The Lesson of Her Death

the cult maybe,” Ribbon offered, looking eyebrows-up at Corde.
    Miller said, “There’s something else too.” His eyes had fallen to the desk and had focused on the phrase that said in green computer type,
Incidents of forcible sodomy to date
.
    “Emily gave me a few things that this guy hadn’t stolen.”
    “Good,” said Corde.
    “One of them was a calendar from last year.” Miller cleared his throat.
    “And?” Ribbon asked.
    “A pocket calendar thing? It was in Emily’s desk and that’s why it wasn’t stolen.”
    “What about it, Lance?” Corde was growing impatient.
    Miller seemed relieved that he could now rely on visual aids. He flipped the battered gray booklet open to the prior year, January. Written in the square for a Saturday night toward the end of the month were the words:
Bill Corde. Nine P.M. My place
.

“I interviewed her.”
    “Part of a case?”
    “The Biagotti case,” Corde said. His eyes were on the rumpled page of Jennie’s calendar for the last week in January. On Thursday she had to pick up her dry cleaning. On Friday she was going to the drugstore for shampoo, Tampax and Sudafed.
    On Saturday she’d seen Bill Corde. Nine P.M. Her place.
    Neither Ebbans, with his affection for Corde, nor Miller, with his inexperience on the job, wanted any part of this.
    Ribbon’s eyes looked into Corde’s, which were two uneasy pools of green.
    The sheriff squinted memories back into his thoughts and said, “That was after you got back from the task force, sure. It would’ve been around the end ofJanuary.” He seemed measurelessly relieved at this. “You didn’t know her otherwise?”
    “No.”
    Then Ribbon’s face clouded again and his eyes fell to the calendar. “She called you Bill. What do you make of that?”
    Ebbans wandered away to his temporary desk and sat down to make a phone call, real or imaginary.
    Corde said calmly, “When I called Jennie up to see when I could interview her about the Biagotti case, she and I got to talking and it turned out we’d lived near each other in St. Louis. We, you know, chatted for a while about that. By the end of the conversation I called her Jennie. I guess she wrote down Bill.”
    “You knew each other in St. Louis?”
    “What exactly are you getting at?”
    “Nothing, Bill. I’m not suggesting a single damn thing. I just have to keep an eye out for this sort of situation.”
    “What sort of situation?”
    “I just want everything on the table.”
    “Everything is
on
the table.”
    “Good. But while your dander’s up I’m just gonna ask one more question and then we’ll say good-bye to it. In the Biagotti file you’ve got a record of that conversation you had with Jennie?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “I didn’t write anything down. I stopped by the dorm that Saturday. Nine o’clock. Jennie and I talked about fifteen minutes. She knew the Biagotti girl a little but that was it. Jennie was one of maybe fifty students I talked to about the case.”
    “You didn’t talk to fifty of them on Saturday night.”
    “But I talked to a lot of them then. And on Sunday morning too. And on Sunday night. And—”
    “That’s a good answer.”
    “That’s the true answer,” Corde shot back.
    “Okay, Bill, don’t get riled. If I don’t ask, somebody else might. Let’s forget the whole thing.”
    Ribbon tapped the sex offender printout. “This was a good idea, this sex stuff. I’d also check out, you know, occult bookstores and that sort of thing. I think there’s one of them not far from the campus on Waverly Street or Stinson. They’ve got a bulletin board in the doorway. See if they have announcements for cult … What do cults have? Services or meetings or something?”
    “Probably services,” Miller said helpfully. “Being religious, I mean.”
    “Well, I’d check that out. Absolutely.” Ribbon returned to his office. The floor wheezed under his solid footsteps.
    Corde found Ebbans and Miller staring at him. Ebbans punched a number into the phone. Corde handed Jennie’s calendar to Miller. “Log that into evidence, Deputy. And let’s get back to work.”
    For a time after he’d met with Dean Larraby he felt like General George Thomas who in 1863 earned his nickname the Rock of Chickamauga by preventing Braxton Bragg’s counterattack from becoming a total rout of the Union forces. Faced with overwhelming odds and bowed under losses but infinitely confident and strong.
    By now though Professor and