The Lesson of Her Death (27 page)

Streaks on her face, hair muddy and plastered around her head the way a bald man hides scalp, still-beautiful Emily Rossiter lay on a blanket, faceup. A black hideous wound marred her temple. A large fishhook was embedded deep in her groin in the center of a slick patch of dark pubic hair. The hook was attached to a long piece of twenty-pound test line, which had pulled her skirt up between her legs.

A crowd of locals and reporters stood on the fringe of the crime scene—a sloping grassy backyard that bordered Blackfoot Pond.

The ME, a thin man of fifty, said to T.T. Ebbans, “Blow to the right temple with a rough, irregular object. Death by drowning.”

“Rape?”

“Not this time.”

“What about the hook?” Ebbans asked. “After she was dead?”

“Dollars to doughnuts.”

Jim Slocum said to Ebbans, “There, you’ve got your postmortem piercing. That’s common in sacrificial murders.”

Ebbans pushed past the reporters, telling them that Sheriff Ribbon would be holding a press conference in ten minutes. He joined Bill Corde up by the road.

“Detective Corde!” Addie Kraskow waved frantically, her laminated
Register
press pass bouncing on her chest. “You didn’t think a serial killer was involved. You feel differently now?”

Corde ignored her, and Ebbans repeated, “Ten minutes. Press conference.”

Addie didn’t pursue the question anyway; she noticed a photo opportunity and sent her photographer to shoot the body being zippered up and carried toward the ambulance that stood in the driveway of a house, next to a child’s pink-and-white tricycle. The cameramen were scrambling like panicked roaches to get the tricycle and the body bag in the same shot.

The County Rescue Squad scuba divers arrived and suited up. One of them looked at the pond and muttered, “Whore’s pussy.”

Corde sternly told the man to act professionally.

On the periphery of the action Wynton Kresge leaned against an old, beige Dodge Aspen crowned by a blue revolving light. On the door was the Auden University seal, printed with the school name and the words
Veritas et Integritas
. Ebbans nodded in his direction. Corde and Kresge ignored each other.

“I step into a mantrap on this one, or what?” Corde asked Ebbans.

“You play it like you see it, Bill. That’s all you can ever do.”

“Crime Scene have a chance before everybody started padding around?”

“It was virgin. We didn’t find much other than the boot prints but it was a virgin.”

Corde glanced at the cluster of policemen beside the pond. One was the blond man he had seen in the back of Ribbon’s car.

Ebbans followed his eyes. “Charlie Mahoney.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“Representative of the family.”

“Uhn. What family?”

“Works for Jennie’s father.”

“And?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“Well, let’s see what we’ve got.” Corde started down to the water.

“Wait up a minute, Bill.”

He stopped. Ebbans stepped beside him and when he spoke his voice was a whisper. Corde lowered his ear toward the man. “I just wanted you to know,” Ebbans began then hesitated. “Well, it’s bullshit is what it is.…”

Corde was astonished. He had never known Ebbans to cuss. “What, T.T.?”

Their eyes were on an indentation in the grass—a wheel tread left by the gurney that had carried Emily’s body to the ambulance.

“Was there any connection between you and Jennie?”

Corde looked up and kept his eye on the mesmerizing lights atop the ambulance. “Go on. What are you saying?”

“There’s some talk at County—just talk—that you burnt those letters because you were, you know …”

“I was what?”

“‘Seeing her’ is what somebody said. And because of that maybe you wanted to deep-six the evidence. I don’t believe—”

“I didn’t do that, T.T.”

“I know that. I’m just telling you what I heard. It’s just a rumor but it’s one of those rumors that won’t go away.”

Corde had been in town government long enough to know there are two reasons rumors don’t go away. Either because somebody doesn’t want them to go away.

Or because they’re true.

“Who’s behind it?” Corde asked.

“Don’t know. Hammerback seems to be on your side. But with the election he’s paying out his support real slow and if you turn out to be a liability he’ll burn you in a second. Who else it could be I just don’t know.”

At Corde’s feet drops of dew caught the flashing lights and flickered like a hundred miniature Christmas bulbs. “’Predate your telling me, T.T.”

