The Lesson of Her Death

watching the man’s thick hands load and lock the gun as if he’d been doing it since he was five. They climbed out and started along the path.
    Kresge said, “I hear something in the woods. Over there.”
    Corde looked, squinting through the low light that shattered in the dense woods. “You see anything?”
    “Can’t tell. Too much glare.”
    “What’d you hear?”
    “Footsteps. A dog maybe. Don’t hear it anymore.”
    “Keep an eye on our backs,” Corde said.
    “He’s just a professor.”
    “Our backs,” Core repeated.
    Crouching, the men walked side by side to the complex’s directory. Corde found the super’s apartment and rang the bell. No response. He motioned with his head toward the upper balcony. Together they went up the stairs.
    Corde whispered, “You never done this before so we’re going in the front door together.”
    “Okay with me,” Kresge said sincerely, the last of his words swallowed in a hugely dry throat.
    “Let’s go.”
    Beneath them a horn blared.
    Corde and Kresge spun around. Jim Slocum’s cruiser—with Randy Sayles handcuffed in the backseat—pulled leisurely into the parking lot. Slocum honked again and waved. “Hey, Bill,” he called, “thought you might need some backup.”
    “Jesus Lord,” Corde whispered harshly. “Jim, what’re you doing? He’s gonna see you.”
    Slocum got out of the car and looked around. He shouted, “What say?”
    Corde jumped out of his crouch and ran for the front door of Gilchrist’s apartment, shouting to Slocum, “Watch the back, behind the building! Watch the back.”
    Corde and Kresge stood on either side of the door. Kresge said, “If he’s in there he knows he’s got company.”
    “I hate this,” Corde said.
    Kresge said, “You ever do this before?”
    Corde hesitated. “Not exactly, no.” He knocked on the door. “Professor Gilchrist. Sheriff’s Department. Open the door.”
    No response.
    “Let me try.” Kresge pounded on the split veneer of the door. “Police, Professor. I mean, Sheriff’s Department. Open the door!”
    Nothing.
    Corde reached for the doorknob. Both men lifted their guns toward the sky. Corde turned the knob and shouldered it open. They leapt inside.
    Jim Slocum turned toward the backseat of the cruiser. He said to Sayles by way of explanation, “I figured they needed some backup.” And he drove around to the back of the apartment complex.
    “Look,” Sayles said, “I’m not real comfortable here.”
    “Minute,” Slocum said, and got out of the car. He unholstered his service revolver and looked around the unkempt yellow lawn.
    “You can’t leave me here. I’m innocent.”
    “Quiet.”
    “You can’t keep me here!”
    “Please, sir, I’d appreciate it if you’d just shut up.”
    “Get the goddamn rope fingerprinted. Are you listening to me? Are you listening to me?”
    Jim Slocum had been—all the way from the Auden campus—and he was pretty tired of it. He leaned forward. “Shut … your … mouth. Got it?”
    “You can’t keep me here.”
    Slocum wandered off to the apartment building’s detached workshed. He went up on tiptoes, looked through the window and noted that there was no one inside then he stepped behind it to take a leak.
    Breathing stale air Corde and Kresge moved farther into the apartment. On the floor next to them was a wooden coat rack and umbrella stand carved with the bas relief of a hound treeing a bear. Corde glanced at the bear’s black glistening mahogany teeth and walked past it.
    In the living room the scents were of mildew, moist paper, dust and a sour scent as if a pet had grown old and ill in the room. The light, dimmed by drawn curtains, barely illuminated the space, which seemed uninhabited. The bookcases were filled but the jackets of the volumes all were matte paper imprinted with dull inks, old-style typography. The wooden chairs were coated with dust, the upholstered ones weren’t indented. A dust sphere leisurely followed Corde into the living room.
    The men danced past each other, stepping into rooms and covering each other—a choreography that Kresge learned quickly. Corde could see he was unnerved and trying to look three directions at once. They secured all the rooms except the kitchen.
    They paused outside the closed French doors.
    Kresge had his index finger curled around the ribbed trigger of the scattergun. Corde lifted the sizable finger out and straightened it along the guard. He then nodded toward the door and