The Lesson of Her Death

Gilchrist stepped back. "Those are my terms. There's no negotiation. My freedom for your daughter. Take it or leave it."

"You bastard, you damn bastard," Corde growled.

"That's perhaps true in one context or another but it's irrelevant at this moment."

The muzzle of the pistol lowered.

Corde's breathing calmed. At least Sarah was alive. At least he had a chance of getting her back home safe. He had a poignant image of the girl sitting in bed, wearing her pajamas and talking to a stuffed bear. Tears saturated his eyes.

"Ill tell you what I'll do," Gilchrist offered. "Let's up the ante. In exchange for my head start I'll tell you where your daughter is and I'll give you an explanation. Ill tell you exactly how I killed Je

Corde squinted slightly and somewhere in his mind the policeman stepped side by side with the father.

Gilchrist took the uneasy caution in Corde's eyes as an affirmative answer. He sat down in an armchair, launching motes of dust into the sallow light.

"I loved Je

"Gilchrist -"

"Please. Let me finish. This spring she dropped me cold. She went back to that fucking roommate of hers. 'Sorry, it's over with.' Well, that wasn't good enough for me. No, sir. I wasn't going to be discarded the way she tossed aside Sayles or Okun. 'Sorry, it's over with.' Oh, no. I wouldn't tolerate it, not even from a borderline personality. I called her up from San Francisco. She was too pusillanimous to break up – excuse me, Detective. She was too cowardly to do it in person. I was in a consuming rage for a full twenty-four hours. I calmed then I flew back."

"You bought a ticket under a different name. So you intended to kill her."

Gilchrist paused for a moment and seemed neither surprised nor alarmed that this was public knowledge. "There's another part. Can you figure it out?"

Corde was nodding. "You killed Susan Biagotti and Je

The professor was, however, overtly disappointed that Corde had made the deduction. Still he continued unemotionally. "Lying in bed with Je

"Why did you kill Susan?"

"Accidental. We got carried away and I strangled her."

Corde winced, uncomprehending. He whispered, "She was somebody you must've cared about. Yet you hurt her so badly you killed her? Why? Was the sex that good?"

"Not for her it wasn't. Obviously." He gave Corde a fast chill smile then added, "I used the hammer to cover up some of the marks and I made it look like a robbery."

"But you didn't tell Je

"Of course not." Gilchrist grimaced at the foolishness of the question. "But she could link us together. When I called her from San Francisco on Sunday, when she told me she was breaking up with me, we argued. She said she was going back to Emily and if I didn't leave her alone she'd tell the administration about the students I'd slept with. Well, our Virgin Dean has this thing - her professors can fuck students' minds all they want but their bodies are off-limits. If Je

"And you killed her."

"And I killed her, yes." Gilchrist seemed to be considering if there was anything else to say about Je

"That deputy in Lewisboro got himself shot too."

"I'm very pleased about that – that it wasn't you, I mean. I was actually feeling somewhat bad thinking that you would be the first one through the door." He nodded his head slightly.

Corde said, "I'll give you a one-hour start."

"Is there anybody outside the house?"

"Just one deputy."

"So this is an unofficial visit, is it?" Gilchrist glanced at Corde with a certain level of respect. "Well, all right. Drop your car keys there."

"We walked. We didn't drive."

"Humor me."

Corde tossed the keys into the middle of the floor. Gilchrist pocketed them.

"She's all right?"

"Of course she's all right. I've tied her hands and feet. That's all. And gagged her."

People suffocate under gags. An FBI bulletin had just reported on this. Corde had noted the fact in boxy script on a three-by-five index card.

Gilchrist picked up his suitcase. He said, "The basement." He walked to the doorway and opened it. He stood at the top of the stairs and flicked a light switch on. Corde shouted, "Sarah! It's Daddy."

There was no response. Gilchrist said impatiently, "The gag. I told you."

Corde took out his handcuffs and stepped toward Gilchrist. "Put one on your right wrist and the other on that radiator pipe there."

"No. We have a deal."

Corde said, "I give you my word you get an hour. But I get my daughter first. Or I'll kill you where you stand."

Gilchrist studied Corde's eyes. "I think you might, Detective. All right. Follow me. I'll have to show you. It's hard to find."

"No. You stay here."

The professor shrugged and said, "You'll have to turn left at the foot of the stairs then go down a corridor then -"

Corde handed him the cuffs.

"- up a few stairs. You don't have to worry. She's fine. Just fine." Gilchrist was speaking like a pediatrician who'd nursed a child out of a fever.

Corde smelled the man's scent, sour, old cloth, sweat. He realized suddenly how close they stood.

Gilchrist, reaching for the cuffs, calmly closed his long fingers around Corde's wrist, the nails dug into flesh, and he threw himself backward down the stairs, dragging Corde with him.

The detective grabbed futilely for the handrail. The gun fired, the bullet sailing into a wall. Together they tumbled down the sharp-edged pine stairs. Snaps and thuds. Corde felt his left wrist pop. The gun flew from his hand. There was a huge reverberation as his head smacked hard into the rickety handrail and he heard another snap of joint that must have come from Gilchrist's arm or leg.

They cartwheeled down and down the wood steps then crashed into the concrete floor and lay still, curled like lovers on a cold winter morning. In the small, dim basement around them were rusted tools, a sprinkling of coal, a half dozen cans of paint. And not another living soul.

Wynton Kresge rested across the trunk of the green Pontiac, in prone firing position. It was the pose of the dressed deer he tied onto his Olds hood when he drove home from hunting. The checkered grip from the Remington had imprinted its design into the pads of his fingers. He smelled gun oil and gasoline and he thought Corde had been inside too damn long.

Then he heard the gunshot. A short crack from inside the house, the ground-floor windows flexing for an instant under the muzzle burst.