Ebbans walked to the ambulance and Corde headed down to the pond, whose turgid surface was filled with bubbles from the divers as they searched for clues to the death of this beautiful young woman—whose story and whose secrets were now lost forever and would never be transcribed on one of Bill Corde’s neatly ordered index cards.

He stood for a long time, with his feet apart in a patch of firm mud, looking over the water, and found himself thinking not at all of fingerprints or weapons or footprints or fiber traces but meditating on the lives of the two girls murdered in this dismal place and wondering what the lesson of those deaths would ultimately be.

“She’s calm now.” Diane Corde was speaking to Dr. Parker in her office. “I’ve never seen her have an attack like that. Bill said he asked her to spell a word and she just freaked out.”

Mother
. That was what Sarah was supposed to spell. Diane didn’t tell the prim doctor this. Neither did she say how much she resented Corde’s callousness in telling her which word so panicked Sarah.

Dr. Parker said, “I wish you’d called me. I could have given her a tranquilizer. She had a panic attack. They’re very dangerous in children.”

Although the doctor’s words were spoken softly Diane felt the lash of criticism again. She said in a spiny tone, “I was out and my husband had just got some bad news. We couldn’t deal with it all at once.”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

“I’m sorry,” Diane said. Then she was angry with herself.
Why should
I
feel guilty?
“I’ve kept her out of—”

“I know,” Dr. Parker said. “I called the school after you called me.”

“You did?” Diane asked.

“Of course I did. Sarah’s my patient. This incident is my responsibility.” The blunt admission surprised Diane but she sensed the doctor wasn’t apologizing; she was simply observing. “I misjudged her strength. She puts on a good facade of resilience. I thought she’d be better able to deal with the stress. I was wrong. I don’t want her back in school this term. We have to stabilize her emotionally.”

The doctor’s suit today was dark green and high-necked. Diane had noticed it favorably when she walked into the office and was even thinking of complimenting her. She changed her mind.

Dr. Parker opened a thick file. Inside were a half dozen booklets, on some of which Sarah’s stubby handwriting was evident. “Now I’ve finished my diagnosis and I’d like to talk to you about it. First, I was right to take her off Ritalin.”

I’m sure you’re always right
.

“She doesn’t display any general hyperkinetic activity and she’s very even-tempered when not confronted with stress. What I observed about her restlessness and her inattentiveness was that they’re symptomatic of her primary disability.”

“You said that might be the case,” Diane said.

“Yes, I did.”

But of course
.

“I’ve given her the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, the Gray Oral Reading Test, Bender Gestalt, Wide Range Achievement Test and the Informal Test of Written Language Expression. The results show your daughter suffers from severe reading retardation—”

“I don’t care what you say,” Diane blurted, “Sarah is not retarded.”

“That doesn’t mean that
she’s
retarded, Mrs. Corde. Primary reading retardation. It’s also called developmental dyslexia.”

“Dyslexia? That’s where you turn letters around.”

“That’s part of it. Dyslexics have trouble with word attack—that’s how we approach a word we’ve never seen before—and with putting together words or sentences. They have trouble with handwriting and show an intolerance for drill. Sarah also suffers from dysorthographia, or spelling deficit.”

Come on, Diplomas, cut out the big words and do what I’m paying you to do
.

“She has some of dyslexia’s mathematical counterpart—developmental dyscalculia. But her problem is primarily reading and spelling. Her combined verbal and performance IQ is in the superior range. In fact she’s functioning in the top five percent of the population. Her score, by the way, is higher than that of the average medical student.”

“Sarah?” Diane whispered.

“It’s also six points higher than your son’s. I checked with the school.”

Diane frowned. This could not be. The doctor’s credentials were suddenly suspect again.

“She’s reading about three years behind her chronological age and it usually happens that the gap will widen. Without special education, by the time she’s fifteen, Sarah’s writing age would be maybe eleven and her spelling age nine or
ten
.”

“What can we do?”

