur. He wondered if that was some relative's name. It seemed weird that his parents would give him a middle name at all because that was something normal parents did and Philip's parents were total hatters.

Jamie sat back and looked at the freckled granite. But this time he saw: JAMES WILLIAM CORDE. Jamie imagined his own funeral and he saw his father standing next to the grave. His father didn't seem particularly sad. He was looking off into the distance, thinking about Sarah. Jamie pictured himself sitting alone in front of his own grave tracing the letters of his name. He did not, however, trace his middle name.


They bypassed Supersalesman and walked right into Amos Trout's office. "Sorry to trouble you again, sir," Corde said and introduced him to Kresge.

Trout said, "You in need of wall-to-wall, Deputy?"

Kresge said not just now but he'd discuss it with the wife.

Corde said, "I wonder if you could go through this book and tell me if you recognize the man you saw in the road that night."

"Well, like I was telling you I can't recall many details about him. That old Buick moves at a pretty good clip -"

"I've got an Olds corners like nobody's business," Kresge said. "GM can put a car together."

"There you go," said Trout.

"If you could maybe narrow it down to a few men might resemble the fellow you saw it'd make our job a whole lot easier." Corde handed him a copy of the Auden University yearbook. Trout began to flip through it quickly.

"Take your time," Corde said.

Corde's heart thudded each time Trout tore off a small piece of paper and marked a page. When he was finished he flipped open to the marked pages and pointed out three men. He said, "I don't think I'd feel right testifying but it could be any one of these fellows."

Corde took the book and glanced at the names of the men Trout had marked. He looked up at Kresge, who nodded slowly. Corde thanked Trout and with Kresge in tow left the store, not bothering to jot down the names on his index cards.


Kresge – just back from his first official evidence photographing expedition – had taken the better pictures.

At the crime scene below the dam in April, Jim Slocum had forgotten to override the automatic focus of his 35 mm camera and in the dark he'd sometimes pointed the infrared rangefinder at a bush or hump of rocks. Many of the pictures were out of focus. Several of them were badly overexposed. Kresge had taken his time with the Polaroid.

Sitting in the den that was really Corde's fourth bedroom, surrounded by the debris of two double orders of the Marquette Grill's steam-fried chicken, drinking coffee (Corde) and two-bag Lipton (Kresge) the men leaned close to the photos.

Six eight-by-tens of the footprints by the dam were tacked up on a corkboard next to an ad for a lawn service that guaranteed to make your lawn thick as cat's fur and we mean purrfect. In the center of the board were Kresge's small Polaroid squares.

"I think it's these two," Kresge said, tapping one of Slocum's pictures and one of his own.

"Why?" Corde asked. "The tread's similar but look at the size. The crime scene shoe's fatter."

Kresge said, "Well, that ground is wetter. By the dam, I mean. I was reading a book on crime scene forensics… You know what that word means?"

Corde had forgotten. He thought for a moment, wondering how he could bluff past it and couldn't think of a way. He said, "What?"

"It means pertaining to criminal or legal proceedings. I used to think it meant medicine, you know. But it doesn't."

"Hmmm," Corde said, at least giving himself credit for not looking too impressed.

"Anyway, I was reading this book and it said that prints in mud change shape depending on how close they are to the water source and whether the print would get drier or muddier with time. That dam's got a runoff nearby and it's uphill of where she was found -"

"How'd you know that?"

"I went there and looked."

"So the print spread. Okay, but how come in the crime scene photo the feet don't point out like in the one you took?"

"I think they do," Kresge said. "We just don't have him standing in one place. Look, the heavier indentation's on the right of his right foot and in this one it's on the left of his left. Means the man walks like a penguin."

"Yessir," Corde said. "It sure does."

"So, I think they're one and the same."

"I do too, Wynton." Corde pondered this information. "I think we're real close to probable cause. But damn I'd love a motive. What else've we got?" He flipped through his cards then lifted out two and read them slowly. He said, "You remember that scrap of computer paper I showed you, the one I found behind Jennie's dorm? Mostly burned up."

"I couldn't find out anything about it before I got laid off."

"Well, in the morning I'd like to check on where it came from."

Kresge winced. "Bill, the school's hardly going to let me do that. I got fired. Remember?"

"Wynton, it's not a question of letting you. We'll get a search warrant. You've got to start thinking like a cop."

Kresge nodded, flustered. "I haven't been on the job too long, you know."

"That's not an excuse."


At ten the next morning the men walked up the steps of the dark-brick house and rang the bell.

Wynton Kresge noticed the way Corde stood away from the front of the door as if somebody might shoot through the oak. He doubted anybody was going to do that but he mimicked the detective.

A blond woman in her forties opened the door. Narrow shoulders in a white blouse widening to a dark plaid pleated skirt. She listed to her right under the weight of a large briefcase. She set it down.

Corde looked expectantly at Kresge, who cleared his throat and said, "Morning, ma'am, would your husband be home?"

She examined them uneasily. "What would this be about?"

Corde said, "Is he home, please?"

Kresge decided he wouldn't have said that. He'd have answered her question.

She let them in. "In his study in the back of the house."

The men walked past her. She smiled, curious. The motion spread the red lipstick slightly past the boundaries of her lips. "There." She pointed to the room then left them. Corde's hand went to the butt of his pistol. Kresge's did too. They knocked on the door and walked in before there was an answer.

The man swiveled slowly in a shabby office chair, bleeding upholstery stuffing. Kresge wondered if he'd found the chair on the street in his poor graduate student days and kept it for sentiment.

Kresge's nostrils flared against the old-carpet smell, basement water in wool. He had a strong urge to walk directly to the nearest window and fling it wide open. The papers and books filling every available space added to the stifling closeness as did the jumble of old-time photos stacked against the wall. Everything was covered with thin films of dust.

Randy Sayles put a pencil tick next to his place in the massive volume he was reading, slipped a paperclip between the pages and closed the book.

A jay landed on a bush outside the window and picked at a small blond mulberry.

Bill Corde said, "Professor Sayles, we're here to arrest you for the murder of Jennifer Gebben."

5

Sayles leaned back in the ancient chair. Sorrow was in his face but it seemed a manageable sorrow like that in the eyes of a distant relative at a funeral.

He listened to Corde recite the Miranda rights. Corde unceremoniously took his handcuffs out of the leather case on his belt. Sayles said a single word softly. Corde believed it was "No." The professor's tongue caressed his lips. One circuit. Two. He lifted his hands and rested them on his knees; they looked dirty because of the fine dark hairs coating his skin. Corde noticed that his feet pointed outward. He said, "Will you hold your wrists out, please?"

"Why do you think it's me?" He asked this with unfeigned curiosity. He did not offer his wrists.

"A witness came forward and identified your picture in the yearbook. He saw you by the dam that night. Your hands?"

Sayles nodded and said, "The man in the car. He almost ran me over."

Kresge said, "And your bootprint matches one found at the scene of the killing." He looked at Corde to see if it was all right to volunteer this kind of information.

"My bootprint?" Sayles looked involuntarily at a muddy corner of the study where presumably a pair of boots had recently lain. "You took prints of mine from the yard?"

"Yessir," Kresge said. "Shot pictures, actually."

Sayles fidgeted with his hands, his face laced with the regret of a marathoner pulling up cramped a half mile shy of the finish. "Will you come with me?" Sayles stood up.

"For what?" Corde asked.

"I didn't kill her." Sayles seemed stricken with apathy.

"You'll have your day in court, sir."

"I can prove it right now."

Corde looked at the eyes and what he saw was a load of disappointment – much more than desperation. He motioned with his head toward the door. "Five minutes. But you wear the cuffs." He put them on.

As they left the house Kresge whispered, "So, okay, let me get this straight. If they say they didn't do it we give them a chance to show us some new evidence? I just want to know the rules."

"Wynton," Corde said patiently, "there are no rules."

The two men followed Sayles outside. They walked to the back of the house – ten feet from the place where Kresge had taken photos of Sayles's footprints. Corde recognized the ruddy box elder root from the Polaroids. Corde glanced toward the front of the house. He believed he smelled cigarette smoke. Corde saw Sayles's wife standing in the kitchen thirty feet away.

Sayles walked to a patch of dug-up earth like two wide tread marks about twenty feet long. Small green shoots were rising from precisely placed intervals along the strips.

"Dig here." He touched a foot to the ground.

Kresge picked up a rusty spade. Corde now felt contempt in the air. Sayles's eyes were contracted like nipple skin in chill water. The deputy began to dig. A few feet down he uncovered a plastic bag. Kresge dropped the spade on the ground. He pulled the bag out, dusted it off carefully and handed it to Corde. Inside was a length of clothesline.

"That's the murder weapon," Sayles said.

Corde said to him, "Do you want to make a statement?"

Sayles said, "This is the proof."

"Yessir," Corde said. "Do you wish to waive your right to have an attorney present during questioning?"

"He killed Jennie with it. I saw him. It'll have his fingerprints on it."

"You're saying you didn't kill her?" Kresge asked.

"No, I didn't kill her," Sayles said. He sighed. "Jennie and I had an affair last year."

"Yessir, we figured as much" Corde said.

In the open window, the blond woman rested her chin in her hand and listened to his words without visible emotion. The cigarette dangled over the sill and from it rose a leisurely tentacle of smoke.

"I was quite taken by her." He said to Corde, "You saw her. How could anybody help but be captivated by her?"

Corde remembered the moon, remembered the smell of mint on the dead girl's mouth, remembered the spice of her perfume. He remembered the dull eyes. He remembered two diamonds and he remembered mud. He had no idea how captivating Jennie Gebben was.

Sayles said, "She went to work for me in the financial aid office."

"We just came from there. The scrap of paper we found burned behind her dorm matches computer files in your records. You broke into her dorm and stole her letters and papers. You burned them."

Sayles laughed shortly, the disarmed sound of someone learning that his secrets are not secret at all. He nodded. "You know the financial condition of the school?"

What was it about educators that made them think their school was exactly the first thing on everyone's mind?

Sayles continued. "We've been in danger of closing since the mid-eighties. Dean Larraby and I came up with an idea two years ago. As dean of financial aid I started giving out loan money to students who were bad risks. Millions of dollars."

Corde nodded. "You gave them the money and they paid it to the school then they dropped out and defaulted. You kept the money. Who got, uhm, taken in in that deal?"

"It was mostly state and federal money," Sayles said. "It's a very common practice at small colleges." A professor, Sayles was giving them information, not apologizing. "Times are extremely bad for educational institutions. Auden is being audited in a week or so by the Department of Education. They'll find the loan defaults. I've tried desperately to get some interim financing to put into the loan accounts to cover the deficit but -"

"And Jennie found out about the scam and you killed her," Kresge said.

"No sir, I did not." Corde thought something like a Southern military officer's drawl crept into the man's offended voice. "She knew what was going on. But she didn't care. And I didn't care if she knew. I just arranged for the job for her so we could see each other privately. She took some work home, administrative things. After she died I went to her dorm and burnt those files and her letters. In case she'd mentioned me in them."

"That's why you urged Steve Ribbon to pull me off the case? So this secret of yours didn't get uncovered?"

"I promised him and Sheriff Ellison they'd have university support in the elections come November."

Kresge's face blossomed into a large frown at this first glimpse of law enforcement politics. He'd been on the job less than twenty-four hours.

"But I didn't kill her. I swear it." His voice lowered. "Our relationship never went past sex. We were lovers. Once or twice I thought about marrying her. But she told me right up front she was in it for the sex and nothing else. I was happy to accommodate. It didn't last long. Jennie was bisexual, you know. She finally patched up her relationship with Emily, her roommate, and she and I drifted apart."

"Emily's death was a suicide, wasn't it?"

"Yes, I'm sure it was. She called me the night she died. I went to meet her. She was terribly depressed about Jennie, incoherent. She ran off. I have no doubt she killed herself."

"Well, Professor, who do you think is the killer?"

"About four months after Jennie and I broke up she said she'd started seeing someone else. We were still close and she told me a few things about her lover. It sounded like a very destructive relationship. Finally she broke it off but the lover was furious. On the day she was killed, after class, Jennie told me she'd agreed to meet for one last time, to say it was over, to leave her alone. I tried to talk her out of it. But that was one thing you just couldn't do with Jennie. You couldn't protect her. She wouldn't stand for it, she wouldn't depend on anybody. I worried about her all evening. Finally, I drove out to the pond, where she'd told me they were going to meet. I found Jennie. With a rope around her neck. That rope. She was dead."

"She hadn't been raped?" Corde asked.

"No, that must've happened later. The boy that got shot."

"Why," Kresge asked, "did you take the rope?"

"I was going to destroy it. But then I thought for my own sake I should save it – to prove that his fingerprints were on the murder weapon. I wrapped it up in a scrap of plastic and buried it here."

Kresge was exasperated. "Destroy the rope? You were trying to cover up the murder? Why?"

"Don't you realize what would happen if word were to get out that a professor murdered one of his students? It would destroy Auden. Enrollment would plummet. It would be the end of the school. Oh, it was hard for me… Oh, poor Jennie. But I had to think of the school first."

"A professor?" Corde asked. "Who is it?"

"I assume you talked to him when you were interviewing people," Sayles said. "His name is Leon Gilchrist."


Jim Slocum, Lance Miller and a county deputy met them at the university, in an alleyway behind Jesse Hall.

Corde said, "He claims it's Gilchrist, one of Jennie's professors."

Miller said, "He was in San Francisco at the time of the killing, I thought."

Corde said to Kresge, "I checked the flights. Gilchrist flew out on the weekend before the killing. His secretary said he just got back a few days ago."

Sayles said, "I swear it, Officer. He was back the Tuesday she was killed."

Kresge said, "Maybe if he was planning to kill her he used a different name on the flight."

Corde nodded then handed Sayles over to Slocum. "Take him to a cell. Book him for murder one, manslaughter and felony obstruction."

Corde and Kresge left Sayles's protests behind and walked through the elaborate towering arch, like the doorway in a medieval hall. The sounds of their footsteps resounded off the high concrete walls.

They suddenly heard running water.

"What's that?" Kresge whispered.

As they got closer to the lecture hall they could tell the sound was of applause, which rose in volume and was soon joined by whistles. The noise filled the old stern Gothic corridors. An image came to Corde's mind: gladiatorial battles from an ancient movie.

Doors opened and the halls filled with students in shorts, jeans, sweats, T-shirts. Corde walked into the lecture hall. It did indeed resemble the Colosseum. Steep rows of seats rising from a small semicircular platform, empty except for a chipped lectern. The ceiling of the auditorium was high, hueless, murky with years of grime. The walls were dark oak. The gooseneck lamp on the lectern still burned and in the dimness of the hall cast a pale shadow on the stage.

Corde stopped a crew-cut student. "Excuse me, this Professor Gilchrist's class?"

"Yessir."

"Do you know where he is?"

The boy looked around, saw someone and grinned. He continued his scan of the auditorium. "Nope. Guess he's gone."

"Was he away from town for a while?"

"Yeah. He was in San Francisco until a few days ago I heard. He came back to give his last lecture."

"What was the applause about?"

"If you ever heard him you'd know. He's totally, you know, intense."

Corde and Kresge continued down the corridor until they found Gilchrist's office. The professor was not there and the departmental secretary was gone. Kresge motioned toward her Rolodex, which was turned to the G's. Gilchrist's home address card was gone. The desk drawers were open and although Corde found files on other professors there was none for Gilchrist.

On the way out of the hall they passed the auditorium again.

The lectern light was dark.


The apartment wasn't university property. It was three miles outside of town in a complex of two-story brick buildings, with the doorways on the second floor opening onto a narrow balcony that ran the length of the building. Gilchrist lived in apartment 2D. The complex was surrounded by thick foliage and mature trees. Corde noticed it was only one mile from his own house through the forest. Another brick of evidence for the district attorney – it would have cost Gilchrist merely a pleasant twenty minute walk to get to Corde's house and leave the threatening pictures of Sarah.

Corde drove the cruiser past the entrance to the apartment complex then parked in a clump of hemlock out of sight of the building. Corde unlocked the shotgun and motioned to Kresge to take it. "You hunt, you told me?"

"Yup." Kresge took the riot gun and Corde got a moment's pleasure watching the man's thick hands load and lock the gun as if he'd been doing it since he was five. They climbed out and started along the path.

Kresge said, "I hear something in the woods. Over there."

Corde looked, squinting through the low light that shattered in the dense woods. "You see anything?"

"Can't tell. Too much glare."

"What'd you hear?"

"Footsteps. A dog maybe. Don't hear it anymore."

"Keep an eye on our backs," Corde said.

"He's just a professor."

"Our backs," Corde repeated.

Crouching, the men walked side by side to the complex's directory. Corde found the super's apartment and rang the bell. No response. He motioned with his head toward the upper balcony. Together they went up the stairs.

Corde whispered, "You never done this before so we're going in the front door together."

"Okay with me," Kresge said sincerely, the last of his words swallowed in a hugely dry throat.

"Let's go."

Beneath them a horn blared.

Corde and Kresge spun around. Jim Slocum's cruiser – with Randy Sayles handcuffed in the backseat – pulled leisurely into the parking lot. Slocum honked again and waved. "Hey, Bill," he called, "thought you might need some backup."

"Jesus Lord," Corde whispered harshly. "Jim, what're you doing? He's gonna see you."

Slocum got out of the car and looked around. He shouted, "What say?"

Corde jumped out of his crouch and ran for the front door of Gilchrist's apartment, shouting to Slocum, "Watch the back, behind the building! Watch the back."

Corde and Kresge stood on either side of the door. Kresge said, "If he's in there he knows he's got company."

"I hate this," Corde said.

Kresge said, "You ever do this before?"

Corde hesitated. "Not exactly, no." He knocked on the door. "Professor Gilchrist. Sheriffs Department. Open the door."

No response.

"Let me try." Kresge pounded on the split veneer of the door. "Police, Professor. I mean, Sheriffs Department. Open the door!"

Nothing.

Corde reached for the doorknob. Both men lifted their guns toward the sky. Corde turned the knob and shouldered it open. They leapt inside.


Jim Slocum turned toward the backseat of the cruiser. He said to Sayles by way of explanation, "I figured they needed some backup." And he drove around to the back of the apartment complex.

"Look," Sayles said, "I'm not real comfortable here."

"Minute," Slocum said, and got out of the car. He unholstered his service revolver and looked around the unkempt yellow lawn.

"You can't leave me here. I'm innocent."

"Quiet."

"You can't keep me here!"

"Please, sir, I'd appreciate it if you'd just shut up."

"Get the goddamn rope fingerprinted. Are you listening to me? Are you listening to me?"

Jim Slocum had been – all the way from the Auden campus – and he was pretty tired of it. He leaned forward. "Shut… your… mouth. Got it?"

"You can't keep me here."

Slocum wandered off to the apartment building's detached workshed. He went up on tiptoes, looked through the window and noted that there was no one inside then he stepped behind it to take a leak.

Breathing stale air Corde and Kresge moved farther into the apartment. On the floor next to them was a wooden coat rack and umbrella stand carved with the bas relief of a hound treeing a bear. Corde glanced at the bear's black glistening mahogany teeth and walked past it.

