The Lesson of Her Death

  "But what do we do?"

  "Wait."

  Corde nodded. Diane was crying. The doctor asked if they'd like sedatives. They answered, "No," simultaneously.

  "It wouldn't hurt to get some sleep," the doctor answered. "I really don't think he'll take a turn for the worse."

  Corde said, "Why don't you run home, honey, get some rest."

  "I'm staying with my boy."

  "I'm staying too."

  When the doctor left she curled up in an orange fiberglass chair and it seemed that she was instantly asleep. Corde rose and walked into the room to sit beside his son.

  "Okay, Deputy, home base is clear."

  Wynton Kresge opened his eyes. Franklin Neale stood above him, shaking him awake.

  "What time is it?"

  "Six-thirty. In the A.M. The hookers're gone and home base is clear."

  "Beg pardon?" Kresge asked.

  The magic thermos appeared again and coffee was poured. Kresge added three packets of sugar and sipped from the red plastic cup.

  Neale said, "You want to go in after him now or wait till he comes out?"

  Kresge was asking Bill Corde silent questions and not a one of them got answered. He looked at Neale, fresh as a recruit on parade. He was clean-shaved. "What do you think?"

  Neale shrugged. "Well, tactically, it's your classic situation. If we go into his hidey-hole there's a better chance of return fire. If we get him on the street we could lose him or get some civvies casualtied in a firefight."

  Hearing this, the military lingo, made Kresge feel better. He decided he wasn't so much out of his element after all. "I'd like to go in and get him."

  "Fair enough, Deputy. We've got our SWAT team on standby. You want them to do it?"

  Wynton Kresge said, "I'll go in. I want them as backup."

  And the crew-cut rosy-skin detective was nodding, solemn and eye-righteous, one grunt to another. "That's the way I'd do it." Then he looked over Kresge's large frame and said, "Okay, let's suit you up in body armor. I think we've got something that might fit."

  As he applied the Velcro straps to the Type II vest with the Supershok plate over the heart, Wynton Kresge thought suddenly of an aspect of being a policeman that he had never considered. If the point of being a cop was ultimately to save lives then the flip side was true also--he might have to take a life.

  All the while sitting in his Auden U office chair, feeling the rub of the Taurus automatic pistol on his belt, he had never really considered using the gun. Oh, there'd been his theatrical little fantasies about winging terrorists. But now Kresge felt dread. Not at the real possibility that in five minutes he'd be dodging slugs but at the opposite--that he would have to send bullets hissing through the body of another man. The thought terrified him.

  "... Deputy?"

  Kresge realized the detective was speaking to him.

  "Yes?"

  Neale opened a diagram of the hotel. "Look here."

  "Where'd you get that?"

  "Our SWAT team has layouts of all the hotels in town. Bus and train stations and most of the office buildings too."

  This seemed like a good idea. Maybe he'd suggest it to Corde.

  "Okay, he's in here. Room 258. There's no connecting door. But there's this thing here. What is it?"

  One of the other officers said, "They have a microwave and a little refrigerator there. Pipes. Stainless steel sink. It's probably enough to stop the hollowpoints but we can't use jacketed because of the street on the other side."

  "Deputy?"

  Kresge said, "I don't think we should give him any warning. No gas or grenades. Take the door down and move in fast before he has a chance to set up a fire zone." He'd seen this in a Mel Gibson movie. He added, "If that's in accordance with procedures?"

  Neale said, "Sounds good to me, Deputy. Let's get--"

  "Sergeant," the young patrolman at the radio console said, "he's rabbitting! Left the room and is moving toward Eastwood." He listened into his headset for a moment then announced to Neale and Kresge, "TacSurv advising SWAT. They're three blocks away. They'll proceed to deployment."

  "Roger," the detective said. "Where's he headed?"

  "Toward the river. On foot. Got his suitcase with him. He's moving fast."

  Kresge said, "Where's that from here?"

  "A block."

  "Well, let's go get him."

  Neale pulled on a blue cap that said POLICE on the crest.

  "TacSurv says he's vanished. He turned before he got to the bridge--into those old warehouses down by the riverfront. He's gone north, they guess."

