The Lesson of Her Death

pool like a speedboat, back and forth, saving the lives of children struggling in the deep end and racing past her brother once then again and again.…
    Five minutes later she heard the approaching footsteps.
    Sarah Corde’s heart began pounding in joyous anticipation, and as she climbed out of her imaginary pool she opened her eyes.
    Look at this place. Lord.
    Bill Corde couldn’t get over the size of Wynton Kresge’s office.
    “Plush.”
    “Yeah, well.” Kresge seemed uncomfortable.
    The room was probably a third as big as the entire New Lebanon Sheriff’s Department. Corde took pleasure walking over the thick green carpet and wondered why two busy oriental rugs had been laid over the pile.
    “That’s the biggest desk I’ve ever seen.”
    “Yeah, well.”
    Corde sat down in one of the visitors’ chairs, which was itself bigger and more comfy than his own Sears armchair at home, and his a recliner at that. He tried to scoot it closer to the desk but it wouldn’t move and he had to stand again and lug the chair up to the desk.
    Kresge explained, “Was the office of some dean or another. Academic affairs, something like that. He retired and they needed someplace to put me. I think they like having a black man on this corridor. See, when you come this way from the main stairwell you see me at my big desk. Looks good for the school. Think I’m a big shot. Little do they know. So they caught the kid.”
    “They caught him. He was a friend of my son’s.”
    “Well.” Kresge would be wondering whether he should ask the question about how close a friend but he let it pass.
    “The evidence is pretty strong against him. He’s a spooky boy and his father’s worse.” Corde realized he still had his hat on—it banged into the high back of the chair—and he took it off, pitched it like a Frisbee onto the seat of the other chair. He opened his briefcase. “I need a favor.”
    “Sure.” Kresge said eagerly.
    Corde leaned forward and set a plastic bag in front of Kresge. Inside was the burnt scrap of computer paper.
    “What’s this?”
    “A bit of that paper we found behind—”
    “No, I mean this.” The security chief pointed at the white card attached to the bag by a red string.
    “That? A chain of custody card.”
    “It’s got your name on it.”
    “It’s not important, Wynton. The piece of—”
    “This’s for trial, right?”
    “Right. So the prosecutor can trace the physical evidence back to the crime scene.”
    “Got it. So that if there’s a gap in the chain, the defense attorney can get the evidence thrown out?”
    “Right.” Because Corde was here to ask a favor he indulged Kresge, who was examining the COC card closely. Finally Corde continued, “The piece of paper inside? I’d like to find out where it came from. I’ve got this idea—”
    “You’re leaning on it.”
    “—it’s from the school. What?”
    “You’re leaning on it.”
    “On what?”
    Kresge motioned him away. Corde sat back in the chair and Kresge yanked a thick wad of computer printouts from beneath of stack of magazines. Corde had been using the pile as an armrest.
    “It’s a university Accounting Department printout. They send them around every week to each department. Mine shows me security expenses, real and budgeted, allocation of overhead. You know, that sort of thing.”
    “You know what department this was from?”
    Kresge looked at it. “No idea.”
    “Any chance you could find out?”
    “Technically I don’t have access to the Accounting Department’s files.”
    Corde asked coyly, “How ’bout untechnically?”
    “I’ll see what I can do.” After a pause he asked, “But if they caught the boy what’s the point?”
    Corde slowly touched away a fleck of lint from his boot heel and stalled long enough that an attractive woman blustered into the office with an armful of letters for Kresge to sign. The security chief rose and with clumsy formality introduced two people with nothing in common except their lack of desire to meet. Corde, however, was grateful for the curious decorum—it seemed to drive the question from Kresge’s mind and after the signing-fest, when their conversation resumed, he did not ask it again.

S he could sense him nearby, almost as though he was hovering right over her body like a wave of hot sunlight.
    She swung her head about, peering into the clearing, into the forest, the tall grass.
    More footsteps, leaves rustling, twigs snapping.
    (So: He