The Lesson of Her Death

STORAG on the table. Sarah spelled the word out loud, touching each letter. Breck scooped them up and hid them behind his back and would hand her one at a time. Eyes closed, the girl would touch it then tell him which letter it was.
    Diane watched, engrossed in the drill. After ten minutes he said, “That’s it for today, Sarah. You did very well but keep working on the b and the d and the q and the p. You get those mixed up.”
    “I will, Dr. Breck.” Sarah assembled the sandpaperletters and put them into her Barbie backpack, in which she kept her tape recorder, cassettes and exercises she was working on. Diane slipped her arm around her daughter.
    Breck said, “Next Thursday?”
    “Fine,” Diane said, “I’ll be home all day.” Then she added,
“We’ll
be home, I mean.”
    Sarah ran outside. “I’ll be back later, Mom.”
    “Stay close to home.”
    Breck and Diane walked into the kitchen and Diane poured two cups from a Braun coffee maker without asking if he wanted any. Breck glanced at her red polished nails then his eyes slipped to her blouse, two buttons open at the chest. He seemed to enjoy the route his gaze followed. She reserved judgment on this reaction.
    She reserved judgment on her own as well.
    Breck spent a long moment studying a picture of Corde in uniform. It was taped to the refrigerator next to an eagle Sarah had cut out of construction paper.
    “It must be exciting being married to a policeman.”
    “More of an inconvenience, I’d say. We get calls at all hours and our friends are always wanting Bill to do something about P&Z or fixing tickets or something. Ever been married, Ben?”
    She had checked his heart finger at their first meeting.
    “No. Never have been so lucky.” He sipped the coffee, Diane watching him closely.
    “That too strong, there’s hot tap water. Our boiler gets it to about one forty-five.”
    “It’s fine.”
    Diane said, “The thing about Bill is, he’s obsessive. He—”
    “You probably mean
compulsive.”
    “I do?”
    “Compulsive is when you
do
something repetitively, obsessive is when you think about something repetitively.”
    “Oh. Well, then he’s both.” They laughed and shecontinued, “He just doesn’t stop. He’s a workaholic. Not that I mind. Keeps him out of my hair and when he’s home he’s pretty much
home
if you know what I mean. But once he gets his mind set he’s like a terrier got hold of a rat. Last night I went to bed and he was still burning the midnight oil. Bill says a case is like building a brick wall. There are always plenty of bricks if you take the trouble to look for them.”
    “And he takes the trouble?”
    “Whoa, that’s true.”
    “I’ve been an expert witness in court a few times, testifying on the psychology of observation. How witnesses can see things that aren’t there and miss things that are. The senses are extraordinarily unreliable.”
    “All I know is I don’t get much involved in his cases. It’s so, you know, grim. It’s different when you watch it on television.”
    So why hasn’t he been married?
    “I’ve done research into violence,” Breck said. “Two associates of mine have done work with sociopaths—”
    “Is that like a psychopath? Like, you know, Tony Curtis in
Psycho.”
    “Tony
Perkins
, I believe.”
    “Right, right.”
Forty-one and never married
.
    “They’ve worked with some pretty odious characters—”
    Odious
.
    “—and their theory is that commercial entertainment does a disservice when it minimizes violence. That it tends to distort moral judgment and leads to situations where individuals act violently because they feel the impact in human terms will be inconsequential. We’re seeing—
    Diane’s palms moistened as she leaned forward, trying to follow what he said.
    “—many cases of blunted affect on the part of young people in response to films and—”
    “Uhm. Affect?”
    He saw that he’d lost her and shook his head inapology.
“Affect
. It means emotion. Kids see people getting blown up and murdered on screen and it doesn’t move them. They don’t feel anything. Or worse, they laugh.”
    “I’d rather Jamie didn’t watch those movies.… Well, look at his friend. They got caught up in that
Lost Dimension
. Look what happened.”
    “That boy who killed the girls?” Breck asked. “He might have been influenced by the movie.”
    The corner of Diane’s mouth hardened. “Well, even with him getting killed and all, Bill still