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Je
No one has found the murder rope though a technician noticed a fresh cut on a short piece of plastic-coated clothesline dangling from a tie-down cleat in the abandoned truck. The medical examiner said the injury to her neck was consistent with that type of rope. The cult knife contains no particle residue from the cord but that is not conclusive. Moreover, the blade of the knife is razor sharp and the county forensic lab reports that the clothesline on the Ford was cut with a sharp instrument. A particle of cotton fiber, matching Je
Her reluctance to discuss her lovers fueled the rumors that she slept with professors. Last year she supposedly went out with one professor for much of the spring term. They kept it intensely secret though it was believed that he was in the Education School and that they had contemplated marriage.
A number of girls call Je
Many students say that they considered her a searcher, unsettled, unhappy. Several give similar versions of the same incident: Late one night Je
She was not religious and had never attended a church in New Lebanon. She had some tapes by New Age musicians and several crystal necklaces but little interest in spiritualism or the occult. Students have given conflicting reports about her relationship with her parents. Je
Bill Corde drops his quarter on the table and scoops up his index cards, considering all these facts, and he tries to picture the killer. But he sees woefully little. Far, far less than the profile in the Register (which infuriated him partly because he doubted he himself could ever create such a vivid image of a criminal). Corde's own profiling technique, that of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, is charted on the yellowed sheet of paper pi
Corde knows many details about Je
Bill Corde riffles the index cards.
He believes much and he knows little. A mass of information is in his hands but the truth is somewhere between the facts themselves, in the gaps of his knowledge, like the shadows between the flipping cardboard. For now, Corde sees only darkness as dense as the water in Blackfoot Pond. He sees no deeper than the reflection of double moons in the facets of a dead girl s necklace.
Corde hopes for startling illumination and yet he fears it will be a long, long time coming.
14
Her trouble came with the first asymmetrical block.
Resa Parker flipped through the green booklet, its cover printed with the large black letters VMI, Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration, and noted the exact point where Sarah Corde's abilities failed her: trying to copy a line drawing of an uneven rectangle.
Setting this aside the psychiatrist reviewed the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children – Revised, examining the snaky plot of the verbal and performance tests in the WISC-R profile blocks. The Revised Gray Oral Reading Test, which was strictly timed, showed Sarah – a fourth grader – reading at a first-grade level. Without the stress of a clock she was slightly better.
The scores were worse than the doctor had expected.
Sarah now sat in front of her, struggling through the last of the diagnostic tests – the Informal Test of Written Language Expression. Dr. Parker saw the anxious behavior, the darting eyes, the quivering knees, the frosting of sweat. The psychiatrist, who had at one time been in daily analysis for six years, continually confronted her own anger and insecurity and the coldness with which they were manifest; she struggled to instill serenity in the child. "Take your time, Sarah." Big smile. "There's no rush."
She noted the process of internalizing. Sarah didn't sound out unknown or difficult words. She stared at them without lip movement until she applied whatever phonetic skills she could muster and then wrote the words slowly in crude letters. Sarah leaned forward, an intense frown on her brow as she tried to conjure up the words. In her eyes the agony of repeatedly slamming into her limitations was clear.
Children of policemen have a higher incidence of learning disabilities than those of other parents and Dr. Parker noticed in herself a kernel of resentment toward Bill Corde. It was a rancor that she would never reveal but that he would have to go a long way in rebutting. Diane Corde refined much of what she said through a very complex series of filters and Dr. Parker wondered just how much the man actually helped his daughter, in contrast to how much Diane believed, or wished, he did.
The doctor also knew something else – how little the girl would ultimately improve and the immense effort and expense even that limited progress would require. "I'm afraid your time's up," Dr. Parker said, and took the notebook from the girl, who was sweating and nearly breathless. She examined the girl's sad attempt to write a story about a simple illustration in the test booklet – a boy with a baseball. Sarah had started: His naem was Freddie. And he watnted to play bsebale, baseball, only… The handwriting was abysmal. The story continued for a half page; an average child could easily fill three of four pages in that time. "All right, Sarah, very good. That's the last of our tests."