In the living room the scents were of mildew, moist paper, dust and a sour scent as if a pet had grown old and ill in the room. The light, dimmed by drawn curtains, barely illuminated the space, which seemed uninhabited. The bookcases were filled but the jackets of the volumes all were matte paper imprinted with dull inks, old-style typography. The wooden chairs were coated with dust, the upholstered ones weren't indented. A dust sphere leisurely followed Corde into the living room.

The men danced past each other, stepping into rooms and covering each other – a choreography that Kresge learned quickly. Corde could see he was unnerved and trying to look three directions at once. They secured all the rooms except the kitchen.

They paused outside the closed French doors.

Kresge had his index finger curled around the ribbed trigger of the scattergun. Corde lifted the sizable finger out and straightened it along the guard. He then nodded toward the door and together they pushed inside.

Empty.

Kresge picked up a cup coated with a moldy layer of dry evaporated coffee. He set it down. Stacked on the table were literary magazines, books, dense articles. "Delmore Schwartz: The Poetry of Obsession." "Special Problems in Translating the Cantos." "The Rebirth of the Poet Warrior"…

The feeling first came to Corde as he stood flipping through the blank notepad beside the yellow telephone, which was decorated with a sticker in the shape of a daisy. He paused as the crinkling chill began at the knob of his neck and swept down his spine. His scrotum contracted. One by one he lifted his fingers off his pistol and he felt the pads of his fingers cool from evaporation. He looked around him at the still, pale doorways, out the window at a black gnarled willow trunk.

He's nearby. I can feel it.

Kresge dropped the journal back down on the table.

Corde walked to the stove and touched the top. It burnt his hand. The tea kettle too was hot but then he tapped the metal again cautiously and found that the pilot light was heating the empty pot. He left the kitchen and returned to the second bedroom, which served as Gilchrist's study. He searched the desk. Papers, letters, drafts of articles. Doodles. There were no photos. Nothing gave a clue as to what Leon Gilchrist looked like or where he might be.

A chill again shuddered through Corde's back. Corde had to share this. "He's nearby."

"What?"

"I feel him. He's around here someplace."

Kresge pointed to a coating of dust on the wood floors and the linoleum. Only their footprints showed. "He hasn't been here for a long time."

Corde said, "We'll get the Crime Scene boys to go through it, take some paper samples and fingerprints. Let's get out of here."

Slocum was walking out from behind the apartment building. He met Corde and Kresge in the parking lot. "I heard something behind there. I went to check but I didn't see anything. If he had a car it's gone."

"We should call in a county APB," Corde said. He walked toward his car. "DMV license and any tag numbers. Let's get back to the office and fax an ID to the state and the FBI. Get a picture of him from the university."

"Yessiree, let's move," Slocum said.

They found though that they had to make a detour.

Which was to drive Randy Sayles to the emergency room at Harrison County Community Hospital. Corde drove, hitting speeds of close to a hundred on the straightaway of 302, while Kresge crouched in the back, applying fierce pressure to the slashes in the man's carotid arteries. Because Sayles's hands were cuffed to the armrest in the backseat of the car, Gilchrist had been free to cut deep and with fearful precision.

At the hospital, while Kresge cleaned up as best he could, Corde sat in a blue plastic chair in the lounge. He sat forward, his chin in his hands. The doctor walked out of the ER and after surveying the three cops chose Corde, to whom he said simply, "I'm sorry."

Corde nodded and stood up. On the way out of the door he glanced at the sky and believed he saw for a moment a silver crescent of waxing moon before it was obliterated by an oncoming storm.

6

The way Sarah thought of it was that her world suddenly turned joyous.

For one thing, she woke up without the pitchforks in her stomach, the way she always felt on school days and still felt sometimes when she awakened from a dream about class or about taking a test. This morning, sitting up in her bed, she felt perfectly free, floating and safe. It was like she had all the good parts of running away from home but still had her family and her room and her magic circle in the forest behind the house.

The day too was perfection itself. The sun was like the round face of a sky tiger and the wind blew through the new leaves so crisp and fast you could hear the voices of the trees calling to each other.

Sarah strolled outside and played a game Dr. Breck had taught her. She looked at the lawn and she said out loud, "G-R-A-S-S." Then came T-R-E-E and C-L-O-U-D. And she got the giggles when she pointed to Mrs. Clemington next door and spelled, "T-R-O-L-L."

She pointed to a cow, ten feet away, separated by the post-and-rail fence. The animal gazed at her eagerly as if it was milking time.

She lay down in her circle of stones and took her tape recorder out of her backpack.

Another good thing about today: she was going to finish the last chapter of her book. This one was her favorite story. She'd been working on it for days and hadn't told anyone about it. It filled almost half a cassette and she hadn't even gotten to the climax of the story yet. She'd give the tape to Dr. Parker, and her secretary would type out the words and Sarah would get the story back in a few days. Then she would copy it into the notebook and show it to Dr. Breck. She wanted desperately to impress him and had worked particularly hard on this story.

Sarah rewound the tape to the start of the chapter to see what she had written so far. She hit the Play button.

Chapter fifteen. The Sunshine Man… Once upon a time, deep in the forest, there lived a wizard…


The deputies got a kick out of Wynton Kresge – a man who owned more law enforcement books than they knew existed and who could outshoot any of them, either-handed, on the small arms range at Higgins. As far as they could remember there'd never been a black deputy in New Lebanon and it made the office seem like a set on a Hollywood buddy movie.

They were sitting around this evening, debating where Gilchrist might have gone. Prosecutor Dwayne Lovell had gotten a bench warrant issued and faxed to Boston and San Francisco, both cities having been Gilchrist's home at one time, then Corde added Gilchrist's name to the Criminal Warrants Outstanding Bulletin and Database for state and major city law enforcement agencies.

"What will they do?" Kresge asked Corde.

"Boston and San Francisco'll prioritize it. The others? Nothing. But if they happen to pick him up for something else and find his name in the computer they'll give us a call. It's not for sure but we can sleep a little better knowing we've done it."

"Looking for a tick on a dog," Kresge muttered as he dialed Boston PD. After a brief conversation, he learned that Gilchrist had no criminal record in Massachusetts.

Earlier that day Corde had granted Kresge's fervent request that he be allowed to interview Dean Larraby about Gilchrist. It was a long interview and she hadn't been much help though Kresge clearly had enjoyed himself. In searching Gilchrist's office and the other departments at Auden, the men had found that the professor had stolen most of the files containing personal information about himself. The Personnel Department, the Credentials Department, the English and Psych Departments – they had all been raided. Computer files erased. Cabinets emptied.

Kresge and Corde interviewed other professors. None of them knew much about Gilchrist or had snapshots that included him. They could not recall any school functions he had attended.

Brian Okun, Corde learned in a second antagonistic interview, said he knew the professor as well as anyone and could offer no clues as to where Gilchrist might have gone. "He's resourceful." Okun said then added with eerie sincerity, "It's troubling you don't know where he is. The evil we can't see is so much worse than that which we can, don't you think, Detective?"

Corde didn't know about that but one thing he did know: Gilchrist was Jennie Gebben's killer. Sayles had been correct; Gilchrist's fingerprints were on the tie-down rope cut from the Ford truck. The rope also contained two of Jennie's partials from trying to fight off the strangulation and one of her hairs. Another strand of her hair was found on a shirt in Gilchrist's closet He also had several red marking pens whose ink matched those on the newspaper clipping he had left for Corde the morning after Jennie's murder and on the back of the threatening Polaroids. Gilchrist's prints were also found on the back door, window and armrest of Jim Slocum's cruiser. It wasn't necessary to dust for those prints; they had been made with Randy Sayles's blood. But, as Corde knew and as Wynton Kresge was learning with great disillusionment, finding a criminal's identity is not the same as finding the criminal. Gilchrist had vanished.

Corde got a deputy to call car rental agencies. No one named Gilchrist had rented a car, the deputy announced, and Corde and Kresge looked at each other, both concluding simultaneously and silently that he wasn't going to be using his real name.

Corde, tapping the butt of his gun with a forefinger, began to say, "When we got Sayles to the ER -"

Kresge finished the question, "Did they find his wallet?"

"I don't know," the deputy said.

Corde continued, "Find out and if not call back the car companies and ask if someone named Sayles rented a car."

Kresge didn't wait to find out about the wallet. He got on the horn and called Hertz. A supervisor told him that a Randolph Sayles had rented a car the day before at Lambert Field in St Louis. He'd rented it for two weeks and was paying a. drop-off charge to leave the car in Dallas. Kresge got the description and plate number of the car and told them it had been illegally rented. "Have them notify us as soon as he returns it. Is that right, I mean, the right procedure?"

Corde realized Kresge had looked up from the phone and was speaking to him. Corde, who had never before had a car-renting felon, said, "Sounds good to me."

"Okay, it's a green Hertz Pontiac," Kresge announced, and sang out the license number. Corde had him send that information out over the wire to the county and state.

They checked the Midwest Air commuter flights. No one matching Gilchrist's description had flown from Harrison County Airport to Lambert Field in the past two days and there had been no private charter flights.

State DMV showed a car registered to Gilchrist, a gray Toyota, but no record of a state driver's license. After two hours on the phone, Miller found out that Gilchrist had a Massachusetts license. They'd fax a picture within three days.

That's the best they can do.

"And I had to beat them up to get that." Kresge said, "So he drove his car to St Louis, dumped it, rented another one and is going south."

"Maybe. Maybe he's trying to throw us off. Fax Dallas in any case." Corde pondered. "You know, maybe he's flying someplace and just rented the car to cover his tracks. Left it in the airport. Call the airlines, everything that flies out of St Louis. Let's hope he used Sayles's credit card again. And check the airport long-term parking for his own car or the rental."

Kresge said, "That's pretty good. How'd you know this stuff?"

"You pick it up as you go along," Corde said.

"I've got a lot to learn," Kresge said.

"He's gone over state lines," Corde said, then added reluctantly, "We could get the FBI in if we wanted to."

"How's that?"

"Teddies aren't interested in state crime unless there's interstate flight or you've got a kidnapping, drugs or bank robbery."

"Why don't we want them in?" Corde decided it was too early in Kresge's career for this kind of law enforcement education. "Because," he answered.

Slocum strolled up. "Bill, one thing I was thinking."

"Yup?"

"I'm not so sure this is just a fleeing felon thing." Corde wondered what trashy paperbacks he'd been reading.

Slocum continued, "I was trying to psych him out. I mean, look what he did to Sayles." When Corde kept staring blankly he added, "Well, it could've been a revenge situation."

"Sayles was a witness," Corde said. "Gilchrist had to kill him."

Kresge said, "But, Bill, we didn't need Sayles to convict him, did we? We had enough other evidence. And Gilchrist would've known that."

Corde considered and said that was true. "Go ahead, Jim, what's your thought?"

"His life's over with. He's never going to teach again, never have a professional job. The best he can do is make it to Canada or Mexico and the first time he runs a red light, zippo, his butt's extradited. I think he's around the bend and wants to get even. He's just killed again. My bet is he rented that car to send us off to Texas but he's staying around here somewhere. He's got some scores to settle."

Kresge said, "Maybe we should check out the hotels around the county. Maybe he used Sayles's name there too."

Slocum said, "Hotels'd be easy to trace. I was thinking maybe cabins or a month lease somewhere nearby. It's getting near season so nobody'd pay much attention to someone taking a vacation rental."

Corde said, "Let's start making some calls."

It was just a half hour later that Wynton Kresge hung up the phone after a pleasant conversation with Anita Conciliano of Lakeland Real Estate in Bosworth. He jotted some notes on a piece of the recycled newsprint the department used for memos. He handed the sheet to Corde.

The detective read it twice and looked up from the grayish paper. He found he was looking at Jim Slocum, who stood in his office doorway leaning on the frame – the same place and the same way Steve Ribbon used to stand.

"We got him. He's in Lewisboro."

Corde grinned at Slocum. Then he saluted. "Thanks, Sheriff."


Sevan's tavern was sixty miles north of New Lebanon in Lewisboro County, edged into a stand of pine and sloppy maples, and just far enough back from Route 128 so you could angle-park a Land Cruiser without too much risk of losing the rear end. Today four men sat in one of the tavern's front booths, drinking iced tea and soda and coffee. A greasy plate that had held onion rings sat in front of them. Lewisboro County Sheriff Stanley Willars said, "How do you know he's there?"

Bill Corde said, "Wynton here tracked him down. He called must've been a thousand real estate companies. Gilchrist used Sayles's name and rented it for two months." Corde wanted more onion rings; he hadn't eaten a meal in eighteen hours. But he counted up that he'd had twelve rings himself so far, with ketchup, and decided not to ask if they wanted another round.

Wynton Kresge said, "He doesn't have any family that we've been able to find. And no other residences. We think he's there and…" Kresge looked at Corde then added, "… we want to hit him."

Corde continued, "It's your county, Stan, so we need your okay."

"Never heard of a professor killing anybody before," said Assistant Sheriff Dudley Franks, who was lean and unsmiling and reminded Corde of T.T. Ebbans. "You'd think they'd be above that or something."

Willars said wryly, "So's Hammerback's providing all the firepower?"

Corde grinned. "Okay, we'd like some backup too."

"Uck."

Corde added, "Fact of life, Stan."

Willars said, "You boys want more rings?" Corde said sure quickly. Willars ordered. He was laughing as he looked out the window at Corde's squad car. "Look at that Dodge. It brand new?"

Corde said, "We got 'em this year."

"You got that damn university down in Harrison. No wonder you got new wheels." He turned to Franks. "What year are we driving?"

"Eighty-sevens."

Kresge said, "That's pretty old."

"That damn university," Willars said. "Remember those old Grand Furies? The Police Interceptors."

"That was quite a car," Corde said.

"Had a four-forty in them, I believe," Franks offered.

Willars said, "What I wish is we had one of those emergency services trucks. You should see the wrecks we get along 607."

Franks said, "Sedge Billings near to cut his little finger off with his chain saw trying to get somebody out of a Caprice that went upside down. There aren't but one Jaws of Life in the whole area. Sedge had to use his own Black and Decker."

The waitress brought the onion rings.

"No," Willars corrected, "that wasn't a Chevy, was a Taurus."

"You're right," Frank said.

Corde said, "I don't think Ellison'd have it in his heart or his budget to buy you boys one of those vans. The one they got in Harrison is secondhand. I know we don't have the money in New Lebanon." There was silence as they dug into their rings.

Willars said, "It's just a shame you couldn't loan it to us from time to time. Like a week we've got it, three weeks you've got it."

Corde said, "I don't know the citizens of Harrison'd be too happy to see that. They're the one's paying."

"True," Willars said pleasantly, "but I don't know the citizens of Harrison're real happy about what this Gilchrist fella's done." With cheer in his voice he added, "And the fact he's still at large."

Franks said, "And the fact that it's election time come November."

"I'd guess," Corde said slowly, "Hammerback'd be willing to work out a sharing arrangement. But only if you're talking a limited period of time. And I've gotta clear it with him."

Willars said, "I think of the families of some kid rolls his car off that bend on 607. You ever seen that happen?"

"It's pretty bad?" Kresge asked. "How come you don't put up guard rails?"

Willars looked mournful. "Fact is we're a poor county."

Corde said, "I think we could work something out."

Sheriff Willars said, "That's good enough for me. Let's pick us up a couple M-16s and go catch ourselves a dangerous professor."


Warning. No trespassing.

Bill Corde and Wynton Kresge stepped out of a stand of trees and found themselves looking at the summer house Leon Gilchrist had rented in his latest victim's name. A dilapidated two-story frame home on whose south side paint was peeling like colonial-red snake scales. The whole place was settling bad and only the portion near the chimney had good posture. The screen door on the porch was torn and every second window was cracked. A typical vacation house in the lake district of Lewisboro – not a two-week dream rental but a badly built clapboard that had been foreclosed on.

Up next to them walked Willars, Franks and a crew-cut local deputy, a young man bowlegged with muscles. Corde and Kresge had their service pistols drawn and the Lewisboro lawmen held battered dark gray military rifles, muzzle up.

Kresge looked at the machine guns and said, "Well, well."

"Peace," whispered Willars, "through superior firepower. Your show, Bill. Whatcha wanta do?"

"Ill go in with Wynton and somebody else. I'd like somebody on the front door and the back just in case."

Willars sent the stocky deputy out back and he took the front door. He said to Franks, "You be so kind as to accompany our cousins here?"

"Look," Corde whispered. A light was flashing in an upstairs window. "He's there…" The men crouched down.

Kresge said, "No, look. It's just the sunlight. A reflection."

"No, I don't think so," Franks said with a taut voice. "I think it's a light."

"Whatever it is," Corde said, "let's go in."

To his men Willars said, "Check your pieces. Load and lock. Semiauto fire." The sharp clicks and snaps of machined metal falling into place filled the clearing then there was silence again. They started forward. A large grackle fluttered past them and a jay screamed. Once out of the brush they ran, crouching, to the front porch and walked up the stairs, keeping low to the steps, smelling old wet wood and decaying paint.

They stood on either side of the door, backs to the house. Near Kresge's head was a sign: Beware of Dog. Kresge tested the door. It was locked.

Franks whispered, "What about the dog?"

"There was one, he'd be barking by now," Corde said.

Kresge said, "We knock, or not?"

Corde thought of the Polaroid of the girl possibly his daughter. He said, "No."

Kresge grunted his agreement like a veteran SWAT team cop and pulled open the screen door for Franks to hold.

"Pit bulls don't bark," Franks said. "I saw that on Current Affair or something." He flicked the trigger guard of his rifle with a nervous finger.

Kresge stepped back but Corde touched him by the arm and shook his head then stepped into his place. "I've got fifteen years' experience on you. Just stay close behind."

"But I got sixty pounds' weight on you, Detective," Kresge said and lowered his shoulder and charged into the door. It blew inward, the jamb shattering under his momentum. He slipped on the carpet and went down on his hip as Corde then Franks leapt into the living room after him.

A half dozen mangy pieces of sour overstuffed furniture and a hundred books stared silently back at them.

Franks kept his M-16 up, swiveling from door to door nervously with his head cocked, listening for malevolent growling.

The sunlight was fading fast and throughout the house the colors of rugs and paintings and wallpaper were vanishing. The men walked like soldiers through this monotone. Corde listened for Gilchrist and heard only old boards moaning beneath their feet, the tapping and surges of tiny household motors and valves.

Franks stayed downstairs while Corde and Kresge climbed up to where they had seen the light. They paused at the landing then continued to the second floor. Corde was suddenly aware of the smells: lemon furniture polish, musty cloth, after-shave or perfume.

They swung open the door to the master bedroom. It was empty. Corde smelled the dry after-shave stronger here and he wondered if it was Gilchrist's. It seemed similar to a cologne that he himself had worn, something Sarah had bought him for his birthday. This thought deeply upset him. The sun was low at the horizon, shining into his face. Maybe that was the light he'd seen, its reflection in the window. The sun dipped below the trees, and the light grew murkier. Corde reached toward the bedside lamp to pull the switch.

