Jeffery Deaver - The Lesson of Her Death

"Anyway, I was reading this book and it said that prints in mud change shape depending on how close they are to the water source and whether the print would get drier or muddier with time. That dam's got a runoff nearby and it's uphill of where she was found -"

"How'd you know that?"

"I went there and looked."

"So the print spread. Okay, but how come in the crime scene photo the feet don't point out like in the one you took?"

"I think they do," Kresge said. "We just don't have him standing in one place. Look, the heavier indentation's on the right of his right foot and in this one it's on the left of his left. Means the man walks like a penguin."

"Yessir," Corde said. "It sure does."

"So, I think they're one and the same."

"I do too, Wynton." Corde pondered this information. "I think we're real close to probable cause. But damn I'd love a motive. What else've we got?" He flipped through his cards then lifted out two and read them slowly. He said, "You remember that scrap of computer paper I showed you, the one I found behind Jennie's dorm? Mostly burned up."

"I couldn't find out anything about it before I got laid off."

"Well, in the morning I'd like to check on where it came from."

Kresge winced. "Bill, the school's hardly going to let me do that. I got fired. Remember?"

"Wynton, it's not a question of letting you. We'll get a search warrant. You've got to start thinking like a cop."

Kresge nodded, flustered. "I haven't been on the job too long, you know."

"That's not an excuse."

At ten the next morning the men walked up the steps of the dark-brick house and rang the bell.

Wynton Kresge noticed the way Corde stood away from the front of the door as if somebody might shoot through the oak. He doubted anybody was going to do that but he mimicked the detective.

A blond woman in her forties opened the door. Narrow shoulders in a white blouse widening to a dark plaid pleated skirt. She listed to her right under the weight of a large briefcase. She set it down.

Corde looked expectantly at Kresge, who cleared his throat and said, "Morning, ma'am, would your husband be home?"

She examined them uneasily. "What would this be about?"

Corde said, "Is he home, please?"

Kresge decided he wouldn't have said that. He'd have answered her question.

She let them in. "In his study in the back of the house."

The men walked past her. She smiled, curious. The motion spread the red lipstick slightly past the boundaries of her lips. "There." She pointed to the room then left them. Corde's hand went to the butt of his pistol. Kresge's did too. They knocked on the door and walked in before there was an answer.

The man swiveled slowly in a shabby office chair, bleeding upholstery stuffing. Kresge wondered if he'd found the chair on the street in his poor graduate student days and kept it for sentiment.

Kresge's nostrils flared against the old-carpet smell, basement water in wool. He had a strong urge to walk directly to the nearest window and fling it wide open. The papers and books filling every available space added to the stifling closeness as did the jumble of old-time photos stacked against the wall. Everything was covered with thin films of dust.

Randy Sayles put a pencil tick next to his place in the massive volume he was reading, slipped a paperclip between the pages and closed the book.

A jay landed on a bush outside the window and picked at a small blond mulberry.

Bill Corde said, "Professor Sayles, we're here to arrest you for the murder of Jennifer Gebben."

Sayles leaned back in the ancient chair. Sorrow was in his face but it seemed a manageable sorrow like that in the eyes of a distant relative at a funeral.

He listened to Corde recite the Miranda rights. Corde unceremoniously took his handcuffs out of the leather case on his belt. Sayles said a single word softly. Corde believed it was "No." The professor's tongue caressed his lips. One circuit. Two. He lifted his hands and rested them on his knees; they looked dirty because of the fine dark hairs coating his skin. Corde noticed that his feet pointed outward. He said, "Will you hold your wrists out, please?"

"Why do you think it's me?" He asked this with unfeigned curiosity. He did not offer his wrists.

"A witness came forward and identified your picture in the yearbook. He saw you by the dam that night. Your hands?"

Sayles nodded and said, "The man in the car. He almost ran me over."

Kresge said, "And your bootprint matches one found at the scene of the killing." He looked at Corde to see if it was all right to volunteer this kind of information.

"My bootprint?" Sayles looked involuntarily at a muddy corner of the study where presumably a pair of boots had recently lain. "You took prints of mine from the yard?"

"Yessir," Kresge said. "Shot pictures, actually."

Sayles fidgeted with his hands, his face laced with the regret of a marathoner pulling up cramped a half mile shy of the finish. "Will you come with me?" Sayles stood up.

"For what?" Corde asked.

"I didn't kill her." Sayles seemed stricken with apathy.

"You'll have your day in court, sir."

"I can prove it right now."

Corde looked at the eyes and what he saw was a load of disappointment – much more than desperation. He motioned with his head toward the door. "Five minutes. But you wear the cuffs." He put them on.

As they left the house Kresge whispered, "So, okay, let me get this straight. If they say they didn't do it we give them a chance to show us some new evidence? I just want to know the rules."

"Wynton," Corde said patiently, "there are no rules."

The two men followed Sayles outside. They walked to the back of the house – ten feet from the place where Kresge had taken photos of Sayles's footprints. Corde recognized the ruddy box elder root from the Polaroids. Corde glanced toward the front of the house. He believed he smelled cigarette smoke. Corde saw Sayles's wife standing in the kitchen thirty feet away.

Sayles walked to a patch of dug-up earth like two wide tread marks about twenty feet long. Small green shoots were rising from precisely placed intervals along the strips.

"Dig here." He touched a foot to the ground.

Kresge picked up a rusty spade. Corde now felt contempt in the air. Sayles's eyes were contracted like nipple skin in chill water. The deputy began to dig. A few feet down he uncovered a plastic bag. Kresge dropped the spade on the ground. He pulled the bag out, dusted it off carefully and handed it to Corde. Inside was a length of clothesline.

"That's the murder weapon," Sayles said.

Corde said to him, "Do you want to make a statement?"

Sayles said, "This is the proof."

"Yessir," Corde said. "Do you wish to waive your right to have an attorney present during questioning?"

"He killed Jennie with it. I saw him. It'll have his fingerprints on it."

"You're saying you didn't kill her?" Kresge asked.

"No, I didn't kill her," Sayles said. He sighed. "Jennie and I had an affair last year."

"Yessir, we figured as much" Corde said.

In the open window, the blond woman rested her chin in her hand and listened to his words without visible emotion. The cigarette dangled over the sill and from it rose a leisurely tentacle of smoke.

"I was quite taken by her." He said to Corde, "You saw her. How could anybody help but be captivated by her?"

Corde remembered the moon, remembered the smell of mint on the dead girl's mouth, remembered the spice of her perfume. He remembered the dull eyes. He remembered two diamonds and he remembered mud. He had no idea how captivating Jennie Gebben was.

Sayles said, "She went to work for me in the financial aid office."