Page 25 of Badlands (Nora Kelly #5)
T HE FAT BINDER landed on Corrie’s desk with a thump, shaking her abruptly out of some unpleasant reveries.
“What’s this?” she asked, looking up to find Nora standing in the entrance to her cubicle at the Albuquerque Field Office, a smile on her face and a visitor’s pass around her neck.
“The PhD dissertation of Miranda F. Driver.”
“Hefty enough. Did you read it?”
Nora took a seat in the cubicle’s only free chair.
“I looked through it. It doesn’t exactly break new ground, but it’s nevertheless a sterling piece of scholarship. Driver would have made a fine professor if she’d taken that route.”
“Any insight into the case?”
“From what I can tell, the dissertation brings together pretty much everything known about the Gallina culture, which isn’t much. And it has a brief section covering the archaeological field seasons Oskarbi directed—not as much detail as I’d hoped, but then again not surprising, given that he never published any of the team’s findings and all his notes, photographs, and journals seem to have disappeared.”
Corrie picked up the tome, flipped through it.
“How did you get this?”
“From UNM. Dissertations are available online, and you can order hard copies.” She paused a moment, fiddling with the visitor’s pass that hung from her neck.
“But this one was harder to find than it should have been.”
“How so?”
“It was indexed incorrectly, effectively rendering it nonexistent to searches. Take a look at the title.”
Corrie looked.
“The Decline of the Galina Culture in the Badlands of the American Southwest.”
“See the misspelling of the word Gallina ? Now look at the name.”
Corrie looked: Miranda F.
Diver.
“Name misspelled, too. That prevented a hit on searches for either author name or title.”
“Deliberate?”
“It could have been a data-entry error… But you gotta wonder.”
“What’s in there someone would want to hide?”
Nora paused, as if choosing her words carefully.
“It’s what’s not in it.”
Corrie raised her eyebrows as Nora hefted the dissertation, opened it to the table of contents, and turned it around for Corrie to see.
“It looks normal, right?”
“As far as I can tell.” Corrie scanned the chapter titles.
“What am I supposed to be looking for?”
“And the page numbering is all in order?”
“Seems so.”
Nora turned the page.
“Now look at the table of figures.”
Corrie looked.
Each entry gave the relevant chapter number, followed by a dash, then the figure number—a standard format.
Again, this seemed normal.
She scanned the table a second time.
“Wait. Some of these figures are misnumbered.”
“Right.”
She looked up to see a broad smile on Nora’s face.
“The last two chapters have been removed. Everything’s been readjusted, pagination and chapters renumbered, table of contents updated—except whoever did it forgot to renumber the figures.”
Corrie stared.
“Nice detective work. So what do you think was in those chapters?”
“I don’t know. But even as I was reading the dissertation over, I felt that Driver was holding something back, as if lining up her evidence for a final, perhaps even unexpected, argument or theory. But then it never materialized. I think that theory was taken out at the last minute—probably in a rush—and a new, more banal conclusion substituted in its place.”
“By whom?”
“The most likely person would have been the dissertation advisor. And as you see from the title page, that was Oskarbi.” Nora paused.
“But even so, we just might be able to find those missing chapters.”
“Really? How?”
“I wrote a dissertation myself. You end up going through ten, fifteen drafts before it’s done,” Nora said.
“And you save every draft. If this material still exists—” she paused and smiled at Corrie—“I’ll bet her father has it. And, Miz FBI Agent, you need to go get it.”
Late that afternoon, Corrie, a lump of stone-like dread in her gut, pulled into a parking space in front of Driver’s apartment building, got out, went up, and rang the doorbell.
She hadn’t called ahead to make an appointment: she was worried he wouldn’t see her.
She had an apology to make—and in addition, if she was going to get his help with the dissertation drafts, she hoped she might have a better chance at persuading him in person.
Another long wait, and then Driver opened the door, looking at her with a cool gaze.
“Come in,” he said, stepping aside.
Corrie entered, feeling nervous and tentative although doing her best not to reveal it.
“Have a seat,” Driver said.
Corrie consciously chose a different chair to sit down in this time.
“Mr. Driver,” she said, starting with the lines she’d rehearsed on the drive over, “I’m really sorry that I offended you when I first—”
Driver held up his hands.
“Say no more. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, and I hope that complaint didn’t get you into trouble.” He took in a deep breath.
“It’s just… I’ve been so frustrated about the do-nothing police. It was obvious they didn’t give a damn from the jump—that they assumed she’d run away. I couldn’t help but think if she were a white girl, they’d have paid more attention. I let my temper get the better of me.”
This was not the response Corrie had expected.
“I’m sorry for not being more… discreet in my opinions.”
Driver waved this away.
“The best thing you can do for me is make progress on this case. Is there any more news?”
“Nothing yet,” Corrie said.
“I did have a few follow-up questions, along with… well, a request.”
“If it can possibly help, go right ahead and ask.”
“You mentioned a group of graduate students around Oskarbi. I’m trying to put together a list of who they were.”
“The university doesn’t have it?”
“Their records aren’t good.”
He slowly nodded.
“Let’s see. Mandy talked a lot about them, they were a pretty close group, but I saw them rarely if ever. Molly Vine was one, of course. And then there was another one, Italian name… Bellagamba. I think she’s still with the university.”
“Olivia Bellagamba?”
“Right. There was Susan Franco… A woman, Elodie Bastien…
A big square fellow by the name of Bromley. Morgan Bromley.
Another fellow named Grant. That was his first name, can’t remember the last.” He thought for a long while.
“There were some others, but I just can’t recall.” He shook his head.
Corrie, writing down the names, was surprised by just how good his memory was.
No doubt he’d had time, in his bitter reflections, to recall just about everything his daughter had told him before she vanished.
“How many in total, would you say?”
“Not that many. Maybe eight, ten?”
Corrie nodded.
Now felt like a good time to make the ask.
“I think there might be useful information among your daughter’s dissertation notes and drafts. Do those still exist?”
“They certainly do—in a filing cabinet right here, as a matter of fact. She didn’t have room in her apartment for all her books and papers, so she stored her research stuff with me, in the spare room.”
He rose, and Corrie followed him past the living room and into a hallway.
The last door opened into a small bedroom almost entirely filled with shabby filing cabinets, books, journals, and papers.
A tiny twin bed was crammed into one corner.
“This was her crash pad when she visited. And where she stored all her stuff.” He spread his hands.
“Feel free to take a look, search everything, take what you want.” He hesitated.
“I’m just thankful that somebody finally cares.”
Corrie looked around the room.
This could be a gold mine.
“I do care,” she said forcefully.
“And I promise you, Mr. Driver, we’re going to get to the bottom of this case.”