The Lesson of Her Death

  The dean said, "Mustn't be greedy now. After all, we have to pay it back."

  "Yes, ma'am, you've got to do that."

  Wynton Kresge said, "He's checking. He's regular Army. Put some salute in your voice when you talk to him."

  Corde picked up the receiver and listened to the hollowness of a phone on hold. He was in his office and Kresge was at a desk two feet away. Propelled by nervous energy, both stood rather than sat.

  After two minutes a crisp voice came on the line. "Deputy Kresge?"

  "Yes sir, I'm here and I have on the line Detective Bill Corde, who's heading the investigation."

  "Detective Corde," the voice said forcefully, "Detective Sergeant Franklin Neale up in Fitzberg here. You five by five, sir?"

  "Five by five," Corde said.

  "Well, sir, I understand we may have one of your perps down here."

  "That's what Wynton tells me, Detective. What've you got?"

  "Well, that Polaroid you sent was a dead end. We checked deeds and leases for a Gilchrist. Negative that. We knocked on doors of the buildings shown in the pics and naturally got negatives there too. But we did some brainstorming and stroked the folks at credit card companies. As best we can tell there's a male perp, cauc, early forties, no distinguishing, using Visa and Amex in the names of Gilchrist comma L. and Sayles comma R. R."

  "It's the same person using both cards?"

  "That's what we're reading, sir," Neale said.

  Corde punched the air with a fist. He winked at Kresge.

  "You have a hidey-hole for him?" Kresge asked.

  "Holiday Inn Eastwood near the river. Checked in as Sayles."

  "He hasn't checked out?"

  "No, sir. But we don't know whether he's in or not at the moment."

  "Okay," Corde said, "We've got a warrant. Deputy Kresge and I'll be up there in about two hours. You'll keep surveillance on him? I'll fax you the warrant. If he heads out before we get there pick him up, will you?"

  "Yessir, it'll be our pleasure. What'd his risk status be?"

  "How's that?" Corde asked.

  "He armed, dangerous?"

  Corde looked at Kresge and said, "Extremely dangerous."

  The hardest part was lying to him.

  It wasn't so difficult to tell him that his father couldn't be at the wrestling match after all. And it wasn't so hard to see Jamie take the news with heroic disappointment, just a nod, not even a burst of temper (which she would have preferred, because that's what she felt). But making up her husband's words just stabbed her through. Your father said to tell you, Diane embellished, that this killer's on the loose and they've got a real solid chance to catch him. He tried to arrange it different but he's the one's got to go. He's sending all his thoughts with you.

  "And," Diane said, unable to look into her son's eyes, "he promised he'll make it up to you."

  What in truth happened was that Corde had simply left for Fitzberg and hadn't even bothered to call home or tell Emma to do it for him.

  What a long long wait it had been! The time had crept past the hour when Corde was due home. Cars passed but no New Lebanon Sheriff's Department We Serve and Protect cruisers hurried up to the house. The minutes dropping away as Jamie and his teammate Davey sat on the couch fidgeting, joking at first as they talked about whupping Higgins High School's butt then looking out the window anxiously then falling silent. As six-thirty came and went Diane had decided she was going to insist that Corde break procedures and take the boys in the cruiser itself, siren blazing and red light going like a beating heart.

  At six-fifty Diane had made the call. It was much shorter than she let on. Emma the dispatcher told her Bill and Deputy Kresge had hurried out the door and would be spending the night in Fitzberg.

  Diane thanked her then listened to the dial tone as she continued her fake conversation at a higher volume. "Oh, Bill, what happened? ... No, really? You've almost got him.... Oh be careful, honey.... Well, Jamie's going to be good and disappointed and here you were already a half hour late.... Okay.... Okay.... I'll tell him...."

  Then she delivered her improvised monologue and asked the deputy to step inside to baby-sit Sarah.

  "Let me get another deputy to go with you, Mrs. Corde. Your husband said there's--"

  "My husband caused this mess," she growled. "And we don't have time to wait."

  Diane and the two boys piled into the station wagon for a frantic ride to the Higgins High School gym. She ran every red light en route and was spoiling for a fight with any uniformed trooper foolish enough to pull her over.

  Bill, you and me've gotta talk.

