Jeffery Deaver - The Lesson of Her Death

Knock me upside the head. I mean, this is too much!

Kresge would have dropped down on his massive, linebacker knees to kiss the police academy graduation ring of any one of those applicants and trade jobs in a minute. Gold shields, GLA supervisors, Ops-Coordinators, portable patrolmen, CS technicians. They all wanted to sit in Kresge's cracked leather chair and swivel back and forth and spend the three hours between start of business and lunch deciding how to allocate guards for the homecoming game.

And what did Wynton Kresge want to do but walk a beat?

He wanted to drive an RMP (remote mobile patrol, a squad car to everybody else; Kresge had learned this), he wanted to kick in doors of murder suspects, he wanted to pin drug dealers up against jagged brick walls and scream at them: WHERE'S THE STASH? (Was that what they called it? He'd learned a lot but there was much he had not learned.)

He had a very real problem however, Wynton Kresge's first goal in life was to be a cop. But his other goal was to make sure his salary exceeded his age. He now made fifty-three thousand dollars a year (being forty-two he was proud of this accomplishment). He was therefore in the Loop. Hooked. Hung up. Wynton Kresge received a salary not unattainable by senior detectives or police administrators in large cities but a complete rainbow for a rookie. It'd be back to school at no pay then a grunt pulling twenty, twenty-five even with overtime. Kresge alone would be able to cope with a career change of that magnitude. Kresge married might be able to.

But not Wynton Kresge father of seven. He loved cops but he also loved being a good father. He thought about reeducating them. He thought about having a family conference and telling them they were going to have to buckle down. Dad was about to take a fifty percent cut in salary and become a cop. (Man, he could taste the silence in the living room after dropping that news.)

So he watched Miami Vice reruns and led his men in drills for dealing with students who'd gone ED (the cop word for emotionally disturbed) and with demonstrators who might try to burn down the stadium (none so far) and he kept his thirteen-shot 9mm automatic loaded and ready on his hip waiting for the chance to draw down on a crazed assault-rifle-wielding sniper (none of them either), picking him off from fifty yards on the knoll of the quad.

This was all Wynton Kresge had for police work.

This, and thinking a lot about the murders of Jennie Gebben and Emily Rossiter, which is what he had been doing most of this hot afternoon. He now walked to his desk and balanced a book on his hand then flipped it lightly in the air as if he were tossing a coin to help him make a choice. That was in fact exactly what he was doing and when he caught the book, cover up, Kresge walked abruptly out of his office.

She died two weeks ago tonight. It took me all of fourteen days to lose the case.

Corde spent five minutes looking for change in front of the vending machines, waiting for the jolts of anger that never came. He dropped in thirty-five cents and pushed coffee milk and sugar. The steaming liquid poured in a loud stream into a fragile cardboard cup. It sounded exactly like a man taking a leak.

T.T. Ebbans walked up next to him, digging in his pockets. Corde held out a handful of change. Ebbans picked out some and bought himself a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. "I'm sorry, Bill."

Corde sipped the coffee. It tasted salty. The machine's spigot dispensed both coffee and chicken bouillon.

"This's real bushwah. I don't know what's going on. What'd Ribbon say?"

"I'm off the case. He's going to fight the inquest. But I hardly believe him. He didn't fight worth diddly to keep me from getting the boot."

"The burnt letters?"

"Yup."

"Did anybody see you take them? They have a witness? Any fingerprints? What's their probable cause?"

Corde said, "We're at the witch-hunt stage now, T.T. The due process comes later - after my name's been drug through the dirt."

After they find out about St Louis. When it'll be too late.

When Ebbans spoke again, after a pause, the flinch in his voice was unmistakable. "Hammerback ordered me to look into every escape and recent release from the hospital at Gunderson."

"I've heard this before." Corde shook his head.

Ebbans continued. "Yep and then talk to school counselors and psychiatrists in town here and see if they had any patients with, you know, dangerous tendencies."

"They won't say anything. It's all privileged. Hammerback oughta know that."

"There was some mention of it in a book that Ribbon keeps loaning to people."

Corde pointed in the general direction of Blackfoot Pond. "Well, Emily was Jennie's roommate. It's pretty damn odd for a cult killer to pick her for the second victim, wouldn't you say?"

"I just tell what I been told."

"I know that, T.T."

Ebbans took a long time staring at the copy of the Register sitting in the lunchroom. The front page had a headline: Terror Continues with Stapleton Girl Cult Threat.

"What's that?" he asked, pointing to the story.

"Turned out to be the boyfriend she dumped. But the paper had to, you know, put it in terms of the Moon Killer. Damn. Good God damn – Well, the case's yours now, T.T. I told you what I found most recent, about Jennie having that girlfriend and a fight with somebody who wasn't too happy about it. And about them maybe getting killed because they were gay. Oh, and don't forget Gilchrist. He could tell us some good stuff about Jennie."

"I don't know. Word is we gotta concentrate a hundred percent on the cult thing. Forget the university connection, forget her personal life. Those're orders."

Corde closed his eyes for a moment, rubbed them. "Son of a gun, this's great. First I lose the investigation. Then it's forget the school. Then they don't want to hear that the victim might've had a girlfriend… I don't know what's going on, T.T. The biggest problem in this case isn't the killer, it's us. It's the good guys."

"Seems that way."

Corde poured the coffee out then said, "You know, I was thinking. You're in a tough spot."

"How's that?"

"Let's say it's what you and me think, that it's not a psycho. That'll mean a lot of wasted time and a lot of panic and news stories about the department's going in the wrong direction. You're walking point on this whole case."

"Well that's true, Bill. I hope you won't be offended if I tell you that if it turns out right -"

"You'll be in the catbird's seat, and more power to you. But with Ellison and Ribbon right beside you especially come November."

"I hear what you're saying. But I just want to get that guy, whoever he is. That's all I care about. I'm no good at this politics stuff. It's like people're using those girls' deaths for themselves. They're twisting things around. Makes me sick."

Ebbans finished his candy and rolled the wrapper into a tiny wad, pitched it out. He looked around and said in a low voice, "I know you're off the case and everything and you'll be doing a bang-up job keeping the roads free of gin-drunk felons but since you're giving me all your notes and leads it's only fair I give you something in return."

"What's that?"

"I told you somebody put the kibosh on the school side of the case? The order came from Ribbon and Hammerback. But you know where they got the word?"

"Sure, yeah, I know." Corde grimaced. "Dean Larraby."

"Nope," Ebbans said. "It was a friend of yours. Randy Sayles."

Corde considered this. "Well, well, well. That's nice to know… But you didn't hear me say that."

Ebbans touched his ear. "Deaf as a mounted trout."

As he walked out of the vending room Bill Corde stepped right into the broad form of Wynton Kresge. "Oh, sorry," Corde said pleasantly, and smiled before he remembered he was mad at the security chief.