ANOTHER WARNING

This Polaroid had been taken at the same time as the one left on the back steps. The scene was of Sarah, or whoever the girl might be, lying in the grass, her skirt still up to her waist. The angle was about the same, so was the lighting. There were in fact only two differences. The photographer was now much nearer—only several feet from the girl.

And the message in red marker on the back was different. It said: GETTING CLOSER.

PRAISE FOR

ACCLAIMED AUTHOR

JEFFERY DEAVER

and HIS PREVIOUS NOVEL

MISTRESS OF JUSTICE

“The characters are well drawn, the plot is fast paced, and the writing avoids totally the usual trappings of blockbusterdom.… An intelligently written thriller.”

—Booklist

“This novel is a solid achievement.”

—Mystery News

“Loaded with character and action and a very devious plot, Mistress of Justice is a top-notch legal thriller.”

—Mystery Lovers News

BY THE AUTHOR OF

The Stone Monkey

The Blue Nowhere

Speaking in Tongues

The Empty Chair

The Devil’s Teardrop

The Coffin Dancer

The Bone Collector

A Maiden’s Grave

Praying for Sleep

The Lesson of Her Death*

Hell’s Kitchen

Hard News*

Death of a Blue Movie Star*

Manhattan 1s My Beat*

Bloody River Blues

Shallow Graves

*Available from Bantam Books

Table of Contents

Cover

Another Warning

Other Books By This Author

Title Page

Dedication

Author’s Note

Part 1 - Profile

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Part 2 - Physical Evidence

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Part 3 - Close Pursuit

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

About The Author

Copyright

For Carla Norton

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I would like to express my grateful appreciation to Jerry Cowdrey, Laguna Niguel, California, for her insights into the plight and the potential of learning disabled children. Similarly, my thanks to my sister and fellow author Julie Reece Deaver, Pacific Grove, California, and special thanks to Karen Cowdrey of Los Angeles, whose insights into psychotherapy and the human mind have proved invaluable in many, many ways. Also, my appreciation to my editor, Kate Miciak, among whose uncanny talents are the abilities to inspire, to instruct, and—not the least—to instill in an author the same enthusiasm she feels for the written word. And finally, my heartfelt thanks to my agent and friend, Deborah Schneider.

JWD, New York City, 1993

PART ONE

Profile

With every passing mile her heart fled a little more.

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

“Please,” the girl said.

“No.”

She put her hands into her lap.

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

Maybe if he slowed down just enough …

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

But then what? Where would she run to?

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

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

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

“I don’t want to. Please.”

“Sarah.”

“Just for today? Please.”

“No.”

“Don’t leave me.”

“Out you go.”

“I’m not ready!”

“Do the best you can.”

“I’m scared.”

“There’s nothing to be—”

“Don’t leave me!”

“Look—” His voice grew stony. “I’m going to be right nearby. Just over at Blackfoot Pond. That’s hardly a mile away.”

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

“Give me a kiss.”

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

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

The car vanished behind a hill.

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

Tinier. Weaker.

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

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

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

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

Had they missed it? How could they?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, you poor girl …

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

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

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

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

“We got her name. Here we go. It’s Jennie Gebben. She’s a student.”

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

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

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

Jim Slocum called, “The whole shebang?”

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

Slocum asked again, “The whole, uhm, place?”

Corde looked up and said, “Whole thing. Yeah.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listen …

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

Footsteps!

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

Where?

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

She ran most of the way.

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

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

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

Maybe it was just a bunch of leaves and branches.

No. She saw movement. It was somebody.

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

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

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

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

“Anything now?”

“Nope.”

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

“Yessiree,” Slocum said. “We head back now?”

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

“You want me just to wait, not do anything?”

“They’re due here now. Shouldn’t be long.”

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

“We gotta keep it sealed, Jim.”

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

“I just don’t want to get into a situation where I’m sitting here all day.”

“I don’t think it’ll—”

A crackle of brush, footsteps coming toward them.

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

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

“Daddy!”

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

“Sarrie!”

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

“Oh, Sarah! What are you doing here?”

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

Jesus Lord.…

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

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

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

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

He repeated, “Answer me!”

What was the safest answer? She shook her head.

“You didn’t see anyone?”

She hesitated then swallowed. “I got sick at school.”

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

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

“It’s like I have pitchforks in my tummy.”

“You have to go to school.”

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

“Come on. Get in the car.”

“No!” she squealed. “I’m not going! You can’t make me.”

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

“Please?” Her face filled with enormous disappointment.

“Now.”

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

“Sarah?”

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

“Kids,” Corde muttered.

“Find yourself something?” Slocum asked.

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

Auden Co-ed Raped, Murdered was the headline.

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

“Damn, Bill.”

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

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

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

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

“You don’t have to be here,” Corde said gently.

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

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

Going to be all right.

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

“You drove all the way here yourself,” Gebben said.

“No, sir, took a commuter flight. Midwest Air.”

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

Corde nodded toward her dresser and asked, “May I?”

“I remember when she left for school the last time she was home, Thanksgiving.… I’m sorry?”

“Her dresser. I’d like to look through it.”

Gebben gestured absently. Corde walked to the bureau but did not yet open it. “Thanksgiving. She’d left the bedclothes all piled up. In a heap. After she’d gone to the airport, Jennie’s mother came up here and made the bed and arranged it just like that.…” Corde looked at the three pink-and-white gingham pillows on top of the comforter, a plush dog with black button eyes sticking his head out from under them. “My wife, she took a long time to arrange the dog.”

Gebben took several deep breaths to calm himself. “She … The thing about Jennie was, she loved …”

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

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

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

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

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

She died on a bed of milky blue hyacinths.

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

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

“No diaries or letters?”

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

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

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

“Was she engaged? Have a steady boyfriend here?”

Gebben was hesitating. “She had a lot of friends. Nobody’d hurt her. Everybody loved her.”

“Did she break up with anybody recently?”

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

“Anybody have a crush on her?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“She does.”

The secretary paused then said, “You’re holed up in here.”

“I beg your pardon?”

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

“The police?” Kresge asked.

“But then I found out it was ‘holed up.’ Like, go into a hole.”

“I don’t really know. Now?”

“She said now.”

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

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

“Sarah, are you with us?”

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

“I called on you. Come up here.”

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

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

Sarah hated her more than anyone in the world.

“Sarah, now come along. This is just practice. You’re not being graded.”

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

“Now, Sarah.”

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

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

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

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

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

Sarah nodded.

“If you studied the list then there’s nothing to cry about.”

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

“I can’t.”

“You don’t want us to think you’re being difficult, do you? ‘Clarify.’”

Between sobs, Sarah said, “C.”

“Very good.” The snake smiled.

Her knees quivered. “I don’t know. I don’t.” More tears.

“What’s the next letter?”

“I don’t know.”

“Try.”

“C-A …”

Mrs. Beiderson exhaled a sigh. “All right, Sarah. Sit—”

“I could do it at home—”

“—down. Anyone else?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Corde said, “I’d like to start interviewing Jennie’s friends and professors as soon as possible.”

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

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

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

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

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

The dean said, “There are so many implications.”

Corde said, “I beg your pardon.”

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

“It didn’t,” Kresge said. “Happen on campus, I mean.”

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

“It’s a very large dorm,” the dean said. “That might cause, I don’t know, panic.”

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

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

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

“You’d be surprised,” Corde said.

“I’ll find out,” Kresge said.

“I’ll guarantee you that we have no criminals on our staff.”

“Probably not,” Corde said agreeably. He turned to Kresge. “You’re going to be my contact here?”

“Sure.”

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

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

Corde found he’d been ignoring Kresge. He looked up and smiled. “Sorry?”

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

“I’m just saying if you need a hand.”

Corde turned to the dean. “I’d like a room of some kind.”

Dean Larraby asked, “Room?”

“For the interviews. We’d prefer to do it on campus.”

Kresge said, “The Student Union’s got a lot of activity rooms.”

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

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

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

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

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

Kresge said, “We’ve beefed up security patrols in the evening.”

Corde said that was good.

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

Kresge said, “We can’t assume anything, Dean.”

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

Corde said, “We just don’t know anything at this point.”

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

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

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

The dean continued, “The school had nothing to do with it. So—”

“It was never solved, Dean,” Kresge’s baritone droned. “I was just speculating.”

“—why bring it up?”

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

“There was no connection,” the dean said sourly.

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

“Wynton.”

“Sorry.”

“Uhn, Detective, I wanted to ask you something. About motives for this type of crime. I—”

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

Kresge’s spacious unsmiling face nodded slowly. “You’ll get it when you want it.”

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

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

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

“No. She hasn’t come back yet. When she’s upset sometimes she hides in the woods.”

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

They hung up.

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

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

No keys.

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

How had she gotten inside without the keys?

The back door had been open.

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

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

But Sarah of course could ignore a thousand stern warnings.

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

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

She is no longer crying.

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

Sarah looks up at the clouds.

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

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

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

But Sarah finds that she has had a visitor.

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

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

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

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

And eventually becomes joyous anticipation.

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

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

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

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

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

This’s right clever, we just reversed positions.

“Bill here?” Ribbon asked.

“He flew over to St. Louis this morning to talk to the girl’s father—”

“He did what?”

“Flew up to St. Louis. To talk to the girl’s—”

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

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

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

“Doesn’t seem to be.”

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

“Cult?” Slocum asked carefully.

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

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

Slocum flipped to the pictures of the crime scenes. “You don’t think it’s the same guy?”

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

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

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

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

“Naw, you don’t have to. Just call up the boys in Higgins and get an appointment.”

Slocum grinned. “Okay. I won’t fly.”

“What?”

“I won’t fly up there.”

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

“How’s that?”

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

“Wouldn’t that kind of tip our hand?”

“It’s our job to save lives too.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Corde was real good at the coin trick.

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

He nodded to the men around the chipped fiber-board table: Jim Slocum, T.T. Ebbans—the lean, ex-Marine felony investigator from the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department—and New Lebanon Deputy Lance Miller. At the far end of the table, surrounded by two empty chairs, was Wynton Kresge. Corde thought, Antsy as a tethered retriever on the first day of season.

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

“Howdy, Bill. Just want to say a few words to the troops about this case, you don’t mind.” The sheriff’s ruddy face looked out over the men as if he were addressing a crowd of a thousand. Ribbon scrutinized Wynton Kresge who represented two oddities in this office—he was black and he wore a suit. Kresge took the look for a moment, realized he was being asked a question then said, “I’m from the college.”

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

“Yessir,” said Ebbans. “I’m just a hired hand here.”

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

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

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

Corde was silent. It was Ebbans who asked, “Cult?”

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

Jim Slocum said, “In these situations that’s what you always have to do.”

Wynton Kresge wrote this down.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s that?” Wynton Kresge asked the question that Corde had been about to.

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

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

“Ah,” Kresge said, and wrote.

Corde and Ebbans played the game again.

“Well, that’s my two cents. I’ll let you boys be. Do me proud and go catch this sickie.” Ribbon left the room.

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

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

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

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

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

“No.” Corde said solemnly. “Take a good look. Remember what she looked like.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kresge said, “Excuse me.”

Corde glanced up. “Yes?”

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

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

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

Ebbans asked, “Was she ever up before the UDB?”

University Disciplinary Board. Kresge said she wasn’t.

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

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

“Look—” Corde began.

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

“How do you know that?”

“If she’d fought there’d be tissue under her nails.”

“Kleenex?”

Slocum laughed. Ebbans said, “Skin. The man’s skin.”

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

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

“Oh. I didn’t know that.”

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

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

Ebbans said, “What’s the coroner say about COD?”

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

“Why’s that?” Miller asked.

“Quantity of the semen. Probably hadn’t had sex for four, five weeks.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miller whistled softly. “Must be a lot of students making a lot of calls, wouldn’t you think?”

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

“Right.”

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

“Will do. I’ll order the printout.”

“Wynton, I don’t suppose you folk fingerprint students and professors?”

“Been my dream and desire but no we don’t.”

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

Echoes of “yup” or “uh-huh” filled the room.

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

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

“’Predate it.”

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

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

“Six-thirty. I left about seven.”

“You see anybody there?”

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

Corde said, “They weren’t there last night. They set up at five A.M. Branch took down a line. I already checked.”

“Oh,” Kresge said with disappointment.

“You see anybody else?”

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

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

“Who’s that?” Miller asked. “Rings a bell.”

“Auden student killed last year.”

“Ah, right.”

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

“It’s my intention to look into it,” Corde said abruptly. “Like I told the dean.”

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

Corde smiled in a meaningless way. “I’ll let you know if we need it.”

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

The deputies frowned with suitable concern as they read.

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

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

Corde hesitated then said, “Actually it’s never happened.”

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

“What’s that?” Jim Slocum asked.

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

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

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

Dear Sarah—

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

—Your friend

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

Running away …

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

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

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

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

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

There was no answer.

A moment later: “Honey, come on down here.”

A weak voice said, “I’m taking a bath, Mommy. I’ll be down before supper.”

“Honey, Mrs. Beiderson called.”

Silence.

“Sarah—”

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

“Come on out. She told me what happened at school.”

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

“I don’t want to!” Sarah answered shrilly.

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

Coward …

The phone began ringing.

She glanced at it. “All right, Sarah, we’ll talk later.”

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

She was married to him.

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

And worse news: he now had a murder case.

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

She picked up the beige phone.

It was not her husband.

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

“Corde residence,” she said, wholly polite.

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

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

The volume of the music diminished. “You’re Jamie’s mother?”

“You want to speak to Jamie?”

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

“Well, Jamie won’t be home for another couple hours.”

“Could you just give me some information about him?”

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

“Today’s the last day we can get anything typeset.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Who’s his homeroom teacher?”

This seemed harmless enough. She said, “That’d be Mr. Jessup.”

“And is he on any teams?” the advisor asked.

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

“Triathlon. So he’s a bicyclist?”

“You can’t hardly keep him off it. He’d ride it to the dinner table if we let him.”

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

“It’s Italian. A fifteen-speed. I don’t remember the name. Is it important?”

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

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

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

“I guess not.”

“What’s his favorite music video?”

“I have no idea.”

“His favorite movie?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“How about his favorite groups?”

“Groups?”

“Music groups?”

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

“Ha.”

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

“Everyone knows Geiger.”

Well, excuse me.…

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

“Could you make up a quote for him?”

No way. “I think that’ll have to be blank.”

“I guess that’s okay. You’ve been a big help, Mrs. Corde.”

“When is the yearbook coming out?”

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

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

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

When he got the note he’d been saying:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“… But it wasn’t until after the Dynamic Duo of Defeat—Gettysburg and Vicksburg—that the Southern troops embraced fundamentalist revivalism with a gusto …”

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

Ah, yes, the memorial service.

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

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

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

“Oh, did you hear? Professor? A student was—”

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

“Randy,” she said, “we have a real problem.”

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

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

Sayles said, “Have you talked to the police?”

“What?”

“The police?”

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

The Gebben girl.

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

The Gebben girl. Student number 144691.

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

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

“None.”

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

“Well,” she said testily, “there isn’t.”

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

“The fact is the money isn’t there.”

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

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

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

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

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

Sayles said coldly, “Her death was most inopportune.”

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

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

“Does anybody know?” he mused. Nope, not anymore she doesn’t. Sayles shook his head.

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

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

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

Student number 144691.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She was thinking of the railroad train.

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

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

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

Sarah stopped crying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today, for instance—the phone call.

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

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

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

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

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

But these dreams were disrupted by a particular individual.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ah, Jennie, what have you done to me?

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

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

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

“Ms. Rossiter? I’m from the Sheriff’s Department.”

Another knock.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No!

“Sarah!”

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

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

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

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

“Leave me alone!” Sarah wailed, and plunged ahead toward the truck’s tires.

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

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

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

“Leave me alone!”

Diane was running toward them. “What happened? What happened?”

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

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

“Why?” her father demanded.

“Because.”

“Sarah—” Corde began sternly.

The little girl seemed to wince. “It’s not my fault. The wizard told me to.”

“The wizard?”

“The Sunshine Man …”

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

“He made Redford T. Redford fly out to the forest and he told me—”

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

“Leave me alone.” The tiny mouth tightened ominously.

Corde said, “It’s going to be okay, honey. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not going back to school.”

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

“I don’t care!”

“Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that!” Mother’s and daughter’s strident tones were different only in pitch.

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

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

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

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

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

“What’re we going to do? She’s taking the pills?”

“Every day. But I don’t think they’re doing any good. They just seem to make her stomach upset.” She waved vaguely toward the front yard. “Can you imagine she did that? Oh, my.”

Corde thought: Why now? With this case and everything, why now? He looked out the window at Sarah’s bike, standing upright on training wheels, a low pastel green Schwinn, with rainbow streamers hanging pathetically from the rubber handle grips. He thought of Jamie and his high racing bike that he zipped along on fast and daring as a motocross competitor. Sarah still couldn’t ride her tiny bike without the trainers. It embarrassed Corde when the family pedaled to town together. Corde tried to avoid the inevitable comparison between his children. He wished whatever God had dished out for them had been more evenly divided. It was difficult but Corde made a special effort to limit the pride he expressed for Jamie, always aware of Sarah’s eyes on him, begging for approval even as she was stung by her own limits.

A more frightening concern: some man offering a confused little girl a ride home. Corde and Diane had talked to her about this and she’d responded with infuriating laughter, saying that a wizard or a magic dog would protect her or that she would just fly away and hide behind the moon. Corde would grow stern, Diane would threaten to spank her, the girl’s face became somber. But her parents could see that the belief in supernatural protectors had not been dislodged.

Oh, Sarrie …

Although Bill Corde still went to church regularly he had stopped praying. He’d stopped exactly nine years ago. He thought if it would do anything for Sarah he’d start up again.

He said, “It’s like she’s emotionally dis—”

Diane turned on him. “Don’t say that! She has a high IQ. Beiderson herself told me. She’s faking. She wants to get attention. And, brother, you give her plenty.…”

Corde lifted an eyebrow at this.

Diane conceded, “Okay, and so do I.”

Corde was testy. “Well, we’ve got to do something. We can’t let that happen again.” He waved toward the yard, like Diane reluctant to mention his daughter’s mortality.

“She’s got her end-of-term tests in two weeks.”

“We can’t take her out of school now,” Corde said. “We can’t hold her back another grade.” He looked out the window. Why did the sight of a bicycle standing upright bother him so?

It encouraged him that she could read some books by herself.

It encouraged him that she had made and kept a few friends.

It encouraged him that she was pretty.

It destroyed him that she wasn’t like Jamie.

“There’s something I ought to tell you,” Corde said, hesitating, not knowing how she’d respond.

He pointed to the Register, which rested with odd prominence on top of four cans of tomatoes in the middle of the table. It was open to the article about the murder.

“Somebody left a copy of that story at the crime scene. It was saying that maybe we shouldn’t be investigating this case too hard. Now it could be a prank and even if the killer left it I don’t take it all that serious. But I’m going to have a deputy here at the house.”

This however seemed to be just another small burden on his wife’s shoulders. Diane said matter-of-factly, “We shouldn’t let Sarah play by herself then.”

“Not outside of the yard, no. We’ll have to tell her somehow. But we don’t want to scare her. She spooks so easy.”

Diane said, “You keep babying her. She’s never going to grow up if you keep treating her that way.”

“I just think we have to be careful is all.” Corde lifted his eyes to the post-and-rail fence two hundred feet away and saw a Hereford grazing in the field beyond. It reminded him of a picture Sarah had once tried to draw of a dalmatian. The drawing had been pathetic—an infant’s scrawl. “It comes close to breaking my heart,” he said. “It’s like she’s …”

“She isn’t retarded,” Diane hissed.

“I didn’t say that.”

“My daughter is not retarded.” She turned her attention to the refrigerator. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

Rockets rising from grass from mud no no not mud servo rockets Dathar man he’s great muscles ripping them all apart shooting with xasers.… Their bodies falling.… Falling into flowers.

Falling. Into. Mud …

Philip Halpern sat behind the two-bedroom house, under the six-by-six back porch, which was for him at this moment the control room of his Dimensioncruiser. He listened. He heard footsteps from the house. They receded. Falling in mud, in flowers. No no no …

Philip was blond, five feet eight, and he weighed two hundred and forty-five pounds. He was the second heaviest person in his freshman high school class. Tonight, in size forty-four Levi’s and a dark green shirt, he sat in a pile of leaves that had drifted under the porch. The boy lowered his head and stared at the bag at his feet. It was small, a sandwich bag, the sort that would contain lunch, when his mother made his lunch, of bologna sandwiches smeared with Hellmann’s and potato chips and bananas and Oreos and eighty cents in dull-clinking coins for chocolate milk. Although what the bag contained tonight was small his hand moved slowly when he picked it up, as though the contents were very heavy.

“Phathar!” a nearby voice whispered.

Philip jumped then answered, “Jano, that you?” He squinted and saw a boy his age crawling through a secret gate they had built together in the chicken-wire fence that surrounded the Halpern property. “Jano, shit, be quiet.”

Between themselves, Philip and his friend had taken the names of characters in a recent science fiction film they’d seen four times. It was like a code, a secret that bound them together in this alien world.

“Phathar, I’ve like called you ten times.” Jano’s voice was agitated.

Phathar whispered harshly, “Just chill, will you? Shut up.”

Jano—full name Jano-IV of the Lost Dimension—climbed through the lattice gate of the porch. He said, “Why didn’t you call me back? I thought you’d been arrested or something. Man, I almost puked this morning. I mean, like really.”

“Chill … out. Okay?” Although Phathar-VII, also a warrior from the Lost Dimension, was calm and in control, Philip Halpern, young and overweight, was close enough to panic without his friend’s adding to it. He said, “So what is there to do?”

“I don’t know. I almost puked.” Jano repeated, looking as if he had. His mouth was wet and his eyes red and though it was too early in the season for serious freckles, the brown dots stood out on his face in sickly contrast to his pale skin.

Phathar said, “How can they even find us?”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“You’re like a total pussy.”

“I am not!” Jano’s eyes blazed.

Philip, whom Jano could have pounded to the dirt floor with a single fist, backed off. “All right, dude, all right.”

Jano said, “We’ve got to destruct the files.”

“You know how long it took us to make those up?”

Jano said, “We’ve got the names of half the girls in class on them. All the codes, all the pictures.”

“I’ve got them in a secret file. If anybody tries—”

“But the pictures—” Jano whined in a voice that wasn’t at all the voice of a Dimensional warrior.

“No, listen,” Phathar said. “If anybody tries to open the drawer everything self-destructs. It’s automatic.”

Jano gazed into the night. “Oh, man, I wish we hadn’t done it.”

“Stop talking that way,” Phathar whispered ruthlessly. A fleck of saliva shot onto Jano’s arm. The boy’s revulsion showed in his face but he didn’t brush the dot away. Phathar continued, “We did do it! We. Did. It. We can’t bring her back to life.”

“Dathar could,” Jano sniveled.

“Well, we can’t so quit like crying about it.”

“I almost puked.”

Above them: A squeak of opening door. A low voice snapped, “Phil!” Both boys froze. “Phil-lip!” His father’s voice stabbed through the night like a Dimension-cruiser’s engine kicking into antimatter mode. “The fuck are you? You got school tomorrow.”

Philip wondered if he himself was going to puke. Even Phathar was trembling.

“You can hear me, you got ten minutes. I have to come looking for you it’ll be with the handy man.”

When the screen door slammed Phathar said, “You gotta leave. He finds you here he’ll whip me.”

Jano stared at the underside of the porch above them then said, “Tomorrow.” He left silently. To his shadowy, receding form, Phathar lifted his arm and closed his fingers in a Dimensional warrior salute.

Oh, she struggled. She wrote the words a dozen times, careful always to tear up the ruined note and drop it into a garbage can. She’d failed him once. She wasn’t going to make it worse by letting her mother and dad find out about him.

Sitting at her desk she hunched over the tricky letters, willing her pen to move one way then watching it move the other. She would tell it to go up to make the top of a b and instead it went down and became a p. Left instead of right.

Is this how an S goes? No. Yes.

Sarah Corde hated S’s.

She heard the crickets playing their tiny squeak-fiddles outside in the cool night, she heard the wind brushing the trees. Neck and back cramped with tension she wrote for another half hour then looked at her work.

Im sorry. I cant’ go awya, they wont let me anb a police man is coomign comming in the mourning to watch us. Can you help me? You can have yor mony back. You are the Sunshine Man aren’t you? Can I see you?

She signed her name carefully.

She felt a moment of panic, worrying that the Sunshine Man might not be able to read the note. Then she decided that because he was a wizard he could probably figure most of it out.

Sarah folded the paper and wrote his name on the outside. She put on her jacket then she paused. She opened the note and added some words at the bottom.

Im sorry I dont’ spell good. Im realy sorry.

Then she snuck out the back door into the windy night and ran all the way to the circle of rocks.

The deputy showed up at eight-thirty almost to the second. He was young pink-scrubbed beefy eager and he wore on his hip a combat-gripped .357 Colt Python with a six-inch vented barrel. He was, in short, everything a husband could want to protect his wife and kids.

“Morning, Tom.” Corde picked up the Register from the driveway and held the screen door open for the deputy.

“Howdy, Detective. Nice house you got here.”

Corde introduced him to the family. Diane offered him some coffee. He declined regretfully as if this were a slap at her cooking.

The deputy retreated to the comfort of his Dodge watchtower parked in the driveway and the family sat down to breakfast. Jamie and Diane were talking about something, animated, near to an argument. Sarah sat quietly but was overjoyed at the news that she could stay home from school today. (“Only today, mind you, one day, just one, but no more absences for the rest of the year, you understand, young lady?”—Oh, yes, and how many times had they said the same thing?)

Corde wasn’t listening to his wife and son and he wasn’t observing his daughter’s elation because he was reading a short article in the Register and he was shocked.

Cult Suspected in Auden Co-ed Murder

He set his coffee on the table and knocked the syrup over. He didn’t notice it fall. Diane glanced at him, frowning, and righted the bottle.

… Sheriff’s Department investigators are looking into the possibility that a cult or religious killer may be stalking the town of New Lebanon.…

His eyes jumped through the article.

… and robbery was not a motive. Because she was killed on the night of the first quarter of the moon, there has been speculation that Miss Gebben may have been a sacrifice victim, possibly one in a chain of such killings. Sources close to the Sheriff’s Department also disclosed that death threats have been made against its personnel.…

Threats plural?

… Sheriff Steve Ribbon stated emphatically, however, that they would in no way impede the investigation. “We aren’t going to be bullied by these people, whoever they are, however sick they might be,” Ribbon said. “We have some strong leads and we’re pursuing them real hard.”

“Damn,” Corde muttered, bringing an end to breakfast table arguments and meditations on freedom. He looked over the paper to find his family staring at him.

“What is it, hon?”

He handed Diane the article and told the children it was nothing. Jamie glanced over his mother’s shoulder as she read.

“A cult?” he asked.

Diane finished the article. Jamie picked it up and continued to read.

His wife asked him, “What’s wrong with the story? I don’t get it.”

“Too much publicity,” he muttered. “I think it’s best to play cases like this close to your chest.”

“I suppose,” she said, and began clearing away dishes.

Corde stood to fetch his gunbelt but before he left the kitchen he glanced at his wife. She was intent on dishes and seemed to have missed what was so troubling to him—that this story was a huge sign for the killer, which said, in the vernacular of Steve Ribbon, You may’ve threatened Corde but no matter. He’s going ahead full steam and he don’t give a good goddamn about your threats. You do your worst, you aren’t stopping our boy Bill.

They wouldn’t go so far as to blurt out, “I was at a frat party” or “I was on a date the night it happened” or “You can ask anyone, I didn’t even see her that night” even though that’s what they wanted to blurt. But they were defensive and they were scared. Dodging Corde’s cool green eyes, the boys glanced from his face to his gun, the girls to the floor. Some of them seemed inconvenienced, some were near tears. Often they did cry.

Room 121 in the Student Union had never been put to such a sorrowful purpose.

The room was worse than any interrogation cubicle at the New Lebanon Sheriff’s Department. It was painted beige and smelled of adolescent perfume and after-shave lotion, chalk, poster paints, bitter bad coffee and food cooking in grease. Corde sat at a lightweight metal desk he could lift: with his knees by flexing his toes and he felt ridiculous. Lance Miller was in the opposite corner of the room.

Throughout the morning students and staff workers of the school gave Corde their version of the essay “The Jennie Gebben That I Knew.” They put their words to many uses—exonerating themselves, pressing the wound of loss, putting their names into the public record.

Some even tried to help him catch a killer.

In the morning alone Corde filled two packs of three-by-five cards. At one P.M. they took a break. Corde opened his briefcase to get a new pack of cards. As he cracked the cellophane wrapping, Miller glanced into the briefcase and noticed Corde staring at a photo taped to the inside. It was the one of Jennie Gebben, face shiny with sweat. Corde was aware of Miller’s watching him and closed the lid. Miller went to the cafeteria to buy sandwiches.

After lunch Miller looked out the window and said, “Oh, boy, here he comes again.” Corde looked up and saw Wynton Kresge coming up the sidewalk. “What’s that man want?” Corde asked.

The security chief entered the small room, carrying an envelope.

“Hiya, Wynton,” Corde said. “What can we do you for?” Kresge set an envelope on Corde’s desk. “What’d this be?” the detective asked.

“I don’t know. I was over to Town Hall and I saw Detective Slocum there. I mentioned I was going to be nearby the Student Union and he asked me if I’d mind dropping this off and I said I’d be happy to.” He stopped abruptly, looking pleased he’d given the explanation so smooth. On the outside was stamped: Forensic Lab Interoffice Use Only—Fredericksberg. Kresge asked him, “They have a division in the state that looks for clues?”

“This’s the county lab. Jim Slocum was in the office? He’s supposed to be checking out the roads and the mall,” Corde snapped.

Kresge asked, “You want me to check out anything at the mall? I’d be happy to.”

“No.” Corde was miffed. He walked out of Room 121 to a phone booth disfigured with innocuous messages. Kresge remained in the activity room for a moment looking awkwardly at the blackboard. Then he left, walking past Corde and waving good-bye. Corde, the phone crooked under his neck, nodded and watched his broad trapezoidal back disappear down the corridor. A deputy in the office said that Slocum wasn’t there. Did Corde want him to call in? Corde answered, “No,” and hung up angrily. He returned to the room and looked inside the envelope Kresge had brought.

“Oh, no.”

Miller looked at him.

“We missed ourselves a knife.”

“At the crime scene?”

“Yup.” Corde was looking at a bad photocopy. The technician had merely laid the weapon on the copier platen. The edges were out of focus and the background was smudged black. It was a short folding stiletto with a dark handle and a thin blade, which looked about four inches long—two shorter than the state limit for concealed weapons. There was a design on the handle—an insignia of some kind—in the shape of crossed lightning bolts. It looked vaguely like a Nazi insignia, Corde thought.

He read the brief report from the Harrison County Crime Scene Division. The knife had been found in the flowers beneath where Jennie Gebben had lain, the blade closed. It had not been used on her—there were no traces of blood or tissue on the blade—though it might have been used to cut the rope the killer strangled her with.

Steve Ribbon had added a handwritten note. Bill—Offering? Sacrifice? More evidence of Cult action. You should follow up.

“Stupid of us, Lance. Damn stupid, missing something like this. And I went over the site twice. Slocum and I both.” Corde’s skin felt hot from this lapse. He pulled another report from the envelope—about the newspaper clipping and its threatening message. There had been no fingerprints. The red ink, in which were found several marker fibers, was from a Flair pen, sold in millions of stores around the country.

On the Analysis Request form he had filled out to accompany the threat Corde had asked, What was used to cut the clipping out of the paper?

A technician had replied, Something sharp.

Finally the envelope contained the warrant permitting them to search Jennie’s half of the dorm room. He handed it to Miller and told him to get over there with a crime scene unit. As he did so he happened to glance at Miller’s notes and he realized he should have been paying more attention to what the young deputy was doing. “You wrote down the score of the homecoming game she went to.”

“Shouldn’t I’ve?”

“No.”

“Oh. I thought you wanted specifics.”

Corde said, “And you’re supposed to be asking the girls in her dorm when Jennie had her period.”

“You can’t go asking somebody that.”

“Ask.”

Miller turned fire red. “Can’t we look it up somewhere?”

“Ask,” Corde barked.

“Okay, okay.”

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

Corde tapped it. “That’s interesting. I want to talk to Emily. Get over there now and have her come in.”

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

“That’s me. Come on in.”

“I got a message that you wanted to see me.”

“What’s your name? Here, sit down.”

“Brian Okun. Is this about Jennie Gebben?”

“That’s right.” Corde was flipping through his index cards. Slowly, card by card, reviewing his boxy hand-writing. It took a long time. He looked up. “Now, how exactly did you know her?”

“She was in Professor Gilchrist’s class. Psychology and Literature. He lectures. I teach the discussion section she was in.”

“You’re on the faculty?”

“I’m a graduate student. Ph.D. candidate.”

“And what did you do in your section?”

“They’re discussion groups, as I said.”

“What do you discuss?”

Okun laughed, puzzled. “Do you really care?”

“I’m curious.”

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

“No, I don’t.” Corde answered. “Do you know if Jennie was going with anybody?”

“‘Going with.’ What does that mean? That’s a vague term.”

“Was she seeing anyone?”

Okun asked in a voice crisp with irony, “‘Seeing anyone’? Do you mean dating?”

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

Okun’s eyes ricocheted off Corde’s cards. “I suppose you know I took her out a few times.”

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

“This’s a college town. Who else is there to ask out?” Okun’s eyes met Corde’s.

“Isn’t it unusual for a professor to ask out his students?”

“I’m not a professor. I told you that. I’m a doctoral candidate. Therefore we were both students.”

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

“We broke up several months ago. We’d dated for three months off and on.”

“Why did you break up?”

“It’s not your concern.”

“It may be, son.”

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

Corde began to ask a question.

Okun said, “I don’t feel like telling you what my type is.”

“What were the circumstances of you breaking up?”

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

“Do you know who Jennie began seeing after you?”

“I know she went out. I don’t know with whom.”

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

Okun’s eyes narrowed and his tongue touched a stray wire of beard. “So, a mystery man.”

Corde asked, “What kind of student was she?”

“Slightly above average but her heart wasn’t in studying. She didn’t feel passion for literature.”

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

“I don’t know.”

“Did you see her personally in the last month?”

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

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

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

“Do you know if there was anybody who had a gripe with her? Anybody she’d fought with recently?”

“No.”

“Did she get along well with her roommate?”

“I guess. I don’t know Emily that well.”

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

Okun smiled. “Ah, ratiocination! Does this mean you’ve trapped me?”

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

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

“Euphemistic?”

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

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

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

“I don’t believe you’re right about that.”

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

Corde didn’t say anything.

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

Corde asked, “Will you submit a blood sample?”

“Blood?”

“For a genetic marker test. To compare with the semen found in Jennie Gebben’s body?”

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

Do You Drive Your Man Crazy?

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

Question 1. What is the wildest thing you and your mate are capable of doing?

A. Taking skydiving lessons together.

B. Making love outdoors.

C. Going skinny-dipping.

D. Taking ballroom dancing classes.

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

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

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

A. Not surprised at all.

B. Somewhat surprised.

C. Very surprised.

D. Astonished.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question 11. Does your husband …

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

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

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

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

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

“I opened my practice a year ago.”

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

“I like small towns.”

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

Dr. Parker said, “When you called you mentioned your daughter. Why don’t you tell me about her.”

Diane’s mind froze. “Well.”

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

Diane blurted, “Our Sarah’s been having some problems in school.”

“How old is she?”

“Nine.”

“And how many months?”

“Uh, six.”

“That’s fifth grade?”

“Fourth. We held her back a year.”

“Tell me about her problem.”

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

“You said she’s smart. Do you know her IQ?”

“I don’t remember,” Diane said, flinching. This was something she should have looked up. “I’m sorry. I—”

“It doesn’t matter. We can get it from the school.”

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

“Has she ever seen a therapist or counselor about this?”

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

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

“Anyway we went to Dr. Sloving and he prescribed Ritalin for her.”

“For attention deficit?”

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

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

“Oh, she’s restless a lot. Jittery. Always running around. Nervous. She drives me to distraction.”

“Did Dr. Sloving give her any psychological testing?”

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

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

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

“Let me ask you a few things.…”

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

“Does she watch much TV?”

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

A miniature smile made a reappearance. “I’m inclined to agree. Go on.”

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

“What’s easy for her?”

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

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

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

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

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

“How is your relationship with your husband?”

“Excellent. Good.”

“Do you quarrel openly? Have you ever talked about divorce?”

“No. Never.”

“Do either of you drink now or take drugs?”

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

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

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

“But she’s not disabled,” Diane said quickly. “I told you, her IQ—”

Dr. Parker said, “A learning disability isn’t a function of IQ. It’s—”

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

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

“But Dr. Sloving said it would help her to learn now and that she’d retain what she did learn.”

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

“Sarah is not crazy,” Diane said icily.

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

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

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

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

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

“But that’s just what she wants.”

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

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

“Then I’ll have her come in for regular sessions and we’ll treat her—probably in conjunction with learning specialists.”

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

Dr. Parker asked, “Shall we schedule an appointment?”

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

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

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

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

Corde and T.T. Ebbans stood over a desk in the main room of the Sheriff’s Department, poring over the computer printout that Ebbans had ordered from the county data base. It was headed: Known Sex Offenders, Convicted, By Offense.

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

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

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

“It’ll be a waste, I know,” Corde said. “But we gotta do it.”

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

“Whatcha got, Lance?”

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

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

“Well, I just talked to her for a minute. She’s real pretty.”

“Who’s that?” Ribbon asked.

Corde said, “Jennie’s roommate.”

“She was damn upset,” Miller continued. “She said it seems somebody broke into the dorm and stole all of Jennie’s letters. She—”

“Well, well, well …” the sheriff said. “That’s interesting.”

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

Corde was nodding.

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

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

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

“Emily gave me a few things that this guy hadn’t stolen.”

“Good,” said Corde.

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

“And?” Ribbon asked.

“A pocket calendar thing? It was in Emily’s desk and that’s why it wasn’t stolen.”

“What about it, Lance?” Corde was growing impatient.

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

“I interviewed her.”

“Part of a case?”

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

On Saturday she’d seen Bill Corde. Nine P.M. Her place.

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

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

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

“No.”

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

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

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

“You knew each other in St. Louis?”

“What exactly are you getting at?”

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

“What sort of situation?”

“I just want everything on the table.”

“Everything is on the table.”

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

“No.”

“Why not?”

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

“You didn’t talk to fifty of them on Saturday night.”

“But I talked to a lot of them then. And on Sunday morning too. And on Sunday night. And—”

“That’s a good answer.”

“That’s the true answer,” Corde shot back.

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

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

“Probably services,” Miller said helpfully. “Being religious, I mean.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Maybe a noncredit continuing education program?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This word comes from the Latin “Luna,” meaning moon.

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

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

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

“This is getting out of hand,” Bill Corde said.

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

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

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

“What was it like? I don’t know. You want to get a graphoanalyst—”

“‘Lunatic.’ It’s Latin for—”

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

“Can’t deny the facts.”

“Steve, it was kids.”

“Kids?”

“A prank or something. High school kids.”

“I don’t know, Bill.”

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

“Well, if the shoe fits …”

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

“Not killing anybody don’t mean anything. Maybe the strike window was narrower than I guessed.”

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

“My interview the other day, you’re saying.”

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

“The knife. You’re forgetting the knife.”

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

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

The sheriff said, “What’ll it cost?”

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

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

Corde said, “I think we’ve got to. Nobody’s come forward. We need some help.”

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

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

“A lot of crazies go through Gunderson.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A comma of tongue touched the dimple in her upper lip and she leaned forward in concentration. Sarah found reading harder than writing because even though she had a terrible time remembering spelling and how the letters were supposed to go, at least she decided which words to use. Reading was the opposite. You had to look at words somebody else had picked and then figure out what they were.

This was torture.

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

Sarah:

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

And yes I am—

The Sunshine Man

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

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

Whoa …

Diane Corde paced through the kitchen.

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

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

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

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

“Simmer down now and tell me what she said.”

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

“Tell me what she said,” Corde repeated patiently.

“She insulted Dr. Sloving and she talked to me like I was keeping Sarrie from getting help because I was afraid people’d say she was crazy.”

Corde squinted, trying to work this out.

“I mean, what she wants to do is for us to pay her a hundred and ten dollars—my word, a hundred and ten dollars—an hour just—”

“I got my insurance.”

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

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

“Oh, okay!” Diane thundered. “You’re taking her side? Fine.”

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

“I’d say you would.” Two potatoes crashed into the sink.

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

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

“I’m not?”

Corde asked, “She’s not?”

“No.”

“Good, I don’t like them. They taste pukey and they give me tummy squabbles.”

“Now you and your father are going to work on your spelling for the test next week and—”

“I’m not going to take—”

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

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

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

Diane looked exasperated. “Excuse me what?”

“I thought … I mean, what you just said. I thought you weren’t going to take Sarah to see her.”

“Meat loaf?” Diane asked.

“Uhm, sure.”

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

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

Oh no …

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

“Whatcha doing, son?” asked the benign voice.

“Nothing.”

“You ask me if you could burn something?”

“No, sir.”

“You lit the matches yourself?”

“I was just fooling around.”

“Fooling around with matches?”

“It’s in the barbecue,” Philip said, trying to keep his voice steady.

“I can see it’s in the barbecue. Did you ask me if you could light a match?”

“No, sir.”

“What’d it be?”

“Huh?”

“What’d I say about answering me that way? You forget the rules?”

“I’m sorry,” Philip said quickly.

“So what is it? That you’re burning?”

“Just some paper I found.”

“More of those magazines?”

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

“Where d’you get those magazines?”

“It wasn’t magazines.”

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

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

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

“Weren’t you?”

Philip nodded.

His father said, “A man answers, a girl nods.”

“Yessir, I was out.”

“Where?”

“Just went for a walk.”

“Uhm,” his father said. “All right. Handy man.”

“Please, Dad.…”

“Don’t whine.”

“I just … I’m sorry. I was just …”

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

“Please.”

“Hold out your hand.”

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

“You get one for the matches, one for the magazines, one for lying.”

“I’m not—”

“Two for lying.”

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

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

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

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

Philip pictured his father lying by the roadside.

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

Bill Corde shudders once and wakes. It is two A.M.

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

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

The dream was this:

Corde was sitting on a porch, the one he remembers from childhood. Only he was now an adult full grown and gray as the paint on the split oak of the floorboards. There had been a terrible mistake, a misunderstanding so shocking that Corde was crying with agony. “I know,” he answered the unseen person inside the house who had just told him the news, “I know I know I know.… But I thought different all these years. I believed different.…”

Oh no, oh no.…

How could he have been wrong?

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

In his dream he sobbed and then he woke.

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

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

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

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

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

“You didn’t …” she began. “I mean you didn’t need to come in today, Mr. Gebben.”

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

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

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

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Gebben.”

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

“Thank you, Charlie.”

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

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

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

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

“Sure, I’d—”

“Let me finish, Charlie.”

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

“If you agree to help me I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars cash. Provided—”

“Ten thousand?”

“Provided that what I’m about to tell you never leaves this room.”

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

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

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

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

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

At the knock on the door she inhaled in shock.

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

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

“I’ll drive you over.”

She heard their voices speaking to one another. She couldn’t make out the words. She—

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

Emily stepped into her closet and sat on the floor, which was strewn with fallen hangers and dust balls and tissue from the dry cleaner’s. She quietly pulled several of her winter coats off the hooks above her and covered herself entirely.

“Emily?”

Breathe slowly, breathe slowly. They can’t get you here.… You’re safe with me, kiddo.