  Diane Corde sat on hard bleachers, sipping a watery Coke. She watched the crowds and thought of the smell, the peculiar aroma of school gyms, which a girlfriend had told her years ago came from boys' jockstraps. She wanted to tell this story to someone. She wished Ben Breck were here, sitting next to her.

  After ten matches there was a staticky announcement, the only words of which she discerned were "Jamie Corde." She set the Coke beside her and finger-whistled at a hundred decibels. The visiting spectators cheered New Lebanon.

  Diane watched her son striding out onto the mat, brooding and engrossed and fluid in his step. She whistled again, bringing fingers to the ears of nearby fans. She wailed for New Lebanon and pummeled the bleachers with her feet--the current fad to show support. Jamie was so focused, so single-minded in his efforts. He ran five miles every day, pumped weights every other. He trained and trained. And he had recovered so well from the tragedy of Philip. He was even taking his father's inexcusable neglect tonight in stride. Diane felt a huge burst of pride for her son, sending it telepathically out to him as he pulled on his head protector and shook his opponent's hand.

  Jamie looked up into the bleachers. She waved at him. He acknowledged her in the only way that a competitor could respond to his mother here--by looking at her once, nodding solemnly then turning away. She didn't mind; she knew he was telling her that he had received her psychic message.

  Jamie strapped the blue cloth marker on his arm, then reared his head back and breathed deeply.

  The whistle blew and the boys exploded into frenzy. Jamie's legs tensed then uncoiled as he leapt at his opponent--a tall blond sophomore--like a striking snake. They gripped arms and necks, heads together. Spinning, spinning, feet snagging the spongy blue mat, inching like grappling crabs. Limbs confused with limbs. Dots of sweat flew. Faces crimson under foam protectors, tendons rising thick from their necks. Furious scrabbling around the mat, hands were claws, gripping at knees and wrists.

  Diane shouted, "Go, go. GO! Come on, JAMIE!!"

  A brutal take-down, Jamie lifting the boy off the mat and driving him down onto his back. His head bounced and the boy gazed upward, momentarily stunned. Face glistening, Jamie pressed him hard into the mat furiously, his opponent's arms flailing. Several blows struck Jamie on the back. They were solid strikes but they rebounded without effect.

  What was happening?

  Diane was frowning, aware suddenly of the quiet of the crowd around her. Then people in the bleachers were on their feet, shouting at the coaches and at the two boys. The blond opponent tried to muscle himself away from Jamie, a centimeter at a time, toward the out-of-bounds line, twisting onto his side, shouting. He'd given up and was bent on pure escape. Several people shot Diane shocked glances as if she were responsible for her son's brutal attack.

  She shouted, "Jamie, stop!"

  His opponent's arm was turning blue-gray under Jamie's relentless grip, his legs kicked in despair. The referee's whistle blew shrilly. Jamie didn't let go. He kept driving the boy into the ground and twisting his arm, from which the red marker fluttered like a distress signal.

  "Jamie!" she called. "Honey ..."

  The referee started forward. The sports-coated coaches were on their feet, shouting, red-faced, running toward the mat. The referee dropped to his knees and slapped both hands on Jamie's shoulders. Jamie spun toward him and hit him hard in the
chest. Off balance, the referee rolled onto his back.

  Diane screamed her son's name.

  Jamie rose on one knee. Using all his leverage he bent his opponent's forearm up up up.... Thock. Diane heard the noise of the break all the way up in the bleachers. She froze where she stood and raised her hand to her mouth, watching her son standing, smiling and triumphant, over the unconscious figure of his vanquished enemy. Jamie turned on the coaches and they froze. Then the boy held his arm out straight and high then closed his fingers into a fist. Diane saw him glance toward her as he ran out the open double doors to the football field, his arm still lifted in the macabre salute of victory.

  Detective Frank Neale was pretty much what Corde expected. Crew cut, blond, beefy, smooth ruddy skin. Too professional to put an If we outlaw guns then only outlaws will have guns sticker on his Fitzberg police cruiser but dollars to doughnuts there'd be one on his (American) 4x4.

  But God bless him, he met Corde and Kresge after their frantic two-hour drive with a thermos of the best coffee Corde had ever tasted and four fat roast beef sandwiches. They ate these as they raced through the bleak streets of urban-decaying Fitzberg en route to what Neale described as an MCP in the parking lot across from the Holiday Inn.

