The Lesson of Her Death

with Kresge in tow left the store, not bothering to jot down the names on his index cards.

    Kresge—just back from his first official evidence photographing expedition—had taken the better pictures.
    At the crime scene below the dam in April, Jim Slocum had forgotten to override the automatic focus of his 35mm camera and in the dark he’d sometimes pointed the infrared rangefinder at a bush or hump of rocks. Many of the pictures were out of focus. Several of them were badly overexposed. Kresge had taken his time with the Polaroid.
    Sitting in the den that was really Corde’s fourth bedroom, surrounded by the debris of two double orders of the Marquette Grill’s steam-fried chicken, drinking coffee (Corde) and two-bag Lipton (Kresge) the men leaned close to the photos.
    Six eight-by-tens of the footprints by the dam were tacked up on a corkboard next to an ad for a lawn service that guaranteed to make your lawn thick as cat’s fur and we mean purrfect. In the center of the board were Kresge’s small Polaroid squares.
    “I think it’s these two,” Kresge said, tapping one of Slocum’s pictures and one of his own.
    “Why?” Corde asked. “The tread’s similar but look at the size. The crime scene shoe’s fatter.”
    Kresge said, “Well, that ground is wetter. By the dam, I mean. I was reading a book on crime scene forensics, … You know what that word means?”
    Corde had forgotten. He thought for a minute, wondering how he could bluff past it and couldn’t think of a way. He said, “What?”
    “It means pertaining to criminal or legal proceedings. I used to think it meant medicine, you know. But it doesn’t.”
    “Hmmm,” Corde said, at least giving himself credit for not looking too impressed.
    “Anyway, I was reading this book and it said that prints in mud change shape depending on how close they are to the water source and whether the print would getdrier or muddier with time. That dam’s got a runoff nearby and it’s uphill of where she was found—”
    “How’d you know that?”
    “I went there and looked.”
    “So the print spread. Okay, but how come in the crime scene photo the feet don’t point out like in the one you took?”
    “I think they do,” Kresge said. “We just don’t have him standing in one place. Look, the heavier indentation’s on the right of his right foot and in this one it’s on the left of his left. Means the man walks like a penguin.”
    “Yessir,” Corde said. “It sure does.”
    “So, I think they’re one and the same.”
    “I do too, Wynton.” Corde pondered this information. “I think we’re real close to probable cause. But damn I’d love a motive. What else’ve we got?” He flipped through his cards then lifted out two and read them slowly. He said, “You remember that scrap of computer paper I showed you, the one I found behind Jennie’s dorm? Mostly burned up.”
    “I couldn’t find out anything about it before I got laid off.”
    “Well, in the morning I’d like to check on where it came from.”
    Kresge winced. “Bill, the school’s hardly going to let me do that. I got fired. Remember?”
    “Wynton, it’s not a question of
letting
you. We’ll get a search warrant. You’ve got to start thinking like a cop.”
    Kresge nodded, flustered. “I haven’t been on the job too long, you know.”
    “That’s not an excuse.”
    At ten the next morning the men walked up the steps of the dark-brick house and rang the bell.
    Wynton Kresge noticed the way Corde stood away from the front of the door as if somebody might shootthrough the oak. He doubted anybody was going to do that but he mimicked the detective.
    A blond woman in her forties opened the door. Narrow shoulders in a white blouse widening to a dark plaid pleated skirt. She listed to her right under the weight of a large briefcase. She set it down.
    Corde looked expectantly at Kresge, who cleared his throat and said, “Morning, ma’am, would your husband be home?”
    She examined them uneasily. “What would this be about?”
    Corde said, “Is he home, please?”
    Kresge decided he wouldn’t have said that. He’d have answered her question.
    She let them in. “In his study in the back of the house.”
    The men walked past her. She smiled, curious. The motion spread the red lipstick slightly past the boundaries of her lips. “There.” She pointed to the room then left them. Corde’s hand went to the butt of his pistol. Kresge’s did too. They knocked on the