The Lesson of Her Death (46 page)

“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 moral 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. Affect?”

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 just 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.

“W
e 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’s 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 being charged with anything. He’s just being 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.”