The Lesson of Her Death

by Jeffery Deaver

  Cooper said, "We had a couple county deputies working on the case, And Bill Corde was running the investigation for a while."

  "Corde's a smart guy and he, he ..." Treadle stammered as he groped for a thought.

  "Found this new witness."

  "He found this witness," Treadle agreed. "And he ..."

  "He doesn't take any crap," Cooper offered.

  "No, he doesn't take any crap."

  "But," Cooper said slowly, "there's the trouble."

  "What trouble?"

  "Didn't you hear? He may've accidentally on purpose lost some evidence. There was word he'd been fucking the Gebben girl. She was a regular little c-you-know-what. Anyway, some letters or shit got burnt up that may've connected her with Corde. They dropped the investigation--"

  "What investigation?"

  "What I'm saying. About Corde, about him eighty-sixing the evidence. But he wasn't ever found innocent. They just dropped it."

  Treadle's eyes brightened. "Think that's something we can use?"

  "I suppose that depends," Cooper said, "on whether we want to use it or not."

  Bill Corde was talking on the pay phone to Diane. It was after dusk and he was in front of Dregg's Variety, perilously close to Route 117. Every sixth or seventh car whipped by so fast he felt his uniform tugged by the slipstream as if the drivers were playing a fun game of cop-grazing.

  "Jamie?" Corde asked, "What's the matter with him?"

  "He got home late. He didn't call or anything. I want you to talk to him. It's the second night in a row."

  "Well, I will. But I'm ..." Corde let the cyclone from a Mack eighteen-wheeler spin past then continued, "But I'm a little busy right at the moment. This lead on the Gebben case. He's okay?"

  Diane said testily, "Of course he's okay. I just said he's okay."

  "I'm out here on the highway," Corde said to explain his distraction. Then he added, "I'll talk to him tonight."

  "I don't want you just to talk to him. I wanted ..."

  "What?"

  "Nothing."

  Corde ignored the brittleness and asked, "How's Sarah?"

  "She had a good session with Ben and she said she did two more chapters of her book. The insurance money didn't come again today. I was thinking maybe you should call...."

  I'm out here in the middle of the highway.

  Diane continued, "It's over two thousand. Mom had her ovaries out for three thousand five. I'm so glad Ben's only twenty an hour. That's a lifesaver."

  "Right." Who's Ben? Oh, the tutor. "Well," Corde said, "that's good. I better go."

  "Wait. One more thing. The team can't get a bus for the match in Higgins. Jamie wants to know if we can drive him and Davey?"

  "I guess. Sure."

  "You won't forget? It's the last match of the season."

  "I won't forget."

  Another car was approaching. This one didn't speed past. It stopped. Corde looked up and saw Steve Ribbon and Jack Treadle looking at him. Ribbon was solemn.

  Oh, brother.

  It was Jack Treadle's car--a bottom-of-the-line Mercedes though it had a big fancy car phone. They pulled in front of Corde's cruiser and parked. The two men got out. He realized Diane was saying something to him. He said, "Gotta go. Be back around eight." He hung up.

  Treadle stayed in the car, Ribbon walked toward Corde. They nodded greetings. "How's that lead of yours panning out, Bill?" he asked with no interest.

  "Slow but we're making progress."

  Ribbon said, "How about we walk over that way?" He pointed to a shady spot of new-cut grass beside an enormous oak.

  Something familiar here. Haven't we done this before?

  Corde walked along under the tree's massive branches, studying Ribbon's expression then focusing on Treadle's. He fished a nickel out of his pocket and did the coin trick.

  There were many things to think about but the one concern he settled on was purely practical: how he was going to break the news to Diane that he'd been fired.

  "We could sell the car."

  Diane Corde had been cleaning out the cupboards. There were cans and boxes covering the counters and tabletop. Corde pulled off his shoes and sat at the kitchen table. A pork-and-beans can rolled toward him. He caught it as it fell off the table. He read the label for a moment then set it down again.

  "The car?" he asked.

  Diane said, "You got the axe, ain't the end of the world. We can sell the second car, don't need it anyway, and that'll save us the insurance and upkeep."

  He looked back at the bottle. "Why you think I got fired?"

