Jeffery Deaver - The Lesson of Her Death

The girl walked upstairs, singing cheerfully to herself, "Never ever again… The Sunshine Man, the Sunshine Man…"

Children. Sometimes …

The young woman said, "I believe it was Leon Gilchrist."

Cynthia Abrams was a thin sophomore, smart and reasonable and unpretentious. Corde liked her. She had long shimmering dark hair, confident eyes, earrings in the shape of African idols. She was a class officer and the campus director of ACT-UP. She was sitting forward, elbows on the low desk in the Student Union, holding a cigarette courteously away from him while she answered his questions.

Corde glanced down and found the professor's name on a card. A note said that Leon Gilchrist had been in San Francisco at the time of the first killing and had not returned as of three days ago. He put a question mark next to the name.

"And you think they had an affair?"

"I don't know for sure. I heard several rumors that she'd gone out with professors over the past couple of years. One or two she was pretty serious about. Then I recently heard Professor Gilchrist's name mentioned."

"Who did you hear this from? About Gilchrist?"

"I don't remember."

"Do you know if there was any bad feelings between them?"

"No. I don't really know anything at all. I'm just telling you what I heard."

Corde glanced at his open briefcase and saw the picture of Jennie Gebben. "Do you know of anyone who would have wanted to hurt Jennie or her roommate?"

"No, I sure don't. But I want to say something else. You seem like a reasonable man and I hope I can speak frankly to you."

"Go right ahead."

"The gay community at Auden is not popular in New Lebanon."

This was hardly news to Bill Corde, who had been on a panel to recommend to the state legislature that consensual homosexual activity be removed from the penal code as a sexual crime – both because he thought it was nobody's business but the participants' and because criminalizing it skewed statistics and confused investigations. He had never heard such vicious words as those fired back and forth in the Harrison County Building public meeting room during the panel discussions.

She asked, "You know Jennie was bisexual?"

"Yes, I do."

"That fact hasn't come out in the press yet but if it does I'm concerned it will get mixed up with, you know, cult or Satanic aspects of the murders. I abhor the linking of homosexuality and violence."

"I don't see why that connection would be made," Corde said. "It certainly won't come from my department…"

Somewhere in Corde's mind was a soft tap as a thought rose to the surface.

"Was Emily…" What was the proper terminology? He felt on some eggshells here. "Was she a lesbian?"

"I don't know. I didn't know her very well."

"You think Jennie might have been targeted because she was bisexual?"

"A bias-related crime?"

"We don't have those laws on the books here."

She lifted a coy eyebrow. "I graduate in two years. I hope that will have changed by then."

"I'm thinking more in terms of helping me with a motive."

"I suppose. There's always the possibility of antigay violence in areas that are less…" Now she trod lightly. "… enlightened than some."

Corde considered this motive but he couldn't carry it very far. He wanted all of his cards in front of him. He wanted to read what other students and professors had told him. He wanted more information about Emily.

He said, "This has been very helpful. Anything else you can think of?"

"There is one thing I'd like to say."

"What's that?"

"My roommate, Victoria, and I were having this discussion last night?"

"Yes?"

"She brought up the idea of surgically castrating rapists. Would you be interested in signing a petition to send to the state legislature?"

Corde said. "I better not. In the Sheriffs Department, we're not supposed to be too, you know, political."

He couldn't recall the last time he felt so unwelcome.

"Detective, I think it's pretty clear that you're dealing with some kind of crazy person. Some psychopath. He is not a student, it is clearly not a professor. Everyone on this faculty has the highest credentials and the most impeccable background. Your rumormongering is despicable."

"Yes'm," Corde said to Dean Catherine Larraby. "I was asking about Leon Gilchrist? You didn't really answer my question."

"You're not suggesting that he had anything to do with the deaths of these two girls?"

"Has he ever been in any trouble with students? Here or at another school?"

The dean whispered, "I'm not even going to dignify that with an answer. Leon Gilchrist is a brilliant scholar. We're lucky to have him on staff and -"

"I've heard from a number of sources that Jennie had relations with at least one professor. One person I interviewed thinks Gilchrist might be him."

"Professors at Auden are forbidden to date students. Doing so is grounds for dismissal. Who told you?"

"I told her I'd respect her confidence."

She looked for a way to pry this information out of him. Not finding one she said, "Impossible. It's a vicious rumor. Leon isn't well liked -"

"No?" A tiny note went onto a stiff white card.

"Don't make anything out of that," she snapped. "Professors can be like children. Leon has an infantile streak in him, which he has trouble controlling. He makes enemies. People as brilliant as he breed rumors. You didn't answer my question. Is he a suspect?"

"No."

"He was reading a paper at the Berkeley Poetry Conference at the time of the killings," she said.

"Did you know that before or afterward?"

"I beg your pardon?" she asked cautiously.

"I'm curious if after Jennie was killed you suspected something about Professor Gilchrist and checked on his whereabouts at that time."

The eyes went to steel cold. "I have nothing further to say to you, Detective."

"If you could -"

"She was killed by a psycho!" The dean's shrill voice tore through the room. "The same one who vandalized the grade school and churches. The same one who murdered Emily. If you'd taken this psychopath seriously, instead of digging into banal college gossip, Emily would still be alive today."

"We have to explore all angles, Dean."

"I'll guarantee you that Leon did not have relations with Jennie and he didn't have anything to do with her death or Emily's. Now if you'll excuse me I'm in the midst of emergency funding meetings, which by the way are necessary largely because you people haven't caught this madman."

When Corde had left the office Dean Larraby snatched up the phone and snapped to her secretary, "Is Gilchrist back from the Coast? When's he expected?… Who's his teaching assistant?" Her foot tapped in anger while she waited. "Who, Okun? Give him a call and tell him I want to see him. Tell him it's urgent."

Charlie Mahoney was pretty tired of New Lebanon. The incident that had cemented this opinion was a bad meal at Ewell's Diner – particularly bad meat loaf (gristle), extraordinarily bad mashed potatoes (paste) and moderately bad bourbon (oily). This cuisine was followed by an early evening in the motel room where he was now lounging in front of a small TV that was not hooked up to cable. The exact instant when boredom became loathing occurred during a Channel 7 commercial break – four straight minutes of grating ads for products like hog feed and cultivators and used cars and kerosene.

Who the fuck buys kerosene from a TV ad?

He lay on the sagging bed and looked up at the stucco ceiling. Stucco. Who invented stucco? And why would anybody put it on a ceiling where you had to look at it all night long because there was nothing else to do? How many college sluts had lain here on this bed with their legs in the air and stared at this ceiling thinking stucco who the fuck invented stucco Jesus when is this son of bitch going to finish? …