The Lesson of Her Death

cleared his large throat with a snapping sound. “One thing I thought I should mention. I was driving past the pond on my way to work this morning. I just took a stroll around.”
    “What time?” Corde noticed something challenging in his own voice. He wished he’d used more of it.
    “Six-thirty. I left about seven.”
    “You see anybody there?”
    “Yessir,” Kresge said enthusiastically. “A Con Ed tent up the road forty yards past the dam. You know, the kind they use for emergency repairs and—”
    Corde said, “They weren’t there last night. They set up at five A.M. Branch took down a line. I already checked.”
    “Oh,” Kresge said with disappointment.
    “You see anybody else?”
    “No.” He consulted his supple leather notebook. “There’s a whole ’nother thing I wanted to bring up. What you and I and the dean were talking about. Susan Biagotti.”
    Corde and Ebbans exchanged looks but this time there was no eye rolling.
    “Who’s that?” Miller asked. “Rings a bell.”
    “Auden student killed last year.”
    “Ah, right.”
    Corde had been away on a joint county-state task force in Fredericksberg for a month. The case had landed in Ribbon’s lap and by the time Corde returned to New Lebanon, many leads had gone cold. They had never even ID’d a suspect, let alone made a case.
    “It’s my intention to look into it,” Corde said abruptly. “Like I told the dean.”
    “I’ve got my own file on the case,” Kresge said. “You want, you can have a copy of it.”
    Corde smiled in a meaningless way. “I’ll let you know if we need it.”
    As he rearranged his papers the plastic bag containing the clipping he had found that morning at the pond fell to the floor. He stooped and picked it up. He stood.His knee didn’t pop. Thirty-nine years of knee, five of it popping. He wondered if he’d gone and cured himself. He passed the clipping around the table. “This is another thing we have to consider.”
    The deputies frowned with suitable concern as they read.
    “I’m sending it up to Higgins for analysis today. Unless we find prints though or the rest of the paper it came from in somebody’s back pocket I don’t think it’ll help. But you might want to keep an eye on yourselves and your families. You know most threats like this are just cranks but you never can tell.”
    “Most threats?” Kresge asked. “You mean this happens a lot?”
    Corde hesitated then said, “Actually it’s never happened.”
    Ebbans looked up from the note then slid it back to Corde. “I know something else about this guy,” he announced.
    “What’s that?” Jim Slocum asked.
    “Well, you could nearly see the girl from the road even if you weren’t looking. Why didn’t he drag her behind the truck at least? Then he came back in the morning to leave that note? It was like he didn’t care if anybody saw him. That says to me he’s a real gutsy fellow.”
    Corde lifted the plastic bag away from Miller. “Gutsy,” he said. “Or crazy. Either way’s a problem.”

B y the time she approached her house, Sarah had memorized the note, which now rested in her skirt pocket, along with the five twenty-dollar bills that had been wrapped in it.
    Dear Sarah—
    I heard you fighting with your daddy today, about school. I know he’ll keep making you go back. I want to help. I’m just like you, we both hate school. You have to leave. Get away! Go to Chicago or, St. Louis. There’s nothing left for you to do. You’ll be safe. I’ll look out for you.
    —Your friend
    This idea is not new to her. Sarah had thought of running away a dozen times. Last March, the week before the arithmetic test, she had spent an hour at the Greyhound station, working up courage to buy a ticket toGrandma’s place, before her courage broke and in tearful frustration she returned home.
    Running away
…
    Sarah paused at the front doorstep. On tiptoe she saw her mother in the living room. She ducked. The motion made the paper in her pocket crinkle. While she waited for her mother to leave the room she pulled out the money and studied the bills, cautiously rubbing them as if they were pages from a book of witch’s spells. She folded them tight again and put them back into her pocket.
    Sarah Corde, nine years old, cared nothing for school, hopscotch, Simon Says, housework, Nintendo, sewing, cooking, cartoons on TV. But she believed fervently in magic and wizards, and she believed that this message was from a particular