Jeffery Deaver - The Lesson of Her Death

"Maybe she didn't know his name. If the girls were lovers then somebody Jennie'd had an affair with'd be a sore point between them. Emily maybe didn't want to hear about him."

"Good point, Wynton. But she could still come in and tell us that somebody Jennie had an affair with had killed her."

Kresge had to agree with that.

Then Corde said, "Of course look what happened. Emily killed herself. She was pretty crazy with grief, I suppose. She wouldn't be thinking about police. All she knew was her lover was dead."

Kresge nodded. "That's good. Yeah, I'll buy that."

"We got our work cut out for us." He selected one stack of cards and tossed it to Kresge. "What we know about Jennie, there're a lot of people who might've had affairs with her."

"Well, there can't be that many who're professors."

"Professors?"

Kresge tapped the plastic. "Well, she's talking about a professor, isn't she?"

Corde stared for the answer in the note. He looked up and shook his head. "Why do you say that?"

"Well," Kresge said, "it says 'teach'. I just assumed she was talking about one of her professors."

"Well, Emily could've meant that like in a general sense."

"Could be," Kresge conceded. "But maybe we could save ourselves a lot of time by checking out the professors first."

Corde picked up the cards and replaced them in his briefcase. He said, " This time we get to use the siren, Wynton. And the lights."

You think they care? Oh, you'll learn soon. You think they want you, but the way they want you is cold as mother moon…

Jamie Corde listened to the lyrics chugging out of his Walkman headset. He was lying on his back, staring at the setting sun. He wanted to be able to tell the time by looking at where the sun was. But he didn't know how. He wanted to be able to tell directions by the way certain trees grew but he couldn't remember what kind of trees. He wanted to travel into a different dimension. Jamie zipped his jacket up tighter against the cool breeze and slipped down farther in the bowl of short grass to escape from the wind. It was probably close to suppertime but he was not hungry.

He turned the volume up.

So just do yourself, do yourself,

do yourself a favor and do yourself…

Jamie was curious where the tape had come from. He'd returned home this afternoon after ditching wrestling practice and found it sitting on his windowsill. Geiger's latest cassette – the tiny cover picture showing five skinny German musicians in leather with long hair streaming behind them, the lead guitarist wearing a noose around his tendony neck.

His parents would never have bought it for him. This particular album was totally fresh; it'd been banned in Florida, Atlanta and Dallas, and most of the record stores in Harrison County refused to carry it. Maybe the last time Philip was over he'd left it. One of the group's songs, from a different, less-controversial album, had been used in The Lost Dimension and the two boys had listened to the soundtrack album frequently.

You think they care?

He held the tape player in both hands, lifted it to his face, pressed it against his cheek.

Do yourself, do yourself, do yourself now…

He thought about school, about Science Club, which was meeting right at this moment. They'd maybe look around and ask where's Jamie? And nobody'd know and then somebody might say something about Philip but there wouldn't be much talk about him because this was the end-of-year party and you were supposed to be having fun, drinking Coke and jamming pretzels into your mouth and talking about the summer not about members of the club who were fat and weird and who'd been shot dead by the police.

And also you weren't supposed to talk about boys who cut school the evening of the party to sit next to a grave – friends who when they weren't around you'd joke about being fags so fuck you fuck you fuck you…

Just do yourself, do yourself, take a razor take a rope you don't have any hope except to do yourself…

Jamie looked at the tombstone and realized he hadn't known Philip's middle name was Arthur. He wondered if that was some relative's name. It seemed weird that his parents would give him a middle name at all because that was something normal parents did and Philip's parents were total hatters.

Jamie sat back and looked at the freckled granite. But this time he saw: JAMES WILLIAM CORDE. Jamie imagined his own funeral and he saw his father standing next to the grave. His father didn't seem particularly sad. He was looking off into the distance, thinking about Sarah. Jamie pictured himself sitting alone in front of his own grave tracing the letters of his name. He did not, however, trace his middle name.

They bypassed Supersalesman and walked right into Amos Trout's office. "Sorry to trouble you again, sir," Corde said and introduced him to Kresge.

Trout said, "You in need of wall-to-wall, Deputy?"

Kresge said not just now but he'd discuss it with the wife.

Corde said, "I wonder if you could go through this book and tell me if you recognize the man you saw in the road that night."

"Well, like I was telling you I can't recall many details about him. That old Buick moves at a pretty good clip -"

"I've got an Olds corners like nobody's business," Kresge said. "GM can put a car together."

"There you go," said Trout.

"If you could maybe narrow it down to a few men might resemble the fellow you saw it'd make our job a whole lot easier." Corde handed him a copy of the Auden University yearbook. Trout began to flip through it quickly.

"Take your time," Corde said.

Corde's heart thudded each time Trout tore off a small piece of paper and marked a page. When he was finished he flipped open to the marked pages and pointed out three men. He said, "I don't think I'd feel right testifying but it could be any one of these fellows."

Corde took the book and glanced at the names of the men Trout had marked. He looked up at Kresge, who nodded slowly. Corde thanked Trout and with Kresge in tow left the store, not bothering to jot down the names on his index cards.

Kresge – just back from his first official evidence photographing expedition – had taken the better pictures.

At the crime scene below the dam in April, Jim Slocum had forgotten to override the automatic focus of his 35 mm camera and in the dark he'd sometimes pointed the infrared rangefinder at a bush or hump of rocks. Many of the pictures were out of focus. Several of them were badly overexposed. Kresge had taken his time with the Polaroid.

Sitting in the den that was really Corde's fourth bedroom, surrounded by the debris of two double orders of the Marquette Grill's steam-fried chicken, drinking coffee (Corde) and two-bag Lipton (Kresge) the men leaned close to the photos.

Six eight-by-tens of the footprints by the dam were tacked up on a corkboard next to an ad for a lawn service that guaranteed to make your lawn thick as cat's fur and we mean purrfect. In the center of the board were Kresge's small Polaroid squares.

"I think it's these two," Kresge said, tapping one of Slocum's pictures and one of his own.

"Why?" Corde asked. "The tread's similar but look at the size. The crime scene shoe's fatter."

Kresge said, "Well, that ground is wetter. By the dam, I mean. I was reading a book on crime scene forensics… You know what that word means?"

Corde had forgotten. He thought for a moment, wondering how he could bluff past it and couldn't think of a way. He said, "What?"

"It means pertaining to criminal or legal proceedings. I used to think it meant medicine, you know. But it doesn't."

"Hmmm," Corde said, at least giving himself credit for not looking too impressed.