The Lesson of Her Death

myself.”
    My, my, a doctor with a sense of humor. How refreshing
.
    “It
is
one of my considerations,” Diane admitted.
    “Well, I think you’ll find me fairly reasonable. I charge twenty dollars an hour.”
    Breck named a figure that two weeks earlier wouldhave paled Diane; now she felt as if she’d pocketed found money. “That’s all?”
    “I do ask to use the results of your daughter’s progress in my research. Anonymously, of course. I’m scheduled to publish my findings in the
American Journal of Psychology
. And I’m doing a book to help teachers recognize the problems of learning disabled children.”
    “Well, I don’t know.…”
    “I hope you’ll think about it, Mrs. Corde. From the application it looks like your Sarah has a lot of potential.”
    Diane said, “You’ve worked with students like Sarah before?”
    “Hundreds. In the majority of cases we’ve cut the gap between reading and chronological age by fifty percent. Sometimes more.”
    “What are these techniques?”
    “Feedback, monitoring, behavioral techniques. Nothing revolutionary. No drugs or medical treatment …”
    “Sarah doesn’t do well with medicine. She’s had some bad reactions to Ritalin.”
    “I don’t do any of that.”
    “Well,” Diane said, “I’ll discuss it with my husband.”
    “I hope to hear from you. I think Sarah and I can help each other a great deal.”

    Seven days till the half-moon.
    Do you know where your .357 is?
    T.T. Ebbans walked into the New Lebanon Sheriff’s Department, glancing at the sign, and asked, “Who put that up?”
    Jim Slocum looked up from that day’s copy of the
Register
and said, “I did.”
    “Could you please take it down?”
    “Sure. Didn’t mean anything. Just thought it’d be kind of a reminder. For morale, you know.”
    Ebbans sat down at his desk. On it were fifteen letters from people who claimed they knew who the killer was because they had dreamed about it (eight of them) or had psychic visions of his identity (four) or had been contacted in a seance by the victims (two). The remaining correspondence was from a man who explained that in a former life he had known Jack the Ripper, whose spirit had materialized in a condominium development outside of Higgins. There were also twenty-nine phone messages about the case. The first two calls Ebbans returned were to disconnected phones and the third was a man’s recorded voice describing how much he loved sucking cock. Ebbans hung up and gave the rest of the messages to Slocum and told him to check them out.
    Corde’s news about the knife had both elated and depressed him. It had cheered him up because it was a solid lead and like any cop he’d take a single piece of hard evidence any day over a dozen psychics or a week’s worth of the most clever speculation. The news had also depressed Ebbans because it meant the line of the investigation he had inherited was looking pretty abysmal. Corde’s warning about Ebbans walking point, which he’d discounted at first, came back to him. Ribbon wasn’t pleased with the
Register
story that morning.
“Cult” Weapon in Auden Death Is Movie Toy
. The sheriff had said coolly, “Guess your boys should’ve checked that out to start.”
    My
boys.
    Ebbans returned to a stack of discharge reports from a mental hospital in Higgins. Ten minutes later the door swung open and a man in blue jeans and a work shirt stood uneasily in the doorway. Ebbans frowned, trying to place him. It took a minute.
    The red hat man, without the hat.
    “Detective?”
    “Come on in.”
    The man said, “What it is, I just thought you’d like to know. You asked me about those boys I seen the night that girl was killed. The boys by the pond? I was leaving the lake and just now one of them was back. He had his tackle but he wasn’t fishing, he was just walking around, looking at things. Would he be the Moon Killer?”
    Ebbans stood up and said, “He out there now?”
    “Was when I left.”
    “Miller, come on, you and me’re taking a ride.”
    So like what’s the reason?
    Why is this guy your friend?
    Jano didn’t have any answers. Philip was a freak. He was fat and had bad skin—not zits, which everybody had, even Steve Snelling, who could have any girl he wanted. It was more that Philip’s skin was dirty. Behind his ear it was always gray. And his clothes were hardly ever clean. He smelled bad. And forget about sports. No way could he even play softball let alone gymnastics. Jano