  The door of the van burst open and Kresge squinted against the blinding light. "Which way?"

  "Follow me." Neale began running across the street. Past a scabby field overgrown with weeds and strewn with rusted hunks of metal. Kresge could see block after block of one-and two-story warehouses. Most of them dilapidated. Some burnt out.

  A perfect hiding place for someone on the run.

  A perfect vantage place for a sniper.

  An Econoline van screeched to a stop nearby. Five SWAT officers jumped out. Kresge heard: "Load and lock. Green team, deploy south. Blue, north. Hug the river. Go, go, go!"

  Neale pulled up in front of the first building. "Deputy?"

  Kresge looked at him and saw he was motioning to Kresge's pistol, still in its holster.

  "Oh." Kresge unsnapped the thong and drew the gun. He pumped a round into the chamber and slid his right index finger parallel to the barrel. He felt a monumental spurt of energy surge through his chest. Neale pointed to himself then to the right. Kresge nodded and turned the opposite way, toward the river. A minute later Kresge found himself in a long alleyway through which ran rusted narrow-gauge rail lines. It was filled with thousands of black doorways and windows and loading docks.

  "Oh, boy," he sighed, and jumped over a small stone abutment, as he ran into the war zone.

  The first five buildings were pure hell. Spinning, ducking, aiming his pistol at shadows and garbage bags and shutters. Then having gotten this far without being shot, Kresge grew bolder. Gilchrist didn't want to get trapped. His whole point's to escape. He's not going to back himself into a closed warehouse.

  Though it was in a warehouse that Kresge found him.

  The deputy stepped into a huge abandoned space, pillars of jagged sun coming through the broken panes of skylight.

  And there was the man he sought. Not fifty feet away, hiding beside an old boiler. He held no weapons, just an old suitcase. He looked benign and small next to the huge tank, a slight man, blond, ashen and nervous. It occurred to Kresge that this was the first time anybody involved in the investigation had actually, seen Leon Gilchrist. It wasn't much of a sighting; the light here was dusty and diffuse.

  Kresge shouted, "Freeze."

  The man did, but only in shock and only for a moment. Then very slowly he turned his back to Kresge and started to walk away as if he were reluctantly leaving a lover.

  "Stop! I'll shoot."

  Step by step he kept going, never looking back.

  Kresge aimed. A clear target. Perfect. Better than on the small arms range at Higgins. His finger slipped into the guard and he started putting poundage on the trigger. About halfway to its eleven pounds of pull he lowered the gun and muttered, "Shit." Then took off at a full gallop.

  Ahead of him the silhouette became a shadow and then vanished.

  One of the patrolmen temporarily assigned to FelAp, the Fitzberg Felony Apprehension Squad, was Tony LaPorda, a great, round chunk of a man, who wore his service revolver high on his belt and his illegal .380 automatic in a soft holster under his pungent armpit. He was a small-city cop--a breed halfway between the calm, slope-shouldered civil servant urban police of, say, New York and the staunch cowboys of Atlanta or San Antonio.

  LaPorda wore a leather jacket with a fur collar and dark slacks and a hat with a patent-leather brim and checkered band around the crown. He was typical of the five patrolmen working N
orth Side GLA, who'd been told to volunteer for a couple hours at time and a half to collar some professor from New Lebanon who'd stuck the big one to a student of his.

  For this assignment LaPorda was given a special frequency for his Motorola and a flak jacket but not an M-16 (nobody but SWAT had rifles, this Leon Gilchrist not being a terrorist or anything but a fucking professor). LaPorda was not very excited about the project especially when it turned out that the perp was on the move. LaPorda hated running even more than he hated the riverfront.

  He trotted lethargically toward one large warehouse where he figured he might sit the whole thing out. He pulled up with a stitch in his side, thinking, Jesus Christ, this fucking aerobic fucking Jane Fonda crap is what they pay fucking SWAT for.

  He leaned against a warehouse wall, listening to the staticky voices of what a buddy had dubbed the Felony Apprehension Response Team (nobody was faster than cops with this sort of acronym). LaPorda called in too, saying that he'd had no sign of the perp but was on his way to the riverfront for further investigation. Then he dug into his jacket pocket for his Camels. He shook one out and put his lips around it.

