The Lesson of Her Death

(university-financed, fifty-six dollars an hour) for the ride to Harrison County Airport.
    Sayles is in terrible despair. He returns to his office and, with the help of one of the school’s lawyers, fills out a Section 34 form requesting emergency state aid for private educational institutions. Too little. At best, Auden might receive six hundred thousand. But Sayles urges the lawyer to file the application anyway and to do so by fax. In a daze he watches the gray-suited lawyer leave his office and he has a vivid image from one of his own lectures—not of George H. Thomas rallying his troops to a bloody defiant stand but rather of Union General Irvin McDowell at Manassas Junction, watching in confused despair the spirits of his many men fly to heaven under the shocking clatter of Jackson’s guns.
    Special to the Register—The carcass of a recently killed and skinned goat was found in a fourth-grade classroom in the New Lebanon Grade School yesterday.
    The carcass was discovered by a janitor at six A.M. and had apparently been left after the school was closed at midnight. The vandal gained access to the school by breaking through a ground-floor washroom window. No one was in the building at the time.
    A large quantity of blood—believed to have come from the animal—was smeared on the walls of the classroom.
    The room will be closed for cleaning for several days. Fourth-grade students will attend class in the school’s recreation room.
    Investigators feel this incident may be related to the rape and murder of an Auden University co-ed by the so-called “Moon Killer” on the night of April 20. School officials reported that the vandal wrote the word “Lunatic” on the classroom wall in blood.
    This word comes from the Latin “Luna,” meaning moon.
    Board of Education officials approved emergency funds to hire a security guard who will be at the school during school hours through the end of the term.
    Meanwhile, the teachers’ union and officials of the PTA have contacted the office of John Treadle, Harrison County Supervisor, with a request for a town curfew and for additional police to help investigate the crime. One PTA official, who insisted on anonymity, said that if the killer is not found within the next few days, parents should consider keeping children home from school.
    The next full moon will occur five days from now, on the night of Wednesday, April 28.
    “This is getting out of hand,” Bill Corde said.
    Steve Ribbon brushed the newspaper delicately. He seemed to decide not to reply to Corde’s tight-lipped comment. The sheriff instead asked, “A goat?”
    “This kind of stuff …” Corde shook his head. “I mean, people
read
this. People believe it.…”
    “We can’t control the press, Bill. You know that. What was the handwriting like? On the classroom wall?”
    “What was it like? I don’t know. You want to get a graphoanalyst—”
    “‘Lunatic.’ It’s Latin for—”
    “This moon thing is making people crazy,” Corde protested. “There’s some no-fooling hysteria out there.”
    “Can’t deny the facts.”
    “Steve, it was kids.”
    “Kids?”
    “A prank or something. High school kids.”
    “I don’t know, Bill.”
    “Even if it
was
Jennie’s killer, all he did was leavesome showy clues making it look like this was related to the moon somehow.”
    “Well, if the shoe fits …”
    “Naw,” Corde said. “He’d do it to throw us off. I mean, why kill a goat? Why not another victim?”
    “Not killing anybody don’t mean anything. Maybe the strike window was narrower than I guessed.”
    Corde debated for a moment. “Well, Steve, isn’t it possible that this wouldn’t’ve happened if the guy hadn’t read that story in the
Register
about cults?”
    “My interview the other day, you’re saying.”
    Corde could think of no response. He shrugged. “We didn’t find any evidence of cult or Satanic stuff around Jennie’s body.”
    “The knife. You’re forgetting the knife.”
    Corde pulled at his lip for a moment. “I don’t know what to make of the knife, that’s true.”
    He could see no reason to pursue this line of talk with Ribbon. He said, “Another thing I want to do—I want to take out an ad and ask for witnesses. Tell them everything’ll be confidential.”
    The sheriff said, “What’ll it cost?”
    “The
Beacon
won’t be much but we’ll have to do it in the
Register
too, I think. It’ll be about four hundred for the week. We get a