  "MCP?" Kresge asked.

  Neale said, "Mobile command post."

  "Oh."

  Corde thought it wouldn't be much more than a police car with maybe two radios, which is what an MCP in New Lebanon would have been. But no it was a big air-conditioned Ford van with room for six officers inside. There was a large antenna dish on the roof. Kresge pointed out the bulletproof windows in the front.

  "Jesus," Corde whispered. "Maybe they got cannons, too."

  No artillery but a rack of laser-sighted M-16s, a gray box containing concussion grenades and rows of radios and computer screens and other imposing electronics. Kresge said, "All this for one perp?"

  Standing as straight as the barrel of a goose-gun, Neale said, "A lawbreaker's a lawbreaker, Deputy, and a killer's my least favorite kind."

  "Yessir," said Kresge. "I'll go along with you there."

  Corde hoped someday soon he could play the eye-rolling game with Kresge. He said to Neale, "Where's Gilchrist now?"

  Neale said, "TacSurv says he's in the room."

  Kresge asked, "Tac? ..."

  "Tactical Surveillance. They say he's in the room but we've got a glitch. He's taken in two innocents with him. A couple prostitutes."

  "His profile isn't a lust killing but he's very unstable."

  Neale said, "We've got a Sensi-Ear on him. He's paid the ladies already and now they're getting down to fun and games. If he goes rogue on us we'll do a kick-in and nail him but if not it's our policy to wait until we're out of hostage situations. Is he the sort who'd take a hostage?"

  "He'd do anything," Corde said emphatically, "to escape."

  "Okay," Neale said, "subject to your go-ahead, sir, we wait."

  The wind swirls into the low bowl of the cemetery and slips inside Jamie's one-piece wrestling uniform.

  The boy shivers and stands up. He carefully walks around the portion of the grave in which Philip's body lies and he leaves the cemetery, walking slowly to the Des Plaines River. Here the water's course is narrow and as close to a rapids as a Midwest farmland river ever gets. Upstream a quarter mile it forks and swirls around a small, narrow island filled with brush and dense trees. You can't wade the water but you can reach the island by a thick fallen birch, which he and Philip crossed hundreds of times to reach the Dimensioncruiser that the island so clearly resembles. Jamie crosses the tree now, looking down into the turbulence of the sudsy phosphate-polluted water and once across walks the familiar path past the cruiser's control room, the engine room, the xaser torpedo tubes, the escape vehicle....

  Jamie stops. He sees on the other side of the island a night fisherman, casting leisurely out into the water. Jamie is bitterly betrayed. Furious. This is their private place, his and Philip's. No one else is allowed here. In the days since Philip died Jamie has come here nearly every day to walk the cruiser's decks. He angrily resents this man's invading the island, taking it over like a Honon warrior. The fisherman turns and looks at the boy in surprise then smiles and waves. Jamie ignores him and walks sullenly back through the island.

  Jamie stands under pines crowned with dusty illumination from the lights of Higgins. He pitches stones into the water. In the gurgle of the torrent he imagines he hears the chugging rhythms of Geiger--the searing guitar riffs, the screams from the sweating hatter of a lead singer. He suddenly feels two mosquito stings on his arms. After the insects drink for a moment he smashes them viciously, leaving bloody black spots on his forearms. He listens to the roar of the water.

  Do. Yourself.

  You gotta do yourself.

  You. Got. To. Do. Yourself.

  The sky, long past blue, is now the gray color of a xaser torpedo before it detonates. The clouds separate for a moment and Jamie sees the first star of the evening. He feels a cloudburst of agony in his soul, the pain gushing through him. He is gripped with coarse panic and runs to the birch bridge. He steps onto the tree.

  Do yourself. You gotta do yourself now!

  Jamie walks halfway across then stops. He lifts his arms, like Dathar-IV standing on top of the State Governance Building Bridge, a thousand feet above the solar crystals, Honon troops closing in from either side. Jamie Corde stretches his arms high above his head, two eyes closed, balancing on twenty toes, above a single abyss of racing water.

  By the power of Your wisdom,

  by the strength of Your might,

  guide me, O Guardians,

  to the Lost Dimension,

  from darkness to light....

