The Lesson of Her Death (58 page)

A
n 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 EID 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 EID 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 Ph.D. 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. “I’ll 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 Sheriff’s 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. A long white structure,
TRIBUTION CENT R
, burnt out letters never replaced. He blazes 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.