The Lesson of Her Death (30 page)

It troubled him to use such a brilliant mind in this cheap way.

She said, “Why Romantic? Why not Classic?”

“Been done,” he dismissed.

“Maybe,” she pondered, “you could do it interstitially—the Augustan era interposed against the Romantic. You know Latin, don’t you?”

“I do,
mirabile dictu
. But I’ve already outlined the program. I hope you’ll think about it. I’d like the panel to be straight, gay, transvestite and transsexual.”

Victoria said, “Ah, you want a cross-section?”

He laughed hard.
Why oh why don’t you want to sit on my cock and scrunch around?

She was courteous enough to ask the question before he had to steer her there. “Is this for Gilchrist’s class?”

“Leon’s? No, it’s my own idea. He’s out in San Francisco. Won’t be back for a couple days.” Gilchrist had in fact called Okun the night before to tell him that he would be arriving in three days and had ordered Okun to prepare a draft of a final exam. Okun noted that the son of a bitch called at exactly the moment a substitute professor was delivering Gilchrist’s lecture; he wanted to make certain that Okun hadn’t been standing before
his
class.

“What’s he doing out there?” she asked.

“Healing the wounds, I guess.”

“How’s that?” she asked.

“You know. The girl.”

“The girl?”

He looked confused.
“You
told me, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“What was her name? The first one who was killed. Jennie something. I thought you told me. About the two of them?”

She asked in astonishment, “Gilchrist and Jennie Gebben, they were fucking?”

“It wasn’t you who told me?”

“No.”

“Who was it?” He looked at the ceiling. “Don’t recall. Well, anyway, I heard they were a unit.”

“Poor girl,” Victoria said, frowning. “Gilchrist, huh? I wouldn’t have guessed Jennie and him. I heard he was an S and M pup.”

Okun nodded knowingly, quelling resentment that this was the second person who seemed to know for a fact something about his own professor that he had not been aware of.

She continued, “I’m surprised at the leather. My opinion was that Gilchrist would be more of your classic
postwar British pederast. You know, I think they should castrate rapists.”

Okun thought for a moment. “That might make another seminar. ‘Mutilation and Castration as Metaphor in Western Literature.’”

Victoria’s eyes brightened. “Now there’s an idea for you.”

S
he wasn’t sure what the vibration was. Alignment maybe. Or a soft tire.

Driving home from Auden University, Diane Corde noticed that the steering wheel seemed to shake; her engagement ring bobbled noisily on tan G.M. plastic. Then she realized the station wagon was fine; it was her hand that shook so fiercely—the first time in her life that a reference to money had made her fingers tremble.

Diane was returning from a meeting with the admissions director at the Auden lab school. The woman, who looked sharp and professional (no sultry pink, no clattering bracelets, no hussy makeup), had explained the procedures. Sarah’s file, which Dr. Parker had already forwarded to the school, would be reviewed by the school’s special education admissions board. They would make a recommendation about placing Sarah in one of the classes or arranging for private tutoring.

“I’m sure,” the woman said, “your daughter will be accepted.”

Diane was grateful to tears at this news.

Then the director had consulted a sheet of paper. “Let’s see.… Tuition for a special education class at Sarah’s level is eight thousand four hundred. Now we—”

“A year?” Diane had interrupted breathlessly.

The woman had smiled. “Oh, don’t worry. That’s not per semester. That’s for the entire year.”

Oh don’t worry
.

Eight thousand four hundred.

Which exceeded Diane’s annual salary when she’d been receptionist for Dr. Bullen the oldest living gynecologist in New Lebanon. “Does insurance ever cover it?”

“Medical insurance? No.”

“That’s a little steep.”

“Auden’s lab school is one of the best in the country.”

“We just bought a new Frigidaire.”

“Well.”

Diane broke the silence. “Dr. Parker mentioned a private tutor is an option. Three times a week, she said. How much would that be?”

The woman had cheerfully parried that the total fee for a tutor would be two hundred seventy dollars a week.

Oh don’t worry
.

Diane had smoothed her navy blue skirt and studied a cleft of wrinkle in the cloth. She felt totally numb; maybe bad news was an anesthetic.

“So you see,” the admissions director had said, smiling, “the school is in fact the better bargain.”

Well, Diane Corde didn’t see that at all. Bargain? What she saw was everybody taking advantage of her little girl’s problem—all of them, Dr. Parker the harlot and this pert
L.A. Law
admissions director and the prissy tutors who weren’t going to do anything but get
Sarah’s brain back up to the level where God intended it to be all along.

“Well, I’ll have to talk to my husband about it.”

“Just let me say, Mrs. Corde, that I think we can be of real help to your daughter. Sarah has the sort of deficit that responds very well to our method of education.”

Well, now, miss, hearing that makes me feel just jim-dandy
.

“Shall I start Sarah’s application? There’s no fee to apply.”

Oh, a freebie!

“Why not?” she had asked, wholly discouraged.

Pulling now into the driveway of her house Diane waved to Tom, standing scrubbed and ruddy beside his Harrison County Sheriff’s Department cruiser. After the two threatening Polaroids and the second murder, he had taken to marching a regular line around the backyard at various times throughout the day. He was also armed with his wife’s opera glasses, which, he explained, she bought for when they went to Plymouth Playhouse Dinner Theater. With these he’d often scan the forest for hostile eyes. He looked silly, a beefy red-cheeked young man holding the delicate plastic mother-of-pearl glasses, but Diane was grateful for the effort. There had been no more threats and the sense of violation had almost vanished.

“Coffee, Tom?”

He declined, gosh-thanks, and turned back to the woods.

Jamie walked outside, slipping a T-shirt on over his thin muscular body. He was the epitome of grace and she enjoyed watching him climb on his bike and balance while he pulled on his fingerless riding gloves.