But there were no keys in the door. After a moment she heard footsteps walking away, the jangle of the awful police equipment receding. It would be safe to climb out but there was something so comforting about lying under satin and cashmere so hidden that she was compelled to stay. “‘Such wilt thou be to me, who must / Like the other fool obliquely run.…’”

She wrapped the coats tighter about her.

They took Jennie away.

They took her letters away.

And now they want me too.…

Ah, kiddo.… Emily lay her head on the thick hump of a suede jacket.

“‘Thy firmness makes my circle just, / And makes me end where I begun.’”

The green Schwinn bicycle sat in the garage, standing upright. Twined around and around the small bike were little lights, a string of Christmas lights from the indoor tree. Wound around the handlebars, the fenders, the training wheels. The lights were on and the bike glowed like a city seen from an airplane landing.

They glowed too in reflection on the surface of the puddle of water on the garage floor.

Sarah stood in the doorway and looked at the spectacle in awe. It made her think of the movie E.T., which she’d seen five times, the scene where the creature makes the bikes fly through the sky.

She walked around it, studying the lights with fascination. This bicycle had terrified her when she’d received it two years ago. At her mother’s insistence she had tried riding it several times without the training wheels and nearly fell headlong onto the concrete of the driveway. She’d leapt off and run into the house screaming in panic. Even with the wheels on she avoided riding it when other children or Jamie, who rode his tall fifteen-speed so fast, might see her.

But what she was looking at now didn’t scare her. It was a bike but it was also something else. Something more. Something pretty and something mysterious. With the cord plugged into the wall socket to light the bulbs she couldn’t ride it of course. But she could sit on it and pretend she was pedaling—riding through the sky.

She could fly to the Sunshine Man’s cottage and thank him.…

She could be the queen of the sky, as if the dots of yellow lights were the stars in her own constellation.…

Stepping forward into the puddle of still water, she reached for the handlebar.

“Sarrie, like what are you doing?”

Jamie stood in the doorway, pulling on his brown leather biking gloves. He slipped off his Styrofoam helmet and set it on a shelf. He stood with his hands on his hips for a moment then walked toward her bike.

“Nothing.” She stepped away, looking down.

“Did you do that?”

She didn’t answer.

“That’s like totally stupid.”

“I’m not stupid,” she said meekly.

He walked to the outlet and yanked the plug out of the wall then began unwinding the lights.

“No, don’t!”

He shouted, “Look! Look at this!” He held up a portion of wire that had been wound around the frame of the bike. The plastic insulation was missing and several inches of copper wire were exposed and wrapped around the foot pedal. He pointed at the floor beneath the bike. “And there’s water spilled there.”

“Don’t yell at me!”

“If you do stupid things you’re gonna get yelled at.”

“Stop it! Stop it!”

“Don’t lay one of your effing tantrums on me! It won’t work,” he shot back.

He wound electrician’s tape around the exposed wire, then carefully rolled the wire into a circle and replaced it in the box marked X-mas Lights.

She muttered ominously, “You shouldn’t’ve done that.”

Diane appeared in the doorway. “What is going on out here? I heard you all the way in the bedroom.”

Jamie said, “Sarah was playing with the Christmas lights.”

“Sarah, were you?”

The little girl puckered her lips into an angry pout. “He called me stupid.”

Diane turned on him. “Jamie?”

“Well, she was being stupid. She could’ve like electrocuted herself or something.”

“It was pretty and he ruined it.”

“Mom,” he said, utterly exasperated.

Diane turned to her daughter. “You know to leave the decorations alone. If you broke any it’ll come out of your allowance.”

“I didn’t do anything!” Sarah shrieked then stormed out of the garage.

Jamie pulled his bike off the pegs stuck in the garage wall and lifted it down. Diane walked over to him and spoke in a menacing whisper, “How many times have I told you not to call her stupid.”

“She was playing with—”

“I don’t care what she was doing. It’s the worst thing in the world for her. Don’t do it.”

“Mom.”

“Just don’t do it.”

“You don’t under—”

“Did you hear me?”

His strong hands squeezed the brake levers on his bike. Diane repeated her question. “Yes,” he grumbled formally.

Diane’s voice softened. “If you see her doing something like that again come tell me. Your sister’s going through a very tough time right now. Little things are really hard on her.”

“I said all right.”

He angrily wheeled his bicycle back and forth.

Diane wiped her hands on her skirt. “I’m sorry I lost my temper.”

“Okay,” he muttered. “No problem.”

“You have the match tonight, right?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll be there.”

“You and Sarah.”

“Your father’s going to be working. It’s a very important case.”

He leapt on the high bike and rolled down the driveway.

“I wish you’d let the deputy take you to school. Your father doesn’t want you two going places alone.”

He shrugged.

“Jamie,” she shouted, looking on the shelf beside the door. “Wait! Your helmet …”

But the boy seemed not to hear and leaned sharply into the turn as he sped out of the driveway and into the road.

He thought it was a skull but he couldn’t be sure.

“You Watkins?”

“That I am.”

Naw couldn’t be. Jim Slocum walked into a small, windowless office in the State Building in Higgins. He introduced himself. He wasn’t impressed; his own office in the New Lebanon Sheriff’s Department was bigger and had a window to boot. This room smelled of onions and was filled with books and telexes and photocopies of memos. He glanced at some and thought how boring they must be. Justice Department Monthly Homicide Demographics Report. Intrafamily Violence Review—Midwest Edition.

Slocum squinted at the glass-enclosed bookcase behind Watkins. No, it was a grapefruit the guy had put in there and forgotten about. Maybe an ostrich egg.

Earl Watkins was short and round and wore a tight blue button-down dress shirt. Round metal-rimmed glasses hung on his nose. His mouth was a squooshed O above a deep cleft chin. “Take a pew.”

Slocum settled onto the hard oak chair. “Say, what is that?”

He followed the deputy’s finger. “That? It’s a skull. See the bullet hole?” Watkins, a huge Capitol rotunda of a man, with flags of sweat under his arms, was a special agent, Violent Crime Division, State Police.

Slocum said, “We’re hoping you could shed some light on this situation we’ve got ourselves. Help us out with a profile of the killer. I’ll tell you, there’s some spooky stuff involved.”

Watkins asked slowly, “Spooky stuff?”

Slocum gave him a summary of the Gebben murder then added, “Happened on the night of the half-moon and underneath her was this cult knife.” He handed Watkins a photocopy.

The large man looked at it briefly, without emotion. “Uh-huh. When was her birthday?”

Slocum blinked. He opened his near-empty briefcase and looked into then closed it, remembering the exact spot where he’d left the rest of the file on his desk. “Uhm, I’ve got somebody compiling all that stuff. I’ll get you a copy.”

Watkins then asked, “Multiple perpetrators?”

“Don’t know. Were a lot of footprints around. Mostly men’s. I had pictures taken of them. I’ll get you copies if you want.”

“Naw.” Watkins studied the photocopy of the knife. “Uh-huh, uh-huh. Did he cut her?”

“No. Strangled.”

Watkins said, “I don’t know what this insignia is. You have any idea?”

“They look sort of German. Like the Nazis, you know.”

“It’s not a swastika.”

“No,” Slocum said, “I don’t mean that. I saw this TV movie. The Gestapo had these insignias—”

“Not the Gestapo. The SS. The Schutzstaffel.”

“That’s it, yeah. Lightning bolts.”

“Only those were parallel. These are crossed.” Watkins waved the sheet. “Knife have any manufacturer?”

“No. Just ‘Korea’ stamped into the end.”

“The hasp,” Watkins said. “When the guy raped her, how much come was there?”

Slocum sought the answer in the ceiling of the office. He thought that Watkins asked this too eagerly and he wondered if Watkins, who wore no wedding ring, was gay. “The ME estimated three ounces.”

“Uh-huh,” Watkins said. He linked his fingers and cradled the back of his head. He asked Slocum dozens of questions: whether restraints were used, if the killer found the victim or kidnapped her, if there was evidence of alcohol, how Jennie’s body had been arranged in the flowers, whether foreign objects had been inserted into her anus or vagina, how attractive she was, if there were lip marks or other evidence that the killer had drunk her blood or urine.

“That’s pretty damn gross,” Slocum said, offended at the question.

“Any fingerprints?”

“On the knife, yeah. Then a mess of ’em other places too. I’m having somebody check those against known sex offenders’.”

“That’s a good place to start.”

“I’m making damn sure this situation isn’t gonna happen again,” Slocum said with relentless sincerity.

“Are you now?” The state detective seemed amused. He scratched at the photocopy then gazed absently at the black toner that came off on his thumb. Watkins interrupted Slocum’s account of the goat found in the grade school by saying, “Tell me about number two.”

“Only one goat I heard about.”

“The other victim?”

“We’ve got no other victim. Just the Gebben girl.”

“When you called,” Watkins said, examining a slip of paper, “you said killings.”

“Did I? There’s only one now. But we’re worried that we’ll have a repeat in the next week. With the full moon, you know.”

“Steve Ribbon’s your sheriff, right?”

“Yep, sure is.”

“And Hammerback Ellison, he’s Harrison County sheriff? They’re both up for reelection next fall.”

The dividing line between what he should say and what he shouldn’t had always been blurry for Jim Slocum. “Yep. I believe so. I’m not sure they’re running.”

Watkins wiped a wave of sweat off his forehead. That was the smell, Slocum recognized. Sweat. Not onions. Watkins grinned. “Lotta folk say Steven Ribbon’s bubble’s a little off-plumb.”

Slocum’s eyes weaseled away from Watkins’s and he studied the spine of Modern Sociopathology. “I don’t know about that.”

“Naw, I suppose you wouldn’t.” Watkins smiled like he’d hit a hole in one. “Well, you, want to make this more’n what it is—”

“Hey—”

“That’s your all’s business.” Then the smile left his face and he said, “With only one killing and on these facts it’s way too early to know what you’ve got. You need more information.”

“Can’t you give us some idea, going on the assumption it’s a cult?”

“I can give you the textbook profile for a classic cult killer if you want. But don’t take it to the bank. I’ve got no idea whether it applies or not.”

“I understand that. Sure.”

“That said, you want me to go ahead?”

“Shoot.” Slocum straightened up and flipped his notebook open. As he did so he glanced at the skull and had a passing thought. Where could a man get himself one of those?

“Dogit,” Amos Trout said. “Why’d it have to happen just now?”

“Always the way. You oughta—”

“Can’t afford a new one. You gotta patch her.” Trout stood with the mechanic in the left bay of the Oakwood Mall’s Car-Care Center, looking down at the tub of water so grimy it might have come from Higgins Creek downstream of the old paper mill. In the tub was a Goodyear tire and out of its side was escaping a steady stream of greasy bubbles.

Trout, forty-four, was wearing dark slacks and a short-sleeved white shirt. He had thinning hair, cut short and combed back. In his plastic pocket protector were three pens, a tiny calculator and a sales tax chart. Trout sold carpeting at Floors for All. He looked sadly at the bubbles. “What’ll it cost for a patch?”

“Five seventy-five.”

“I could do it myself, I was home,” Trout said.

“You ain’t home.”

“Looks to be a pretty slow leak and she got me all the way here this morning. I could just pump her up and take my chances.”

“You could. You wouldn’t want to do that, without you had yourself a good spare. That’s my opinion.”

Trout wouldn’t have been so concerned about the tire if after he closed up tonight he and the wife weren’t driving up to Minnesota to catch big lazy muskies and sit in lawn chairs while they drank cocktails out of the back of their beige accordion Travel-All. And it was going to be four weeks before he got back to thirteen-ninety-five acrylic pile your choice of colors pad included free if you buy today.

“Plug her,” he said. “And do a good job. I’m about to put some road under that Buick.”

Four blessed weeks thank you Lord though I’m sorry about the wife part.

The tire man went to work. After a moment he held up a piece of glass like a Dodge City doctor who’d just extracted a bullet from a gunslinger’s arm. “There she be. You had steel belteds it wouldn’t even’ve dented em.”

Trout studied the glass. “I knew I picked up something. Tuesday night I was coming back late on 302. And you know that curve by the dam? Blackfoot Pond? Where everybody fishes?”

The mechanic slicked a plug with glue and began driving it into the puncture. “Uhn.”

“Well, I went around the curve and this fellow comes running up right into my lane.”

“Maybe your lights’re on the blink. I could check—”

“They’re fine except one high beam’s out of whack.”

“I can just—”

“That’s okay. And so I went off the road so’s not to hit him. Wham bam just like that. He froze. I went over a beer bottle. You know it’s those fishermen, they leave all kinds of crapola around. They don’t do that in Minnesota.”

“They don’t?”

Trout said, “Scared the living you know what out of me, seeing that fellow. He looked scared as I was.”

“Don’t blame him. I wouldn’t wanta be Buick feed myself.”

“Yessir.” Trout looked at his watch. It was two o’clock. He paid for the plug. “You sell propane?”

“You got a tank, you can fill it.”

“No, I mean for a Coleman.”

“Naw, gotta go to the Outdoor Store for that.”

“Guess I better. Long lunch hour today. But, hell with it, I’m almost on vacation.”

The sound of the gears buzzing was just audible over the wind that hissed past his ears.

Jamie Corde upshifted as he came to the crest of the hill on Old Farm Road. Below him, a hazy mile away, the school sat in a field—tar-topped brick buildings squatting in a couple of acres of parking lots and lime-green grass.

This was his favorite stretch of road—a sharp decline of smooth asphalt, which if you caught it at the right time of day was pretty much traffic free. Although he now rode a fifteen-speed Italian racing bike, the boy had often surged down this road on his old three-speed Schwinn, which was mounted with a speedometer. On a summer day with tires fat from the heat inflation he could hit fifty miles per hour before he had to brake for the stop light where Old Farm crossed Route 116.

He started downhill.

Jamie Corde loved to run and he was a ragingly fast runner, but he knew that nothing could beat the feeling of speed not of your own making—flying down a mountain of snow in Colorado or racing down a slope like this one, effortlessly, the gears ratcheting beneath your toe-clipped feet. As if the powers of nature were taking you someplace you couldn’t find by yourself.

The bike was steady under his strong arms as the dotted centerline became a single gray blur. He leaned forward to cut the drag and concentrated on nothing but steering around patches of pebbles. He did not think of his mother or his sister, he did not think of his father. With the exception of a few images of Greg LeMond in the Tour de France, Jamie Corde thought of speed and speed only.

Halfway down the incline, to his enormous delight, he passed a car. True, it was an old Volkswagen diesel and it was being driven by someone who resembled Mrs. Keening, his antiquated Latin teacher. But it was nonetheless a car and he had outraced it, feeling with utter ecstasy the motion of the driver’s head as she glanced at him with disapproving awe.

A half mile ahead at the foot of the hill lay the intersection. He noticed with disappointment that he had timed his assault on the slope wrong. If he had waited three or four minutes at the top and started his descent just as the stoplight had turned red, he might have arrived when it was green and he would have swept smoothly through. But the light was now changing to yellow. Route 116 was heavily trafficked and was favored by this particular light, which kept drivers on Old Farm Road waiting impatiently for long minutes.

He slowly squeezed the rear brake lever. Thonk. A sudden sensation. Something had struck his right calf. He believed he had hit a small animal—a field mouse or chipmunk—and it had been flung up against his leg by the hissing wheel. Almost simultaneously his hand on the brake lever began to cramp. He glanced at the handlebars and noticed that the lever was all the way to the metal.

Jamie looked down at the rear wheel. What had struck his leg had not been an animal. It was the rubber pad of the rear brake shooting from its housing. The metal seemed slightly bent and he realized with horror that when he had lifted the bike onto the pegs in the garage last night, he must have hit the steel jacket that held the pad, loosening it. His father had warned him a dozen times to be careful when he placed the bike on the wall; he continually ignored the advice.

He was two hundred yards from the intersection and still accelerating, approaching forty-five or fifty. The bike began to vibrate. He gripped the handlebars with trembling fists as he swept over stones and branches; he was going too fast to maneuver around them. Sweat of panic burst from his neck and under his arms. He felt the icy chill as the moisture evaporated in the slipstream. Jamie gently squeezed the front brake. No effect. He squeezed harder and the rear end of the bike rose suddenly, nearly sending him tumbling head-forward over the front wheel. He was now a hundred yards from the intersection. He kept as much pressure on the front brake as he dared but still the bike continued to speed up.

A stand of tall oaks flashed into his vision and vanished. A roadside truck, some fence posts. The shoulder here was narrow. Paralleling his mad course was a barbed wire fence that would lacerate him if he were to set the bike down in the gravel beside the road.

Jamie Corde, an A-minus science student, knows that terminal velocity in earth atmosphere is approximately one hundred and thirty miles an hour, he knows that human organs cannot withstand instant deceleration from any speed above fifty. He glances up at the cross-traffic along Route 116, trucks and cars whizzing past. Tears—from the wind, from his panic—streak from his squinting burning eyes and disappear into his hair. He sits up to increase wind resistance. He remembers a prayer from Sunday school. He drags his feet on the asphalt but shreds the running shoes’ nylon toes quickly. He lifts his feet to the pedals and the bike hurtles forward once again.

Seventy-five yards …

The hill had bottomed out but the bicycle tore along the road at close to sixty, the noise of the wheels and gears wholly obscured by the howl of the slipstream. Several bugs died against his face with sharp stings. The lightweight frame of the bike shuddered painfully with every stone.

Jamie eased onto the centerline of Old Farm Road where there was less debris. A fragment of bottle or a smear of grease could kill him.

Fifty yards from the intersection …

He believed he heard a horn behind him, maybe the Volkswagen driver trying to warn him.

Forty yards …

The man in a car waiting at the light glanced in his rearview mirror and Jamie saw astonishment in the glossy rectangle that reflected the man’s eyes.

Thirty …

Two Japanese imports and a Buick dashed through the intersection on 116 going north. A tanker truck rumbled south.

And Jamie Corde began to pedal.

He couldn’t stop in time. That was clear. Either he was going to dart between cars or he was going to get nailed. He lowered himself into his best aerodynamic huddle, clicked into his highest gear, released the front brake lever and pedaled as he never had before. He felt a warm sense of calm envelop him. The cars were on a different plane. The wind, the barbed wire, the road too. The bike itself. The fear vanished. He was above all of these things. The blue-haired woman piloting the Volkswagen, the driver whose eyes gaped in the mirror, the trees, the birds startled and fleeing from Jamie’s own speed—nothing was of the least importance. He smiled and struggled to pedal fast enough to keep up with his trilling wheels, propelling himself faster and faster.

Fifteen yards …

The car waiting for the green light was a Nissan and its license plate number was DRT 345.

Ten …

An old skid mark in the shape of a sine curve crossed both lanes.

Pedal pedal pedal pedal! …

A wooden crate that had contained Rock Island peaches lay shattered by the roadside, wads of blue tissue paper bleeding into the ground.

… faster than light.…

The southbound Taurus station wagon, doing about sixty-five, began its skid thirty feet from where the bike was entering the intersection. The gray vehicle’s end drifted to the left as the frozen wheels howled. The driver steered into the skid expertly, which had the effect of moving the car into the oncoming lane and aiming the grille precisely at where the speeding bicycle would cross the highway.

The front-seat passenger lowered her face below the dashboard.

The baritone Detroit horn blared.

The driver flung an arm over his eyes.

Ping.

Jamie Corde had an impression of fingers snapping beside his head as he passed in front of the station wagon. The bumper missed his rear tire by no more than six inches. Their combined speed was close to one hundred ten miles an hour.

His ears filled with the horn and the endless scream of the locked wheels. Then he was past Route 116, dancing over what was otherwise a risky patch of pebbles and transmission fluid as confidently as if the road were a smooth, banked racetrack. He relaxed his numb legs and coasted. Horns shrieked behind him and he knew he was getting cussed out by at least one station wagon full of people.

But what could he do except keep going, leaving them far far behind?

Jamie Corde continued to pedal—furiously to keep his speed up. As he approached the school he stood high on the pedals. He gazed up into the sky and breathed in hot oily air, waving a fist above his head, laughing and howling like a desert-loco cowboy.

Jim Slocum opened the candy bar and took a bite, pressing the candy up against the roof of his mouth. He dropped a dollar on the counter.

“Be right with you, Officer,” the young woman behind the counter said.

“Take your time.”

Slocum leaned against the counter in the Sweets ’n Things shop at the Oakwood Mall. He took another bite of Milky Way, which was still his favorite candy bar. Always had been, always would be. The door to the candy store opened and Slocum watched a teenage boy enter. Fat. Wearing grimy clothes. Blond hair long and stiff with spray or grease. Slocum recognized him as Philip Halpern. The boy glanced at Slocum in unconcealed surprise. He walked to the wall of glass canisters of penny candy and began to fill a bag.

Slocum was put off. He felt angry at the boy for his weight and his lack of willpower. He wanted to say, “You keep eating like that you’re gonna stroke out by the time you’re twenty, son.” He kept these thoughts to himself though. Like all New Lebanon deputies Slocum had answered domestic violence calls at Creth Halpern’s shabby bungalow. The father could be frightening—his eerily confused eyes as much as his temper. The ex-sailor would slouch on the couch picking at a flap of skin from his right-hook knuckle and smiling at the bloody streaks on the dented front of the Kelvinator.

His wife, pungent with gin, holding ice to her pretty face, would look up with a drunk’s sincerity and say, “We was fooling around is all.” Philip, himself sometimes bruised, usually hid in the bedroom. There was a daughter too. Slocum bet she’d be knocked up and Remington-married by the time she was sixteen.

Boy, you stay that fat, they won’t let you join the Army and what’re you gonna do then? Jim Slocum was convinced that all emotional troubles could be cured by varsity football or basic training.

The clerk’s customer left the store.

“Miss,” Slocum said to her, “I’m asking all the merchants here in the mall if they were open late on Tuesday night.”

“This have to do with the student girl who got killed?”

“Yep, sure does.”

“Is this fellow, you know …” Two furrows of concern appeared on the young woman’s brow.

“How’s that?”

She touched her heavily moussed brown hair. “What I heard was, Debbie Lipp told me, who’s ever behind that killing? He’s looking for brunets. I bought some Clairol yesterday. I mean, I had my colors done and going blond would throw it all off but …”

Slocum watched a tear center in her eye and roll over the edge of the eyelined lid.

“I wouldn’t go doing that, miss. He’s not looking for brunets that we know about. Your hair looks real nice just the way it is.” He smiled. “Sexy too.”

“I’m scared, Officer.” Her brittle voice cracked. “I gotta drive home at night and Earl he’s my husband’s shift’s not over till eleven. Sitting there in the trailer for three hours! By myself.… I can’t watch TV, for the noises outside. I can’t read. I just sit. I’m too addled to even knit and I’m going to miss my niece’s birthday with the vest I promised her.” She cried, grim and silent, for a moment.

“We’re doing everything in our power to get this son of a gun. Now I was asking about Tuesday?”

“I can’t help you, I’m afraid. We close at seven on Tuesday.”

Well, there you have it. Dead end. “Tell you what, give me a quarter pound of those jelly beans. What flavor’d they be?”

“The watermelon ones?”

“Yeah.” Slocum paid. He took the change and smiled a flirt at her. “I get by here on occasion. I’ll look in on you and see how you’re doing.”

She swallowed and lifted away a tear with a corner of her sleeve. “I’d rather you was out catching him.”

“Well, we’re doing that too,” he said stonily and took the candy, walking to the door. He glanced at the Halpern boy. “You want a snack, eat apples,” he snapped.

Slocum ambled through the recession-battered wasteland of the mall until he came to the last store on his list. Floors for All. Inside a young man with trim hair sat at a desk, carefully writing in an order book. “Afternoon,” Slocum said.

“Howdy, Officer, what kind of carpet you interested in today? We got a special—”

“This place here open late on Tuesday?”

“Yessir. Lot of carpet stores close down weeknights but we’re number one with carpet, number one with service. Nights’re important. We get men come in after work to check out the carpet their little ladies’ve chose earlier in the day.”

“You working this last Tuesday?”

“No sir, that’d be Mr. Trout. Amos Trout.”

“Will he be coming in today?”

“Oh, he’s in. He’s not here right now because he got car problems. He took a late lunch. Should be back any time.”

“I’ll stop back later.”

Slocum left the store and halfway to the exit nearly walked into Adeline Kraskow. “Well, well, well.” Slocum circled her.

“Hey, Jim,” she said in her husky voice. She was young and might have been pretty if she’d forced her salt-and-pepper hair into staying put. The strands reminded him of BX cable. She also needed to move some of her boob weight down to her toothpick legs (a rearrangement Slocum never thought he’d recommend to any woman). Addie had dry skin and high cheekbones and she wore little makeup. This made Slocum think that she was desperate for a man.

He asked, “What’s happening?”

“Doing a story on how this cult murder thing is affecting business.”

“Bad?”

“Yep. People’re scared. Staying home and not spending money. What are you doing here?”

“I can’t really talk about it.”

They stood for a minute, silent. Slocum had a fast series of thoughts: that he’d been promising to bring the wife to the mall, that he could do that on Sunday and that while she did her shopping he could talk to this guy Amos Trout at the carpet store. He asked, “I’m taking kind of a break. You interested in getting a drink?”

Adeline Kraskow said, “Sure. I guess.” And she stuffed her notebook into her huge purse and together they strolled through the mall.

They had known each other for exactly one year, ever since she started covering the police beat for the Harrison County Register. The top-heavy Ms. Kraskow didn’t know that Slocum regularly had acrobatic sexual intercourse with and had been fellated by her dozens of times—each instance of course in his Technicolor imagination while he was engaged in considerably more mundane sexual activity with his wife of eleven years, or with his right hand. He supposed that if in real life Addie had ever stubbed out one of her chain-smoked cigarettes and unzipped his fly he’d have gone limp as month-old rhubarb but still he liked to sit with his knee pressed accidentally on purpose up against her thigh while she asked her reporter’s ever-serious questions. Now he maneuvered her into a dark corner booth of the mall’s only full-fledged restaurant, T.K. Hoolihan’s.

“You’re on duty?” she asked.

“I’m undercover. I can drink.”

“You’re wearing a uniform. How can you be undercover?”

“Well, I’m wearing Jockey shorts. No, that’s under-wear not undercover.” He laughed to show it was a joke. Addie smiled with flirtatious contempt. They ordered neat scotches and he paid.

“Thank’y.” She lit a cigarette, inhaled and shot out a stream of smoke at the plastic Tiffany lampshade decorated with robins. “So, you got any leads yet?”

“I told you—”

“Is there a connection with the Susan Biagotti killing?”

“Bill wouldn’t want me talking on that.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t. But I can’t ask only questions people want me to ask. The Biagotti killing never got solved. Here Steve Ribbon’s revving up for reelection and he flubbed that case bad. Now there’s a second girl dead.”

“Addie.”

She said, “You don’t know how persistent I am. Tell me something. Anything. I promise your name won’t appear anywhere in the story.”

Slocum sighed.

Addie leaned forward, strategically, and whispered, “Cross my heart.”

The warmth she denied the parents she spent on the children.

Diane Corde could at least say that for the woman.

“Hello, Sarah,” the woman said ebulliently. “I’m Dr. Parker. How are you today?”

In the silence that followed, the three of them standing in the veterinarian waiting room, Diane said, “Honey, you know how to answer.”

“I’m not going to take the spelling test,” Sarah said in a dour, snappy voice. “And I’m not going back to school.”

“Well, now Sarah,” the doctor said cheerfully, “we’ve got some other things to talk about. Let’s not think about your spelling test today, all right?”

“Sarah,” Diane barked, “I won’t have you behaving this way.”

Dr. Parker didn’t intrude between mother and daughter; she simply kept the smile and extended her hand. Sarah shook it abruptly then stood back, looking, Diane thought sadly, like the little brat she’d become.

“Come on inside,” the doctor said. “I’ve got some things I’d like to show you.” She motioned the girl into her office. Diane looked through the door and noticed a number of dark green boxes on her desk. The letters WISC-R were stamped into them.

She then glanced at Dr. Parker to appraise today’s fashion choice. A close-fitting red silk dress. With dark stockings. In New Lebanon! Didn’t some famous gangster’s moll wear a red dress when she turned him in?

Diane stepped forward after Sarah. But Dr. Parker shook her head and nodded to the couch in the waiting room. “Just Sarah and me today.”

“Oh. Sure.”

Diane, feeling chastised, retreated to the couch and watched the receptionist open a pack of Trident and slip a piece into her mouth. The woman noticed Diane staring at her and held up the package.

“I don’t chew gum, thank you.”

As the doctor’s door closed Diane caught a glimpse of her daughter’s face staring fearfully down at the boxes. The door latch clicked. Diane sighed and aimlessly picked through a basket of wilted magazines. She lifted one to her lap with substantial effort and turned the pages.

A few minutes later Diane closed the unread magazine and slumped on this rec room couch, awash with defeat.

Defeated by her husband, in whose presence Sarah relaxed and laughed—her husband who could speak Sarah’s flawed, tricky language while Diane could not.

Defeated by Sarah herself with her wily tactics of tears and panic.

By this harlot of a shrink, who was taking their scarce money so eagerly.

And by her own guilt.

Diane Corde gazes with unseeing eyes at a glossy magazine peppered with giddy photos of models while her legs shake with the terrible anguish of retribution. Diane Corde, fairly good Methodist, has been taught to believe in divine justice, taught to believe that revenge is fair and cleansing. But it is not. Because the person who is paying the exacted price for the sins is not the mother who committed them but the daughter.

Did you drink while you were pregnant?

No. Of course not.

What a question! No one drank when they were pregnant. No one took sleeping pills. No one took aspirin. All you had to do was read the science and health section of the Post-Dispatch or Register or even Reader’s Digest, for heaven’s sake, and you knew how to behave when you were pregnant.

Drinking liquor? No sane pregnant woman would drink.

Unless, unless …

Unless, for instance, someone you loved had perhaps done something very bad. Your husband maybe. And after word got out—in the newspapers—the neighbors would look at you funny or not look at you at all. And people would call late at night and just listen for a moment before hanging up as if they were curious to hear if your breathing was more monstrous than theirs.

Unless that person, your husband maybe, kept doing nothing and saying nothing nothing nothing until the money ran out and the only solution was to move from a nice shipshape suburb to a small, tired rural town and start life over again.

His life.

And yours, in the process.

So even if you were pregnant wasn’t that reason enough to take a drink now and then? Just to kill the silence of a man doing nothing, the heaviest silence that there is? A pill now and then. A few more drinks. And a few more.… To break the mournful web surrounding the seven A.M. breakfast table? To help you sleep, even if you woke up with a dogjaw pressure in the back of your head every other morning? Nobody drinks when they’re pregnant.

Oh, Sarah …

Diane Corde looked at the cheap door separating herself from her injured daughter and focused on the magazine again. She read every word of an article about a boat trip down the Loire as if she were going to be tested on the subject in the morning.

“I don’t like her,” Sarah announced in the car on the way home.

“Why not?”

“She gave me all this stupid stuff to do. Drawing pictures and answering questions. I did it at school already.”

“Wasn’t she nice to you?”

“Mrs. Beiderbug—”

“Beiderson.”

“Mrs. Beiderson’s nice to me and she makes me feel all yucky. I felt yucky when I did those tests in Dr. Parker’s office.”

“She’s trying to help you.”

“I hate her!”

“Sarah, don’t talk that way.”

“She’s going to make me take the spelling test at school. I saw you talking with her after. That’s what she told you, isn’t it?”

Yes, it was. Diane hesitated then said, “Dr. Parker wants you to keep studying. Next time you see her she’s going to give you some tricks to help you take tests.”

“I’m not going back to school.”

Diane’s patience had just about evaporated and she said nothing.

“I hate it. I feel stupid in school. The Sunshine Man …” Her voice faded.

“We all hated school. That’s what your father and I keep telling you. Everybody does.” This was spoken through firmly clenched teeth. “You remember what a good job you did on your story this spring? About the birds.”

Sarah got a C plus, her highest grade ever in English, and had written a single page. Other students had filled four or five.

Sarah whined, “I don’t want to take the tests. Don’t make me!”

“I’m going to work with you on the words tonight. Then we’re going to Jamie’s match.”

“No,” she announced. “I want Daddy to help me.”

“Your father’s working late.” Diane pulled the car into the driveway. She waved at the deputy in the cruiser parked in front of the house. He nodded back and returned to the newspaper. Diane braked to an angry stop.

Sarah said, “He’s always working.”

They got out of the car and walked through the garage to the back door.

“No, he isn’t. He spends a lot of time with you. He’s missing Jamie’s match too tonight.”

“Wrestling’s stupid.”

“Don’t criticize your brother! He’s doing just fine in school.…” Diane was horrified at these words. She glanced at Sarah surreptitiously but the girl hadn’t noticed the unintended slight. “Mommy, look, there’s something on the back steps.”

Diane saw a small white envelope. Sarah scooped it up eagerly and looked at it. She frowned then handed it to her mother. They continued into the house. Diane paused in the hallway, the sunlight pouring through the open door. It fell on her hands, turning them blood red. “Go on upstairs and get your books.” The little girl gave an extended sigh and clomped up the stairs.

The envelope was addressed to Officer Corde. Red ink, sloppy handwriting. Diane tore it open, lifted out the contents.

“What is it?” Sarah yelled.

Diane jumped. “Nothing, honey.”

She dropped the glossy square Polaroid back into the envelope, which she shoved into her pocket. She called the Sheriff’s Department. She got the dispatcher. “Emma, it’s Diane Corde. Find him and tell him to get home. Tell him we’re okay but I need him and I need him now.”

She hung up and started toward the front door to summon the deputy. She got only as far as the living room before she paused, leaned against the wall and surrendered to her tears.

Bill Corde crouched casually in front of Sarah. He measured his words then said, “Honey, I have to ask you something and you’ll tell me the as-you-love-me truth?”

“Sure, Daddy.” The girl returned his gaze cautiously. “Did I do something wrong? I’m sorry.”

“No, no, honey.” Corde’s heart cried as he looked into her penitent eyes. “I’m just curious to know something. Has anybody maybe taken your picture in the last couple days?”

“My picture? No.”

“Or maybe just asked if he could take your picture? Some stranger on the way home from school?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Did I do something wrong?” She seemed about to cry.

“No, nothing. It’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. I was just curious. You run get washed up for dinner.”

Corde returned to Steve Ribbon and Tom, who were walking in slow paces around the fence behind Corde’s property. “Nothing, Bill,” Ribbon said. “Not a footstep.”

“Dry grass. What do you expect?”

The deputy said, “I was here all afternoon.” He was defensive. “I can’t be both at the front and the back at the same time.”

“I’m not blaming you, Tom.”

Ribbon shielded his eyes like a Plains warrior’s and gazed off into the forest. “Anybody live thataway?”

Corde leaned on a cockeyed, termite-chewed fence post, squinting against the sunset light. “Five hundred acres of forest, mostly private. A few houses. Beyond that’s the river and the other way’s the preserve and the university and downtown beyond that. He could’ve come from anyplace. He could’ve parked on 302 by the bridge and walked. None of the neighbors saw anything.”

Corde examined the photograph again, through the plastic bag in which it now rested. It was of a girl about Sarah’s age—the face wasn’t visible—lying in grass. Her skirt was pulled up to her waist and the V of white underwear filled the center of the shot.

On the back was printed in red marker: YOU’RE WORKING TOO HARD, DETECTIVE

“Hell.” He winced as if the message brought him physical pain. “I don’t think it’s her. She says nobody took her picture recently and I know she wouldn’t lie to me. But goddamn …”

The deputy said, “We should get a handwriting analysis. The newspaper clipping at the pond and this.”

“I’m sure they’re the same,” Corde said. “Even I can see the similarity.”

“Nobody saw nothing? Your son?”

“Nope. Nobody was here.”

“Brother, I’m sorry about all this, Bill,” Ribbon offered.

“You’re sorry?” Corde muttered, walking inside.

Diane was sitting on the couch, her hands together. Corde sat beside her and cradled her hands in his. “This could be just a prank, maybe it has nothing to do with the case.”

“A prank? It was our daughter!” she whispered violently.

“We don’t know that for sure. It could be anybody. She tells me nobody took her picture.”

“She tells you? Oh, Bill, you know Sarah. Half the time she’s off in her own world.”

“He’s trying to spook me is all. Look, if that was Sarah in the picture and he’d wanted to hurt her, why didn’t he?”

She pressed her eyes closed. Wrinkles blossomed into her face and for a moment she seemed ten years older than she was.

“If anybody’s at risk, it’s me,” Corde said.

“That sure makes me feel damn better,” she shot back at him.

“Honey, this fellow isn’t stupid. Murdering a law enforcement officer’s a capital crime.”

“Does he know that?” she blurted.

“Diane.”

She stormed into the kitchen.

There was nothing more to do. Corde went back outside to talk to Ribbon. Ten minutes later Diane poked her head out the door and told him in an ominous monotone that dinner was ready. Corde asked Steve Ribbon and the deputy if they wanted to stay but they couldn’t or more likely didn’t want to. They left. Corde walked into the dining room, then Jamie and Sarah joined their parents and the family sat down to dinner.

Corde told the children with gentle words that there might be some people who weren’t real happy with what he was doing to solve this case, so not to go anywhere by themselves and to stay close to home. Don’t talk to strangers. Then Corde somehow found the strength to turn the conversation funny and talked about a sports blooper tape he’d seen recently. The only time a pall filled the room was when Corde realized he had stopped talking in mid sentence and was staring out the black window at the backyard. He stood up fast and closed the drapes. Everybody looked at him. Then he sat down and ate a huge third helping of string beans even though he didn’t want them but it seemed like a comic thing to do and the evening returned more or less to normal.

T.T. Ebbans’s practice was to question people at home at night. He’d try not to conduct interviews during business hours at offices, where guards are up and minds instinctively think up lies and excuses—for bosses, for fellow workers, for clients, for creditors.

Ebbans also happened to enjoy the evening. It reminded him of a wholly different era of his life, years before. The oily smell of night, the stillness, the bleaching to monotone of the deep colors of the day and the feel of his heartbeat quickening—a prelude to the five-man search-and-destroy night missions that were both the peak and the valley of his life.

At ten-thirty he came to the last house, a colonial on one acre sloping down to Blackfoot Pond. This hour was usually postbedtime in New Lebanon for anybody under fifteen and over thirty. But lights shone in the windows of this house. He thunked the brass lion’s-head knocker once and the door swung open almost immediately. He found the couple waiting for him. Communication was good among Blackfoot Pond homeowners.

They all introduced themselves church-social formal. Tall, paunchy, bushy-haired Hank said, “Come on in, Officer. Get you anything?”

“Maybe if I could trouble you for a glass of water.”

“Surely.” Lisa, still in her real estate broker’s white blouse and trim red skirt, vanished like a spooked mouse.

Hank motioned Ebbans into a living room spotless as an operating theater. Plush white carpet, a cream-color sofa covered with clear plastic. The furniture was antiqued white and gold. Lisa walked into the room and handed the water to the deputy. They both stared at him as he drank it all down. He wasn’t so thirsty as this but he didn’t know where to set down the glass. He handed it to her. “Thank you.” She returned a moment later. They sat. Plastic crinkled loudly.

Hank said, “You’re here about the murder.”

“I’m asking everyone in the area if they saw or heard anything around the time of the killing. That would be ten o’clock.”

“That was Tuesday, right?” Lisa asked, gesturing, moving her fingers in a circular motion to count back on an invisible calendar.

“Nothing,” Hank said. “We didn’t see anything.”

“No,” Lisa echoed. “Not a thing. Sorry we can’t be more help.” Hank said he wished they could but, well, Ebbans knew how it was.

The deputy let them stew in a lengthy silence then asked Lisa, “But do I understand that you saw something another night?”

Lisa’s busy hands spread apart for a moment. Ebbans noticed they had left sweat stains on her crimson skirt. “Pardon?”

Hank said, “We didn’t see—”

Ebbans said to his wife, “You asked if it was Tuesday. I was just wondering if that meant you saw something some night other than Tuesday.”

She stared for a minute then gave a fast burst of a laugh. “Oh, I see what you mean. No. The only reason I asked if it was Tuesday was to, you know, orient myself. Because of Sean. He …” She blinked. Hank’s head turned slowly toward her. Ebbans figured they had debated all evening about keeping their secret. Lisa began to tremble. Ebbans wondered how loud the discussion between these two would be after he left.

“Sean is … ?” Ebbans asked.

“Our son,” Hank muttered.

Lisa said, “He was here on Tuesday. That’s right. I’d forgotten.” She swallowed hard and Ebbans wondered if she was going to cry. “Sean got home from a Rifle Club practice late.”

“What time would that have been?”

She looked at her husband and decided not to lie. “About ten.”

Ebbans asked, “Is Sean here now?”

“Well, he is,” Hank conceded. “But I doubt he can help you.”

Lisa said, “It was pretty dark. I don’t think he saw much.”

“Anything you tell me is confidential. Nobody’ll know he gave us any information.”

Hank walked to the stairs and called his son. A tall boy in jeans and a T-shirt appeared in a minute, looking assured, smiling, staring Ebbans right back in the eyes. Ebbans, who had two daughters and had never for one minute regretted that, thought he would love to have a son like Sean. “You heard about the girl was killed over by the dam.”

“Yessir. We heard the next day.”

“I understand you got home about ten. From the Rifle Club. What kind of gun you shoot?”

“Winchester 75. With a target barrel.”

“That’s a good gun. What’s your rank?”

“Sharpshooter. All positions.”

Ebbans jutted out his jaw, impressed, and asked, “You were outside about ten on Tuesday?”

“After I dumped the garbage bags in the bin I saw this raccoon and I chased him off, down toward the lake. I saw two people sitting on the other side of the dam.”

“What were they doing?”

Lisa said, “Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know, if you don’t.”

“Looked like they had tackle but it might just have been gym bags or something. They weren’t fishing.”

“Can you describe them?”

“Sorry, sir. Not too good.” He nodded vaguely toward where the dam must have been. “It’s a ways. All I could see was their, you know, outlines. Silhouettes.”

Ebbans said, “Could you tell if they were men or women, boys? White or black?”

“Well, I got the feeling they were guys. Kids from school, I mean.” He added formally, “I don’t believe they were African-Americans.”

“What did you see them do?”

“After a couple minutes they stood up and picked up whatever they were carrying and walked to the dam. There was this flash from one of their hands. I thought it was a knife. The way he held it.”

Ebbans said, “Might it have been a bottle or a soda can?”

“Yessir, could’ve been. They sat on the dam for a while then I saw one of them point and they ducked down and ran off into the bushes. I thought they might be hatters so—”

“Hatters?”

“You know, like geeks or something. So I put the bikes in the garage.”

“And you didn’t see them again?”

“Nosir. But I did see someone who walked by close to them. An old guy. He was fishing. He was about sixty, I’d guess. About my grandpa’s age. He was casting spoons but he had a fly fisherman’s hat on. A red one.”

“You haven’t seen him since?”

“Nosir. You want me to keep an eye out for him, I’ll be happy to do that.”

“No, honey,” Lisa said. “I mean, you’ve done plenty.”

With the authoritative voice of a middle manager, Hank said, “That’s not our job, son.”

“You won’t use his name, will you?” Lisa asked. “You won’t talk to reporters?”

“All names are confidential. I promise you that.” Ebbans looked at his watch and said he had to be going and thanked Lisa for the water and Hank for the time. He said to the boy, “I sure appreciate your help. It was a brave thing to do. And I’d appreciate anything else you can do for us.”

At the door, the only hand he shook was Sean’s.

In the dark they talked.

Brian Okun said, “Think about what you’re saying. What you’re calling melancholia was cynicism.”

The young woman considered this then said, “No, I don’t think so.”

“How much of Wallace Stevens have you read?”

They were in Okun’s apartment in downtown New Lebanon, a half mile from the quadrangle. This was the town’s sole urban tenement neighborhood, which consisted of one block of three-story walk-ups, eighty years old.