"Damn!"

The bulb was hot.

He told this to Kresge. The two men looked at each other, put their backs together, squinting through the gloom at the half dozen menacing near-human shapes they knew were a coat rack, an armoire, a shadow, a thick pink drape, yet at which each man drew an equivocal target with his pistol.

Kresge reached for the light switch. He laughed nervously. "Wall's hot too. I think it was the sun. It was falling on the lamp and the wall here."

Corde didn't respond. He opened his mouth wide and began to take slow breaths. He listened. No footsteps, no motion, no creaks. Walking around the edge of the room where the noise from sprung floorboards would be less, Corde looked in both closets. They were empty. He stepped into the hall and examined the other bedrooms and their closets, filled with musty coats and jackets, faded floral blouses, blankets stinking of camphor.

Kresge said, "The attic?"

Hell. Going up through a trapdoor into an attic that was surely packed with furniture and boxes – perfect cover for a gunman…

But they were spared that agony. Corde found the trapdoor in the ceiling of the hall. It was padlocked from the bottom.

He exhaled in relief.

On the ground floor again, they moved through the dining room and living room.

Corde thought: Hell's bells the basement, just like the attic only ifs not going to be padlocked at all and that's where Gilchrist is going to be. Has to be. No question.

"How about the basement?"

"Isn't one," Franks said.

Thanks, Lord, may be time to reconsider this church business, yessir

Kresge said, "I'm pretty surely tense in here." He said it as if he were surprised and Corde and Franks laughed. In the kitchen Corde saw colorful labels that said Heinz and Goya and Campbell's, dented aluminum pans, bottles and chipped canisters, refrigerator magnets of barnyard animals, which had turned dark with years of cooking grime.

Corde said to Kresge, "Let's keep at it." He held his pistol with cramping pressure, his finger caressing the ribbed trigger inside the guard where he had told Kresge it should not be. "I saw something I want to check."

Franks said, "There's a room in the back, I listened at it and didn't hear anything. But it's locked from the inside." He poked a stained yellow drape with the slotted muzzle of his soldier gun.

"Just a second we'll go with you," Corde called from the living room. He was looking at a pile of ash in the fireplace. He crouched down and sifted through the gray dust. Kresge stood guard over him. In the midst of a pyramid of ash Corde found the scorched cover of a photo album. His hands shook with the excitement of being close to a picture of Gilchrist. But there were none. Almost everything was burnt and the ash dissolved.

But one remained. A Polaroid had fallen through the log rack. Though it was badly blistered from the heat it hadn't burnt completely. The square showed a street in a city, a line of faded row houses, with a few trees in front. Breaking through the Maginot Line of the tops of the residences was a shiny office building five or six stories high.

On the back was written: Leon, come visit sometime. Love

Corde wrapped the photo in his handkerchief and put it in his pocket then stood, the familiar pop of his knee resounding through the dark room.

The pop was loud. But not loud enough to cover the crack of Assistant Sheriff Franks breaking through the doorway of the locked room and the thunderclap of the shotgun blast that took off much of his shoulder.

Corde spun fast, dropping into a crouch. Kresge grabbed the convulsing deputy by his leg and dragged him toward the kitchen, along a wall now covered by a constellation of slick blood.

"Okay, okay, okay!" Corde shouted to no one and he rolled forward into the doorway, prone position.

His elbow landed on a bit of sharp bone from the deputy's shoulder. Corde ignored the pain as he fired five staccato shots at the figure inside. Three missed and slammed into the armchair to which was taped the double-barrel Remington wired to the doorknob. Two of Corde's slugs though were aimed perfectly and found their target.

Which wasn't however Professor Leon David Gilchrist but a four-foot-high ceramic owl, which in the dim light resembled not a bird but a laughing man and which under the impact of the unjacketed rounds exploded into a thousand shards of brown and gold porcelain.

7

Bill Corde sat in the Auden University Library.

This was a musty Victorian building, latticed with oak dense as metal and wrought-iron railings that coiled through the balconies and stacks like ivy boughs. The structure might have been imported brick by brick from sooty London and reassembled on this grassy quad within sight of thousands of acres of stalky fields growing a green pelt of corn shoots.

This was the library of a university that Bill Corde would not be admitted to and whose tuition he could not have afforded if he had been.

He had just gotten off the phone with Sheriff Willars in Lewisboro and learned that Dudley Franks was in critical but stable condition. Whatever that meant. Willars had said, "I'm not a happy camper, Bill, no sir," and Corde knew there'd be some hefty reparation payments between the two counties.

Gloom had settled on the New Lebanon Sheriff's Department after the shooting. The manhunt that seemed so like a game several days ago had now turned rooty and mean. Gilchrist was both far crazier and far more savage than any of them had guessed and though those two adjectives were rarely if ever found in the vocabulary of modern law enforcement, Corde now felt the full pressure of their meaning.

Gilchrist, Leon David, 6.1951, Cleary, New York. BA summa cum laude, MA, Northwestern University; PhD English literature, Harvard University; PhD psychology, Harvard University. Assistant Professor and Fellow, Department of English, School of Arts & Sciences, Harvard University. Tenured Professor, Department of English, School of Arts & Sciences, Auden University. Lecturing Professor, Department of Special Education, School of Education, Auden University. Visiting Professor, Vanderbilt University, University of Naples, La Sorbonne Université, College of William & Mary

There were two more full paragraphs.

Corde finished his notes then closed the Directory of Liberal Arts Professors. It contained no picture of Gilchrist – the main purpose of his visit here. Neither did the three books written by Gilchrist in the library's permanent collection. They were books without author photos, books without jackets, smart-person books. Corde jotted a note on a three-by-five card to call the sheriff in Cleary, New York, to see if there were any Gilchrists still in the area.

He flipped quickly through the Index to Periodicals. He was about to close the book when his eye caught the title of an article. He walked to the Periodicals desk and requested the journal the article had been published in. The clerk vanished for a moment and returned with the bound volume of Psyche: The Journal of Psychology and Literature.

Corde sat at his place again, read the first paragraph of "The Poet and the Violent Id" by Leon D. Gilchrist, PhD. He returned to the counter and borrowed a dictionary.

He tried again.

The poet, by which expansive term I am taking the liberty of referring to anyone who creates fictional modes with words, is himself a creation of the society in which he lives. Indeed, it is the obligation of the poet to deliquesce…

"Deliquesce."

Corde marked his place in the journal with his elbow and thumbed through the dictionary. The "levitate" / "licentious" page fell out. He stuffed it back between "repudiate" / "resident" and "residual" / "response".

"Deliquesce, v. To melt by absorbing moisture or humidity contained in the air."

Okay. Good.

… obligation of the poet to deliquesce so that he might permeate all aspects of society…

"Permeate."

Corde lifted the dictionary again.

For ten minutes he fought through the article, his sweaty hands leaving splendid fingerprints on the torn jacket of the dictionary, his stomach wound into a knot – not by what he learned about Gilchrist (which was hardly anything) but by the slippery obscurity of meaning. For the first time Corde truly understood his daughter's predicament.

He paused, saturated by frustration. He breathed slowly several times and resumed.

… does not the id of a pulp thriller writer encompass a lust to travel the countryside, strangling women…

Words…

What did these words say about where Gilchrist was? What state he would flee to, what country? How he would try to escape? What kind of weapon he might use?

Letters syllables words sentences…

What do they say about a beautiful young girl lying dead in a bed of hyacinths, swabbed with cold mud? What do they say about the man who closed his hands around her neck, felt her breasts shaking under his elbows, felt the slow, bloody give of her throat, felt the last shiver of her breath on his wrists as she lay down like a struggling lover and saw for one short moment the darkening glow of the half-moon?

… the metaphors of violence abound…

Corde reached forward and ran a finger along metaphors of violence and seemed to feel heat coming off the ink.

"Metaphor, n. A figure of speech in which an object, idea or symbol is described by analogy…"

WHAT

"Analogy, n. Correspondence between objects generally thought to be dissimilar…"

IS HE TALKING

"Correspondence, n. A similarity…"

ABOUT?

Corde leaned forward and pressed his eye sockets into his palms, hearing tiny pops of pressure.

The motives of the poet are the motives of us all. The mind of the poet is the collective mind. But it is the poet – whether his psyche be that of saint or murderer – who perceived the world by the illumination of pure understanding, while others see only in reflected light.

Bill Corde turned to the last page of the article.

Oh Lord…

He stopped as if he'd been struck, feeling the throbbing as the blood pumped furiously through his neck. He reached forward and lifted the Polaroid from the binding of the journal.

The snapshot had been taken recently, perhaps when the family had cooked supper outside just two evenings ago. He noticed the garbage can had not been righted after a storm last week. Sarah and Jamie stood around the barbecue looking down at the glowing coals. The picture had been taken from somewhere on the other side of the cow pasture in the forest. Almost the exact spot where Corde believed he had seen someone that night he'd kept his long vigil, shotgun-armed and shivering.

Written across the surface of the photo in smeared red ink were the words: SAY GOOD-BYE, DETECTIVE.


Diane Corde, feeling suddenly sheepish, told Ben Breck that she and the children were going to Wisconsin for several weeks.

"What?" Breck asked, frowning.

Diane lifted her hands to her eyes. Her burgundy nail polish was unchipped and her fingers, often red and leathery from the housework, were soft and fragrant with almond-scented lotion. "It's the damn case again."

She explained that there'd been yet another threat by the killer. "Bill thought it was best if we went to visit my sister."

He hesitated and then whispered, "Two weeks?"

She shrugged. "At least. Or until they catch this crazy man. Or find out he's left town."

Breck's downcast boyish face and his tone were identical to those of her first husband when she'd told him she had to spend a week with her mother, who'd fallen and broken her hip. It had been the first time they'd be apart and the young man's face had revealed major heartbreak. Breck's eyes now mirrored the poor man's forlorn expression. This troubled and thrilled her.

They heard a voice outside.

In the backyard, Sarah Corde paced, speaking into her tape recorder like a Hollywood producer dictating memos. Tom, the familiar deputy guard, leaned against the fence rail, his head swiveling slowly like a scout's in an old-time Western as he scanned the horizon for marauders.

Breck and Diane stood in the dining room and watched Sarah silently. They stood one foot away from each other. Diane felt him touch her hair, the motion of his hand very gentle, as if he were afraid he might hurt her. She leaned her head against his shoulder then stepped away, both disappointed and grateful to hear him begin to speak suddenly about Sarah. "She's coming along remarkably well. What a mind! The stories she comes up with are incredible."

"I've given Dr. Parker four tapes already. Her secretary's transcribing the last of them."

He brushed his salt-and-pepper hair off his forehead in a boyish gesture.

"She's fortunate," Breck said slowly, his eyes playing over Diane's face. "She's got a superior auditory processing system. That's how I'm approaching her lessons, and it's working very well."

Diane had recognized something about him. If he had a choice between a ten-dollar word and a twenty-five-cent word, he picked the big one. "Fortunate" instead of "lucky." "Auditory processing," not "hearing." "Onerous." "Ensconce." With anyone else this habit would put her off; in Breck, she found it increased his charm.

No. His "charisma."

He continued to speak about Sarah. This was unusual and she sensed he was propelled by nervousness. In most of these after-session get-togethers – usually in the kitchen, occasionally in the woods – they spoke not of phonemes or the Visual Aural Digit Span Test or Sarah's book but of more personal things. The schools he had taught at, his former girlfriends, her first husband, Diane's life as the daughter of a riverboat worker, vacations they hoped to take. Where they wanted to be in ten years, and five. And one.

Yet the nature of these minutes they spent together was ambiguous. Though they talked intimately Breck had not kissed her; though they flirted he seemed bashful. Their contact was plentiful but often seemed accidental: fingers brushing when passing coffee cups, shoulders easing against each other when they stood side by side. She once shamelessly seated her breasts against his arm as she leaned forward to look at an article on learning disabilities. She thought he had returned the pressure but she couldn't be sure. In any event he neither backed away nor prolonged the moment.

She didn't know whether to expect a proposition or not.

A proposition she would, of course, refuse.

She believed she would refuse. She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to leave. She now touched his arm and he swayed close to her and Diane sensed again the boundary between them that was continually being redefined. They were like teenagers.

Today she believed this barrier was clear and solid. Jamie was only thirty feet away, in his room, and although Bill was at work it wasn't unheard of for him to drop by at this time of day, stay for dinner then return to the office. She and Breck looked at each other for a long moment and she was vastly relieved when he looked at his watch and said, "Must depart, madame…" (She was also pleased that he said this frowning with genuine disappointment.) He gathered his notebooks.

That was when Diane kissed him.

Like a sly college girl, she glanced over her shoulder to make sure Sarah was out of sight then pushed scholarly Breck into the corner of the room and kissed him fast, open-mouthed, then stepped away.

Ohmygod ohmygod…

Panic bubbled inside her. Terrified – not that one of her children had seen, not that word would get back to her husband. No, a more chilling fear: what if he hadn't wanted to?

Breck blinked once in surprise. He put his hand on the back of her neck and pulled her quickly to him. As he kissed her hard, his forearm was leveraged against her breast and his hand made one slow sweep along the front of her blouse then wound around to the small of her back. They embraced for a long moment then Diane willed herself to break away. They stood staring at each other, two feet apart, in surprise and embarrassed defiance.

He whispered, "Can I see you before you go? I have to."

"I don't know. The deputy'll be watching us like a hawk."

"I have to see you. Let's get away somewhere."

She thought. "I just don't see how."

"Look, I'd like to tape Sarah taking some tests. If you're not going to be back for a couple weeks I should do it before you leave. Maybe you could come with us to the school. We could have a picnic."

"I don't know."

"I want you," he whispered.

Diane stepped away, rubbed her hands together. She stared out the window at her daughter prancing about in the grass.

"Did I say something amiss?" Breck asked.

Oh, my. All theses highfalutin' words, all these snappy things he does for Sarah, all the places he's been, and what is at the heart of it all – him being a man and me being a woman.

Do I want this or not? I just can't tell. For the life of me I can't tell…

But she said nothing. She kissed him once more, quickly, then led him by the hand to the door. They walked out to his car and she said to him, "It'll be a couple weeks at the most." In a whisper intended to convey grave significance she added, "I think it's for the best anyway, don't you?"

"No," he said firmly. "I don't."

8

The big problem with the My-T-Fine Tap was the dirty plateglass windows. They let in bleak, northern, cool light, which turned the afternoon patrons all pasty and sick.

Also, sitting at a table you could look up under the bar and see the mosaic of twenty years' worth of gum wads.

Corde ordered an Amstel, so tired he wasn't even thinking it was a weekday, and Kresge said, "I just want to get this right. It's okay to drink light beer on duty?"

Corde changed the order to an iced tea. They sat on stools upholstered in jukebox red vinyl, squinting against the glare. People used to tell Sammie to fill up the window with plants (they died) or blinds (they cost too much). He'd say it's an ugly room who gives a damn anyway. Which it was and nobody did so they all stopped complaining.

Corde asked, "What are we doing here?"

"Waiting for her," Kresge said, and pointed to the woman in her late fifties, slender, short, with foamy gray hair. She was walking through the door on the arm of an older man, balding and also thin.

"Hey, Wynton," the woman called. "How's Darla?"

"Tina, Earl, come on over here for a second." The couple walked over and Kresge said to Corde, "They eat here 'most every day. She and Darla're bridge buddies." Kresge introduced Corde to Earl and Tina Hess. Earl was a lanky retiree of about sixty. His protruding ears and hook nose were bright with a May sunburn.

"What's that uniform you got yourself, Wynton? The school got you all duded up?"

"Got a new job."

"Doing what?"

"I'm a deputy."

"No kidding," Earl said. "Like Kojak."

"He's still got himself some hair left," Corde said. "But not a lot."

"We come for the tuna plates," Tina said. "You want to eat with us?"

Corde shook his head and turned the session over to Kresge, who said, "We've found ourselves a picture and we were thinking maybe you could tell us where it is, Tina." He turned to Corde. "Tina worked for Allied Office Supplies."

"Sales Rep of the Year fifteen years running. My last year I lost to D.K Potts but only because he got himself the Instant Copy Franchises up in Higgins which are owned by the Japanese and I won't comment on that."

Kresge continued, "She's traveled all over the state. Knows every city, bar none."

"Three years ago I put a hundred thirty-seven thousand miles on my Ford. You ever put that much mileage on a car before she rusted? I should bet not."

"No, ma'am," Corde admitted.

"She didn't tell you about the transmissions," Earl said earnestly.

Kresge said, "We've got to find the building that's in the picture."

"That's a sort of tall order," Tina said. "Do I have to testify or anything?"

"No."

"I was hoping I would. You watch Matlock?"

"'Fraid I don't," Corde said. Kresge set the photograph on the table.

"Why's it wrapped up?" Earl asked, poking the plastic bag.

"Evidence," Kresge said.

"Why's it burned?"

"Was in a fireplace," Corde said. "You know where that is?"

"Not much to go on." Tina squinted and studied it. She held it toward her husband and he shrugged. Tina said, "No idea. Why you so interested?"

"It'd help us in an investigation."

She handed it back. "Sorry."

Kresge, taking the failure personally, said, "It was a long shot."

Corde kept the disappointment off his face. "Thanks anyway."

"Were you part of that layoff at Auden?" Earl asked Kresge.

"Layoff?"

"They let near to three hundred people go. Professors and staff."

Kresge whistled. "Three hundred? No. I left before that happened."

"After that professor killed that girl," Earl said, "a lot of people took their kids out. It was in the Register, didn't you read it?"

Tina said, "I wouldn't send my kids to any school that hired professors like that. I can't blame them." The couple wandered off to a booth.

As Kresge and Corde stood and dropped bills onto the bar Tina called from across the room, "Hey, Wynton, got an idea: Why don't you ask somebody in the Fitzberg C of C where that is."

"Who?"

"The Chamber of Commerce."

"That's Fitzberg?" Corde asked, pointing at Kresge's breast pocket where the burnt photo now resided.

"Sure, didn't you know?"

Kresge laughed. "Well, no. You said you didn't recognize it."

"I thought you meant did I know what street it was. Of course it's Fitzberg. What do you think that building is in the background? Fireman's Indemnity Plaza. Where else you think they have a building like that?"

Earl said, "Fitzberg's got a Marshall Field. Best store in the Midwest."


Dean Catherine Larraby walked in a slow circle around the perimeter of an oriental rug that had been acquired in 1887 by the then chancellor of the school, whose first visitor to tread upon the new carpet happened to be William Dean Howells. The august writer was lecturing at Auden on the contemporary novel. Dean Larraby mentioned this fact as she paced, her eyes on the frayed carpet.

Her visitor this morning wasn't as well known as Howells, at least not among literary circles, though the dean treated him more reverentially than if he had been the ghost of the eminent literatus himself.

She was speaking of Howells, of Dickens, of the school's tradition of academic excellence, of the number of Harvard graduates on the Auden faculty and vice versa, when Fred Barrett, a thick-faced, slick-haired businessman from Chicago, stopped her cold by asking, "What's with these murders?"

