Jeffery Deaver - The Lesson of Her Death

"I am, that's true."

"You know I went to a state school."

Sayles said, "I didn't know but that's okay."

"Of course it's fucking okay," Strumm barked. "We didn't have a good team. We had a terrible team. I always thought if I had it to do over again I'd go to a school that had a good team."

"Auden has a pretty good team."

"It's got a nice stadium."

Sayles said it did, that was true. "Modeled on Soldier Field in Chicago."

"That a fact? I've had a dream in my life," Strumm said. "A man gets older and he starts to think about his dreams more and more."

"Happens to all of us."

"One of my dreams has been to make a lot of money."

Well, you certifiably crazy old cocksucker, you sure have done that.

"Another's to give some of it to a school like Auden…"

Are you playing with me or is this for real?

"And in exchange…"

Spit it out.

"… they'd build a football stadium in my honor. You see, I had my chance and I didn't seize it. So the next best thing would be to have a stadium named after me."

"Well, Hal, we have the stadium already."

"Named after Barnes. Who was he?"

"One of our graduates in the 1920s. A philanthropist. He set up an endowment that's still in effect."

"So that means you're not inclined to change the name of the stadium?"

"It's in the terms of the endowment. There's nothing we can do about it."

Strumm studied a sickly plant and sprinkled on its leaves something out of a package labeled "Strumm's Extra. " Extra what ? Sayles wondered. The businessman said, "Well, enough said of that. I've had another dream. I've always wanted a reactor named after me."

"A nuclear reactor?"

"At Champaign-Urbana I think it is, they've got a research reactor named after somebody. I thought that would be almost as good as a stadium."

"Hal, we don't need a reactor. We don't have a science department to speak of. We're mostly liberal arts."

What was in the white-and-yellow packages? Old horses? Old pigs? Strumm shit?

"I'd write you boys a check for two hundred thousand dollars if you built a reactor and named it after me."

Sayles said quietly, "Hal, we need three and a half million."

Nip.

"That much, hum? I couldn't come close to that. Been a bad year for the company. Economy's down, people get rid of plants. First thing to go. I'm not recessionproof like everybody says."

"Auden's going to close."

"Even if I had a stadium and a reactor both I couldn't come up with much more than a quarter million."

"We can name a chair after you. A building. We've got a couple buildings. You could have your pick."

"Three-hundred's the top. Maybe for a vet school I could go up to three-fifty but that'd be the end of it."

"We don't want a vet school, Hal."

"Well, there you have it."

Nip.

Sayles drove at seventy miles an hour all the way back to the campus. His car came to rest partially over the curb of the parking lot. He ran through the corridors of the Arts and Sciences Building and stopped in front of the door to his lecture hall, composing himself and listening to Glenn Darby's voice explain about Sayles's absence.

He caught his breath then pushed the doors open and strode confidently down the long aisle to the podium. He was halfway there when the class realized he had returned and broke into applause, which grew ever louder, rolling and rolling, then was joined by whistles and shouts. By the time he was on the podium, clipping on his lavaliere mike, the applause had became a standing ovation and it was five minutes before he was able to quiet the students.

Then – barely holding back tears – Randy Sayles began to speak, resonantly and impassioned, delivering what might very well be his last lecture at Auden. Or, for that matter, his last lecture at any university.

Corde was no longer pacing. He sat on the couch, slouched down and grim, and Diane was sitting in a straight-backed chair nearby. She held her hands in her lap. Jamie Corde sat between his mother and father. He looked shrunken. "Son, this is pretty serious. I don't need to tell you that."

"I didn't do anything."

"T.T. said you told him you were at the pond by yourself the night the Gebben girl was killed."

"I was. I was just fishing by myself is all."

Diane said, "Honey, please."

Her eyes were on a studded milk-glass candy dish and it was impossible to tell if she was speaking to father or son.

"Jamie, we want to believe you. It's just that T.T. talked to a couple of people say they saw two boys and you fit the description of one of them."

"So you don't believe me. You think I'm lying."

This was a matter-of-fact announcement. He wouldn't hold Corde's eyes, which was okay with Corde because he would sure have trouble looking back into his boy's.

"Son, we need to know what happened. I don't remember where you were that night, I -"

Jamie leaned forward. "How would you know where I was any night?"

Diane said sternly, "Don't talk to your -"

He continued, "Where was I last night? Two nights ago? How the hell would you have any idea?"

His mother rebuked, "Young man." But there was no edge to her words.

The boy was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "I went fishing. I was there by myself."

A felony investigator, Corde had a dozen tricks he could try to drag the real story out of the boy. Bluffs and traps and intimidations. He'd learned them from his journals and seminars and bulletins. He'd practiced them in his continuing education courses. He'd tried them out on car thieves and burglars. He couldn't bring himself to use them now; he was crying out for the truth but he wanted it only one way.

"Were you fishing by the dam?"

"Not so close to the dam. Up a ways, in somebody's yard."

"I've told you you're not to trespass there."

Jamie didn't answer.

Corde asked, "Did you see the girl or anyone else that you hadn't recognized before?"

"No. I just fished then I came home."

"Why didn't you tell me any of this before? You knew I was on the case."

"Because I was there alone and I didn't see anything. What was there to say?"

"Jamie, please."

The boy looked away. "I'm going to my room."

"Jamie…" Corde scooted forward on the couch and touched his son's knee. The boy remained unresponsive.

Corde asked the question he'd been putting off. "The other night, Wednesday, you weren't home either, were you?"

Diane said, "Bill, what are you asking?"

Jamie kept his eyes on his father. "He wants to know my whereabouts the night the second girl was killed. That's what he's asking."

Corde said, "Wait a minute, son. You can't treat this so light. T.T. and Steve are going to want to talk to you…" Jamie walked casually out of the living room. Corde's face went bright red with fury and he stood. Then he sat slowly on the couch again.

Diane said, "You know he didn't have anything to do with it."

"I know he was there." Corde looked at her miserably. "And I know he's lying to me. That's all I know."

Dear Sarah …

She read the note again but had trouble because of the voices from the other room. Something was going on with Jamie. Her brother scared her some. At times she idolized him. When, for instance, he would include her in what he was doing – like repeating jokes to make sure she got the punch line or taking her along when he went shopping at the mall. But other times he'd look at her like she wasn't even in this world, as if he was looking through her. He would get all dark and secretish. In Jamie's dresser Sarah had found magazines filled with pictures of women without any clothes on and a lot of copies of Fantagore - movie scenes of monsters, and people being stabbed or cut up.