“Enough to know that he was sad,” Dahlia answered.

“Sad men don’t write poetry like his. Skeptics do. There’s a power about him.”

“What about ‘Sunday Morning’?” she asked. “You call that power? The woman has no energy. She’s almost paralyzed at the thought that there’s no God.”

“‘Sunday Morning’ is his most …” Okun found a word that conveyed contempt. “… accessible poem. It doesn’t count. But since you’ve brought it up I maintain that only a cynic would create that imagery in the first place.”

Dahlia was from Wichita but was of Eastern Indian ancestry. She was short and voluptuous (Okun called her “plump”—another nod to Dickens). He wished she knew more about the Modern poets. He said, “You forget Stevens was a lawyer for an insurance company. A businessman. Wait! Wait …”

Okun, who was lying naked between Dahlia’s dark smooth thighs, tensed for a moment, slipped his penis out of her and came generously on her black fur of pubic hair. He squeezed against her and lay still for a moment.

He kissed her breast and said, “Are you okay?”

By which he meant did she have an orgasm. When she said a hesitant “I’m fine,” he rolled off her and began reciting from memory the Stevens poem “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction.”

They had been dating off and on for a year when Okun fell in love with Jennie Gebben. After the breakup with Jennie, Okun and Dahlia continued to see each other on occasion and more rarely to have lethargic sex. Not a word was ever spoken about marriage, monogamy or even vaguer commitments.

Although he was more frank with her than with anyone else at Auden, tonight she was unknowingly taking part in an experiment Okun was just about to commence.

He turned on the overhead light and lit a cigarette. He stared at a flap of paint on the ceiling, a flap that for some reason always made him think of the severed portion of Vincent van Gogh’s ear. “I was in Leon Gilchrist’s office today.”

“He’s off someplace, isn’t he?”

“San Francisco. Poetry conference at Berkeley.”

“He doesn’t seem like the UCB sort.”

“I have no idea what sort he is. The strange sort.”

Dahlia said, “He’s brilliant.”

“Stating the obvious diminishes you,” Okun said, a homemade aphorism he used often.

“He’s cute,” she said.

“Cute? Bullshit.”

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe not. He’s intense. I have trouble picturing him. He’s nondescript.”

“Oxymoron. How can he be intense and nondescript at the same time?”

She blotted her sable groin with his sheet. “I don’t know.”

“He had a draft of my evaluation for the faculty committee in his desk.”

“You went through his desk?”

“Do you know what he wrote in it?”

She asked, “How could you burgle his desk?”

“He said he did not want to work with me next semester. And he recommended that my advisor look long and hard at my dissertation.”

She was shocked. “He what?”

“He said I was arrogant and lacked sufficient depth to be a talented professor. He said if the school insisted on hiring me after conferring the degree, it should be as a librarian.”

This was all true. When Okun had first read the words on Gilchrist’s evaluation form he had felt physically ill. He now had some distance, but reciting the professor’s scathing critique made his hands quiver with rage.

“Brian! Why did he say that?”

“He’s a vengeful prick is why. I’m as smart as he, I have more social skills and I want his job. He’s figured that out.”

“Why were you going through his desk?”

Okun barked, “I’m his graduate assistant. If I can’t have access to his desk, who can?” He then added coyly, “Can you keep a secret?”

“Brian.”

“It’s something I’ve been wrestling with. I’ve got to confide in somebody. It’s about him. Gilchrist.”

“You’re dying to tell me.”

“I shouldn’t.”

“Tell me.”

“Did you know that he and Jennie Gebben had an affair?”

“The girl who was killed? Ohmagod!”

“From almost the first week in September.”

“No!”

“He’s into S and M.”

“I knew that,” Dahlia said, surprising Okun, who had fabricated this detail—as he had the fact of the affair itself. He asked where she’d heard this. She shook her head. “Don’t know.”

Okun continued, “He used to tie her up and whip her tits. Oh and he’d piss on her. I think she pissed on him too.”

“God.”

Her wide-eyed expression of shock was delicious. Okun smiled then chuckled silently. Dahlia frowned across the pillow at him then grimaced and slapped his arm. “You’re making this up, you fuck.”

He laughed hard. “I doubt Gilchrist knew Jennie from, excuse the expression, a hole in the wall. But you swallowed it raw.”

“Prick. So you going to start a rumor, are you?”

Okun said, “He’s not going to crater me with a bad evaluation. He’s dumped on the wrong person.”

“But he could be arrested!”

“Divorce yourself from simplicity, darling.… He was in San Francisco when she was killed. They’ll find that out soon enough. I don’t want him to go to jail. I just want to make him sweat.”

“You know what I think?”

“I’m vindictive and petty?” he asked, curious.

“I think you should cut out the part about getting pissed on. That’s too sick for words. Nobody around here’d buy that.”

“Good point,” Okun said, always willing to take good advice. “A little paraphilia goes a long way. Kiss me.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you scare me, Brian.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Kiss me.”

“No.”

“Yes,” he commanded. And she did.

The security guard led Corde and Ebbans through the garbage room of Jennie’s dorm to an emergency exit.

It was early the next morning and the air was humid and filled with smell of lilac, dogwoods and hot tar from roofers forty feet above their heads.

Corde and Ebbans had returned to the dorm to see if they could find Emily. Corde thought they might catch her before she left the dorm. She wasn’t here although her bed had been slept in and the bar of Camay in the cream-color soap dish was wet. The detectives had waited in her room for nearly twenty minutes but she never returned. Just as the antsy guard seemed about to complain, Corde glanced out the window into the parking lot.

“Huhn.”

He’d written a note to Emily on one of his business cards and had left it on her desk. He then had said to Ebbans, “Follow me.”

Ebbans did, trailed by the guard, a man with a huge swelling of latticed nose, who hadn’t smiled at the men all morning.

Bill Corde pushed the stained bar on the gray fire door and stepped into the parking lot behind the dorm. The three men walked along a small grassy strip that separated the building from the parking lot. Grass and weeds. And oil drums painted green and white. Corde asked the guard, “Are those the school colors?”

“Nope. They’d be black and gold.”

“Ugly,” Ebbans said.

“You salute it, you don’t wear it,” the guard grumbled. “Least, I don’t.”

They saw however that not all the oil drums were green and white.

One was black.

“Fire?” Corde asked now as he walked up to the drum.

“Pranks.” The guard rubbed his great crosshatched nose and muttered, “That the way they be. Think they own the world, the students, you know what I’m saying? Be spoiling stuff for everybody.”

Corde peered into the drum.

“Let’s get it over. But slow.”

Together they eased the heavy drum to the ground. A small avalanche of ash puffed up a gray cloud. Corde and Ebbans went onto their knees and probed carefully, trying not to shatter the thin pieces of ash. There were two blackened wire spirals that had been the spines of notebooks. The rest was a mostly unrecognizable mound of ash and wads of melted plastic.

Corde found several fragments of unburnt white paper. There was no writing on them. He eased them aside. He then found half a scrap of green accounting printout paper filled with numbers.

“What’s this?”

Ebbans shrugged. “I don’t do brainy crimes.”

Corde put the scrap in a plastic bag.

Ebbans plucked a small pair of tweezers from the butt of a Swiss Army knife and reached forward. He gently lifted a bit of crinkly purple paper. All that remained was the upper lefthand corner.

- March 14, 1

- Jennie Ge

- McReyn

- Aude

- New

“Her letters,” Ebbans said. There was triumph in his voice. “There you go, Bill.”

“A pile of ash is all they are.”

Ebbans often worked like a dog on scent. “Maybe, maybe not. Let’s keep going and see what we can find.”

Together the men crouched down and began their search again. When they finished, an hour later, they had nothing to show for their effort but the scraps of paper they had found right off, and two uniforms filthied, it seemed, beyond saving.

Even from the distance he sees fear in their eyes, in their posture, in their cautious gait.

Driving along Cress Street, a shortcut to the Sheriff’s Department, Bill Corde watches people on the sidewalks of New Lebanon. Shades are drawn. More than the usual number of stores have not yet opened this morning although it is a glorious spring day in a town that has wakened early for a hundred and fifty years.

The people are skittish. Like cattle in thunder. Corde drums the steering wheel and wishes he hadn’t compared his good citizens to fed-out slaughter animals.

Ace Hardware, Lamston’s, Long’s Variety, Webb’s Lingerie and Foundations.… Stores or the descendants of stores identical to them that have been here forever. Stores he has walked past for years, stores he has shopped in and answered 911 calls at, stores whose owners he sees at PTA meetings. But today, as he cruises slowly in and out of elongated morning shadows, Corde hardly recognizes the street and its occupants. He feels what a soldier feels in an occupied foreign city. He thinks of his own time in uniform—when he once got lost in an old quarter of Berlin.

Corde stops his cruiser at the Main Street light.

A sudden crack on the window makes him jump.

Gail Lynn Holcomb—a high school classmate of his—knocks again with red knuckles. He cranks the glass down and looks up at her frowning overly powdered face.

“Bill, how’s this thing going?” There is no need to be more specific. She continues, “Should I keep Courtney out of school? I’m thinking I ought to.”

He smiles to reassure her and says she doesn’t have to worry.

But he sees that the words are pointless. She is worried. Oh, she’s terrified.

And as he tells her that he thinks the Gebben killing is an isolated incident he observes something else too. He sees that she resents him.

Corde has been a small-town deputy for nine years, which is about eight years longer than it takes to understand the ambiguous status of cops in towns like New Lebanon. People here respect him because they’ve been taught to, and what small-town people are taught when young stays with them forever. People knock on his windows with fat, nervous hands and ask his advice and invite him to Rotary Club lunches and buy peanuts from him at the PTA fall fund-raiser. They josh and nod and shake his hand and cry against his solid shoulder.

But there’s a distance that’s real and it’s big and it never shrinks. Because if Bill Corde stands for anything it’s that the long arm of malice can reach into the center of this safe little town, where it ought not to be; New Lebanon doesn’t deserve the same fate as East St. Louis or the South Side of Chicago or the Bronx, and Bill Corde is uniformed proof that its fate is different in degree only, not kind.

What Corde sees now in this agitated blond bundle of Gail Lynn, gone heavy on potato chips and cola and cello-wrapped cookies, unskilled with the makeup brush, but a good mother and a good wife, is this very rancor.

Oh, how she resents him!

Because she now must fight daily, amid the noise of soap operas and sitcoms, with her husband and daughter about locking doors and latching windows and chaperoning dates and which routes to take to and from jobs and shopping centers and schools …

Because tomorrow morning Courtney with her thick wrists and bright blue eye shadow might walk uncautiously into a Middle School girls’ room, where a man waits in a stall, holding a narrow wire destined for a young girl’s throat.…

Because life for Gail Lynn Holcomb is already a relentless series of burdens, and she surely doesn’t need this one too: this murmur of utter fear that grows louder and louder each day that Bill Corde, sitting calmly in his safe and secure black-and-white Dodge, fails to catch this lunatic.

“We’re doing everything we can,” Corde concludes.

The light changes.

“Don’t you worry now,” he adds, and pulls into the intersection. She does not respond beyond pressing her flecked lips together and staring at the car as it turns onto Main Street.

SPECIAL TO THE REGISTER—INVESTIGATORS from the New Lebanon and Harrison County Sheriffs Departments have developed a profile of the so-called “Moon Killer,” who raped and murdered a 20-year-old Auden University co-ed on April 20, the Register has learned.

Criminal behavior experts have reported that the man, whose motive may have been to sacrifice the victim as part of a cult ritual, is probably in his late teens or early twenties and white, and he lives within ten miles of the murder site.

The man might be obsessed with occult literature, much of which will be pornographic in nature. He may have a history of sexual problems and may himself have been abused as a young child.

He may come from a broken home, and at least one parent was a hostile disciplinarian. He is a loner.

There is no known religion or cult in which human sacrifice to the moon is or was practiced. This means that the “Moon Killer” might have created his own “religion,” as did Charles Manson or Jim Jones. The moon may be significant because in mythology and certain religions it represents the female. It is women that the killer fears and hates.

Investigators are considering the possibility that the recent murder is related to the beating death last year of another Auden co-ed, Susan Biagotti, 21, a resident of Indianapolis.

It is believed that the killer may act again on the night of the next full moon, Wednesday, April 28. Deputies and Auden campus security police have intensified patrol efforts and are urging young women to avoid going outside alone.

Corde dropped the Register on Jim Slocum’s desk and said, “How’d this happen?”

Slocum rubbed his cheek. “You got me. Steve had an idea to have me go up to Higgins and talk to the state boys. Just a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

“Didn’t you check out the roads and the mall, like I asked?”

“Did that too. Put nearly two hundred miles on the cruiser. Didn’t find diddly.”

“Well, did you talk to a reporter?”

“Why would I talk to a reporter?” He frowned and slapped the newspaper with his hand. “Where I was maybe a little careless was I wrote up a memo after I talked to the State Police and circulated it to everybody on the case. It’s in your in basket. Didn’t you see it? You know what I’ll bet happened is something got leaked from the state.”

Corde was angry. He shouted throughout the office, “No reporters! Nothing goes to the press without clearing it with me. Understood?” Four deputies nodded, stiff-faced with unjust accusation.

“But Bill,” Slocum said, “there’s a lot that adds up. Look at this moon thing. The ‘lunatic’ message, the knife—”

Corde snapped, “Damned coincidence.”

“Everybody knows about the full moon. Remember Ed Wembkie?”

Corde said, “This is not some guy got foreclosed out of his farm and went crazy.”

“Ed killed that banker on the night of the full moon.”

“Was also the day the marshal tacked up the auction notice. And what’s this talk about Biagotti? Who brought that up?”

Slocum shrugged. “We are looking into it. Or at least you said you were going to.”

“Jim, I don’t care that it’s accurate,” Corde said in a low voice. “I care that it’s being talked about in the press.” He punched the newspaper. “There’s nothing we can do about it now. But in the future—”

“In the future I won’t trust them state boys,” Slocum said earnestly. “That’s for damn sure.”

Corde stared at the article for a moment. He clicked his tongue. “Okay, what’s done’s done. Now, I’d like you to get out to the truck stops and along 116, put up some fliers asking for witnesses. That route’s a feeder for the interstate if you’re coming from Hallburton.”

“That town’s mostly dead, Bill. I doubt there’d be any truck traffic.”

“Do it just the same. Fast-Copy’s delivering them this afternoon.”

“Uhn,” Slocum said.

Corde continued into his office. He cracked open the window. Before he could sit down T.T. Ebbans walked up to his desk, carrying his own Register.

Ebbans said angrily, “We got ourselves a leak, looks like.”

Corde snorted and swung his door shut. “It’s not a leak if the sheriff doesn’t mind.” He dug into his in box and found Slocum’s memo. It presented most of the same information that was in the article. Across the top Slocum had scrawled: Something to think about. Corde handed the memo to Ebbans, who read it and said, “Watkins knows what he’s about but it’s too darn early for this sort of profile. He should know better.”

Corde nodded toward Ribbon’s office. “You know something, T.T.,” he whispered. “Steve’d look like a genius, he stops a cult killer in his tracks, don’t you think? Especially if he could tie the Biagotti killing to this guy.”

“I guess,” Ebbans said, “but he wouldn’t, you know, hurt the case just to do something like that.”

Corde shrugged. “We catch this guy, five’ll get you ten Ribbon mentions Biagotti at the same press conference. Also with this Moon Killer poop he’s taking a lot of focus off the school, which is where he doesn’t want the focus to be.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t live in New Lebanon, T.T. Hell, the school damn near pays our salaries. If Auden goes, what’ve we got? Precious little. Farms. A few dealerships. Insurance.”

Corde tossed the Register into the trash. He began pacing slowly and then stopped abruptly. “You know, I can’t let that go.”

Ebbans looked at him quizzically.

“Woman came up to me today and she was mighty spooked, like she had the killer on her tail. Some paperboy or milkman comes to somebody’s front door and he’s going to get himself shot. Who’s going to come forward with evidence if they think they’re going to get gutted by a werewolf or something?”

Ebbans said, “The stories’ve run already, Bill. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Yeah there is.”

Corde picked up the phone. He called the Register and then WRAL, the local TV station in Higgins. He asked them about deadlines and if they’d be interested in a statement about the Auden co-ed case by the chief investigator. He took down some information then hung up. After Corde hung up Ebbans glanced toward Ribbon’s office and raised an eyebrow. He sang, “He ain’t gonna like it.”

Corde shrugged and proceeded to spend an agonizing half hour composing a release. After a dozen rewrites he slipped it over to Ebbans.

New Lebanon Sheriff’s Department investigators are following several leads in the rape and murder of an Auden University co-ed. Although it has been suggested that the murder was cult or sacrifitial, investigators have said that this is only one possibility and, they are also exploring the possibility that a friend or acquaintance of the victim’s from Auden University may have been somehow involved. Anyone with any information is urged to immediately contact the New Lebanon Sheriff’s Department in complete confidentiality.

“You spelled sacrificial wrong and also it doesn’t sound like a newspaper story. They write things different. Smoother or something.”

“Well, I don’t care about that. They’ll doll it up. What do you think about what it says?”

Ebbans read it again. He shrugged. “I think you hedged pretty good—at least so’s Ribbon won’t get too bent out of shape. But you know one thing, Bill. If we keep playing it up that we’re after a cult killer the real perp might be, you know, lulled into thinking he’s safe. He won’t be as likely to carry out those threats against you. You run this, well, he may come looking for you.”

Corde had not considered this. He smoothed the copy of his release in front of him. “It’s a risk, true. But it’s my risk and I think I have to take it. We’ve got to get ourselves some witnesses.”

Returning to work from lunch Corde parked in the Town Hall lot and saw Steve Ribbon climbing out of his cruiser.

The sheriff grinned a vacuous smile and motioned to him. Corde walked over to the car. They leaned butt-first against the fender.

“Howdy, Steve.”

The sheriff nodded.

The sunlight hit Ribbon’s face and revealed a speckle of red on his cheeks. It reminded Corde that Ribbon volunteered every Christmas to play a Jaycee’s Santa and slogged around in the snow and mud on New Lebanon’s east side, visiting trailers and maimed bungalows occupied mostly by single parents and their kids.

Whenever he formed opinions about Steve Ribbon, like the one he’d shared with T.T. Ebbans that morning, Corde tried to temper them with the memory of how the man spent December 24.

“Say, Bill, there’s a situation I’ve got to let you know about.” The Register was tucked under Ribbon’s solid arm.

“Shoot.”

“I was just over at County. Hammerback’s office. Last night he got a call from Dean Larraby over at Auden. You know her, right?”

Corde grunted affirmatively.

“Well, here’s the scoop.” Ribbon cleared his throat. “I seen that report on the burnt-up letters. The Gebben girl’s letters?”

“Yup.”

Ribbon exhaled long through closed teeth, stopping the breath with his tongue every second or so. Thup thup thup … When his lungs emptied he took another breath and said, “Somebody saw you coming out of her room the day they were stolen.”

Corde looked down at the pebbly asphalt.

“Wednesday afternoon,” Ribbon said. “The day after she was killed.”

“Wednesday. I was there, yeah. I wanted to talk to Jennie’s roommate.”

“Well, you didn’t say anything about it. When Lance told us the letters were missing and—”

“Steve, I was there without a warrant. The door was unlocked and people knew the girl was dead. I was afraid evidence would start to disappear. I took a fast look around the room and that was it.”

“Did you see—”

“The letters weren’t there, no.”

“Well, Jesus, Bill.” Ribbon chose not to mention the most serious offense, the one that would be filling an uneasy ninety percent of his thoughts—that Corde had destroyed the letters himself. Instead he said, “Anything you’d picked up wouldn’t’ve been admissible. That would’ve thrown the case all catercorner.”

“If I’d found anything I would’ve phoned in for a warrant then just baby-sat until Lance or T.T. showed up with it. All I was worried about was evidence disappearing.”

“Which is just what happened anyway.”

“Yes, it did.”

Ribbon’s eyes swung like slow pendulums from Town Hall to a Chevy pickup and back. “I don’t think this’s a problem. Not yet. Hammerback’s got more important things to worry about and the dean didn’t know diddly about warrants or anything. She just had her tit in a wringer ’cause she doesn’t like the way we’re going after the school and not letting her know what we’re about. But for Pete’s sake, Bill, there’s stuff about this case that could bite us in the ass we aren’t careful.”

Corde held Ribbon’s eye. “I didn’t burn those letters, Steve.”

“Absolutely. I know you didn’t. The thought never crossed my mind. I’m just telling you what some people who don’t know you as good as me might think. Just, sort of, be on your guard, you know what I’m saying? Good. Now how ’bout we get back to the salt mines?”

The front door of the Sheriff’s Department office swung open and into the office strode Wynton Kresge. Corde had a permanent image of Kresge, walking into a room just this way, swaggering and carrying a manila folder. It was becoming a cliché. Kresge, dropping the envelope on a desk and standing like a proud retriever that’d set a shot quail one inch from a hunter’s boot.

“Thankya, Wynton.” Corde sat in a chair at an unoccupied desk, opening the envelope. Still stewing about what Ribbon had told him, he added dismissingly, “That’s all.”

Kresge went from hangtail to a pit bull in less than a second. Ebbans saw it coming and winced. Corde was caught completely off guard.

“I’m just curious ’bout something, Detective,” Kresge said loudly in a James Earl Jones baritone.

Corde looked up. “I beg your pardon?”

“What would you like me to call myself?”

“How’s that?”

“I was just hoping you could provide some en-lightenment. Should I call myself Messenger?”

“Oh, boy,” Ebbans muttered.

Kresge said, “Maybe Step-’n’-fetch-it?”

Ebbans said again, “Oh, boy.”

Corde blinked. “What’re you talking about?”

“I’m talking about I don’t work for you. I don’t get a damn penny of town money, so everything I do for you’s gravy and you treat me like I’m delivering pizza.”

Corde looked at Ebbans for help but the county deputy’s face was a mask. Corde asked Kresge, “What are—

“This girl gets herself killed and I say, ‘Let me help you interview people.’ I say, ‘Let me help you look for clues.’ I say, ‘Let me help you put up fliers.’ And you treat me like a busboy. You say—”

“I didn’t—”

Kresge shouted, “You say, ‘No, Wynton, no thanks, you’re a black man! I don’t need your help.’”

“Oh, boy,” Ebbans said.

“You’re crazy!” Corde yelled.

“I don’t see so many deputies working for you. I don’t see so goddamn many suspects lined up you can cart ’em off in a bus. I offer you some help and what do you say? You say, ‘That’s all. Run ’long now. I’ll call you when I need some im-poh-tant pay-pahs.’” Menace was deep on his brow.

Work throughout the department had stopped. Even the 911 dispatcher had walked into the doorway of her office, leaning sideways, her head held captive by the plugged-in headset.

Corde stood up, red-faced. “I don’t have to listen to this.”

“I’m just curious what you’ve got against me?”

“I don’t have anything against you.”

“You don’t want my help ’cause I’m black.”

Corde waved his arm angrily. “I don’t want your help ’cause you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“How would you know? You never tried me out.”

“You never asked me if you could help.”

“Hell I didn’t!” Kresge looked at Ebbans. “Did I ask to help? Did I volunteer?”

Ebbans said to Corde, “He did ask, Bill.”

Corde glared.

Kresge said, “I wish you lots of luck, detective. You need any more help from the university Security Department, you talk to one of the guards. They wear uniforms. They make seven twenty-five an hour. They’ll be happy to pick up things for you. You can even tip, you want.”

Ebbans and Corde both squinted, waiting for the rippled glass window in the door to explode inward from the concussion of Kresge’s slam. Instead, he closed it delicately and stomped off down the serpentine path to the driveway.

Ebbans started laughing. Corde, his face red with anger, turned on him. “This isn’t goddamn funny.”

“Sure it is.”

“What’s with him? What did I do?”

Ebbans said, “Don’t they teach community relations in these here parts?”

“That’s not funny.” They heard a car squeal away from the curb outside. Corde said, “Goddamn! I don’t understand what I did.”

Ebbans said, “He could be helpful. Why don’t you apologize?”

“Apologize?” he roared. “For what?”

“You weren’t taking him seriously.”

“He’s a security guard.”

“You still weren’t taking him seriously.”

Corde said, “I don’t care if he’s black. Where did he get that idea?”

“Don’t get so riled.”

“Son of a bitch.”

Ebbans said, “He might sue you. Discrimination.”

It took Corde a minute to realize that Ebbans was joking. “Go to hell.”

“You take everything else seriously. Just not him.”

Corde shook his head in anger then stood. He walked to the coffee vending machine and returned a minute later, sipping the burnt-tasting liquid. He grabbed the envelope Kresge had delivered. Without seeing them he looked at the half dozen résumés it contained for a few minutes then said, “I hope he does sue. I’d like the chance to say a few things to him in court.”

Ebbans said, “Bill, simmer down.”

Corde started reading the résumés. He looked up a moment later, was about to speak, then closed his mouth and went back to reading. A half hour later he’d calmed down. He asked Ebbans, “These things say CV on them. What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. Where?”

“At the top. Oh, wait, here’s one it’s spelled out. Curriculum Vitae. What’s that?”

“Maybe it’s Greek for resume.”

Corde said, “Professors …” And went back to reading.

After he finished he read them again and then said to Ebbans, “May have something here. Interesting.”

“What’s that?”

Corde handed Ebbans a copy of Randolph Sayles’s CV. “What’s this tell you?”

Ebbans read carefully. “Got me.”

“He’s one of Jennie’s professors. Over the last twelve years he’s been a visiting professor at three other schools. Two of them were for one-year terms. But at that one, Loyola, in Ohio, he left after three months.”

“So?”

“After Loyola, it says, he spent the next nine months researching and writing a book before he came back to Auden. Nine months. That’s the rest of the one-year period, after you subtract the three.”

Ebbans said, “Well, these professors travel around a lot, don’t they? Maybe he took time off.”

“But he hasn’t published any books since he’s been back from Loyola. That was four years ago.”

“Maybe it’s about to come out.”

“Well, let’s speculate. Doesn’t it seem possible, let’s just say, he got dumped from Loyola and didn’t want to come back here right away. It would look strange. He’d have to explain why he got kicked out.”

“That’s a reach, Bill.”

Corde picked up the telephone. He dialed long-distance directory assistance, then the number he’d been given. As he did, Ebbans continued, “I don’t know. Getting fired’s pretty thin grounds to make him a suspect, isn’t it?”

Not if he was fired because he slept with a student then assaulted her when she threatened to report it.

The dean at Loyola College outside of Columbus, Ohio, took some convincing before he would tell Corde this and even then he did so only after he’d patched in the school’s lawyer, on an extension, to tell the dean what questions to answer, which turned out to be all of them.

After he hung up Corde said to Ebbans, “The assault charges were dropped. Nothing ever came of them but Sayles agreed to resign. What do you think now?”

“I think there’s something else.” Ebbans pointed at the résumé. “Randy Sayles is the associate dean in charge of financial aid.”

“Rings a bell.”

“Jennie Gebben worked for him.”

They were outside in the yard, lapped by bands of cool air then hot. As Corde and Diane sat pressed together on the picnic blanket, he remembered this phenomenon from his teenage days. They called it hotcolds. Waves of warm breeze alternating with waves of cold, drifting through fields around the New Lebanon High School at dusk. A schoolmate had an explanation: when a man and a woman did it, the air around them got real hot and stayed that way for hours; what the boys felt was proof that somewhere upwind a dozen girls had just gotten laid.

Corde and Diane had come outside to watch what was advertised as a meteorite shower. After the threatening photo he had made an extra effort to get home early and once there stay put for the evening. He’d noticed the story about the meteorites and, after Sarah and Jamie were in bed, asked his surprised wife if she’d like to have a date in the backyard. Diane had spread the blanket down and with half a bottle of wine beside them they sat close together, fingers twined, listening to crickets and owls and feeling the hotcolds wash over them.

The sky was clear and dominated by the near-full moon. They’d seen only one meteorite in fifteen minutes, though it had been spectacular—a long pure white streak covering half the sky. The afterimage remained in their vision long after the burning rock disintegrated.

“Do you wish on ’em?” Diane asked.

“I think you can. I don’t know.”

“I don’t know what to wish for.”

“If you decide,” Corde said, “don’t say it out loud. Meteors’re probably like birthday candles and wishbones.”

She kissed him, gripping his lip with her teeth. They lay on the dew-moist blanket, kissing hard, sometimes brutally, for almost five minutes. His hand slipped up under her sweater and into her bra. He felt her stiffen as her nipple went instantly hard.

“Passion,” he whispered, grinning.

“Cold,” she said, exhaling a laugh. “I know a place where it’s warmer.”

“So do I.” His hand started down toward her jeans.

Diane grabbed it with both of hers. “Follow me.” She stood up and pulled him toward the house.

“Does this have anything to do with your wish?” he asked.

They lay in the same pose as in the yard. Now though they were naked and atop a hex-pattern quilt Diane’s mother had begun the year of the Iran embassy takeover and finished the year of the Challenger explosion. The three-way light was on dim and Corde had licked off the last bit of her lipstick. He rolled her over on her back.

“Wait a minute,” she said, bounding up. “Let me put it in.”

The promised minute passed. Then several others. He heard running water. He heard a toothbrush. He rolled over on his back, gripping himself and squeezing to keep hard.

He heard the toilet flush. He squeezed harder.

He heard the medicine cabinet opening and closing. He stopped squeezing; he was firm as a teenager.

For about ten seconds.

“Ohhhh, Bill …”

The heartsick cry, the alto moan of Diane’s voice, was pitiful. A scream would have been less harrowing. Corde was on his feet and running into the bathroom, thinking only when he arrived that he should have taken the time to unlock the bedside table and pull his pistol from the drawer.

The blue diaphragm case lay at her feet. The rubber disk itself rested like a pale yellow blister on the sink.

Diane was sobbing, her arms around herself, covering her nakedness even from her husband.

Bill saw a small white square on the floor at her feet. He picked it up while Diane pulled her red terrycloth bathrobe off the back of the door and slipped it on, tying the belt tightly around her. “It was inside,” she whispered, spinning a stream of toilet paper off the roll and using it to pick up the diaphragm. She carried it like a crushed wasp to the wastebasket and dropped it in. She did the same with the plastic case, then began scrubbing her hands with soap and hot water.

This Polaroid had been taken at the same time as the one left on the back steps. The scene was of Sarah, or whoever the girl might be, lying in the grass, her skirt still up to her waist. The angle was about the same, so was the lighting. There were in fact only two differences. The photographer was now much nearer—only several feet from the girl.

And the message in red marker on the back was different. It said: GETTING CLOSER

Corde unlocked the gun rack and lifted out his long, battered Remington. He slipped three shells into the tube and from a desk drawer took a cylindrical chrome lock. He separated it and fitted the two parts on either side of the trigger guard. He squeezed them together with a soft ratchety sound. He put one key on his keychain and carried the other key and the gun itself into the living room, where Diane sat staring at the floor. Her mouth was a thin line.

“How is he doing this?” Diane’s voice broke in frustration.

“I don’t know, honey.”

“How does he get past the deputy?”

“I think he might’ve left that note the same time he left the other one. He’s probably long gone by now.”

“Might’ve … probably … Doesn’t anybody know anything about this man?”

Corde kneaded the key absently. No, we don’t. We don’t know a damn thing at all.

After a moment he said, “I’ll talk to Tom tomorrow. Have him make trips around the house and into the woods.”

Corde set the gun in the corner. “I didn’t chamber a round. You’ll have to pump it once. The safety’s off. Just pump and pull. You know how to do it. Aim low.” He handed her the key and she stood up and put it in her purse. She seemed calmer now, seeing the gun, having some control.

“Wait a minute,” Corde said. He took the key out of her bag and walked into their bedroom. He returned a moment later with a thick golden necklace. He slipped the key over the end and then clasped it behind her neck. He kissed her on the forehead.

She said, “This’s the chain you gave me when you gave me your class ring.”

“Figured that was the right length to let everybody know to keep their hands off.” The key rested at the shadow of her cleavage.

She smiled and hugged him and cried some more.

Corde said, “It’s plate, you know. The chain.”

“Isn’t a girl alive can’t recognize plate from solid. But it was the ring I was most interested in.”

Corde held her face. “We’re going to get through this just fine. Nothing’s going to happen to you or the kids. He’s just doing this to rattle me. I promise.”

Diane dried her eyes and walked toward the bedroom. She said, “God give me strength.”

At first no one in town paid much attention; it was mostly little things. Like when the Register came out, more people than usual bought it. And what they turned to first was the almanac page, which showed the phases of the moon for the next thirty days.

Sales of shotgun shells and rifle ammunition were running twice what they usually did this time of year (being nowhere close to season yet). The sporting goods section of Sears, which normally sold tons of Ted Williams baseball gear this month, was doing most of its dollar volume in low-cost .22s, .30-’06s, and even Crossman CO2 air pistols.

Business at the quad and HoJo’s and Baskin-Robbins fell to nothing as parents refused to let their daughters go on dates after dark. Exam grades at Auden went up as students who would normally be outside groping under clothing or pledging fidelity over the long summer months stayed home and broke the spines of books. A number of students were taking incompletes and returning home three weeks early.

A lot of town dogs were kept hungry.

Corde’s awkwardly phrased press statement, meant to reassure the people of New Lebanon, in short, had no effect on the hysteria.

Bob Siebert came home late to his trailer on Route 302. He opened the door and in the dark kitchen found himself staring at his five-year-old son, who was aiming Siebert’s Ruger .225 deer rifle more or less at his father’s heart. Standing silhouetted in the moonlight, afraid to speak, Siebert froze. It was only after the short click of the firing pin that he began to breathe again. He lifted the gun away, laughing madly and thanking the Lord that his son had not known how to chamber a round. His smile faded when he opened the rifle’s bolt and the misfired shell spiraled out. Siebert’s legs went slack, his pants went wet and he dropped sobbing to the floor. The boy said, “I thought you was the Moon Man, Daddy.”

And on Tuesday, one day before the full moon, the first graffiti went up.

No one saw who’d done it and in fact hardly anyone recognized the drawings at first. Clara and Harry Botwell were returning home in their 1976 Buick Electra from the Shrimp ’n’ Salad Night at the Wrangler, Clara driving, being the less impaired. Harry pointed to the wall of the First Bank of New Lebanon and said, look, somebody had painted a big gumdrop on the side of the bank, and Clara studied the wall and asked, why was it on its side and anyway why would anybody paint a gumdrop?

“Sweet Mary,” she said, “that’s no gumdrop, it’s a half-moon.” In panic she gunned the big engine and shot through a red light, broadsiding a Celica. The couple escaped unhurt, though the driver of the Toyota went to Memorial with a broken arm.

The bank wasn’t the only site of a half-moon. Three hundred citizens punched in 911 that night (most of them for the first time in their lives) to report a half dozen of the graffiti moons. The callers were all pretty shaken up; the paint the artist had used was blood.

This evening, Randolph Sayles, professor and dean, student of Union economics and apologist for the noble Confederate States of America, sat in his backyard smoking a cigarette and staring at the evening sky bright with moonlight. He held a drooping fax in his hand. Sayles tapped an ash to the ground in front of him and looked at it. Beside his muddy boots a tree root had grown out of the earth and then, only a few inches away, had returned underground as if even this short excursion into the world was intolerable. He heard footsteps. He recognized them.

Joan Sayles was an angular woman with short-cropped blond hair and abrupt hips and long breasts. Tonight she wore a white blouse, tied in the front à la Lana Turner, and skimpy, baggy shorts. She sat beside her husband. Dimpled bands of white flesh hung from her upper legs.

A full professor of sociology at Auden, she was one year older than Sayles and had an IQ two points higher than his, though they both fell in the ninety-ninth percentile. When they met, their last year of undergraduate school (on this same campus), one of them had been a virgin and it hadn’t been Joan. Even as a grad assistant she had professorial drive and an instinctive grasp of institutional politics. He appreciated these talents in her although he realized too late that she used these to pursue not only tenure but Sayles himself. She was successful on both fronts; they were married the day after he sat for his doctoral orals. And if he’d never felt a moment of resounding passion for her—nothing close in fact to what he felt when he stood at the lectern—that was all right. He loved her (he believed). Anyway he needed a wife (he was pretty sure), stability and a brainy spouse being Doric columns of Midwest university success.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked, squinting in the violet moonlight. The gesture pulled the corners of her mouth up in a wet grotesque smile that Randy Sayles did not want to look at. She noticed a small muddy shovel next to him and her eyes dipped to his boots. “Moonlight gardening?”

He imagined that her question, which sounded simply curious, was in fact laced with mockery.

He thought: What does she know?

“Taking in the air,” he answered. “You had a meeting tonight?”

“Completed.” She was holding a batch of white, stapled papers rubber-banded together. She had made many notes and marks on the first page of the top paper. He noticed C/C+. She was a bitch of a grader.

“What are you doing?” she repeated. When he did not respond she asked, “Are you ignoring me for a reason?”

He apologized with a sincerity that surprised them both, then handed her the fax. The state had rejected Auden’s application for an emergency loan.

“Ah.” She handed it back and lit a cigarette. It hung from the side of her lips and this made her mouth even sloppier and more lopsided. Joan inhaled then lifted a long finger to her tongue and touched away a fleck of something. “I’m sorry.”

Sayles squeezed her knee in response. She said, “Do you know what one of my students wrote? The issue was whether a population center like New Lebanon had an inner city. He wrote that it didn’t. Rather, he said, it had a wrong side of the tracks. I gave him an A minus, solely for that.”

Sayles said, “Clever.”

“You know, if I had it to do all over again I’d pick something frivolous. Romance languages or art appreciation. No, I know. Russian literature.”

She touched the side of her tongue again, probing, as if she wanted to make sure it wasn’t numb.

He said, “The police want to see me.”

“About that girl in your class? The one who was killed?”

Sayles nodded.

“You were sleeping with her?”

This was not truly a question. So she does know.

His silence was an answer she could read. “Did you enjoy it?” she asked.

“On occasion.”

“They don’t think you had anything to do with it, do they?”

“Of course not.”

How does she know?

Joan finished her cigarette and dropped it on the ground. She did not step on it. After a moment she shuffled the papers in her hand and said, “You know, I’m astonished at how college sophomores cannot put sentences together,” and walked back to the house along a narrow patch stained red and purple by droppings from a row of mulberry trees.

Where T.T. Ebbans wanted to be: standing in the exact position of the man he was talking to, the man leaning on the bent branch beside the muddy Des Plaines and connected to a hook sunk in murky water by twenty feet of fishing line via a Sears rod and reel. The man in the red hat.

“Those’re some flies,” Ebbans said, nodding at the hat.

“Yessir.”

Ebbans leaned over and looked into the Rubbermaid bucket where three pale catfish floated motionless. “A fly fisherman doesn’t get bored feeding stinkballs to suckers?”

“I don’t fly. S’only the hat. Was a present from the wife.” A moment later he added, “I got a license. Only I left her at home.”

“Uh-huh,” Ebbans said. “You by any chance fishing on Tuesday evening down at Blackfoot Pond?”

“This is my evening.”

“How’s that?” Ebbans asked.

“I work owl at the container plant. Get off at seven in the A.M. Go to bed. Eat Fish. Go to work. That’s my life. Your evening’s my day.”

“Some fella there saw someone fits your description.”

He grunted.

Ebbans said, “We had a girl killed over there on Tuesday.”

“That was there? Shitabrick. I didn’t know. Yeah, I was there on Tuesday.”

“When did you leave?”

“Must’ve been nine-thirty or ten. Got off to a late start because of the storm.”

“You see anybody else?”

“When I was leaving I seen two kids come up. They had tackle but they weren’t fishing. I figured they maybe had a Delco or a hand-crank and were just going to jolt up some worms.”

“They were kids?”

“Looked to be teenagers.”

“You know them?”

“Didn’t see ’em up close. They were down at the foot of the dam, walking up to the pond. One of them was fat so they were going slow. The fat one was wearing something dark. The other one was thin and was wearing a jacket may’ve been gray.”

“How old?”

“High school. I dunno.”

“Both white?” Ebbans asked.

“What else ’round here?”

“I’d like to have a talk with those boys or one of them. You see them I’d appreciate your letting us know.”

“You bet.”

“You do that I’ll forget to tell Fish and Game about the license you left at home.”

“I’ve been meaning to get me one,” he said. “You know how it is. One thing after another.”

The First Methodist Church of New Lebanon announced today that Sunday school classes will be canceled until further notice following the vandalism of the school by the man authorities are calling the “Moon Killer.”

“Authorities” are calling?

A painting of a half-moon in blood was found on the door of the first-floor girls’ room in the Sunday school building, located at 223 Maple Street, adjacent to the church.

The blood matched that from a goat whose carcass was found several days ago in the New Lebanon Grade School.

How do they know that? I didn’t know that.

Attendance at the town’s schools has fallen dramatically since the Moon Killer began stalking the streets of New Lebanon.…

“Stalking” the streets?

Tonight will be the first full moon since the murder of the Auden co-ed.…

Jennie. Her name is Jennie Gebben.

… and residents are urged to stay home from sunset to sunrise.…

Bill Corde, sitting in Room 121 of the Auden Student Union, stared at that morning’s Register for five minutes before pitching it out. He opened an envelope he had picked up at the office on the way over here. It contained a report from the county lab about the match between the carcass blood and the graffiti blood.

How did they know? I didn’t.

A man appeared in the doorway. Corde looked up at him.

“Excuse me. I’m Professor Sayles. You wanted to see me?”

“Come on in. Sit down.” Corde shoved aside the lab report and motioned with his palm toward the chair across from his miniature desk.

Sayles sat, folding his long legs slowly. He scooted the seat back. “This has to do with the Jennifer Gebben murder?”

Corde asked, “She was in your class?”

“Yes, she was.” Sayles looked at his watch. A wrinkled, frayed shirt cuff appeared outside his blue blazer and stayed there. “And she worked part-time for me. In the Financial Aid Department.”

“Did you know her well?”

“I try to know all my students.”

“But you knew her better than the others,” Corde said.

“The class she was in is large. The Civil War Centennial course is very popular. I try to know as many students as I can. I think it’s important. Any personal attention in class can be very inspiring. Don’t you remember?”

Corde, who had spent most of his school years trying to avoid the attention of teachers, said, “Why was she working for you? I assume she didn’t need the money.”

“Why do you assume that?” Sayles asked dourly.

“She wasn’t in the work-study program and didn’t have any student loans or scholarships. Seems she would’ve followed those routes before she’d get a part-time job paying five-ten an hour.”

“There’s something altruistic about disbursing money to needy students. Jennie helped organize last year’s AIDS walkathon. And she was also a Meals on Wheels volunteer.”

“For a month or two,” Corde said.

“For a month or two.”

“But how did she come to work for you?”

“We got to talking about how curious it was that I—a history professor—ended up in charge of financial aid and she asked if she could assist me.”

“What were the circumstances of this conversation?”

“Officer.” Sayles was riled. “I hardly recall.”

“Was there anybody in class she was particularly friendly with?”

“I never paid any attention.”

“Did you ever see her with anyone who wasn’t a student?”

Sayles shrugged. “No.”

“How often did you work together?”

“Several times a week.”

“You see her socially?”

“No, not socially. We’d have dinner after work sometimes. Often with other people. That was all.”

“You don’t consider that social?”

“No, I don’t,”

Corde watched the man’s dark eyes, which in turn studied three dirty fingernails on his right hand.

“Professor, were you asked by Loyola College to stop teaching there?”

Sayles started to reach for his red-and-blue striped tie. He stopped and tilted his head slightly, adjusting the needle valve on his indignation. “I was, yes.”

“That was because you’d been involved with a student?”

“Involved with? Yes.”

“And you assaulted her?”

“I did not. We had an affair. I broke it off. She wasn’t happy about that and called the police to report that I’d assaulted her. It was a lie.”