Dean Larraby, heiress to great administrators and greater scholars, overseer of this bastion of Midwest letters, smelled defeat. She stopped pacing, sighed and returned to her chair.

Here he was, another wealthy businessman, able to loan enough money for her to conceal from the Department of Education auditors the bum loans she and Randy Sayles had made, here he sat, a godsend, and yet she would now have to confess that yes a professor had killed a student, and yes that student's lesbian lover killed herself.

And that the professor had then murdered a colleague.

And that yes enrollment had fallen fourteen percent because of the whole damn mess.

He would then gather his London Fog coat and place his jaunty hat on his head and walk away with his five million dollars. And her job and the viability of Auden University would depart with him. The DOE auditors were due in three days. Barrett had been her last chance.

She sighed and said, "I'm afraid we have had some tragedies on the campus this spring. It's unfortunate. But you see why we need the money so desperately. Once we get this all behind us -"

Barrett asked, "This Professor Sayles is the one who called me. I come all the way from Cicero down here and I find he's dead." He had an accent that she couldn't place.

"I'm sorry if you wasted your time, Mr. Barrett."

He shook his head. "Not a waste yet. Let's talk about lending some money."

Hope glinted. She considered tactics for a moment then said, "You're familiar with Auden University?"

"Not really. It's like a college?

The dean thought he might have been joking but she didn't dare risk a smile. She looked around the room for a moment, intuitively grasped that there was no irony in his question and readjusted her sales pitch. I think it will be helpful to put the loan in context. Auden is one of the nation's premiere institutions of higher learning -"

"I'm sure it's a great place. How much do you want?"

Don't mince words in Chicago, do you? The dean sought refuge in the high-rise of papers on her desk. "I know it sounds like a lot. But I can't tell you how important it is to the school that we get this money."

Barrett cocked an eyebrow, which emphatically repeated his question.

Dean Larraby said softly, "Five million."

He shook his head.

"I know it's a great deal," she pleaded. The nakedness of her voice shocked her and she spoke more slowly. "But the school is in desperate straits. You have to understand that. Without -"

"It's too little. Gotta be ten million minimum or we don't even talk to you."

Dean Larraby believed she misheard the man. She ran through various permutations of his words. "You don't loan anything under ten million?"

"Not worth our while."

"But -"

"Not worth our while."

This was a predicament she had not counted on. "You couldn't make an exception?"

"I could maybe talk my associates down to eight."

She wondered if she was being naive when she asked, "Well, if we were to do business with you, would it be possible to borrow the eight and repay some of it early?"

"Sure. You can borrow it Monday and repay it Tuesday. A lot of my clients do that."

"They do?" Dean Larraby could find no logical reason for this practice and dropped it from her mind. She regained her stride. She lifted the school's financial statements from her desk and handed one to Barrett. He took it and flipped through the document as if it were printed in Chinese. He handed it back. He shook his head. "That does me no good. Just tell me, you want the money or no?"

"Don't you want to know about the fiscal strength of the school? Our debt ratio? Our overhead?" Dean Larraby, a liberal arts workhorse from the U of K, was proud of this financial knowledge she'd learned, this useful knowledge.

"No," Barrett said, "I want to know how much money you want."

"It sounds like you're just asking me to name a figure."

Barrett lifted both eyebrows this time.

She stalled. "Well, what's the interest rate?"

"Prime plus two."

"You should know there's a collateral problem…"

"We're not interested in collateral. We're interested in you paying us back when you're supposed to."

"We'll do that. We're trimming expenses and we've already fired three hundred and twelve employees. We've hired a financial advisor and he's cutting -"

Barrett looked at his watch. "How much?"

The dean inhaled nervously. "Eight million."

"Done." Barrett smiled.

"That's it? You'd write a check to us just like that?"

Barrett snorted a laugh. "Not a check of course."

"Eight million dollars in cash?" she whispered. He nodded. "Isn't that… risky?"

"It's riskier with checks, believe me."

"I guess we could put it directly in the bank."

"No," Barrett said cautiously, "that would be inappropriate." The big word stumbling under his urban drawl. When the dean looked at him quizzically he added, "What most of my clients do is keep it in their own safe and pay it out in small amounts. If you have to bank it make sure it's in different numbered accounts of less than ten thousand each."

"That's a rather strange requirement."

"Yeah, Washington comes up with some funny rules."

The dean's education was expanding exponentially. "Your business is headquartered in Chicago?"

Barrett said, "Among other places."

"And what line are you? Is it banking?"

"A number of lines."

Dean Larraby was nodding. "I don't suppose I should ask where this money comes from."

"Ask whatever you want."

"Where? -"

"Various business enterprises."

The dean was nodding. "This isn't illegal, is it?"

"Illegal?" Barrett smiled like an insulted maitre d'. "Well, let's look at the broad scenario. I'm lending you money at a fair, negotiated rate based on prime. You pay it back, principal and interest." His eyes swept up to a portrait of a sideburned former dean. "That doesn't sound illegal to me."

"I suppose not," she said. The dean looked out on the quadrangle then back to the William Dean Howells rug.

She wondered if she should ask directly if she had just committed her school to a major money laundering scheme but decided it might be insulting or incriminating and the risk of either was enough to put the kibosh on the question.

She looked out the windows and saw a lilac bush bending in a spring breeze. This reminded her of Whitman's poem about Lincoln's death, and free-associating she recalled that the last time she cried was in college on the wet afternoon of November 22,1963. She now felt her eyes fill with tears though this time they came from relief and, perhaps, joy.

She said, "I guess we have a deal."

Barrett kept a noncommittal, what-a-nice-office-you-got smile on his face. He said, "You go up to ten million, I'll shave the points to one and three-fourths."

The dean said, "Mustn't be greedy now. After all, we have to pay it back."

"Yes, ma'am, you've got to do that."


Wynton Kresge said, "He's checking. He's regular Army. Put some salute in your voice when you talk to him."

Corde picked up the receiver and listened to the hollowness of a phone on hold. He was in his office and Kresge was at a desk two feet away. Propelled by nervous energy, both stood rather than sat.

After two minutes a crisp voice came on the line. "Deputy Kresge?"

"Yes sir, I'm here and I have on the line Detective Bill Corde, who's heading the investigation."

"Detective Corde," the voice said forcefully, "Detective Sergeant Franklin Neale up in Fitzberg here. You five by five, sir?"

"Five by five," Corde said.

"Well, sir, I understand we may have one of your perps down here."

"That's what Wynton tells me, Detective. What've you got?"

"Well, that Polaroid you sent was a dead end. We checked deeds and leases for a Gilchrist. Negative that. We knocked on doors of buildings shown in the pics and naturally got negatives there too. But we did some brainstorming and stroked the folks at credit card companies. As best we can tell there's a male perp, cauc, early forties, no distinguishing, using Visa and Amex in the names of Gilchrist comma L. and Sayles comma R.R."

"It's the same person using both cards?"

"That's what we're reading, sir," Neale said.

Corde punched the air with a fist. He winked at Kresge.

"You have a hidey-hole for him?" Kresge asked.

"Holiday Inn Eastwood near the river. Checked in as Sayles."

"He hasn't checked out?"

"No, sir. But we don't know whether he's in or not at the moment."

"Okay," Corde said, "We've got a warrant. Deputy Kresge and I'll be up there in about two hours. You'll keep surveillance on him? Ill fax you the warrant. If he heads out before we get there pick him up, will you?"

"Yessir, it'll be our pleasure. What'd his risk status be?"

"How's that?" Corde asked.

"He armed, dangerous?"

Corde looked at Kresge and said, "Extremely dangerous."

9

The hardest part was lying to him.

It wasn't so difficult to tell him that his father couldn't be at the wrestling match after all. And it wasn't so hard to see Jamie take the news with heroic disappointment, just a nod, not even a burst of temper (which she would have preferred, because that's what she felt). But making up her husband's words just stabbed her through. Your father said to tell you, Diane embellished, that this killer's on the loose and they've got a real solid chance to catch him. He tried to arrange it different but he's the one's got to go. He's sending all his thoughts with you.

"And," Diane said, unable to look into her son's eyes, "he promised he'll make it up to you."

What in truth happened was that Corde had simply left for Fitzberg and hadn't even bothered to call home or tell Emma to do it for him.

What a long long wait it had been! The time had crept past the hour when Corde was due home. Cars passed but no New Lebanon Sheriffs Department We Serve and Protect cruisers hurried up to the house. The minutes dropping away as Jamie and his teammate Davey sat on the couch fidgeting, joking at first as they talked about whupping Higgins High School's butt then looking out the window anxiously then falling silent. As six-thirty came and went Diane had decided she was going to insist that Corde break procedures and take the boys in the cruiser itself, siren blazing and red light going like a beating heart.

At six-fifty Diane had made the call. It was much shorter than she let on. Emma the dispatcher told her Bill and Deputy Kresge had hurried out the door and would be spending the night in Fitzberg.

Diane thanked her then listened to the dial tone as she continued her fake conversation at a higher volume. "Oh, Bill, what happened?… No, really? You've almost got him… Oh be careful, honey… Well, Jamie's going to be good and disappointed and here you were already a half hour late… Okay… Okay… Ill tell him…"

Then she delivered her improvised monologue and asked the deputy to step inside to baby-sit Sarah.

"Let me get another deputy to go with you, Mrs. Corde. Your husband said there's -"

"My husband caused this mess," she growled. "And we don't have time to wait."

Diane and the two boys piled into the station wagon for a frantic ride to the Higgins High School gym. She ran every red light en route and was spoiling for a fight with any uniformed trooper foolish enough to pull her over.

Bill, you and me've gotta talk.

Diane Corde sat on hard bleachers, sipping a watery Coke. She watched the crowds and thought of the smell, the peculiar aroma of school gyms, which a girlfriend had told her years ago came from boys' jockstraps. She wanted to tell this story to someone. She wished Ben Breck were here, sitting next to her.

After ten matches there was a staticky announcement, the only words of which she discerned were "Jamie Corde." She set the Coke beside her and finger-whistled at a hundred decibels. The visiting spectators cheered New Lebanon.

Diane watched her son striding out onto the mat, brooding and engrossed and fluid in his step. She whistled again, bringing fingers to the ears of nearby fans. She wailed for New Lebanon and pummeled the bleachers with her feet – the current fad to show support. Jamie was so focused, so single-minded in his efforts. He ran five miles every day, pumped weights every other. He trained and trained. And he had recovered so well from the tragedy of Philip. He was even taking his father's inexcusable neglect tonight in his stride. Diane felt a huge burst of pride for her son, sending it telepathically out to him as he pulled on his head protector and shook his opponent's hand.

Jamie looked up into the bleachers. She waved at him. He acknowledged her in the only way that a competitor could respond to his mother here – by looking at her once, nodding solemnly then turning away. She didn't mind; she knew he was telling her that he had received her psychic message.

Jamie strapped the blue cloth marker on his arm, then reared his head back and breathed deeply.

The whistle blew and the boys exploded into frenzy. Jamie's legs tensed then uncoiled as he leapt at his opponent – a tall blond sophomore – like a striking snake. They gripped arms and necks, heads together. Spinning, spinning, feet snagging the spongy blue mat, inching like grappling crabs. Limbs confused with limbs. Dots of sweat flew. Faces crimson under foam protectors, tendons rising thick from their necks. Furious scrabbling around the mat, hands were claws, gripping at knees and wrists.

Diane shouted, "Go, go. GO! Come on, JAMIE!!"

A brutal take-down, Jamie lifting the boy off the mat and driving him down onto his back. His head bounced and the boy gazed upward, momentarily stunned. Face glistening, Jamie pressed him hard into the mat furiously, his opponent's arms flailing. Several blows struck Jamie on the back. They were solid strikes but they rebounded without effect.

What was happening?

Diane was frowning, aware suddenly of the quiet of the crowd around her. Then people in the bleachers were on their feet, shouting at the coaches and at the two boys. The blond opponent tried to muscle himself away from Jamie, a centimeter at a time, toward the out-of-bounds line, twisting onto his side, shouting. He'd given up and was bent on pure escape. Several people shot Diane shocked glances as if she were responsible for her son's brutal attack.

She shouted, "Jamie, stop!"

His opponent's arm was turning blue-gray under Jamie's relentless grip, his legs kicked in despair. The referee's whistle blew shrilly. Jamie didn't let go. He kept driving the boy into the ground and twisting his arm, from which the red marker fluttered like a distress signal.

"Jamie!" she called. "Honey…"

The referee started forward. The sports-coated coaches were on their feet, shouting, red-faced, running toward the mat. The referee dropped to his knees and slapped both hands on Jamie's shoulders. Jamie spun toward him and hit him hard in the chest. Off balance, the referee rolled onto his back.

Diane screamed her son's name.

Jamie rose on one knee. Using all his leverage he bent his opponent's forearm up up up… Thock. Diane heard the noise of the break all the way up in the bleachers. She froze where she stood and raised her hand to her mouth, watching her son standing, smiling and triumphant, over the unconscious figure of his vanquished enemy. Jamie turned on the coaches and they froze. Then the boy held his arm out straight and high then closed his fingers into a fist. Diane saw him glance toward her as he ran out the open double doors to the football field, his arm still lifted in the macabre salute of victory.


Detective Frank Neale was pretty much what Corde expected. Crew cut, blond, beefy, smooth ruddy skin. Too professional to put an If we outlaw guns then only outlaws will have guns sticker on his Fitzberg police cruiser but dollars to doughnuts there'd be one on his (American) 4X4.

But God bless him, he met Corde and Kresge after their frantic two-hour drive with a thermos of the best coffee Corde had ever tasted and four fat roast beef sandwiches. They ate these as they raced through the bleak streets of urban-decaying Fitzberg en route to what Neale described as an MCP in the parking lot across from the Holiday Inn.

"MCP?" Kresge asked.

Neale said, "Mobile command post."

"Oh."

Corde thought it wouldn't be much more than a police car with maybe two radios, which is what an MCP in New Lebanon would have been. But no it was a big air-conditioned Ford van with room for six officers inside. There was a large antenna dish on the roof. Kresge pointed out the bulletproof windows in the front.

"Jesus," Corde whispered. "Maybe they got cannons, too."

No artillery but a rack of laser-sighted M-16s, a gray box containing concussion grenades and rows of radios and computer screens and other imposing electronics. Kresge said, "All this for one perp?"

Standing as straight as the barrel of a goose-gun, Neale said, "A lawbreaker's a lawbreaker, Deputy, and a killer's my least favorite kind."

"Yeessir," said Kresge. "I'll go along with you there."

Corde hoped someday soon he could play the eye-rolling game with Kresge. He said to Neale, "Where's Gilchrist now?"

Neale said, "TacSurv says he's in the room."

Kresge asked, "Tac?…"

"Tactical Surveillance. They say he's in the room but we've got a glitch. He's taken in two innocents with him. A couple prostitutes."

"His profile isn't a lust killing but he's very unstable."

Neale said, "We've got a Sensi-Ear on him. He's paid the ladies already and now they're getting down to fun and games. If he goes rogue on us we'll do a kick-in and nail him but if not it's our policy to wait until we're out of hostage situations. Is he the sort who'd take a hostage?"

"He'd do anything," Corde said emphatically, "to escape."

"Okay," Neale said, "subject to your go-ahead, sir, we wait."


The wind swirls into the low bowl of the cemetery and slips inside Jamie's one-piece wrestling uniform.

The boy shivers and stands up. He carefully walks around the portion of the grave in which Philip's body lies and he leaves the cemetery, walking slowly to the Des Plaines River. Here the water's course is narrow and as close to a rapids as a Midwest farmland river ever gets. Upstream a quarter mile it forks and swirls around a small, narrow island filled with brush and dense trees. You can't wade the water but you can reach the island by a thick fallen birch, which he and Philip crossed hundreds of times to reach the Dimensioncruiser that the island so clearly resembles. Jamie crosses the tree now, looking down into the turbulence of the sudsy phosphate-polluted water and once across walks the familiar path past the cruiser's control room, the engine room, the xaser torpedo tubes, the escape vehicle…

Jamie stops. He sees on the other side of the island a night fisherman, casting leisurely out into the water. Jamie is bitterly betrayed. Furious. This is their private place, his and Philip's. No one else is allowed here. In the days since Philip died Jamie has come here nearly every day to walk the cruiser's decks. He angrily resents this man's invading the island, taking it over like a Honon warrior. The fisherman turns and looks at the boy in surprise then smiles and waves. Jamie ignores him and walks sullenly back through the island.

Jamie stands under pines crowned with dusty illumination from the lights of Higgins. He pitches stones into the water. In the gurgle of the torrent he imagines he hears the chugging rhythms of Geiger – the searing guitar riffs, the screams from the sweating hatter of a lead singer. He suddenly feels two mosquito stings on his arms. After the insects drink for a moment he smashes them viciously, leaving bloody black spots on his forearms. He listens to the roar of the water.

Do. Yourself.

You gotta do yourself.

You. Got. To. Do. Yourself.

The sky, long past blue, is now the gray color of a xaser torpedo before it detonates. The clouds separate for a moment and Jamie sees the first star of the evening. He feels a cloudburst of agony in his soul, the pain gushing through him. He is gripped with coarse panic and runs to the birch bridge. He steps onto the tree.

Do yourself. You gotta do yourself now!

Jamie walks halfway across then stops. He lifts his arms, like Dathar-IV standing on top of the State Governance Building Bridge, a thousand feet above the solar crystals, Honon troops closing in from either side. Jamie Corde stretches his arms high above his head, two eyes closed, balancing on twenty toes, above a single abyss of racing water.

By the power of Your wisdom, by the strength of Your might, guide me, O Guardians, to the Lost Dimension, from darkness to light…

He drops like a meteorite into the dark rage of water. He feels a scraping pain against his ear as the side of his head smacks the tree on his way down, then a cold colder than he's ever felt envelops his body, squeezing every last bit of breath from his lungs.

Jamie Corde looks up, he sees water, he sees blood and he sees in the tunnel of blackness above him a single star, which he knows is the eye of a Guardian, agreeing to lift him away, safely into a new dimension.


A second thermos of coffee appeared. Neale ran his fingers along his buzz-cut hair and told them of the time one of his snipers picked off a perp at eight hundred yards. "God held his breath for that one," Neale said reverently.

On a panel like the dashboard of a 747 a lonely red light began flashing and an electronic beep pulsed. A sergeant picked up a receiver. "MCP One. This is an unsecured landline. Go ahead." He listened for a moment. "Detective Corde, for you."

"Me?" He took the receiver. "Corde here."

"Bill." The hollowness of Diane's whisper cried a hundred different messages to him.

He said, "Honey, what is it? Why are you -"

"Bill."

Corde could hear she'd already cried volumes. He heard noises behind her. Other voices. He hated that sound. They were hospital sounds. He asked, "Sarah?"

"Jamie."

"What happened?"

"He's in a coma. He… Oh, Bill, he tried to kill himself. A fisherman found him but -"

"Oh, my Lord."

