The Lesson of Her Death (2 page)

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
.

T
hey 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.