The Lesson of Her Death

new dimension.
    A second thermos of coffee appeared. Neale ran his fingers along his buzz-cut hair and told them of the time one of his snipers picked off a perp at eight hundred yards. “God held his breath for that one,” Neale said reverently.
    On a panel like the dashboard of a 747 a lonely red light began flashing and an electronic beep pulsed. A sergeant picked up a receiver. “MCP One. This is an unsecured landline. Go ahead.” He listened for a moment. “Detective Corde, for you.”
    “Me?” He took the receiver. “Corde here.”
    “Bill.” The hollowness of Diane’s whisper cried a hundred different messages to him.
    He said, “Honey, what is it? Why are you—”
    “Bill.”
    Corde could hear she’d already cried volumes. Heheard noises behind her. Other voices. He hated that sound. They were hospital sounds. He asked, “Sarah?”
    “Jamie.”
    “What happened?”
    “He’s in a coma. He … Oh, Bill, he tried to kill himself. A fisherman found him but—”
    “Oh, my Lord.”
    He remembered, and the thought was like a wallop in the stomach. “The wrestling match? I missed it.”
    She didn’t speak for a moment. “Come home, Bill. I want you here.”
    “Is he going to be okay?”
    “They don’t know. He almost drowned. He hit his head when he went in. Come home now.”
    When they hung up Corde said, “Wynton, Jamie’s hurt. I’ve got to go.”
    “Oh, no, Bill. Was it him?” He nodded toward the hotel.
    “No. Something else. Pretty serious. I’ve got to go. You’re in charge here.”
    Wynton Kresge had the love for seven children in his voice when he said, “I’ll be thinking of you.” Corde couldn’t speak but just rested his hand on the deputy’s huge back. In that brief gesture, Kresge felt a huge weight shift and remain on him even after Corde stepped out the door. Kresge said, “We’ll get him, Bill. We’ll get him.”

“I did this one bad, didn’t I?” Corde said.
    They sat in the intensive care unit of Community Hospital in a small waiting room separated from their son by a thick blond wood door. The doctors were in with him now. Occasionally the large silver handle of a doorknob would flick and a nurse or doctor would exit silently. This was the purest of punishments.
    They held hands but there was minimal returning pressure from Diane’s. Corde figured he wasn’t entitled to expect otherwise. Other than to tell him that Jamie was in critical condition and still unconscious, Diane hadn’t said more than five words since he’d arrived after a perilous drive from Fitzberg through the vast Midwest night. This was her worst anger, a peaceful-eyed, camouflaged fury that seemed almost curiosity.
    For the first time in his marriage Corde wondered if he’d lost his wife.
    “The case ran off with me.”
    He was thinking mostly of the impact on Jamie but he remembered too that he’d turned down the job of sheriff because of Jennie Gebben’s death. He supposed Diane also was thinking of this. “I wish you’d say something.”
    “Oh, Bill, how can you figure it all out? Here we spent all our time with Sarah. We just assumed Jamie didn’t need us the way she did. And it turns out he was the one that did, and she’s doing better without us.”
    “This was mostly me,” Corde said. “I knew about the match. I was even looking forward to it. Then I heard about Gilchrist and I got like a dog, sniffing rabbit.”
    She stood up and walked down the hall to a pay phone. Whoever she was calling was not home. She grimaced, hung up, retrieved her coin and sat down in silence.
    Their vigil continued. Corde took a quarter from his pocket and started rolling it over his fingers. The coin fell and rang as it spun to a stop. He picked it up and put it back into his pocket. Then the door opened and three doctors walked out. Both husband and wife locked onto their faces and began panning for clues but goddamn they were stone-eyed. One, the chief neurologist, sat in a chair beside Diane. He began to speak.
    Corde heard the words. “Brainstem … Minimal … Serious concussion … No life support …” He talked for five minutes and told them all the things they could do for Jamie. They seemed to be good words or at least not bad words but when Corde said, “When will our boy wake up?” the doctor said, “I don’t have an answer for you.”
    “But what do we do?”
    “Wait.”
    Corde nodded. Diane was crying. The doctor asked if they’d like sedatives. They