“Were you having an affair with Jennie Gebben?”

“No. And I believe I resent your asking me that.”

“I have my job to do,” Corde said wearily.

“And if you think anyone from the university had something to do with her death …” Sayles’s voice grew harsh. “… you’re badly mistaken. There are enough unfounded rumors about the murder already. It’s hard enough running a school and raising money for it without spooking parents and benefactors. Read the paper. Your department said it was a demonic killing.”

“We have to look at all possibilities.”

The watch was again gravely consulted. “I have a class in five minutes.”

“Where were you on the night she was killed, Professor?”

He laughed. “Are you serious?” Corde lifted an eyebrow and Sayles said, “I was home.”

“Is there anyone who can verify that?” Corde glanced at the narrow gold ring. “Your wife maybe?”

His voice grew soft in anger. “I was by myself. My wife was doing research at the library until midnight.”

“I understand that Brian Okun was seeing Jennie?”

“Seeing her? I’d say he was seeing her. He was sleeping with her.”

In his Chinese handwriting Corde made a small notation on a three-by-five card. “Could you tell me who you heard that from?”

“I can’t recall.”

“What’s your opinion of him?”

“Of Brian? You can’t suspect Brian of hurting Jennie.”

“Your opinion?”

“He’s brilliant. He needs to temper his intelligence somewhat. He’s a little arrogant for his own good. But he’d never hurt Jennie.” Sayles watched Corde slowly write. “May I go now?”

Corde completed the card and looked up. “I—”

“Look, I can’t help you. I have nothing more to say.” Sayles stood and his grim surliness was at a high pitch now.

This anger seemed out of proportion to the circumstances of the questioning. At first this reinforced Corde’s suspicion of the man. But one look into Sayles’s face told another story. The source of the professor’s indignation was contempt. Contempt at himself for loving Jennie Gebben. Whatever her talents in bed, which Corde guessed were pretty damn plentiful if both Sayles and Okun had risked their jobs to have her, Jennie was still nothing more than an average student, a suburban girl, fat at the throat, the daughter of a small-business man, a Meals on Wheels volunteer, a very ordinary young woman.

And here was Randolph Sayles, Ph.D., just blistered with humiliation for the love he’d spent on this common girl.

So Corde released him. And like a squirming cat escaping at last from his master’s arms the professor stalked out of Room 121 neither dallying nor fast, absorbed with forgetting the prior moments of troubling captivity.

Returning to the office Corde found on Slocum’s desk the stack of fliers from Fast-Copy, which were supposed to be tacked up thick as litter along Route 116. Slocum was out, he learned, looking into reports of missing goats.

The difficult night at home had now caught up with him—the second photo, his guilt at missing another of Jamie’s wrestling matches tonight, a tempestuous dream that woke him at one. Unable to sleep he had sat for two hours in the back bathroom with the shotgun on his lap, scanning the forest for any sign of the intruder. Once, he was sure he’d seen a face looking at the house and had gone so far as to chamber a shell and walk outside, hands shaking in anticipation as much as from the predawn chill. But as he stood shoeless on the slab back porch the image became a moonlit tangle of trees and leaves.

He’d turned to walk back into the house and Sarah had scared the utter hell out of him, bounding forward from the stairs. They stared at each other—Corde, shocked, the girl more disappointed than anything. She was headed for the back door and he’d thought for an instant that she was sleepwalking. But, no, she was only after a glass of water. “What’s wrong with your bathroom?” Corde asked as his heart’s gallop slowed. She had drunk the water, staring out the window, until he impatiently shooed her off to bed.

He did not get to sleep till five.

Then there’d been a fight at breakfast. Sarah had shrilly refused her mother’s demand that she study before going to school. Corde had had to both comfort his wife and calm his daughter. He tried not to take sides and they both ended up mad at him.

Now, in his office, the door closed, Corde sat at his desk for ten minutes, arranging and rearranging the tall stacks of his three-by-five cards, fat and limber from all the shuffling. He spread them out until they covered his desk.

A dull bicentennial quarter appears in his hand and begins flopping over the backs of his fingers. He stares at the cards and after a few minutes Bill Corde is no longer in the Sheriff’s Department but is on the Auden University campus and the day isn’t today but is Tuesday, April 20. It is four-thirty P.M.

Corde pictures Jennie Gebben leaving Professor Sayles’s lecture hall and walking to the university bookstore three blocks away to cash a check for thirty-five dollars. Her picture is taken by the cashier’s security camera and the film shows her wearing a white blouse with a button-down collar. Her dark hair is straight, a thick strand sloping over her forehead. The shutter catches her with eyelids half closed. The time on the film is 16:43:03. Jennie continues to the dorm and arrives there at about five. She and Emily Rossiter remain in their room with the door closed for about an hour. The girls on the floor can detect the roommates having what seems to be an argument though no one hears enough to know the substance of their discussion.

Lance Miller’s report on the phones shows that during the hours Jennie was at the dorm today, there have been no outgoing long-distance calls and most local calls are to innocent recipients. The only local call whose recipient can’t be ascertained is to the Auden School of Arts and Sciences; which of the sixty-four extensions the call is transferred to cannot be determined. Both Randy Sayles’s and Brian Okun’s numbers are among those sixty-four, as is Emily’s; she works as an assistant in the Sociology Department.

At about six-fifteen Jennie takes a shower and with hair still damp walks with three other girls to the cafeteria. They have asked Emily to join them but she moodily declines. The four eat dinner and talk. Jennie eats quickly and leaves early. She too is moody. Her dinner companions return to the dorm at seven-thirty and watch a TV game show for a half hour. Jennie enters the lounge and watches TV for a few minutes then looks at her watch. She seems distracted, edgy. At about eight-fifteen she leaves the lounge and tells one of the girls that she’ll be back by midnight.

The next time Jennie Gebben is accounted for, it is ten-fifty-eight. She has been raped and strangled to death and her body is lying in a bed of blue hyacinths at the muddy base of Blackfoot Pond dam.

At the site of her death: Nineteen shoe and boot prints around the body, most of them men’s or teenage boys’ sizes. The Ford pickup, covered with 530 partial and 140 full fingerprints. Scraps of standard, virtually untraceable typing paper. Cellophane wrappers from several snack foods sold by Wise and Frito-Lay and Nabisco. Cigarette butts, beer and soda bottles and cans, a condom, the semen in which doesn’t match that found in the victim.

And the knife (whose source even the FBI has not been able to identify, despite the assistance of the Seoul Prefecture of Police and faxed inquiries to twelve professors of religion, criminology and parapsychology around the country).

None of the fingerprints found at the crime scene matches those on file in Harrison County. The prints are now in Higgins and in Washington, D.C., for similar cross-checking in state and federal files. Fingerprinting the dorm room netted 184 partial and whole prints, sixty-two of which belonged to Jennie and other students on the floor. The others are as yet unmatched.

After reporting the theft of Jennie’s letters Emily Rossiter has turned uncooperative. She still has not appeared at Room 121 and she has not returned his calls.

Corde has looked carefully through the file on the Biagotti case—the case that introduced him to Jennie Gebben. On January 15 of the previous year, Susan Biagotti was in her off-campus apartment when she was beaten to death with a hammer during a robbery. As Corde told Ribbon, Jennie could offer no insights into the crime. The girls did know each other but only casually. Susan lived two buildings away from Brian Okun’s apartment but Corde can find no other connection between the two of them. The phase of the moon on January 15 was three days after new.

The burnt scraps found in the oil drum behind Jennie’s dorm include three types of paper. Hammermill long-grain recycled white typing paper, Crane’s laid stationery, tinted violet, and sprocketed green-and-white-striped computer paper whose manufacturer has not been determined. Ninhydrin analysis has revealed two partial fingerprints on the Crane’s stationery and one complete print on the computer printout. All three are Jennie’s. The county lab reports that the amount of ash in the drum would be equal to about fifty to seventy-five sheets of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch paper. The ash was so badly destroyed that no latent watermarks, writing or fingerprints are detectable.

The printing on the computer paper is of dollar amounts ranging from $2,670 to $6,800. The printer was a nine-pin dot matrix. The extreme faintness of the type suggests it was printed in the machine’s high-speed mode or that the ribbon was old. Both county and State Bureau of Investigation technicians report that the papers and ink are too common to provide further leads unless matching samples are recovered.

Jennie died of traumatic asphyxia. The killer strangled her with his hands then used a rope or cord to make sure she was dead. The speed with which she died makes an erotic asphyxia interlude unlikely. She did not die standing up; the backs of her shoes kicked deep impressions into the mud before they flew off, and the soles of her feet were clean. The semen in and on her body is from a single individual and was serum-typed B positive. There is evidence of both vaginal and anal intercourse.

No one has found the murder rope though a technician noticed a fresh cut on a short piece of plastic-coated clothesline dangling from a tie-down cleat in the abandoned truck. The medical examiner said the injury to her neck was consistent with that type of rope. The cult knife contains no particle residue from the cord but that is not conclusive. Moreover, the blade of the knife is razor sharp and the county forensic lab reports that the clothesline on the Ford was cut with a sharp instrument. A particle of cotton fiber, matching Jennie’s panties, was found on the stiletto.

Of Jennie Gebben, Corde knows this:

She dated frequently though these were not typical Burger-King-and-a-movie events. She simply vanished in the evenings, sometimes for the entire weekend. She rarely talked about her companions on these outings though what she did share caused a considerable stir. Sex was Jennie’s favorite topic. Not boys or dates or engagement rings. Sex. Jennie had been found masturbating in the dorm bathroom a number of times and she didn’t mind being watched. She got pleasure from blunt talk (“One time Jennie and I were in the study room, okay? And it’s all quiet and she like looks up and goes, ‘You ever take it up the ass?’ and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, did you really say that?’”).

Her reluctance to discuss her lovers fueled the rumors that she slept with professors. Last year she supposedly went out with one professor for much of the spring term. They kept it intensely secret though it was believed that he was in the Education School and that they had contemplated marriage.

A number of girls call Jennie’s sexual behavior disgraceful but when they do, the disdain is transparent and there is envy beneath.

Many students say that they considered her a searcher, unsettled, unhappy. Several give similar versions of the same incident: Late one night Jennie was in the stairwell of the dorm by herself. She was crying and the echoes of her voice on the concrete walls made a terrible, mournful moan. “I’m so lonely.…” one student believes she was saying. Another, on the floor below, heard, “If only I had him.…”

She was not religious and had never attended a church in New Lebanon. She had some tapes by New Age musicians and several crystal necklaces but little interest in spiritualism or the occult. Students have given conflicting reports about her relationship with her parents. Jennie was cool toward her mother. Her connection with her father, on the other hand, was turbulent. On the phone she sometimes told him in oddly passionate terms that she missed and loved him. Other times she slammed the phone down and announced about him, “What a prick.”

Bill Corde drops his quarter on the table and scoops up his index cards, considering all these facts, and he tries to picture the killer. But he sees woefully little. Far, far less than the profile in the Register (which infuriated him partly because he doubted he himself could ever create such a vivid image of a criminal). Corde’s own profiling technique, that of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, is charted on the yellowed sheet of paper pinned on the corkboard behind his desk. It is a lengthy process of inputting voluminous facts, arranging them into models, assessing the crime and finally creating then fine-tuning the criminal profile. (He knows that the NCAVC procedure includes an optimistic sixth and final step: apprehension of the killer—a stage that seems despairingly unattainable at this moment, eight long days after Jennie Gebben’s demure body was found in a bed of muddied hyacinths beside that gloomy, still pond.)

Corde knows many details about Jennie Gebben. He knows that Brian Okun has lied to him and that Professor Sayles might have. He knows that two boys were near the dam shortly before her death and one of them may have had a knife. The trail is cooling and there is so much more to learn. More interviews, more facts to unearth.… Though he secretly wonders: Is he merely stalling, hoping for a picture of the killer to flutter down from heaven, a picture as clear as the portrait of Jennie taped inside his briefcase?

Bill Corde riffles the index cards.

He believes much and he knows little. A mass of information is in his hands but the truth is somewhere between the facts themselves, in the gaps of his knowledge, like the shadows between the flipping cardboard. For now, Corde sees only darkness as dense as the water in Blackfoot Pond. He sees no deeper than the reflection of double moons in the facets of a dead girl’s necklace.

Corde hopes for startling illumination and yet he fears it will be a long, long time coming.

Her trouble came with the first asymmetrical block.

Resa Parker flipped through the green booklet, its cover printed with the large black letters VMI, Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration, and noted the exact point where Sarah Corde’s abilities failed her: trying to copy a line drawing of an uneven rectangle.

Setting this aside the psychiatrist reviewed the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Revised, examining the snaky plot of the verbal and performance tests in the WISC-R profile blocks. The Revised Gray Oral Reading Test, which was strictly timed, showed Sarah—a fourth grader—reading at a first-grade level. Without the stress of a clock she was slightly better.

The scores were worse than the doctor had expected.

Sarah now sat in front of her, struggling through the last of the diagnostic tests—the Informal Test of Written Language Expression. Dr. Parker saw the anxious behavior, the darting eyes, the quivering knees, the frosting of sweat. The psychiatrist, who had at one time been in daily analysis for six years, continually confronted her own anger and insecurity and the coldness with which they were manifest; she struggled to instill serenity in the child. “Take your time, Sarah.” Big smile. “There’s no rush.”

She noted the process of internalizing. Sarah didn’t sound out unknown or difficult words. She stared at them without lip movement until she applied whatever phonetic skills she could muster and then wrote the words slowly in crude letters. Sarah leaned forward, an intense frown on her brow as she tried to conjure up the words. In her eyes the agony of repeatedly slamming into her limitations was clear.

Children of policemen have a higher incidence of learning disabilities than those of other parents and Dr. Parker noticed in herself a kernel of resentment toward Bill Corde. It was a rancor that she would never reveal but that he would have to go a long way in rebutting. Diane Corde refined much of what she said through a very complex series of filters and Dr. Parker wondered just how much the man actually helped his daughter, in contrast to how much Diane believed, or wished, he did.

The doctor also knew something else—how little the girl would ultimately improve and the immense effort and expense even that limited progress would require.

“I’m afraid your time’s up,” Dr. Parker said, and took the notebook from the girl, who was sweating and nearly breathless. She examined the girl’s sad attempt to write a story about a simple illustration in the test booklet—a boy with a baseball. Sarah had started: His naem was Freddie. And he watnted to play bsebale, baseball, only.… The handwriting was abysmal. The story continued for a half page; an average child could easily fill three or four pages in that time. “All right, Sarah, very good. That’s the last of our tests.”

Sarah looked mournfully as the written language test was slipped into the file. “Did I pass?”

“You don’t pass these tests. They’re just to tell me about you so I can help you do better in school.”

“I don’t want to go back to school.”

“I understand, Sarah, but it’s not a good idea for you to stay back another year. You don’t want all your classmates to advance a grade while you’re left behind, do you?”

“Yes,” Sarah answered without hesitation, “I’d like that.”

Dr. Parker laughed. “Well, how about if I call Mrs. Beiderson and have her agree that you can take your tests out loud? Would that be all right?”

“So I wouldn’t have to write out the answers?”

“Right.”

“Would she do that?”

“I’m sure she would.” The call had already been made.

“What about the spelling test? I’m ascared of spelling.” The voice grew meek. Manipulatively meek, the doctor noted. Sarah had tried this technique before, with success.

“I’d like you to take it. Would you do it for me?”

“I’ll be up in front of everybody. They’ll laugh at me.

“No, you can do it by yourself. You and Mrs. Beiderson. That’s all.”

The child’s instinctive sense of negotiation caught on that this was the best she could do. She looked at Dr. Parker and nodded uneasily. “I guess.”

“Good. Now—”

“Can I finish the story at home?”

“The story?”

“Freddie and the baseball.” She nodded at the booklet.

“I’m sorry, Sarah, that’s all we had time for.”

The girl’s face twisted with enormous disappointment. “But I didn’t get to write down the neat part!”

“No?” Dr. Parker asked. “What’s the neat part?”

Sarah looked up at the same diplomas the doctor had watched Diane Corde scrutinize so desperately the previous week. The girl turned back, looked into the doctor’s eyes and said, “What happens is Freddie hits the baseball into the street and it goes rolling down the sidewalk and into a drugstore. And there’s Mr. Pillsit …” Sarah’s eyes widened. “And he used to play for the Chicago Eagles. That was a ball team that had real eagles that would swoop down and grab the baseball and sail out over the grandstand and they won every game there was. And Mr. Pillsit says to Freddie—”

Dr. Parker held up her hand. “Sarah, did you read this story someplace?”

She shook her head. “No, I just made it up, like I was supposed to. I thought I was supposed to. I’m sorry …” The eyes lowered theatrically. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No, not at all. Keep going.”

“And Mr. Pillsit, he says to Freddie, ‘If you really want to play baseball, I can make you the best player that ever was, only you have to go find the tallest tree in the eagles’ forest and climb up to the top. Are you brave enough to do that?’”

Freddie was of course up to the job, and Sarah enthusiastically continued with his adventures, not noticing the psychiatrist’s braceletted hand reach forward and nonchalantly lift her gold pen, recording in rapid, oblique symbols of speed writing Freddie’s quest for the magic baseball—fighting Hugo the Claw, the worst eagle that ever was, building a new clubhouse for the team after their original one burned down, running away from home and living in a big nest with a family of beautiful golden eagles. Freddie never returned home though he did become a famous baseball player. By the time Sarah finished, Dr. Parker had filled ten pages of steno paper. “That is a very interesting story, Sarah.”

“No,” Sarah said, sounding like a TV film reviewer. “But the picture was of Freddie and a baseball so I couldn’t think of anything else.”

The doctor flipped through her notebook slowly then said, “All right, I’ve got to look over all the work you’ve done for me and you’ve got to go study for your tests.”

“I want my daddy to help me.”

After a moment the doctor looked up. “I’m sorry, Sarah. What did you say?”

“I want Daddy to help me study. Is that okay?”

“That’ll be fine,” Resa Parker spoke absently. Her mind was wholly occupied by a boy and a baseball and a talking eagle.

“This is my federal firearm permit and this is my Missouri private investigator’s license.”

Sheriff Steve Ribbon studied the squares of laminated plastic in the man’s wallet. He’d never seen a federal firearm permit. Or a Missouri private eye’s license.

He said, “Looks in order.”

Charlie Mahoney put the wallet back in his pocket. He wore a businessman’s suit—in a fine, faint plaid that looked gray but up close was tiny lines of pink and blue. Ribbon liked that suit a whole lot. Ribbon nodded him toward a chair, observing that the man had two types of self-assurance: the institutional authority of a long-time cop. And the still confidence of a man who has killed another man.

Mahoney tossed an expensive, heavy tan raincoat onto an empty chair and sat down across the desk from Ribbon. He talked without condescension or interest about the beautiful spring weather, about the difficulty of getting to New Lebanon by air, about the ruralness of the town. He then fell silent and looked behind Ribbon, studying a huge topographical map of the county. During this moment Ribbon grew extremely uncomfortable. He said, “Now what exactly can I do for you?”

“I’m here as a consultant.”

“Consultant.”

“I’m representing the estate of Jennie Gebben. I was a homicide detective in Chicago and I have a lot of investigatory experience. And I’m offering my services to you. Free of charge.”

“The thing is—”

“I’ve apprehended or assisted in the apprehension of more than two hundred homicide suspects.”

“Well, what I was going to say was, the thing is, you’re a, you know, civilian.”

“True,” Mahoney conceded. “I’ll be frank. I can’t tell you how upset Mr. Gebben is that this has happened. This has nothing to do with your ability to collar the perpetrator, Sheriff. Sending me here was just something he felt he had to do. Jennie was his only child.”

Ribbon winced and felt genuine sorrow in his heart. “I appreciate what he must be going through. I’ve got kids myself. But you know how it is, regulations. You must’ve had those in Chicago.”

“Sure, plenty.” Mahoney studied the great blossom of Ribbon’s face and added some shitkick to his voice as he said, “Can’t hurt just to do a little talking. That can’t hurt nothing now, can it?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“You’re in charge of the case?”

“Well, ultimately,” Ribbon said. “But we got a senior detective here who’s doing most of the legwork. Bill Corde. Good man.”

“Bill Corde. Been doing this sort of thing for a few years?”

“Yessir, he has.”

“What approach is he taking?”

“Well, he’s thinking that it was somebody who knew her. Most likely somebody at the school.”

Mahoney was nodding in a way that said to Ribbon he was troubled. “Playing the odds.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“He’s taking the cautious approach. Statistically most people are killed by somebody—”

“—they know.”

“Exactly. But from what I’ve read about this case it’s a little stranger than most. Some twists and turns, you know what I’m saying?”

“I hear you.” Ribbon’s voice lowered. “I’ve got a load of trouble with what’s happening here. There are some, you know, cult overtones to the whole thing.”

“Cult.” Mahoney was nodding again, this time agreeably. “Like she was a sacrifice victim or whatever. Right. Those goats and that blood. The moon and everything. Whoever picked up on that idea was doing some good law enforcement work.”

Ribbon’s caution was on the ebb but he said, “I still have some trouble with you getting involved, Mr. Mahoney. I—”

“Charlie,” Mahoney chided. “Charlie.” He lifted his thick hands, with their yellow-stained index fingers, heavenward. “At least do yourself a favor and let me tell you about the reward.”

“Reward.”

“Mr. Gebben is a very wealthy man. He’s offering twenty-five thousand dollars for apprehension of the killer.”

Ribbon chewed on his cheek to keep the rampaging grin at bay. “Well, my, that’s generous.… Of course you can imagine that rewards like that generate a mess of bounty hunting. We got a lot of people in this county own guns and can carry them legally.”

Mahoney frowned as he corrected himself. “Should’ve said: the reward is for professionals only. For law enforcers. That way there’s no risk of people who don’t know what they’re doing getting hurt.”

“Mr. Mahoney.”

“I’m a cop, you’re a cop …”

“Charlie. Charlie, it might not look good for … Well, politically is what I’m saying, to have an outsider here. It might look like we don’t know what we’re doing.”

“It might also look like you thought so highly of the community that you had the foresight to call in some special help.” Mahoney took a leisurely moment to study his watch. “Well. There you have it. Now, you can kick my ass out of here tomorrow if you want. But I’m stuck in town for the night at least and don’t know a soul. How ’bout you and me get a drink and trade war stories. There’s not much else to do in this town, is there?”

Ribbon almost made a comment about one pastime being raping co-eds by moonlight but caught himself. “Well, there are,” he said, “but ’cept for fishing none of ’em’s as fun as drinking.”

She lifted the card off her desk with a trembling hand and stared at it, the little white rectangle. It was stiff and the corners were very sharp. One pressed painfully into her nail-chewed thumb, which left a bloody smear on the card.

Emily Rossiter started to sit on the bed but then thought that they might have sat here. They’d probably looked between the mattress and the springs. They’d felt the pillow. They’d run their hands along the same sheets where she and her lover had lain. She dropped the card and saw, as it flipped over and over, the words Please call me.… Det. William Corde flash on and off then disappear as the card landed in the wastebasket. She wondered if even the trash had been violated. Emily walked into the hall then into the telephone alcove.

She made a call and stiffened slightly when someone answered. “It’s Emily.… I have to see you. No, now.” She listened for a moment to vehement protests then answered defiantly. “It’s about Jennie.” The voice on the other end of the line went silent.

“So I go like you are too much why don’t you just sit on it and then Donna’s like he is too totally much it’s like you know like his eyes have this total hard-on and I go …”

Philip Halpern thought: Shut. Up.

In the room he and his sister shared there was one telephone. His sister, fourteen, used it most of the time.

The cool breeze of an April evening flowed through the window, rippling the green sheet that separated Philip’s side from his sister’s. Taped on the poorly painted walls were dozens of creased posters, the sort that come stapled in the centerfold of teen magazines. The wind momentarily lifted aside the Kmart sheet, studded with tiny red flowers, and for a brief moment Luke Perry and Madonna faced off against the Road Warrior and Schwarzenegger’s Terminator.

In Philip’s half of the stale-scented space: stacks of comic books, science fiction novels, drawing tablets, plastic figures of comic book heroes and villains. Hundreds of magazines, Fangoria, CineGore, Heavy Metal, many missing their covers; unable to afford them, Philip regularly swiped the unsold, stripped copies from trash bins behind New Lebanon News. On his dresser and desk rested elaborate plastic models of space ships perfectly assembled but coated with grime. In the corner, a hatrack project for shop class, partially completed, hid a massive dustball.

Dominating the room was a huge hand-printed sign. In oddly elaborate script it read: Entry Forbidden, the message surrounded by dozens of letters from the runic alphabet and tiny sketches of gargoyles and dragons.

Philip lay in his sagging bed on a mattress now dry but marred with a hundred old urine stains. He had told his parents that he had to study for a test and went into the bedroom. His father had seemed pleasantly surprised at this news then turned on Wheel of Fortune. Philip did not however study. He read Heinlein, he read Asimov, he read Philip K. Dick (he believed at times he was possessed by Dick’s spirit), he lay on the bed, staring at flowers and mentally designing a laser, until his sister came into the room and made the phone call to her girlfriend.

Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

Their father opened the bedroom door abruptly and said, “Off the phone. Lights out. Now.” His hand swept the light switch down. The door closed.

“… naw, my old man … gotta go. Yeah, tomorrow.”

Philip turned the laser onto the afterimage of his father to see if it would work. It did, spectacularly. Philip invented very efficient weapons.

His voice hissed as he fired it again.

Rosy said, “Asshole.”

“Say that to him.”

“I’m talking to you,” she said. He heard the zipper of her jeans. He wondered what she was going to wear to bed.

Philip said, “You’re a ’ho.”

She said, “You wish.”

“Bitch.”

“Fag.”

The springs of her mattress squeaked as she flopped into bed. Philip lay unmoving for ten minutes—until he heard her steady breathing. Fully dressed, he sat up, feeling the cool air from the open window wash over him. He climbed through the window and as he fell to the spongy ground he slipped into the Lost Dimension; it was Phathar the warrior who staggered briefly then righted himself and strode confidently out of the moonlight-flooded backyard.

Professor Randolph Sayles wondered why there were no crickets or cicada here. He listened. It was late April. Was it too early for them? He didn’t know entomology. He’d struggled through life sciences, biology being the one course that had deprived him of a four-point grade average in undergraduate school. Twenty-six years later he still resented this.

He stood in the Veterans Memorial Park for ten minutes before she appeared. He thought Emily Rossiter was one of the most beautiful young women he’d ever seen. She had curly brown hair, surrounding a round face of Italian or Greek features, very pale. On her beauty alone he could have lived forever with her, sufficiently happy, sufficiently in love.

Yet as she approached him now—under a trestle of budding maples, the defiantly glaring moonlight silver against the riffling underside of the young leaves—what he saw shocked him. She was like a homeless woman, disheveled, her face puffy, her hair in tangles and unclean, her mouth slack, clothes dirty. Her eyes unfocused, her weak smile mad.

Yet despite her crazed demeanor, despite his anger toward her, despite his fear of her, Randy Sayles wanted nothing so much as to make love to her. Here, immediately, on the grass, on the dirt, hot flesh on flesh in a sea of cool spring air.… He wanted to force her down and press on her, harder harder.… He wanted to sample her vulnerability. He wanted her salty, unwashed flesh between his teeth.…

He had once tried to seduce her, an incident that ended unconsummated and dangerously close to rape. She had finally repelled him with a slap, drawing blood. He had apologized and never approached her again. Curiously this scalding memory exponentially increased his hunger for her now.

He stood slouching, hands pocketed, as she stopped two feet away from him. They stood under a streetlight that seemed duller and more eerie than the light from the full moon. “Emily.”

“You know what happened to her, don’t you?” The words seemed to stumble from her mouth.

“What is it you want?”

“To Jennie, You know what happened to her?”

She began to walk, suddenly, as if she just remembered an appointment. Sayles followed, slightly behind. They moved this way, together, for five minutes then turned north along a path that led to a circle of brick surrounded by concrete benches and behind them a tall boxwood hedge. They would have three or four minutes’ warning in case somebody walked toward them.

When speaking with female students Sayles automatically considered escape routes.

“Where are you staying,” he asked, “in the room?”

“Ah, kiddo,” Emily whispered to no one.

“You should think about going home. Take incompletes. I’ll arrange it if you like.”

“Kiddo.”

“What were you trying to say on the phone? You didn’t sound very coherent.”

“I didn’t know it would be this hard. It’s so hard without her.”

“What do you want?”

The moonlight shone on her cheeks in two streaks leading from her eyes to her mouth. Sayles stood with his hands still in his pockets, Emily with her arms crossed over breasts he had never seen. She asked, “You saw her the night she died, didn’t you?” She spoke from some brink whose nature he couldn’t fathom; was it resolution or resignation?

Sayles said, “No.”

“I don’t believe you.”

They were in the small park off the quad, a place where lovers over the years had unzipped and unbuttoned all manners of fashions as they lay struggling on fragrant Midwest grass. Tonight the park was, or appeared to be, deserted. Emily said, “You know what happened to her, don’t you?”

After a moment Sayles asked, “Why are you asking me?”

“Ah, kiddo,” Emily muttered. “Ah kiddo kiddo kiddo …”

Sayles asked in a furious whisper, “What are you saying? What do you know?” He was engulfed with emotion and couldn’t will his strong hands to stop as they grabbed her shoulders.

She seemed to waken suddenly and stood back, shaking her head, crying. “You’re hurting me.…”

“Hey, anybody there?” a gruff voice called. Footsteps behind them. Someone walking in the woods nearby, separated from view by the boxwood hedge. Emily broke away. Sayles started toward her. She waved her hand wildly, as if brushing away a riled bee.

“Tell me!” Sayles whispered viciously.

Emily walked quickly down the path. He started after her but the intruder, a security guard, shone his light in their direction. They both dodged it. Emily ran.

Sayles whispered, “Wait!” Then he stepped through the bushes, out of sight of the guard. He hurried through the darkness in the direction he believed she had gone.

Phathar jogged slowly down the path, gasping for breath. It reminded him of dreaded PE class tomorrow; the students were going to run the 880—the purest form of Honon torture for him. He pictured himself plodding along, fat bouncing, as the others—who’d all finished—hooted and laughed. “Way to go, Phil. Hustle, Phil. Hustle!” His bowel churned.

He came out of the woods and walked for fifty feet before he smelled the water and the mud. He found himself at the foot of Blackfoot Pond dam. Phathar felt a stirring in his groin, and he painfully admitted to himself that despite the horror of last Tuesday night Phathar wished in his Dimensional soul he could relive the half hour he had spent here.

Lights. The sound of a speeding car. He crouched and ran to a low hemlock. The lights swept over his head like searchlights in a prison camp and the car disappeared with a hiss of tires, loud in the damp air. Phathar walked into the dish of mud and began his search for the knife that he had discovered to his horror had been lost that night. He was stung by this carelessness, not worthy of Phathar at all (but typical of a fat clumsy high school freshman). Back and forth, using a small penlight he’d wrapped with black construction paper to mask the light, he searched.

Phathar slowly grew serene. Smelling the mud and water, hearing the groan of bullfrogs reminded him of biology class—his best course. He remembered the time he had helped the teacher collect frogs from the banks of the Des Plaines one night and the man had thanked Philip in front of the class the next day. Philip’s face had burned with rare pride at the compliment. He had felt bold enough to volunteer to pith frogs for anyone who didn’t want to. He jabbed a probe into the heads of a dozen frogs that day. One girl thanked him and said he was brave. Philip had stared at her, dumbstruck.

After a half hour of futilely scanning the muck for the knife, he gave up. He couldn’t stay any longer; his father might make an unexpected raid on the bedroom. He started for the path. Then: footsteps. The boy froze, sweat bursting on his forehead, his neck bristling with panic. He retreated to the hemlock. The steps grew closer and he cowered beneath the muffling boughs. He leaned out and looked.

A girl!

Philip calmed immediately and a thrill rippled through his plentiful body.

Another college girl, it seemed. About the same age as the first one. Only prettier. Not so horsey. He felt the stirring in his groin again. Almost a burning vibration. She was alone. He wondered what her tits looked like, hidden under the thick sweater. Her skirt was loose and flowing. Philip felt a painful erection. The girl walked right past the hemlock. She stood in the center of the clearing.

Pacing back and forth she stared at the ground until she came to a bed of blue flowers. She dropped to her knees, smearing her skirt with mud. She leaned forward. He couldn’t see what she was doing. He heard her muttering to herself.

“Emily!” A man’s breathless voice called from the road.

Philip’s erection vanished and he crouched beneath the tree. The girl dropped lower and melted into the flowers. Ten yards away the man jogged along Route 302. He stopped and looked out over the pond. The moonlight was in his eyes and Philip could see him squinting. He was looking right at where the girl was hiding but didn’t see her. He called once more then started back along the road. Soon he was gone.

The girl sat up. Philip heard a rustle of the leaves as she stood. He heard an owl close by. Philip pulled a branch down to see her better. He wondered what her ass was like. He wondered if her breasts smelled the way the other girl’s had—like pumpkin pie spices. He wondered if she had blond hair or brown between her legs. The erection returned and pressed roughly against his taut jeans.

Slowly the beautiful girl stood and walked along the path. Philip saw she’d forgotten her purse. He let go of the branch. It snapped up and cut off his view of her. He stepped away from the tree and walked into the clearing, where he picked up the purse and without opening it, lifted it to his face. He smelled the scent of lemon perfume and leather and makeup. He slipped it inside his shirt and followed her.

The full moon is high above New Lebanon.

Most of the men are nearly invisible in their camouflaged hunting gear though you can see occasional glints off class rings and glossy blue-black gun barrels and receivers. They hide behind stands of bushes, dodging pricklers and feeling colder than they think they ought to, it being nearly May. They walk in clusters of two or three along trimmed streets. They cruise in cars. Some, veterans, have blackened their cheekbones and are consumed by a lust they have not felt for twenty-five years.

A number of men pad through fields where they figure there’s not much chance of finding any killers but where, if they do, the spotlight of a moon will illuminate their target. Their guns are loaded with rock salt or buckshot or deer slugs and some of the hunters have tapped the bullets and filled the holes with mercury then waxed them over again to make sure that even if they just wing the killer he’s not getting up ever ever again.

Some go out with beer and fried chicken and make a campfire, hoping their presence alone will deter the man. Some take the job of guardian more seriously and believe that the entire future of a wholesome New Lebanon depends on their vigilance. And their aim. Jim Slocum and Lance Miller, stripped of their indicia of police authority, are out with one such group.

There are no gunshots until eight P.M., almost exactly as Bill Corde turns onto Route 302, heading home. The first shooting is, not surprisingly, one of the hunters putting a load of buckshot into another one. Fortunately the shooter had his choke wide and the victim got stung by only five or six pellets. The second victim is a cat and the third is a movie poster of Tom Cruise, which may or may not have been an accident.

It isn’t until nearly nine that Waylon Sinks, juggling a thirty-two-ounce bottle of Budweiser and a Browning 16-gauge, forgets to put the safety on as he goes over a fence and kills himself unpleasantly. The New Lebanon Sheriff’s Department, as well as the county sheriff’s dispatcher and 911 for most of Harrison County, have been taking dozens of calls. Mostly they are sightings of the Moon Killer, who is sometimes spotted carrying a long knife, sometimes a rope. Usually he’s standing in backyards and looking in windows though sometimes he is climbing walls or scampering over roofs. There isn’t much the deputies can do. Officers make their rounds, and under their spotlights the offending shadows vanish completely.

The moonlight beats down on the town of New Lebanon.

It beats down so hard you can nearly hear a buzz like a high-watt bulb or like the humming of blood in your ears when you hold your breath in fear. The moonlight beats down and throughout the town you can see uneasy faces in windows and you can hear dogs howling—though what they bay at isn’t the white eye of the moon but the incessant forms of the prowling vigilantes, bleached yet black in the eerie wash of illumination.

Corde arrived home at eight-thirty. He sent Tom the deputy back to his uneasy wife and children. Diane and Jamie were at a wrestling match at the high school, where Corde himself oh-so wanted to be. He walked into the house, half wondering if he should have tipped Tom something; the cheerful young man had been more a baby-sitter than a guard these past few days.

Corde pulled off his muddy shoes and hugged Sarah. He washed his hands and face in the kitchen sink then poured a Diet Coke for her and a seltzer for himself. Only the Warner Brothers glasses were clean and he kept the Road Runner glass for himself. He handed Sarah Porky Pig.

They got to work.

She was particularly edgy tonight. The study session went badly from the start. She panicked often and began talking nonsense, joking and giddy. This put Corde in a bad mood because Diane had told him that Mrs. Beiderson was making special arrangements for Sarah’s tests and he thought the silliness measured up to ingratitude.

They were in the living room, on the couch, surrounded by a mass of papers. Sarah looked so small and overwhelmed by the mess that Corde picked up the papers and organized them into a single stack. They were Sarah’s attempts at the practice spelling test. So far, twelve tries, her best score had been twenty-two out of fifty. Thirty-three was passing.

Corde had that day written a check to Dr. Parker for $880, which was exactly twice what it cost him to insulate the entire attic.

“Let’s try again,” he said.

“Daddy, I don’t want to take the test. Please! I don’t feel good.”

“Honey, we’ve got to work on a few more words. We’re only up to the M’s.”

“I’m tired.”

Tired was the one thing his souped-up little daughter was not. At battle stations again, they sat with the spelling list between them.

“Okay, the M words.” He joked, “The M for ‘mouthful’ words.”

“I don’t want to take the damn test,” Sarah said sullenly.

“Don’t cuss.”

“It’s a shitty test! I don’t want—”

“Young lady, don’t you use that word again.”

“—to take it! I hate Dr. Parker.”

“Just the M words.”

“I’m tired,” she whined.

“Sarah. Spell ‘marble.’”

Eyes squinting, lip between teeth, back erect. She said, “M-A-R-B-L-E.”

“Very good, honey. Wonderful.” Corde was impressed.

“Marble” went on the plus side, joined by “make,” “mark,” “miss” and “milk.” Sarah wasn’t as lucky with “middle,” “missile,” “makeshift,” “messenger,” “melon” and “mixer.” Dr. Parker hadn’t suggested it but Corde took to drawing pictures of the objects next to the words. This seemed clever but didn’t help.

Sarah’s mood was getting progressively worse. Her leg bounced. Her tiny fingers wound together frantically.

“Now spell ‘mother.’”

Sarah started to cry.

Corde was sweating. He’d been through this so many times and her defeats were always his. He wanted to shake her. He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and point her at Jamie and say, “You’ve got the same blood. There’s no difference between you. Can’t you understand that? Just work hard! Work hard! Why won’t you do that?” He wanted to call up the psychiatrist and tell her to get her fashion-plate ass over here this minute. In a tired voice: “You’re doing fine. A lot better than when we started tonight.”

“No, I’m not!” she said. She stood up.

“Sit down, young lady. You’ve done the word before. Try it again. ‘Mother.’”

“M-O- …”

Corde heard her hyperventilating and thought momentarily of Diane’s long labor when the girl was born. Breathe, breathe, breathe.…

“It’s E-R. No, wait. M-O-T … I got lost. Wait, wait …”

Corde set the piece of paper on the table with the other failed tests and picked up a blank sheet. He began to write, “M-O-T-H …”

“No!” she screamed.

Corde blinked at the volume of the wail and the terror it contained. “Sarah!”

“I don’t know it! I don’t know it!” She was howling. Corde—standing up, sending a chair flying—believed she was having a seizure.

“Sarah!” he shouted again. His neck bristled in panic.

Corde took her by the shoulders. “Sarah, stop it!”

She screamed again and tipped into hysteria.

He shook her hard, her hair flying around her head like golden smoke. The glass tumbled over, a flood of brown soda poured onto the carpeting. She broke away from him and raced up the stairs to her room. Sheetrock throughout the house shook as her door slammed.

Corde, hands shaking, was mopping up the spilled soda with wads of napkins when the doorbell rang.

“Oh, Lord, now what?”

Steve Ribbon leaned on the doorpost, looking out over the lawn. “Talk to you for a minute, Bill?”

Corde looked toward Sarah’s bedroom then back to Ribbon. “Come on in.”

Ribbon didn’t move. “Your family home?”

“Just Sarah. Jamie and Diane are at a meet. Should be home anytime.”

The sheriff didn’t speak for a minute. “Why don’t you step outside here?”

Corde shook his head. “I don’t want to go too far. Sarah’s not feeling well.” He stepped onto the porch. Ribbon closed the door behind him. Corde flicked spilled soda off his fingers. The sheriff’s squad car was parked in the driveway. Jim Slocum was driving. In the back was a blond man, heavy, craggy-faced, eyes fixed on the headrest in front of him.

Ribbon’s eyes scanned the moonlit ground, studying the perfectly trimmed grass. He said, “Bill, I’ve got to talk to you. They found Jennie’s roommate. Emily Rossiter.”

Corde crossed his arms.

They found … Not we found. Corde understood the difference.

It was his turn to stare at the neatly edged front lawn. From where he stood it was in some geometric shape whose name he couldn’t recall—a rectangle pushed to one side.

“Somebody hit her over the head then threw her in Blackfoot Pond right by the dam. She drowned. And there’s some pretty unpleasant stuff he did to her.” Ribbon paused. “There’s a tentative match between shoeprints nearby her and those found by the dam the night Jennie Gebben was killed. I know your opinion, Bill, but it looks like there probably was a cult killer all along.”

PART TWO

Physical Evidence

The medical examiner was in a prickly mood. For the second time in two weeks, he stood in mud, at night, beside this dark pond. His usual demeanor—that of a cheerful TV doctor—was absent.

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.”

Technically this was trespassing. But boundaries in the country aren’t what they are in the city. You could walk, hunt, fish on almost anybody’s land for miles around. As long as you left it in good shape, as long as the feeling was reciprocal, nobody made an issue.

Corde ducked under the wire fence, and slipped into the scruffy forest behind his property. He continued for a ways then broke out into a clearing in the center of which was a huge rock some glacier had left behind, twenty feet high and smooth as a trout’s skin. Corde clambered onto the rock and sat in one of the indentations on the west side.

She wears a turquoise sweater high at the neck, half obscuring her fleshy throat.

To the south he could just see a charcoal gray roof, which seemed attached to a stand of adolescent pines though in fact it covered his own house. He noticed the discolored patch near the chimney where he had replaced the shingles last summer.

“You used to live in St. Louis, didn’t you?” Jennie Gebben asks.

Oh, she is pretty! Hair straight and long. Abundant breasts under the soft cloth. Sheer white stockings under the black jeans. She wears no shoes and he sees through the thin nylon red-nailed toes exceptionally long.

“Well, I did,” he answers. “As a matter of fact.” He clears his throat. He feels the closeness of the dormitory room. He smells incense. He smells spicy perfume.

“Eight, nine years ago? I was little then but weren’t you in the news or something?”

“All cops get on the air at one time or another. Press conference or something. Drug bust.”

Saturday night, January a year ago, branches click outside the dormitory window. Bill Corde sits on a chair and Jennie Gebben tucks her white-stockinged feet under her legs and lies back on the bed.

“It seems it was something more than that,” she says. “More than a press conference. Wait. I remember. It was …”

She stops speaking.

Bill Corde, sitting now on the flesh-smooth rock in the quiet town of New Lebanon, watched the sun grow lower to the horizon through a high tangle of brush and hemlock and young oaks soon to die from light starvation.

Shots fired! Shots fired! Ten-thirty-three. Unit to respond.…

Each inch the sun fell, each thousand miles the earth turned away from it, he sensed the forest waking. Smells grew: loam, moss, leaves from last fall decomposing, bitter bark, musk, animal droppings.

