The Lesson of Her Death

by Jeffery Deaver

"Open her up. We gotta talk to you. Business."

  "Couldn't you call me--"

  "Official, Owen."

  The heavyset, mustachioed man in a plaid shirt and blue jeans opened the door. The store was dim. Costumes and helmets and monster masks lining the wall made the place seem as eerie as a wax museum at night. Some toy at the far end of the store gave off red dots of Owen. He stared at thirty stilettos just like the one found under Jennie Gebben.

  "What are these?"

  "What do you think they are?" As if Corde had asked who was George Washington.

  "Owen."

  He said, "They're Naryan Lost Dimension survival knives."

  "What's that symbol?"

  Owen sighed. "That's the insignia of the Naryan Empire." He extended his hand the way Kresge had done. "'I come in peace, from--'"

  Corde said, "Yeah, yeah, I know. The movie company makes 'em?"

  "They license somebody in China or Korea to make them. They sell all kinds of things. Helmets, xaser guns, Dimensional cloaks, scarves ... All that stuff in the movie."

  Kresge said, "He doesn't remember the movie."

  "He doesn't?" Owen asked. "Like Ninja Turtles a few years ago. T-shirts. Toys. Tie-ins they're called."

  "How many of these knives you sold?"

  "They're a best-seller."

  Corde glanced at Kresge and said, "I somehow figured they might be. How many?"

  Owen said, "That's I think my third merch rack. Why?"

  "Has to do with an investigation."

  "Oh."

  Corde pulled out a pen and handed it and a stack of blank three-by-five cards to Owen. He asked, "Could you give me the names of everybody you've sold one of those knives to?"

  "You're kidding." Owen laughed, then looked at Kresge. "He's kidding."

  Kresge said, "No, I don't think he's kidding."

  Owen's smile faded. "Practically every kid in New Lebanon bought one. It'd take me an hour to remember half of them."

  "Then you better get started."

  "Aw, Bill. It's suppertime."

  "The sooner you write the sooner you eat, Owen."

  Bill Corde parked the squad car in the lot next to the five-foot-high logo of the Fredericksberg Register--the name in the elaborate hundred-year-old typeface as it appeared on the paper's masthead. He and Wynton Kresge got out of the car and walked into the advertising office. The girl behind the counter snapped her gum once and hid it somewhere in her mouth. "Hi, gentlemen. Help you?"

  Corde said, "Last week I called about running an ad as part of an investigation down in New Lebanon."

  "Oh, that girl that was killed. I heard there was another one too."

  "Did I talk to you?"

  "No, that'd be my boss, Juliette Frink. She's left for the day. But I can take the order. How long you want it run?"

  "A week, I think."

  "What size?"

  Corde looked at samples of ads under a faded Plexiglas sheet covering the counter. "What do you think, Wynton?"

  Kresge said, "May as well go pretty big, wouldn't you think?"

  Corde pointed to one. "I guess that size."

  She looked. "That's two columns by seventy-five agates." She wrote it down. "What section of the paper would you like?"

  "Oh. I hadn't thought. Front page?"

  "We don't have ads on the front page."

  "Well, I don't know. What's the best-read section?"

  "Comics first then sports."

  Corde said, "I don't think we can run an ad like this on the comic pages."

  Kresge said, "But sports, you might lose women, you know."

  The clerk said, "I read the sports page."

  "How about the same page as the movie ads?" Kresge said.

  "That sounds good," Corde said.

  She wrote it up. "Juliette said you get a public-service discount. That'll be four hundred eighty-four dollars and seventy cents. Then you want us to typeset it for you that'll be another twenty-five dollars. You have cuts?"

  "Cuts?" Corde blinked. He was thinking of the thin slash the rope had made on Jennifer Gebben's throat, the fishhook embedded in Emily Rossiter.

  "Pictures, I mean."

  "Oh. No. Just words." He wrote out copy for the ad. Corde pulled out his wallet and handed her his Visa card. She took it and stepped away to approve the charge.

  "What is it," Kresge asked. "You pay then get reimbursed?"

  Corde snickered. "I guess you oughta know, I was just relieved of duty."

  Kresge frowned severe creases into his wide face. "Man, they fired you?"