  He was startled when a polite voice next to him said, "Need a match?"

  When LaPorda turned he didn't see who was speaking. All he saw was a rusty pipe, four inches wide and about four feet long, as it whistled square into his face. The ponk echoed off the walls nearby. LaPorda collapsed in a large pile and began to bleed heavily. He did not lose consciousness at first and was aware of hands rifling his shirt. The hands were persistent but delicate; the man they belonged to didn't seem very strong.

  Professor's hands, he thought then he passed out.

  Wynton Kresge caught him lifting the fallen patrolman's service revolver out of its holster. Kresge wondered if Gilchrist had killed the officer. "Hold it right there." He turned and their eyes met. The two were alone. There were no footsteps, no crackles of walkie-talkies. The rest of the teams had passed them by. "Don't move," Kresge said. He aimed at the darting, dark eyes then remembered the Deputy's Procedural Guide. Rule 34-6. The chest, not the head, is the preferred target in an arrest situation.

  Kresge said, "Drop the gun."

  The sunlight bounced off a high window and illuminated the men in pale light.

  "Drop it."

  "Let's talk about this."

  Kresge nodded at the man's gun. "Now!" It was a double-action revolver. All Gilchrist had to do was aim and pull the trigger. No safety, no slides. Rule 34-2. Identify suspect's weapon immediately. "I'm not going to tell you again."

  "Do you want some money? How much do you want? A thousand? No problem." He nodded toward the cop. "That was an accident. He fell. I was trying to help him. You want two thousand?" He gestured casually toward his suitcase, which moved the muzzle of the revolver closer to Kresge.

  He remembered the silhouette targets on the Higgins range. He said, "I'll count to three."

  "Hey, why don't you just count to ten and give me a chance to go away? What could be easier than that? Two thousand dollars cash. I've got it right there in my suitcase."

  "If you don't drop the gun immediately," Kresge said, "I am going to shoot you."

  "Oh, I don't think so, Officer."

  "He moved. He said something."

  "Detective Corde?" the nurse said.

  "I don't know what it was exactly," he explained.

  "Telephone for you, sir."

  Corde said to her, "He moved. He said something."

  The nurse, who knew all about sleep-deprivation hallucinating, glanced down at Jamie's immobile form. "That's wonderful."

  "He sat up."

  She had also read Jamie's chart and she knew that he was as likely to fly loop-de-loops through the room as he was to sit up and utter one syllable. "That's wonderful."

  "Don't you want to tell the doctor?"

  She said, "It's a policeman in Fitzberg on the line. He said it's urgent."

  "Okay." Corde turned his red eyes to the phone. He walked groggily toward it.

  "No, sir, it's out here. We don't put calls through to the ICU."

  "Oh."

  Standing at the nurses' station Corde accepted the phone and said, "Hello?"

  He heard Wynton Kresge ask, "How's your son?"

  "He's asleep now, Wynton. But he sat up and said something to me. I heard him. I don't know what he said but I heard him."

  "That's good. Bill, Gilchrist is dead."

  "Uh-huh. You got him?"

  "He was trying to get away. He had Sayles's credit cards in his wallet. Some other people's too. He'd stolen them or bought them. He was going to cover his tracks real well."

  "What happened?"

  "Bill, I wanted to talk to you about it. About what I did. He had a gun. He was waving it around. I shot him. Four times."

  "That's good, Wynton."

  "I couldn't stop myself. I kept pulling the trigger. He just fell over and died. I shot him four times."

  "You did fine."

  "But the thing is, Bill, I wasn't sure, I mean, not really sure he was going to use his gun. I just couldn't tell."

  "Did they give it to the Fitzberg DA? They're not going to indict you, are they?"

  "No. But it's not the law part I'm talking about. I killed him and he might not have been going to shoot me.

  "Wynton, he killed Jennie and he killed Sayles. He was going to draw down on you."

  "But I just don't know he was."

  Corde was looking back into the hospital room. All he could see was a mound under the gray sheet that was his Jamie. "We never really know, Wynton...."

  "I didn't want to bother you, Bill, but I had to say it, kind of get it off my chest."