  "You looking as mournful as you do presently's got something to do with it."

  Bill Corde said, "They offered me the job of sheriff."

  After all these years of marriage there were still a few times when she couldn't tell when he was joking. She put away two cans of pinto beans, reached for a third then stopped.

  Corde said, "I'm serious."

  "I'm guessing there'd be a little more to it."

  "They bailed Steve Ribbon out. He blew the case bad but he's in tight with Bull Cooper and Jack Treadle so they're moving him up to some plush job with the county. I'm sheriff. Jim Slocum takes over on felony investigations. T.T. got fired. With this new witness, we know that Philip was innocent. They needed somebody to blame for the boy's death. T.T. took the hit."

  "But I thought there was an inquiry?"

  "He's not being charged with anything. He's just being fired."

  "That's too bad. I always liked him. He's a good man."

  "He's a damn good man," Corde said vehemently.

  She sat on the kitchen chair that Corde held out for her. They'd refinished these chairs themselves. A memory smell of the sulfury Rock Magic stripper came back to him.

  She said, "And it's T.T.'s the reason you're upset?"

  "Partly. And I'd have to give up investigating."

  "So what you're worried about is sitting behind a desk?"

  "Yeah," Corde said. Then figuring he shouldn't be lying to her at least when it was so clear a lie: "No. What it is is Slocum'd take over the Gebben case."

  "Well?"

  Corde laughed. "Honey, I've worked with Slocum for years. God bless him but Jim could catch a killer liming the body with the victim's wallet in his hip pocket and the murder knife in his teeth and he'd still screw up the case."

  Diane stared at the groceries for a long moment as if looking for something good about the deputy. She said, "I guess."

  "I'm not inclined to let go of this one."

  Diane said, "You won't like my question but I suppose they'd be paying you more money."

  "Some."

  "How much?"

  "Five."

  "Hundred?"

  "Thousand."

  "Ah." There was enough reverence in her voice to send a bristle of pain all the way through Corde. Diane stood up. The third bean can joined its siblings on the shelf and then she started on the spices. "You haven't eaten. What should we have for dinner? You interested in burritos?"

  "I don't want this fellow to get away."

  "Slocum taking the case doesn't mean he's going to get away. Jim won't be the only one working on it, will he be?"

  "There'll be some rookie from the county probably. The case's an embarrassment now. They just want it to go away."

  Diane gave up on the packaged goods. "Just let me ask you. Say this fellow hadn't left those pictures of Sarrie for us. Would you still be this hot after him?"

  "Maybe not."

  "That hadn't happened you'd take the job?"

  Corde said, "I always wanted to be sheriff."

  "Well, he didn't do anything to Sarrie and he's gone now. He's scooted, hasn't he?"

  "Maybe. Not necessarily."

  Diane paused for a moment. "You've wanted this for a long time. Everybody in town thinks more of you than Steve Ribbon. You could get yourself elected as often as you want."

  "I can't tell you I don't want it bad.... And I better say it: Wi
th Steve gone, they need a new sheriff. It'll be either me or Slocum. We're senior."

  Diane said, "Well, honey, I don't think you should pass it up. You can't be working for Jim. I just can't see that at all."

  Corde smiled in frustration. "It'd be hard to do that to New Lebanon. Believe you me."

  She ripped open a cello pack of beef chuck cubes. They fell out glistening and soft on the cutting board. She picked up a knife and began to slice the cubes smaller. She wished she could talk to Ben Breck about this. Not ask his advice but just tell him what she felt. Without looking at her husband she said, "I've got to be honest with you, Bill...." She rarely used his name. Sometimes in connection with expensive presents he'd just given her, more often in connection with sentences like that one. "Jamie's coming up on college age in a few years and you know all about Dr. Parker's bills."

  "Five thousand'd go a long way," Corde said.

  They were silent for a long time. Diane broke the stillness. "Okay, I've said what I wanted to. Why don't you go talk to Jamie? He's got to call if he's going to be out past suppertime. He just came back then went into his room without saying hello or anything and he's listening to some gosh-awful rock music that's got screams and howling on it."

  "Well, maybe that means he's feeling better."

  "He could celebrate feeling better by getting home when he's supposed to and listening to the Bee Gees or Sinatra."