… this session of the St. Louis Police Department Shooting Review Board. Incident number 84-403. Detective Sergeant William Corde, assigned to St. Louis County Grand Larceny, currently suspended from duty pending the outcome of this hearing.…

Corde thought he’d be happy just being a hunter. He would have liked to live in the 1800s. Oh, there was a lot that amused and appealed to him about the Midwest at the end of the twentieth century. Like pickup trucks and televised Cardinals and Cubs games and pizza and computers and noncorrosive gunpowder. But if you asked him to be honest he’d say that he’d forgo it all to wake up one morning and walk downstairs to find Diane in front of a huge fireplace making johnnycakes in the beehive oven, then he and Jamie would go out to trap or hunt all day long among the miles and miles of forests just like this one.

A. Well, sir, the perpetrators …

Q. You knew them to be armed with assault rifles?

A. Not with assault rifles, no, though we knew they were armed.… The perpetrators had taken the cash and jewelry and were still inside the store. I ordered my men into the alley behind the store. It was my intention to enter through a side door and take them by surprise.

Corde listened to the snapping of some invisible animal making its way through the woods. He thought how odd it was that a creature was moving past him, probably no more than ten feet away, yet he sensed no danger. He felt if anything the indifference of the surroundings, as if he had been discounted by nature as something insignificant and not worth harming.

Q. Sergeant Corde, could you tell us then what happened?

A. Yes, sir. There were a number of exit doors leading from the stores into the alley. I had inadvertently told the men to enter through door 143.

Q. Inadvertently?

A. That was a mistake. The door that opened onto the jewelry store was number 134. I—

Q. You mixed up the numbers?

A. Yes, sir. In speaking with the fire inspector, he had told me the correct number of the door. I had written it down. But when I radioed to the men which door to enter, I read it backwards.

Q. So the men entered the mall through the wrong door.

A. No, they tried to. But that door was locked. As they were trying to get it open, thinking it was the correct door, the perpetrators ran into the alley and fired on the policemen. Their backs—

Q. Whose backs?

A. The policemen’s backs were to the perpetrators. Two police officers were killed and two were wounded.

Q. Have the perpetrators been apprehended?

A. To date, one has. The rest have not.

He’d been suspended with half pay for six months but he quit the force a week before reinstatement. He sat around in his suburban home, thinking about the men who’d died, thinking of the kind of jobs he ought to get, replaying the incident a hundred times then a thousand times. He stopped going to church and didn’t even have the inclination to turn a bar or the bottle into his personal chapel. He spent his time with the TV, doing some security jobs, some construction work. Finally the mortgage payments on the trim suburban split-level outran their savings and with Sarah on the way they’d had no choice but to come back to New Lebanon.

Feed and grain, planing and sawing, teaching.… Long, long days. Then he’d seen the ad in the paper for a deputy and he’d applied.

After Bill and Diane had moved back to New Lebanon he had five years with his father before the stroke. Five full years of opportunities to talk about what happened at the Fairway Mall. But what the two men spent those years on was pheasant loads and movies and carburetors and memories of their wife and mother.

One day, a month before the blood clot swapped a clear, complicated mind for one that was infinitely simple, Corde was crouched down, sharpening a mower blade in his father’s garage. He heard the footsteps and he looked up to see the old man standing hunched and pale, licking the top of a Dannon yogurt container. His father said, “’Bout time we deal with St. Louis, wouldn’t you say?” Corde stood, his knee popping and pushing him oh-so-slowly upward. He turned to face his father and cleared his throat. The elder Corde said solemnly, “Ten bucks says they’ll cave to New York.” Corde rolled grass flecks off his hands and dug into his pocket for a bill. “You’re on,” he said. His father wandered into the yard while Corde turned back to the iron blade in complete remorse.

Q. If someone else had read the number of the door to the policemen in the alley, the mishap might not have happened. Or if you had taken your time and read the number slowly?

A. (garbled)

Q. Could you repeat that please.

A. The mishap probably would not have happened, no.

He’d never told anyone in New Lebanon. The facts were there, somewhere in his file in St. Louis. If Steve Ribbon or Hammerback Ellison or Jim Slocum or Addie Kraskow of the Register wanted to go to the trouble to look it up, they would find everything. But the New Lebanon Sheriff’s Department simply glanced at his résumé and believed the truthful statement that the reason for termination from his last job was that he’d quit. They believed too his explanation that he had grown tired of fighting city riverfront crime and had wanted to move back to his peaceful home town. After all, he had a six-year-old son and a baby on the way.

Who’d think to look beyond that?

Another snap, nearby. Corde turned. The animal materialized. A buck. He saw two does not far off. He loved watching them. They were elegant in motion but when they stopped—always as if they were late for something vitally important and had time to give you just a brief look—they were completely regal. Corde wished he was a poet. He wanted badly to put into words what he felt at this moment: The knowledge in the deer’s eyes.

The melting sun.

The unseen movement of the woods at dusk.

The total sorrow when you fall short of the mark that you know God’s set for you.

With a single crack of wet wood, the deer were gone. Bill Corde scooted off the rock and slowly made his way to his twentieth-century home, with his pickup truck and television, and his family.

SPECIAL TO THE REGISTER—Two days after the slaying of a second Auden University co-ed by the man known as the “Moon Killer,” John Treadle, Harrison County Supervisor, ordered Sheriff’s Department deputies to step up nighttime patrols around New Lebanon.

“But,” he said, “I can’t emphasize enough that girls shouldn’t travel by themselves after dark until we catch this man.”

The body of the student, Emily Rossiter, a resident of St. Louis, was found floating in Blackfoot Pond on the night of the full moon. She had been struck on the head and left to drown. The body was reportedly mutilated.

“We’re devoting a hundred and ten percent of our time to solving these cult murders,” Steven Ribbon, Sheriff of New Lebanon, said last night. He added that he had taken the unusual step of asking an outside consultant to assist in the investigation.

“This man has a number of years of homicide investigation experience with a big city police department and he’s already provided some real helpful insights into the workings of this killer’s mind.”

Citing security, Sheriff Ribbon would give no details on this consultant’s identity or exact role in the case.

The Chamber of Commerce estimates that the series of murders has cost the town one million dollars in lost revenues.

Her biggest fear is that somehow her father has scared off the Sunshine Man.

It is now a couple of days in a row that her daddy has gotten up late, had breakfast with them and then been home before supper. But worse than that he had gone for long walks in the woods behind the house, the woods where the Sunshine Man lived. Sarah considers herself an expert on wizards and she knows that they resent people who don’t believe in them. Her father’s certainly a person like that.

Although she’s questioned Redford T. Redford at length about the wizard the bear has remained silent. She has left several presents and painstakingly written notes for the Sunshine Man in the magic circle. He has not picked them up or responded.

She has thought about running away again. But because her mother has agreed with Dr. Parker to keep her out of school for a while, Sarah is willing to postpone her escape plans. She listens to her books on tape, she looks at her picture books, she watches television, she plays with her stuffed animals.

At night Sarah sits and stares out the window. Once, when the waning moon is bright, she thinks she sees the form of a man walking through the woods. She flashes her bedside light and waves. Whoever it might be stops and looks at the house but does not respond. He seems to vanish. She stares after him until the trees begin to sway and the night sky opens up in great cartwheeling streaks of stars and planets and giants and animals, then she crawls under the blankets. She holds tight to her piece of magic quartz and, knowing the Sunshine Man may be out there, sends him a message in her thoughts.

Sarah wishes her father would start working late again. And sure enough, after just two days, she gets this wish. He’s up and gone before breakfast, and home long after she’s gone to bed. One morning, when he hadn’t seen her for two days, her father left a note at the breakfast table for her; it sounded all stiff. Sarah sadly thinks the Sunshine Man is much smarter than her father.

She hopes the wizard will come back and make her smart. She believes he can do it. She also knows though that this will be a very hard wish to grant so she tells herself to be patient. She knows she’ll have to wait just a little while longer.

Philip closed his bedroom door and immediately they were warriors once again, tall and dignified and ever correct, struggling to understand this strange dimension.

Jano looked around the room. “Your sister here?”

“Nope.”

The boys who knew Philip’s sister, and that was a lot of boys, did not call her “Rose” or “Rosy”; they called her “Halpern,” which seemed to Philip to say everything there was to say about her.

Jano whispered urgently, “Well?”

“What?” Phathar shoved a dripping handful of popcorn from a half-gallon bag into his mouth.

He whispered, “Did you do it?” Jano’s eyes were red and it looked like there was a streak of dried snot under his nose. Phathar wondered if his friend had been crying (Phathar assumed he was the only freshman boy who still cried).

Jano repeated, “The girl at the pond. Emily something. Did you?”

He ate another mouthful. “Nope.”

Jano whispered, “I don’t believe you.”

“I didn’t do it, dude.”

“You wanted to fuck her so you killed her.”

“I did not.” With a pudgy finger Phathar worked a hull out from between an incisor and his gum.

“I am like totally freaked. What are we going to do?”

“Have some popcorn.”

“You are like too much, man. She’s dead too and you’re like—”

“So what? You saw the way the Honons mowed down the Valanies. They just like went in with the xasers and totally mowed them down. The women and the kids, everyone.”

“That’s a movie.”

Phathar repeated patiently, “I didn’t like kill her.”

“Did you find the knife?”

“I might have if I hadn’t been alone.”

“I couldn’t make it. I told you. Maybe you didn’t lose it.”

“I lost it.”

Jano said, “Man, we’ve got to get rid of everything.”

“I told you, I put a destructor on the files. It’s great. Here look.” Phathar walked to a locked metal file cabinet. He unlocked it and pulled a drawer open. Inside were stacks of charts and drawings and files. Resting on top of them was a coil from a space heater. “Look, this is a lock switch that I got from Popular Mechanics. It’s great. If you open the cabinet without shutting off the switch …” He reached inside the cabinet and pointed to two pieces of wood wound with wires pressing against each other, like a large clothespin. “… Somebody opens the drawer and it closes the circuit. The coil gets red hot in like seconds and torches everything.”

“Totally excellent,” Jano said with admiration. “What if it burns the house down?”

Phathar did not respond. Through the closed door, they heard Philip’s father singing some old song, “Strangers in the Night.”

Jano looked in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet. “What’s that?” He picked up the brown purse, smeared with mud.

Phathar froze. He was in a delicate position. This was his only friend in high school; he couldn’t do what he wanted to—which was to scream to him to put it back. He said simply, “It’s hers.”

Jano clicked it open. “The girl’s? The second one! You did do it!”

Phathar reached out and closed it. “Would you just chill? I saw her but—”

“I don’t see why you’re denying it, man.”

“—I didn’t kill her.”

“Why’d you keep it?”

“I don’t know.” Phathar in fact had wondered that a number of times. “It smells nice.”

“You get over with her too?” Jano had stopped looking shocked and was curious.

“Are you deaf? Like are you totally deaf?”

“Come on, Phathar, I tell you everything. What was it like?”

“You’re a fucking hatter. I followed her for a while but then I took off. There was some dude wandering around.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“They found her in the pond. Yuck. If you did it with her your dick’ll probably fall off, with that water. What’s in the purse?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t open it.” Phathar stood up and took the purse away from his friend. He put it in the file cabinet and laid another heater coil on top of it. He closed the drawer.

“I don’t think that’s a good place for it,” Jano said.

“How come?”

“Even with the destructor it’d take a while for the leather to catch fire.”

Phathar decided this might be true. He retrieved the purse. He held it out to Jano. “You take it. Throw it someplace.”

“No way. I don’t want to get caught with it. Why don’t you burn it?”

“I can’t. My dad’d whack me again. Maybe I’ll hide it under the porch and some night when he’s playing cards I’ll burn it.”

The terrible, glass-splintering crash came from the living room. The boys each stared at the dirt-smeared wall through which the sound had come. Philip dropped the purse into the empty popcorn bag and wadded it, along with some trash, into a green plastic garbage bag, which sat in the corner of his room. They stepped into the hall.

Philip’s mother was on the floor, on all fours, her knees spread out, skirt up to her trim waist. The eyes in her pretty face were nearly closed and her head lolled as the muscles in her smooth arms tried to keep her shoulders from dropping to the ground. Mr. Halpern stood above her, his hands gripping the stained orange blouse, saying desperately, “It’ll be all right, it’ll be all right. No, no, it’ll be all right.”

And she was repeating louder and in a shrill soprano, “Lemmealone, lemmealone!” In her hand was a white wad of cloth. On the stained carpet was a fresher stain of vomit. The smell of sour gin was thick in the air. Philip started to cry.

“Mrs. Halpern,” Jano whispered.

Philip’s father looked up. “Get the fuck out of here, both of you.”

Jano said, “But she’s sick.”

Whimpering, Philip said, “She’s not sick.”

“Get the fuck out!” his father shouted. “Both of you. Out out out!” He stamped his foot as if he were spooking dogs.

Philip said to Jano, “Please.”

“But—”

“Please,” Philip said. His friend fled outside. Staring out the front window Philip heard the scuffling of his mother’s shoes. His father had lifted her into an armchair and was whispering to her. Philip walked past his parents and out the back door then he slipped under the porch.

Philip hid the bag containing the purse under a mound of soft black dirt. He rocked back and forth in the crisp dusty leaves.

Oh, he was tired.

He was tired of so much. His father wore torn T-shirts and made the handy man visit. His mother packed him greasy sandwiches for lunch—when she made his lunch—and forgot to wash his clothes. There were enemies everywhere, everywhere you looked. His sister was a ’ho, he was fat. She was Halpern, he was Philip, Phil-lip. He got a D in phys ed and a B in biology and, while another glass shattered somewhere in the house above him, a single thought centered in his head—an image of a shy young girl leaning on a lab table and telling him how brave he was while Philip stuck a needle way deep into a frog’s brain then slit its belly open and watched the slick lump of a heart continue to beat on and on and on.

Bill Corde was sitting in infamous Room 121 of the Student Union. He was alone, surrounded by the now familiar scents of fatty meat, bitter paper and burnt coffee.

More students, more three-by-five cards. Today’s questions were similar to last week’s but they were not identical.

Today he was asking about two victims.

Corde took notes, jotting down the boxy oriental letters, but the hours were unproductive; he heard variations on what he had already learned or pointless, obscure details. “Emily wore this yoked dress a lot then one day it got stolen from the laundry room. That was just before she was killed. I mean, like the day before.” Corde nodded and recorded this fact, unsure what it might mean or what he would ever do with it but afraid to let the item get away. He had this feeling often.

Many thoughts intruded on the interviews, not the least of which was a vague disquiet about Charlie Mahoney, the mysterious consultant. Ribbon had introduced them but the man had said little to Corde and been in a hurry to leave the office. Corde had not seen him since.

When Corde asked Ribbon what “real helpful insights” Mahoney had provided, picking up the sheriff’s phrase from the Register, he’d been as elusive as Corde expected. “Mahoney’s here as an observer is all. What I said was mostly for public relations. Trying to calm people down a little.”

Well, who the hell got ’em un-calm in the first place, with all this talk of a Moon Killer?

“I don’t want a civilian working on this case,” Corde said.

“I know you don’t,” Ribbon had answered cryptically and returned to his office.

Now, in Room 121, Corde looked at his watch. Four P.M. He wandered out to the cafeteria and bought an iced coffee. He finished it in three swallows. He was eager to go home. He nearly did so but his resolve broke—or discipline won—and he stepped to the door and waved a final student inside then told the others to come back tomorrow.

It was just as well that he did not leave. This last student was the one who told him Jennie Gebben’s secret.

She was round and had thick wrists and was worried about a double chin because she kept her head high throughout the interview. With that posture and the expensive flowered dress she seemed like an indulged East Coast princess.

The lazy Southern drawl disposed of that impression quickly. “I do hope I can help you, officer. It’s a terrible thing that happened.”

Did she know either of the murdered girls? Just Jennie. How long had she known her? Two years. Yes, they shared some classes. No, they had never double-dated.

“Do you know either Professor Sayles or Brian Okun?”

“Sorry.”

“Do you know who Jennie might have been going out with?”

The fleshy neck was touched.

It reminded him compellingly of Jennie’s throat. Corde looked from the white flesh back to the paler white of his three-by-five cards.

“Well, would you be speaking of men she went out with?”

“Students, professors, anyone.”

“… or girls?”

The tip of Corde’s pen lowered to a card.

“Please go on.”

The girl played tensely with the elaborate lace tulle on the cuff of her dress. “Well, you know ’bout Jennie’s affair with that girl, don’tcha?”

After a pause he wrote “Bisexual?” in precise boxy letters and asked her to continue.

The girl touched her round pink lip with her tongue and made a circuit of Corde’s face. “Just rumors. Y’all know how it is.” The plump mouth closed.

“Please.”

Finally she said, “One time, the story goes, some girls were in a dorm across campus and saw Jennie in bed with another girl.”

The flesh was no longer pale but glowed with fire.

“Who was this other girl?”

“I was led to believe their … position in bed made it a little difficult to see her. If you understand what I’m saying.”

“Who were these girls who saw it?”

“I don’t know. I assumed you knew all about this.” The frown produced not a single wrinkle in her perfect skin. “You know of course about the fight she had?”

“Tell me.”

“The Sunday before she died. Jennie was on the phone for a long time. It was late and she was whispering a lot but I got the impression she was talking to somebody she’d dumped. You know that tone? Like where you have to get meaner than you want to because they’re not taking no for an answer. They all were carrying on and my room is right near the phone and I was going to go out and tell her to hush when I heard her say, ‘Well, I love her and I don’t love you and that’s all there is to it.’ Then crash bang she hung up.”

“Loved ‘her’?”

“Right. I’m sure about that.”

“The call, did she make it or receive it?”

“She received it.”

No way to trace. “Man or woman?”

“She sounded like she was talking to a man but maybe I’m projecting my own values. With her, I guess it could’ve been either. That’s all I know.”

“Nobody else has said anything about it.”

She shrugged. “Well, did y’all ask?”

“No.”

“Then that pretty much explains it, would’n you say?”

When she had gone Corde bundled his cards together and tossed them into his briefcase. He noticed that the phone booth up the hall was free and he walked quickly to it. As he stood waiting for someone to answer his call, two young men walked past lost in loud debate. “You’re not listening to me. I’m saying there’s perception and there’s reality. They’re both valid. I’ll prove it to you. Like, see that cop over there? …” But at that moment T.T. Ebbans said hello and Corde never heard the end of the discussion.

He lusted for her.

What a phenomenon! He was actually salivating, his nostrils flaring as if he could smell her and he wanted more than anything to pull open her white blouse and slip a high-rider breast into his mouth.

Brian Okun said to Victoria Feinstein, “I’m thinking of doing a seminar on gender identity in the Romantic era. Would you be interested in being on the panel?”

“Interesting idea,” she said, and crossed legs encased in tight black jeans.

They were sitting in the Arts and Sciences cafeteria, coffee before them. Victoria was Okun’s most brilliant student. She had stormed onto campus from Central Park West and Seventy-second Street. He had read her first paper of the semester, “Gynocriticism and the Old New Left,” and bolstered by her self-rising breasts and hard buttocks decided she was everything that Jennie Gebben was and considerably more.

Alas this proved too literally true however and he found with bitterness that certain aspects of her knowledge—semiotics, for instance, and South American writers (currently chic topics in the MLA)—vastly outweighed his, a discrepancy she gleefully flaunted. Okun’s hampered hope vaporized one day when he saw Victoria Feinstein kiss a woman on the lips outside his classroom. Still Okun admired her immensely and spoke to her often.

It troubled him to use such a brilliant mind in this cheap way.

She said, “Why Romantic? Why not Classic?”

“Been done,” he dismissed.

“Maybe,” she pondered, “you could do it interstitially—the Augustan era interposed against the Romantic. You know Latin, don’t you?”

“I do, mirabile dictu. But I’ve already outlined the program. I hope you’ll think about it. I’d like the panel to be straight, gay, transvestite and transsexual.”

Victoria said, “Ah, you want a cross-section?”

He laughed hard. Why oh why don’t you want to sit on my cock and scrunch around?

She was courteous enough to ask the question before he had to steer her there. “Is this for Gilchrist’s class?”

“Leon’s? No, it’s my own idea. He’s out in San Francisco. Won’t be back for a couple days.” Gilchrist had in fact called Okun the night before to tell him that he would be arriving in three days and had ordered Okun to prepare a draft of a final exam. Okun noted that the son of a bitch called at exactly the moment a substitute professor was delivering Gilchrist’s lecture; he wanted to make certain that Okun hadn’t been standing before his class.

“What’s he doing out there?” she asked.

“Healing the wounds, I guess.”

“How’s that?” she asked.

“You know. The girl.”

“The girl?”

He looked confused. “You told me, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“What was her name? The first one who was killed. Jennie something. I thought you told me. About the two of them?”

She asked in astonishment, “Gilchrist and Jennie Gebben, they were fucking?”

“It wasn’t you who told me?”

“No.”

“Who was it?” He looked at the ceiling. “Don’t recall. Well, anyway, I heard they were a unit.”

“Poor girl,” Victoria said, frowning. “Gilchrist, huh? I wouldn’t have guessed Jennie and him. I heard he was an S and M pup.”

Okun nodded knowingly, quelling resentment that this was the second person who seemed to know for a fact something about his own professor that he had not been aware of.

She continued, “I’m surprised at the leather. My opinion was that Gilchrist would be more of your classic postwar British pederast. You know, I think they should castrate rapists.”

Okun thought for a moment. “That might make another seminar. ‘Mutilation and Castration as Metaphor in Western Literature.’”

Victoria’s eyes brightened. “Now there’s an idea for you.”

She wasn’t sure what the vibration was. Alignment maybe. Or a soft tire.

Driving home from Auden University, Diane Corde noticed that the steering wheel seemed to shake; her engagement ring bobbled noisily on tan G.M. plastic. Then she realized the station wagon was fine; it was her hand that shook so fiercely—the first time in her life that a reference to money had made her fingers tremble.

Diane was returning from a meeting with the admissions director at the Auden lab school. The woman, who looked sharp and professional (no sultry pink, no clattering bracelets, no hussy makeup), had explained the procedures. Sarah’s file, which Dr. Parker had already forwarded to the school, would be reviewed by the school’s special education admissions board. They would make a recommendation about placing Sarah in one of the classes or arranging for private tutoring.

“I’m sure,” the woman said, “your daughter will be accepted.”

Diane was grateful to tears at this news.

Then the director had consulted a sheet of paper. “Let’s see.… Tuition for a special education class at Sarah’s level is eight thousand four hundred. Now we—”

“A year?” Diane had interrupted breathlessly.

The woman had smiled. “Oh, don’t worry. That’s not per semester. That’s for the entire year.”

Oh don’t worry.

Eight thousand four hundred.

Which exceeded Diane’s annual salary when she’d been receptionist for Dr. Bullen the oldest living gynecologist in New Lebanon. “Does insurance ever cover it?”

“Medical insurance? No.”

“That’s a little steep.”

“Auden’s lab school is one of the best in the country.”

“We just bought a new Frigidaire.”

“Well.”

Diane broke the silence. “Dr. Parker mentioned a private tutor is an option. Three times a week, she said. How much would that be?”

The woman had cheerfully parried that the total fee for a tutor would be two hundred seventy dollars a week.

Oh don’t worry.

Diane had smoothed her navy blue skirt and studied a cleft of wrinkle in the cloth. She felt totally numb; maybe bad news was an anesthetic.

“So you see,” the admissions director had said, smiling, “the school is in fact the better bargain.”

Well, Diane Corde didn’t see that at all. Bargain? What she saw was everybody taking advantage of her little girl’s problem—all of them, Dr. Parker the harlot and this pert L.A. Law admissions director and the prissy tutors who weren’t going to do anything but get Sarah’s brain back up to the level where God intended it to be all along.

“Well, I’ll have to talk to my husband about it.”

“Just let me say, Mrs. Corde, that I think we can be of real help to your daughter. Sarah has the sort of deficit that responds very well to our method of education.”

Well, now, miss, hearing that makes me feel just jim-dandy.

“Shall I start Sarah’s application? There’s no fee to apply.”

Oh, a freebie!

“Why not?” she had asked, wholly discouraged.

Pulling now into the driveway of her house Diane waved to Tom, standing scrubbed and ruddy beside his Harrison County Sheriff’s Department cruiser. After the two threatening Polaroids and the second murder, he had taken to marching a regular line around the backyard at various times throughout the day. He was also armed with his wife’s opera glasses, which, he explained, she bought for when they went to Plymouth Playhouse Dinner Theater. With these he’d often scan the forest for hostile eyes. He looked silly, a beefy red-cheeked young man holding the delicate plastic mother-of-pearl glasses, but Diane was grateful for the effort. There had been no more threats and the sense of violation had almost vanished.

“Coffee, Tom?”

He declined, gosh-thanks, and turned back to the woods.

Jamie walked outside, slipping a T-shirt on over his thin muscular body. He was the epitome of grace and she enjoyed watching him climb on his bike and balance while he pulled on his fingerless riding gloves.

“Where’re you off to?”

“Practice.”

“When’s the match?”

“Saturday.”

“How’s your arm?”

“It’s like fine. No problem.”

“Garage looks nice.”

“Thanks. I did the windows. They were totally gross.”

“You did the windows?” she asked in mock astonishment.

“Very funny. And I found the old Frisbee.”

“We’ll play tonight, you and me.”

“Yeah okay. We oughta get a glow-in-the-dark one. Gotta go.” He pushed the bike forward without using his hands and coasted down the driveway as he closed the Velcro fasteners on his gloves. She watched him lean forward and his muscular legs start to pedal. He’s going to be a heartbreaker.

Inside the house Sarah was playing with a stuffed animal. After Diane had delivered the news that school was over for the year, the girl glowed with Christmas-morning happiness. This bothered Diane, who saw in the girl’s face the look of a spoiled child who finally got her way.

“The Sunshine Man … He came back.”

“Did he now?” Diane asked absently.

“He saved me from Mrs. Beiderbug.”

“Sarah. I’ve told you about that.”

“Mrs. Beiderson.” She sprang up and ran into the kitchen.

Diane hung up her jacket. “Who’s the Sunshine Man again? Which one’s he?”

“Mommy.” She was exasperated. “He’s a wizard who lives in the woods. I saw him again today. I thought he’d gone away but he came back. He cast a spell on Mrs. Beider—” She grinned with coy nastiness. “—Beiderson. And I don’t have to go back to school.”

“Just for the term. Not forever.”

Although the girl’s insistence that magical characters were real frequently irritated Diane, at the moment she wished that she herself had a Sunshine Man to watch over her shoulder. Or at least to cast a spell and cough up some big bucks for special ed tuition. As she looked through the mail she asked, “Your father call?”

“Naw.”

Diane went into the kitchen and took four large pork chops from the refrigerator. She chopped mushrooms and sauteed them with oregano and bread crumbs then let the filling cool while she cut pockets in the pork.

“You sure your father didn’t call? Maybe Jamie took a message.”

“Mom. Like there’s the board. Do you see any messages?”

“You can answer me decently,” Diane snapped.

“Well, he didn’t call.”

Diane carefully cut a slit in the last pork chop.

“I’m not going back to school ever again,” Sarah announced.

“Sarah, I told you, it’s just for—”

The girl walked upstairs, singing cheerfully to herself, “Never ever again … The Sunshine Man, the Sunshine Man …”

Children. Sometimes …

The young woman said, “I believe it was Leon Gilchrist.”

Cynthia Abrams was a thin sophomore, smart and reasonable and unpretentious. Corde liked her. She had long shimmering dark hair, confident eyes, earrings in the shape of African idols. She was a class officer and the campus director of ACT-UP. She was sitting forward, elbows on the low desk in the Student Union, holding a cigarette courteously away from him while she answered his questions.

Corde glanced down and found the professor’s name on a card. A note said that Leon Gilchrist had been in San Francisco at the time of the first killing and had not returned as of three days ago. He put a question mark next to the name.

“And you think they had an affair?”

“I don’t know for sure. I heard several rumors that she’d gone out with professors over the past couple years. One or two she was pretty serious about. Then I recently heard Professor Gilchrist’s name mentioned.”

“Who did you hear this from? About Gilchrist?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Do you know if there was any bad feelings between them?”

“No. I don’t really know anything at all. I’m just telling you what I heard.”

Corde glanced at his open briefcase and saw the picture of Jennie Gebben. “Do you know of anyone who would have wanted to hurt Jennie or her roommate?”

“No, I sure don’t. But I want to say something else. You seem like a reasonable man and I hope I can speak frankly to you.”

“Go right ahead.”

“The gay community at Auden is not popular in New Lebanon.”

This was hardly news to Bill Corde, who had been on a panel to recommend to the state legislature that consensual homosexual activity be removed from the penal code as a sexual crime—both because he thought it was nobody’s business but the participants’ and because criminalizing it skewed statistics and confused investigations. He had never heard such vicious words as those fired back and forth in the Harrison County Building public meeting room during the panel discussions.

She asked, “You know Jennie was bisexual?”

“Yes, I do.”

“That fact hasn’t come out in the press yet but if it does I’m concerned it will get mixed up with the, you know, cult or Satanic aspects of the murders. I abhor the linking of homosexuality and violence.”

“I don’t see why that connection would be made,” Corde said. “It certainly won’t come from my department.…”

Somewhere in Corde’s mind was a soft tap as a thought rose to the surface.

“Was Emily …” What was the proper terminology? He felt on some eggshells here. “Was she a lesbian?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know her very well.”

“You think Jennie might have been targeted because she was bisexual?”

“A bias-related crime?”

“We don’t have those laws on the books here.”

She lifted a coy eyebrow. “I graduate in two years. I hope that will have changed by then.”

“I’m thinking more in terms of helping me with a motive.”

“I suppose. There’s always the possibility of antigay violence in areas that are less …” Now she trod lightly. “… enlightened than some.”

Corde considered this motive but he couldn’t carry it very far. He wanted all of his cards in front of him. He wanted to read what other students and professors had told him. He wanted more information about Emily.

He said, “This has been very helpful. Anything else you can think of?”

“There is one thing I’d like to say.”

“What’s that?”

“My roommate, Victoria, and I were having this discussion last night?”

“Yes?”

“She brought up the idea of surgically castrating rapists. Would you be interested in signing a petition to send to the state legislature?”

Corde said, “I better not. In the Sheriff’s Department, we’re not supposed to be too, you know, political.”

He couldn’t recall the last time he felt so unwelcome.

“Detective, I think it’s pretty clear that you’re dealing with some kind of crazy person. Some psychopath. He is not a student, it is clearly not a professor. Everyone on this faculty has the highest credentials and the most impeccable background. Your rumormongering is despicable.”

“Yes’m,” Corde said to Dean Catherine Larraby. “I was asking about Leon Gilchrist? You didn’t really answer my question.”

“You’re not suggesting that he had anything to do with the deaths of these two girls?”

“Has he ever been in any trouble with students? Here or at another school?”

The dean whispered, “I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer. Leon Gilchrist is a brilliant scholar. We’re lucky to have him on staff and—”

“I’ve heard from a number of sources that Jennie had relations with at least one professor. One person I interviewed thinks Gilchrist might be him.”

“Professors at Auden are forbidden to date students. Doing so is grounds for dismissal. Who told you?”

“I told her I’d respect her confidence.”

She looked for a way to pry this information out of him. Not finding one she said, “Impossible. It’s a vicious rumor. Leon isn’t well liked—”

“No?” A tiny note went onto a stiff white card.

“Don’t make anything out of that,” she snapped. “Professors can be like children. Leon has an infantile streak in him, which he has trouble controlling. He makes enemies. People as brilliant as he breed rumors. You didn’t answer my question. Is he a suspect?”

“No.”

“He was reading a paper at the Berkeley Poetry Conference at the time of the killings,” she said.

“Did you know that before or afterward?”

“I beg your pardon?” she asked cautiously.

“I’m curious if after Jennie was killed you suspected something about Professor Gilchrist and checked on his whereabouts at that time.”

The eyes went to steel cold. “I have nothing further to say to you, Detective.”

“If you could—”

“She was killed by a psycho!” The dean’s shrill voice tore through the room. “The same one who vandalized the grade school and churches. The same one who murdered Emily. If you’d taken this psychopath seriously, instead of digging into banal college gossip, Emily would still be alive today.”

“We have to explore all angles, Dean.”

“I’ll guarantee you that Leon did not have relations with Jennie and he didn’t have anything to do with her death or Emily’s. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m in the midst of emergency funding meetings, which by the way are necessary largely because you people haven’t caught this madman.”

When Corde had left the office Dean Larraby snatched up the phone and snapped to her secretary, “Is Gilchrist back from the Coast? When’s he expected? … Who’s his teaching assistant?” Her foot tapped in anger while she waited. “Who, Okun? Give him a call and tell him I want to see him. Tell him it’s urgent.”

Charlie Mahoney was pretty tired of New Lebanon. The incident that had cemented this opinion was a bad meal at Ewell’s Diner—particularly bad meat loaf (gristle), extraordinarily bad mashed potatoes (paste) and moderately bad bourbon (oily). This cuisine was followed by an early evening in the motel room where he was now lounging in front of a small TV that was not hooked up to cable. The exact instant when boredom became loathing occurred during a Channel 7 commercial break—four straight minutes of grating ads for products like hog feed and cultivators and used cars and kerosene.

Who the fuck buys kerosene from a TV ad?

He lay on the sagging bed and looked up at the stucco ceiling. Stucco. Who invented stucco? And why would anybody put it on a ceiling where you had to look at it all night long because there was nothing else to do? How many college sluts had lain here on this bed with their legs in the air and stared at this ceiling thinking stucco who the fuck invented stucco Jesus when is this son of bitch going to finish? …

When Mahoney’s thoughts got tired of Midwest decor they ambled over to Richard Gebben.

Mahoney, not a man with much heart to spare for anyone, least of all an employer, had sat with perplexed but genuine sympathy as he watched Richard Gebben absently drive the toy Christmas truck back and forth on his desk, back in St. Louis.

Gebben Pre-Formed We Fabricate the World.

“Jennie’s mother, I don’t know when she’s going to come out of it. She may never. She doesn’t cry anymore. She doesn’t do anything but sometimes she has these, I don’t know, bursts of energy, Charlie. She’ll be lying in bed then she leaps up and has to polish the silver. The silver, Charlie. For Christsake, we have a maid.”

A jet had begun its takeoff run and the tenor roar filled the beige office. The DC-10 was well over Illinois before Gebben spoke again.

“Jennie,” he had said, addressing Mahoney, not the spirit of his daughter.

He had proceeded to speak about reputation. About the media, about misunderstandings. He had spoken about troubling discoveries. Then he paused and the truck stopped rolling and as he stared out the window at a tall gray McDonnell Douglas hangar Richard Gebben spoke about his daughter the whore.

To Mahoney—a man who had seen evidence of just about every sexual act humankind could think of—the fact that Jennie slept with women as well as men was unremarkable. What was a little boggling, at least in the age of AIDS, was the sheer volume of both men and women she’d had between her legs.

“Charlie, I don’t care what you have to do. This fellow Corde is going to be taking her life apart. He’s already been looking for diaries and letters. I can’t let that happen, Charlie. You know what happens in investigations like this. They look at every little detail of somebody’s life. They make up stories about people. The newspapers just love that crap. You know, Charlie. It happens all the time. You saw it happen.”

No, Mahoney had never seen it happen. What he saw happen was Ismalah R dissed Devon Jefferies who went home to his crib on South Halsted, picked up his MAC-10 then came a’calling to spray Ismalah R with forty or fifty rounds and the asshole just died where he stood and nobody made up a single fucking thing about him at all.

That was what Mahoney had seen.

And what he saw now was a pathetic Richard Gebben with his pitted face and moist eyes, trying to save what little remained of his daughter.

Well, that was how Gebben had explained Mahoney’s mission to New Lebanon, and ten thousand dollars had bought Mahoney’s unwavering acceptance of it along with a generous number of encouraging nods and mutterings of sympathy thrown in.

But Mahoney knew there was more.

Gebben had taken many business trips to places that had a light market share of the Gebben Pre-Formed steel sheeting business, if any at all. Unnecessary trips. To Acapulco, Aspen, Puerto Vallarta, Palm Beach. And he was always accompanied by a sultry blond secretary or young marketing assistant or steno typist. This was the role model he had been for his daughter. It was a lesson she had learned, and learned well, and maybe it had killed her.

And, who knew? Maybe Gebben himself had even come to visit Jennie late at night, Mommy fast asleep.…

As a cop Mahoney had seen a good deal of emotional pain. He remembered walking up three flights of shit-stinking stairs in a tenement, knocking on the door to deliver some news to a young woman. She listened, nodding vigorously as she held her daughter, who had little plastic toys tied into her hair where pigtails sprouted from her scalp—tiny trains, soda bottles, dogs, dolls. The woman saying, “I unnerstand, I unnerstand,” and Mahoney thinking, Understand? You poor bitch. There’s nothing complicated here. Your old man just got blown away in a drug deal.…

But Mahoney knew of course that it was complicated.

So complicated she would never unnerstand it. As complicated as Gebben’s reasons for wanting his daughter’s secrets to stay hidden forever. Reasons that Charlie Mahoney, lying on a lumpy bed in front of a flickering Ralston Purina commercial, would never completely figure out.

Not that he needed to. He had his ten thousand dollars and he had a specific job.

Which arrived at that moment in the form of Steve Ribbon, who knocked and called, “Hey, Charlie? I’m a little late, sorry. You in there, Charlie?”

“Right with you.”

Mahoney let him wait for a full minute then stretched and stood and opened the door.

Ribbon grinned shyly like a police cadet on graduation day. The sheriff, who had ten years on Mahoney, looked like a youngster and Mahoney thought, Damn if these small towns didn’t preserve you real well.

“Steve,” he said ebulliently, “how you doing?”

They shook hands. Ribbon walked in, saying, “I like that. The way you kept your hand in your jacket when you opened the door.”

“Habit.”

“You looked pretty smooth. Cabrini projects, you were telling me the other night. War zone. Brung a present. You want a drink?”

“Sure.”

Ribbon poured John Begg scotch into squooshy plastic hotel cups. They tapped them together and sipped. Ribbon was in uniform and when Mahoney glanced at the top of the sheriff’s head Ribbon took off his Smokey hat and dropped it down on the dresser.

“You’re not getting tired of our little town, are you?”

“Tired?” Mahoney grunted. “It’s heaven on earth.” He slipped off his jacket. He hung it up and poured more sour scotch.

Ribbon’s eyes slipped to the large dark gray automatic pistol riding high on Mahoney’s right hip.

“Steve, I happened to have a talk with Deputy Ebbans, Jim Slocum and some of the other boys on the case today. I sounded them out about how the investigation’s going.” Mahoney’s eyes tunneled into Ribbon’s, which danced a little, looked briefly back then danced away again. This was fun. It was the way Mahoney used to look at perps and he missed doing it. “There’re a couple things I’ve got to talk to you about.”

Ribbon responded exactly the same way the perps had—fiercely studying the scenery behind Mahoney as if memorizing the wall or window or front door.

“But first off. Good news. I just talked to Mr. Gebben.”

“Did you now?”

“And you know that reward I was talking about?”

“Reward?” Ribbon frowned. Then he nodded. “Right, yeah, I recall you mentioning that.”

“Well, he’s authorized me to release some of it now.”

“We haven’t caught anybody yet, Charlie.” Ribbon snorted a laugh.

“Well, I’ve told him you’re doing a good job and he wants to show his support.”

“That’s real kind of him, Charlie.”

“He’s a generous man. But I’m afraid we’ve got to talk about something. Kind of an unpleasant situation.”

“Unpleasant.”

Ribbon licked the rim of his cup and Mahoney let him fret for a delectable minute before he said, “Again, I don’t want to be imposing myself. You’re the boss here, Steve.”

“I value your opinion. You’re surely more of an expert than any of us.” Ribbon seemed at sea and took refuge in the scotch. He drank long and busied himself with pouring another glass.

“I hate to say anything.”

“Naw, go ahead, Charlie.”

“Well, it’s about this Bill Corde.”

Corde pulled into the Town Hall driveway and saw three deputies standing in front of a new Nissan Pathfinder 4×4. It was a beauty. Corde admired it. He saw nothing wrong with buying foreign as long as the quality was better than American. He had a little problem paying foreign, having test-driven a Pathfinder himself; he knew he was looking at over twenty thousand dollars worth of transport.

Corde turned his attention away from the truck and back to the lardy figure of Dodd Humphries he was helping out of the squad car and through the parking lot. As he passed the truck Corde said to the men, “Who’s the proud father?”

“Steve bought her.”

Corde laughed in genuine surprise. “Steve Ribbon?”

“Surely did. Walked right into the dealership and drove out this morning.”

“Hell you say. He was gonna drive that Dodge till it dropped.” Corde looked at the shimmering chrome and metallic-flecked burgundy paint and he said to Lance Miller, “He’s gone and set a bad precedent. Now everybody’s gonna want their trucks with all cylinders running.”

They entered the Sheriff’s Department wing. Half the complement was out inspecting the sheriff’s new wheels. Jim Slocum was looking at a handful of letters. Corde assumed they were more of the worthless confessions and tip letters that accompany any publicized investigation.

“Dodd, you can’t keep doing this,” Corde said to his prisoner.

“Doing what?” the man asked drowsily.

The man’s Toyota pickup had sheared a leg off the Purina feed billboard on 116 and dropped a painted sixty-foot Hereford on her black-and-white rump. Miller took him into the lockup in the back of the office. When he returned Corde looked up from the arrest report. “Two point four. He’s more than legally drunk. I do believe he’s legally dead.”

Miller said, “Well, he’s legally barfing and he’s got bits of windshield falling out of his skivvies. It’s all over the floor.”

Corde said, “Give him some paper towels and make him clean it up. Nobody should be drinking like that on a weekday morning.”

“He’ll lose his license this time,” Miller said.

“Hardly matters,” Corde answered. “That was his last truck.”

Steve Ribbon appeared in the doorway and looked at Corde. “Talk to you for a minute, Bill.”

Corde followed him into his office and the sheriff shut the door. Ribbon sat down and expanded his cheeks like a blowfish’s body and started to bounce a Ticonderoga number two off the drum of his skin. Corde decided it might be a long conversation and sat down in the chair opposite the sheriff’s desk.

“Bill …” The pencil stopped being a drumstick and became a Flash Gordon rocket crash-landing on the desk. “Damn this bureaucracy, Bill.”

Corde waited.

“County and state and everybody.”

“Okay, what’s up, Steve?”

“I got a call from Ellison.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Bill, this is a damn difficult thing to say to you.”

Corde laughed without humor. “Then spit it out fast.”

Ribbon said, “The county’s taking over the Gebben and Rossiter cases.”

It took several seconds for the fire to burn across Corde’s cheek. “The county.”

“T.T.’s going to be heading her up.”

“Well, Steve, legally, I suppose, the county can take over any murder investigation it wants to. But the point is it’s never—”

“Bill.”

“The point is it’s never happened before. All right. I’m a little angry. That’s what you’re hearing. I don’t think we’ve done anything to make Ellison feel this way.”

“It was that situation at the dorm.”

“What situation?”

Ribbon surveyed the rocket pencil’s crash site. “They think you burned her letters and her diary, Bill.”

Corde said nothing.

“They’re thinking it was curious you flew to St. Louis so fast after the killing. When you didn’t find anything there you went to her dorm room and took them and burned it all up. Don’t look that way, Bill. They think you were trying to cover up something between you and her. There’ll be an inquest next month and you’re off the case till it’s over.”

Wynton Kresge’s great-great-great-grandfather, whose name was Charles Monroe, had been a slave, one of two, on a small farm near Fort Henry, Tennessee. The story goes that when the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on New Year’s Day in 1863 Monroe went to his master and said, “I am sorry to tell you this, Mr. Walker, but there is a new law that says you can’t own slaves anymore, including us.”

Walker said, “They did that in Nashville?”

