The Lesson of Her Death

  "So I should take him up on it?"

  "Cheap tutoring from an expert. I'd say there isn't much of a choice there."

  "I've already told him I would."

  "I think you'll see some dramatic improvements in Sarah." The doctor looked at her watch. "This session will be very short, Mrs. Corde. A few minutes with you, a few with Sarah. I'm not going to charge you for the time."

  "My horoscope for this month must've said, 'You will meet two generous therapists.'"

  Dr. Parker's sense of humor had been spent on the cartoon; she ignored the pleasantry and dug again with some irritation into the bottom of her desk drawer. Finally she extracted a small black box.

  The doctor said, "You're going to see Sarah carrying this around with her. Tell your husband and son to leave it alone. Don't touch it, don't listen to it, don't ask her about it. Unless she says something first."

  Diane asked the most innocuous question she could think of. "Is it a tape recorder?"

  "That's right."

  "What's it for?"

  "I'm going to reconstruct Sarah's self-esteem."

  "How?"

  She answered tersely, "Sarah's going to write a book."

  Diane smiled, a reflex. Then she decided that the joke was in poor taste and she frowned. Dr. Parker pushed the recorder, a blank cassette and an instruction book toward Diane, who scooped them up and held them helplessly. When the doctor said nothing more Diane said, "You're not joking, are you?"

  "Joking?" Dr. Parker looked as if Diane were the one making the tasteless comment. "Mrs. Corde, I'd think you'd know by now I rarely joke."

  Diane Corde believed that the perfection of children's fingers was proof that God existed and she thought of this now watching her daughter hold the tape recorder, examining it with some small suspicion and turning it over in her pale hands. Diane unfolded a tattered copy of the instruction manual and took the recorder back. She set it on the living room coffee table. In her left hand she held two AA batteries and a new cassette.

  "I think we should ..." She examined the instruction sheet.

  "Lemme," Sarah said.

  Diane read. "We have to--"

  "Lemme."

  Click, click, click. "There."

  Diane looked down. Sarah had the machine running and was pressing the Play and Record buttons simultaneously, saying, "Testing, testing."

  "How did you do that? Did you read the instructions?"

  Sarah rewound the tape and pressed another button. Diane's tinny voice repeated, "... read the instructions?"

  "Mom, come on. Like, it's easy." She looked at the recorder then back up to her mother. "Dr. Parker wants me to make up stories and put them in my book."

  "That's what she said."

  "I don't know what to write about. Maybe Buxter Fabricant?"

  "I think Dr. Parker would like to hear that story. He's the dog that became president, right?"

  "I like Buxter--" Sarah scrunched her nose. "--but I already wrote that story. I could write, a story about Mrs. Drake Duck ... , No, no, no! I'm going to write a story about Mrs. Beiderbug."

  "Sarah. Don't make fun of people's names."

  "It's going to be a good story." Sarah dropped the recorder in her Barbie backpack.

  Jamie appeared in the doorway. He was eating a sandwich and carrying a glass of milk. From the way he was looking at Sarah, Diane knew he wanted to talk about something out of the girl's presence. He turned and walked back into the kitchen. She heard the refrigerator door opening and the shuffle as he pulled out a plastic gallon jug of milk.

  Diane stood up and walked into the kitchen. She took a package of chicken from the freezer and set it on a pad of paper towels, taking her time as she cut away the plastic wrapper. Jamie sat at the table and silently stared at his glass of milk, which he then gulped down. He stood, filled the glass again and returned to his chair. She thought it was odd that though Sarah had problems with language, speaking with Jamie was often far more difficult.

  She asked, "Practice today?"

  "Yeah. Later."

  "Then you have weight training?"

  "Not today."

  There was nothing more she could do with the chicken and she decided to boil potatoes, because that would give her an excuse to stay in the kitchen for as long as he wanted her to be there. She began peeling. The silence was thick as oil smoke. Finally she said, "We know you didn't have anything to do with it, Jamie."

  The prosecutor hadn't presented the boy to the grand jury but he had warned the Cordes sternly that he would have to testify at Philip's trial. And that there was a chance new evidence might arise implicating him further.

