第 44 页

'Here, gimme.' Corde scowled. That's what I was afraid of. We've hardly got enough left for raises. Not enough for a new man.'

'Raises? Should I give the men raises?'

Corde was making notes on his index cards. He said, 'We've got about five thousand in travel and equipment left for the rest of the year... Well, I'd like you to leave that alone. I'm going to need a good portion of it if not everything.'

'Equipment? But I told you I was having trouble getting money for the walkie-talkies. And I was going to buy us all Glocks. They cost over four hundred each.' ' 'Glocks? Jim, we don't need fifteen-round automatics.'

Slocum didn't speak for a minute then he said quietly, 'I'm the sheriff, Bill. I said I'd consider your request but I can't promise anything.'

Corde dropped the sheet on the desk. 'Okay, Jim, there's no nice way to say what I'm about to.' He paused while he honestly tried to think of one. The only thing I'll add to take the sting out of it is that whether it was you or Steve or Jack Treadle himself sitting where you are, I'd say exactly the same thing. Which is: You got yourself a plum job and you know it and I know it and I'm happy for you. But you got appointed because I turned it down. And the price for that is me getting the Cebben case and all of the travel and equipment budget, every penny of it. After this is over I'd be glad to help you with all this administrative stuff and I'll even learn your radio codes but until then what I just said is the way it is.'

Corde looked back at the shock on Slocum's face, which froze slowly to a chill. Corde wondered if this talk might actually do some good, toughening the man's flaccid way.

"You don't have to be like that, Bill.'

The buffoonery was gone and Corde now saw in Slocum's eyes the too-vivid knowledge that he had advanced by default and he saw too the man's depleted hope, which could have very well been Corde's own broken ambition had life moved just a little different. This stung him - for his own sake as well as Slocum's -but he did not apologize. He stood and walked to the door. Tm counting on you to leave that money just where it is until I need it.'

What Wynton Kresge owed: $132.80 to GMAC. $78.00 to Visa. $892.30 to Union Bank and Trust (the mortgage). $156.90 to Union Bank and Trust (the bill consolidation loan). $98.13 to Consolidated Edison. $57.82 to Midwestern Bell. $122.78 to Duds 'n' Things for Kids. $120.00 to Corissa Hanley Duke, the housekeeper. $245.47 to American Express. $88.91 to Mobil (goddamn Texans, goddamn Arabs). $34.70 to Sears.

And that was just for the month of May.

He didn't have the heart to tally the numbers up for the year and he didn't dare calculate the brood's budget for makeup, burgers, ninja outfits, skateboards, air pump Nikes, gloves, basketballs, piano lessons, potato chips, Apple software, Spike Lee and Bart Simpson T-shirts, Run DMC tapes, Ice-T tapes, Janet Jackson, Paula Abdul, The Winnans tapes, gummy bears, white cheddar, popcorn, Diet Pepsi and whatever else got sucked into the black hole of childhood capitalism.

Darla came to the door of his den and told him the plumber had just finished.

'Oh, good,' Kresge said. 'How much?' He opened the checkbook and tore off a check. He left it blank and handed it to her.

'It's a hundred twenty-four, doll.'

'How much?'

"You can't take a bath in cold water.' She was gone.

He marked down: Check 2025. Amount $124. For SOB, MF'ing Plumber. Why, he wondered, was it that the more you get the more you spend? When he and Darla had first been married they'd lived in a trailer park south of the Business Loop in Columbia, Missouri. He'd been an assistant security director for the university, making nineteen thousand dollars a year.

They'd had a savings account. A real savings account that paid you interest - not very much, true, but something. You could look at the long line of entries and feel that you were getting somewhere in life. Now, zip. Now, debt.

This was too much. Thinking about the bills, about hungry children, about a wife, about his lack of employment, his palms began to sweat and his stomach was doing 180s. He recalled the time he talked a failing student down from the Auden Chancellory Building. Sixty feet above a slate walk. Kresge, calm as could be. No rope. Standing on a ledge fourteen inches wide. Like he was out looking for a couple buddies to shoot pool with. Talking the boy in by inches. Kresge had felt none of the terror that assaulted him now as he lined up the fat white envelopes of bills and pulled toward him his blue-backed plastic checkbook, soon to be emasculated.

The telephone rang. He answered it. He listened then looked at his watch. Wynton Kresge said, 'Well, I don't know.' He listened some more. Well, I guess.' He hung up.

4

Wynton, come on, get the lead out of your cheeks. You look like a walking tombstone.'

Corde spun the squad car around the corner and pressed the accelerator down. The four-barrel engine, factory-goosed so it could catch 'Vettes and Irocs, pushed both men back in the vinyl seat. Come on Wynton cheer up cheer up cheer up.

'What you got there?' Kresge looked at the seat under Corde's butt. What you're sitting on?'

A backrest of round wooden balls strung together. It looked like a doormat 'Good for the back,' Corde said. 'It's like it massages you.'

Kresge looked away as if he'd already forgotten he'd asked the question.

