Jeffery Deaver - The Lesson of Her Death

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 livingroom, 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 sheriffs 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."

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."