BOOK 2

1

The medical examiner was in a prickly mood. For the second time in two weeks, he stood in mud, at night, beside this dark pond. His usual demeanor – that of a cheerful TV doctor – was absent.

Streaks on her face, hair muddy and plastered around her head the way a bald man hides scalp, still-beautiful Emily Rossiter lay on a blanket, faceup. A black hideous wound marred her temple. A large fishhook was embedded deep in her groin in the center of a slick patch of dark pubic hair. The hook was attached to a long piece of twenty-pound test line, which had pulled her skirt up between her legs.

A crowd of locals and reporters stood on the fringe of the crime scene – a sloping grassy backyard that bordered Blackfoot Pond.

The ME, a thin man of fifty, said to T.T. Ebbans, "Blow to the right temple with a rough, irregular object. Death by drowning."

"Rape?"

"Not this time."

"What about the hook?" Ebbans asked. "After she was dead?"

"Dollars to doughnuts."

Jim Slocum said to Ebbans, "There, you've got your postmortem piercing. That's common in sacrificial murders."

Ebbans pushed past the reporters, telling them that Sheriff Ribbon would be holding a press conference in ten minutes. He joined Bill Corde up by the road.

"Detective Corde!" Addie Kraskow waved frantically, her laminated Register press pass bouncing on her chest. "You didn't think a serial killer was involved. You feel differently now?"

Corde ignored her, and Ebbans repeated. "Ten minutes. Press conference."

Addie didn't pursue the question anyway; she noticed a photo opportunity and sent her photographer to shoot the body being zippered up and carried toward the ambulance that stood in the driveway of a house, next to a child's pink-and-white tricycle. The cameramen were scrambling like panicked roaches to get the tricycle and the body bag in the same shot.

The County Rescue Squad scuba divers arrived and suited up. One of them looked at the pond and muttered, "Whore's pussy."

Corde sternly told the man to act professionally.

On the periphery of the action Wynton Kresge leaned against an old, beige Dodge Aspen crowned by a blue revolving light. On the door was the Auden University seal, printed with the school name and the words Veritas et Integritas. Ebbans nodded in his direction. Corde and Kresge ignored each other.

"I step into a mantrap on this one, or what?" Corde asked Ebbans.

"You play it like you see it, Bill. That's all you can ever do."

"Crime Scene have a chance before everybody started padding around?"

"It was virgin. We didn't find much other than the boot prints but it was a virgin."

Corde glanced at the cluster of policemen beside the pond. One was the blond man he had seen in the back of Ribbon's car.

Ebbans followed his eyes. "Charlie Mahoney."

"What's he doing here?"

"Representative of the family."

"Uhn. What family?"

"Works for Jennie's father."

"And?"

"Don't ask me."

"Well, let's see what we've got." Corde started down to the water.

"Wait up a minute, Bill."

He stopped. Ebbans stepped beside him and when he spoke his voice was a whisper. Corde lowered his ear toward the man. "I just wanted you to know," Ebbans began then hesitated. "Well, it's bullshit is what it is…"

Corde was astonished. He had never known Ebbans to cuss. "What, T.T.?"

Their eyes were on an indentation in the grass – a wheel tread left by the gurney that had carried Emily's body to the ambulance.

"Was there any connection between you and Jennie?"

Corde looked up and kept his eye on the mesmerizing lights atop the ambulance. "Go on. What are you saying?"

"There's some talk at County – just talk – that you burnt those letters because you were, you know…"

"I was what?"

"'Seeing her' is what somebody said. And because of that maybe you wanted to deep-six the evidence. I don't believe -"

"I didn't do that, T.T."

"I know that. I'm just telling you what I heard. It's just a rumor but it's one of those rumors that won't go away."

Corde had been in town government long enough to know there are two reasons rumors don't go away. Either because somebody doesn't want them to go away.

Or because they're true.

"Who's behind it?" Corde asked.

"Don't know. Hammerback seems to be on your side. But with the election he's paying out his support real slow and if you turn out to be a liability he'll burn you in a second. Who else it could be I just don't know."

At Corde's feet drops of dew caught the flashing lights and flickered like a hundred miniature Christmas bulbs. "Predate your telling me, T.T."

Ebbans walked to the ambulance and Corde headed down to the pond, whose turgid surface was filled with bubbles from the divers as they searched for clues to the death of this beautiful young woman – whose story and whose secrets were now lost forever and would never be transcribed on one of Bill Corde's neatly ordered index cards.

He stood for a long time, with his feet apart in a patch of firm mud, looking over the water, and found himself thinking not at all of fingerprints or weapons or footprints or fiber traces but meditating on the lives of the two girls murdered in this dismal place and wondering what the lesson of those deaths would ultimately be.

"She's calm now." Diane Corde was speaking to Dr. Parker in her office. "I've never seen her have an attack like that. Bill said he asked her to spell a word and she just freaked out."

Mother. That was what Sarah was supposed to spell. Diane didn't tell the prim doctor this. Neither did she say how much she resented Corde's callousness in telling her which word so panicked Sarah.

Dr. Parker said, "I wish you'd called me. I could have given her a tranquilizer. She had a panic attack. They're very dangerous in children."

Although the doctor's words were spoken softly Diane felt the lash of criticism again. She said in a spiny tone, "I was out and my husband had just got some bad news. We couldn't deal with it all at once."

"That's what I'm here for."

"I'm sorry," Diane said. Then she was angry with herself. Why should I feel guilty? "I've kept her out of -"

"I know," Dr. Parker said. "I called the school after you called me."

"You did?" Diane asked.

"Of course I did. Sarah's my patient. This incident is my responsibility." The blunt admission surprised Diane but she sensed the doctor wasn't apologizing; she was simply observing. "I misjudged her strength. She puts on a good facade of resilience. I thought she'd be better able to deal with the stress. I was wrong. I don't want her back in school this term. We have to stabilize her emotionally."

The doctor's suit today was dark green and high-necked. Diane had noticed it favorably when she walked into the office and was even thinking of complimenting her. She changed her mind.

Dr. Parker opened a thick file. Inside were a half dozen booklets, on some of which Sarah's stubby handwriting was evident. "Now I've finished my diagnosis and I'd like to talk to you about it. First, I was right to take her off Ritalin."

I'm sure you're always right.

"She doesn't display any general hyperkinetic activity and she's very even-tempered when not confronted with stress. What I observed about her restlessness and her inattentiveness was that they're symptomatic of her primary disability."

"You said that might be the case," Diane said.

"Yes, I did."

But of course.

"I've given her the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, the Gray Oral Reading Test, Bender Gestalt, Wide Range Achievement Test and the Informal Test of Written Language Expression. The results show your daughter suffers from severe reading retardation -"