'You like to fish?' Corde asked him.

'I don't want to today.'

'You don't what?'

After a moment Kresge resumed the conversation. Want to go fishing.'

We're not going fishing,' Corde said. *But do you like to?'

'I like to hunt.'

'I like to fish,' Corde said. 'Hunting's good too.'

They drove past the pond where Jennie Gebben and Emily Rossiter had died. Corde didn't slow down and neither of them said a word as they sped on toward the Fredericksberg Highway.

After ten minutes Kresge touched the barrel of the riot gun lock-clamped muzzle-up between them.

"What's this loaded with?'

'Double-ought.'

'I thought maybe it was rock salt or plastic bullets or something.'

'Nope. Lead pellets.'

You don't have to use steel? I thought with the wetlands and everything you had to use steel.'

Corde said, 'It's not like we shoot that much buckshot at people 'round here.'

"Yeah, I guess not. You ever used it?'

'Drew a target a couple times. Never pulled the trigger, I'm mighty pleased to say. You got a pretty wife.'

'Yep.'

'How many kids you got, all told?'

'Seven. Where we going?'

'Fredericksberg.'

'Oh. How come?'

'Because,' Corde said.

'Oh.'

Twenty minutes later they pulled into a large parking lot and walked into the County Building. They passed the County Sheriffs Department. Corde noticed an empty office being painted. It was T.T.'s old one. There was no name on the plate next to the door. He could picture a nameplate that said S.A. Ribbon. Corde and Kresge continued on, to the office at the end of the hall. Painted in gold on rippled glass a sign read, County Clerk.

Kresge stopped to study a Wanted poster in the hall. He said to Corde, You got business, Detective, I can wait out here.'

'Naw, naw, come on in.'

Corde walked through a swinging gate and into a dark, woody old office presided over by a dusty oil painting of a judge who looked like he'd spent the entire portrait session thinking up cruel and unusual punishments.

From a desk under the window, a grizzled bald man, wearing a wrinkled white shirt, bow tie and suspenders, waved them over.

'Rest your bones, gentlemen.' The county clerk dug through the stacks of papers on his desk. What've we got here, what've we got here... Okay. Here we go.' He found a couple of sheets of paper, dense with tiny type. He set them in front of him. You're a crazy son of a bitch, Corde, to pass up that chance.'

Corde said, 'I probably am.'

They were good and pissed, I'll tell you. Nobody wanted it this way.'

'Uh-huh.'

'In case you hadn't guessed.'

'I had.'

'What's he mean?' Kresge asked Corde.

The clerk added loudly, as if he hoped to be overheard, 'And nobody here is real happy we inherited you know who.'

Corde supposed he meant Ribbon. You can't pin that on me.'

The county clerk grew solemn then spread the papers out in front of him. He flipped through a three-ring binder. He stopped at one page and began speaking rapid-fire toward the book. 'Okay raise your right hand by the power vested in me ...'

Corde was looking at the sour portrait above their heads. Kresge followed his eyes. The clerk stopped reading and looked at Kresge. You gonna raise your hand or what?'

'Me?' Kresge said.

'You're the one being deputized.'

'Me?' The man's baritone rose nearly to a tenor.

'Raise your hand, Wynton,' Corde said. Kresge did.

'By the power vested in me by the County of Harrison, you, Wynton Washington Kresge, are hereby appointed as special deputy pursuant to Revised State Code Title 12 Section 131.13. Repeat after me.

"I, Wynton Washington Kresge ...".'

Kresge cleared his throat, looking with astonishment at Corde. 'What is this?"

Corde said, 'Do what the man's telling you.'

'I, Wynton Washington Kresge, do swear to uphold the laws of this state and to tirelessly and faithfully serve and protect the citizens of the County of Harrison and the municipalities located therein...'

'If you don't want to say "so help me God,"' the clerk concluded, 'you can say. "upon my solemn oath".'

Kresge said, 'So help me God.'

Corde shook his hand. The clerk gave him three pieces of paper to sign.

'You didn't tell me.' Kresge whispered this to Corde.

'I need you, Wynton. I figured if I just drove you here you'd be less inclined to say no and go looking for a cushy office job someplace else.'

'Look, Detective, I'm grateful. I really am. But there's no way I can afford to do this.'

Corde smiled cryptically. "You can't afford not to. Talk to that pretty wife of yours. You'll find some way to work it out.'

The clerk was impatient. You two talk about this later, will you?' He finished the paperwork and folded a couple of sheets like a subpoena. He handed one to Kresge. 'Go over to County Central Booking and get fingerprinted on the same form and have a picture ID taken in Personnel. The same building. Bill'll tell you where it is. Have both these copies notarized. Lucy can do it if she's not at lunch, and if she is go to Fanner's Bank. Ask for Sally Anne. Bring me back one copy.'

'But I haven't even thought about it.'

"You're a special deputy, which sounds good but don't let it go to your head, it's the lowest rank we've got. You have a pistol permit?'

"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 thatof Subject Emily Rossi ter. 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?'