  He drops like a meteorite into the dark rage of water. He feels a scraping pain against his ear as the side of his head smacks the tree on his way down, then a cold colder than he's ever felt envelopes his body, squeezing every last bit of breath from his lungs.

  Jamie Corde looks up, he sees water, he sees blood and he sees in the tunnel of blackness above him a single star, which he knows is the eye of a Guardian, agreeing to lift him away, safely into a new dimension.

  A second thermos of coffee appeared. Neale ran his fingers along his buzz-cut hair and told them of the time one of his snipers picked off a perp at eight hundred yards. "God held his breath for that one," Neale said reverently.

  On a panel like the dashboard of a 747 a lonely red light began flashing and an electronic beep pulsed. A sergeant picked up a receiver. "MCP One. This is an unsecured landline. Go ahead." He listened for a moment. "Detective Corde, for you."

  "Me?" He took the receiver. "Corde here."

  "Bill." The hollowness of Diane's whisper cried a hundred different messages to him.

  He said, "Honey, what is it? Why are you--"

  "Bill."

  Corde could hear she'd already cried volumes. He heard noises behind her. Other voices. He hated that sound. They were hospital sounds. He asked, "Sarah?"

  "Jamie."

  "What happened?"

  "He's in a coma. He ... Oh, Bill, he tried to kill himself. A fisherman found him but--"

  "Oh, my Lord."

  He remembered, and the thought was like a wallop in the stomach. "The wrestling match? I missed it."

  She didn't speak for a moment. "Come home, Bill. I want you here."

  "Is he going to be okay?"

  "They don't know. He almost drowned. He hit his head when he went in. Come home now."

  When they hung up Corde said, "Wynton, Jamie's hurt. I've got to go."

  "Oh, no, Bill. Was it him?" He nodded toward the hotel.

  "No. Something else. Pretty serious. I've got to go. You're in charge here."

  Wynton Kresge had the love for seven children in his voice when he said, "I'll be thinking of you." Corde couldn't speak but just rested his hand on the deputy's huge back. In that brief gesture, Kresge felt a huge weight shift and remain on him even after
Corde stepped out the door. Kresge said, "We'll get him, Bill. We'll get him."

  "I did this one bad, didn't I?" Corde said.

  They sat in the intensive care unit of Community Hospital in a small waiting room separated from their son by a thick blond wood door. The doctors were in with him now. Occasionally the large silver handle of a doorknob would flick and a nurse or doctor would exit silently. This was the purest of punishments.

  They held hands but there was minimal returning pressure from Diane's. Corde figured he wasn't entitled to expect otherwise. Other than to tell him that Jamie was in critical condition and still unconscious, Diane hadn't said more than five words since he'd arrived after a perilous drive from Fitzberg through the vast Midwest night. This was her worst anger, a peaceful-eyed, camouflaged fury that seemed almost curiosity.

  For the first time in his marriage Corde wondered if he'd lost his wife.

  "The case ran off with me."

  He was thinking mostly of the impact on Jamie but he remembered too that he'd turned down the job of sheriff because of Jennie Gebben's death. He supposed Diane also was thinking of this. "I wish you'd say something."

  "Oh, Bill, how can you figure it all out? Here we spent all our time with Sarah. We just assumed Jamie didn't need us the way she did. And it turns out he was the one that did, and she's doing better without us."

  "This was mostly me," Corde said. "I knew about the match. I was even looking forward to it. Then I heard about Gilchrist and I got like a dog, sniffing rabbit."

  She stood up and walked down the hall to a pay phone. Whoever she was calling was not home. She grimaced, hung up, retrieved her coin and sat down in silence.

  Their vigil continued. Corde took a quarter from his pocket and started rolling it over his fingers. The coin fell and rang as it spun to a stop. He picked it up and put it back into his pocket. Then the door opened and three doctors walked out. Both husband and wife locked onto their faces and began panning for clues but goddamn they were stone-eyed. One, the chief neurologist, sat in a chair beside Diane. He began to speak.

  Corde heard the words. "Brainstem ... Minimal ... Serious concussion ... No life support ..." He talked for five minutes and told them all the things they could do for Jamie. They seemed to be good words or at least not bad words but when Corde said, "When will our boy wake up?" the doctor said, "I don't have an answer for you."