The Lesson of Her Death

all, that Jamie got tricked. Philip understood and believed that. Corde puts thirty-nine years of sincerity into this speech. Jamie’s expression doesn’t change and they silently return to fishing. Five minutes later Jamie asks if Corde will be at the final wrestling match in two weeks and Corde says that nothing—hell or high water or a sale at Sears—will keep him away. The boy’s face comes close to a smile and with the nod he gives his father Corde knows they’re back on track.
    Corde calls Wynton Kresge at his office and is shocked to hear the secretary say that he’s no longer with the school. Does that mean he’s quit, Corde asks, or been fired? She says it means he’s no longer with the school. He calls Kresge at home but he isn’t there or he’s told his wife to say he isn’t. Corde leaves a message.
    Here is Bill Corde, driving out to dark Blackfoot Pond the dark dam the dark trees the gray-green mud, getting out of the cruiser, walking through the tangled brush. There’s nothing much to see thanks to the sightseers,the fishermen, two power-out rainstorms and one tornado that vaulted over New Lebanon the other day, spraying branches and a million just-born leaves all over the murder scene.
    Here is Bill Corde, flipping a dull quarter over his fingers as he walks through the site of paired deaths over ground that for him fairly trembles beneath his feet.
    The case is closed but here he walks, here he bends to the ground and kicks at twigs and leaves and the flattened disks of beer cans, here he pauses at times and squints into the deeper forest then moves on.
    Here is Bill Corde.
    “You know the one I mean?” the man was asking. He was lean, bald and wore a blue suit whose polyester fibers glistened like mica. Down the front of his white shirt a red-and-black striped tie hung stiff as a paint stirrer. “The plant out on 117?”
    “Walt.”
    “I want to explain. Let me explain.”
    Professor Randy Sayles wasn’t feeling well. Although he was tearfully relieved that the Gebben investigation was over and the Halpern boy was buried, he had learned that the financial situation of the university was worse than Dean Larraby had at first let on. She had called the day before to tell him an additional million was needed. To the man in whose office he now sat Sayles said patiently, “Go ahead. Explain.”
    “She was valued at nine, we loaned seven and when we foreclosed the marketed turned and it was worth five. That’s a two-hundred-thousand bad loan and we ate up our reserve by February because of a dozen just like her. No, a dozen and a half.”
    The office did not much look like a bank president’s. It was closer to a Tru-Value manager’s. There was some blotchy modern litho up on the wall but Sayles saw a sticker on the side of the frame and knew he wasn’tlooking at the real article; you don’t generally get much in the way of investment art at Walgreen’s especially at a two-for-one sale.
    Sayles pulled a packet of papers out of his briefcase. “I wouldn’t be here hat in hand if it weren’t serious, Walt. We’re looking at a shortfall of close to thirteen million this year.”
    “Things’re tough all over.”
    Sayles tried not to sound desperate. He pictured himself up in front of his class. Assured, smiling, humorous. Everything he’d learned in twenty years of teaching he brought to bear on this man. “We’ve got benefactor commitments of about seven. We’re talking to—”
    The banker too was used to theatrics. “Look out that window, what do you see?”
    Sayles counterattacked. “I see a city that’ll suffer to its very heart if Auden University closes.”
    Nice try
. The banker smiled and shook his head. “I’m talking about that building not fifty yards up the street. Plainsman’s S&L. The RTC’s moved in and she’s in conservatorship. They’re going to sell it off. We’re more solid but not a lot. The loan committee, no way’ll it approve Auden a penny.” The banker’s voice remained a low calm monotone as he twisted his curly eyebrow with his thumb and ring finger. He dressed in pastel plastic cloth, he had yellow teeth and glistening see-through hair and under the veneer desk he kept a casual beat with crinkly black Monkey Ward shoes. Sayles knew however that Wall Street had nothing on this guy.
    “Auden closes,” Sayles said, “it’ll be a tragedy.”
    “It’ll be a tragedy but it’ll be more of a tragedy if I write a bad loan and the U.S.