Jeffery Deaver - The Lesson of Her Death

"You're kidding." Owen laughed, then looked at Kresge. "He's kidding."

Kresge said, "No, I don't think he's kidding."

Owen's smile faded. "Practically every kid in New Lebanon bought one. It'd take me an hour to remember half of them."

"Then you better get started."

"Aw, Bill. It's suppertime."

"The sooner you write the sooner you eat, Owen."

Bill Corde parked the squad car in the lot next to the five-foot-high logo of the Fredericksberg Register - the name in the elaborate hundred-year-old typeface as it appeared on the paper's masthead. He and Wynton Kresge got out of the car and walked into the advertising office. The girl behind the counter snapped her gum once and hid it somewhere in her mouth. "Hi, gentlemen. Help you?"

Corde said, "Last week I called about running an ad as part of an investigation down in New Lebanon."

"Oh, that girl that was killed. I heard there was another one too."

"Did I talk to you?"

"No, that'd be my boss, Juliette Frink. She's left for the day. But I can take the order. How long you want it run?"

"A week, I think."

"What size?"

Corde looked at samples of ads under a faded Plexiglas sheet covering the counter. "What do you think, Wynton?"

Kresge said, "May as well go pretty big, wouldn't you think?"

Corde pointed to one. "I guess that size."

She looked. "That's two columns by seventy-five agates." She wrote it down. "What section of the paper would you like?"

"Oh. I hadn't thought. Front page?"

"We don't have ads on the front page."

"Well, I don't know. What's the best-read section?"

"Comics first then sports."

Corde said, "I don't think we can run an ad like this on the comic pages."

Kresge said, "But sports, you might lose women, you know."

The clerk said, "I read the sports page."

"How about the same page as the movie ads?" Kresge said.

"That sounds good," Corde said.

She wrote it up. "Juliette said you get a public-service discount. That'll be four hundred eighty-four dollars and seventy cents. Then you want us to typeset it for you that'll be another twenty-five dollars. You have cuts?"

"Cuts?" Corde blinked. He was thinking of the thin slash the rope had made on Jennifer Gebben's throat, the fishhook embedded in Emily Rossiter.

"Pictures, I mean."

"Oh. No. Just words." He wrote out copy for the ad. Corde pulled out his wallet and handed her his Visa card. She took it and stepped away to approve the charge.

What is it," Kresge said. You pay then get reimbursed?"

Corde snickered. "I guess you oughta know, I was just relieved of duty."

Kresge frowned severe creases into his wide face. "Man, they fired you?"

"Suspended."

"Why?"

"They claim I took some letters out of Jennie's room."

"Did you?" Kresge asked, but so innocently that Corde laughed.

"No," he said.

"Hardly seems fair," he said. "You mean, you're paying for this ad yourself?"

"Yup."

He wasn't though, it turned out. The clerk, embarrassed, returned. "Sorry, Officer… They kind of said you're over the limit. They wouldn't approve it." She handed the card back to him.

Corde felt the immediate need to explain. But that would involve telling her a long story about two children – one with primary reading retardation – and a psychiatrist and a new Frigidaire and roll after roll of Owens-Corning attic insulation and a boy coming up on college in a few years. "Uh…" He looked for a solution in the back of the cluttered Advertising Department.

Kresge said, "Miss, Auden has an account here, right?"

"The university? Yessir. The student affairs office. Ads for plays and sports. I was to the homecoming game last fall. That third quarter! I'll remember that all my life."

"Yes'm, that was a game and a half," Kresge said. "Can you put these on the school account?"

"You work for the school?"

"Yes, ma'am," Kresge said. "I do." He pulled out his identification card. "I'll authorize it. This's official school business."

She rummaged under the counter and pulled out a form. "Just sign this requisition here. Fourth and twelve on the Ohio State forty. Did Ladowski punt? No sir. And it wasn't even a bomb but a hand-off to Flemming. Ran all the way, zippity-zip."

"While I'm about it," Kresge said, "run that ad for two weeks and put a border around it like that one there."

"You got it."

"That's real good of you, Wynton," Corde said. "I do appreciate it."

"People keep forgetting," Kresge said quietly, "they were my girls too."

Corde spent the evening talking to the parents of boys who'd bought Naryan Dimensional stilettos. He was easygoing and jokey and careful to put them at ease. No, no, we don't suspect Todd Sammie Billie Albert not hardly why he's in Science Club with Jamie…

"I'm just," he would tell them, "getting information."

They nodded gravely and answered all his questions and smiled at his jokes.

But they were scared.

Men and women alike, they were scared.

The second killing had proved the cult theory. The words that Corde had spoken to chubby Gail Lynn Holcomb had been proved utterly false. They did have something to be scared of. As far as the good citizens of New Lebanon were concerned, Satan himself had arrived, with two murders to his name and more on his mind.

Corde went from house to house and listened to parents, without exception, account for every minute of each boy's whereabouts on the night of April 20 – a feat possible, Corde knew as a father, only if every man and woman he talked to had turned psychic.

He saw through much of the smoke of course but still found no leads.

Long about midnight Corde noticed a dusty drawer somewhere in his mind. It seemed to contain Sheriffs Department regulations and he believed, when he peered into it, that he saw something about officers who continue to engage in police work when suspended being guilty of impersonating sheriffs deputies. He peered further and saw the word "misdemeanor" though his mind was often very dark and the word might actually have been "felony."

Corde felt suddenly pummeled by fatigue. He returned home.

A county deputy, Tom's replacement for the evening, sat in the driveway. Corde thanked him and sent him home and then went into the house. His children were asleep in their rooms. His wife too. Corde was grateful for that. He wasn't looking forward to telling Diane that he'd been suspended.

The next morning he was up early. He kissed Diane, dodged a chance to give her the hard news and slipped out for a secret meeting with T.T. Ebbans. They rendezvoused outside the Sheriffs Department on the hard-packed dirt the deputies sometimes used for impromptu basketball games. They both felt like spies or undercover narcs, padding around out of sight of the department's grimy windows.

Corde told him about the knife and Ebbans slapped his head. "Doggone, I saw that movie."

"So'd I, T.T., and I'll bet every deputy in there did too. Hell," he said in a whisper, "I'll bet Ribbon's even got the comic book. I talked to maybe thirty people last night. Here's the list and my notes. Nothing real helpful."

Ebbans took the sheet. "Watch yourself, Bill."

Corde tapped his holster.

"I don't mean that. You forget you're suspended?"

"This thing's too important to leave to Ribbon. You got what I asked you for?"

Ebbans handed Corde a plastic bag containing the green computerized accounting ledger that they'd found in the burnt oil drum. "Don't lose it, Bill. I'm taking a chance as it is."

"I think I've found me an expert who can help."

"I also looked into the Gilchrist angle. Forget about it. He flew out to San Francisco to read some paper on Saturday before Jennie was murdered and he was still out there when Emily was killed. I don't think he's back even yet."