Page 17 of Badlands (Nora Kelly #5)

A S THEY WALKED back outside, Corrie muttered, “Bitch.”

Nora was a little surprised at Corrie’s vehemence, but she couldn’t deny the sentiment.

“What’s she hiding?” Corrie went on.

“And there’s something about this Oskarbi that stinks, too.”

“You mean the sleeping with his students?” Nora asked.

“I know the type—the charismatic male professor who gathers female students around himself to bask in their adulation and then, if he can, fuck them. Anyone who’s been to graduate school has seen that phenomenon.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Corrie.

“And did you notice her tone of voice when she talked about Professor this and the Professor that? It was like when she spoke his name it was some sort of talisman.”

Nora had noticed.

“You think that this somehow connects with Molly’s death?”

Corrie shook her head.

“All I know is, I’d sure like to talk to the Professor .”

They got back into Corrie’s vehicle, she started the engine, and they began making their way off the university campus.

“Let’s establish a timeline of sorts, then, between Oskarbi and Molly,” Nora said.

“You spoke to the girl’s mother—what did she have to say?”

“Molly had pretty much distanced herself from her mother. She told me that Molly had been very excited about her graduate work, and her advisor—”

“Oskarbi.”

“Yes. She’d spent a few summers with him in the field. According to the mother, her work had been first-class. But then she abruptly dropped her doctorate studies, saw a therapist for a while, drifted around, and finally got a teaching certificate.”

“Dr. Lemmon speculated the sudden dropping of her studies coincided with Oskarbi leaving the university.”

“‘Abandoning them’ was the way he put it.”

“I’d take that with a grain of salt,” Nora said.

“I got a pretty strong whiff of professional jealousy from Dr. Lemmon.”

Corrie nodded.

“It’s true, Molly’s mother had only good things to say about Oskarbi. But then, she was also adamant her daughter didn’t commit suicide… despite living through what I have to believe was a pretty rough decade or more.”

“Oskarbi’s other ‘groupies’ seemed to rebound well enough. Look at Bellagamba: she was one of them herself, but I don’t see any signs of resentment about how her advisor left. If anything, she was overly defensive of him.”

“Exactly.”

They had cleared the grounds of the university and were now headed for the interstate.

“But Bellagamba also said that she knew Molly quite well,” Nora added.

“She called her an old hand with the desert. If that’s true, she wouldn’t be the kind of person likely to end up stranded without water and dying of heatstroke, unless it was deliberate.”

After a moment, Corrie shrugged.

“I can’t deny that obnoxious professor got my goat. But still, I can’t help but wonder if the two disappearances are related.”

“You mean, Oskarbi and Molly Vine?” To Nora this seemed like a long shot, even for Corrie: not only were the two events separated by almost a decade, but there was no mystery surrounding the professor’s return to Mexico.

Just then, Corrie’s work phone rang.

She picked it up. “Agent Swanson.”

As Nora watched, Corrie’s knuckles whitened around the cell phone.

“Yes. Yes. I’ll be there in forty-five minutes. Thanks.”

She ended the call and looked over at Nora.

“They just found another body.”

“What?”

Corrie nodded.

“One of our search helicopters spotted it. The sector’s totally different—the chopper was actually on its way back to the airfield when the body was spotted. Pilot said the surroundings were too gnarly for a landing, but telephoto images show a lot of similarities: absolute middle of nowhere, mostly nude, young… at least, apparently young.”

“You mean, there’s a body—not just bones?”

“So it seems.”

“Did they say where the body was spotted?”

“Near something called Pierre’s Ruins—in case that rings a bell.”

“Oh, Christ.” It certainly did.

“The pilot was right—that area’s so remote and broken up you couldn’t get in there with a Bradley.”

“So how do we get to the body?”

“On horseback. Unless you want to walk.”

Corrie drove in silence a moment, taking this new development in.

“Horseback sounds better to me. And I think I know just who to tap for a guide.”