Jeffery Deaver - The Lesson of Her Death

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 round."

"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."