  Jamie drank the milk like a man on a bender. He stood and she prayed he was just going to the refrigerator, not leaving the room. He poured another glass and sat down again. He asked, "Did Dad like look through my room or anything?"

  "Did he what?"

  When he didn't repeat the question she said, "Your father wouldn't do that. If there was something bothering him he'd talk to you."

  "Uh-huh." Her son sat with his head tilted, studying the glass. Diane wanted to tell him how much she loved him, how proud they were of him, how the incident at the pond--whatever had happened--was one of those ambiguous glitches in the complicated history of families that don't touch the core of its love. Yet she was afraid to. She believed that if she did, the words would turn his heart as thick as his sculpted muscles and he would move further away from her.

  Jamie--

  Sarah appeared in the doorway. "He's here, Mommy! Dr. Breck!"

  Diane looked toward the living room and saw a car parked in the driveway. "Okay, I'll be there in a minute."

  Sarah left and Diane said to her son, "Your father loves you." She stood and ran a hand through his hair, feeling his neck muscles tense at this. He said nothing.

  A suspect had been arrested but Tom the pink-cheeked deputy was still taking his job seriously.

  Nobody had relieved him of his command yet. Besides, he was hugely aware that somebody had gotten past him at least once and that Sarah had hightailed it into the woods right under his nose; he wasn't letting Ben Breck put a foot on the front porch until he had the Queen's okay.

  Diane nodded. "It's all right. He's expected." She turned to the man standing on the concrete walk. "Dr. Breck?"

  "Call me Ben, please." He walked past the deputy into the house.

  Breck was over six feet tall, with dark, unruly hair laced with gray. Forty-one, she remembered Dr. Parker had said. He had boyish qualities--his voice and face, for instance--and you could see exactly what he had looked like when he was twelve. He seemed to be in good shape but he was pale and this gave him the deceptive appearance of weakness. His eyes were dark. He wore black jeans and a tweed sports coat over a dark blue shirt. His hands were small and his fingers almost delicate. He slouched. Diane, accustomed to her husband's military posture, was put off by this initially. Almost immediately though this aversion flipflopped and became pleasantly quirky. He carried a battered briefcase.

  Diane motioned him to the couch. He glanced out the window. "Is there, uhm, something wrong?"

  "Oh, the deputy? No, my husband's a detective. He's involved in the case where those girls were killed."

  "The students?"

  "That's right. The Sheriff's Department sometimes has a deputy keeping an eye out on the houses of the investigators."

  Sarah bounded down the stairs and halted in the arched doorway to the living room, clutching her pink backpack and gazing at Breck. Diane noted that she had changed clothes and was now wearing her favorite T-shirt, bright blue and emblazoned with a seahorse. The girl brushed a long tail of hair from her face and said nothing.

  "Sarah, this is Dr. Breck."

  "You're my tutor."

  "That's right. I'm pleased to meet you, Sarah," Breck said.

  To Diane's surprise, the girl shook his hand.

  Jamie walked quickly through the living room, wearing his biking shorts
and a sweatshirt.

  "Oh, Jamie ..."

  He glanced at the three people in the room and didn't say a word. He left by the front door. She saw him leap on his bike and pedal quickly out of the driveway.

  "Wrestling practice," she explained to Breck.

  "Ah." Breck turned to Sarah. "What've you got there?"

  "My backpack."

  "What's in it?"

  "Barbie. And Redford T. Redford--"

  "That's one of her stuffed bears." Diane felt a need to translate.

  "That's a clever name."

  Sarah announced, "He's the world's smartest bear. And I have my tape recorder."

  "Tape recorder? Oh-oh, are you recording what I'm saying? Like a spy?"

  "No!" Sarah smiled. "I'm writing stories."

  "Stories?" Breck's eyes went wide. "I've never known anybody who writes stories."

  "Dr. Parker is having me write a book."

  Breck said, "I write books. But mine are very boring. Students use them in class. I'll bet yours are more interesting than mine. Sarah, why don't you sit over here next to me."

  Diane asked, "Can I get you anything?"

  "A salt shaker," Breck said.

