The Lesson of Her Death

chapter of her book. This one was her favorite story. She’d been working on it for days and hadn’t told anyone about it. It filled almost half a cassette and she hadn’t even gotten to the climax of the story yet. She’d give the tape to Dr. Parker, and her secretary would type out the words and Sarah would get the story back in a few days. Then she would copy it into the notebook and show it to Dr. Breck. She wanted desperately to impress him and had worked particularly hard on this story.
    Sarah rewound the tape to the start of the chapter to see what she had written so far. She hit the Play button.
    Chapter fifteen. The Sunshine Man
…
Once upon a time, deep in the forest, there lived a wizard
.…
    The deputies got a kick out of Wynton Kresge—a man who owned more law enforcement books than they knew existed and who could outshoot any of them, either-handed, on the small arms range at Higgins. As far as they could remember there’d never been a black deputy in New Lebanon and it made the office seem like a set on a Hollywood buddy movie.
    They were sitting around this evening, debating where Gilchrist might have gone. Prosecutor Dwayne Lovell had gotten a bench warrant issued and faxed to Boston and San Francisco, both cities having been Gilchrist’s home at one time, then Corde added Gilchrist’s name to the Criminal Warrants Outstanding Bulletinand Database for state and major city law enforcement agencies.
    “What will they do?” Kresge asked Corde.
    “Boston and San Francisco’ll prioritize it. The others? Nothing. But if they happen to pick him up for something else and find his name in the computer they’ll give us a call. It’s not for sure but we can sleep a little better knowing we’ve done it.”
    “Looking for a tick on a dog,” Kresge muttered as he dialed Boston PD. After a brief conversation, he learned that Gilchrist had no criminal record in Massachusetts.
    Earlier that day Corde had granted Kresge’s fervent request that he be allowed to interview Dean Larraby about Gilchrist. It was a long interview and she hadn’t been much help though Kresge clearly had enjoyed himself. In searching Gilchrist’s office and the other departments at Auden, the men had found that the professor had stolen most of the files containing personal information about himself. The Personnel Department, the Credentials Department, the English and Psych Departments—they had all been raided. Computer files erased. Cabinets emptied.
    Kresge and Corde interviewed other professors. None of them knew much about Gilchrist or had snapshots that included him. They could not recall any school functions he had attended.
    Brian Okun, Corde learned in a second antagonistic interview, said he knew the professor as well as anyone and could offer no clues as to where Gilchrist might have gone. “He’s resourceful,” Okun said then added with eerie sincerity, “It’s troubling you don’t know where he is. The evil we can’t see is so much worse than that which we can, don’t you think, Detective?”
    Corde didn’t know about that but one thing he did know: Gilchrist
was
Jennie Gebben’s killer. Sayles had been correct; Gilchrist’s fingerprints were on the tie-down rope cut from the Ford truck. The rope also contained two of Jennie’s partials from trying to fight off thestrangulation and one of her hairs. Another strand of her hair was found on a shirt in Gilchrist’s closet. He also had several red marking pens whose ink matched those on the newspaper clipping he had left for Corde the morning after Jennie’s murder and on the back of the threatening Polaroids. Gilchrist’s prints were also found on the back door, window and armrest of Jim Slocum’s cruiser. It wasn’t necessary to dust for those prints; they had been made with Randy Sayles’s blood.
    But, as Corde knew and as Wynton Kresge was learning with great disillusionment, finding a criminal’s identity is not the same as finding the criminal.
    Gilchrist had vanished.
    Corde got a deputy to call car rental agencies. No one named Gilchrist had rented a car, the deputy announced, and Corde and Kresge looked at each other, both concluding simultaneously and silently that he wasn’t going to be using his real name.
    Corde, tapping the butt of his gun with a forefinger, began to say, “When we got Sayles to the ER—”
    Kresge finished the question, “Did they find his wallet?”
    “I don’t know,” the deputy said.
    Corde continued,