Monroe answered, “No, sir, they did that in the capital, that is to say, Washington, D.C.”

“Blazes,” Walker said, and added that he’d have to look into it. Because both he and his wife were illiterate they had to ask someone to tell them more about this law. Their charming innocence was demonstrated by their choice of Abigail, the Walker’s second slave, to confirm the news. She did so by reading from an outspoken abolitionist penny sheet, which printed the text of the Proclamation while avoiding an inconvenient discussion of Lincoln’s jurisdiction to free slaves located in the Confederacy.

“Damnation, he’s right,” Walker said. Then he wished Monroe luck and said by any chance you be interested in staying on for pay and Monroe said he’d be happy to and they negotiated a wage and room and board and Monroe kept on working on the Walker farm until he married Abigail. The Walkers gave them their wedding and Monroe named his first son Walker.

Family history.

And probably as embellished and half-true as any. But what Wynton Kresge thought was most interesting was how his children responded to the story. His eldest son, Darryl, eighteen, was horrified that he had been descended from slaves and never wanted the fact mentioned. Kresge felt bad the boy was so ashamed and grumbled that since he was black and had grown up in the United States and not on the Ivory Coast, how come that was such a shock?

Kresge’s eldest daughter, Sephana, sixteen, on the other hand often talked about Monroe’s plight. Which was how she referred to it. Plight. She hated Monroe for going back to work for Walker. She hated him for not putting a Minié ball in his master’s head and torching the farm. Sephana had posters of Spike Lee and Wesley Snipes on her wall. She was beautiful. Kresge had put all serious talks with his daughter on hold for a few years.

Kresge’s fifth child, named after the ancestor in question, was eight and he loved the story. Charles often wanted to act it out, insisting that Kresge take the role of Mr. Walker, while Charles did an impersonation of someone probably not unlike his namesake. Kresge wondered what his youngest son, Nelson, aged two, would say about their ancestor when he learned the story.

These were the thoughts that kept intruding into Kresge’s mind as he sat trying to read in the massive bun-buster swivel chair. He felt all stifled and bouncy with nervous energy so he stood up and walked to the window in the far corner of his office. He reached out and rested his hands on the windowsill and did a dozen lazy-boy push-ups then twelve more and twelve more after that until he smelled sweat through his shirt.

The window overlooked not the quad but a strip of commercial New Lebanon, storefronts and flashing trailer signs and a chunk of the satellite dish on the Tavern. He was anxious and his muscles quivered from using them the wrong way, in a soft office, in a soft university, a soft white university, where you had to keep your temper and give reasons and all the suspects were good students and were trying hard and were just out for some fooling ’round.

He sat on the windowsill, his huge shoulders slumped.

Thinking of his ancestor (perhaps because Walker had ultimately gotten his freedom) had put Wynton Kresge in mind of his essential problem—he was not what he wanted to be.

Which was a cop.

He would be a cop in Des Moines. He would be a cop in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. In Sandwich, Illinois. He’d be a cop taking tolls on the interstate if they also let him spend a good portion of the time cruising around in a souped-up four-barrel Dodge, tagging speeders and hunting down child molesters and stopping DUIs.

What was ironic—no, what was bitterly mean—was that every day Kresge got résumés from cops all over the country. From real COPS! They wanted to work for him. Dear Sir: As a law enforcement officer of ten years standing, I am seeking a position in private security services and would like to be considered for any positions you might have open.…

Knock me upside the head. I mean, this is too much!

Kresge would have dropped down on his massive, linebacker knees to kiss the police academy graduation ring of any one of those applicants and trade jobs in a minute. Gold shields, GLA supervisors, Ops-Coordinators, portable patrolmen, CS technicians. They all wanted to sit in Kresge’s cracked leather chair and swivel back and forth and spend the three hours between start of business and lunch deciding how to allocate guards for the homecoming game.

And what did Wynton Kresge want to do but walk a beat?

He wanted to drive an RMP (remote mobile patrol, a squad car to everybody else; Kresge had learned this), he wanted to kick in doors of murder suspects, he wanted to pin drug dealers up against jagged brick walls and scream at them: WHERE’S THE STASH? (Was that what they called it? He’d learned a lot but there was much he had not learned.)

He had a very real problem however. Wynton Kresge’s first goal in life was to be a cop. But his other goal was to make sure his salary exceeded his age. He now made fifty-three thousand dollars a year (being forty-two he was proud of this accomplishment). He was therefore in the Loop. Hooked. Hung up. Wynton Kresge received a salary not unattainable by senior detectives or police administrators in large cities but a complete rainbow for a rookie. It’d be back to school at no pay then a grunt pulling twenty, twenty-five even with overtime. Kresge alone would be able to cope with a career change of that magnitude. Kresge married might be able to.

But not Wynton Kresge father of seven. He loved cops but he also loved being a good father. He thought about reeducating them. He thought about having a family conference and telling them they were going to have to buckle down. Dad was about to take a fifty percent cut in salary and become a cop. (Man, he could taste the silence in the living room after dropping that news.)

So he watched Miami Vice reruns and led his men in drills for dealing with students who’d gone ED (the cop word for emotionally disturbed) and with demonstrators who might try to burn down the stadium (none so far) and he kept his thirteen-shot 9mm automatic loaded and ready on his hip waiting for the chance to draw down on a crazed assault-rifle-wielding sniper (none of them either), picking him off from fifty yards on the knoll of the quad.

This was all Wynton Kresge had for police work.

This, and thinking a lot about the murders of Jennie Gebben and Emily Rossiter, which is what he had been doing most of this hot afternoon. He now walked to his desk and balanced a book on his hand then flipped it lightly in the air as if he were tossing a coin to help him make a choice. That was in fact exactly what he was doing and when he caught the book, cover up, Kresge walked abruptly out of his office.

She died two weeks ago tonight. It took me all of fourteen days to lose the case.

Corde spent five minutes looking for change in front of the vending machines, waiting for the jolts of anger that never came. He dropped in thirty-five cents and pushed coffee milk and sugar. The steaming liquid poured in a loud stream into a fragile cardboard cup. It sounded exactly like a man taking a leak.

T.T. Ebbans walked up next to him, digging in his pockets. Corde held out a handful of change. Ebbans picked out some and bought himself a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. “I’m sorry, Bill.”

Corde sipped the coffee. It tasted salty. The machine’s spigot dispensed both coffee and chicken bouillon.

“This’s real bushwah. I don’t know what’s going on. What’d Ribbon say?”

“I’m off the case. He’s going to fight the inquest. But I hardly believe him. He didn’t fight worth diddly to keep me from getting the boot.”

“The burnt letters?”

“Yup.”

“Did anybody see you take them? They have a witness? Any fingerprints? What’s their probable cause?”

Corde said, “We’re at the witch-hunt stage now, T.T. The due process comes later—after my name’s been drug through the dirt.”

After they find out about St. Louis. When it’ll be too late.

When Ebbans spoke again, after a pause, the flinch in his voice was unmistakable. “Hammerback ordered me to look into every escape and recent release from the hospital at Gunderson.”

“I’ve heard this before.” Corde shook his head.

Ebbans continued, “Yep and then talk to school counselors and psychiatrists in town here and see if they had any patients with, you know, dangerous tendencies.”

“They won’t say anything. It’s all privileged. Hammerback oughta know that.”

“There was some mention of it in a book that Ribbon keeps loaning to people.”

Corde pointed in the general direction of Blackfoot Pond. “Well, Emily was Jennie’s roommate. It’s pretty damn odd for a cult killer to pick her for the second victim, wouldn’t you say?”

“I just tell what I been told.”

“I know that, T.T.”

Ebbans took a long time staring at the copy of the Register sitting in the lunchroom. The front page had a headline: Terror Continues with Stapleton Girl Cult Threat.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to the story.

“Turned out to be the boyfriend she dumped. But the paper had to, you know, put it in terms of the Moon Killer. Damn. Good God damn.… Well, the case’s yours now, T.T. I told you what I found most recent, about Jennie having that girlfriend and a fight with somebody who wasn’t too happy about it. And about them maybe being killed because they were gay. Oh, and don’t forget Gilchrist. He could tell us some good stuff about Jennie.”

“I don’t know. Word is we gotta concentrate a hundred percent on the cult thing. Forget the university connection, forget her personal life. Those’re orders.”

Corde closed his eyes for a moment, rubbed them. “Son of a gun, this’s great. First I lose the investigation. Then it’s forget the school. Then they don’t want to hear that the victim might’ve had a girlfriend.… I don’t know what’s going on, T.T. The biggest problem in this case isn’t the killer, it’s us. It’s the good guys.”

“Seems that way.”

Corde poured the coffee out then said, “You know, I was thinking. You’re in a tough spot.”

“How’s that?”

“Let’s say it’s what you and me think, that it’s not a psycho. That’ll mean a lot of wasted time and a lot of panic and news stories about the departments’ going in the wrong direction. You’re walking point on this whole case.”

“Well that’s true, Bill. I hope you won’t be offended if I tell you that if it turns out right—”

“You’ll be in the catbird’s seat, and more power to you. But with Ellison and Ribbon right beside you especially come November.”

“I hear what you’re saying. But I just want to get that guy, whoever he is. That’s all I care about. I’m no good at this politics stuff. It’s like people’re using those girls’ deaths for themselves. They’re twisting things around. Makes me sick.”

Ebbans finished his candy and rolled the wrapper into a tiny wad, pitched it out. He looked around and said in a low voice, “I know you’re off the case and everything and you’ll be doing a bang-up job keeping the roads free of gin-drunk felons but since you’re giving me all your notes and leads it’s only fair I give you something in return.”

“What’s that?”

“I told you somebody put the kibosh on the school side of the case? The order came from Ribbon and Hammerback. But you know where they got the word?”

“Sure, yeah, I know.” Corde grimaced. “Dean Larraby.”

“Nope,” Ebbans said. “It was a friend of yours. Randy Sayles.”

Corde considered this. “Well, well, well. That’s nice to know.… But you didn’t hear me say that.”

Ebbans touched his ear. “Deaf as a mounted trout.”

As he walked out of the vending room Bill Corde stepped right into the broad form of Wynton Kresge. “Oh, sorry,” Corde said pleasantly, and smiled before he remembered he was mad at the security chief.

Kresge blinked and started to smile before he recalled he too was mad. He ignored Corde and turned back to where he’d been, standing in Jim Slocum’s doorway, holding a book open and pointing to a passage.

“Yessir, Chief,” Slocum was saying to Kresge. “We’ve pretty much got it under control. But I appreciate your concern.”

“What I’m saying is, you ought to read this.…” Kresge sounded like he was arguing with a belligerent waitress.

Slocum said formally, “We’ve got ourselves a pretty demanding situation, Chief, as you can well imagine.…”

Corde left the office. He got into his squad car and started the engine. Wynton Kresge came out and walked toward his Olds, which was parked two empty spaces from Corde’s cruiser. Kresge’s was nice-looking, new. Everybody seemed to have a new car but Corde. Kresge flung the book into the front seat then opened the door. He got in and started the engine. The two men sat twenty feet apart in their cars, staring straight ahead as their engines idled.

A very strained Bill Corde shut off the engine, paused a moment then walked over to Kresge. “Talk to you?”

Kresge shut off his engine and got out. He stood up, taller than Corde, many pounds heavier. Corde said, “About last week … What I want to say is I’m sorry. At first I didn’t think you were right and I’ll tell you it didn’t have anything to do with you being who you are or anything like that but maybe I was the way you said and if I was I apologize.”

There was a moment of fierce silence and Corde couldn’t think of anything to do but stick out his hand. Kresge looked down and seemed boxed into a corner. He took the hand and shook it firmly then released it. “I’m bad-tempered sometimes.”

“I get kind of caught up in these cases. They can be frustrating.”

“I understand that.” He nodded with a grimace toward the Sheriff’s Department.

“What were you doing there?”

Kresge fished the book out of the front seat. “Finished this today. I’m not saying I’m an expert but I think you’re looking for the wrong guy.”

Corde looked at the spine. Psychotic Functioning Individuals: Volume Three. Criminal Behavior.

“Listen up.” Kresge opened the book, found an underlined paragraph, and read: “‘In a study of psychopathic and sociopathic (here used synonymously) homicides in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland conducted from 1956 through 1971, we (Irvine & Harrington 1972) concluded that the number of homicides that are in fact astrologically or astronomically driven are exceedingly rare. Of the eighty-nine psychopathic murderers convicted of their crimes, only one was in fact motivated to commit murder on the night of the full moon. In extensive interviews and examinations of records in the man’s hometown of Manchester, it was learned that he had been killing animals and human victims indiscriminately, as often as five times a year for the past fifteen years, always on the night of the full moon. He had no sexual contact with his victims and indeed found such thoughts abhorrent. On the other hand, Scotland Yard reported that for the years 1961 through the present, the only years for which such data are available, as many as ten murders per year are committed on the nights of full moons, under the guise of psychopathic episodes when the criminal’s true motives for the killing are revenge, robbery, rape and organized-crime expediency.’”

“You just read them that?” Corde nodded toward the office.

“Tried. They weren’t interested.”

“You mind if I borrow it? Make a copy of some of it? It’s kind of a jawful and I’d like to read it slow.”

“It’ll be overdue day after tomorrow.”

“I’ll do it myself. Tonight.” After a moment Corde asked, “If you don’t think it’s a psycho, who would you be looking for?”

“Nobody’s been much interested in my opinion.”

“Tell me. Just for the hell of it.”

Kresge said, “At first I was pretty sure it was the girl’s lover. A professor or a student. You should see all of what goes on here on campus. Young people on their own. Doing whatever they want. Fair game for the professors—men and women, I ought to tell you. So that was my original thought. But that was before …” Kresge’s hand rose in a straight-arm salute then closed into a fist. He looked at Corde expectantly.

“I’m sorry?”

Kresge said, “You know, the knife. So now I figure it was a kid, maybe some punk.”

“Uh-huh.” Corde nodded absently then said, “What knife?”

“‘I come in peace.’” Kresge’s hand rose and closed again. “‘From a land that is here and yet not here.’”

“Uh-huh. What are you talking about?”

“Didn’t you see The Lost Dimension?”

Corde said he hadn’t.

“The movie. It was at the Duplex a couple months ago.”

“I don’t remember.” Corde was thinking of some film with creatures that had red eyes. “Oh, wait, was that the one with these snake things?”

“Yeah. The Honons. They were battling the Naryans in the Lost Dimension.”

“But what’s …” He lifted his hand and closed his fist.

“It’s the Naryan salute.” Kresge snorted a baritone laugh. “Don’t you remember?”

“Nup.”

“You mean you guys don’t know? … About the knife? Back there in that bag.”

The cult knife.

“I saw it on the deputy’s desk.…” Kresge pointed.

“That symbol on the knife? It’s from the movie?”

“You really didn’t know, did you?”

Corde lifted his fingers to his eyes. “I don’t believe it!” He turned toward the department. “Hell, I gotta tell ’em.”

But he stopped abruptly. Staring at the ancient Town Hall he sucked on the inside of his cheek for a moment. “Wynton, you want to go for a ride?”

“I guess. Can we go in the squad car?”

“Sure. Only I can’t use the siren.”

“That’s okay.”

They arrived at the toy store just as it was closing. Together the two large men strode to the door. Kresge stood awkwardly with his hands on his hips while Corde knocked. After a moment the owner appeared.

“Can you open up, Owen? Important.”

“I’m closed, Bill. It’s suppertime.”

“Open her up. We gotta talk to you. Business.”

“Couldn’t you call me—”

“Official, Owen.”

The heavyset, mustachioed man in a plaid shirt and blue jeans opened the door. The store was dim. Costumes and helmets and monster masks lining the wall made the place seem as eerie as a wax museum at night. Some toy at the far end of the store gave off red dots of Owen. He stared at thirty stilettos just like the one found under Jennie Gebben.

“What are these?”

“What do you think they are?” As if Corde had asked who was George Washington.

“Owen.”

He said, “They’re Naryan Lost Dimension survival knives.”

“What’s that symbol?”

Owen sighed. “That’s the insignia of the Naryan Empire.” He extended his hand the way Kresge had done. “‘I come in peace, from—’”

Corde said, “Yeah, yeah, I know. The movie company makes ’em?”

“They license somebody in China or Korea to make them. They sell all kinds of things. Helmets, xaser guns, Dimensional cloaks, scarves … All that stuff in the movie.”

Kresge said, “He doesn’t remember the movie.”

“He doesn’t?” Owen asked. “Like Ninja Turtles a few years ago. T-shirts. Toys. Tie-ins they’re called.”

“How many of these knives you sold?”

“They’re a best-seller.”

Corde glanced at Kresge and said, “I somehow figured they might be. How many?”

Owen said, “That’s I think my third merch rack. Why?”

“Has to do with an investigation.”

“Oh.”

Corde pulled out a pen and handed it and a stack of blank three-by-five cards to Owen. He asked, “Could you give me the names of everybody you’ve sold one of those knives to?”

“You’re kidding.” Owen laughed, then looked at Kresge. “He’s kidding.”

Kresge said, “No, I don’t think he’s kidding.”

Owen’s smile faded. “Practically every kid in New Lebanon bought one. It’d take me an hour to remember half of them.”

“Then you better get started.”

“Aw, Bill. It’s suppertime.”

“The sooner you write the sooner you eat, Owen.”

Bill Corde parked the squad car in the lot next to the five-foot-high logo of the Fredericksberg Register—the name in the elaborate hundred-year-old typeface as it appeared on the paper’s masthead. He and Wynton Kresge got out of the car and walked into the advertising office. The girl behind the counter snapped her gum once and hid it somewhere in her mouth. “Hi, gentlemen. Help you?”

Corde said, “Last week I called about running an ad as part of an investigation down in New Lebanon.”

“Oh, that girl that was killed. I heard there was another one too.”

“Did I talk to you?”

“No, that’d be my boss, Juliette Frink. She’s left for the day. But I can take the order. How long you want it run?”

“A week, I think.”

“What size?”

Corde looked at samples of ads under a faded Plexiglas sheet covering the counter. “What do you think, Wynton?”

Kresge said, “May as well go pretty big, wouldn’t you think?”

Corde pointed to one. “I guess that size.”

She looked. “That’s two columns by seventy-five agates.” She wrote it down. “What section of the paper would you like?”

“Oh. I hadn’t thought. Front page?”

“We don’t have ads on the front page.”

“Well, I don’t know. What’s the best-read section?”

“Comics first then sports.”

Corde said, “I don’t think we can run an ad like this on the comic pages.”

Kresge said, “But sports, you might lose women, you know.”

The clerk said, “I read the sports page.”

“How about the same page as the movie ads?” Kresge said.

“That sounds good,” Corde said.

She wrote it up. “Juliette said you get a public-service discount. That’ll be four hundred eighty-four dollars and seventy cents. Then you want us to typeset it for you that’ll be another twenty-five dollars. You have cuts?”

“Cuts?” Corde blinked. He was thinking of the thin slash the rope had made on Jennifer Gebben’s throat, the fishhook embedded in Emily Rossiter.

“Pictures, I mean.”

“Oh. No. Just words.” He wrote out copy for the ad. Corde pulled out his wallet and handed her his Visa card. She took it and stepped away to approve the charge.

“What is it,” Kresge asked. “You pay then get reimbursed?”

Corde snickered. “I guess you oughta know, I was just relieved of duty.”

Kresge frowned severe creases into his wide face. “Man, they fired you?”

“Suspended.”

“Why?”

“They claim I took some letters out of Jennie’s room.”

“Did you?” Kresge asked, but so innocently that Corde laughed.

“No,” he said.

“Hardly seems fair,” he said. Then: “You mean, you’re paying for this ad yourself?”

“Yup.”

He wasn’t though, it turned out. The clerk, embarrassed, returned. “Sorry, Officer.… They kind of said you’re over your limit. They wouldn’t approve it.” She handed the card back to him.

Corde felt the immediate need to explain. But that would involve telling her a long story about two children—one with primary reading retardation—and a psychiatrist and a new Frigidaire and roll after roll of Owens-Corning attic insulation and a boy coming up on college in a few years. “Uh …” He looked for a solution in the back of the cluttered Advertising Department.

Kresge said, “Miss, Auden has an account here, right?”

“The university? Yessir. The student affairs office. Ads for plays and sports. I was to the homecoming game last fall. That third quarter! I’ll remember that all my life.”

“Yes’m, that was a game and a half,” Kresge said. “Can you put these on the school account?”

“You work for the school?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kresge said. “I do.” He pulled out his identification card. “I’ll authorize it. This’s official school business.”

She rummaged under the counter and pulled out a form. “Just sign this requisition here. Fourth and twelve on the Ohio State forty. Did Ladowski punt? No sir. And it wasn’t even a bomb but a hand-off to Flemming. Ran all the way, zippity-zip.”

“While I’m about it,” Kresge said, “run that ad for two weeks and put a border around it like that one there.”

“You got it.”

“That’s real good of you, Wynton,” Corde said. “I do appreciate it.”

“People keep forgetting,” Kresge said quietly, “they were my girls too.”

Corde spent the evening talking to the parents of boys who’d bought Naryan Dimensional stilettos. He was easygoing and jokey and careful to put them at ease. No, no, we don’t suspect Todd Sammie Billie Albert not hardly why he’s in Science Club with Jamie.…

“I’m just,” he would tell them, “getting information.”

They nodded gravely and answered all his questions and smiled at his jokes.

But they were scared.

Men and women alike, they were scared.

The second killing had proved the cult theory. The words that Corde had spoken to chubby Gail Lynn Holcomb had been proved utterly false. They did have something to be scared of. As far as the good citizens of New Lebanon were concerned, Satan himself had arrived, with two murders to his name and more on his mind.

Corde went from house to house and listened to parents, without exception, account for every minute of each boy’s whereabouts on the night of April 20—a feat possible, Corde knew as a father, only if every man and woman he talked to had turned psychic.

He saw through much of the smoke of course but still found no leads.

Long about midnight Corde noticed a dusty drawer somewhere in his mind. It seemed to contain Sheriff’s Department regulations and he believed, when he peered into it, that he saw something about officers who continue to engage in police work when suspended being guilty of impersonating sheriff’s deputies. He peered further and saw the word “misdemeanor” though his mind was often very dark and the word might actually have been “felony.”

Corde felt suddenly pummeled by fatigue. He returned home.

A county deputy, Tom’s replacement for the evening, sat in the driveway. Corde thanked him and sent him home and then went into the house. His children were asleep in their rooms. His wife too. Corde was grateful for that. He wasn’t looking forward to telling Diane that he’d been suspended.

The next morning he was up early. He kissed Diane, dodged a chance to give her the hard news and slipped out for a secret meeting with T.T. Ebbans. They rendezvoused outside the Sheriff’s Department on the hard-packed dirt the deputies sometimes used for impromptu basketball games. They both felt like spies or undercover narcs, padding around out of sight of the department’s grimy windows.

Corde told him about the knife and Ebbans slapped his head. “Doggone, I saw that movie.”

“So’d I, T.T., and I’ll bet every deputy in there did too. Hell,” he said in a whisper, “I’ll bet Ribbon’s even got the comic book. I talked to maybe thirty people last night. Here’s the list and my notes. Nothing real helpful.”

Ebbans took the sheet. “Watch yourself, Bill.”

Corde tapped his holster.

“I don’t mean that. You forget you’re suspended?”

“This thing’s too important to leave to Ribbon. You got what I asked you for?”

Ebbans handed Corde a plastic bag containing the green computerized accounting ledger that they’d found in the burnt oil drum. “Don’t lose it, Bill. I’m taking a chance as it is.”

“I think I’ve found me an expert who can help.”

“I also looked into the Gilchrist angle. Forget about it. He flew out to San. Francisco to read some paper on Saturday before Jennie was murdered and he was still out there when Emily was killed. I don’t think he’s back even yet.”

“You might want to talk to him though. He might know some of Jennie’s boyfriends. Or girlfriends.”

“Maybe I’ll ask him on the sly.” Ebbans added, “We’ve pulled up with a stitch on this mental-patient stuff. And the occult bookstore leads are going nowhere. This whole cult thing is looking thin as October ice. I think we oughta tell Hammerback and Ribbon.”

“Hold up a while,” Corde said gravely. “Next thing you know you’ll be off the case too and Jim Slocum’ll be our new investigator in charge.”

“Hey now,” said Ebbans brightly, “that’d give us a chance to read Miranda to werewolves and vampires.”

“Mrs. Corde? Hello. My name is Ben Breck.”

Diane held the phone warily. From the man’s cheerful voice, she suspected a salesman. “Yes?”

“I’m from the Auden University lab school. You were speaking to the admissions department about a tutor?”

It turned out that he was a salesman of sorts but Diane listened anyway. Breck was selling something pretty interesting.

“I’m a visiting professor from the University of Chicago. I noticed your daughter’s application for admission to the Special Education Department.”

And how much are you going to cost, Doctor Visiting Professor from the Big City? A hundred an hour? Two?

“Our daughter’s seeing Resa Parker, a psychiatrist in town. She recommended we find a special ed tutor.”

“I know of Dr. Parker.” Breck then added, “I’ve done a lot of tutoring and I thought I might be able to help you.”

“Dr. Breck, I appreciate your call but—”

“Money.”

“Beg pardon?”

“You’re worried about the fees at Auden. And I don’t blame you one bit. They’re outrageous. I wouldn’t pay them myself.”

My, my, a doctor with a sense of humor. How refreshing.

“It is one of my considerations,” Diane admitted.

“Well, I think you’ll find me fairly reasonable. I charge twenty dollars an hour.”

Breck named a figure that two weeks earlier would have paled Diane; now she felt as if she’d pocketed found money. “That’s all?”

“I do ask to use the results of your daughter’s progress in my research. Anonymously, of course. I’m scheduled to publish my findings in the American Journal of Psychology. And I’m doing a book to help teachers recognize the problems of learning disabled children.”

“Well, I don’t know.…”

“I hope you’ll think about it, Mrs. Corde. From the application it looks like your Sarah has a lot of potential.”

Diane said, “You’ve worked with students like Sarah before?”

“Hundreds. In the majority of cases we’ve cut the gap between reading and chronological age by fifty percent. Sometimes more.”

“What are these techniques?”

“Feedback, monitoring, behavioral techniques. Nothing revolutionary. No drugs or medical treatment …”

“Sarah doesn’t do well with medicine. She’s had some bad reactions to Ritalin.”

“I don’t do any of that.”

“Well,” Diane said, “I’ll discuss it with my husband.”

“I hope to hear from you. I think Sarah and I can help each other a great deal.”

Seven days till the half-moon.

Do you know where your .357 is?

T.T. Ebbans walked into the New Lebanon Sheriff’s Department, glancing at the sign, and asked, “Who put that up?”

Jim Slocum looked up from that day’s copy of the Register and said, “I did.”

“Could you please take it down?”

“Sure. Didn’t mean anything. Just thought it’d be kind of a reminder. For morale, you know.”

Ebbans sat down at his desk. On it were fifteen letters from people who claimed they knew who the killer was because they had dreamed about it (eight of them) or had psychic visions of his identity (four) or had been contacted in a seance by the victims (two). The remaining correspondence was from a man who explained that in a former life he had known Jack the Ripper, whose spirit had materialized in a condominium development outside of Higgins. There were also twenty-nine phone messages about the case. The first two calls Ebbans returned were to disconnected phones and the third was a man’s recorded voice describing how much he loved sucking cock. Ebbans hung up and gave the rest of the messages to Slocum and told him to check them out.

Corde’s news about the knife had both elated and depressed him. It had cheered him up because it was a solid lead and like any cop he’d take a single piece of hard evidence any day over a dozen psychics or a week’s worth of the most clever speculation. The news had also depressed Ebbans because it meant the line of the investigation he had inherited was looking pretty abysmal. Corde’s warning about Ebbans walking point, which he’d discounted at first, came back to him. Ribbon wasn’t pleased with the Register story that morning. “Cult” Weapon in Auden Death Is Movie Toy. The sheriff had said coolly, “Guess your boys should’ve checked that out to start.”

My boys.

Ebbans returned to a stack of discharge reports from a mental hospital in Higgins. Ten minutes later the door swung open and a man in blue jeans and a work shirt stood uneasily in the doorway. Ebbans frowned, trying to place him. It took a minute.

The red hat man, without the hat.

“Detective?”

“Come on in.”

The man said, “What it is, I just thought you’d like to know. You asked me about those boys I seen the night that girl was killed. The boys by the pond? I was leaving the lake and just now one of them was back. He had his tackle but he wasn’t fishing, he was just walking around, looking at things. Would he be the Moon Killer?”

Ebbans stood up and said, “He out there now?”

“Was when I left.”

“Miller, come on, you and me’re taking a ride.”

So like what’s the reason?

Why is this guy your friend?

Jano didn’t have any answers. Philip was a freak. He was fat and had bad skin—not zits, which everybody had, even Steve Snelling, who could have any girl he wanted. It was more that Philip’s skin was dirty. Behind his ear it was always gray. And his clothes were hardly ever clean. He smelled bad. And forget about sports. No way could he even play softball let alone gymnastics. Jano remembered how his friend had strained to get up on the parallel bars and he had watched horrified as the wood rods sagged almost to breaking under the weight.

Why were they friends?

This afternoon Jano was walking around Blackfoot Pond, holding the gray chipped tackle box and the rod and reel. Tracing steps, trying not to think about that terrible night of April 20. He felt bad. Not depressed but fearful, almost panicked. He felt as if a screaming Honon warrior in an invisible Dimensional cloak was racing toward him from behind, preparing to leap, closer closer closer, to tear him apart. Jano’s heart galloped in his chest, heating his blood as it pumped and he felt terror spatter him like a spray of hot water. Like a spray of come.

He pictured the girl lying in the mud, her white fingers curled, her eyes mostly open, her bare feet with their long toes.…

No no no! She’s not an actress in a movie, thirty feet high on the screen in the mall. She is exactly what she is: pretty, heavy, smelling of mint, smelling of grass and spicy flowers. She is still. She does not breathe. She is dead.

Jano shuddered, feeling the Honon troops circling around him, and found he was staring at the crushed muddy blue flowers at his feet. He thought of Philip drowning the other girl, holding her down. And what was he, Jano, going to do now? Who could he talk to? Nobody … The panic crested and he sucked in air frantically.

Eventually he calmed.

Why is he your friend?

Well, he and Phathar did talk about sci fi a lot. And movies. And girls. For a guy who never dated, Philip was an expert on sex. A walking dictionary of terms that every fifteen-year-old should know. He told Jano how gay guys shoved their fists up each other’s asses and how you could tell whether a girl was a virgin by the way she bent over to tie her shoes.

But Jano decided that their most common bond was how much they hated their fathers. Phathar was scared of his and that made plenty of sense because the old man was a total hatter. (One Halloween, Philip’s dad had come into the yard, sneaking up behind trick-or-treaters, carrying bloody cow’s intestines in his arms. He’d just stood staring at the totally freaked kids.) But Jano’s father was worse. He was like a Honon warrior hiding in a Dimensional cloak, passing through the house as if Jano didn’t exist. Sneaking past, looking at his son oddly, then vanishing.

… The dimensional warp swelling out out out finally bursting into the now, the here, all that purple energy of the Naryan realm flooding onto the earth.…

The movie had had a happy ending. Jano didn’t think this life would. He climbed to the top of the dam and then dropped onto his knees. He leaned forward looking at his gray reflection in the still water. He didn’t like water that was so still. It made him look like death. His thin face. He lowered his head to the water. He wondered what it was like to breathe water instead of air.

Look at that, Jano. You ever touched a girl there? You ever tasted a girl?

He stared at the water. He could smell its oily sourness.

You ever fucked a girl, Jano?

By lowering his head another two inches he could taste the water. He could lick it. The same way that Phathar gave him the opportunity to taste the girl’s cold mouth, her tongue, her cunt. He could swallow the water, he could swallow her, hide in her forever. A princess—

“Excuse me, young man.” The voice was like a chill downpour on his back. He leapt up. “I talk to you for a minute?” The deputy was tall and very thin.

Jano’s mouth was dry as summer pavement. He swung his tongue back and forth between his sticky teeth and didn’t say anything.

“What’s your name?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“I’d just like to talk to you.” The deputy was smiling but Jano’d seen that smile before and didn’t believe it. A lying smile. The same smile his father kept on his face. “I understand you and a friend were fishing here at night about ten days ago.”

Jano couldn’t speak. He found his skin was contracting with terror and he imagined that his bowl of thick hair was vibrating visibly. Other footsteps sounded behind him. He turned.

Lance Miller grinned and said to him, “Hey, how you doing?”

Jano didn’t answer.

The other cop looked at Miller and said, “You know him?”

“Sure, T.T.,” Miller said. “This’s Bill Corde’s son. Didn’t you introduce yourself, Jamie?”

With panic in his voice Randy Sayles said, “I have a lecture.”

“He said it’s now’r never.”

“A LECTURE!”

“Professor,” the departmental secretary said, “I’m only reporting to you what he said.”

“Shit.”

“Professor. There’s no need to be vulgar.”

He sat at his desk at nine o’clock in the morning, gripping the telephone receiver in his hand as if he were trying to squeeze out an answer to the dilemma. Sayles’s last lecture of the year was scheduled to begin in one hour. It was set against the centennial celebrations throughout the U.S. in 1876. The climax was a spellbinding account (his students’, not his, review) of the Custer massacre. For him to miss this particular class was obscene. This fucko fund-raising crap had totally disrupted his teaching and he was torrid with rage.

He said, “Tell him to hold.” He dialed the dean. Her secretary said she was out.

“Shit.”

Yes, no, yes, no? Sayles said into the receiver, “Okay, I’ll see him. Get Darby to take over for me.”

“The students will be disappointed.”

“You’re the one who told me it was now or never!”

She said, “I was only—”

“Get Darby.” Sayles banged the phone down and ran from his office, hurrying to his car. As he roared out of the professors’ parking lot, he laid down two streaks of simmering rubber as if he were a sixteen-year-old in a stolen ’Vette.

He paced across the gold carpet, staring down at the stain made by the cola Sarah spilled the night Emily was murdered.

“Oh, Bill.”

“It doesn’t mean I’m fired. I still draw pay.”

“What were these letters?”

“Who knows? We found ash. We found scraps.”

He looked up at his wife. Before Diane did something she dreaded, her eyes grew very wide. Astonishingly wide and dark as night. This happened now.

Bill Corde waited a moment, as if taking his temperature. The sense of betrayal never arrived and he said finally, “I didn’t take them.”

“No.”

He couldn’t tell how she meant the word. Was she agreeing? Or disputing him?

She asked, “They don’t know about St. Louis, do they?”

“I never told them.” He did not tell her that Jennie Gebben had known.

She nodded. “I should see about a job.”

“I told you I’m not fired. I—”

“I’m just thinking out loud. This is something—”

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“This is something we have to talk about,” she continued.

But they didn’t talk about it. Not then at any rate. Because at that moment a squad car pulled into the driveway.

Corde leaned against the glass. He smelled ammonia. After a long moment the front door of the car opened. “It’s T.T. He’s got somebody with him, in the back. What’s he doing, transporting a prisoner?”

Ebbans climbed out of the squad car and unlocked the back door. Jamie slowly stepped out.

Halbert Strumm, who lived in an unincorporated enclave of Harrison County known as Millfield Creek, had made his fortune in animal by-products, turning bone and organ into house plant supplements, marked up a thousand times. Strumm would say with sincerity and drama that it brightened some stiff gelding’s last walk up the ramp to know he was going to be sprinkled lovingly on a tame philodendron overlooking Park Avenue in New York City. It was comments like this that kept Strumm held in contempt or ridicule by all the people who worked for him and most of the people who knew him.

Although he had not attended Auden University, Strumm and his wife Bettye had embraced the school as their adoptive charity. Their generosity however was largely conditional and they invariably looked for an element of bargain in their giving. Off shot a check for a thousand dollars if they got subscription seats to the concert series. Five hundred, a stadium box. Five thousand, a trip to the Sudan on a dig with archeology students made wildly uncomfortable by the couple’s rollicking presence.

Now Randy Sayles, pulling into the Strumms’ driveway, was not sure if the couple was going to like the deal he was about to propose. Strumm, a huge man, bald and broad, with massive hands, led Sayles into his greenhouse, and there they stood amid a thousand plants that seemed no healthier than those in Sayles’s own backyard garden, which did not gobble down the earthly remains of elderly animals. There was an injustice in this that depressed Sayles immensely.

“Hal, we have a problem and we need your help.”

“Money, that’s why you’ve come. It’s why you always come.”

“You’re right.” Sayles leaned hard into the abuse. “I’m not going to deny it, Hal. But you understand what Auden does for this town. We’re in danger of losing the school.”

Strumm frowned and nipped off a tendril of green from a viney plant. “That serious?”

“We’ve already drafted severance letters to the staff.”

“My word.” Nip.

“We need some money and we need your help. You’ve always been generous in the past.”

“You know, Professor, I’m in a generous mood today.”

Sayles’s heart beat with a resounding pressure, he heard the hum of blood speeding through his temple.

“I might just be inclined to help you out. Do I assume you’re talking about some serious bucks?”

“I am, that’s true.”

“You know I went to a state school.”

Sayles said, “I didn’t know but that’s okay.”

“Of course it’s fucking okay,” Strumm barked. “We didn’t have a good team. We had a terrible team. I always thought if I had it to do over again I’d go to a school that had a good team.”

“Auden has a pretty good team.”

“It’s got a nice stadium.”

Sayles said it did, that was true. “Modeled on Soldier Field in Chicago.”

“That a fact? I’ve had a dream in my life,” Strumm said. “A man gets older and he starts to think about his dreams more and more.”

“Happens to all of us.”

“One of my dreams has been to make a lot of money.”

Well, you certifiably crazy old cocksucker, you sure have done that.

“Another’s to give some of it to a school like Auden.…”

Are you playing with me or is this for real?

“And in exchange …”

Spit it out.

“… they’d build a football stadium in my honor. You see, I had my chance and I didn’t seize it. So the next best thing would be to have a stadium named after me.

“Well, Hal, we have the stadium already.”

“Named after Barnes. Who was he?”

“One of our graduates in the 1920s. A philanthropist. He set up an endowment that’s still in effect.”

“So that means you’re not inclined to change the name of the stadium?”

“It’s in the terms of the endowment. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

Strumm studied a sickly plant and sprinkled on its leaves something out of a package labeled “Strumm’s Extra.” Extra what? Sayles wondered. The businessman said, “Well, enough said of that. I’ve had another dream. I’ve always wanted a reactor named after me.”

“A nuclear reactor?”

“At Champaign-Urbana I think it is, they’ve got a research reactor named after somebody. I thought that would be almost as good as a stadium.”

“Hal, we don’t need a reactor. We don’t have a science department to speak of. We’re mostly liberal arts.”

What was in the white-and-yellow packages? Old horses? Old pigs? Strumm shit?

“I’d write you boys a check for two hundred thousand dollars if you built a reactor and named it after me.”

Sayles said quietly, “Hal, we need three and a half million.”

Nip.

“That much, hum? I couldn’t come close to that. Been a bad year for the company. Economy’s down, people get rid of plants. First thing to go. I’m not recessionproof like everybody says.”

“Auden’s going to close.”

“Even if I had a stadium and a reactor both I couldn’t come up with much more than a quarter million.”

“We can name a chair after you. A building. We’ve got a couple buildings. You could have your pick.”

“Three hundred’s the top. Maybe for a vet school I could go up to three-fifty but that’d be the end of it.”

“We don’t want a vet school, Hal.”

“Well, there you have it.”

Nip.

Sayles drove at seventy miles an hour all the way back to the campus. His car came to rest partially over the curb of the parking lot. He ran through the corridors of the Arts and Sciences Building and stopped in front of the door to his lecture hall, composing himself and listening to Glenn Darby’s voice explain about Sayles’s absence.

He caught his breath then pushed the doors open and strode confidently down the long aisle to the podium. He was halfway there when the class realized he had returned and broke into applause, which grew ever louder, rolling and rolling, then was joined by whistles and shouts. By the time he was on the podium, clipping on his lavaliere mike, the applause had become a standing ovation and it was five minutes before he was able to quiet the students.

Then—barely holding back tears—Randy Sayles began to speak, resonantly and impassioned, delivering what might very well be his last lecture at Auden. Or, for that matter, his last lecture at any university.

Corde was no longer pacing. He sat on the couch, slouched down and grim, and Diane was sitting in a straight-backed chair nearby. She held her hands in her lap. Jamie Corde sat between his mother and father. He looked shrunken. “Son, this is pretty serious. I don’t need to tell you that.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“T.T. said you told him you were at the pond by yourself the night the Gebben girl was killed.”

“I was. I was just fishing by myself is all.”

Diane said, “Honey, please.”

Her eyes were on a studded milk-glass candy dish and it was impossible to tell if she was speaking to father or son.

“Jamie, we want to believe you. It’s just that T.T. talked to a couple of people say they saw two boys and you fit the description of one of them.”

“So you don’t believe me. You think I’m lying.” This was a matter-of-fact announcement. He wouldn’t hold Corde’s eyes, which was okay with Corde because he would sure have trouble looking back into his boy’s.

“Son, we need to know what happened. I don’t remember where you were that night, I—”

Jamie leaned forward. “How would you know where I was any night?”

Diane said sternly, “Don’t talk to your—”

He continued, “Where was I last night? Two nights ago? How the hell would you have any idea?”

His mother rebuked, “Young man.” But there was no edge to her words.

The boy was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I went fishing. I was there by myself.”

A felony investigator, Corde had a dozen tricks he could try to drag the real story out of the boy. Bluffs and traps and intimidations. He’d learned them from his journals and seminars and bulletins. He’d practiced them in his continuing education courses. He’d tried them out on car thieves and burglars. He couldn’t bring himself to use them now; he was crying out for the truth but he wanted it only one way.

“Were you fishing by the dam?”

“Not so close to the dam. Up a ways, in somebody’s yard.”

“I’ve told you you’re not to trespass there.”

Jamie didn’t answer.

Corde asked, “Did you see the girl or anyone else that you hadn’t recognized before?”

“No. I just fished then I came home.”

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before? You knew I was on the case.”

“Because I was there alone and I didn’t see anything. What was there to say?”

“Jamie, please.”

The boy looked away. “I’m going to my room.”

“Jamie.…” Corde scooted forward on the couch and touched his son’s knee. The boy remained unresponsive. Corde asked the question he’d been putting off. “The other night, Wednesday, you weren’t home either, were you?”

Diane said, “Bill, what are you asking?”

Jamie kept his eyes on his father. “He wants to know my whereabouts the night the second girl was killed. That’s what he’s asking.”

Corde said, “Wait a minute, son. You can’t treat this so light. T.T. and Steve are going to want to talk to you.…” Jamie walked casually out of the living room. Corde’s face went bright red with fury and he stood. Then he sat slowly on the couch again.

Diane said, “You know he didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“I know he was there.” Corde looked at her miserably. “And I know he’s lying to me. That’s all I know.”

Dear Sarah …

She read the note again but had trouble because of the voices from the other room. Something was going on with Jamie. Her brother scared her some. At times she idolized him. When, for instance, he would include her in what he was doing—like repeating jokes to make sure she got the punch line or taking her along when he went shopping at the mall. But other times he’d look at her like she wasn’t even in this world, as if he was looking through her. He would get all dark and secretish. In Jamie’s dresser Sarah had found magazines filled with pictures of women without any clothes on and a lot of copies of Fantagore—movie scenes of monsters, and people being stabbed or cut up.

She guessed her father had found the magazines and that was why they were fighting.

She tried to ignore them now and turned back to her immediate problem.

Which was what should she give to the Sunshine Man?

She wanted him to have something special. Something personal from her. But when she tried to think of a present her mind went blank. Maybe she could—

The sounds from the next room grew louder. Jamie was mad and her parents spoke in grim voices. It was the way they had talked when Grandpa got sick in the middle of the night and went to the hospital and then didn’t come home ever again.

