Jeffery Deaver - The Lesson of Her Death

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 sheriffs 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. You 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 of 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.