  "Suspended."

  "Why?"

  "They claim I took some letters out of Jennie's room."

  "Did you?" Kresge asked, but so innocently that Corde laughed.

  "No," he said.

  "Hardly seems fair," he said. Then: "You mean, you're paying for this ad yourself?"

  "Yup."

  He wasn't though, it turned out. The clerk, embarrassed, returned. "Sorry, Officer.... They kind of said you're over your limit. They wouldn't approve it." She handed the card back to him.

  Corde felt the immediate need to explain. But that would involve telling her a long story about two children--one with primary reading retardation--and a psychiatrist and a new Frigidaire and roll after roll of Owens-Corning attic insulation and a boy coming up on college in a few years. "Uh ..." He looked for a solution in the back of the cluttered Advertising Department.

  Kresge said, "Miss, Auden has an account here, right?"

  "The university? Yessir. The student affairs office. Ads for plays and sports. I was to the homecoming game last fall. That third quarter! I'll remember that all my life."

  "Yes'm, that was a game and a half," Kresge said. "Can you put these on the school account?"

  "You work for the school?"

  "Yes, ma'am," Kresge said. "I do." He pulled out his identification card. "I'll authorize it. This's official school business."

  She rummaged under the counter and pulled out a form. "Just sign this requisition here. Fourth and twelve on the Ohio State forty. Did Ladowski punt? No sir. And it wasn't even a bomb but a hand-off to Flemming. Ran all the way, zippity-zip."

  "While I'm about it," Kresge said, "run that ad for two weeks and put a border around it like that one there."

  "You got it."

  "That's real good of you, Wynton," Corde said. "I do appreciate it."

  "People keep forgetting," Kresge said quietly, "they were my girls too."

  Corde spent the evening talking to the parents of boys who'd bought Naryan Dimensional stilettos. He was easygoing and jokey and careful to put them at ease. No, no, we don't suspect Todd Sammie Billie Albert not hardly why he's in Science Club with Jamie....

  "I'm just," he would tell them, "getting information."

  They nodded gravely and answered all his questions and smiled at his jokes.

  But they were scared.

  Men and women alike, they were scared.

  The second killing had proved the cult theory. The words that Corde had spoken to chubby Gail Lynn Holcomb had been proved utterly false. They did have something to be scared of. As far as the good citizens of New Lebanon were concerned, Satan himself had arrived, with two murders to his name and more on his mind.

  Corde went from house to house and listened to parents, without exception, account for every minute of each boy's whereabouts on the night of April 20--a feat possible, Corde knew as a father, only if every man and woman he talked to had turned psychic.

  He saw through much of the smoke of course but still found no leads.

  Long about midnight Corde noticed a dusty drawer somewhere in his mind. It seemed to contain Sheriff's Department regulations and he believed, when he peered into it, that he saw something about officers who continue to engage in police work when suspended being guilty of impersonating sheriff's deputies. He peered further and saw the word "misdemeanor" though his mind was often very dark and the word might actually have been "felony."<
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  Corde felt suddenly pummeled by fatigue. He returned home.

  A county deputy, Tom's replacement for the evening, sat in the driveway. Corde thanked him and sent him home and then went into the house. His children were asleep in their rooms. His wife too. Corde was grateful for that. He wasn't looking forward to telling Diane that he'd been suspended.

  The next morning he was up early. He kissed Diane, dodged a chance to give her the hard news and slipped out for a secret meeting with T.T. Ebbans. They rendezvoused outside the Sheriff's Department on the hard-packed dirt the deputies sometimes used for impromptu basketball games. They both felt like spies or undercover narcs, padding around out of sight of the department's grimy windows.

  Corde told him about the knife and Ebbans slapped his head. "Doggone, I saw that movie."

  "So'd I, T.T., and I'll bet every deputy in there did too. Hell," he said in a whisper, "I'll bet Ribbon's even got the comic book. I talked to maybe thirty people last night. Here's the list and my notes. Nothing real helpful."

  Ebbans took the sheet. "Watch yourself, Bill."

  Corde tapped his holster.

  "I don't mean that. You forget you're suspended?"

  "This thing's too important to leave to Ribbon. You got what I asked you for?"

