Jeffery Deaver - The Lesson of Her Death

The clerk added loudly, as if he hoped to be overheard, "And nobody here is real happy we inherited you know who."

Corde supposed he meant Ribbon. "You can't pin that on me."

The county clerk grew solemn then spread the papers out in front of him. He flipped through a three-ring binder. He stopped at one page and began speaking rapid-fire toward the book. "Okay raise your right hand by the power vested in me…"

Corde was looking at the sour portrait above their heads. Kresge followed his eyes. The clerk stopped reading and looked at Kresge. "You gonna raise your hand or what?"

"Me?" Kresge said.

" You're the one being deputized."

"Me?" The man's baritone rose nearly to a tenor.

"Raise your hand, Wynton," Corde said. Kresge did.

"By the power vested in me by the County of Harrison, you, Wynton Washington Kresge, are hereby appointed as special deputy pursuant to Revised State Code Title 12 Section 131.13. Repeat after me. 'I, Wynton Washington Kresge…'."

Kresge cleared his throat, looking with astonishment at Corde. "What is this?"

Corde said, "Do what the man's telling you."

"I, Wynton Washington Kresge, do swear to uphold the laws of this state and to tirelessly and faithfully serve and protect the citizens of the County of Harrison and the municipalities located therein…"

"If you don't want to say 'so help me God,'" the clerk concluded, "you can say. 'upon my solemn oath'."

Kresge said, "So help me God."

Corde shook his hand. The clerk gave him three pieces of paper to sign.

"You didn't tell me." Kresge whispered this to Corde.

"I need you, Wynton. I figured if I just drove you here you'd be less inclined to say no and go looking for a cushy office job someplace else."

"Look, Detective, I'm grateful. I really am. But there's no way I can afford to do this."

Corde smiled cryptically. "You can't afford not to. Talk to that pretty wife of yours. You'll find some way to work it out."

The clerk was impatient. "You two talk about this later, will you?" He finished the paperwork and folded a couple of sheets like a subpoena. He handed one to Kresge. "Go over to County Central Booking and get fingerprinted on the same form and have a picture ID taken in Personnel. The same building. Bill'll tell you where it is. Have both these copies notarized. Lucy can do it if she's not at lunch, and if she is go to Fanner's Bank. Ask for Sally Anne. Bring me back one copy."

"But I haven't even thought about it."

"You're a special deputy, which sounds good but don't let it go to your head, it's the lowest rank we've got. You have a pistol permit?"

"Yes, I do. I did the small-arms course at Higgins. My score -"

"You have to buy your own weapon but you can get reimbursed up to two hundred. Automatics are okay but you can only use accepted loads, the ones on here." He handed Kresge a badly photocopied sheet of paper. "Don't get caught with anything heavier. And if you file the trigger it can't be easier than a nine-pound pull."

Kresge nodded and Corde noticed that he'd stopped arguing.

The clerk continued, "Your pay is twenty-nine-five annual, prorated for however long you're with us. You'll be assigned to Bill for whatever he needs you for. Ha, ha, big guess. You folks finish up the Gebben case and get this sicko under, we can find a permanent place for you here at the county if you get certified by the state police academy.

"Now, you get benefits as long as you work more than twenty-five hours a week but you gotta take a physical. And for the family you gotta pay something. You got a wife and kids?"

"Seven."

Corde added, "That's the kids. He's only got one wife."

"Oh, one more thing…" He tossed Kresge a plastic-wrapped green vinyl notebook about six by nine inches, three hundred or so pages thick. "That's the state penal code and the Deputy's Procedural Guide. Read 'em. Learn 'em."

"Yessir." Kresge was lit up with modest pride. "Do I salute?"

"It's all in there." The clerk tapped the Guide.

Jennie -

You wanted someone to teach you about love, and

all you found was someone to teach you how to die.

Why did you go that night? You said it was over.

Do I believe you or not?

Not knowing is almost as hard as life without you.

Why, kiddo, why?

Till we meet soon,

Em

"It was where?"

"In Emily's purse the night she drowned."

Wynton Kresge said, "They thought the Halpern boy wrote that? A fifteen-year-old kid?"

Corde said, "Uhn."

Sitting in the New Lebanon's Sheriffs Department, wearing a uniform as spotless and pressed as Corde's, Kresge dropped Emily's plastic-encased note on Corde's desk while Corde read the report aloud. "'Graphoanalysis of Subject Document. My professional opinion is that there is no more than a 50 percent probability that the handwriting is that of Subject Emily Rossiter. Significant similarities are five-degree backslant and short ascenders and descenders and looped capital letters. Deviation from samples submitted are significant but may be attributable to inebriation, drug use, emotional disturbance or unsteadiness of writing surface.'"

"Why didn't Philip say anything about it?"

"Maybe he didn't see it. Maybe he saw it and it didn't mean anything to him." Corde looked at the letter for a long moment then said, "Let's assume it's really Emily's okay?"

"Okay."

"Does it tell us anything?"

"Well, it says two things. First, it's a suicide note. So it means -"

"Suggests," Corde corrected.

" Suggests that Emily killed herself. She wasn't murdered."

"Okay. What's the second thing?"

"That the Halpern boy didn't kill Jennie either. I mean, it implies that he didn't."

"Why?"

"Because the 'someone' Emily mentions is probably, well, maybe, the killer. Someone Jennie had an affair with, I'd guess. She sure didn't have an affair with Philip Halpern."

"Because of where she says she thought it was over?"

"Yeah. Like the affair was over."

Corde said, "And look at 'go that night'. Tuesday night, she might be talking about." He opened his attaché case. The now-tattered picture of Jennie Gebben fresh off the volleyball court stared down at stacks of plump, dog-eared three-by-five cards. He flipped through one pile and extracted a card.

"That your computer, Bill?"

"Computer, ha. Here we go. Between about five and six on the night Jennie was killed she and Emily had a serious discussion of some kind. Maybe an argument. And Emily was moody that night. She didn't join her friends for supper."

"So maybe Jennie was going to see her lover, or former lover, and Emily was ticked off."

"Could be."

"Wait," Corde said. He dug through another card. "The girl who told me that Jennie was bisexual also said that she'd had a fight with somebody the night before she was killed. She said, 'I love her, I don't love you.' What if she agreed to meet that man -"

"Or woman," Kresge added.

Corde raised an eyebrow, acknowledging the point. "Possibly. But Trout, the carpet guy, said he saw a man… What if she agreed to meet him one last time, and he killed her?"

"That's sounding pretty good."

"But what about the DNA match? It was Philip's semen found at the scene."

"Damn, that's right." Kresge frowned.

"Don't agree with me too fast."

Kresge considered for a minute and said, "Maybe the lover killed her. Then the boy actually came along and raped her -"

"Actually, if she was dead first, it wasn't rape. It was violation of human remains. Misdemeanor."

"Oh." Kresge looked troubled. "I've got a hell of a lot to learn."

Corde mused, "Well, why didn't Emily come to us and tell us what she knew? Wouldn't she want the killer arrested?"