Then the voices finally stopped and she heard Jamie go into his room and close the door and she heard music start up, the soundtrack from that science fiction movie he’d seen three or four times.

What would the Sunshine Man like?

When her parents went to parties her mother always took a cake or something like that. But Sarah didn’t know how to bake. She looked around the room, surveying her toys, videotapes, a dozen stuffed animals … Ah, that seemed like a good choice—because he had made Redford T. Redford fly out to the circle of stones two weeks ago it was pretty clear that he liked animals and they liked him.

She picked one, a small cinnamon bear that her mother had named Chutney.

She put a pink scarf around Chutney’s neck and then carried him to the window and together they looked out over the backyard. She took the note from her pocket. This time she read it out loud so that the bear could hear what the Sunshine Man had written to her.

Dear Sarah, meet me tomorrow at our magic stones. Be there at three o’clock. Don’t tell anyone. I’ll make sure you never have to go to school ever again.

Dean Larraby said, “I suspect you have two minds about it.”

Brian Okun said, “Well, of course.… What can I say? He’s my boss. I’ve learned more about literature from him than from anyone. I respect him immensely.”

The dean continued, “He was in San Francisco when the murders were committed. So the rumor that he was involved in the girls’ deaths, well, there’s no foundation to that.”

“You mean, Leon was a suspect?”

“The police, you know how it is. Fools. But I’m not concerned about the deaths. The question is whether Professor Gilchrist was dating either Jennie Gebben or Emily Rossiter. Do you know if he was intimate with either of them?”

“Is that what you asked me here about?”

“You’re the one he’s closest to.”

Okun shook his head. “But if he’s not a suspect …”

The dean’s square, matronly face turned to Okun. This was her pose of sincerity but she spoke with menace. “I think the most despicable misuse of power is for a professor to seduce his students.”

“I agree one hundred percent. But I don’t believe it for a minute about Professor Gilchrist. In fact the only rumors I heard were about him and Jennie. Nothing about Emily.”

“So you did hear something.”

He paused, his eyes evasive with embarrassment. “But you can’t believe campus gossip.…”

“If he was sleeping with her I’ll have him dismissed at once.”

“Of course the temptation’s there. He lives alone, you know. He’s a recluse.” Okun shook his head. “No, what am I saying? No, as far as I know he never dated her.” The voice lowered, “There was some talk, you know, that he was a, well, homosexual.”

The South surfaced in both grimace and inflection. “That’s nearly as bad,” she muttered.

As bay-ad. Okun deliberated for a moment.

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “I was going to suggest something. But it doesn’t really seem supportable.”

“Please say it.”

“Well …” Okun’s voice faded and his eyes landed on the dean’s diploma. University of Kentucky. Chahm school …

She said, “I hope you feel your first loyalty is to Auden.”

He sighed. “Dean, I’m as concerned about this as you are. To be blunt, I’ve invested a lot of time and effort in Leon. I have nothing but respect for him and I want to see him vindicated. I want the opportunity to prove he’s innocent. Let me check around his office, see if I can find something about Jennie. Maybe a note from her. Maybe an entry in his desk calendar. If I can’t, well, let’s just accept that this was a tragic rumor. If I do I promise I’ll show it to you and you can make your own decision.”

“That’s very courageous of you.”

“It’s not courageous at all. This school’s been good to me. I owe Auden a great deal.” Okun paused. “The only thing is …”

“Yes?”

“Well, I’d be taking a big risk. This would be, well, spying.” He extended his palms and laughed at the plebian word. “Leon would fire me in a minute if he found out I’d looked through his personal things.”

“If he was sleeping with Jennie we’d dismiss him. He’d be no threat to you.”

“But if he wasn’t sleeping with her …” You stupid bitch. “That,” he added delicately, “is the only time when it would be a risk.”

“Of course.” The dean debated and Okun watched her thoughts stroll to where his were impatiently waiting. She said, “There would be a simple way of protecting you. You’ve applied for a teaching position here, haven’t you?”

“Subject to the acceptance of my dissertation, of course.”

“I could talk to the Appointments Committee. I couldn’t guarantee much of a salary.”

“I’m a scholar,” Okun said. “Money is irrelevant.”

Through the window came a buzz of an old lawn mower. A breeze was blowing but he could detect no scent of cut grass. Okun looked at the worker moving like a drone. He felt abject pity for the man’s unimaginative life, a mass of dull years utterly without the cocaine of intellect.

The dean asked coyly, “Have we just agreed to something?”

A quote of Nietzsche’s came to mind. Okun rewrote it slightly and was pleased with the result. Man is the only animal that makes promises and fulfills threats.

After a sleepless night Corde drove Jamie to the Sheriff’s Department. Red-eyed and ragged with anger and exhaustion, Corde had sat silently in the car. Jamie, however, was talkative, almost flighty, as if the two of them were going fishing. In fact he seemed happier than if they were going fishing. It made Corde’s anger boil harder.

He remembered the way his son’s eyes used to brighten when Corde took him for an unauthorized ride in the squad car, a delight Jamie had had no desire to experience in the last few years. Corde glanced at him then back to the road. Somewhere deep in his son, he eagerly believed, was Corde’s own fundamental manner, which is why he felt so often that words were unnecessary between them. And now it hurt, oh it hurt, to see the boy wall this nature up as well as he did, secure as a hogtied prisoner, with this chatter. Corde didn’t say a single word all the five-mile drive to the Sheriff’s Department.

T.T. Ebbans said, “Hello, Bill. Hi, Jamie.”

Miller waved uneasily to both of them. Corde looked at the astrological chart on the wall prominently taped above Slocum’s desk then nodded to both men. Through the doorway of Ribbon’s office Corde saw Ribbon and Charlie Mahoney the Family Representative talking. The sheriff glanced up, saw Jamie then walked over to the others. Mahoney hung in the doorway.

There was a long moment’s silence then Corde said, “James tells me he was alone that evening.”

Ebbans was nodding. He had on his face a smile that meant nothing. “Well,” he began and fell silent. No one spoke. Ribbon stared intensely at the boy. Corde studied the floor.

“Jamie,” Ebbans finally continued. “We just want to ask you a few questions. You don’t mind, do you?”

“No sir.”

“Why don’t we go into the back office?”

The boy looked at his father and started after Ebbans. Corde followed. Ribbon said, “Bill. Just a minute.” He stopped. Ebbans and Jamie disappeared through the door. Neither looked back.

“Best wait here, Bill.”

“I’d like to be with my boy.”

“He didn’t say anything?” Ribbon asked in a low voice.

“He says he was alone, didn’t see the girl or anybody.”

“Do you think he’s lying?”

Corde looked into Ribbon’s eyes. “No. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

Ribbon touched his arm. “We talked about it, Bill. We think it’s better if you’re not there.”

“He’s a minor. I’ve got a right to be present during …”

Corde’s voice faded and Ribbon verbalized Corde’s sudden thought. “He’s not a suspect, Bill. We’re just treating him like a witness.”

“I—”

Ribbon shook his head. “It’s better for the investigation and better for you not to be in there. We want to avoid any, you know, appearances of impropriety.”

Corde turned toward the door. Thinking how easy it would be to lift Ribbon’s hand off his arm and walk out of the office and into the room where Jamie was. What he did was to take off his hat and drop it on a nearby desk.

Steve Ribbon stepped away, stood for a minute looking out the window then said, “We’ve got to go fishing one of these days.”

Corde said softly, “You bet, Steve.”

“You little shit.” Charlie Mahoney walked slowly around Jamie.

Mahoney was impressed the boy wasn’t crying. He decided he’d have to try harder. “You’re a fucking liar. I know it. Your father knows it. And you know it.”

“I was by myself.” Jamie looked at the door. Deputy Ebbans had left a few minutes ago to get Cokes. Jamie was just now catching on that he wasn’t coming back.

“Oh, cut the crap. What do you think this is? Like breaking curfew? You think you’re gonna get fucking grounded for this? You think they’re going to take away your allowance? I’m talking prison! I’m talking about hard time up in Warwick. You’re how old? Sixteen?”

“Fifteen,” Jamie said.

Now the boy’s voice was quivering.

“You’re fifteen now but by the time you come to trial—”

“Me?” His voice cracked.

“You’ll be sixteen and they’ll send you into the adult wing. That’s it, kid. You’re fucked.”

And he was starting to cry.

“I didn’t do it. I swear I didn’t.”

Mahoney sat and leaned forward. “You don’t know jack shit, you little prick! Jack shit. We’ve gotta find somebody. And ’cause we don’t have anybody else, as far as I’m concerned that somebody is you.”

Jamie wiped his face. “Where’s my father?”

“He said he was leaving.”

“No! He said he was going to be here with me.”

“He just said that to get you in here. He told us you’re lying.”

Jamie looked at the door. His teeth touched and he breathed hotly. “He did not.”

“He said you lied to him and you’d lie to us.”

“He didn’t say that. He wouldn’t.”

“Who the hell were you with? You have a daisy chain going, pulling each other’s dicks?”

“I’m not a homo!”

“You’re not? Then you wouldn’t mind a little pussy. A pretty girl walking by herself. A pretty little college girl. Were you the one that came all over her?”

The tears were thick. “I didn’t do anything.”

“How many times did you see the movie?”

“What movie?”

Mahoney leaned forward and screamed, “Will you cut out this bullshit?! How many times did you see The Lost Dimension?”

Jamie looked down and picked at a ragged fingernail. “A couple. I don’t know.”

Mahoney said slowly, “You know, your father gave us some of your shorts. Ones you’d been wearing while you were beating off. We’ve got samples of your come. We’re going to match it against what we found in the girl.”

“My father …” Jamie whispered.

“We know there were two of you. We’ve—”

“He gave you my underwear?”

“We’ve got enough now to convict you. But we don’t want to leave that other asshole wandering around the streets. You give his name to us and you’ll walk. I guarantee it.”

Jamie looked desperately at the door.

“I was alone.”

Mahoney waited for a long, long minute then kicked back his chair and stood. “I gotta crap. People like you make me want to shit. I’ll be back in three minutes. Think real hard, kid.”

Mahoney left the room. The door remained open about six inches and through the gap Jamie could see the back door of Town Hall. He gazed through the half window at the parking lot and the thick trees beyond.

Outside, it was a May school day. The sun was brilliant and insects zipping through the light flashed like sparks. Outside, kids were lining up to be picked for softball in PE class, they were jogging, playing soccer and tennis, swatting golf balls.

Outside was an entirely different dimension from that in which Jamie Corde now sat.

The sunlight grew in radiance. No, it had moved closer to him! He was astonished to find himself on his feet, no longer sitting in the hard chair. Now, walking across the interrogation room. Now, pushing into the dark corridor, staring all the while at the back door window. In the hallway, pausing. The light began to approach him, slowly at first then picking up speed, rushing toward him, as his heart thudded with a shockingly loud pounding, beating ever faster. The light filled his vision, it illuminated his flushed skin, it grew very close. And Jamie understands that the sound is not his heart at all but the drumming of his running shoes on chestnut floorboards. His hands rise palms out fingers splayed, the back door explodes outward and a million splinters of glass precede Jamie Corde into the golden light.

One man jumped at the sound. The other did not.

Mahoney looked at the shocked face of T.T. Ebbans, who ran into the corridor behind the Sheriff’s Department and stared as the back door, now lacking most of its glass, swung slowly closed once more.

He stepped across the hall to the interrogation room and looked inside then glanced out the broken door and saw Jamie sprinting away from the station house.

“Deputy, you better—”

Ebbans turned his gaunt face to Mahoney. “Jamie wouldn’t run like that. What’d you say to him?”

Mahoney nodded toward the shattered door. “You better stay on him. You know where he’s going.”

Ebbans said evenly, “I should tell you, sir, I think you’re a real son of a bitch.”

“Deputy, he’s getting away.”

“What are you doing here?” Corde asked.

Mahoney, walking through the squad room, glanced at the coffee he sipped. “Devil’s brew.”

“Were you in there with my son?”

“I just looked in on him. He and T.T. were talking.”

Corde stepped into the corridor and saw the empty room. He returned as Mahoney was dumping sugar into his cup. “Where is he?”

“Your kid? I think T.T. said they were going to the lake and look around. I don’t know.”

Corde walked to the front door. “He should’ve told me.

Mahoney noticed the evidence envelopes containing the Polaroids and the messages they carried. “What’s this?”

Ribbon answered tentatively, as if asking for Corde’s approval, “Somebody left them for Bill. He thinks they might be his daughter.”

“You show them to her, ask her about it?”

“She didn’t see them, no. My daughter has a learning disability. She’s going through a rough time right now. This would upset her.”

“Well,” Mahoney said with an exasperated laugh, “that’d be a shame, but—”

“I asked her if anybody’d taken her picture recently and she said no.”

“You say she’s slow?”

“She’s not slow,” Corde said evenly. “She has an above-average IQ. She has dyslexia and dyscalculia.”

“Does she now? Maybe somebody talked her into posing and warned her not to tell anybody about it. That happens all the time.”

“I know my daughter.”

Mahoney, fingering the photos, said, “Your son, does he have a Polaroid camera?”

Corde turned to Ribbon. “Can I see you for a minute, Steve?”

The men walked into the sheriff’s office, Corde leading. Ribbon left the door open. Corde reached back and closed it. He hardly ever lost his temper but the problem was he couldn’t tell when it was going to happen.

Ribbon said, “All right, Bill, I understand—”

Corde’s teeth pressed together fiercely. “No more with that guy! I don’t want him crossing my path.”

“He’s—”

“Let me finish. It may be that Jamie knows a little more than he’s saying but you know him as well as any boy in town and he wouldn’t take those pictures. I’m not going to listen to this crap anymore!”

“But Mahoney doesn’t know Jamie at all and you can’t condemn him for asking the question.”

“Hell yes I can! This thing is way out of hand. The town’s scared out of its mind. We got the paper counting down the days till another moon and we’re going to get ten more folk shot.”

“You’ll remember it was my thought not Charlie’s about the moon.”

“Was he interrogating Jamie?”

Ribbon paused. “He’s been helping out some. Bill … Look, he’s a famous homicide detective.”

“Oh, Steve, come on.”

“We need all the help we can get. This isn’t a frat hazing that got out of hand.”

“Do you know where T.T. took my son?”

“I don’t know if he did. Or where.”

Corde opened the door and walked into the squad room.

Mahoney said, “Hold up, Detective.”

Corde walked toward the door.

“Hey, Detective …”

Corde kept going.

The window was open, letting in the scent of lilacs and whatever snatches of breeze might penetrate the stale-ness of the room. The morning was quiet. Philip’s father was at the warehouse. His mother was asleep. She hadn’t wakened her children in time for school. Philip lay in bed, eating from a box of graham crackers. Crumbs dusted his chest and stomach. He’d wait until ten, when his PE class was over then wake his mother and have her write him a tardiness excuse.

Outside he heard footsteps. He rolled over and looked out the window. “Hey, Phil!” The voice was urgent.

Philip looked into the stand of lilac bushes. He saw Jamie Corde, sweating and pale. “Hey, Jano, what’s the matter?”

“I went by the school. What’re you doing home?” Before Philip could answer he continued urgently, “Come on out here. I gotta talk to you.”

Philip rolled out of bed, pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt then walked through the house. His sister was asleep under a mound of pink satin comforter. In his parents’ room Philip’s mother also lay asleep. Her mouth was open and her lipstick had left wet, red blotches on the pillow around her face, like stains of fresh blood. He continued outside, onto the back porch.

“Hey, man,” Philip called, walking barefoot down the stairs, “what’s—”

“I was just at the police.”

The boy stopped walking. “What did you tell them?”

“Nothing,” Jamie whined. “Nothing.”

Shit. The knife. That’s what it was. He knew it. He felt sweat break out on his forehead. Philip continued into the bushes and sat down. Jamie sat too.

“What do they know?”

“They know I was there and they know I was there with somebody that night. They’ve got sort of a description of you.”

“Shit. Like, how did they find that out?” Suspicion filled Philip’s round face.

“I didn’t say anything. My father …” Jamie said. “He …” He couldn’t bring himself to say anything else about it. He pictured his father going through the dirty clothes, finding his underwear, putting it in an evidence bag.… He began to cry. “They said we’re going to prison! What are we going to do? Oh, man.”

Jamie’s hands were shaking but Philip was calm. In the dimension where he spent much of his time nothing was impossible, nothing was what it seemed. Maple trees were sodium boosters of intergalactic vehicles. Sidewalks were crystal walkways a thousand feet above the plasma energy core of the planet. Stars weren’t stars at all but holes in the paltry three-dimensional world through which the all-powerful, all-brilliant Guardians trillions and trillions of light-years big looked down. In Philip’s world fat boys in dirty blue jeans were sinewy, lithe heros, who could pull on cloaks and disappear from their terrible enemies. “We have to vanish,” he said softly.

“Vanish?”

“Like, dimensionally.” He added in a whisper, “Permanently.”

Jamie whispered, “It was just a movie, man.”

Philip continued in his quiet voice, “We’re both fucked. You want to go to prison? Then what? Come back and live at home? With your father?” He smiled in a weary way. “This dimension sucks, Jano.”

Jamie was silent.

“We took an oath,” Philip said quietly. “We took an oath—”

“We shouldn’t have done it to her.”

“An oath to the death.” Philip looked up at the sky through a cluster of faint purple lilacs. “That dimension’s real. This one isn’t. We took an oath. Are you going back on it?”

Jamie grabbed a black branch dotted with buds and small blossoms. He stripped the sinewy twigs away, like peeling skin off bones, and flung the branch away furiously with a low moan.

Philip said, “Remember Dathar? The way he leapt off the Governance Building? They thought they had him but he got away.”

“He didn’t get away. He died. The Guardians brought him back but he died.”

“It’s the same thing,” Philip whispered. “He got away.”

Jamie said nothing.

The sound of a siren, howling like a dentist’s drill, filled the front yard. Philip’s smile vanished as the squad car skidded to a stop. He stared at his friend. “You told them!”

“No!” Jamie scrambled to his feet.

Footsteps sounded. Running, the men spread out. Ebbans and Slocum and Miller and two other deputies.

“You turned me in!” Philip screamed as he began willing his huge body to run, feet pointing outward, stomach and tits bouncing with every step, feeling the sting of his chafed legs and the deeper pain of a struggling heart.

“Whoa, boy, hold up there!”

“Stop him! Slow him up!”

Slocum was chuckling. “He’s doing okay for a big fellow.”

Somebody else laughed and said, “We need ourselves a lasso.”

The men easily caught up with Philip and pulled him to the ground. They were laughing as if they’d grounded a suckling pig for a barbecue. Handcuffs appeared and were ratcheted on pudgy wrists.

One of the cops asked Jamie a question but the boy missed the words. All he could hear was the sound of Philip’s voice, filling the backyard, as he shrieked, “You turned me in, you turned me in, you turned me in!”

Corde paused outside the house.

He saw: a broken lawn mower, termite-chewed stacks of black firewood, a V-6 engine block sweating under a foggy plastic tarp, rusty tools, four bloated trash bags, bald tires, a garbage can filled with brackish water. The lawn was riddled with crabgrass and bare spots of packed mud. Showing through the scabby white clapboard of the house were patches of milky green from an earlier paint job.

Three brilliant bursts of color tempered the grim scene—orange-red geraniums in clay pots.

Inside were T.T. Ebbans, Jim Slocum, Lance Miller and the two county deputies. Charlie Mahoney was not there. On the couch sat Philip and Jamie. Creth Halpern stood over his boy, staring down at him. His arms were crossed and he had an eerie smile on his face. Jane Halpern sat in a chair off to the side of the room. Her eyes were red and her lips were glisteningly wet. Corde didn’t know much about her. Only that she’d been a thin, pretty cheerleader in the New Lebanon High School class behind his, and she was now a thin, pretty drunk.

The house smelled bad. Food and mold. He also could smell animal and he vaguely remembered a dog nosing in weeds behind a shed in the backyard. With the door wide open the brilliant outdoor light, which looked unnatural in the dank room, revealed a coat of grime and spheres of dustballs. The windows were mostly shaded. Corde stepped on something hard. He kicked away a small, dried dog turd. He crouched next to Jamie. “You all right, son?”

The boy looked at him silently with an undiluted hate that made Corde want to weep. He motioned to Ebbans and the two of them stepped outside. “What happened, T.T.? Did you and Mahoney spook Jamie and follow him here?”

To his credit in Corde’s mind Ebbans held the detective’s eyes and answered honestly. “I’m sorry, Bill. That’s what happened. He just asked to see him for a few minutes by himself and Steve told me to let him. I didn’t know what he had in mind. I swear that.”

Corde said, “You don’t think Philip did it, do you?”

“Take a look at what we found.” Ebbans led him to the squad car. Inside was a foot-high stack of porn magazines and violent comic books, also sketchbooks and notebooks. Corde flipped through the crudely drawn pictures of spaceships and monsters, montages of photos cut out of the school yearbook: girls imprisoned in towers and dungeons, chained to walls while snake creatures circled around them. Much of the material had the Naryan insignia hand-printed on it.

Corde thought of the picture of Sarah, her skirt high over her thighs.

“He had this incendiary thing hooked up. We opened the drawer where he’d hid all this stuff and it started to set fire to the file cabinet. It blew a fuse before it did any damage. Lance went through the backyard. In the barbecue he found some scraps of Jockey shorts the kid’d tried to burn.” Ebbans touched a small plastic bag. “They were stained and it could be semen. Oh, and we also found some pictures of a naked girl. Polaroids.”

Polaroids.

“Jennie?”

“Can’t tell. It’s a girl’s breasts.”

“It’s not …” Corde dodged Ebbans’s eyes. “Not a younger girl, is it?”

Ebbans said, “Not a little girl, no.” He continued, “And I found a pair of muddy boots. I’m doing casts.”

From the porch Slocum offered, “It all fits the profile. The smut collection, the home situation, everything.”

Corde ignored this and said to Ebbans, “You didn’t question him by himself, did you? He’s got to have his parents present.”

“No. I didn’t question him at all. But I’ll tell you, his father’s not going to be much help to the kid. He’s the one sent us out to the barbecue. Told us he saw Philip burning something there the night after the first killing.”

Corde stared at the pile in the back seat of the car. In the center of Corde’s bulletin board was a sign that he’d sent off for from National Law Enforcement Monthly a couple of years ago. The brittle yellow slip of glossy paper read: Physical evidence is the cornerstone of a case. He was looking at physical evidence now. Physical evidence that could put two boys in prison for forty years. And one of them was his son.

Ribbon and Ellison arrived in one of the county’s fancy Furies. The slogan on the side said, If you drink, do us all a favor. Don’t drive. Ebbans told them what they’d found.

Inside Halpern was leaning over his son, who stared straight ahead. “What the hell was going through your mind?” The boy’s eyes were glazed. He didn’t speak. His face wasn’t particularly sad or frightened. He seemed to be possessed.

Philip played at the Corde house once or twice a week. But was this the boy who’d taken the pictures of Sarah? Who had put the threatening newspaper article on the rosebush? And in Diane’s diaphragm case?

Was this the boy who murdered Jennie Gebben and Emily Rossiter?

He looked at Philip’s round, soft face, smudged with dirt or chocolate, a face that did not appear so much guilty as bewildered.

Corde said, “Jamie, come here.”

Slocum’s head turned. “Say, Bill … maybe it’s not such a good idea. Uh, talking to him in private, I mean.”

Corde squashed his temper and ignored the deputy. He motioned to his son. The boy stood and followed him onto the porch. Ribbon stepped forward.

Corde stopped him with a look. “Leave me alone with my boy.” The sheriff hesitated only a moment before stepping away.

Jamie leaned against the porch bannister and turned to his father, “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“Jamie, why are you being this way? I want to help you.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Just tell me what happened.”

“I don’t know what happened.”

“Son, it’s murder we’re talking about. They’re looking for somebody to send to jail for this.”

“I know you are.”

“Me?”

“You want me to make up something about Phil?”

“I want you to tell the truth. I want you to tell it to me right here and now.”

“Bill?” Ribbon came to the doorway. “You can be present at questioning but—”

“Oh, goddamnit,” Corde exploded. “Goddamnit! You don’t have probable cause to charge him. Call the DA. Ask him!”

Ribbon said delicately, “We do for conspiracy and obstruction. You’ll just make things worse for everybody.”

“Jamie, why?” Corde’s eyes begged, his hand reached for his son’s arm but stopped short of contact. “What did I do? Why won’t you tell me?”

Eyes downcast, the boy let Ribbon lead him into the filthy house, while his father’s desperate questions fell like shot quail, silent and flimsy.

The tall grass waved in the wind and the sunlight flickered off the leaves of thin saplings. Sarah stepped into her circle of stones and sat down. She crossed her legs carefully. From her backpack she took the bear she was going to give to the Sunshine Man and set him next to her.

She looked at her Madonna watch. It said 2:40. She closed her eyes and remembered that this meant twenty minutes to three. She hated numbers. Sometimes you counted to a hundred before they started over, other times you counted to sixty.

Twenty minutes until the Sunshine Man arrived.

She remembered a drill at school—her second-grade teacher would move the hands on a clock and then point to different students and have them tell the time. This exercise socked her with icy terror. She remembered the teacher’s bony finger pointing at her. And, Sarah, what time is it now? She screamed that she didn’t know she couldn’t tell don’t ask don’t ask don’t ask.… She cried all the way home from school. That night her daddy bought her the digital watch she now wore.

A sudden breeze whipped her hair around her face and she lay down, using her backpack as a pillow. Sometimes she took afternoon naps here. Looking around her, wondering where the Sunshine Man would come from, Sarah noticed just above the horizon a sliver of new moon. She imagined that the sky was a huge ocean and that the moon was the fingernail on a giant’s hand as he swam just below the surface of the smooth water. Then she wondered how come you can see the moon in the daytime.

She closed her eyes and she thought of the giant as he swam, lifting arms as big as mountains from the water, kicking his mile-long legs and speeding across the sky. Sarah was afraid of the water. When the family went to the park downtown she would still play in the baby pool, which made her ashamed but wasn’t as bad as the terror of bouncing on the adult pool floor with the water inches from her nose and thinking she might get swept into the deep part.

She wished she could swim. Strong strokes, like Jamie. Maybe this was something else she could ask the Sunshine Man to do for her. She looked at her watch. 2:48. She counted on her fingers. Two minutes … No! Twelve minutes. She closed her eyes and kneaded the grass bunched up at her hips and pretended she was swimming, skimming across the pool like a speedboat, back and forth, saving the lives of children struggling in the deep end and racing past her brother once then again and again.…

Five minutes later she heard the approaching footsteps.

Sarah Corde’s heart began pounding in joyous anticipation, and as she climbed out of her imaginary pool she opened her eyes.

Look at this place. Lord.

Bill Corde couldn’t get over the size of Wynton Kresge’s office.

“Plush.”

“Yeah, well.” Kresge seemed uncomfortable.

The room was probably a third as big as the entire New Lebanon Sheriff’s Department. Corde took pleasure walking over the thick green carpet and wondered why two busy oriental rugs had been laid over the pile.

“That’s the biggest desk I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah, well.”

Corde sat down in one of the visitors’ chairs, which was itself bigger and more comfy than his own Sears armchair at home, and his a recliner at that. He tried to scoot it closer to the desk but it wouldn’t move and he had to stand again and lug the chair up to the desk.

Kresge explained, “Was the office of some dean or another. Academic affairs, something like that. He retired and they needed someplace to put me. I think they like having a black man on this corridor. See, when you come this way from the main stairwell you see me at my big desk. Looks good for the school. Think I’m a big shot. Little do they know. So they caught the kid.”

“They caught him. He was a friend of my son’s.”

“Well.” Kresge would be wondering whether he should ask the question about how close a friend but he let it pass.

“The evidence is pretty strong against him. He’s a spooky boy and his father’s worse.” Corde realized he still had his hat on—it banged into the high back of the chair—and he took it off, pitched it like a Frisbee onto the seat of the other chair. He opened his briefcase. “I need a favor.”

“Sure.” Kresge said eagerly.

Corde leaned forward and set a plastic bag in front of Kresge. Inside was the burnt scrap of computer paper.

“What’s this?”

“A bit of that paper we found behind—”

“No, I mean this.” The security chief pointed at the white card attached to the bag by a red string.

“That? A chain of custody card.”

“It’s got your name on it.”

“It’s not important, Wynton. The piece of—”

“This’s for trial, right?”

“Right. So the prosecutor can trace the physical evidence back to the crime scene.”

“Got it. So that if there’s a gap in the chain, the defense attorney can get the evidence thrown out?”

“Right.” Because Corde was here to ask a favor he indulged Kresge, who was examining the COC card closely. Finally Corde continued, “The piece of paper inside? I’d like to find out where it came from. I’ve got this idea—”

“You’re leaning on it.”

“—it’s from the school. What?”

“You’re leaning on it.”

“On what?”

Kresge motioned him away. Corde sat back in the chair and Kresge yanked a thick wad of computer printouts from beneath of stack of magazines. Corde had been using the pile as an armrest.

“It’s a university Accounting Department printout. They send them around every week to each department. Mine shows me security expenses, real and budgeted, allocation of overhead. You know, that sort of thing.”

“You know what department this was from?”

Kresge looked at it. “No idea.”

“Any chance you could find out?”

“Technically I don’t have access to the Accounting Department’s files.”

Corde asked coyly, “How ’bout untechnically?”

“I’ll see what I can do.” After a pause he asked, “But if they caught the boy what’s the point?”

Corde slowly touched away a fleck of lint from his boot heel and stalled long enough that an attractive woman blustered into the office with an armful of letters for Kresge to sign. The security chief rose and with clumsy formality introduced two people with nothing in common except their lack of desire to meet. Corde, however, was grateful for the curious decorum—it seemed to drive the question from Kresge’s mind and after the signing-fest, when their conversation resumed, he did not ask it again.

She could sense him nearby, almost as though he was hovering right over her body like a wave of hot sunlight.

She swung her head about, peering into the clearing, into the forest, the tall grass.

More footsteps, leaves rustling, twigs snapping.

(So: He doesn’t fly, he doesn’t materialize, he doesn’t float. He walks. That’s okay.)

Sarah looked for the glow of sun as he approached but she could see nothing except trees and branches, leaves, grass, shadows. The footsteps grew closer. Hesitant, uncertain. Then she saw him—a figure in the woods, coming slowly toward her, picking his way through the brush. He seemed less like a wizard than, well, a big man tromping noisily through the forest. (That’s okay too.)

“I’m over here. Here!” She stood up, waving her arm.

He paused, located her and slowly changed direction, pushing aside branches.

She picked up the stuffed bear and ran toward him. She shouted, “I’m here!”

A sheet of bright green leaves lifted aside and the deputy stepped out, brushing dust and leaves off his uniform.

“Tom!” she cried, her heart sinking.

“Hey, missie, how’d you get here without getting all messed up?” He picked a leaf out of his hair then swatted his forehead. “Skeeter.” He examined his palm.

Crestfallen, Sarah stared up at him.

“You’re not supposed to be out here, you know. You could get me in a whole mess of trouble. You’re supposed to stay close to the house. Anyway, ’nough said. Your mom wants to see you now. You’ve got an appointment at the doctor’s, she says.”

“I can’t come right now.” She scanned the forest. He’s leaving! I can tell. The deputy scared him off.

“Well, I don’t know,” Tom said patiently. “Your mother told me to fetch you.”

“Not now, please? Just a half hour?” She was close to tears.

“That’s a cute little fellow you’ve got there. What’s his name?”

“Chutney.”

“How about if you and Chutney come home now and afterward you come back here with me and I’ll keep an eye on you? How’d that be?”

When she didn’t answer, the deputy said, “Your mom’ll be pretty unhappy with me if I don’t bring you right now, like she asked. You don’t want her to have words with me, do you?”

It was true. If she didn’t come now, if she missed the appointment with Dr. Parker, her mother would be furious with the deputy. Sarah couldn’t stand the thought of anyone being mad because of her. People hated you when you made them mad, they laughed at you.

She looked around her once more. The Sunshine Man was gone now. He’d fled and was far away.

“Why you looking so sad, little lady?”

“I’m not sad.” Sarah walked through the grass. “Come this way. It’s easier.” She led him out of the tall grass into the strip of land beside the cow pasture and turned toward the house, certain that she and the Sunshine Man would never meet.

Special to the Register—A freshman at New Lebanon High School has been charged in the “Moon Killer” slayings of two Auden University co-eds, law enforcement authorities announced today.

The fifteen-year-old youth, whose identity has been withheld because of his age, was apprehended by town and county deputies at his parents’ home yesterday afternoon.

“He clearly fits the profile that we were working from,” said New Lebanon Sheriff Steve Ribbon. “He had a collection of deviate photographs and drawings of girls from the high school. It looked like he had a whole series of assaults planned.”

Sheriff Ribbon added that authorities are looking at the possibility that the youth was involved in the slaying last year of another Auden co-ed, Susan Biagotti.

“At the time,” he said, “it appeared that the girl was killed during a robbery. But the way we’re looking at it now, it might have been the first in this series of killings.”

Some residents greeted the news of the arrest with cautious relief. “Of course, we’re glad he’s been caught,” said a New Lebanon housewife who refused to give her name, “but it seems like there’s still a lot of questions. Was he doing this alone? Is it safe for my children to go back to school?”

Others were less restrained in their reaction. “We can breathe again,” said one Main Street shopkeeper, who also insisted on anonymity. “My business came to a standstill the last couple weeks. I hope he gets the chair.”

Under state law, a fifteen-year-old can be tried as an adult for murder, but no one under eighteen can be sentenced to death. If the jury convicts the youth of first-degree murder, his sentence could range from thirty-five years to life and he would have to serve at least twenty-five years before he would be eligible for parole.

Diane had found a psychiatrist cartoon in a magazine and cut it out for Dr. Parker. It showed a little fish sitting in a chair holding a notebook. Next to him was a huge shark lying down on a couch and the little fish was saying to the shark, “Oh, no, it’s perfectly normal to want to eat your psychiatrist.” Diane kept studying the cartoon and not getting it. But the expression on the face of the shark was so funny she broke out in laughter.

Which wasn’t as loud as the laughter that escaped from Dr. Parker’s mouth when she looked at the clipping. Maybe the woman did have a sense of humor after all. Dr. Parker pinned the cartoon up on her bulletin board. Diane felt ecstatic, as if she’d been given a gold star at school.

Sarah was in the waiting room. Dr. Parker had asked to see Diane first today. By herself. This troubled Diane, who wondered what kind of bad news the woman had to report. But seeing the doctor laugh, she sensed this was no crisis. As Dr. Parker rummaged through her desk Diane told her about Ben Breck.

“Breck? I think I’ve heard of him. Let’s look him up.” She spun around in her chair and found a huge book. She opened it and flipped through. “Ah, here we go. He’s forty-one.… Impressive. Summa cum from Yale, ditto an M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology. Ph.D. in education from Chicago. He’s taught at a number of Ivy League schools. Currently tenured at Chicago. Published extensively in the journals. Visiting at Auden, is he? Lucky you.”

“So I should take him up on it?”

“Cheap tutoring from an expert. I’d say there isn’t much of a choice there.”

“I’ve already told him I would.”

“I think you’ll see some dramatic improvements in Sarah.” The doctor looked at her watch. “This session will be very short, Mrs. Corde. A few minutes with you, a few with Sarah. I’m not going to charge you for the time.”

“My horoscope for this month must’ve said, ‘You will meet two generous therapists.’”

Dr. Parker’s sense of humor had been spent on the cartoon; she ignored the pleasantry and dug again with some irritation into the bottom of her desk drawer. Finally she extracted a small black box.

The doctor said, “You’re going to see Sarah carrying this around with her. Tell your husband and son to leave it alone. Don’t touch it, don’t listen to it, don’t ask her about it. Unless she says something first.”

Diane asked the most innocuous question she could think of. “Is it a tape recorder?”

“That’s right.”

“What’s it for?”

“I’m going to reconstruct Sarah’s self-esteem.”

“How?”

She answered tersely, “Sarah’s going to write a book.”

Diane smiled, a reflex. Then she decided that the joke was in poor taste and she frowned. Dr. Parker pushed the recorder, a blank cassette and an instruction book toward Diane, who scooped them up and held them helplessly. When the doctor said nothing more Diane said, “You’re not joking, are you?”

“Joking?” Dr. Parker looked as if Diane were the one making the tasteless comment. “Mrs. Corde, I’d think you’d know by now I rarely joke.”

Diane Corde believed that the perfection of children’s fingers was proof that God existed and she thought of this now watching her daughter hold the tape recorder, examining it with some small suspicion and turning it over in her pale hands. Diane unfolded a tattered copy of the instruction manual and took the recorder back. She set it on the living room coffee table. In her left hand she held two AA batteries and a new cassette.

“I think we should …” She examined the instruction sheet.

“Lemme,” Sarah said.

Diane read. “We have to—”

“Lemme.”

Click, click, click. “There.”

Diane looked down. Sarah had the machine running and was pressing the Play and Record buttons simultaneously, saying, “Testing, testing.”

“How did you do that? Did you read the instructions?”

Sarah rewound the tape and pressed another button. Diane’s tinny voice repeated, “… read the instructions?”

“Mom, come on. Like, it’s easy.” She looked at the recorder then back up to her mother. “Dr. Parker wants me to make up stories and put them in my book.”

“That’s what she said.”

“I don’t know what to write about. Maybe Buxter Fabricant?”

“I think Dr. Parker would like to hear that story. He’s the dog that became president, right?”

“I like Buxter—” Sarah scrunched her nose. “—but I already wrote that story. I could write, a story about Mrs. Drake Duck … , No, no, no! I’m going to write a story about Mrs. Beiderbug.”

“Sarah. Don’t make fun of people’s names.”

“It’s going to be a good story.” Sarah dropped the recorder in her Barbie backpack.

Jamie appeared in the doorway. He was eating a sandwich and carrying a glass of milk. From the way he was looking at Sarah, Diane knew he wanted to talk about something out of the girl’s presence. He turned and walked back into the kitchen. She heard the refrigerator door opening and the shuffle as he pulled out a plastic gallon jug of milk.

Diane stood up and walked into the kitchen. She took a package of chicken from the freezer and set it on a pad of paper towels, taking her time as she cut away the plastic wrapper. Jamie sat at the table and silently stared at his glass of milk, which he then gulped down. He stood, filled the glass again and returned to his chair. She thought it was odd that though Sarah had problems with language, speaking with Jamie was often far more difficult.

She asked, “Practice today?”

“Yeah. Later.”

“Then you have weight training?”

“Not today.”

There was nothing more she could do with the chicken and she decided to boil potatoes, because that would give her an excuse to stay in the kitchen for as long as he wanted her to be there. She began peeling. The silence was thick as oil smoke. Finally she said, “We know you didn’t have anything to do with it, Jamie.”

The prosecutor hadn’t presented the boy to the grand jury but he had warned the Cordes sternly that he would have to testify at Philip’s trial. And that there was a chance new evidence might arise implicating him further.

Jamie drank the milk like a man on a bender. He stood and she prayed he was just going to the refrigerator, not leaving the room. He poured another glass and sat down again. He asked, “Did Dad like look through my room or anything?”

“Did he what?”

When he didn’t repeat the question she said, “Your father wouldn’t do that. If there was something bothering him he’d talk to you.”

“Uh-huh.” Her son sat with his head tilted, studying the glass. Diane wanted to tell him how much she loved him, how proud they were of him, how the incident at the pond—whatever had happened—was one of those ambiguous glitches in the complicated history of families that don’t touch the core of its love. Yet she was afraid to. She believed that if she did, the words would turn his heart as thick as his sculpted muscles and he would move further away from her.

Jamie—

Sarah appeared in the doorway. “He’s here, Mommy! Dr. Breck!”

Diane looked toward the living room and saw a car parked in the driveway. “Okay, I’ll be there in a minute.”

Sarah left and Diane said to her son, “Your father loves you.” She stood and ran a hand through his hair, feeling his neck muscles tense at this. He said nothing.

A suspect had been arrested but Tom the pink-cheeked deputy was still taking his job seriously.

Nobody had relieved him of his command yet. Besides, he was hugely aware that somebody had gotten past him at least once and that Sarah had hightailed it into the woods right under his nose; he wasn’t letting Ben Breck put a foot on the front porch until he had the Queen’s okay.

Diane nodded. “It’s all right. He’s expected.” She turned to the man standing on the concrete walk. “Dr. Breck?”

“Call me Ben, please.” He walked past the deputy into the house.

Breck was over six feet tall, with dark, unruly hair laced with gray. Forty-one, she remembered Dr. Parker had said. He had boyish qualities—his voice and face, for instance—and you could see exactly what he had looked like when he was twelve. He seemed to be in good shape but he was pale and this gave him the deceptive appearance of weakness. His eyes were dark. He wore black jeans and a tweed sports coat over a dark blue shirt. His hands were small and his fingers almost delicate. He slouched. Diane, accustomed to her husband’s military posture, was put off by this initially. Almost immediately though this aversion flipflopped and became pleasantly quirky. He carried a battered briefcase.

Diane motioned him to the couch. He glanced out the window. “Is there, uhm, something wrong?”

“Oh, the deputy? No, my husband’s a detective. He’s involved in the case where those girls were killed.”

“The students?”

“That’s right. The Sheriff’s Department sometimes has a deputy keeping an eye out on the houses of the investigators.”

Sarah bounded down the stairs and halted in the arched doorway to the living room, clutching her pink backpack and gazing at Breck. Diane noted that she had changed clothes and was now wearing her favorite T-shirt, bright blue and emblazoned with a seahorse. The girl brushed a long tail of hair from her face and said nothing.

“Sarah, this is Dr. Breck.”

“You’re my tutor.”

“That’s right. I’m pleased to meet you, Sarah,” Breck said.

To Diane’s surprise, the girl shook his hand.

Jamie walked quickly through the living room, wearing his biking shorts and a sweatshirt.

“Oh, Jamie …”

He glanced at the three people in the room and didn’t say a word. He left by the front door. She saw him leap on his bike and pedal quickly out of the driveway.

“Wrestling practice,” she explained to Breck.

“Ah.” Breck turned to Sarah. “What’ve you got there?”

“My backpack.”

“What’s in it?”

“Barbie. And Redford T. Redford—”

“That’s one of her stuffed bears.” Diane felt a need to translate.

“That’s a clever name.”

Sarah announced, “He’s the world’s smartest bear. And I have my tape recorder.”

“Tape recorder? Oh-oh, are you recording what I’m saying? Like a spy?”

“No!” Sarah smiled. “I’m writing stories.”

“Stories?” Breck’s eyes went wide. “I’ve never known anybody who writes stories.”

“Dr. Parker is having me write a book.”

Breck said, “I write books. But mine are very boring. Students use them in class. I’ll bet yours are more interesting than mine. Sarah, why don’t you sit over here next to me.”

Diane asked, “Can I get you anything?”

“A salt shaker,” Breck said.

“Pardon?”

“Actually, the whole carton would be better.”

“Salt.”

Breck said, “Please.”

Diane walked into the kitchen and Breck turned to Sarah. “How do you spell ‘chair’?”

“C-H-A-I-R.”

“Very good.”

Sarah beamed.

“How about ‘table’?”

She closed her eyes and thought for a minute. She shook her head. Then she said, “T-A-B-E-L. No, L-E.”

“That’s right. How ’bout ‘tablecloth’?”

The girl went quiet, her mood changed fast as a balloon popping. “I don’t know.” Her face became sullen.

“Tablecloth,” Breck said.