  "I'm not in the mood for giving him a talking-to tonight. Maybe tomorrow I will."

  She wiped her hands, full of dust and old flour. Corde was studying the ingredients of Budweiser and didn't see her wrench her lips into a narrow grimace or tighten her hand into a fist.

  He doesn't want to do anything at all for those two girls dead by the pond--who wouldn't be dead if they hadn't been where they shouldn't've, campus sluts both of them. No, no, he wants to save those cops he thinks he laid out on the concrete floor of Fairway Mall, laid them out like the broken dolls they seemed to be on the front page of the Post-Dispatch.

  Well, it's too late for them, Bill. It's too late.

  Diane said to her husband, "Quit looking so glum. You think about it tonight and whatever you decide we're still going to have my special burritos for dinner. Then we'll watch that Farrah Fawcett movie and I'll let you guess who the killer is. Now go water that new strip of lawn, whatever the birds've left."

  And she turned back to the sink, smiling brightly and scalded with anger at herself for this complete cowardice.

  At eight-thirty in the morning Bill Corde walked into the Sheriff's Department and hung up his blue jacket and his hat. Then he went into Steve Ribbon's office where he saw assembled the whole of the department except for the two deputies on morning patrol. They all nodded to him. He paused in the doorway then sat down among them--across the desk from Jim Slocum who was sitting in Ribbon's old high-backed chair.

  Resting on the desk prominently was that morning's Register. The headline read: "Sheriff's Dep't Reopens Auden Slay Case." A subhead: "Youth's Death Termed 'Tragic Accident'."

  "Well, gentlemen," Slocum said, "welcome. You've all heard the announcement about Steve's move up and we're real happy about that situation. I've asked you here to chew the fat a little and tell you about some of the changes I'm going to institute. And I want to say, if there are any questions, I want you to interrupt me. Will you do that?"

  Lance Miller, his volume hampered by the surgical tape around his ribs, said, "Sure we will."

  "Good. First off nothing I'm going to do is too, you know, radical but I've been thinking about the department and there are some things we can do different that'll be helpful." He looked down at a sheet of paper. "Well, number one, we're going to change the radio codes. We're used to a lot of casual talk on the radio and I don't think we should be doing that. You can get yourself into some real unprofessional situations that way. From now on we're going to be using the Associated Public Safety Communications Officers' Codes. That's like you see on TV. Ten-four. Ten-thirteen. All that. There are thirty-four of them and you'll have to learn them all. Oh and I don't want you to say A, B, C, you know. I want Adam, Boy, Charles and so on. We're not going to use the military ones. I know some of you boys learned Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta. We're civilian and there's no reason for us to be ashamed of it."

  Two deputies nodded to show that they weren't ashamed.

  God bless you but ... Bill Corde shifted his weight and crossed his arms.

  Slocum said, "Ten-four?"

  The deputies smiled politely.

  "Another thing, I don't want you to worry about calling me by my first name. I've been Jim to you for years and I don't want you all going grandiose on me and calling me 'Sheriff' or especially 'sir' or anything. Promise me that?"

  "Yessir!" one of the deputies saluted sharply, and they all laughed.

  "I've also been seeing about getting you boys walkie-talkies. Mayor Cooper thinks it's a good idea but where the money's going to come from is a whole 'nother thing so you may have to wait a while on those. But I just want you to know they're on our wish list. Now let's get down to brass tacks."

  Over the next ten minutes Corde tried his best to pay attention as Slocum described his plans for dividing New Lebanon into precincts and the special drug task force he was going to establish.

  One deputy frowned and said, "I don't think I ever arrested anybody for real drugs, Jim. Not more'n a little pot. Or coke at Auden." He turned to another deputy. "Anybody?"

  The other deputies said they rarely had.

  "Ain't been don't mean won't be," Slocum said and held up a Time magazine cover about crack in small towns.

  It was then that Corde, mentally, left the room.

  A half hour later the deputies departed, carrying their photocopies of the new radio codes that they'd be quizzed on next week. Corde scooted his chair closer to the desk.

  "Glad you stayed, Bill. There's some things I wanted to talk to you about."

  "Me too."