  Ebbans handed Corde a plastic bag containing the green computerized accounting ledger that they'd found in the burnt oil drum. "Don't lose it, Bill. I'm taking a chance as it is."

  "I think I've found me an expert who can help."

  "I also looked into the Gilchrist angle. Forget about it. He flew out to San. Francisco to read some paper on Saturday before Jennie was murdered and he was still out there when Emily was killed. I don't think he's back even yet."

  "You might want to talk to him though. He might know some of Jennie's boyfriends. Or girlfriends."

  "Maybe I'll ask him on the sly." Ebbans added, "We've pulled up with a stitch on this mental-patient stuff. And the occult bookstore leads are going nowhere. This whole cult thing is looking thin as October ice. I think we oughta tell Hammerback and Ribbon."

  "Hold up a while," Corde said gravely. "Next thing you know you'll be off the case too and Jim Slocum'll be our new investigator in charge."

  "Hey now," said Ebbans brightly, "that'd give us a chance to read Miranda to werewolves and vampires."

  "Mrs. Corde? Hello. My name is Ben Breck."

  Diane held the phone warily. From the man's cheerful voice, she suspected a salesman. "Yes?"

  "I'm from the Auden University lab school. You were speaking to the admissions department about a tutor?"

  It turned out that he was a salesman of sorts but Diane listened anyway. Breck was selling something pretty interesting.

  "I'm a visiting professor from the University of Chicago. I noticed your daughter's application for admission to the Special Education Department."

  And how much are you going to cost, Doctor Visiting Professor from the Big City? A hundred an hour? Two?

  "Our daughter's seeing Resa Parker, a psychiatrist in town. She recommended we find a special ed tutor."

  "I know of Dr. Parker." Breck then added, "I've done a lot of tutoring and I thought I might be able to help you."

  "Dr. Breck, I appreciate your call but--"

  "Money."

  "Beg pardon?"

  "You're worried about the fees at Auden. And I don't blame you one bit. They're outrageous. I wouldn't pay them myself."

  My, my, a doctor with a sense of humor. How refreshing.

  "It is one of my considerations," Diane admitted.

  "Well, I think you'll find me fairly reasonable. I charge twenty dollars an hour."

  Breck named a figure that two weeks earlier would have paled Diane; now she felt as if she'd pocketed found money. "That's all?"

  "I do ask to use the results of your daughter's progress in my research. Anonymously, of course. I'm scheduled to publish my findings in the American Journal of Psychology. And I'm doing a book to help teachers recognize the problems of learning disabled children."

  "Well, I don't know...."

  "I hope you'll think about it, Mrs. Corde. From the application it looks like your Sarah has a lot of potential."

  Diane said, "You've worked with students like Sarah before?"

  "Hundreds. In the majority of cases we've cut the gap between reading and chronological age by fifty percent. Sometimes more."

  "What are these techniques?"

  "Feedback, monitoring, behavioral techniques. Nothing revolutionary. No drugs or medical treatment ..."

  "Sarah doesn't do well with medicine. She's had some bad reactions to Ritalin."

  "I don't do any of that."

  "Well," Diane said, "I'll discuss it with my husband."

  "I hope to hear from you. I think Sarah and I can help each other a great deal."

  Seven days till the half-moon.

  Do you know where your .357 is?

  T.T. Ebbans walked into the New Lebanon Sheriff's Department, glancing at the sign, and asked, "Who put that up?"

  Jim Slocum looked up from that day's copy of the Register and said, "I did."

  "Could you please take it down?"

  "Sure. Didn't mean anything. Just thought it'd be kind of a reminder. For morale, you know."

  Ebbans sat down at his desk. On it were fifteen letters from people who claimed they knew who the killer was because they had dreamed about it (eight of them) or had psychic visions of his identity (four) or had been contacted in a seance by the victims (two). The remaining correspondence was from a man who explained that in a former life he had known Jack the Ripper, whose spirit had materialized in a condominium development outside of Higgins. There were also twenty-nine phone messages about the case. The first two calls Ebbans returned were to disconnected phones and the third was a man's recorded voice describing how much he loved sucking cock. Ebbans hung up and gave the rest of the messages to Slocum and told him to check them out.

