Jeffery Deaver - The Lesson of Her Death

The room was milky, as if illuminated through smoke or mist. Light, already diffused by the clouds, ambled off the silver maple leaves outside and fell ashen in the room. The carpet, walls, plywood furniture, paintings seemed bleached by this weak radiance.

A terrible moment passed. Corde believed the house was empty and Gilchrist had escaped from them again. Then his eyes grew accustomed to the weak light and he saw at the end of the room a pale shape, a sphere that moved. It was mottled with indefinite features like the surface of the moon. Corde saw that it was a man's head and that he was staring back at Corde.

The man slowly rose and stood behind a cluttered desk. About six-two, graying brown hair, trim, gangling arms and long thin hands. He wore a conservative light green tweed sports jacket and tan slacks. His face gave no clue that he was surprised by the intrusion. He examined Corde with brown eyes that were the only dark aspects of his person.

He looks like me was the thought that passed involuntarily through Corde's mind.

"Gilchrist," he said evenly, "where is my daughter?"

Leon Gilchrist walked through a thick beam of dusty light and stopped ten feet from Corde. He folded his arms. A mirthful half smile was on his face. "Well, I am surprised, Detective Corde."

"I want to know where she is." Corde's voice trembled. "I want to know now."

"Of course you do."

"Sarah!" Corde shouted, looking at a stairway that led to the second floor.

"I was just thinking of you," Gilchrist said mildly. "You'd be surprised how often you're in my thoughts. About as often as I am in yours, I'd guess."

Corde stepped forward, raising his revolver to Gilchrist's chest. The professor glanced down at it then slipped his hands into his pockets and studied Corde as if the detective were a bug padding his last circle on the cyanide disk in a kill jar. Then he asked, "How's your son, Detective?"

An uncertain flicker was in Corde's eyes as they scanned the face of Leon Gilchrist.

"Still enjoy bicycling, does he? Despite the dangers."

"What are you talking about?"

"And he went for a swim, I heard. The music these young people listen to…"

He's trying to get my goat. Calm, stay calm.

"Suicide by drowning. That was uniquely his. The song, I believe, mentions razors and ropes… An alliteration suitable for adolescent lyrics."

"What did you have to do with that?" Corde's grip on the gun tightened and he was beset by a frightening sense that he was losing control of himself. In his ears he heard a humming of immense pressure. He swung the muzzle toward the professor's face, which tightened microscopically but remained otherwise passive. The barrel stopped short of striking skin. "I could kill you -"

Gilchrist said slowly, "I don't imagine you know the writing of Paul Verlaine. The French symbolist poet? No, of course not. I find his poems stunning but I also believe he suffered from the same problem as you do. Stoic on the outside, raging within. He tried to murder his close friend Rimbaud in a fit of passion. He ended up a worthless drunk. But if not for his psychoses the world wouldn't have his astonishing work. The element of compensation is miraculous – compensation, which your little Sarah displays so well."

Corde's breathing was fierce. He felt himself hyperventilating. He grabbed Gilchrist's collar and pressed the gun muzzle against his ear.

"Ah," Gilchrist said in a silky voice, "remember her. Remember Sarah. Our conversation mustn't become so obfuscated by passion that we forget that only I know where she is. Obfuscated. Can you deduce what that means, Detective? Can you?"

Corde shoved Gilchrist away and stepped back. He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He felt that he was the cornered animal and that it was Gilchrist who was playing him.

"Detective, you continually misunderstand whom you're dealing with. I'm not a thug barricaded in a convenience shop. Your concept of intelligence is that it gets you to the bottom row of a category in Jeopardy! I'm different in kind from people like Jennie Gebben and you and your son and your Sarah and your beautiful Diane.

"I've been studying you and your family since the morning after Jennie died. I saw your daughter at the pond after I'd left my first note to you. Her beautiful hair. The sun was so pretty on her tight, white blouse. Last year's fashions?… Had to put off the spring shopping spree at Sears, did we? You know, I've been corresponding with Sarah ever since then. Why the shock, Detective? You would have figured it out eventually. See, that's the problem that concerned me. You're not intelligent but you're dogged – unlike the rest of your colleagues, who are neither intelligent nor persistent.

"Undoubtedly we could put you on the couch and wrench up some reason for this chronic tenacity. You fell asleep at the wheel once or twice when it mattered, didn't you? When was it? Not too formative, I'd guess. Your teenage years? Maybe later. Whatever happened, you'll be paying it off for a long time. I was sure you'd plod along until you stumbled across me.

"Sarah was the perfect distraction. At first I convinced her to run away. When that didn't work I decided I'd infiltrate, throw you off the track. The town wanted a Moon Killer so I skinned a goat and gave them one. 'Lunatic.' And I did some painting around town with a bit of the leftover blood. Mezza luna … Oh, I'll bet my frescoes had your boss salivating. But not you, Detective. You kept plodding, ever the pedestrian, getting closer and closer. I needed a more direct attack. I tried threatening you off the case."

He pointed to a Polaroid camera. "I'm quite some photog, don't you think? Oh, an aside: I detected that your wife's contraceptive had not been much used of late. Are we in the middle of the sixteen-year itch? Have you noticed any change in her recently? Her pathetically polished fingernails? Her sudden interest in eye shadow? Did you know she and Breck have been for several walks in the forest?"

The professor smiled and lifted his hands like a TV preacher. "Did you know that while that buffoon of a deputy was supposed to be guarding the old homestead, I was browsing through your bedroom? I opened your dresser and rearranged Diane's panties. I smelled her pillow. I washed my hands with her cheap L'Air du Las soap. Oh, I sat on Sarah's bed. I caressed your son's pajamas. It was all so fascinating to me! I lecture – excuse me, I used to lecture – about psychology every day. I've written articles for the most prestigious journals in the field, journals…" He cocked an eyebrow with amusement. "… that perhaps you've tried to read. But I don't do clinical practice. Toying with your family has amused me greatly. Entwining them in this whole matter. I drew you away from the nest. I sent you to Lewisboro. I sold a handful of credit cards to this polyester thug in a bar in Fitzberg so you'd hightail it over there. Then I circled back. I followed that fool Breck -" Gilchrist sneered the name. "- and I killed him deader than Dreiser's prose. I did all that, Detective, right under your nose and I escaped."

"But," Corde said, "here I am."

The smile on the professor's face did not diminish. "But I… have your daughter."

"I want to know where she is!" Corde shouted in anguish.

"Stating the obvious," Gilchrist snorted, "diminishes you, as a late colleague of mine used to say."

Sarah, cry for me, baby! Shout, scream…

"You son of a bitch!" The menace in Corde's voice rose to the distant smudged ceiling. It seemed to break the shafts of weak light that fell onto the bloodred carpet. Corde pressed his revolver forward and the hammer actually started back. Gilchrist's eyes registered an instant of monumental fear then became calm and conciliatory. He lifted a palm. "She's all right. I swear it."