The Lesson of Her Death (47 page)

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: With 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.

And that was just for the month of May.

He didn’t have the heart to tally the numbers up for the year and he didn’t dare calculate the brood’s budget for makeup, burgers, ninja outfits, skateboards, air
pump Nikes, gloves, basketballs, piano lessons, potato chips, Apple software, Spike Lee and Bart Simpson T-shirts, Run DMC tapes Ice-T tapes Janet Jackson Paula Abdul The Winnans tapes gummy bears white cheddar popcorn Diet Pepsi and whatever else got sucked into the black hole of childhood capitalism.

Darla came to the door of his den and told him the plumber had just finished.

“Oh, good,” Kresge said. “How much?” He opened the checkbook and tore off a check. He left it blank and handed it to her.

“It’s a hundred twenty-four, doll.”

“How
much?”

“You can’t take a bath in cold water.” She was gone.

He marked down:
Check 2025. Amount $124. For SOB, MF’ing Plumber
. Why, he wondered, was it that the more you get the more you spend? When he and Darla had first been married they’d lived in a trailer park south of the Business Loop in Columbia, Missouri. He’d been an assistant security director for the university, making nineteen thousand dollars a year. They’d had a savings account. A real savings account that paid you interest—not very much, true, but something. You could look at the long line of entries and feel that you were getting somewhere in life. Now, zip. Now, debt.

This was too much. Thinking about the bills, about hungry children, about a wife, about his lack of employment, his palms began to sweat and his stomach was doing 180s. He recalled the time he talked a failing student down from the Auden Chancellory Building. Sixty feet above a slate walk. Kresge, calm as could be. No rope. Standing on a ledge fourteen inches wide. Like he was out looking for a couple buddies to shoot pool with. Talking the boy in by inches. Kresge had felt none of the terror that assaulted him now as he lined up the fat white envelopes of bills and pulled toward him
his blue-backed plastic checkbook, soon to be emasculated.