The Lesson of Her Death

in.”
    “I got a message that you wanted to see me.”
    “What’s your name? Here, sit down.”
    “Brian Okun. Is this about Jennie Gebben?”
    “That’s right.” Corde was flipping through his index cards. Slowly, card by card, reviewing his boxy hand-writing.It took a long time. He looked up. “Now, how exactly did you know her?”
    “She was in Professor Gilchrist’s class. Psychology and Literature. He lectures. I teach the discussion section she was in.”
    “You’re on the faculty?”
    “I’m a graduate student. Ph.D. candidate.”
    “And what did you do in your section?”
    “They’re discussion groups, as I said.”
    “What do you discuss?”
    Okun laughed, puzzled. “Do you really care?”
    “I’m curious.”
    “The question last week was: ‘How would John Crowe Ransom and the school of New Criticism approach the poetry written by someone diagnosed with bipolar depression?’ Do you know what the New Criticism movement was all about, Officer?”
    “No, I don’t.” Corde answered. “Do you know if Jennie was going with anybody?”
    “‘Going with.’ What does that mean? That’s a vague term.”
    “Was she seeing anyone?”
    Okun asked in a voice crisp with irony, “‘Seeing anyone’? Do you mean dating?”
    It seemed to Corde that the boy wasn’t hostile. He looked genuinely perplexed—as if the detective were asking questions that could not be answered in plain English. “I’d like to know about anyone Jennie may have had more than a passing friendship with.”
    Okun’s eyes ricocheted off Corde’s cards. “I suppose you know I took her out a few times.”
    Corde, who did not know this, answered, “I was going to ask you about that—do you usually date students?”
    “This’s a college town. Who else is there to ask out?” Okun’s eyes met Corde’s.
    “Isn’t it unusual for a professor to ask out his students?”
    “I’m not a professor. I told you that. I’m a doctoral candidate. Therefore we were both students.”
    Corde rubbed his finger across a Styrofoam cup of cold coffee. He shuddered at the squeaky sound. “I’d appreciate you answering my questions in a straightforward way. This is a pretty serious matter. How long were you seeing her?”
    “We broke up several months ago. We’d dated for three months off and on.”
    “Why did you break up?”
    “It’s not your concern.”
    “It may be, son.”
    “Look, Sheriff, we went out five or six times. I never spent the night with her. She was sweet but she wasn’t my type.”
    Corde began to ask a question.
    Okun said, “I don’t feel like telling you what my type is.”
    “What were the circumstances of you breaking up?”
    Okun twitched a shoulder. “You can’t really call it breaking up. There was nothing between us, nothing serious. And neither of us saw any point in going on with it.”
    “Do you know who Jennie began seeing after you?”
    “I know she went out. I don’t know with whom.”
    Corde fanned through his three-by-fives. “That’s interesting. Several of her other friends also told me they aren’t sure who she was dating recently.”
    Okun’s eyes narrowed and his tongue touched a stray wire of beard. “So, a mystery man.”
    Corde asked, “What kind of student was she?”
    “Slightly above average but her heart wasn’t in studying. She didn’t feel passion for literature.”
    He pronounced it
lit’rature
. Corde asked, “Was there anybody in class she was particularly close to? Other than you?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Did you see her personally in the last month?”
    Okun blinked.
“Personally?”
he asked the ceiling. “Isuppose I’d have to see her
personally
, wouldn’t you think? How else can one see anyone? Do you mean did I see her
intimately?
Or do you mean
socially?”
    Corde thought of the time he managed to cuff and hogtie George Kallowoski after the man had spent ten minutes swinging a four-by-four, trying in his drunken haze to cave in Corde’s skull. He thought a lot better of Kallowoski than he did of this boy. “Outside of class, I meant.”
    “I hadn’t seen her socially for a month. I assume you remember that I told you I didn’t see her intimately at all.”
    “Do you know if there was anybody who had a gripe with her? Anybody she’d fought with recently?”
    “No.”
    “Did she get along well with her roommate?”
    “I guess. I don’t know Emily that well.”
    “But you knew Jennie well enough to know that Emily was her