  "Pardon?"

  "Actually, the whole carton would be better."

  "Salt."

  Breck said, "Please."

  Diane walked into the kitchen and Breck turned to Sarah. "How do you spell 'chair'?"

  "C-H-A-I-R."

  "Very good."

  Sarah beamed.

  "How about 'table'?"

  She closed her eyes and thought for a minute. She shook her head. Then she said, "T-A-B-E-L. No, L-E."

  "That's right. How 'bout 'tablecloth'?"

  The girl went quiet, her mood changed fast as a balloon popping. "I don't know." Her face became sullen.

  "Tablecloth," Breck said.

  Diane, returning with the blue carton, felt an electric rush across her face--sympathetic fear. She's getting upset, she's going to be blocked and you're bucking for a tantrum, boy....

  Breck opened his briefcase and pulled out a sheet of black paper. Diane handed him the salt. Breck took it and poured a large pile onto the paper then spread it out smoothly. Mother and daughter watched--one with fascination, one with caution. Breck said to Sarah, "Let's spell it together."

  "I don't know how." She stared at the salt. Diane stood in the doorway until she saw what she believed was a glance from Breck, requesting privacy. She retreated to the kitchen.

  "Give me your hand," Breck said to the girl.

  Reluctantly Sarah did. He took her index finger and drew a T in the salt with it. "You feel it?" He asked. "You feel what a T is like?"

  Sarah nodded. Breck smoothed the salt. "Do it again."

  She hesitated, then started the letter. It was a clumsy attempt, looking more like a plus sign.

  "Let's try an A."

  "I can do that one," she said and smoothed the salt herself.

  For a half hour they made salt letters. A hundred "table"s. A hundred "cloth"s. A hundred of those words put together, making a third word. Even though Sarah struggled fiercely to spell it correctly--and did so the majority of times--Breck did not seem interested in her results. Less a tutor than a sculpting instructor, Breck urged her to feel the shape of the letters. Diane, crouched like a peeping Tom, peered through a crack in the kitchen door and watched.

  At the end of the session he gave Sarah a tracing notebook, which contained a story Breck read to her. Sarah declared it was "a pretty darn good story," even though she guessed the ending halfway through. Breck gave her instructions on tracing the paragraphs. He stood up and left Sarah to her book and tape recorder and mangy stuffed bear.

  "Hello?" Breck called. "Mrs. Corde?"

  "In here."

  He walked into the kitchen, where Diane had rapidly resumed peeling potatoes.

  "You are amazing," she said. Then confessed, "I overheard."

  "These are very well-known techniques. Rapport with the child. Multisensory stimulation. Work with her motor skills. Use her given talents to compensate for her deficits."

  "You seem like an artist."

  "I like what I do. That's the optimal motivation for any endeavor."

  Optimal? Endeavor?

  "You want some coffee?"

  He said, "Sure."

  She poured two cups and chattered about her garden and a PTA bake sale she was chairing. Diane Corde didn't know what to make of her rambling. Apparently neither did Breck, who sat in the kitchen and sipped coffee while he looked close to uncomfortable. He gazed out over the backyard. When she paused he said, "I like these windows, you can see the whole field there. I have bay windows like these in my town house."

  "Where's that?"

  "Chicago. South Side. Only I don't see fields. I see the lake."

  "I wonder if that's why they call them bay windows. Bay, lake."

  He said, "Or perhaps it's because they're shaped like a bay."

  Diane said that was true and felt like a fool that her joke had missed its mark.

  Breck said, "Sarah's a good candidate for improvement. Dr. Parker has her dictating stories to build up self-esteem, I assume?"

  "That's right."

  "She has an astonishing imagination."

  "She's always making up things. It drives me nutty sometimes. I don't know what's real and what's fantasy."

  "A plight many of us suffer from."

  Plight.

  There was a moment of long silence. Breck was still gazing, though no longer at the cow pasture. Now it was Diane's eyes he was examining.

  He asked, "Do you work?"

  "Yep. You just finished with one of my bosses. I got two more. Jamie--you saw him--and a husband. They're all a handful."