He remembered, and the thought was like a wallop in the stomach. "The wrestling match? I missed it."

She didn't speak for a moment. "Come home, Bill. I want you here."

"Is he going to be okay?"

"They don't know. He almost drowned. He hit his head when he went in. Come home now."

When they hung up Corde said, "Wynton, Jamie's hurt. I've got to go."

"Oh, no, Bill. Was it him?" He nodded toward the hotel.

"No. Something else. Pretty serious. I've got to go. You're in charge here."

Wynton Kresge had the love for seven children in his voice when he said, "I'll be thinking of you." Corde couldn't speak but just rested his hand on the deputy's huge back. In that brief gesture, Kresge felt a huge weight shift and remain on him even after Corde stepped out the door. Kresge said, "We'll get him, Bill. We'll get him."

10

"I did this one bad, didn't I?" Corde said.

They sat in the intensive care unit of Community Hospital in a small waiting room separated from their son by a thick blond wood door. The doctors were in with him now. Occasionally the large silver handle of a doorknob would flick and a nurse or doctor would exit silently. This was the purest of punishments.

They held hands but there was minimal returning pressure from Diane's. Corde figured he wasn't entitled to expect otherwise. Other than to tell him that Jamie was in critical condition and still unconscious, Diane hadn't said more than five words since he'd arrived after a perilous drive from Fitzberg through the vast Midwest night. This was her worst anger, a peaceful-eyed, camouflaged fury that seemed almost curiosity.

For the first time in his marriage Corde wondered if he'd lost his wife.

"The case ran off with me."

He was thinking mostly of the impact on Jamie but he remembered too that he'd turned down the job of sheriff because of Jennie Gebben's death. He supposed Diane also was thinking of this. "I wish you'd say something."

"Oh, Bill, how can you figure it all out? Here we spent all our time with Sarah. We just assumed Jamie didn't need us the way she did. And it turns out he was the one that did, and she's doing better without us."

"This was mostly me," Corde said. "I knew about the match. I was even looking forward to it. Then I heard about Gilchrist and I got like a dog, sniffing rabbit."

She stood up and walked down the hall to a pay phone. Whoever she was calling was not home. She grimaced, hung up, retrieved her coin and sat down in silence.

Their vigil continued. Corde took a quarter from his pocket and started rolling it over his fingers. The coin fell and rang as it spun to a stop. He picked it up and put it back into his pocket. Then the door opened and three doctors walked out. Both husband and wife locked onto their faces and began panning for clues but goddamn they were stone-eyed. One, the chief neurologist, sat in a chair beside Diane. He began to speak.

Corde heard the words. "Brainstem… Minimal… Serious concussion… No life support…" He talked for five minutes and told them all the things they could do for Jamie. They seemed to be good words or at least not bad words but when Corde said, "When will our boy wake up?" the doctor said, "I don't have an answer for you."

"But what do we do?"

"Wait."

Corde nodded. Diane was crying. The doctor asked if they'd like sedatives. They answered, "No," simultaneously.

"It wouldn't hurt to get some sleep," the doctor answered. "I really don't think he'll take a turn for the worse."

Corde said, "Why don't you run home, honey, get some rest."

"I'm staying with my boy."

"I'm staying too."

When the doctor left she curled up in an orange fiberglass chair and it seemed that she was instantly asleep. Corde rose and walked into the room to sit beside his son.


"Okay, Deputy, home base is clear."

Wynton Kresge opened his eyes. Franklin Neale stood above him, shaking him awake.

"What time is it?"

"Six-thirty. In the AM. The hookers're gone and home base is clear."

"Beg pardon?" Kresge asked.

The magic thermos appeared again and coffee was poured. Kresge added three packets of sugar and sipped from the red plastic cup.

Neale said, "You want to go in after him now or wait till he comes out?"

Kresge was asking Bill Corde silent questions and not a one of them got answered. He looked at Neale, fresh as a recruit on parade. He was clean-shaved. "What do you think?"

Neale shrugged. "Well, tactically, it's your classic situation. If we go into his hidey-hole there's a better chance of return fire. If we get him on the street we could lose him or get some civvies casualtied in a firefight."

Hearing this, the military lingo, made Kresge feel better. He decided he wasn't so much out of his element after all. "I'd like to go in and get him."

"Fair enough, Deputy. We've got our SWAT team on standby. You want them to do it?"

Wynton Kresge said, "I'll go in. I want them as backup."

And the crew-cut rosy-skin detective was nodding, solemn and eye-righteous, one grunt to another. "That's the way I'd do it." Then he looked over Kresge's large frame and said, "Okay, let's suit you up in body armor. I think we've got something that might fit."

As he applied the Velcro straps to the Type II vest with the Supershok plate over the heart, Wynton Kresge thought suddenly of an aspect of being a policeman that he had never considered. If the point of being a cop was ultimately to save lives then the flip side was true also – he might have to take a life.

All the while sitting in his Auden U office chair, feeling the rub of the Taurus automatic pistol on his belt, he had never really considered using the gun. Oh, there'd been his theatrical little fantasies about winging terrorists. But now Kresge felt dread. Not at the real possibility that in five minutes he'd be dodging slugs but at the opposite – that he would have to send bullets hissing through the body of another man. The thought terrified him.

"… Deputy?"

Kresge realized the detective was speaking to him.

"Yes?"

Neale opened a diagram of the hotel. "Look here."

"Where'd you get that?"

"Our SWAT team has layouts of all the hotels in town. Bus and train stations and most of the office buildings too."

This seemed like a good idea. Maybe he'd suggest it to Corde.

"Okay, he's in here. Room 258. There's no connecting door. But there's this thing here. What is it?"

One of the other officers said, "They have a microwave and a little refrigerator there. Pipes. Stainless steel sink. It's probably enough to stop the hollowpoints but we can't use jacketed because of the street on the other side."

"Deputy?"

Kresge said, "I don't think we should give him any warning. No gas or grenades. Take the door down and move in fast before he has a chance to set up a fire zone." He'd seen this in a Mel Gibson movie. He added, "If that's in accordance with procedures?"

Neale said, "Sounds good to me, Deputy. Let's get -"

"Sergeant," the young patrolman at the radio console said, "he's rabbitting! Left the room and is moving toward Eastwood." He listened into his headset for a moment then announced to Neale and Kresge, "TacSurv advising SWAT. They're three blocks away. They'll proceed to deployment."

"Roger," the detective said. "Where's he headed?"

"Toward the river. On foot. Got his suitcase with him. He's moving fast."

Kresge said, "Where's that from here?"

"A block."

"Well, let's go get him."

Neale pulled on a blue cap that said POLICE on the crest.

"TacSurv says he's vanished. He turned before he got to the bridge – into those old warehouses down by the riverfront. He's gone north, they guess."

The door of the van burst open and Kresge squinted against the blinding light. "Which way?"

"Follow me." Neale began running across the street. Past a scabby field overgrown with weeds and strewn with rusted hunks of metal. Kresge could see block after block of one- and two-story warehouses. Most of them dilapidated. Some burnt out.

A perfect hiding place for someone on the run.

A perfect vantage place for a sniper.

An Econoline van screeched to a stop nearby. Five SWAT officers jumped out. Kresge heard: "Load and lock. Green team, deploy south. Blue, north. Hug the river. Go, go, go!"

Neale pulled up in front of the first building. "Deputy?"

Kresge looked at him and saw he was motioning to Kresge's pistol, still in its holster.

"Oh." Kresge unsnapped the thong and drew the gun. He pumped a round into the chamber and slid his right index finger parallel to the barrel. He felt a monumental spurt of energy surge through his chest. Neale pointed to himself then to the right. Kresge nodded and turned the opposite way, toward the river. A minute later Kresge found himself in a long alleyway through which ran rusted narrow-gauge rail lines. It was filled with thousands of black doorways and windows and loading docks.

"Oh, boy," he sighed, and jumped over a small stone abutment, as he ran into the war zone.

The first five buildings were pure hell. Spinning, ducking, aiming his pistol at shadows and garbage bags and shutters. Then having gotten this far without being shot, Kresge grew bolder. Gilchrist didn't want to get trapped. His whole point's to escape. He's not going to back himself into a closed warehouse.

Though it was in a warehouse that Kresge found him.

The deputy stepped into a huge abandoned space, pillars of jagged sun coming through the broken panes of skylight.

And there was the man he sought. Not fifty feet away, hiding beside an old boiler. He held no weapons, just an old suitcase. He looked benign and small next to the huge tank, a slight man, blond, ashen and nervous. It occurred to Kresge that this was the first time anybody involved in the investigation had actually seen Leon Gilchrist. It wasn't much of a sighting; the light here was dusty and diffuse.

Kresge shouted, "Freeze."

The man did, but only in shock and only for a moment. Then very slowly he turned his back to Kresge and started to walk away as if he were reluctantly leaving a lover.

"Stop! I'll shoot."

Step by step he kept going, never looking back.

Kresge aimed. A clear target. Perfect. Better than on the small arms range at Higgins. His finger slipped into the guard and he started putting poundage on the trigger. About halfway to its eleven pounds of pull he lowered the gun and muttered, "Shit." Then took off at a full gallop.

Ahead of him the silhouette became a shadow and then vanished.


One of the patrolmen temporarily assigned to FelAp, the Fitzberg Felony Apprehension Squad, was Tony LaPorda, a great, round chunk of a man, who wore his service revolver high on his belt and his illegal.380 automatic in a soft holster under his pungent armpit. He was a small-city cop – a breed halfway between the calm, slope-shouldered civil servant urban police of, say, New York and the staunch cowboys of Atlanta or San Antonio.

LaPorda wore a leather jacket with a fur collar and dark slacks and a hat with a patent-leather brim and checkered band around the crown. He was typical of the five patrolmen working North Side GLA, who'd been told to volunteer for a couple hours at time and a half to collar some professor from New Lebanon who'd stuck the big one to a student of his.

For this assignment LaPorda was given a special frequency for his Motorola and a flak jacket but not an M-16 (nobody but SWAT had rifles, this Leon Gilchrist not being a terrorist or anything but a fucking professor). LaPorda was not very excited about the project especially when it turned out that the perp was on the move. LaPorda hated running even more than he hated the riverfront.

He trotted lethargically toward one large warehouse where he figured he might sit the whole thing out. He pulled up with a stitch in his side, thinking, Jesus Christ, this fucking aerobic fucking Jane Fonda crap is what they pay fucking SWAT for.

He leaned against a warehouse wall, listening to the staticky voices of what a buddy had dubbed the Felony Apprehension Response Team (nobody was faster than cops with this sort of acronym). LaPorda called in too, saying that he'd had no sign of the perp but was on his way to the riverfront for further investigation. Then he dug into his jacket pocket for his Camels. He shook one out and put his lips around it.

He was startled when a polite voice next to him said, "Need a match?"

When LaPorda turned he didn't see who was speaking. All he saw was a rusty pipe, four inches wide and about four feet long, as it whistled square into his face. The ponk echoed off the walls nearby. LaPorda collapsed in a large pile and began to bleed heavily. He did not lose consciousness at first and was aware of hands rifling his shirt. The hands were persistent but delicate; the man they belonged to didn't seem very strong. Professor's hands, he thought then he passed out.


Wynton Kresge caught him lifting the fallen patrolman's service revolver out of its holster. Kresge wondered if Gilchrist had killed the officer. "Hold it right there." He turned and their eyes met. The two were alone. There were no footsteps, no crackles of walkie-talkies. The rest of the teams had passed them by. "Don't move," Kresge said. He aimed at the darting, dark eyes then remembered the Deputy's Procedural Guide. Rule 34-6. The chest, not the head, is the preferred target in an arrest situation.

Kresge said, "Drop the gun."

The sunlight bounced off a high window and illuminated the men in pale light.

"Drop it."

"Let's talk about this."

Kresge nodded at the man's gun. "Now!" It was a double-action revolver. All Gilchrist had to do was aim and pull the trigger. No safety, no slides. Rule 34-2. Identify suspect's weapon immediately. "I'm not going to tell you again."

"Do you want some money? How much do you want? A thousand? No problem." He nodded toward the cop. "That was an accident. He fell. I was trying to help him. You want two thousand?" He gestured casually toward his suitcase, which moved the muzzle of the revolver closer to Kresge.

He remembered the silhouette targets on the Higgins range. He said, "I'll count to three."

"Hey, why don't you just count to ten and give me a chance to go away? What could be easier than that? Two thousand dollars cash. I've got it right there in my suitcase."

"If you don't drop the gun immediately," Kresge said, "I am going to shoot you."

"Oh, I don't think so, Officer."

11

"He moved. He said something."

"Detective Corde?" the nurse said.

"I don't know what it was exactly," he explained.

"Telephone for you, sir."

Corde said to her, "He moved. He said something."

The nurse, who knew all about sleep-deprivation hallucinating, glanced down at Jamie's immobile form "That's wonderful."

"He sat up."

She had also read Jamie's chart and she knew that he was as likely to fly loop-de-loops through the room as he was to sit up and utter one syllable. "That's wonderful."

"Don't you want to tell the doctor?"

She said, "It's a policeman in Fitzberg on the line. He said it's urgent."

"Okay." Corde turned his red eyes to the phone. He walked groggily toward it.

"No, sir, it's out here. We don't put calls through to the ICU."

"Oh."

Standing at the nurses' station Corde accepted the phone and said, "Hello?"

He heard Wynton Kresge ask, "How's your son?"

"He's asleep now, Wynton. But he sat up and said something to me. I heard him. I don't know what he said but I heard him."

"That's good. Bill, Gilchrist is dead."

"Uh-huh. You got him?"

"He was trying to get away. He had Sayles's credit cards in his wallet. Some other people's too. He'd stolen them or bought them. He was going to cover his tracks real well."

"What happened?"

"Bill, I wanted to talk to you about it. About what I did. He had a gun. He was waving it around. I shot him. Four times."

"That's good, Wynton."

"I couldn't stop myself. I kept pulling the trigger. He just fell over and died. I shot him four times."

"You did fine."

"But the thing is, Bill, I wasn't sure, I mean, not really sure he was going to use his gun. I just couldn't tell."

"Did they give it to the Fitzberg DA? They're not going to indict you, are they?"

"No. But it's not the law part I'm talking about. I killed him and he might not have been going to shoot me."

"Wynton, he killed Jennie and he killed Sayles. He was going to draw down on you."

"But I just don't know he was."

Corde was looking back into the hospital room. All he could see was a mound under the gray sheet that was his Jamie. "We never really know, Wynton…"

"I didn't want to bother you, Bill, but I had to say it, kind of get it off my chest."

"You get back, you and me'll go hunting. We can talk about it then." Corde closed his eyes and leaned wearily against the wall.

"I hope Jamie gets better real soon."

"He talked to me," Corde said. "Did I tell you that? He sat up and said something to me. I wish I could remember what." Corde missed the nurse glancing at him with a sad, straight line of a mouth.

Kresge said, "Tell him I'm thinking of him."

"I will, Wynton."

Corde hung up the telephone and walked back into Jamie's room.

Bill Corde, a tall man now hunched over, with short trimmed hair now mussed, a man in whose heart one grave burden had been eased while another had been accepted. He sat down on a low chair beside his son's bed.


Corde didn't know what a fashion plate was but he decided if Dr. Parker was one it was no way an insult. He wished New Lebanon could get a few more of them.

Sitting at the spotless desk, the good doctor was wearing a hot pink dress cut low enough so Corde could have seen a number of freckles on her chest if he was inclined to look, which he was and he did. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she was wearing a thick gold bracelet, which Corde figured he himself might've bought her, what with all the fees. She had matching earrings and he imagined that those too were courtesy of him.

"I'm pleased to meet you at last, Officer."

On the other hand the way she dabbed her eyes over him he believed she was examining him distrustfully. He wondered if Diane had blown some whistles. "Well, I sure have heard good things about you, Doctor. Sarah's a whole new girl since she's been seeing you."

The Dr. Parker of reputation emerged. She nodded aside the compliment and asked abruptly, "Sarah's here, isn't she?"

"She's in the waiting room."

"Why didn't your wife come? She at the hospital?"

"That's right. Jamie's been in and out of consciousness. They think he's going to be all right. He might have some memory problems, they say. Maybe some other things. A neurologist is going to give him some tests. Dr. Weinstein? At Community? Supposed to be the best in the county. That's what we heard."

Dr. Parker gazed at Corde passively and said nothing.

"You know what happened was…" Corde's voice suddenly stopped working.

Dr. Parker continued, "He tried to kill himself. Mrs. Corde told me."

"I don't know what it'll be like when he gets home. I don't know what happened exactly or why. But if you'd be available…"

"I'd be happy to see both of you," she said sincerely, but didn't seem to be looking forward to it.

Both of us? Corde nodded. "I'd appreciate that."

The doctor opened her drawer and lifted out a thick handful of papers. Corde had a bad moment thinking they were more bills. She slid them across the desk. He glanced at the first one, dense with single-spaced writing and topped by Sarah's byline. Without looking up he said, "She wrote these?"

"They're her most recent tapes. My secretary's typed them up. She speaks very well, you'll notice. There are only a few places where the words are garbles. And remarkably few places where she goes back to correct herself or misspeaks."

Corde clipped through the stack. "There must be a hundred pages here."

"Close to it."

He had thought all along that the whole idea was silly. If Sarah was going to do all this work why not make her copy a history book or science book? Something practical? Something that she could use in school. What possible benefit did these stories have? But he kept this to himself. He knew he'd play along with the doctor. She was the expert; besides, Bill Corde was nothing if not a sport.

"Is it really a book?"

"More a collection of short stories with recurrent characters. Like the Winnie the Pooh stories or Song of the South. You know, Br'er Fox and Br'er Rabbit."

"Are they any good?"

"Mr. Corde, for a nine-year-old with her history and her problems they are remarkable."

"What should I do with them?"

"You? Nothing. Dr. Breck is using these stories in Sarah's exercises. Her learning will be exponentially increased if she works with words that she herself has created."

Exponentially. "Sure. It's probably a lot of fun too."

Some blunder here. Dr. Parker was frowning. "It's mostly a great deal of work."

"Sure. I'll bet it is." Corde riffled the pages again and let the breeze scented with typewriter oil and expensive bond paper blow into his face. He rose and started toward the waiting room, where Sarah was waiting. "She did this all by herself? Hell, I get sweaty hands every time I have to write out an incident explanation on an MV-204 form."

"Maybe your daughter can teach you a few things, Mr. Corde," Dr. Parker said, and allowed herself an indulgent smile.


Bill Corde doesn't know what to think.

He sits on a folding chair in his den and flips back and forth through Sarah's book. He's read about shape-changing wizards, about dragons and princesses and talking cars, flying loaves of bread, dancing blackbirds and bobcats that sing opera under full moons.

"Why bobcats?"

"Because that's what they are," Sarah explains.

"Why opera?"

"Because," she answers with such exasperation that Corde, who asked the question solely because he couldn't think of anything else to say, feels ashamed and therefore doesn't ask why the full moon, which he'd intended to.