  Slocum said, "I've been doing some thinking and I'd like to tell you what I've decided. This is a pretty odd situation, you being senior to me and me getting the job. So I've come up with something I think you're going to be pretty pleased with."

  "Go ahead."

  "I'm going to create a new job here. It'll be called vice sheriff." Slocum paused and let Corde taste the full flavor of the words. When he didn't respond Slocum said, "And guess who's going to be appointed it? ... You bet." Slocum beamed. "Sounds real nice, don't you think?"

  "What exactly does it mean?"

  "Oh, don't think I'm doing you a favor. No sir. The fact is you're going to work for it. I've been thinking about where your talents are, Bill. And it's pretty easy to see you're a better administrator than me. I'm going to throw a lot of stuff at you. Scheduling, overtime, personnel problems, payroll. So what do you say to that, Mr. Vice Sheriff?"

  Corde got up and closed the door then returned to the chair. He easily held Slocum's eye. "Jim, you're the sheriff now and I think you'll probably run the department pretty good. But I'm doing one thing and one thing only and that's tracking down Jennie Gebben's killer. I'm finding him whether he's in New Lebanon or Fredericksberg or Chicago or Mexico City and I'm bringing him back for trial. Now, tell me, what's the budget for deputies?"

  "What?" Slocum was too surprised to frown.

  "The budget?" Corde asked impatiently. "Didn't Steve show you the department budget?"

  "Yeah, somewhere...." He inspected the desk for a moment, looking for something he had no desire to find. "But, Bill, the thing is I don't know I can have you assigned to just one case. We're down one man already, what with Lance's broken ribs and all. This's a pretty big request. I'll have to think about it."

  "I believe that's it there, that computer printout."

  Slocum pulled it out and opened it up. "What, is it this column? It says 'Personnel.'"

  Corde said, "That's actual. I need to know budgeted."

  "What's that?"

 
"Here, gimme." Corde scowled. "That's what I was afraid of. We've hardly got enough left for raises. Not enough for a new man."

  "Raises? Should I give the men raises?"

  Corde was making notes on his index cards. He said, "We've got about five thousand in travel and equipment left for the rest of the year.... Well, I'd like you to leave that alone. I'm going to need a good portion of it if not everything."

  "Equipment? But I told you I was having trouble getting money for the walkie-talkies. And I was going to buy us all Glocks. They cost over four hundred each."

  "Glocks? Jim, we don't need fifteen-round automatics."

  Slocum didn't speak for a minute then he said quietly, "I'm the sheriff, Bill. I said I'd consider your request but I can't promise anything."

  Corde dropped the sheet on the desk. "Okay, Jim, there's no nice way to say what I'm about to." He paused while he honestly tried to think of one. "The only thing I'll add to take the sting out of it is that whether it was you or Steve or Jack Treadle himself sitting where you are, I'd say exactly the same thing. Which is: You got yourself a plum job and you know it and I know it and I'm happy for you. But you got appointed because I turned it down. And the price for that is me getting the Gebben case and all of the travel and equipment budget, every penny of it. After this is over I'd be glad to help you with all this administrative stuff and I'll even learn your radio codes but until then what I just said is the way it is."

  Corde looked back at the shock on Slocum's face, which froze slowly to a chill. Corde wondered if this talk might actually do some good, toughening the man's flaccid way.

  "You don't have to be like that, Bill."

  The buffoonery was gone and Corde now saw in Slocum's eyes the too-vivid knowledge that he had advanced by default and he saw too the man's depleted hope, which could have very well been Corde's own broken ambition had life moved just a little different. This stung him--for his own sake as well as Slocum's--but he did not apologize. He stood and walked to the door. "I'm counting on you to leave that money just where it is until I need it."

  What Wynton Kresge owed: $132.80 to GMAC. $78.00 to Visa. $892.30 to Union Bank and Trust (the mortgage). $156.90 to Union Bank and Trust (the bill consolidation loan). $98.13 to Consolidated Edison. $57.82 to Midwestern Bell. $122.78 to Duds 'n' Things for Kids. $120.00 to Corissa Hanley Duke, the housekeeper. $245.47 to American Express. $88.91 to Mobil (goddamn Texans, goddamn Arabs). $34.70 to Sears.