  "You get back, you and me'll go hunting. We can talk about it then." Corde closed his eyes and leaned wearily against the wall.

  "I hope Jamie gets better real soon."

  "He talked to me," Corde said. "Did I tell you that? He sat up and said something to me. I wish I could remember what." Corde missed the nurse glancing at him with a sad, straight line of a mouth.

  Kresge said, "Tell him I'm thinking of him."

  "I will, Wynton."

  Corde hung up the telephone and walked back into Jamie's room.

  Bill Corde, a tall man now hunched over, with short trimmed hair now mussed, a man in whose heart one grave burden had been eased while another had been accepted. He sat down on a low chair beside his son's bed.

  Corde didn't know what a fashion plate was but he decided if Dr. Parker was one it was no way an insult. He wished New Lebanon could get a few more of them.

  Sitting at the spotless desk, the good doctor was wearing a hot pink dress cut low enough so Corde could have seen a number of freckles on her chest if he was inclined to look, which he was and he did. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she was wearing a thick gold bracelet, which Corde figured he himself might've bought her, what with all the fees. She had matching earrings and he imagined that those too were courtesy of him.

  "I'm pleased to meet you at last, Officer."

  On the other hand the way she dabbed her eyes over him he believed she was examining him distrustfully. He wondered if Diane had blown some whistles. "Well, I sure have heard good things about you, Doctor. Sarah's a whole new girl since she's been seeing you."

  The Dr. Parker of reputation emerged. She nodded aside the compliment and asked abruptly, "Sarah's here, isn't she?"

  "She's in the waiting room."

  "Why didn't your wife come? She at the hospital?"

  "That's right. Jamie's been in and out of consciousness. They think he's going to be all right. He might have some memory problems, they say. Maybe some other things. A neurologist is going to give him some tests. Dr. Weinstein? At Community? Supposed to be the best in the county. That's what we heard."

  Dr. Parker gazed at Corde passively and said nothing.

  "You know what happened was ..." Corde's voice suddenly stopped working.

  Dr. Parker continue
d, "He tried to kill himself. Mrs. Corde told me."

  "I don't know what it'll be like when he gets home. I don't know what happened exactly or why. But if you'd be available ..."

  "I'd be happy to see both of you," she said sincerely, but didn't seem to be looking forward to it.

  Both of us? Corde nodded. "I'd appreciate that."

  The doctor opened her drawer and lifted out a thick handful of papers. Corde had a bad moment thinking they were more bills. She slid them across the desk. He glanced at the first one, dense with single-spaced writing and topped by Sarah's byline. Without looking up he said, "She wrote these?"

  "They're her most recent tapes. My secretary's typed them up. She speaks very well, you'll notice. There are only a few places where the words are garbled. And remarkably few places where she goes back to correct herself or misspeaks."

  Corde flipped through the stack. "There must be a hundred pages here."

  "Close to it."

  He had thought all along that the whole idea was silly. If Sarah was going to do all this work why not make her copy a history book or science book? Something practical? Something that she could use in school. What possible benefit did these stories have? But he kept this to himself. He knew he'd play along with the doctor. She was the expert; besides, Bill Corde was nothing if not a sport.

  "Is it really a book?"

  "More a collection of short stories with recurrent characters. Like the Winnie the Pooh stories or Song of the South. You know, Br'er Fox and Br'er Rabbit."

  "Are they any good?"

  "Mr. Corde, for a nine-year-old with her history and her problems they are remarkable."

  "What should I do with them?"

  "You? Nothing. Dr. Breck is using these stories in Sarah's exercises. Her learning will be exponentially increased if she works with words that she herself has created."

  Exponentially. "Sure. It's probably a lot of fun too."

  Some blunder here. Dr. Parker was frowning. "It's mostly a great deal of work."

  "Sure. I'll bet it is." Corde riffled the pages again and let the breeze scented with typewriter oil and expensive bond paper blow into his face. He rose and started toward the waiting room, where Sarah was waiting. "She did this all by herself? Hell, I get sweaty hands every time I have to write out an incident explanation on an MV-204 form."

  "Maybe your daughter can teach you a few things, Mr. Corde," Dr. Parker said, and allowed herself an indulgent smile.