"This is what Dr. Breck and I are doing," she explains, touching the typed sheets first then a blank piece of paper in front of her. "We move all these words over here like they're on a magic train."

"A train. Ah."

They sit in the den, Corde with his shoes off, stretched back on the couch feeling like a dog in front of a fire. Sarah is at the wobbly desk. Corde had been by the hospital at seven that morning. He is utterly exhausted though much of that fatigue is held at bay by his daughter's enthusiasm for copying her book. Her leg vibrates with excitement at her task.

It's a mystery to Corde, all these stories of magic otters and flying eagles and trolls and shining wizards. Corde's library contains mostly hunting and fishing nonfiction. The animals he reads about are wolves and grizzles and damn clever trout who elude the most well-placed tufts of fly. They do not wear aviator hats and wetsuits and they do not hold parties in tree trunks or sing any kind of music in the moonlight.

He decides that his daughter would be the kind of film director whose movies he would not go to see.

But he can compliment her on her work, which he does, and watch with fascination as she leans forward, writing with the awkward elegance of a doe on ice.

Corde notices her techniques. With her index finger she writes letters and words on her palm, she traces the letters in a dust of salt on the tabletop, she tears sheets of paper containing a single word into portions of the word and stares at them. Corde himself forgets what the fragments of words are called. Syllabus? No. Then he remembers, syllables. Although her spelling still needs much work, her self-confidence is bursting. He has never seen her enjoy herself this way. He looks at the first page of the slim stack of sheets Sarah has printed.


MY BOOK

BY SARAH REBECCA CORDE, FOURTH GRADE

DEDICATED TO DR BRECK MY TUTOR


Corde stares at this for a few minutes, wondering if jealousy will surface. It does not.

When she finishes, Corde rises to leave. He watches her for a moment then leans forward and hugs her suddenly and hard. This surprises and pleases her and she hugs back enthusiastically. Corde does not tell his daughter that the complex gratitude he is filled with is only in part for her.

12

An officer in the Fitzberg Police Department's Demographics and Vital Statistics Division made the discovery.

The DemVit man had been cross-checking prints of the bodies of recent DCDS's found at crime scenes against Known Felons (Warrants Open) and was at the tail end of his shift so it took him longer than it normally would have to find the glitch. He marked his conclusion down on an BID form and was about to drop it in the interoffice mail to the Detective Division when he noticed that the body was due for shipping out later that day.

Oh, boy,

Reluctantly he called Mister Master Sergeant Super Detective Franklin Neale.

"Detective? This is Tech Officer Golding in DemVit?"

"Yes, Golding, what's on the agenda?" Neale said.

Hup, two, three four

"There's an EID on that deceased confirmed dead you sent to the morgue two days ago?"

"An erroneous ID?" Neale growled. "Tell me about it, Officer."

"We had a tentative ID from personal effects and from some out-of-town deputy?"

"Yes, that's right. The DCDS was the perp in a four-eleven, two counts. Fellow was a real bad operator."

Tell me, dickhead, do you polish your medals every night? "Yessir," Golding said, "Well, the prints the coroner sent down match a felon there's a bench warrant out on. Eddie Scavello. Two counts armed, one burglary and ten receiving stolen. Rap sheet full of hot plastic."

"You're sure?"

"We're talking ninety-eight percent."

There was silence. Neale said, "Okay, do me a favor, fax the BID to Harrison County and New Lebanon. Sheriffs' Departments."

"They have a fax machine in New Lebanon?"

"Officer," Neale said, "Consolidated Law Enforcement Agency Guidelines require one in every town -"

It was a joke.

"- over five thousand population."

"Oh, that's right. I'm glad you reminded me. Whose attention?"

"Wynton Kresge at County, William Corde in New Lebanon. That's Deputy Kresge and Detective Corde. Write that down and don't get them mixed up."

"No, sir. I wouldn't."

"And attach a cover note – mark it urgent – and tell them it looks like their boy Gilchrist is still a loose cannon. My compliments on a job well done, Tech Officer."

"A pleasure to be of help, Detective."


Brian Okun celebrated the announcement that Auden University would stay open for another year in what he thought was an appropriate manner: he fucked a student on Leon Gilchrist's desk.

He had another cause for celebration as well. He would, subject to formal acceptance of his PhD thesis this summer, be joining the faculty of the Department of English, College of Arts and Sciences, Auden University.

Okun was now alone. The blond student – ironically, one who had sat next to Jennie Gebben in his seminar session – was gone and he sat naked to the waist in Gilchrist's chair, spinning in slow circles. The blinds were down and since the AC was off (the school being officially closed for two weeks until summer school began) the office was hot as an Ozark swamp in August. Okun looked at spots of moisture on the desktop and wondered whether they were semen or sweat.

Okun had been shocked at the news that Gilchrist was a killer. For a horrible moment he had wondered if the rumor he had started had gotten out of hand. But in reading the Register he had understood that Gilchrist and Jennie had had an affair. But killing her and Professor Sayles! Astonishing. Okun had suspected that Gilchrist was violent and probably was capable of murder but he had never thought that he would kill.

And now the son of bitch was himself dead, shot down by police… Okun searched his repertoire for a suitable maxim that might summarize the man. He could think of nothing.

Slipping on his T-shirt, Okun stretched out again, gazing at the old prints, at the hundreds of books that he supposed would go into Gilchrist's estate. An old volume of Freud that might be valuable. More recent books on psychoses and literature. Okun had no claim to them, even as Gilchrist's academic successor, but he figured he could pilfer the choicest ones before the dean raided the office. Musing on these additions to his library, feeling warm and spent, smelling a May breeze and the redolence of sex, Okun closed his eyes.

He was awakened sometime later by a slight stinging on his neck. At first he thought a bee or mosquito had gotten him but as he reached up to the sting he found himself so weak that he could barely lift his hand above his chest.

He looked down and saw that his shirt was soaked with blood. He cried out and forced his hands to his neck. He touched the loose flap of skin where his carotid artery had been severed. Okun tried to stand and fell immediately to the floor. He grabbed at the telephone cord and pulled it off the desk onto the floor beside him.

"Ohgodhelp…" The weakness of his voice terrified him.

He pressed 9.

The receiver slipped from his bloody hand. He managed to retrieve it.

He pressed 1.

He stared at the blurring number pad of the phone. He tried to touch the final digit but found his arm would not respond. He heard a hum and a click then a three-part ascending musical tone followed by a woman's electronically-generated voice speaking to him, saying the last words he would ever hear: "Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try your call again."


Diane Corde slipped her arms around Ben Breck and hugged him hard.

This seemed a wholly natural thing to do: standing up in her garden as she watched him pull up in the driveway then walking quickly to him, wrapping her arms around him, feeling his around her.

Wholly natural. This frightened her terribly. She said, "I left a message for you at the library."

"I've been over at Arts and Sciences. How's Jamie?"

"That's what I called about. He's much better. I just got back from the hospital."

Diane realized with a shock that they were still embracing. She stepped back quickly. Oh, God, the neighbors… At least he didn't kiss me… She looked around and stepped into the cover of the juniper bushes. Breck followed.

And why didn't he kiss me?

Diane haltingly explained Jamie's diagnosis by rote, not even hearing the words she'd repeated a dozen times that day.

As they talked Breck slipped his hands into his pockets. This added to his boyishness and made him infuriatingly appealing. He wore dark jeans and a thick burgundy sweater with a braided collar. He said, "You told me on the phone that Wisconsin's out."

"Surely is. Seems they got that fellow. Got him up in Fitzberg."

Relief seemed to flood into his face. "I'm glad you won't be going."

"Agree with you there. Doris's never outgrown the big sister complex. And it's hardly fair since she only outranks me by thirteen months."

"I have more selfish reasons for being glad you're not going." He spoke seductively.

Diane swallowed. "Say, Ben, I think you and I ought to have a talk."

"Somewhere alone." He smiled. "Private." A thought seemed to slip spontaneously into his mind. "How about my place?"

"No," she whined playfully. "I'm serious."

The smile faded. "Are you saying you don't want to see me?"

"No," Diane said quickly. "I'm just saying we have to talk. Before things get… You know. Get too complicated."

"Fair enough."

Diane tamped on mounds of moist earth at the base of some newly planted zinnias and asked if he wanted something to drink. She had a recurring image – of her pouring coffee or wine into him in the afternoons. Trying to delay his leaving. All these beverages struck her as funny. She wondered if he ever felt waterlogged on the drive home.

"No, I just better collect Sarah. I've got the video camera reserved for two-thirty."

"Honey," Diane shouted, "Dr. Breck's here."

"Kay," came the answering shout. Diane asked, "These tests you're giving Sarah, what are they?"

"They're the same as Dr. Parker gave her. I want to correlate short-term results to sessions of study per week. The first draft of my article for the New England Journal of Child Psychology is due tomorrow and I wanted to include her revised results on the Bender Gestalt and Gray's Oral. The data are also important for me – they'll give me an idea of where we should go next."

Data are… Some boys never quit being the show-offs.

"You think they'll upset her?" Diane asked cautiously.

He shook his head. "Ill be videotaping her but it's a hidden camera. She'll never know she's being filmed. She'll do fine."

Sarah's face appeared through the front screen door. "Dr. Breck!"

"Hello, Sarah. Bring your book with you. If we get a chance, we'll do some more work."

"I've got it here." She slapped her backpack.

"All of it?"

"Everything. The new pages from Dr. Parker too."

"Good. Let's get a move on."

She ran to the car. He hesitated, his face clouded. Diane noticed it. "Something wrong?"

His eyes were distant. He didn't seem to hear her and she repeated the question, touching his arm gently. He blinked and said, "I was thinking about Jamie."

"No, no. He's going to be fine. He is."

Breck's smile returned but Diane saw a glint of something in his eyes – regret or pining, she believed. She considered this. Perhaps what she saw was a childless man approaching middle age, which was one of the saddest things she could imagine. She wanted to wrap her arms around him. She muscled up restraint and laughed. "That boy's going to be just fine. He's a tough one."

"I must stop by and visit him sometime. I'll bring him a present Maybe something about that movie he liked."

"Come on, Dr. Breck!"

Diane said to them both, "Don't be late," and stepped back into the tilled dirt of her garden.


When he noticed Tom – the young deputy who had guarded his house – walking toward him, Corde was crouched down, jamming stacks of papers from the Gebben case into file cabinets in the small storeroom off the Sheriffs Department. He paused, a file halfway sunk into a clogged drawer. He froze as he watched the grave face of the approaching deputy.

Jamie!

He knew without a doubt that the hospital had just called and that his son had died. When Corde had last seen him the boy was frighteningly disoriented. His eyes wouldn't stay on his father's face and he blacked out twice.

Propelled by fear Corde rose fast, his knee a resounding gunshot. "What is it?" he demanded. The desperation in his voice stopped the deputy short.

Tom told him, "There's a problem on your case, Bill."

Case?

Corde was confused. He wasn't working on any cases at the moment. The only case he could have meant was the Gebben case. But it was closed. Corde knew this because he had written that word in careful block printing in the "Status" box on form FI-113, which was this very moment sitting in Sheriff Jim Slocum's in basket.

Corde was wrong.

Tom said, "We just got a fax. An erroneous identification notice from Fitzberg. The man Wynton Kresge shot wasn't Gilchrist. It was some guy with a rap sheet full of GL arrests, mostly credit card dealing. Prints confirmed it."

"Oh, no." Corde closed his eyes as he leaned against the doorjamb. "Did you tell Wynton?"

"Yessir. And Emma says a call just came in. A grad student was found in Gilchrist's old office a few minutes ago. Murdered, looks like."

"Okun? Was that the name?"

"Matter of fact, that's it."

Corde's grim-set mouth didn't come close to the despair he felt. And fear too. Gilchrist had returned to New Lebanon. And Corde knew why.

"Okay, Tom, get over to my house now and keep an eye on Diane and Sarah. I think Gilchrist is after them. And get somebody over to the hospital to stay with Jamie."

"Will do."

As he hurried back to the squad room Emma shouted from the dispatcher office, "Detective Corde? It's Wynton Kresge on the phone for you. He's over at the university."

Corde sent Tom on his way then trotted to his office and snatched up the phone. "Wynton, what've we got?"

"Killed just like Sayles, Bill." Kresge sounded despondent. "Cut throat. Razor. Witness says a car stopped outside the building, man matching Gilchrist's description got out and went inside for three, four minutes then left, got into the car and drove off. Late-model green sedan, no tag, no make. About forty minutes ago."

"Any idea where he headed?"

"Just toward the campus exit. They didn't see after that."

There was a lengthy pause, both men lost in their own vital thoughts. Kresge finally said, "Looks like I got the wrong man, huh, Bill?"


Corde's squad car moves at seventy, lights whipping around, siren grating. The driving is fast but, in this big taut American cruiser, oddly placid. He is on the outskirts of town, passing small stores and buildings. He sees a vet's office. Dog 8 Cat Hospital, the numeral substituting for an ampersand stolen long ago. Along white structure, TRIBUTION CENTR, burnt out letters never replaced. He blazed through the town's last stoplight, then the land opens up, there is no traffic and Corde is free to have a discussion with himself. This makes him extremely agitated.

Think, goddamn it. Think.

Leon Gilchrist, who sees by the light of pure brilliance, the Prince of Auden University. Come on, think of something clever, think of something unlikely, think of something he would think of.

Think!

His hands sweat and he feels ill.

I can't think!

The newspaper clipping, the scrawled threat.

IT COULD HAPPEN TO THEM.

Corde zooms past Andy Dexter's harvester listing half off the highway as it bobs along at ten miles per hour. The cruiser's slipstream rattles the blades as it passes.

I can't think the way he does… He's too smart for me…

Corde sees the Polaroid of Sarah and Jamie, looking safe and silly as actors in a commercial. He sees Gilchrist's handwriting:

SAY GOOD-BYE, DETECTIVE.

Corde crests the road by Sutler's farm and is blinded by a sheet of stunning sun. The streaked, bug-dotted windshield goes opaque. He is out of the glare immediately, dropping rollercoaster over the hill and sees before him a three-mile straightaway of cambered gray asphalt. His foot aims for the accelerator then waffles and goes suddenly to the brake.

His skid is as precariously controlled as the ones he practiced for weeks on the State Police course. The Dodge comes to rest dead center in the road, at the head of twin black stripes. The cloud of burnt rubber and dust catches up with the cruiser, encloses it, then passes away intact on an impossibly gentle breeze.

Corde's car sat askew in front of his own house, half on the lawn, engine still running, next to Tom's cruiser, which was parked civilly in the center of the driveway.

Inside Diane looked up at her husband's wide green eyes as he burst through the door. He took her hands and placed her on the couch.

"You're scaring me, Bill." As if speaking to a stranger. "Is it Jamie? What's happened?"

Corde sat next to her. His breath was rapid. He didn't let go of her hands. She squirmed. "What?" she said, then louder: "What is it?"

"I think…" He squeezed her cold fingers. "I think Ben Breck is Leon Gilchrist."

13

"Oh, God, no…" Diane's voice crumbled. "No, it's not true…"

"Gilchrist is a special education lecturer at Auden. Isn't that the department where the tutors work?"

She nodded, her eyes sweeping the floor at her feet.

"He could've read Sarah's file and known all about her problem."

"No, Bill," she protested. "No!"

"What does he look like?"

"No, no, no… He wouldn't do that to me. He wouldn't do it!…" Her voice vanished in hysterical sobbing.

"Diane," Corde said harshly, "you've got to help me on this. Think."

"Oh, Bill, no!"

He gripped her shoulders. "Describe him!"

She did, as best she could, her words punctuated with sobs. When she finished she cried, "Oh, God, it can't be. I know it can't."

Diane's description was vague but it did depict someone who could resemble Gilchrist. "Where's he staying?"

"I don't know! Near hear somewhere. He never told me."

"He never told you?" Corde shouted. "How did you call him?"

"Usually he called me. When I called I left messages at the library. I never saw his office." Every word grew weaker as the evidence mounted.

"What kind of car does he drive?"

"I don't know! Quit cross-examining me!"

Corde gripped his wife by her shoulders. "Think. You must've seen it. Is it green?"

"I don't know. Just a car. American, I think. A four-door of some kind. I don't remember the color. I think it was dark. No… Oh, and I just saw it! When he picked her up…" Her hands flew to her face. "Oh Bill!"

"Sarah?" Corde shouted. "Sarah's with him now?"

He grabbed the phone and dialed Auden. He heard a click. "You have reached Auden University. The school will be closed until summer session registration on June 10. If you would like to leave a message, press the number of the extension for the department you wish to reach and at the tone leave your message. If you -"

He slammed the phone down. He paused a moment then picked up the receiver again, intending to dial directory assistance. In his frazzled state of mind he dialed 911 by mistake. He shuddered at the error and pressed the receiver cradle down then released it. The line wouldn't disconnect. He held it again for three seconds. Still no dial tone. Then five seconds. GOD STRIKE THEM DEAD! Finally he heard the tone.

Four. One. One.

"Operator, this is the New Lebanon Sheriffs Department. We have a police emergency. I need the number and address of a man named Breck. In New Lebanon."

"Breck? First name?"

How many Brecks do you have? "Ben. Benjamin."

The wait was a huge black pit. He heard the clattering of keys. He heard pages riffling. He heard a one-sided conversation – another operator saying "I'll bring 'em home but you have to cook 'em. I won't have time."

"Sir?"

"Yes?" Corde asked.

"How would you be spelling that?"

"Spell it? How do you think? B-R-E-C-K"

"There's no listing of Ben, Benjamin or B. Breck in New Lebanon or Fredericksberg. Would he -"

He jammed the button on the phone down again. Shaking his head, he made another call. Dr. Parker's receptionist said she was with a patient and Corde said, "Please tell her this is an emergency."

The psychiatrist came on the phone and said coolly, "Yes, Mr. Corde?"

He said, "Do you personally know Dr. Breck?"

"Why, what's the problem?"

"Do you know him?"

She paused a moment in irritation but must have sensed the urgency. She said, "No. But I've spoken to him several times about Sarah's course of treatment."

"But it might not have been Breck you talked to."

"You mean you think he was an impostor? Oh, I don't think so. He seemed to know a great deal about your daughter. Come to think of it, he knew a great deal about your whole family, Detective."


"What's your daddy doing today?" Dr. Breck asked.

"I don't know. He's at work, I guess."

"Do you love your daddy?"

"Oh yeah. Sure."

"Does your mommy love your daddy?"

"Sure. I guess."

Dr. Breck drove quickly. The scenery raced past as if Sarah were riding Cloud-Tipper the eagle. A barn was a red dot in the distance then a red ball then a huge red whale then it vanished behind them like a wish.

Dr. Breck slowed and pulled into the driveway of the college. He turned toward a part of the school that was deserted, more trees than buildings. Sarah was able to read at least one sign. Auden University. She couldn't understand the word "university" but she had memorized it because this was where Dr. Breck worked and that made it important to her.

