The Lesson of Her Death

Where is she? Where is my daughter?…

The deputy asked, "You go

"Oh, Bill," Diane whispered. "Please God -"

"All units in the vicinity…"

From outside over the PA system of both squad cars, as if in stereo, came the radio broadcast.

"All units in the vicinity. Ten-thirty-three in progress. School of Education Building, Auden University. Assault. Man with a knife or razor in late-model sedan. No plates…"

Corde and Diane looked at each other.

"Further to that ten-thirty-three. Ambulance is en route. And we have unconfirmed report that a juvenile is involved… Make that a female juvenile about ten years of age. Repeat. Ten-thirty-three in progress…"

It looked like an auto accident – the driver's door open, the figure lying bloody and still beside the car, one foot up on the driver's seat. Revolving red Lights, men and women in uniform.

Diane screamed and flung open the door before Corde had brought his cruiser to a stop in the school parking lot. She sprinted over the cracked asphalt to where the ambulance crew, a cluster of white-coated attendants, was huddled, working feverishly. With her hands over her mouth, Diane looked down, then closed her eyes, muttering indistinct words over and over.

Corde trotted to the car and looked down at the bloody mass at his feet. He took a deep breath and peered over the head of an attendant.

It was not Sarah.

Lying on his back Ben Breck opened his eyes. He squinted and spit blood. He whispered halting yet astonished words: "Leon Gilchrist!… Following us…" He held up his arm to examine deep slashes in the palm of his hand with serene curiosity. "I don't feel any pain." He looked back at Diane. "We were in the car… he just appeared. Just like that. Had a razor…"

"Where's Sarah?" Diane cried.

Corde said to a county deputy, "Do you know who this man is?"

Diane shouted at her husband, "It's Ben Breck!"

"She's right, Detective." The deputy offered Corde a bloody wallet. He opened it. Inside there was an Illinois driver's license with Breck's picture, a University of Chicago faculty picture ID, and an Auden ID, which identified him as a visiting professor.

Visiting professor. So, a temporary address and no directory assistance listing.

Corde crouched. "Where's Sarah?"

"She ran. I think he's got her," Breck gasped. "I don't know what happened. He was…" The words dissolved into bloody coughing. "We'd stopped and he came… up behind the car. He was… just there. Cutting me, slashing. Grabbing for Sarah…"

"Did he hurt her?" Diane asked, choking on tears.

"I don't… I couldn't… see."

An attendant finished applying a tourniquet and started bandaging a deep cut.

Corde asked Breck, "Where did they go? Did you see -"

"There. There." Breck reached up a bloody hand.

At first Corde thought he was pointing out a direction. But no. He saw in the front seat of the car two typed pages. Corde said, "Those sheets?"

Breck nodded. "Take them. Read… I'm getting very dizzy. My mouth is dry…" He closed his eyes.

Corde picked up the sheets. He started to read. His attention flagged and he looked down. Diane took Breck's face in both of her slick, red hands and shouted to him, "You're going to be all right! You're going to be fine! Do you hear me? Do you hear me?"

She looked up at her husband. Corde put his hand on her shoulder. She picked it up and flung it off then lowered her head to Breck's chest and began to cry.

It wasn't until the ambulance left a minute later, kicking up dust and siren howling, that Corde walked abruptly back to his car and sat in the driver's seat. Finally he began to read.

They stepped over a tangle of brush, between two beech trees that pretty much marked the start of Corde's backyard and entered the forest at the exact spot he had seen, or imagined, the moonlit face staring at the house a month before. They walked on a carpet of spring-dried leaves and low raspy grass, yellow and deer-chewed.

Beside him, dressed in a beige uniform and tan windbreaker, Wynton Kresge was carrying a Remington pump shotgun. The gun had a stiff sling but he did not carry it slung. He held it two-handed like a soldier, index finger pointed forward outside of the trigger guard. The men walked quickly, Corde consulting two sheets of dark-stained typewriter paper as if they were instructions on a scavenger hunt.

The sky was milky. The sun, a white disk low in the sky, was trying to burn off the overcast, but the density of gray meant that it was going to lose. The forest, the cow pasture, the yellow-green carpet in front of him were an opaque watercolor. A coal black grackle flew immediately toward him then turned abruptly away, startling both men.

At an old burnt-down barn that he had forbidden Jamie and Sarah from playing in, they turned right. Beams of the silo rose like charred bones. They walked on, over an old railroad bridge then followed the gravelly roadbed to the Des Plaines. They walked along the bank through more woods until they found the house. Corde folded the sheets of paper and put them in his pocket.

The house was another dilapidated colonial, two stories, narrow and sagging. This one was set in a grim, scruffy clearing, past which you could see storage tanks along the river. A tug towed a rusty barge upstream, its harsh, chugging engine irksome in the heavy air.

In the front yard was parked a green car. A Hertz sticker in the windshield. Corde read the plate.

"It's the one Gilchrist rented."

Corde crouched and Kresge knelt beside him, under cover of a fallen branch. Corde looked at the ground. He said, "You stay outside. No matter what you hear. If he comes out alone, stop him. He's the only one who knows where Sarah is. I want him alive."

Kresge said, "I'd feel better calling in some backup. That's what the manual says in cases like this."

Corde kept studying the house. Lord, it seemed ominous – towery and pale, mean. He said, "I'm going to get my daughter one way or another. I may need some time with Gilchrist by myself."

Kresge looked long at Corde, considering these words. He turned back to the house. "How'd you know this was his place?"

Corde shushed him. Together they closed in on the colonial. Kresge crouched behind the Hertz car and rested the shotgun on the hood. He pointed at the front and back doors, nodding, meaning that he could cover them both. Corde nodded back and, crouching, ran to the front of the house. He paused beside the rotting gray porch. He caught his breath then eased slowly up to the door. He smashed the door in with a vicious kick of his boot and stepped into the rancid-smelling house.

The room was milky, as if illuminated through smoke or mist. Light, already diffused by the clouds, ambled off the silver maple leaves outside and fell ashen in the room. The carpet, walls, plywood furniture, paintings seemed bleached by this weak radiance.

A terrible moment passed. Corde believed the house was empty and Gilchrist had escaped from them again. Then his eyes grew accustomed to the weak light and he saw at the end of the room a pale shape, a sphere that moved. It was mottled with indefinite features like the surface of the moon. Corde saw that it was a man's head and that he was staring back at Corde.

The man slowly rose and stood behind a cluttered desk. About six-two, graying brown hair, trim, gangling arms and long thin hands. He wore a conservative light green tweed sports jacket and tan slacks. His face gave no clue that he was surprised by the intrusion. He examined Corde with brown eyes that were the only dark aspects of his person.

He looks like me was the thought that passed involuntarily through Corde's mind.