“Tutoring and special education. Immediately. Dyslexia
is troubling with any student but it’s an extremely serious problem for someone with Sarah’s intelligence and creativity—”

“Creativity?” Diane could not suppress the laugh. Why, the doctor had mixed up her daughter’s file with another patient’s. “She’s not the
least
creative. She’s never painted anything. She can’t carry a tune. She can’t even strum a guitar. Obviously she can’t write …”

“Mrs. Corde, Sarah is one of the most creative patients I’ve ever had. She can probably do all of those things you just mentioned. She’s been too inhibited to try because the mechanics overwhelm her. She’s been conditioned to fail. Her self-esteem is very low.”

“But we always encourage her.”

“Mrs. Corde, parents often encourage their disabled children to do what other students can do easily. Sarah is not like other children. Encouragement like that is just another way of helping her fail.”

“Well,” Diane said stiffly. “You sure don’t hesitate to call it the way you see it, Doctor.”

Dr. Parker smiled a smile that meant nothing at all to Diane, who was for once relieved that the psychiatrist had set a frigid atmosphere for these sessions. She had no problem saying bluntly, “That’s very well and good, Doctor, but how the hell are you going to help my little girl?”

“I want you to find a tutor. They’re expensive but you need one and you need a good one. I recommend that you check with the Auden lab school.”

“Why can’t we help her? Bill and me?”

“Sarah needs a specialist.”

“But—”

“It’s important that she see someone who knows what they’re doing.”

Diane thought it was remarkable that you could both admire and detest someone at the same time.

“Second, I’d like to work with her myself. Until we build up her confidence in herself she’s never going to improve. Her self-esteem has been very badly damaged.”

“What can you do that we haven’t? All right, maybe the way we tried to teach her was wrong. But you keep forgetting that we’ve always supported her. We always tell her how good she is. How talented.”

“But she doesn’t
believe
you. And how can she? You push her to work harder and it does no good. You tell her she’s doing well but she isn’t, she’s failing her classes. You tell her she’s smart but by all the outward manifestations she isn’t. Mrs. Corde, you’ve acted for the best motives but your efforts have been counterproductive. We need to encourage Sarah to do the things she’s genuinely good at.”

“But haven’t you heard what I’ve told you? She isn’t good at anything. She doesn’t even like to help me cook or sew. All she does is play games by herself, go to movies and watch TV.”

“Ah. Precisely.” Dr. Parker smiled like a chess player calling checkmate.

Diane blinked.
What’d I say?

“I’d like to see Sarah as soon as possible. If you could make the appointment with Ruth.” The cryptic eyes, so talented at dismissals, glanced at another file.

“Okay, sure.” Diane stood.

Then she hesitated.

She sat down again. “Say, Doctor …”

“Yes?”

Diane blurted, “Where does it come from? Dyslexia?”

“I’m sorry, I should have discussed that with you.” She closed the second file and turned full attention to Diane. “We don’t know exactly. It used to be that a lot of doctors attributed it to physical problems—like memory confusion between the two hemispheres of the brain. That’s been discredited now though vision and hearing problems can be major factors. My belief is that like many developmental problems dyslexia has both a nature and nurture component. It’s largely genetic and the prenatal period is very critical. But how parents and teachers respond to the child is important too.”

“Prenatal?” Diane asked, then casually added, “So could it be that someone who had maybe smoked or drank or took drugs during pregnancy might cause dyslexia in their children?”

“To some extent though usually there’s a correspondent decrease in IQ.…” Dr. Parker squinted and flipped through her notes. “Anyway I thought you said you largely abstained while you were pregnant.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Diane said. “I was just curious.… You know, when someone you love has a problem you want to know all about it.” Diane stood up. She sensed Dr. Parker studying her. “Well, I’ll make that appointment.”

“Wait a minute, please.” Dr. Parker capped her pen. “You know, Mrs. Corde, one of the underlying themes of my approach to therapy is that we really
are
our parents.” She was smiling, Diane believed, in a heartfelt way for the first time since they had begun working together. “I call parents the quote primary providers and not just in a positive sense. What they give us and what they do for us—and
to
us—include some unfortunate things. But it can include a lot of good things too.”

Diane looked back at her and tried to keep her face an unemotional mask. She managed pretty well, even when the doctor said, “I’ve seen a lot of parents in here and I’ve seen a lot of people in here because of their parents. Whatever’s troubling you, Mrs. Corde, don’t be too hard on yourself. My opinion is that Sarah is a very lucky girl.”