"I like these buildings," Sarah announced. They looked to her like castles – only without gates and drawbridges and the lakes around them. Some even had up-down teeth on the tops like in Robin Hood (the old Robin Hood, the good one) where the sheriffs soldiers stood and shot crossbow darts at the star, renamed by her "Arrow Flynn." Sarah's book contained two stories about castles.

Dr. Breck had remained silent as they drove. He seemed lost in thought and she didn't want to trouble him but she tried to read the sign in the front of the building they were passing. She couldn't and she asked him about the words. "It says 'Graduate School of Education,'" he answered. "Read the other sign there."

She frowned. "'Arts.' Oh oh oh, and 'School of.' I can read those. And 'Sciences.'"

"That's good," he said. "'School of Arts and Sciences.'"

"I got back my last story from Dr. Parker," Sarah said. "Can we read it today?"

"If you'd like."

"It's my favorite. It's about a wizard I saw over by Blackfoot Pond. He lives in the woods behind my house. He watches the house a lot. It took me forever to write it. I wanted to get it just right. It's got Cloud-Tipper the eagle in it and -"

With sudden curiosity Dr. Breck asked, "This wizard's in your story?"

"Uh-huh. It's called 'The Sunshine Man.' That's his name."

"And you saw him by Blackfoot Pond? When?"

"One morning. Last month, I guess. He's been behind the house too."

"What does he look like?"

"I never saw him up close." Sarah brushed a strand of hair off her face. "You know, Dr. Breck, I wanted to ask the Sunshine Man to make me smart only I was scared to. But I think he knew. I think he sent you to me."

"You think so?" Dr. Breck pulled the car onto an empty parking lot beside a deserted building. He braked to a stop. She reached for the door handle but before she could pull the lever up Dr. Breck's hand touched her arm. "No, Sarah. Wait just a minute." She did as she was told.


Corde ran to the front door. He said to Tom, "Deputy…" His voice shook and he took a deep breath to calm himself before starting again. "I think that man who's been coming here for the past month, Breck, I think he's Gilchrist."

"What?"

"I'm not going into it now." He turned to Diane. "He and Sarah left when?"

Through her tears she said, "A half hour ago."

Where are they, where could they go?

Where has he taken my daughter?

"They were going to the school."

"Which school?"

"Auden. To take some tests. Oh, Bill." She sobbed and gripped the pillow hysterically. "He said he was going to tape her. He had a camera…"

Corde said to the deputy, "Do an APB. State and federal. Call in a kidnapping-in-progress code and an approach-with-caution. Check Auden first but if he killed Okun this morning -" This brought a moan from Diane. "- I doubt he's anywhere near the campus now."

"Right, sir."

"And you tell them that it's my daughter he's got."

"Yessir."

"If he hostages her I'm doing the negotiating, got it? Tell that to Slocum and Ellison and if they have any trouble with that they're to call me. And I want somebody to keep an eye on Wynton Kresge's house. Watch his wife and all the kids."

Where is she? Where is my daughter?…

The deputy asked, "You gonna stay here, sir? Or you want a couple men on the house?"

"Oh, Bill," Diane whispered. "Please God -"

"All units in the vicinity…"

From outside over the PA system of both squad cars, as if in stereo, came the radio broadcast.

"All units in the vicinity. Ten-thirty-three in progress. School of Education Building, Auden University. Assault. Man with a knife or razor in late-model sedan. No plates…"

Corde and Diane looked at each other.

"Further to that ten-thirty-three. Ambulance is en route. And we have unconfirmed report that a juvenile is involved… Make that a female juvenile about ten years of age. Repeat. Ten-thirty-three in progress…"


It looked like an auto accident – the driver's door open, the figure lying bloody and still beside the car, one foot up on the driver's seat. Revolving red Lights, men and women in uniform.

Diane screamed and flung open the door before Corde had brought his cruiser to a stop in the school parking lot. She sprinted over the cracked asphalt to where the ambulance crew, a cluster of white-coated attendants, was huddled, working feverishly. With her hands over her mouth, Diane looked down, then closed her eyes, muttering indistinct words over and over.

Corde trotted to the car and looked down at the bloody mass at his feet. He took a deep breath and peered over the head of an attendant.

It was not Sarah.


Lying on his back Ben Breck opened his eyes. He squinted and spit blood. He whispered halting yet astonished words: "Leon Gilchrist!… Following us…" He held up his arm to examine deep slashes in the palm of his hand with serene curiosity. "I don't feel any pain." He looked back at Diane. "We were in the car… he just appeared. Just like that. Had a razor…"

"Where's Sarah?" Diane cried.

Corde said to a county deputy, "Do you know who this man is?"

Diane shouted at her husband, "It's Ben Breck!"

"She's right, Detective." The deputy offered Corde a bloody wallet. He opened it. Inside there was an Illinois driver's license with Breck's picture, a University of Chicago faculty picture ID, and an Auden ID, which identified him as a visiting professor.

Visiting professor. So, a temporary address and no directory assistance listing.

Corde crouched. "Where's Sarah?"

"She ran. I think he's got her," Breck gasped. "I don't know what happened. He was…" The words dissolved into bloody coughing. "We'd stopped and he came… up behind the car. He was… just there. Cutting me, slashing. Grabbing for Sarah…"

"Did he hurt her?" Diane asked, choking on tears.

"I don't… I couldn't… see."

An attendant finished applying a tourniquet and started bandaging a deep cut.

Corde asked Breck, "Where did they go? Did you see -"

"There. There." Breck reached up a bloody hand.

At first Corde thought he was pointing out a direction. But no. He saw in the front seat of the car two typed pages. Corde said, "Those sheets?"

Breck nodded. "Take them. Read… I'm getting very dizzy. My mouth is dry…" He closed his eyes.

Corde picked up the sheets. He started to read. His attention flagged and he looked down. Diane took Breck's face in both of her slick, red hands and shouted to him, "You're going to be all right! You're going to be fine! Do you hear me? Do you hear me?"

She looked up at her husband. Corde put his hand on her shoulder. She picked it up and flung it off then lowered her head to Breck's chest and began to cry.

It wasn't until the ambulance left a minute later, kicking up dust and siren howling, that Corde walked abruptly back to his car and sat in the driver's seat. Finally he began to read.


They stepped over a tangle of brush, between two beech trees that pretty much marked the start of Corde's backyard and entered the forest at the exact spot he had seen, or imagined, the moonlit face staring at the house a month before. They walked on a carpet of spring-dried leaves and low raspy grass, yellow and deer-chewed.

Beside him, dressed in a beige uniform and tan windbreaker, Wynton Kresge was carrying a Remington pump shotgun. The gun had a stiff sling but he did not carry it slung. He held it two-handed like a soldier, index finger pointed forward outside of the trigger guard. The men walked quickly, Corde consulting two sheets of dark-stained typewriter paper as if they were instructions on a scavenger hunt.

The sky was milky. The sun, a white disk low in the sky, was trying to burn off the overcast, but the density of gray meant that it was going to lose. The forest, the cow pasture, the yellow-green carpet in front of him were an opaque watercolor. A coal black grackle flew immediately toward him then turned abruptly away, startling both men.

At an old burnt-down barn that he had forbidden Jamie and Sarah from playing in, they turned right. Beams of the silo rose like charred bones. They walked on, over an old railroad bridge then followed the gravelly roadbed to the Des Plaines. They walked along the bank through more woods until they found the house. Corde folded the sheets of paper and put them in his pocket.

The house was another dilapidated colonial, two stories, narrow and sagging. This one was set in a grim, scruffy clearing, past which you could see storage tanks along the river. A tug towed a rusty barge upstream, its harsh, chugging engine irksome in the heavy air.

In the front yard was parked a green car. A Hertz sticker in the windshield. Corde read the plate.

"It's the one Gilchrist rented."

Corde crouched and Kresge knelt beside him, under cover of a fallen branch. Corde looked at the ground. He said, "You stay outside. No matter what you hear. If he comes out alone, stop him. He's the only one who knows where Sarah is. I want him alive."

Kresge said, "I'd feel better calling in some backup. That's what the manual says in cases like this."

Corde kept studying the house. Lord, it seemed ominous – towery and pale, mean. He said, "I'm going to get my daughter one way or another. I may need some time with Gilchrist by myself."

Kresge looked long at Corde, considering these words. He turned back to the house. "How'd you know this was his place?"

Corde shushed him. Together they closed in on the colonial. Kresge crouched behind the Hertz car and rested the shotgun on the hood. He pointed at the front and back doors, nodding, meaning that he could cover them both. Corde nodded back and, crouching, ran to the front of the house. He paused beside the rotting gray porch. He caught his breath then eased slowly up to the door. He smashed the door in with a vicious kick of his boot and stepped into the rancid-smelling house.

The room was milky, as if illuminated through smoke or mist. Light, already diffused by the clouds, ambled off the silver maple leaves outside and fell ashen in the room. The carpet, walls, plywood furniture, paintings seemed bleached by this weak radiance.

A terrible moment passed. Corde believed the house was empty and Gilchrist had escaped from them again. Then his eyes grew accustomed to the weak light and he saw at the end of the room a pale shape, a sphere that moved. It was mottled with indefinite features like the surface of the moon. Corde saw that it was a man's head and that he was staring back at Corde.

The man slowly rose and stood behind a cluttered desk. About six-two, graying brown hair, trim, gangling arms and long thin hands. He wore a conservative light green tweed sports jacket and tan slacks. His face gave no clue that he was surprised by the intrusion. He examined Corde with brown eyes that were the only dark aspects of his person.

He looks like me was the thought that passed involuntarily through Corde's mind.

"Gilchrist," he said evenly, "where is my daughter?"

14

Leon Gilchrist walked through a thick beam of dusty light and stopped ten feet from Corde. He folded his arms. A mirthful half smile was on his face. "Well, I am surprised, Detective Corde."

"I want to know where she is." Corde's voice trembled. "I want to know now."

"Of course you do."

"Sarah!" Corde shouted, looking at a stairway that led to the second floor.

"I was just thinking of you," Gilchrist said mildly. "You'd be surprised how often you're in my thoughts. About as often as I am in yours, I'd guess."

Corde stepped forward, raising his revolver to Gilchrist's chest. The professor glanced down at it then slipped his hands into his pockets and studied Corde as if the detective were a bug padding his last circle on the cyanide disk in a kill jar. Then he asked, "How's your son, Detective?"

An uncertain flicker was in Corde's eyes as they scanned the face of Leon Gilchrist.

"Still enjoy bicycling, does he? Despite the dangers."

"What are you talking about?"

"And he went for a swim, I heard. The music these young people listen to…"

He's trying to get my goat. Calm, stay calm.

"Suicide by drowning. That was uniquely his. The song, I believe, mentions razors and ropes… An alliteration suitable for adolescent lyrics."

"What did you have to do with that?" Corde's grip on the gun tightened and he was beset by a frightening sense that he was losing control of himself. In his ears he heard a humming of immense pressure. He swung the muzzle toward the professor's face, which tightened microscopically but remained otherwise passive. The barrel stopped short of striking skin. "I could kill you -"

Gilchrist said slowly, "I don't imagine you know the writing of Paul Verlaine. The French symbolist poet? No, of course not. I find his poems stunning but I also believe he suffered from the same problem as you do. Stoic on the outside, raging within. He tried to murder his close friend Rimbaud in a fit of passion. He ended up a worthless drunk. But if not for his psychoses the world wouldn't have his astonishing work. The element of compensation is miraculous – compensation, which your little Sarah displays so well."

Corde's breathing was fierce. He felt himself hyperventilating. He grabbed Gilchrist's collar and pressed the gun muzzle against his ear.

"Ah," Gilchrist said in a silky voice, "remember her. Remember Sarah. Our conversation mustn't become so obfuscated by passion that we forget that only I know where she is. Obfuscated. Can you deduce what that means, Detective? Can you?"

Corde shoved Gilchrist away and stepped back. He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He felt that he was the cornered animal and that it was Gilchrist who was playing him.

"Detective, you continually misunderstand whom you're dealing with. I'm not a thug barricaded in a convenience shop. Your concept of intelligence is that it gets you to the bottom row of a category in Jeopardy! I'm different in kind from people like Jennie Gebben and you and your son and your Sarah and your beautiful Diane.

"I've been studying you and your family since the morning after Jennie died. I saw your daughter at the pond after I'd left my first note to you. Her beautiful hair. The sun was so pretty on her tight, white blouse. Last year's fashions?… Had to put off the spring shopping spree at Sears, did we? You know, I've been corresponding with Sarah ever since then. Why the shock, Detective? You would have figured it out eventually. See, that's the problem that concerned me. You're not intelligent but you're dogged – unlike the rest of your colleagues, who are neither intelligent nor persistent.

"Undoubtedly we could put you on the couch and wrench up some reason for this chronic tenacity. You fell asleep at the wheel once or twice when it mattered, didn't you? When was it? Not too formative, I'd guess. Your teenage years? Maybe later. Whatever happened, you'll be paying it off for a long time. I was sure you'd plod along until you stumbled across me.

"Sarah was the perfect distraction. At first I convinced her to run away. When that didn't work I decided I'd infiltrate, throw you off the track. The town wanted a Moon Killer so I skinned a goat and gave them one. 'Lunatic.' And I did some painting around town with a bit of the leftover blood. Mezza luna… Oh, I'll bet my frescoes had your boss salivating. But not you, Detective. You kept plodding, ever the pedestrian, getting closer and closer. I needed a more direct attack. I tried threatening you off the case."

He pointed to a Polaroid camera. "I'm quite some photog, don't you think? Oh, an aside: I detected that your wife's contraceptive had not been much used of late. Are we in the middle of the sixteen-year itch? Have you noticed any change in her recently? Her pathetically polished fingernails? Her sudden interest in eye shadow? Did you know she and Breck have been for several walks in the forest?"

The professor smiled and lifted his hands like a TV preacher. "Did you know that while that buffoon of a deputy was supposed to be guarding the old homestead, I was browsing through your bedroom? I opened your dresser and rearranged Diane's panties. I smelled her pillow. I washed my hands with her cheap L'Air du Las soap. Oh, I sat on Sarah's bed. I caressed your son's pajamas. It was all so fascinating to me! I lecture – excuse me, I used to lecture – about psychology every day. I've written articles for the most prestigious journals in the field, journals…" He cocked an eyebrow with amusement. "… that perhaps you've tried to read. But I don't do clinical practice. Toying with your family has amused me greatly. Entwining them in this whole matter. I drew you away from the nest. I sent you to Lewisboro. I sold a handful of credit cards to this polyester thug in a bar in Fitzberg so you'd hightail it over there. Then I circled back. I followed that fool Breck -" Gilchrist sneered the name. "- and I killed him deader than Dreiser's prose. I did all that, Detective, right under your nose and I escaped."

"But," Corde said, "here I am."

The smile on the professor's face did not diminish. "But I… have your daughter."

"I want to know where she is!" Corde shouted in anguish.

"Stating the obvious," Gilchrist snorted, "diminishes you, as a late colleague of mine used to say."

Sarah, cry for me, baby! Shout, scream…

"You son of a bitch!" The menace in Corde's voice rose to the distant smudged ceiling. It seemed to break the shafts of weak light that fell onto the bloodred carpet. Corde pressed his revolver forward and the hammer actually started back. Gilchrist's eyes registered an instant of monumental fear then became calm and conciliatory. He lifted a palm. "She's all right. I swear it."

"Where is she?"

Gilchrist's eyes swept over him. The smile had faded. He was now composed and his face was a mask of concern. "I can't tell you that. I'm sorry."

"If you've hurt her -" Corde stepped forward, his hand kneading the gun.

"She's fine," Gilchrist said in a soothing voice. "Think, Detective. Why would I hurt her? I kidnapped her because I needed some insurance. I couldn't stop you any other way." He spread his hands out in front of him. "Look… You found out where I was. I had to protect myself."

"I swear I'll kill you if you don't tell me what you've done with her." He stifled a spiny urge to fire a bullet into Gilchrist's leg or elbow.

The professor's voice was suavely reassuring. "I haven't done anything with her. She's safe." He nodded at his suitcase. "As long as I get out of here she'll be fine. If you hurt me or arrest me you'll never see her again. It's as simple as that."

Corde stepped forward and held the gun close to Gilchrist's face. "Where is she?" he cried.

Gilchrist stepped back. "Those are my terms. There's no negotiation. My freedom for your daughter. Take it or leave it."

"You bastard, you damn bastard," Corde growled.

"That's perhaps true in one context or another but it's irrelevant at this moment."

The muzzle of the pistol lowered.

Corde's breathing calmed. At least Sarah was alive. At least he had a chance of getting her back home safe. He had a poignant image of the girl sitting in bed, wearing her pajamas and talking to a stuffed bear. Tears saturated his eyes.

"Ill tell you what I'll do," Gilchrist offered. "Let's up the ante. In exchange for my head start I'll tell you where your daughter is and I'll give you an explanation. Ill tell you exactly how I killed Jennie and why."

Corde squinted slightly and somewhere in his mind the policeman stepped side by side with the father.

Gilchrist took the uneasy caution in Corde's eyes as an affirmative answer. He sat down in an armchair, launching motes of dust into the sallow light.

"I loved Jennifer Gebben very much. The first time I've ever felt that way about a woman. Ridiculous, when you think about it. She was a simple girl. She wasn't particularly pretty. She vacillated between intense and moody. But when she was with you, in bed, she was completely with you. Do you understand what I'm saying? She was the center of the universe. We'd play our games, we'd take our hickory sticks, we'd get out the straps. A lot of women just tolerate it for their man – the remote father problem, of course. But Jennie loved it. She lived for it."

"Gilchrist -"

"Please. Let me finish. This spring she dropped me cold. She went back to that fucking roommate of hers. 'Sorry, it's over with.' Well, that wasn't good enough for me. No, sir. I wasn't going to be discarded the way she tossed aside Sayles or Okun. 'Sorry, it's over with.' Oh, no. I wouldn't tolerate it, not even from a borderline personality. I called her up from San Francisco. She was too pusillanimous to break up – excuse me, Detective. She was too cowardly to do it in person. I was in a consuming rage for a full twenty-four hours. I calmed then I flew back."

"You bought a ticket under a different name. So you intended to kill her."

Gilchrist paused for a moment and seemed neither surprised nor alarmed that this was public knowledge. "There's another part. Can you figure it out?"

Corde was nodding. "You killed Susan Biagotti and Jennie found out about it."

The professor was, however, overtly disappointed that Corde had made the deduction. Still he continued unemotionally. "Lying in bed with Jennie…" Gilchrist smiled at some memory. "Or lying in the bathtub with her or on the kitchen floor, I'd tell her things. You did that with her. She was disarming. Well, Susan and I had played some very serious games. I mentioned that one time to Jennie. Stupid of me but I did it."

"Why did you kill Susan?"

"Accidental. We got carried away and I strangled her."

Corde winced, uncomprehending. He whispered, "She was somebody you must've cared about. Yet you hurt her so badly you killed her? Why? Was the sex that good?"

"Not for her it wasn't. Obviously." He gave Corde a fast chill smile then added, "I used the hammer to cover up some of the marks and I made it look like a robbery."

