The Lesson of Her Death (14 page)

“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.

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.