  Corde's news about the knife had both elated and depressed him. It had cheered him up because it was a solid lead and like any cop he'd take a single piece of hard evidence any day over a dozen psychics or a week's worth of the most clever speculation. The news had also depressed Ebbans because it meant the line of the investigation he had inherited was looking pretty abysmal. Corde's warning about Ebbans walking point, which he'd discounted at first, came back to him. Ribbon wasn't pleased with the Register story that morning. "Cult" Weapon in Auden Death Is Movie Toy. The sheriff had said coolly, "Guess your boys should've checked that out to start."

  My boys.

  Ebbans returned to a stack of discharge reports from a mental hospital in Higgins. Ten minutes later the door swung open and a man in blue jeans and a work shirt stood uneasily in the doorway. Ebbans frowned, trying to place him. It took a minute.

  The red hat man, without the hat.

  "Detective?"

  "Come on in."

  The man said, "What it is, I just thought you'd like to know. You asked me about those boys I seen the night that girl was killed. The boys by the pond? I was leaving the lake and just now one of them was back. He had his tackle but he wasn't fishing, he was just walking around, looking at things. Would he be the Moon Killer?"

  Ebbans stood up and said, "He out there now?"

  "Was when I left."

  "Miller, come on, you and me're taking a ride."

  So like what's the reason?

  Why is this guy your friend?

  Jano didn't have any answers. Philip was a freak. He was fat and had bad skin--not zits, which everybody had, even Steve Snelling, who could have any girl he wanted. It was more that Philip's skin was dirty. Behind his ear it was always gray. And his clothes were hardly ever clean. He smelled bad. And forget about sports. No way could he even play softball let alone gymnastics. Jano remembered how his friend had strained to get up on the parallel bars and he had watched horrified as the wood rods sagged almost to breaking under the weight.

 
Why were they friends?

  This afternoon Jano was walking around Blackfoot Pond, holding the gray chipped tackle box and the rod and reel. Tracing steps, trying not to think about that terrible night of April 20. He felt bad. Not depressed but fearful, almost panicked. He felt as if a screaming Honon warrior in an invisible Dimensional cloak was racing toward him from behind, preparing to leap, closer closer closer, to tear him apart. Jano's heart galloped in his chest, heating his blood as it pumped and he felt terror spatter him like a spray of hot water. Like a spray of come.

  He pictured the girl lying in the mud, her white fingers curled, her eyes mostly open, her bare feet with their long toes....

  No no no! She's not an actress in a movie, thirty feet high on the screen in the mall. She is exactly what she is: pretty, heavy, smelling of mint, smelling of grass and spicy flowers. She is still. She does not breathe. She is dead.

  Jano shuddered, feeling the Honon troops circling around him, and found he was staring at the crushed muddy blue flowers at his feet. He thought of Philip drowning the other girl, holding her down. And what was he, Jano, going to do now? Who could he talk to? Nobody ... The panic crested and he sucked in air frantically.

  Eventually he calmed.

  Why is he your friend?

  Well, he and Phathar did talk about sci fi a lot. And movies. And girls. For a guy who never dated, Philip was an expert on sex. A walking dictionary of terms that every fifteen-year-old should know. He told Jano how gay guys shoved their fists up each other's asses and how you could tell whether a girl was a virgin by the way she bent over to tie her shoes.

  But Jano decided that their most common bond was how much they hated their fathers. Phathar was scared of his and that made plenty of sense because the old man was a total hatter. (One Halloween, Philip's dad had come into the yard, sneaking up behind trick-or-treaters, carrying bloody cow's intestines in his arms. He'd just stood staring at the totally freaked kids.) But Jano's father was worse. He was like a Honon warrior hiding in a Dimensional cloak, passing through the house as if Jano didn't exist. Sneaking past, looking at his son oddly, then vanishing.

  ... The dimensional warp swelling out out out finally bursting into the now, the here, all that purple energy of the Naryan realm flooding onto the earth....

  The movie had had a happy ending. Jano didn't think this life would. He climbed to the top of the dam and then dropped onto his knees. He leaned forward looking at his gray reflection in the still water. He didn't like water that was so still. It made him look like death. His thin face. He lowered his head to the water. He wondered what it was like to breathe water instead of air.