"But you didn't tell Jennie you'd killed her."

"Of course not." Gilchrist grimaced at the foolishness of the question. "But she could link us together. When I called her from San Francisco on Sunday, when she told me she was breaking up with me, we argued. She said she was going back to Emily and if I didn't leave her alone she'd tell the administration about the students I'd slept with. Well, our Virgin Dean has this thing - her professors can fuck students' minds all they want but their bodies are off-limits. If Jennie blew the whistle Larraby would find out about Susan and me and I'd have problems. I flew back to New Lebanon and asked Jennie if I could see her. I told her I wanted us to end on a positive note. I said I had a book for her – in memory of our relationship. She agreed. We went for a walk. We ended up at the pond."

"And you killed her."

"And I killed her, yes." Gilchrist seemed to be considering if there was anything else to say about Jennie Gebben and concluded there was not. He added, "And I killed Sayles and Okun because…" He brought his hands together in a concluding way. "… they were my enemies."

"That deputy in Lewisboro got himself shot too."

"I'm very pleased about that – that it wasn't you, I mean. I was actually feeling somewhat bad thinking that you would be the first one through the door." He nodded his head slightly.

Corde said, "I'll give you a one-hour start."

"Is there anybody outside the house?"

"Just one deputy."

"So this is an unofficial visit, is it?" Gilchrist glanced at Corde with a certain level of respect. "Well, all right. Drop your car keys there."

"We walked. We didn't drive."

"Humor me."

Corde tossed the keys into the middle of the floor. Gilchrist pocketed them.

"She's all right?"

"Of course she's all right. I've tied her hands and feet. That's all. And gagged her."

People suffocate under gags. An FBI bulletin had just reported on this. Corde had noted the fact in boxy script on a three-by-five index card.

Gilchrist picked up his suitcase. He said, "The basement." He walked to the doorway and opened it. He stood at the top of the stairs and flicked a light switch on. Corde shouted, "Sarah! It's Daddy."

There was no response. Gilchrist said impatiently, "The gag. I told you."

Corde took out his handcuffs and stepped toward Gilchrist. "Put one on your right wrist and the other on that radiator pipe there."

"No. We have a deal."

Corde said, "I give you my word you get an hour. But I get my daughter first. Or I'll kill you where you stand."

Gilchrist studied Corde's eyes. "I think you might, Detective. All right. Follow me. I'll have to show you. It's hard to find."

"No. You stay here."

The professor shrugged and said, "You'll have to turn left at the foot of the stairs then go down a corridor then -"

Corde handed him the cuffs.

"- up a few stairs. You don't have to worry. She's fine. Just fine." Gilchrist was speaking like a pediatrician who'd nursed a child out of a fever.

Corde smelled the man's scent, sour, old cloth, sweat. He realized suddenly how close they stood.

Gilchrist, reaching for the cuffs, calmly closed his long fingers around Corde's wrist, the nails dug into flesh, and he threw himself backward down the stairs, dragging Corde with him.

The detective grabbed futilely for the handrail. The gun fired, the bullet sailing into a wall. Together they tumbled down the sharp-edged pine stairs. Snaps and thuds. Corde felt his left wrist pop. The gun flew from his hand. There was a huge reverberation as his head smacked hard into the rickety handrail and he heard another snap of joint that must have come from Gilchrist's arm or leg.

They cartwheeled down and down the wood steps then crashed into the concrete floor and lay still, curled like lovers on a cold winter morning. In the small, dim basement around them were rusted tools, a sprinkling of coal, a half dozen cans of paint. And not another living soul.


Wynton Kresge rested across the trunk of the green Pontiac, in prone firing position. It was the pose of the dressed deer he tied onto his Olds hood when he drove home from hunting. The checkered grip from the Remington had imprinted its design into the pads of his fingers. He smelled gun oil and gasoline and he thought Corde had been inside too damn long.

Then he heard the gunshot. A short crack from inside the house, the ground-floor windows flexing for an instant under the muzzle burst.

Front or back, front or back?

Pick one, damn it.

Kresge stood up, hesitated, then ran over the barren lawn and through the open front door.

"Bill!" he shouted, and in response the poker caught him in the corner of the eye and laid open six inches of cheek. He fell backward hard. The shotgun went off, a chunk of clapboard exploded from the impact of the heavy shot. Hot blood streamed into his eye and mouth and he had a distorted image of Gilchrist limping forward to pick up the fallen shotgun. The professor's right hand was swollen and dark and he too was bloodied about the face.

"Bill!" Kresge called, sputtering through blood.

Gilchrist lifted up the shotgun and pointed it at Kresge's face. The deputy rolled over and tried to scramble away. He heard Gilchrist's grunt as he pulled the trigger and realized that there was a spent round in the chamber. Kresge prayed that he didn't know enough about guns to pump a new shell in.

He heard the double snap of the slide going back and forth and the tap of the old shell falling on the porch.

"No," Kresge moaned, groping for his automatic. It had fallen from his holster and he could not find it. He crawled another few inches and pressed against the wrought-iron railing. He felt the heavy cold touch of the shotgun barrel on his back.

Then the explosion.

And another and another. Gilchrist reeling over, clutching his chest and stomach, where Corde's bullets had exited. The shotgun fell on Kresge, who grabbed it in his blindness and pointed the muzzle toward the forest. Gilchrist dropped to his knees then fell forward.

Wynton Kresge was surrounded by numb silence, which was broken a moment later by a voice intruding on and finally destroying the deputy's relief: the sound of Bill Corde crying, "Sarah, what have I done to you, what have I done?"

15

He walked unsteadily, the tufts of grass and wiry roots reaching out and snagging his feet. His voice was hoarse as he cried, "Sarah, Sarah?" Skittish birds flew up from their ground nests as he stumbled past. Sometimes he heard his own desperate echoes, which fed him momentary false hopes.

He had sprained his wrist in the fall down the stairs but had refused any treatment and hurried outside to search for his daughter.

Or for what he was now beginning to believe with despair: his daughter's body. She had been nowhere in the house or the garage.

Prodded by the horror of loss, his mind in chaos, Bill Corde was combing the five tricky acres around the house – tangled woods, pine needle dunes, a couple deep wells and plenty of dirt soft enough for a shallow grave. Wynton Kresge, stitched and in agony, strode through the same fields. As much as Corde, he dreaded finding a small overturn of earth. Bringing such news about a child to her father was unthinkable to him; still he searched frantically. Other deputies joined in, even Lance Miller, wheezing against the grip of the elastic tape around his ribs. Jim Slocum and two off-duty New Lebanon deputies, entitled to be home with beer, wives and the tube, also combed the scruffy landscape.

Corde staggered through grass and whips of thin branches. He scrambled and shuddered his way through head-high brush. He fell over a cruelly hidden arc of barbed wire and bloodied his good palm to save his jaw. Every reclining blotch of pink seen through the weeds was a well of agony, every distant yip of a dog or owl's hollow call. Once Corde cried hard as he leapt through tall grass to what turned out to be a beige IGA bag filled with empties.

"Sarah, Sarah?" he called in a whisper and continued across a stand of trees into another field, which was a dozen acres of fresh-plowed dirt.

By seven the sun is low, and narrow shadows of trees stretch out for yard and yards. Bill Corde sits on a hillock of chunky earth covered with dandelions and catnip and stalks of milkweed. His voice is gone, his strength too. He reaches out and affectionately strokes a yellow leaf in a wholly mad way. He thinks he should be searching the fields but he knows it is useless. He can do nothing, nothing but sit and mourn his daughter, and another loss too, for Sarah's death will in an obscure, brutal way also poison the life he shares with Diane, and that with Jamie. The three of them will now be wedged forever apart.

While he searched, hope had been his only instrument and now it too is gone.

He sits for ten minutes in this paralysis then watches as a police cruiser rocks over the uneven ground toward him, Lance Miller cautiously piloting. It stops on an incline. The door opens. Diane gets out.

Then Sarah behind her.

Corde stands uneasily and steps forward. He hugs the girl hard, embracing then wholly encompassing her. "Honey, honey, honey!" he cries. His intensity begins to confuse her and he forces himself to grow nonchalant. Then a giddiness, which is not faked, set in. He laughs hard and squeezes her hand.

Diane explains that Sarah came running up the road to their house twenty minutes before. She whispers to Corde, "She's shaken up bad. She saw Gilchrist attack Ben and she ran and hid at the school. Then she came home on foot." Corde cocks an anxious eyebrow and Diane reads the signal. She mouths, "She's fine. He didn't touch her."

Diane then nods toward the ambulance parked at the entrance to Gilchrist's driveway. "They gave her a pill that will keep her relaxed. Didn't they, honey?"

"I feel sleepy, Mommy."

Although there are a thousand questions he wants to ask, Corde knows not to pursue this conversation with his daughter now. He says, "Almost suppertime. How about we go home and fire up the barbecue?"

"Okay, Daddy. You hurt your hand."

"It's nothing."

They start toward the Dodge in this holiday atmosphere but the weight of the events is suddenly too much for Sarah. She is staring at Gilchrist's house as if gazing at a friend who has betrayed her. Although it is at some distance Corde slowly steps between her and the house on the slim chance that she might see blood. "He hurt Dr. Breck, Daddy. The Sunshine Man hurt Dr. Breck. I thought he was my friend."

"It's all right, honey. You're going to be all right."

"I feel sleepy. I lost my backpack."

"We'll get it later, honey."

"I left it in Dr. Breck's car. It has my tape recorder in it. Dr. Breck made me run when the Sunshine Man…" Her tiny voice fades.

Diane's fingertips rise slowly to her lips but she is determined not to reveal any more horror in front of the girl. She forces a smile onto her face.

Corde asks Diane, "How's Breck?"

She hesitates. Corde knows she's considering if she should admit the existence of this knowledge. "I called the hospital," she whispers. "Hell live. Hundreds of stitches."

Sarah looks groggily away. "I don't like it here. I'm afraid he's going to come back to his house."

"Who?" Diane asks.

"The Sunshine Man."

Corde crouches down. "He's gone away, honey. He'll never come back. I've sent him away."

Diane looks at the house. She says, "He lives there, your wizard?"

Sarah says, "I saw him behind the cow pasture a couple times. I wanted him to cast a spell to make me smart so one day I followed him here. But I was ascared to ask so I left."

"And she wrote a story about it."

Corde pulls the two stained pages from his breast pocket and reads the words he near to memorized earlier in the day. "And the girl climbed onto the back of Cloud-Tipper the eagle and hugged his feather neck. They sailed away from the yellow house. They followed the Sunshine Man home. They flew into the yard then past the cow field and past the old well and the burned-down silo that looked like whale ribs and over the railroad bridge and along the path to the river. Finally, they came to a clearing in the woods. Cloud-Tipper landed gentle. And there was the Sunshine Man's cottage…"

"You came here by yourself, Sarah?" Diane's eyelids lower at the insolence of tragedy averted by the smallest slip of fate.

"I just wanted him to make me smart, Mommy."

Diane casually slips her arm around her daughter and they walk toward the squad car. Corde hobbles along behind. Mother and daughter separate for a moment, the girl running ahead.

Corde catches up with his wife, who is now silent, the same wary expression on her face that she'd worn at Jamie's bedside. Corde knows why but doesn't want to consider it now. The pain in his arm is making up for lost time and he's half faint by the time he slides into the backseat of the Dodge, next to Diane. Sarah has claimed the front. Diane brushes her daughter's hair with her fingers.

When Corde sits closer to his wife she shies away from him. Her motion is subtle but is clear.

Miller starts the car and drives slowly over the rough ground, the Dodge sashaying like a canoe in a powerboat's wake. Corde lowers his forehead to his thumb, as if administering Lent ashes, and lets his palm take the whole weight of his head. This is what he thinks: "I am just doing my job the only way I know how. What more is a man supposed to do?" Though Corde suspects that a man must do more and probably a lot more. He knows that when your daughter gets well your son gets sick and when the car is paid off the mortgage goes up and when you decide you love your wife she's gone to another man… There's no end to the burdens life lays on you. Oh, there is so much to do and more after that. And more and more and more… But it seems to him that this isn't so much the problem as is finding somebody or something that can show you exactly what has to be done. This is the lesson. This is what Bill Corde doubts he'll ever get right.

"Everybody buckle up now," Lance Miller announces and turns the cruiser onto the highway.


Corde got the new FI-113 written up but it was a chore. He was extra careful because he knew it was going to be the basis for Jim Slocum's comments to the press and Hammerback Ellison's as well and he wanted it to be as clear as possible. He tried dictating into Sarah's tape recorder but he kept getting tongue-tied and had to go back to ruled paper and a Bic medium-point.

The Register lost its exclusive. The killings had been laid at the feet of a college professor who'd taught at Harvard and had written book reviews for the New York Times. The Associated Press and some big-city newspaper reporters came to town, along with a herd of earnest young TV reporters (one from CNN, to the town's delight) with their hair spray and crisp outfits and fancy electronics. One journalist referred to Gilchrist as the "New Lebanon Cult Killer" but Sheriff Jim Slocum said that "this didn't appear to be so much a cult situation as a romance-oriented homicide and some follow-up homicides to cover it up."

Corde had been granted dispensation from learning the radio codes and was now in charge of what Slocum was calling the Felony Desk, something he'd thought up after watching America 's Most Wanted one night. Things were slow though, the only felon at the moment being Dell Tucker, a New Lebanon farmer who'd turned an AR-15 full-automatic and had been heard testing it on gophers. Corde figured that was mostly a federal offense so why bother? Besides Corde had gopher problems himself.

Wynton Kresge had drawn a tough rotation from Hammerback Ellison. Being new he'd been assigned to a month of speed-trap duty out in the unincorporated portions of Harrison County. Corde told him they couldn't all be glamour assignments.

"S'hardly fair," Kresge had muttered. Sitting on Corde's desk in the New Lebanon Sheriffs Department he was now looking over the felony investigation report. "Gilchrist flew back here the day before Jennie was killed…" He was speaking to himself, picturing it. "He bought a new ticket under a different name."

"We should've checked passengers, IDs and forms of payment. The information was there."

Kresge said, "Seems like you can't think of everything."

Corde thought for a moment. "True, you can't. But you have to."

"Flew back all the way from San Francisco?" Kresge mused.

Corde continued, "And he just stayed in New Lebanon. He rented that house in the woods, the place we found him in. He rented it for a month, laying low. When he called people he just told them he was calling from San Francisco and they believed him."

"How'd you find that out?"

"I didn't find it out. I figured it out. From what he told me. The best source of information on a murder is the perpetrator. Remember that."

"Well, I will."

"I think he was going to stay there for a little while then reappear like he'd come back from the conference. But that first morning he must've seen Sarah in the woods. He decided to use her to get to me. Her and Jamie too."

"How?"

"His threats against Sarah might've stopped me. Or if any thing'd happened to the kids, I would've been in no shape to keep going. Remember, everybody else was looking for the Moon Killer. T.T. Ebbans and me – and you too – were looking for somebody like Gilchrist. He knew that. I was the one he had to stop. Hardly Ribbon."

"Or Werewolf Slocum," Kresge whispered. "When you were at the house, where you shot him, he said he had Sarah. Why'd he say that?"

Corde grimaced. "To do just what he did: get the advantage on me. I didn't play it too smart. It never occurred to me that she'd gotten away. I walked in and asked first off where she was. That gave him something on me and he used it pretty damn well considering he was making it up as he went along. He was playing with me. He got me pretty riled then calmed me down telling me that Sarah was safe and telling me why he killed Jennie. Put me off my guard."

"Who's this Breck fellow?" Kresge looked at the report.

Now there's a question for you.

"I just had me a talk with him. He was Sarah's tutor. That's all he was. Breck read part of Sarah's book about this wizard watching our house. He asked her about it and found out she hadn't made that part up. He figured it was the man leaving the threats and that meant he was the killer."

"Why didn't he tell us before?"

"He just read the damn thing five minutes before Gilchrist gutted him."

And two days after I read the same story.

"A wrong-time, wrong-place fellow, Breck was," Kresge offered.

"You could say."

Although there was a lot more to Breck than this, Corde now understood. But that had nothing to do with Gilchrist or the investigation, and it was going to take a lot of thinking and a lot more talking before Corde figured out what to do about the Ben Breck situation – if there was anything he could do. And the person he had to talk to about it, well, she wasn't much in the mood for conversation.

Who's this Breck fellow?

"Gilchrist," Kresge said almost reverently. "He was one step ahead of us the whole time."

"He always was. And one step behind us too."

"How'd you know he was in that house, Bill? I've lived in New Lebanon ten years and never even knew there were houses down there by the river."

"It's tough to explain how the process of deduction works, Wynton."

"You mean it's something you're born with?"

"No. You can learn. The more you practice the better you are. Remember that."

"Well, I will."


Corde stepped out into the backyard of his house and set down his Pabst Blue Ribbon. He inspected the strip of muddy dirt by the dryer exhaust. He shooed off a couple of grackles and bent down low to the ground then went lower, on all fours; it seemed to him the green fuzz hadn't grown a millimeter in the last weeks. He decided it was crazy to try to grow grass here in this sunless rocky gully between two houses populated by hard-running teenage boys who loved shortcuts; he ought to put in gravel and be done with it.

Nevertheless Corde arranged the sprinkler carefully and turned on the water.

He sat down in a plaid lawn chair, the aluminum legs screeching on the slab of concrete he'd laid two years ago and spent two years meaning to enclose. He looked at his watch. Tonight the family was going to visit Jamie in the hospital. They were going to smuggle in a VCR and Corde was going to hook it up to the TV in the hospital room. They were all going to watch a movie Diane had rented, some cop comedy. But that excursion was planned for after dinner. Now, he wanted to relax for a few minutes. He opened the beer and drank half of it then replaced the can on the concrete while he watched the intermittent rainbow the sprinkler made as it waved a fan of water high enough to catch the last of the sun. He glanced behind him and saw Diane behind the twin Thermopanes, occupied with dinner.

Corde felt a stack of three-by-five cards gig him in the thigh and he took them out of his pocket. Most of them would be filed away in the tall green cabinets he had testily commandeered for his own use down at the Sheriffs Department. One card though, filled with his careful block lettering, he intended to pin up on his bulletin board. He thought he would put it in the space next to his favorite quote – about physical evidence being the cornerstone of a case. This card read:

IT IS THE POET WHO PERCEIVES THE WORLD BY THE ILLUMINATION OF PURE UNDERSTANDING,

WHILE OTHERS SEE ONLY IN REFLECTED LIGHT.

L.D. GILCHRIST

He slipped the card into his pocket then picked up his beer, took several sips and cradled the sweating can on his stomach, listening to the sounds of dusk: cicadas, cricket creaks, an owl waking to his hunger, a dinnertime summons to the neighbor children. Diane banged on the window and shouted, "Ten minutes."

Bill Corde said okay. He waited half that time then stood and stretched. He walked to the edge of the concrete deck and leaning outward began to wave the white cards high in the air, shouting "Whoa, whoa!" at a half dozen shiny grackles, which fled from his muddy patch of frail lawn and vanished into the moonless sky.

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