“Where’re you off to?”

“Practice.”

“When’s the match?”

“Saturday.”

“How’s your arm?”

“It’s like fine. No problem.”

“Garage looks nice.”

“Thanks. I did the windows. They were totally gross.”

“You did the
windows?”
she asked in mock astonishment.

“Very funny. And I found the old Frisbee.”

“We’ll play tonight, you and me.”

“Yeah okay. We oughta get a glow-in-the-dark one. Gotta go.” He pushed the bike forward without using his hands and coasted down the driveway as he closed the Velcro fasteners on his gloves. She watched him lean forward and his muscular legs start to pedal.
He’s going to be a heartbreaker
.

Inside the house Sarah was playing with a stuffed animal. After Diane had delivered the news that school was over for the year, the girl glowed with Christmas-morning happiness. This bothered Diane, who saw in the girl’s face the look of a spoiled child who finally got her way.

“The Sunshine Man … He came back.”

“Did he now?” Diane asked absently.

“He saved me from Mrs. Beiderbug.”

“Sarah. I’ve told you about that.”

“Mrs. Beiderson.” She sprang up and ran into the kitchen.

Diane hung up her jacket. “Who’s the Sunshine Man again? Which one’s he?”

“Mommy.” She was exasperated. “He’s a wizard who lives in the woods. I saw him again today. I thought he’d gone away but he came back. He cast a spell on Mrs. Beider—” She grinned with coy nastiness. “—Beiderson. And I don’t have to go back to school.”

“Just for the term. Not forever.”

Although the girl’s insistence that magical characters were real frequently irritated Diane, at the moment she wished that she herself had a Sunshine Man to watch over her shoulder. Or at least to cast a spell and cough up some big bucks for special ed tuition. As she looked through the mail she asked, “Your father call?”

“Naw.”

Diane went into the kitchen and took four large pork chops from the refrigerator. She chopped mushrooms and sauteed them with oregano and bread crumbs then let the filling cool while she cut pockets in the pork.

“You sure your father didn’t call? Maybe Jamie took a message.”

“Mom. Like
there’s
the board. Do you see any messages?”

“You can answer me decently,” Diane snapped.

“Well, he didn’t call.”

Diane carefully cut a slit in the last pork chop.

“I’m not going back to school ever again,” Sarah announced.

“Sarah, I
told
you, it’s just for—”

The girl walked upstairs, singing cheerfully to herself, “Never ever again … The Sunshine Man, the Sunshine Man …”

Children. Sometimes
…

The young woman said, “I believe it was Leon Gilchrist.”

Cynthia Abrams was a thin sophomore, smart and reasonable and unpretentious. Corde liked her. She had long shimmering dark hair, confident eyes, earrings in the shape of African idols. She was a class officer and the campus director of ACT-UP. She was sitting forward, elbows on the low desk in the Student Union, holding a cigarette courteously away from him while she answered his questions.

Corde glanced down and found the professor’s name on a card. A note said that Leon Gilchrist had been in San Francisco at the time of the first killing and had not returned as of three days ago. He put a question mark next to the name.

“And you think they had an affair?”

“I don’t know for sure. I heard several rumors that
she’d gone out with professors over the past couple years. One or two she was pretty serious about. Then I recently heard Professor Gilchrist’s name mentioned.”

“Who did you hear this from? About Gilchrist?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Do you know if there was any bad feelings between them?”

“No. I don’t really
know
anything at all. I’m just telling you what I heard.”

Corde glanced at his open briefcase and saw the picture of Jennie Gebben. “Do you know of
anyone
who would have wanted to hurt Jennie or her roommate?”

“No, I sure don’t. But I want to say something else. You seem like a reasonable man and I hope I can speak frankly to you.”

“Go right ahead.”

“The gay community at Auden is not popular in New Lebanon.”

This was hardly news to Bill Corde, who had been on a panel to recommend to the state legislature that consensual homosexual activity be removed from the penal code as a sexual crime—both because he thought it was nobody’s business but the participants’ and because criminalizing it skewed statistics and confused investigations. He had never heard such vicious words as those fired back and forth in the Harrison County Building public meeting room during the panel discussions.

She asked, “You know Jennie was bisexual?”

“Yes, I do.”

“That fact hasn’t come out in the press yet but if it does I’m concerned it will get mixed up with the, you know, cult or Satanic aspects of the murders. I abhor the linking of homosexuality and violence.”

“I don’t see why that connection would be made,” Corde said. “It certainly won’t come from my department.…”

Somewhere in Corde’s mind was a soft tap as a thought rose to the surface.

“Was Emily …” What was the proper terminology?
He felt on some eggshells here. “Was she a lesbian?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know her very well.”

“You think Jennie might have been targeted
because
she was bisexual?”

“A bias-related crime?”

“We don’t have those laws on the books here.”

She lifted a coy eyebrow. “I graduate in two years. I hope that will have changed by then.”

“I’m thinking more in terms of helping me with a motive.”

“I suppose. There’s always the possibility of antigay violence in areas that are less …” Now
she
trod lightly. “… enlightened than some.”

Corde considered this motive but he couldn’t carry it very far. He wanted all of his cards in front of him. He wanted to read what other students and professors had told him. He wanted more information about Emily.

He said, “This has been very helpful. Anything else you can think of?”

“There is one thing I’d like to say.”

“What’s that?”

“My roommate, Victoria, and I were having this discussion last night?”

“Yes?”

“She brought up the idea of surgically castrating rapists. Would you be interested in signing a petition to send to the state legislature?”

Corde said, “I better not. In the Sheriff’s Department, we’re not supposed to be too, you know, political.”