Jeffery Deaver - The Lesson of Her Death

"What's he doing out there?" she asked.

"Healing the wounds, I guess."

"How's that?" she asked.

"You know. The girl."

"The girl?"

He looked confused. " You told me, didn't you?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"What was her name? The first one who was killed. Jennie something. I thought you told me. About the two of them?"

She asked in astonishment, "Gilchrist and Jennie Gebben, they were fucking?"

"It wasn't you who told me?"

"No."

"Who was it?" He looked at the ceiling. "Don't recall. Well, anyway, I heard they were a unit."

"Poor girl," Victoria said, frowning. "Gilchrist, huh? I wouldn't have guessed Jennie and him. I heard he was an S and M pup."

Okun nodded knowingly, quelling resentment that this was the second person who seemed to know for a fact something about his own professor that he had not been aware of.

She continued, "I'm surprised at the leather. My opinion was that Gilchrist would be more of your classic postwar British pederast. You know, I think they should castrate rapists."

Okun thought for a moment. That might make another seminar. "Mutilation and Castration as Metaphor in Western Literature."

Victoria's eyes brightened. "Now there's an idea for you."

She wasn't sure what the vibration was. Alignment maybe. Or a soft tire.

Driving home from Auden University, Diane Corde noticed that the steering wheel seemed to shake; her engagement ring hobbled noisily on tan GM Plastic. Then she realized the station wagon was fine; it was her hand that shook so fiercely – the first time in her life that a reference to money had made her fingers tremble.

Diane was returning from a meeting with the admissions director at the Auden lab school. The woman, who looked sharp and professional (no sultry pink, no clattering bracelets, no hussy makeup), had explained the procedures. Sarah's file, which Dr. Parker had already forwarded to the school, would be reviewed by the school's special education admissions board. They would make a recommendation about placing Sarah in one of the classes or arranging for private tutoring.

"I'm sure," the woman said, "your daughter will be accepted."

Diane was grateful to tears at this news.

Then the director had consulted a sheet of paper. "Let's see… Tuition for a special education class at Sarah's level is eight thousand four hundred. Now we -"

"A year?" Diane had interrupted breathlessly.

The woman had smiled. "Oh, don't worry. That's not per semester. That's for the entire year."

Oh don't worry.

Eight thousand four hundred.

Which exceeded Diane's annual salary when she'd been receptionist for Dr. Bullen, the oldest living gynecologist in New Lebanon. "Does insurance ever cover it?"

"Medical insurance? No."

"That's a little steep."

"Auden's lab school is one of the best in the country."

"We just bought a new Frigidaire."

"Well."

Diane broke the silence. "Dr. Parker mentioned a private tutor is an option. Three times a week, she said. How much would that be?"

The woman had cheerfully parried that the total fee for a tutor would be two hundred seventy dollars a week.

Oh don't worry.

Diane had smoothed her navy blue skirt and studied a cleft of wrinkle in the cloth. She felt totally numb; maybe bad news was an anesthetic.

"So you see," the admissions director had said, smiling, "the school is in fact the better bargain."

Well, Diane Corde didn't see that at all. Bargain? What she saw was everybody taking advantage of her little girl's problem – all of them, Dr. Parker the harlot and this pert L.A. Law admissions director and the prissy tutors who weren't going to do anything but get Sarah's brain back up to the level where God intended it to be all along.

"Well, I'll have to talk to my husband about it."

"Just let me say, Mrs. Corde, that I think we can be of real help to your daughter. Sarah has the sort of deficit that responds very well to our method of education."

Well, now, miss, hearing that makes me feel just jim-dandy.

"Shall I start Sarah's application? There's no fee to apply."

Oh, a freebie!

"Why not?" she had asked, wholly discouraged.

Pulling now into the driveway of her house Diane waved to Tom, standing scrubbed and ruddy beside his Harrison County Sheriffs Department cruiser. After the two threatening Polaroids and the second murder, he had taken to marching a regular line around the backyard at various times throughout the day. He was also armed with his wife's opera glasses, which, he explained, she bought for when they went to Plymouth Playhouse Dinner Theater. With these he'd often scan the forest for hostile eyes. He looked silly, a beefy red-cheeked young man holding the delicate plastic mother-of-pearl glasses, but Diane was grateful for the effort. There had been no more threats and the sense of violation had almost vanished.

"Coffee, Tom?"

He declined, gosh-thanks, and turned back to the woods.

Jamie walked outside, slipping a T-shirt on over his thin muscular body. He was the epitome of grace and she enjoyed watching him climb on his bike and balance while he pulled on his fingerless riding gloves.

"Where're you off to?"

"Practice."

"When's the match?"

"Saturday."

"How's your arm?"

"It's like fine. No problem."

"Garage looks nice."

"Thanks. I did the windows. They were totally gross."

"You did the windows?" she asked in mock astonishment.

"Very funny. And I found the old Frisbee."

"We'll play tonight, you and me."

"Yeah, okay. We oughta get a glow-in-the-dark one. Gotta go." He pushed the bike forward without using his hands and coasted down the driveway as he closed the Velcro fasteners on his gloves. She watched him lean forward and his muscular legs start to pedal. He's going to be a heartbreaker.

Inside the house Sarah was playing with a stuffed animal. After Diane had delivered the news that the school was over for the year, the girl glowed with Christmas-morning happiness. This bothered Diane, who saw in the girl's face the look of a spoiled child who finally got her way.

"The Sunshine Man… He came back."

"Did he now?" Diane asked absently.

"He saved me from Mrs. Beiderbug."

"Sarah. I've told you about that."

"Mrs. Beidersora." She sprang up and ran into the kitchen.

Diane hung up her jacket. "Who's the Sunshine Man again? Which one's he?"

"Mommy." She was exasperated. "He's the wizard who lives in the woods. I saw him again today. I thought he'd gone away but he came back. He cast a spell on Mrs. Beider -" She grinned with coy nastiness. "- Beidersorc. And I don't have to go back to school."

"Just for the term. Not forever."

Although the girl's insistence that magical characters were real frequently irritated Diane, at the moment she wished that she herself had a Sunshine Man to watch over her shoulder. Or at least to cast a spell and cough up some big bucks for special ed tuition. As she looked through the mail she asked, "Your father call?"

"Naw."

Diane went into the kitchen and took four large pork chops from the refrigerator. She chopped mushrooms and sauteed them with oregano and bread crumbs then let the filling cool while she cut pockets in the pork.

"You sure your father didn't call? Maybe Jamie took a message."

"Mom. Like there's the board. Do you see any messages?"

"You can answer me decently," Diane snapped.

"Well, he didn't call."

Diane carefully cut a slit in the last pork chop.

"I'm not going back to school ever again," Sarah announced.

"Sarah, I told you, it's just for -"