  "Ah, your son. The bicyclist. Does he have any learning problems?"

  "Nope. Good student, good athlete."

  "That's not unusual. Birth order is often a significant factor in dyslexia. And your husband's a policeman?"

  "A detective. He works like a maniac, he's away from home so much." Diane found herself about to blurt, "And that's with a case he's been ordered off of!" But she said only, "We don't get many murders in New Lebanon."

  "From what I've read it's got the town in quite an uproar."

  "Well, all this talk of Moon Killers and cults and that nonsense ..."

  "Is it nonsense?"

  "Well, they've caught that boy. I shouldn't be telling you this but that's why Jamie was a little moody. The one they've indicted was a friend of his."

  "Really?" Breck frowned in sympathy. "Poor kid."

  "I'm of mixed mind. I didn't want to say anything in front of Sarah but the reason the deputy's out there? Somebody's left some threats."

  "How terrible."

  "To get Bill to stop the investigation."

  "And they think your son's friend did that?"

  "Philip's a sorry soul. With parents like his I'm not surprised he turned out bad. He's been abused, I'm sure. And his mother drinks. But threatening my daughter ... I don't cut him any slack. He gets no sympathy from me."

  "But if they've arrested him, why the guard?"

  "That's my Bill. Between you and me and the fence post, he's not sure the boy's guilty. He asked to have the deputy kept on the house for a few days longer. I can't say that upsets me too much." Diane hesitated. "I guess I shouldn't ... I mean, this is pretty much classified stuff I'm telling you."

  Breck acknowledged the discretion with a nod and Diane turned the talk back to the PTA. After ten minutes Breck looked at his watch and stood. "Thanks for the coffee. I'd like to stay longer," he said with sincerity, "but I have a lecture to prepare."

  Diane took his hand and found she was studying parts of him--his floppy hair, his eyelids, his lips, reaching conclusions about each. This allowed her to avoid conclusions about Breck as a person. Or as a man.

  She thought suddenly that this was the first time in years she was having a serious talk alone in her kitche
n with a man not related by blood or marriage. She asked, "Next Tuesday?"

  "I'll look forward to it." Breck added, "I've enjoyed talking with you. I think we have some good rapport established."

  "Is that important?"

  "Indeed." Breck took her hand again. He continued to hold it, pressing firmly, as he said, "You'd be surprised how important the tutor's relationship with a parent is."

  MEMO

  TO: Files

  FROM: Dennis B. Brann, Esq.

  DATE: May 8

  RE: People v. Halpern, a Minor

  Attached are the relevant portions of a transcript of my interview with Philip Halpern, defendant in this case, which interview took place today at the New Lebanon Sheriff's Department, following a bail hearing at which bail was set in the amount of $1 million and was not posted. The Grand Jury of Harrison County has indicted Philip with one count of first-degree murder, one count of first-degree manslaughter, one count of first-degree rape and one count of first-degree sodomy, in connection with the death of Jennifer Gebben, and one count first-degree murder and one count first-degree manslaughter in the death of Emily Rossiter.

  DNA genetic marker test results indicate that the semen found in and on the Gebben victim was Philip's (see Attachment "A").

  DBB: Philip, I'd like to talk to you about what happened at the pond. Everything you tell me, even if you tell me that you did what you're accused of, is only between us. The court will never find that out.

  PH: Yessir.

  DBB: Tell me what happened that night, that Tuesday, April 20.

  PH: I was with Jamie--

  DBB: That's Jamie Corde?

  PH: Yeah and what it was, we'd been fishing, only nothing was biting so we thought since it'd rained during the day there'd be some worms close to the surface, so we thought we'd dig some and we walked over along the dam. It was around ten. Jamie and me were walking along there and we looked down and we seen this white thing and we thought it was, I thought it was one of those, you know, those dolls they sell in the back of magazines sometimes....

  DBB: Dolls?

  PH: You like blow them up and, you know, do things to them.

  DBB: Inflatable dolls.

  PH: Yeah. So I go, "Let's go look," and we go down there and it isn't a doll, it's this girl and she's lying there and she looks dead.

  DBB: Where was she?