"Yes, I do. I did the small-arms course at Higgins. My score -"

"You have to buy your own weapon but you can get reimbursed up to two hundred. Automatics are okay but you can only use accepted loads, the ones on here." He handed Kresge a badly photocopied sheet of paper. "Don't get caught with anything heavier. And if you file the trigger it can't be easier than a nine-pound pull."

Kresge nodded and Corde noticed that he'd stopped arguing.

The clerk continued, "Your pay is twenty-nine-five annual, prorated for however long you're with us. You'll be assigned to Bill for whatever he needs you for. Ha, ha, big guess. You folks finish up the Gebben case and get this sicko under, we can find a permanent place for you here at the county if you get certified by the state police academy.

"Now, you get benefits as long as you work more than twenty-five hours a week but you gotta take a physical. And for the family you gotta pay something. You got a wife and kids?"

"Seven."

Corde added, "That's the kids. He's only got one wife."

"Oh, one more thing…" He tossed Kresge a plastic-wrapped green vinyl notebook about six by nine inches, three hundred or so pages thick. "That's the state penal code and the Deputy's Procedural Guide. Read 'em. Learn 'em."

"Yessir." Kresge was lit up with modest pride. "Do I salute?"

"It's all in there." The clerk tapped the Guide.

Jennie -

You wanted someone to teach you about love, and

all you found was someone to teach you how to die.

Why did you go that night? You said it was over.

Do I believe you or not?

Not knowing is almost as hard as life without you.

Why, kiddo, why?

Till we meet soon,

Em

"It was where?"

"In Emily's purse the night she drowned."

Wynton Kresge said, "They thought the Halpern boy wrote that? A fifteen-year-old kid?"

Corde said, "Uhn."

Sitting in the New Lebanon's Sheriffs Department, wearing a uniform as spotless and pressed as Corde's, Kresge dropped Emily's plastic-encased note on Corde's desk while Corde read the report aloud. "'Graphoanalysis of Subject Document. My professional opinion is that there is no more than a 50 percent probability that the handwriting is that of Subject Emily Rossiter. Significant similarities are five-degree backslant and short ascenders and descenders and looped capital letters. Deviation from samples submitted are significant but may be attributable to inebriation, drug use, emotional disturbance or unsteadiness of writing surface.'"

"Why didn't Philip say anything about it?"

"Maybe he didn't see it. Maybe he saw it and it didn't mean anything to him." Corde looked at the letter for a long moment then said, "Let's assume it's really Emily's okay?"

"Okay."

"Does it tell us anything?"

"Well, it says two things. First, it's a suicide note. So it means -"

"Suggests," Corde corrected.

"Suggests that Emily killed herself. She wasn't murdered."

"Okay. What's the second thing?"

"That the Halpern boy didn't kill Jennie either. I mean, it implies that he didn't."

"Why?"

"Because the 'someone' Emily mentions is probably, well, maybe, the killer. Someone Jennie had an affair with, I'd guess. She sure didn't have an affair with Philip Halpern."

"Because of where she says she thought it was over?"

"Yeah. Like the affair was over."

Corde said, "And look at 'go that night'. Tuesday night, she might be talking about." He opened his attaché case. The now-tattered picture of Jennie Gebben fresh off the volleyball court stared down at stacks of plump, dog-eared three-by-five cards. He flipped through one pile and extracted a card.

"That your computer, Bill?"

"Computer, ha. Here we go. Between about five and six on the night Jennie was killed she and Emily had a serious discussion of some kind. Maybe an argument. And Emily was moody that night. She didn't join her friends for supper."

"So maybe Jennie was going to see her lover, or former lover, and Emily was ticked off."

"Could be."

"Wait," Corde said. He dug through another card. "The girl who told me that Jennie was bisexual also said that she'd had a fight with somebody the night before she was killed. She said, 'I love her, I don't love you.' What if she agreed to meet that man -"

"Or woman," Kresge added.

Corde raised an eyebrow, acknowledging the point. "Possibly. But Trout, the carpet guy, said he saw a man… What if she agreed to meet him one last time, and he killed her?"

"That's sounding pretty good."

"But what about the DNA match? It was Philip's semen found at the scene."

"Damn, that's right." Kresge frowned.

"Don't agree with me too fast."

Kresge considered for a minute and said, "Maybe the lover killed her. Then the boy actually came along and raped her -"

"Actually, if she was dead first, it wasn't rape. It was violation of human remains. Misdemeanor."

"Oh." Kresge looked troubled. "I've got a hell of a lot to learn."

Corde mused, "Well, why didn't Emily come to us and tell us what she knew? Wouldn't she want the killer arrested?"

"Maybe she didn't know his name. If the girls were lovers then somebody Jennie'd had an affair with'd be a sore point between them. Emily maybe didn't want to hear about him."

"Good point, Wynton. But she could still come in and tell us that somebody Jennie had an affair with had killed her."

Kresge had to agree with that.

Then Corde said, "Of course look what happened. Emily killed herself. She was pretty crazy with grief, I suppose. She wouldn't be thinking about police. All she knew was her lover was dead."

Kresge nodded. "That's good. Yeah, I'll buy that."

"We got our work cut out for us." He selected one stack of cards and tossed it to Kresge. "What we know about Jennie, there're a lot of people who might've had affairs with her."

"Well, there can't be that many who're professors."

"Professors?"

Kresge tapped the plastic. "Well, she's talking about a professor, isn't she?"

Corde stared for the answer in the note. He looked up and shook his head. "Why do you say that?"

"Well," Kresge said, "it says 'teach'. I just assumed she was talking about one of her professors."

"Well, Emily could've meant that like in a general sense."

"Could be," Kresge conceded. "But maybe we could save ourselves a lot of time by checking out the professors first."

Corde picked up the cards and replaced them in his briefcase. He said, "This time we get to use the siren, Wynton. And the lights."

You think they care? Oh, you'll learn soon. You think they want you, but the way they want you is cold as mother moon…

Jamie Corde listened to the lyrics chugging out of his Walkman headset. He was lying on his back, staring at the setting sun. He wanted to be able to tell the time by looking at where the sun was. But he didn't know how. He wanted to be able to tell directions by the way certain trees grew but he couldn't remember what kind of trees. He wanted to travel into a different dimension. Jamie zipped his jacket up tighter against the cool breeze and slipped down farther in the bowl of short grass to escape from the wind. It was probably close to suppertime but he was not hungry.

He turned the volume up.

So just do yourself, do yourself,

do yourself a favor and do yourself…

Jamie was curious where the tape had come from. He'd returned home this afternoon after ditching wrestling practice and found it sitting on his windowsill. Geiger's latest cassette – the tiny cover picture showing five skinny German musicians in leather with long hair streaming behind them, the lead guitarist wearing a noose around his tendony neck.