The Lesson of Her Death

it’s a fifty-fifty chance. I don’t think we can ignore it.”
    “I don’t think so either. Who is he? What’re his credentials?”
    “A graphoanalyst. Works for the state. It’s admissible, Charlie. When Brann gets his hand on it, it’ll be back to square one and that’s gonna be a son of a bitch for all of us.”
    “For all of us,” Mahoney repeated slowly. He glanced at Ribbon with a smile that meant if anything:
Why you fat shitfaced rube
.
    Ribbon continued, “The case goes public again, they’ll start talking about Jennie and her girlfriend. And the school. I mean, this’ll fuck us both.” He glanced at the paper.
    Mahoney said, “I’ll bet his father wrote it to get the kid off.”
    “Nup, not the father. You don’t know him. He wouldn’t help his boy that way. But the kid himself might’ve written it and hid it knowing we’d find it.”
    “Any chance at all it’s real we gotta give it to Brann. That’s the law,” Mahoney stuck a solid finger at Ribbon. “And say what you like,
you
had the investigation for two weeks before the county and everybody knows it. Your dick’s in the ringer just’s far as
all of ours
.…” He drew out the last words melodically.
    Ribbon avoided the man’s relentless eyes. “This don’t disprove the case against the boy for the Gebben girl’s murder.”
    “Damnit, Ribbon, you been harping on this cult serial killing shit since the case started. If the boy didn’t kill the second girl then where’s that theory of yours go?
    Ribbon said, “You’ve seen the kid. All those magazines, the pictures, the porn, all that cult crapola. The knife. He guilty or not?”
    Mahoney shrugged. “Probably.”
    “What if we was to get a confession outa him?” Ribbon said, and to Mahoney’s relief touched away a web of spit that had formed in the corner of his mouth.
    “Confession. Uhm.”
    “Could you do that?” Ribbon asked. “You’ve gotten confessions before?”
    Mahoney snorted.
    “It sounds like something you’d be good at, getting confessions.”
    “Yeah,” Mahoney said, both pleased by the stroking and feeling utter contempt at Ribbon for resorting to it.
    “He’s in the lockup right now.”
    Mahoney looked at his watch.
    Ribbon said, “I think sooner rather than later’d be best, don’t you?”
    “What about the other deputies?”
    “I can arrange for you to be alone with him.”
    “Now?”
    “Completely alone.”
    He didn’t have a fifty-thousand-joule xaser gun.
    He didn’t even have his father’s Ruger .22.
    But Philip Halpern had one weapon.
    He turned back to his cell and stripped the sheet off his bunk. Philip lifted it to his wet mouth and with his teeth tore four notches in the cheap cloth. He ripped the sheet into strips and tied them together. He pushed the table into the exact center of the room and after a struggle climbed up on top of it. He took hold of the metal overhead lamp shade. A wispy avalanche of dust fell. He breathed it in, coughing and blinking. He smelled the pungent odor of his sweat mixed with pine-scented Lysol. Philip wrapped the sheet-rope around his neck and then looped it around the electric cord.
    He stared up.
Penny-Saver Soft Light Registered Trademark Sixty Watts Made in USA
. The nearness ofthe cheap bulb began to erode his vision. The words faded, the flecks of dust and the corpses of fried bugs on the metal shade grew indistinct. The room became bright as heaven. Philip Halpern lowered his arms.
    They heard the boy’s loud moan.
    Lance Miller cocked his head and said, “Sounds like he’s not feeling good. Maybe we ought to get him something.”
    “Shore,” the county deputy said. “How ’bout a ice-cold girl.”
    Lance Miller looked up from
USA Today
. “Already had hisself two of them.” He returned to an article about Jay Leno.
    “Can you get a dose from a corpse?” the county deputy mused.
    “That’s disgusting,” Miller told him.
    Another moan, loud and eerie.
    “Should we check on him?”
    “You see the pictures of his sister’s boobs?” Miller asked.
    “Missed ’em.”
    “He tried to burn them.”
    “Her boobs?”
    “No, the pictures,” Miller said.
    “What were they like?”
    “Close-ups, you know. Polaroids.”
    “No, her boobs,” the deputy said.
    “Not real big. The picture was dark. He didn’t use a flash.”
    They heard the moan again and looked at each other. “He’s beating off in there,” the deputy said.
    “What if he’s really