Diane, returning with the blue carton, felt an electric rush across her face—sympathetic fear. She’s getting upset, she’s going to be blocked and you’re bucking for a tantrum, boy.…

Breck opened his briefcase and pulled out a sheet of black paper. Diane handed him the salt. Breck took it and poured a large pile onto the paper then spread it out smoothly. Mother and daughter watched—one with fascination, one with caution. Breck said to Sarah, “Let’s spell it together.”

“I don’t know how.” She stared at the salt. Diane stood in the doorway until she saw what she believed was a glance from Breck, requesting privacy. She retreated to the kitchen.

“Give me your hand,” Breck said to the girl.

Reluctantly Sarah did. He took her index finger and drew a T in the salt with it. “You feel it?” He asked. “You feel what a T is like?”

Sarah nodded. Breck smoothed the salt. “Do it again.”

She hesitated, then started the letter. It was a clumsy attempt, looking more like a plus sign.

“Let’s try an A.”

“I can do that one,” she said and smoothed the salt herself.

For a half hour they made salt letters. A hundred “table”s. A hundred “cloth”s. A hundred of those words put together, making a third word. Even though Sarah struggled fiercely to spell it correctly—and did so the majority of times—Breck did not seem interested in her results. Less a tutor than a sculpting instructor, Breck urged her to feel the shape of the letters. Diane, crouched like a peeping Tom, peered through a crack in the kitchen door and watched.

At the end of the session he gave Sarah a tracing notebook, which contained a story Breck read to her. Sarah declared it was “a pretty darn good story,” even though she guessed the ending halfway through. Breck gave her instructions on tracing the paragraphs. He stood up and left Sarah to her book and tape recorder and mangy stuffed bear.

“Hello?” Breck called. “Mrs. Corde?”

“In here.”

He walked into the kitchen, where Diane had rapidly resumed peeling potatoes.

“You are amazing,” she said. Then confessed, “I overheard.”

“These are very well-known techniques. Rapport with the child. Multisensory stimulation. Work with her motor skills. Use her given talents to compensate for her deficits.”

“You seem like an artist.”

“I like what I do. That’s the optimal motivation for any endeavor.”

Optimal? Endeavor?

“You want some coffee?”

He said, “Sure.”

She poured two cups and chattered about her garden and a PTA bake sale she was chairing. Diane Corde didn’t know what to make of her rambling. Apparently neither did Breck, who sat in the kitchen and sipped coffee while he looked close to uncomfortable. He gazed out over the backyard. When she paused he said, “I like these windows, you can see the whole field there. I have bay windows like these in my town house.”

“Where’s that?”

“Chicago. South Side. Only I don’t see fields. I see the lake.”

“I wonder if that’s why they call them bay windows. Bay, lake.”

He said, “Or perhaps it’s because they’re shaped like a bay.”

Diane said that was true and felt like a fool that her joke had missed its mark.

Breck said, “Sarah’s a good candidate for improvement. Dr. Parker has her dictating stories to build up self-esteem, I assume?”

“That’s right.”

“She has an astonishing imagination.”

“She’s always making up things. It drives me nutty sometimes. I don’t know what’s real and what’s fantasy.”

“A plight many of us suffer from.”

Plight.

There was a moment of long silence. Breck was still gazing, though no longer at the cow pasture. Now it was Diane’s eyes he was examining.

He asked, “Do you work?”

“Yep. You just finished with one of my bosses. I got two more. Jamie—you saw him—and a husband. They’re all a handful.”

“Ah, your son. The bicyclist. Does he have any learning problems?”

“Nope. Good student, good athlete.”

“That’s not unusual. Birth order is often a significant factor in dyslexia. And your husband’s a policeman?”

“A detective. He works like a maniac, he’s away from home so much.” Diane found herself about to blurt, “And that’s with a case he’s been ordered off of!” But she said only, “We don’t get many murders in New Lebanon.”

“From what I’ve read it’s got the town in quite an uproar.”

“Well, all this talk of Moon Killers and cults and that nonsense …”

“Is it nonsense?”

“Well, they’ve caught that boy. I shouldn’t be telling you this but that’s why Jamie was a little moody. The one they’ve indicted was a friend of his.”

“Really?” Breck frowned in sympathy. “Poor kid.”

“I’m of mixed mind. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Sarah but the reason the deputy’s out there? Somebody’s left some threats.”

“How terrible.”

“To get Bill to stop the investigation.”

“And they think your son’s friend did that?”

“Philip’s a sorry soul. With parents like his I’m not surprised he turned out bad. He’s been abused, I’m sure. And his mother drinks. But threatening my daughter … I don’t cut him any slack. He gets no sympathy from me.”

“But if they’ve arrested him, why the guard?”

“That’s my Bill. Between you and me and the fence post, he’s not sure the boy’s guilty. He asked to have the deputy kept on the house for a few days longer. I can’t say that upsets me too much.” Diane hesitated. “I guess I shouldn’t … I mean, this is pretty much classified stuff I’m telling you.”

Breck acknowledged the discretion with a nod and Diane turned the talk back to the PTA. After ten minutes Breck looked at his watch and stood. “Thanks for the coffee. I’d like to stay longer,” he said with sincerity, “but I have a lecture to prepare.”

Diane took his hand and found she was studying parts of him—his floppy hair, his eyelids, his lips, reaching conclusions about each. This allowed her to avoid conclusions about Breck as a person. Or as a man.

She thought suddenly that this was the first time in years she was having a serious talk alone in her kitchen with a man not related by blood or marriage. She asked, “Next Tuesday?”

“I’ll look forward to it.” Breck added, “I’ve enjoyed talking with you. I think we have some good rapport established.”

“Is that important?”

“Indeed.” Breck took her hand again. He continued to hold it, pressing firmly, as he said, “You’d be surprised how important the tutor’s relationship with a parent is.”

MEMO

TO: Files

FROM: Dennis B. Brann, Esq.

DATE: May 8

RE: People v. Halpern, a Minor

Attached are the relevant portions of a transcript of my interview with Philip Halpern, defendant in this case, which interview took place today at the New Lebanon Sheriff’s Department, following a bail hearing at which bail was set in the amount of $1 million and was not posted. The Grand Jury of Harrison County has indicted Philip with one count of first-degree murder, one count of first-degree manslaughter, one count of first-degree rape and one count of first-degree sodomy, in connection with the death of Jennifer Gebben, and one count first-degree murder and one count first-degree manslaughter in the death of Emily Rossiter.

DNA genetic marker test results indicate that the semen found in and on the Gebben victim was Philip’s (see Attachment “A”).

DBB: Philip, I’d like to talk to you about what happened at the pond. Everything you tell me, even if you tell me that you did what you’re accused of, is only between us. The court will never find that out.

PH: Yessir.

DBB: Tell me what happened that night, that Tuesday, April 20.

PH: I was with Jamie—

DBB: That’s Jamie Corde?

PH: Yeah and what it was, we’d been fishing, only nothing was biting so we thought since it’d rained during the day there’d be some worms close to the surface, so we thought we’d dig some and we walked over along the dam. It was around ten. Jamie and me were walking along there and we looked down and we seen this white thing and we thought it was, I thought it was one of those, you know, those dolls they sell in the back of magazines sometimes.…

DBB: Dolls?

PH: You like blow them up and, you know, do things to them.

DBB: Inflatable dolls.

PH: Yeah. So I go, “Let’s go look,” and we go down there and it isn’t a doll, it’s this girl and she’s lying there and she looks dead.

DBB: Where was she?

PH: Next to the truck. The old Ford.

DBB: What position was she in?

PH: Lying on her back. They’re not listening in, are they? I mean is there a microphone here or anything?

DBB: No, there isn’t. It’s okay to talk to me.

PH: She was lying in the mud on her back. Her arm’s up over her face and her fingers were all curly. It was like weird. Jamie and me walked down to her and we think she’s like asleep but then I think maybe she’s dead and I don’t want to touch her at first and we just stand around and look at her then we look at each other for a while and we’re like, oh, man, what’re we going to do? And we can’t think of anything. So I finally bend down and feel on her neck like they do on TV for the pulse or whatever, and I’m like I can’t feel anything and then I …

DBB: Go on.

PH: Then I keep touching her. And Jamie bends down and he touches her leg and she’s cold but she’s not hard like, you know, with rigid mortis. I …

DBB: Go on.

PH: I touch her, you know, her tits. Then I pull up her skirt and Jamie’s like, “Man, this is too much.” He goes, “Like I’m serious, we gotta call somebody. Let’s call my dad.” But I’m still touching her. I can’t help myself. I cut her underwear off with the knife.

DBB: Your Naryan knife?

PH: Uh-huh. I cut them off, her underwear, and Jamie was touching her, you know, down there. He stuck his finger in a couple times.… Then I, you know, I did it. I couldn’t stop myself.

DBB: You had intercourse with the corpse?

PH: Yeah, I guess.

DBB: Did you ejaculate?

PH: Uh, yeah.

DBB: Did you have both vaginal and anal intercourse with her? You know what I mean by that, don’t you?

PH: (inaudible)

DBB: What was that?

PH: I wasn’t sure how it, you know, worked at first.

DBB: What happened then?

PH: I kind of just finished. I asked Jamie if he wanted to. But he didn’t. He was like totally freaked. So we went home.

DBB: Did you touch her in any way afterward?

PH: Oh, yeah. She didn’t look right, lying there. So I made her look better. I pulled her dress down and folded her arms.

DBB: Why did you do that?”

PH: Well, in this movie I saw, The Lost Dimension?—it’s a really really good movie—the hero brings this princess back to life. The Honons had killed her. They’re like totally evil. And Dathar like made her look like that.

DBB: Did you think you could bring her back to life?

PH: I don’t know.

DBB: Did you ever see the girl before? When she was alive?

PH: No.

DBB: Could you tell me about those pictures of the girls you had in your file cabinet? The drawings?

PH: Well, it was sort of a game Jamie and me made up. It was like based on the movie—

DBB: The Lost Dimension?

PH: Yeah. And we wanted to do a computer game of it and sell it but we don’t know programming too good so we made up this board game. We used some of the girls from school as characters. We cut their pictures out of the yearbook.

DBB: Was this like a religion or a cult?

PH: No sir. It was just a game. We were going to sell it to Parker Brothers or Milton Bradley. I was going to make a lot of money and get a house of my own and move out.

DBB: Did you see anyone else around the pond that Tuesday?

PH: We saw some guys fishing but that was at dusk.

DBB: Do you have any idea who killed her?

PH: No.

DBB: Do you recognize this photocopy?

PH: That’s my knife.

DBB: Are you sure it’s yours? Or does it just look like one you have?

PH: I don’t know. It looks like mine.

DBB: You don’t have that knife any longer?

PH: I lost it. I think I dropped it at the pond.

DBB: Philip, did you know a Susan Biagotti?

PH: Who?

DBB: A student at Auden University.

PH: I don’t know about her. I never heard of her.

DBB: She was killed last year.

PH: I don’t know anything about that. Really, Mr. Brann.

DBB: Now you went back to the pond on the twenty-eighth? The night of the twenty-eighth?

PH: No. Did Jamie tell you that?

DBB: Nobody told me. The prosecutor thinks you were there.

PH: Well, I wasn’t.

DBB: You weren’t there at the pond?

PH: I don’t know. I don’t remember.

DBB: The deputies found some bootmarks near where the Rossiter girl was killed. They seem to match boots you had in your garage.

PH: Well … (long pause). I think they planted those boots there.

DBB: Philip, I’m on your side. You have to be honest with me. I know you’re scared and a lot is happening to you. But you have to tell me the truth.

PH: I don’t know what happened.

DBB: Did you threaten Detective Corde or his family?

PH: No. I never did. Who said I did?

DBB: Calm down, Philip. Is there anything you can tell me that might prove you didn’t kill the Rossiter girl?

PH: I don’t know.

The dean was on the phone when he walked in. She looked at Wynton Kresge and motioned him inside then hung up.

“You wanted to see me?” he asked.

The dean stood up and walked across her office. It was a lot plusher than Kresge’s but he didn’t care for it. Too many scrolly twists of wood and ceramic vases and immense nineteenth-century portraits. She closed the door and returned to her seat.

Kresge was tired so he sat too.

“Wynton,” she began, “I’d like to talk to you about the incidents.”

“Incidents?”

“The girls’ deaths.”

“Right. Sure.”

“I mentioned that it was important for the school not to be too involved. I can’t tell you the fallout we’ve had because of the investigation that Detective Corde was doing. Several of our lenders told Professor Sayles point-blank that they would not refinance their loans to us because they’d heard about lesbian orgies in the dorms. Thank God they’ve caught that young man.”

“I’m sure Bill didn’t say anything about orgies.”

“Well, this is just background, Wynton,” the dean said. “The reason I called you here is that I’m afraid I’ll have to let you go.”

“Go?”

“I’ve gotten a report from the Finance Committee. Did you authorize the placement of some advertising in the Register?”

Ads. The ads that Bill Corde couldn’t pay for. “That’s right, I did.”

“You have no authority to approve nonsecurity expenses.”

“I’d say it was pretty much a security expense. It was to find the killer of two of our students.”

“Wynton, you made an unauthorized expense. It’s the same as embezzlement.”

“That’s slander, Dean,” said Wynton Kresge, who owned more law books than hunting books.

“It’s a serious breach of procedures. The Personnel Department will be contacting you about the severance package, which is extremely generous under the circumstances.”

She didn’t say anything more. She hunkered down in her chair and waited for the onslaught.

Kresge let her flash through a few EEOC nightmares for a long moment then said calmly, “That’d be effective today?”

“Yes, Wynton. And I’m sorry.”

“Well, Dean, I hope this’s all you have to be sorry about,” he said cryptically, and left the office.

Chunk.

Lying on the bottom bunk, looking up at the xaser coils above his face, he heard the sound.

Philip Halpern blinked and felt a low punch in his stomach. He recognized the noise instantly. The door of the family’s Chevy station wagon slamming. His palms began sweating. His fingers twitched. He stood up and looked through thick bars and thin glass to see what he knew he’d see: his mother coming to visit. He’d been expecting her—

NO, NO, NO!

Oh, God. He’d found it, the plastic Hefty bag with the dead girl’s purse inside! His father, not forty feet away, holding the bag Philip had buried under the back porch.

The boy stared at his father talking with Sheriff Ribbon, bleak expressions on both their faces. Ribbon pointed back toward the cell. His father stared for a long moment as if he was trying to decide whether he should visit his son. Then they both turned and walked up the street, away from the jail.

These two men looked like any good old boys in New Lebanon, sitting at a green Formica booth in the drugstore. Their solid shoulders arching over heavy white coffee cups. The kind of men who would stand up quick when they heard the four-bar intro of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” The kind of men who’d buy a NAPA carburetor at nine A.M. on Saturday and have it seated by ten-thirty. The kind that talked about the price of propane and what poppers the bass were hitting on.

Right now these two men were talking about murder.

“My boy’s got his share of problems,” Creth Halpern said. “He’s got more weight than he ought. It’s soft weight. It’s girl weight. I don’t know where he gets it. His mother’s a drinker, you know that. I think maybe that mixed up his chrome zones.”

Steve Ribbon nodded and kept stirring the coffee he had no taste for. He listened. This was a pain and in spades.

“Take them pictures.” Halpern was whispering, as if admitting things he’d never in his life spoken out loud. “The pictures you boys found. I’d sometimes find these girlie magazines. Not like Playboy. It was just plain smut. Pictures of people, you know, humping. I don’t know where he got them from. I was ascared it was somebody older. Some man. Phil’s a little girlish like I say.” Halpern smiled and looked at a Heinz bottle as he sailed over the second great tragedy of his life. “But the pictures weren’t of queers.”

Ribbon asked, “What you getting at exactly, Creth?”

“He’s not the kind of boy would hurt anybody. I don’t want him to go to prison.”

“You showed us the shorts. That he tried to burn.”

“I was mad then. I wanted to whup him. I feel different now.”

“Why you talking to me? You hired Dennis Brann.”

“I don’t do well by lawyers. I didn’t take to Brann or him to me.”

“It doesn’t look real good for Philip, Creth.”

“He’s not bad. He’s a disappointment is what he is. You know what’d happen to him if he went to jail?” Halpern glanced at Ribbon, who was silent but who knew exactly what would happen to Philip in general population at the state prison in Warwick and probably on his first day there.

Halpern said, “I can’t say I love the boy. I gave up trying a time ago. But I … I don’t know.”

“Brann’s an all-right shyster. He’ll give it a good shot.”

“Well, look here what I found.” Halpern lifted the torn, filthy plastic bag onto the countertop. Crumbs of dirt and popcorn fell into a comma of spilled coffee on the Formica and dissolved. “I found it in this place where Phil played. Like a hiding place. Under the back porch.”

Ribbon opened up the bag. Inside was a purse, stained with mud. He shook it out on the table. He looked up at Halpern. He whispered harshly, “This’s one of the girls’? Hell, what’re you giving it to me for? It’ll convict him sure, Creth.”

“No, no.” Halpern shook his head. “There’s something you gotta see.”

They stood outside the one-story yellow-brick building in Higgins, both bent over a piece of computer printout paper.

“Well, we gotta do something with it,” Steve Ribbon said. “Damn, this is a wrinkle.”

Charlie Mahoney handed the printout back to Ribbon then held up the clear plastic bag with a COC tag attached. He read the handwritten letter that was inside.

Ribbon waved the printout as if he were drying ink. “It says it’s a fifty-fifty chance. I don’t think we can ignore it.”

“I don’t think so either. Who is he? What’re his credentials?”

“A graphoanalyst. Works for the state. It’s admissible, Charlie. When Brann gets his hand on it, it’ll be back to square one and that’s gonna be a son of a bitch for all of us.”

“For all of us,” Mahoney repeated slowly. He glanced at Ribbon with a smile that meant if anything: Why you fat shitfaced rube.

Ribbon continued, “The case goes public again, they’ll start talking about Jennie and her girlfriend. And the school. I mean, this’ll fuck us both.” He glanced at the paper.

Mahoney said, “I’ll bet his father wrote it to get the kid off.”

“Nup, not the father. You don’t know him. He wouldn’t help his boy that way. But the kid himself might’ve written it and hid it knowing we’d find it.”

“Any chance at all it’s real we gotta give it to Brann. That’s the law,” Mahoney stuck a solid finger at Ribbon. “And say what you like, you had the investigation for two weeks before the county and everybody knows it. Your dick’s in the ringer just’s far as all of ours.…” He drew out the last words melodically.

Ribbon avoided the man’s relentless eyes. “This don’t disprove the case against the boy for the Gebben girl’s murder.”

“Damnit, Ribbon, you been harping on this cult serial killing shit since the case started. If the boy didn’t kill the second girl then where’s that theory of yours go?

Ribbon said, “You’ve seen the kid. All those magazines, the pictures, the porn, all that cult crapola. The knife. He guilty or not?”

Mahoney shrugged. “Probably.”

“What if we was to get a confession outa him?” Ribbon said, and to Mahoney’s relief touched away a web of spit that had formed in the corner of his mouth.

“Confession. Uhm.”

“Could you do that?” Ribbon asked. “You’ve gotten confessions before?”

Mahoney snorted.

“It sounds like something you’d be good at, getting confessions.”

“Yeah,” Mahoney said, both pleased by the stroking and feeling utter contempt at Ribbon for resorting to it.

“He’s in the lockup right now.”

Mahoney looked at his watch.

Ribbon said, “I think sooner rather than later’d be best, don’t you?”

“What about the other deputies?”

“I can arrange for you to be alone with him.”

“Now?”

“Completely alone.”

He didn’t have a fifty-thousand-joule xaser gun.

He didn’t even have his father’s Ruger .22.

But Philip Halpern had one weapon.

He turned back to his cell and stripped the sheet off his bunk. Philip lifted it to his wet mouth and with his teeth tore four notches in the cheap cloth. He ripped the sheet into strips and tied them together. He pushed the table into the exact center of the room and after a struggle climbed up on top of it. He took hold of the metal overhead lamp shade. A wispy avalanche of dust fell. He breathed it in, coughing and blinking. He smelled the pungent odor of his sweat mixed with pine-scented Lysol. Philip wrapped the sheet-rope around his neck and then looped it around the electric cord.

He stared up. Penny-Saver Soft Light Registered Trademark Sixty Watts Made in USA. The nearness of the cheap bulb began to erode his vision. The words faded, the flecks of dust and the corpses of fried bugs on the metal shade grew indistinct. The room became bright as heaven. Philip Halpern lowered his arms.

They heard the boy’s loud moan.

Lance Miller cocked his head and said, “Sounds like he’s not feeling good. Maybe we ought to get him something.”

“Shore,” the county deputy said. “How ’bout a ice-cold girl.”

Lance Miller looked up from USA Today. “Already had hisself two of them.” He returned to an article about Jay Leno.

“Can you get a dose from a corpse?” the county deputy mused.

“That’s disgusting,” Miller told him.

Another moan, loud and eerie.

“Should we check on him?”

“You see the pictures of his sister’s boobs?” Miller asked.

“Missed ’em.”

“He tried to burn them.”

“Her boobs?”

“No, the pictures,” Miller said.

“What were they like?”

“Close-ups, you know. Polaroids.”

“No, her boobs,” the deputy said.

“Not real big. The picture was dark. He didn’t use a flash.”

They heard the moan again and looked at each other. “He’s beating off in there,” the deputy said.

“What if he’s really sick?”

“I dunno. How ’bout you look now. I’ll look later.”

“If he’s puking I’m not cleaning it up.”

“We’ll draw straws.”

Lance Miller walked into the lockup area, closed the door and continued down the corridor to Philip’s cell.

He saw: the boy, the sheet-rope, the table.

“Oh shit. Oh shit.” He fumbled with his key and swung open the door to the cell and leapt up on the table, reaching for the boy’s shoulders.

Which is when Philip started to fall.

Behind him trailed the strip of sheet, which he hadn’t tied to the lamp, or to anything at all. It streamed behind him like a tail of Dimensional cloak. Firing his secret weapon at Miller—not fifty-thousand joules, not a xaser, not a Honon whip but his two hundred plus pounds of weight. The deputy, struggling to get his balance, slipped onto the concrete floor and landed on his back. Philip continued downward and landed directly on him. There was a huge snap. Lance Miller groaned once then passed out.

Philip grabbed Miller’s keys and his Smith & Wesson and walked out of the cell. He unlatched the back door of the lockup, then slipped into Town Hall and out the back door. Once outside he sprinted away from the town building then out of downtown, his lungs sucking air. As the pain in his chest grew, a momentary thought occurred to him—he felt grateful, ebullient even, that he had been in jail and had missed the anguish of the long-distance run in PE class. Now he put his head down and ran faster than he ever had in school. Faster than he’d ever run in his life. Philip ran, he ran, he ran.

Wait. What is this?

Bill Corde stood in the doorway to the lockup and watched one deputy on his knees, leaning over the other one—wait, it was Lance Miller—kissing him.

Wait. No.

What is this?

It was CPR. Lance Miller, white-faced and blotched in sweat, thrashed on the floor. Arms sweeping like he was waving down a rescue copter, legs kicking, whispering in between the county deputy’s smacks, “Gedoff, gedoff, gedoff!” The deputy would pinch his nose then breathe air into his lungs.

Corde said, “I don’t think he needs that.”

“S’all right. I’ve done this before,” the rescuing deputy said as he put both hands on Miller’s chest and pressed down hard. The crack of the breaking rib was audible to Corde. Miller muttered, “Gedoff me,” and fainted.

“Didn’t look like he was having a heart attack,” Corde said.

“Look what I done,” said the rescuer, standing up and looking heartsick.

Corde knelt and checked Miller’s pulse. “I don’t think he’s hurt too bad. Why don’t you call the ambulance?”

“Yeah, I could do that. The kid escaped.” He stood up and ran past Corde to the phone.

“What?”

“What should I call? Nine one one?”

“What do you mean, he escaped?”

Clutching the phone the deputy blurted, “Ran outa here five minutes ago. Hello, we need a ambulance at the sheriff’s office. There’s a injured deputy. I was giving him CPR and he didn’t take to it.”

Corde ran through the lockup, out the back door, then to the Town Hall exit door, which swung wide into the sunlit parking lot. Outhouse fulla shit! There was no sign of the fleeing boy. He trotted back into the office just as the fire siren began its throaty wail.

Corde had the dispatcher call Ebbans in then he picked up the phone and dialed Ribbon’s home. “Hey, Ettie, can you get him down here soon’s you can? We got an escape.… Yeah? Where? Fishing? Hell’s bells!”

Jim Slocum ran through the open doorway, passing the county deputy, who kept an intense vigil for the ambulance. “What’s up, Bill? I just heard an ambulance call.”

“The Halpern boy’s gone.”

“Gone? Whatdya?—”

“Escaped is what I mean. Beat up Lance bad.”

“No shit.” Slocum grinned. “Hell of a scrapper for a fat boy.”

“Where’s Steve?”

“Saturday afternoon? Where d’ya think? In his new goddamn truck.… He got a phone in it?”

“Naw,” Slocum said. “He was gonna put the old CB in but he didn’t get around to it.”

Corde said, “Get out a description but tell them go easy when apprehending.”

“I can say but it don’t mean they’ll do.” Slocum walked off to the dispatcher’s office.

The medics streamed through the door with a low gurney and explored Lance Miller’s body carefully. They gave him an injection then got him outside and into the ambulance. He was awake again and cussing colorfully as they closed the door.

Twenty minutes later Ebbans arrived and Mahoney five minutes after him.

“Great, we got a killer out?” Mahoney said after he’d heard the news.

“Oh, I guess I missed the trial,” Corde said, loud.

Mahoney lifted his eyes to the ceiling.

Slocum said happily, “We got ourselves some proof now. I mean, why’s he escaping if he didn’t do it?”

Corde looked at him as if he’d asked where babies come from.

Ebbans said, “We better call the state and tell them we got one loose.”

“You might want to mention,” the rib-cracking deputy said, “he’s got a gun.”

Outright silence. Every head in the room turned to him.

The deputy blushed then said, “Forgot to say, what with Lance being down and all. He got Lance’s gun. I thought he’d gotten the Speedloaders but they’d fallen under the bunk. Just the gun he got. I was relieved to find the extra shells.”

Corde said, “Nobody’s supposed to go into the cells with a gun! He didn’t leave it in the box?”

“Guess he forgot.”

“Sweet Mary,” Corde whispered. “Get on the horn,” he ordered Slocum. “Make it APB to county and state. Armed and emotionally disturbed. Tell them that he’s scared but he doesn’t want to hurt anybody.”

Mahoney asked, “You sound like you’re in charge here, Detective. I seem to recall you’re under suspension.”

The others looked at Corde cautiously, waiting for him to blow. He however had not even heard the words. He was in a different place altogether, running through bushes and trees, wheezing and hawking, right next to Philip Halpern. “The boy’s fifteen. So he doesn’t have a driver’s license. He’s probably trying to get out of the county on foot. How would he do that?”

Slocum said, “I don’t know. I don’t think we’ve ever had an escape situation here.”

Ebbans said, “What about a Greyhound out of Fredericksberg.”

“Maybe,” Corde said slowly. “How about the state park?”

Slocum said. “Damn, sure. It’ll lead him right to the river and I bet he thinks he’ll snatch a canoe or boat and head south.”

The door opened and Harrison County Sheriff Hammerback Ellison stepped into the office. He was a solid, heavy man but his face was pointed and delicate and he had very small feet and narrow ankles. “I just got the call. The boy got away?”

“Sure did.” Ebbans stood up and picked up his hat. “And he’s got a gun. You and me ought to get over to the state park. That okay with you, Bill?” Ebbans asked. His voice was strident; he was challenging anybody to question the shift of authority back to Corde. Bless you on this, T.T. Corde nodded and said to Slocum, “Jim, why don’t you take 302. Just on the chance that he’s hitching. I’ll take 117 down to the river and see if I find him there.”

Slocum looked at Ebbans, who said, “Do it, Jim.”

Then Corde said to Mahoney, “Charlie, maybe you ought to check out downtown. He could be trying to outsmart us and hole up till night somewhere around here.”

Mahoney reluctantly said, “I don’t think he’s that smart. But it’s not a bad idea.”

They all hurried outside to the parking lot. Slocum got into his car and sped off. Ellison and Ebbans vanished in a cloud of dust and tire smoke. Corde hung back. He started the engine then drove slowly out of the parking lot.

He did not however make the right turn onto Cress, which would have taken him directly to Route 117. He turned left then slammed his foot onto the accelerator.

By the power of Your wisdom,

by the strength of Your might,

guide me, O Guardians,

to the Lost Dimension,

from darkness to light.

Philip pauses to smell the deputy’s gun. The scents are oil, plastic and metal warmed to 98.6 by the abundant flesh of his stomach. It is a small gun but very heavy.

Systems armed. Xaser torpedoes in launch tubes.…

Philip is in the woods that border his parents’ house. He is surrounded by lean pines and the hot stems of wild sunflowers and long, bowed grass. Within a frame of trees he can see the Chevrolet. He can see the tail of the duct tape that holds the station wagon’s grille, which was shattered when his mother went off the road two years ago. He can see the barbecue. He can see the back porch with its lattice door open wide—left that way by his father after digging up the purse. Philip can see the green of the sagging shack in the backyard. Under one eave of the shack is a huge, skin-creepy wasp nest that has weighed on his mind like a fat pimple for a week. After he kills his father and after he kills Jano the Honon traitor he will fire the rest of the bullets into the wasp nest.

Lock on target, entering Dimensional shift now.…

No, Philip remembers, he will not shoot all the bullets into the nest. He’ll save one.

Philip steps out of the woods and starts toward his house.

Faith. To the Lost Dimension. From darkness to light.

“Doing that,” Creth Halpern said, “won’t help much at all.”

His wife looked at him curiously—as if he hadn’t spoken, as if he were simply standing in front of her, moving his mouth silently. As if the words buzzed around her head like bees in an old cartoon.

They were both surprised at his comment. It had been years since he’d referred to her drinking. His wife emptied the contents of the heavy glass into her throat and swallowed. She poured another and replaced the plastic pitcher in a refrigerator that held Kraft cheese slices, a near-empty box of Post Toasties, a package of gray ground beef, a half quart of milk. She leaned against the wall. Halpern gripped the screwdriver he was using to crack open a paint-frozen window. He dug the blade into the seam and levered upward, crushing the wood of the sill. The window didn’t budge. “Damn.”

His wife sipped the drink and looked out at a blooming lilac bush outside windows bordered with curtains on which were printed tiny brown tepees.

Halpern for the life of him couldn’t understand why she looked so good. In the mornings, a little puffy-faced; at night, eyes dead to all who bothered to look. But that was the only real evidence. Last summer one of Philip’s friends had hit on her. A skin-and-bones high school kid! Halpern admitted she had a great bod. How could she pour down the Beefeaters faster than any one of the guys down at the Tap and still keep her face clean and her hair all permed up nice? Her nails done? Her legs shaved?

“Our son,” she said by way of announcement, “in jail.”

“He didn’t do it. He’ll be out tomorrow.”

“Oh, come on. He did those things to her.…” She didn’t even sound drunk. He wondered if he’d just gotten used to it. He tried to remember her voice when he’d met her, when he’d first started hanging out in the New Lebanon Inn, where she was waitressing. He couldn’t. This saddened him greatly.

His wife said to a lumber yard calendar, “I can’t call my mother. How can I call her? I’d be so ashamed.”

“He did some things to that girl, yeah, and he oughta be whipped and he will be. But he didn’t kill anybody. I’ll swear to that. What we should do is get some help.”

“Oh, sure. How?”

“There’s state help, I guess. Talk to a … I don’t know. Somebody.”

“Oh, just like that? Sure. If you made money maybe.” Her voice clear as gin.

“I put a roof over his head. I put food in his mouth. And yours too. Food, and that’s not all.” Two digs in one day. Halpern was shaken.

“If you made money—”

“I fucking make money. You could make money too.”

“—we could do a few things.”

“I’m stopping you from getting a job?”

“You don’t remember. You don’t remember anything.”

Halpern said, “I can’t talk to you when you’re this way.”

“How come,” she asked curiously, “you don’t fuck me anymore?”

Halpern’s temper blazed then died immediately to a simmer. He considered open-handing her cheek but was paralyzed by a bottomless remorse. He joined his wife in gazing out the window. It occurred to him that most of their arguments happened just this way—her drunk, him thinking about other places and people, both of them staring out the window. Wanting to smack her and not having the energy or the type of hate required.

“Oh, go to hell,” his wife said as if giving directions.

Halpern snatched up the screwdriver. He squeezed it a dozen times, feeling the resilience of the rubberized handle spattered in paint. He stepped slowly to the kitchen sink, leaned forward and dug the screwdriver furiously into the seam of the window, cracking chunks out of the soft pine sill.

He heard a clatter of pans behind him.

He heard the sticky sound of the refrigerator door opening.

He heard the sound of pouring liquid.

He heard his wife’s voice. “Philip!”

Halpern turned. The boy had entered through the back door and stood in the center of the kitchen.

“When d’you get out?” his father asked. He felt a horrid urge, a salivating urge, to step forward and bloody the boy’s nose. To scream at him. (To scream what? “How could you do that to a poor girl? How could you, you stupid little prick?” To scream: “What’d I do to make you this way? I loved you! I really loved you! I’m so sorry!”)

Creth Halpern stood completely still, the screwdriver sliding from his hand. He stood twenty feet away from his son, whose upper lip glistened with snot and whose face was glossy with sweat, his fat three-dimensional chest heaving.

“How did you?—”

His wife whispered, “Oh my God.”

Creth Halpern too saw the gun.

“Whatcha got there, boy?” he asked.

Philip’s head turned to his mother. The glass fell from her grip, hitting the floor and whipping a tail of liquor against the refrigerator. Her smooth hands, tipped in unchipped red nails, went to her mouth. Philip turned back to his father. The boy’s mouth moved but no words came out. It was the mouth of a fish eating water. Finally, he swallowed then said in a weak voice, “The handy man’s here.”

“Listen up, young man. Put that gun down.”

“The handy man.”

His mother said, “Philip, don’t do this.” She sobbed, “Please, don’t do this.”

“I never did anything to you,” the boy said to his father.

“Son—”

Philip held the gun up and said, “Handy man. Handyman, handymanhandyman—”

“I only wanted to help you, son.”

“I never did anything to you,” Philip whispered.

“Son, I know you didn’t hurt those girls.”

“You were talking to the sheriff. I saw you.”

“I was giving him that purse you hid. The note! The note was inside. You know what I’m talking about! It shows you didn’t kill her.”

In a voice more assured and more adult and more frightening than Halpern had ever heard, Philip said, “I’m sorry, Dad, but the handy man’s here.”

“I wanted to help you,” his father said.

Philip said, “Hold out your hand.”

Bill Corde stepped silently past a drowsy old mutt, chained to the worn railing of the front porch. He slipped through the door and made his way toward the back of the house along the pink carpet runner, stained with dark patches. He smelled dog piss and old food and bleach. He could see Philip in the kitchen, holding the dark gray gun. He could see Halpern nearby. He could see a woman’s white arm ending in long polished nails. Corde stopped in the dining room outside the kitchen doorway. He left his revolver holstered then took his hat off and set it on a dusty Sanyo TV. He paused next to the dining room table, which was covered with sticky soiled dishes and scraps of food, crusts from last night’s pizza. In the center of the Formica a large paisley spill of ketchup had coagulated darkly.

“Hi, Philip,” Corde said softly.

Creth Halpern jumped at the sound. His wife’s shocked face appeared in the doorway. Philip looked at the detective, uninterested, then back to his father and said, “Hold out your hand.”

Halpern said slowly to Corde, “He’s got himself a gun.”

“Hold out your hand!”

Halpern raised his hands above his head.

“No, not up. Handy man is here. Hold out your hand! You know how to do it.”

“Phil,” Corde said. The boy looked at him for a minute then back to his father. When Corde moved a step closer to the living room Philip raised the gun to the center of his father’s chest.

“Philip,” Corde said, speaking casually. “Why don’t you set the gun down? Would you please?”

His parents looked helplessly at Corde. He saw despair in their faces and he saw that the boy’s father wore it the hardest.

“Please honey, please son,” his mother was whimpering.

Philip looked at her. He smiled. He said, “Open the refrigerator.”

“Please honey.…”

“OPEN IT!”

She screamed, and tore open the door. Philip held the gun up and fired a ringing, deafening shot into the bottom of the pitcher. The stained beige Rubbermaid exploded in a mist of gin. His mother screamed again. Neither Corde nor Halpern moved. Philip turned back to Corde.

Corde said, “Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

Philip laughed triumphantly. “You think I don’t know about that? That’s what they tried with Dathar. They tried to fool him. They lied to him but he didn’t believe them.”

“We want to help you, Phil.”

“Jamie turned me in.”

Corde said sternly, “No, he didn’t. I talked—”

“He did.”

“He didn’t!” Corde shouted furiously, risking the boy’s reaction. “I talked to him about what happened. Some people at the sheriff’s office tricked him. He didn’t know they followed him. He was trying to save you. He has a message for you.” Corde held his hand in the Naryan salute.

The gun in Philip’s hand wobbled. “He said that?”

“He sure did.”

Philip nodded and smiled weakly. Then he turned to his father and spoke in a mournful voice, “You didn’t come see me.”

“They said I couldn’t. There was visiting hours. I was coming tonight. Like at the hospital when we went to visit Gram. They said I could only come at four o’clock.”

Philip looked at Corde, who said, “That’s true, Philip. It’s the Sheriff’s Department rules.”

The boy’s eyes swept the floor.

Outside when he heard the gunshot and the scream, Charlie Mahoney put aside the Motorola walkie-talkie on which he’d just called T.T. Ebbans and Hammerback Ellison. He pulled his federally licensed automatic pistol out of his pocket and started up the porch stairs.

After following Corde here he had waited on the front steps considering what to do next. The gunshot ended the debate. Crouching, taking a fast look through the rusted, torn screen, he pulled the door open and crawled onto the porch. The lime green indoor-outdoor carpet was filthy and Mahoney’s expensive gray plaid slacks ended up hoof-marked on the knees with dirt.

He watched them talking, Corde and the Halperns, until the two squad cars silently pulled up. He crawled back to the door, opened it and motioned the men forward. Ebbans and Ellison went around back and Slocum and a county deputy held up on the front steps where Mahoney signaled them to stay.

Mahoney crawled into the living room.

“Son, please, there’s nothing to be gained by this.…”

“Philip, your father and mother and I want to help you.”

The boy was crying now. “He’s always hitting me. I don’t do anything but he hits me.”

“I want you to be strong,” Halpern said. “That’s all. I know you have it in you. It’s going to be all right. They’ll see the note and you’ll be free. Tell him about the letter, Corde.”

Corde asked, “Letter?”

Halpern said desperately, “The note! Tell him!”

Mahoney stood then walked along the corridor into the dining room, holding his breath not only to keep silent but to keep the stink of the dog piss and rotting food out of his nostrils.

“What note, Halpern?” Corde asked.

“Didn’t the sheriff tell you?”

Mahoney eased forward. A board creaked.

Corde spun around and saw him. “No!”

The boy’s silver-dollar eyes saw Mahoney and he raised the gun. Mahoney did the same. Corde lifted his arms, palms out, his back to Philip and stepped in between them. His nerves bristled at the thought of a Smith & Wesson muzzle ten feet behind him and a Browning automatic’s the same distance in front. “Mahoney, what the hell are you doing here?”

“You fucking son of a bitch, Corde, get out of the way! You fucking—”

“Get out of here, you’ve got no business! …” Corde was shouting. Mahoney was dancing in the doorway, jockeying for a target. The boy stood frozen with fear, the muzzle pointed at Corde’s spine.

“Philip,” Corde shouted over his shoulder, “drop the gun! You’ll be okay. Just—”

“GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY!” Mahoney shouted.

Philip’s hand drooped. His father looked at him and said, “Put it down, son. Please.”

The gun sank lower.

A shadow flashed across the kitchen floor. Mahoney shouted, “Drop it!” And fired two shots into the ceiling.

Ebbans and Ellison leapt into the kitchen. Philip whirling toward them, Ellison screaming in panic, “He’s shooting he’s shooting take him out!” The men’s hands vanished in ragged flares of muzzle bursts. Mahoney dropped to the carpet. One slug hissed past Corde’s left ear as he collapsed on the floor. Philip spun around and around. Then he fell. Corde scrabbled toward him, shouting, “No, no, no!” Philip’s father stood frozen, his right hand outstretched toward his son.

In the enormous silence that followed, Charlie Mahoney stood up and steadied himself on a pink metal table. He knocked off a flower pot, which broke and scattered a wiry geranium along the carpet, a flower as red and dazzling as the artery blood that sprang from Philip’s neck and chest and soaked the filthy floor that may at one time have been white.

PART THREE

Close Pursuit

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 Sheriff’s 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 Sheriff’s 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

1. 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, fellas, 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 Sheriff’s 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 balsa wood 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 marketed 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 U.S. 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.”

“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 a Toys “” 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.”

“How. 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 watching 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 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.

“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’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.”

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 Sheriff’s 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: “Sheriff’s 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 Gebben 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.

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 Sheriff’s 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 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 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 Farmer’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 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 Sheriff’s 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 attache 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 Sunday night 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 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 supper-time 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. “G.M. 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 35mm 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 minute, 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 tic 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.”

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 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 here 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,” Core 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. Sheriff’s Department. Open the door.”

No response.

“Let me try.” Kresge pounded on the split veneer of the door. “Police, Professor. I mean, Sheriff’s 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.

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

“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’ 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?”

“Feddies 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’ 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.”

Bevan’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’ 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’re 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,” Franks 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?”

“I’ll 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 it’s 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.

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, b. 1951, Cleary, New York. B.A. summa cum laude, M.A., Northwestern University; Ph.D. English literature, Harvard University; Ph.D. 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, Le 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, Ph.D. 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 perceives 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 bubbling 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 these 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.”

The big problem with the My-T-Fine Tap was the dirty plate-glass 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 Dark?”

“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 maître 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 the 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? I’ll 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.”

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 Sheriff’s 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.… I’ll 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 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) 4×4.

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.”

“Yessir,” 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 envelopes 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.”

“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 A.M. 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.”

“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 garbled. And remarkably few places where she goes back to correct herself or misspeaks.”

Corde flipped 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 grizzlies 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.

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 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.

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 Sutter’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.”

“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 here 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 Sheriff’s 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 onesided 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 sheriff’s 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 like 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?”

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 very 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 browning 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 Lis 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.

“I’ll 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. I’ll 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?”

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 hope.

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 shouldered 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 yards 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, sets 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. “He’ll 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 Sheriff’s 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 anything’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 Jenny. 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 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 Sheriff’s 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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeffery Deaver’s novels have appeared on a number of bestseller lists around the world, including the New York Times, the London Times and the Los Angeles Times. The author of sixteen novels, he’s been nominated for four Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America and an Anthony award and is a two-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Reader’s Award for Best Short Story of the Year. His book A Maiden’s Grave was made into an HBO movie starring James Garner and Marlee Matlin, and his novel The Bone Collector was a feature release from Universal Pictures, starring Denzel Washington. Turner Broadcasting is currently making a TV movie of his novel Praying for Sleep. His most recent novels are The Stone Monkey, The Blue Nowhere (soon to be a feature film from Warner Brothers), The Empty Chair and Speaking in Tongues.

Look for his other suspense novels from Bantam Books: Manhattan Is My Beat, Death of a Blue Movie Star, Hard News and The Lesson of Her Death.

Deaver lives in Virginia and California and is now at work on his next Lincoln Rhyme novel.

Readers can visit his website at www.jefferydeaver.com and the site for his latest book: www.thebluenowhere.com.

All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

THE LESSON OF HER DEATH

A Bantam Book / published by arrangement with Doubleday

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 1993 by Jeffery Deaver.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 92-36496

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information address: Doubleday

eISBN: 978-0-307-56967-7

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

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