Page 28 of Badlands

“Any close friends?”

“She had some friends among her colleagues from her time at UNM. I have her old address book and can look them up for you.”

“Could I borrow it?”

A hesitation. “I suppose so.” She got up and walked over to a large cupboard across the living room and unlocked and opened it. Corrie could see it was filled with memorabilia—graduation diplomas, framed photos, a bundle of letters, some books, a bound thesis, knickknacks, and a beaten-up teddy bear—clearly a sort of shrine to her daughter.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Vine. Would you mind if we borrowed some of this material?”

The woman turned. “It’s all I have left of my daughter. I would hate to lose it.”

“I understand. We’re experts at handling evidence. I’ll send over our Evidence Response Team, and they’ll inventory every item and pack it up with care. I promise you’ll get everything back as soon as we’ve reviewed it.”

Corrie looked into the woman’s gray eyes, and for the first time she could see the depth of anguish in them. Grief was finally breaking through the façade of this tough old Texas rancher lady.

“All right,” she said as she picked up first an address book, then a hairbrush, from the makeshift shrine. “Molly was no stranger to the desert. She never would have gone out there unprepared without a reason. I… hope and pray that you find that reason.”

16

AH, YES,” SAIDRalph Lemmon. “Sure, I remember Molly.” The professor of archaeology lounged in his office chair behind a cluttered desk, one leg thrown over the other. He wore a rumpled tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and sported dirty eyeglasses, prematurely graying hair in a ponytail, bushy sideburns, and shoulders flecked with dandruff. His socks didn’t match.

Nora occupied the lumpy sofa next to Corrie, who had her FBI cell phone out, recording the conversation. The office was claustrophobic: journals and books were piled up in tottering stacks, the desk heaped with loose papers. Even the sofa had to be cleared of books before they could sit down. Corrie had requested that Nora, as a fellow academic, take the lead in questioning Lemmon. The DNA from the brush had been sequenced, and there was no longer any question: the bones in the desert belonged to Molly Vine. The primary reason they were interviewing Lemmon at all was that he occupied the Morris F. Cliffe Chair of American Studies—a position Vine’s PhD advisor, Oskarbi, had once held. But Nora wasn’t particularly pleased to be here—she’d slept poorly the night before, mostly because ofthat weird tune on the wax cylinder they’d digitized, which had kept twisting its way into her dreams. Now she felt tired and on edge.

“When was Vine a graduate student here?” she asked.

“Let’s see now,” Lemmon said. “She’d just arrived as a grad student when I got my doctorate, so that would be about sixteen years ago. She became one of Oskarbi’s groupies.”

“Groupies?” Nora asked. “How so?”

“Oskarbi liked to surround himself with pretty girls. It was sort of his thing.”

“Was he sleeping with them?” she asked.

At this, Lemmon gave a little laugh. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“And what makes you think that?”

“Oskarbi was a real charmer—handsome, funny, charismatic, full of interesting stories about his life. He was also kind of famous back then, thanks to that book he wrote. He’d made a lot of money on it, and those students of his just worshipped him. He wasn’t a bad dude, really, and if hewassleeping with any of them, I’m sure it was consensual. They were all graduate students in their early twenties, so it wasn’t like he was boning undergrads.” He shrugged. “He was just one ofthose men.”

Nora thought she picked up a faint note of envy in his voice. “More specifically, was Molly sleeping with him?”

“I’ve no idea. But I’m sure he would have if he could. She was one gorgeous creature.”

Creature. Corrie shrugged that one off. “Do you have any idea why she left the program?”

“Not specifically. But it may well have had to do with Oskarbi going back to Mexico and resuming his, ah, discipleship.” A snort followed.

“When was that?”

“That would be… about twelve years ago. As I recall, Molly had met all PhD requirements except the dissertation itself. A classic ABD.”

“ABD?” Corrie broke in.

“All but dissertation,” Lemmon said airily. “It’s not uncommon. But in her case, I don’t think it was the writing of the dissertation that, ah, blocked her. I think it was Oskarbi taking off like that, with essentially no notice. You could have expected he didn’t have the discipline for any extended amount of time in academia. Naturally, it was irresponsible of him, abandoning his students, but then he was always a flake. Too much peyote, taken for ‘research purposes.’” He made air quotes with his fingers and laughed.

“Did you keep in touch with her after she left?” Corrie asked.

“No. I think she continued to pal around with the Oskarbi group, though. They were a closed circle, having done fieldwork together every summer. Most are still around. Some are professors now, a couple here at UNM. Others went into the contract archaeology business.” He paused. “You should talk to Olivia Bellagamba. She’s director of the Archaeology Center now, but back then she was one of Oskarbi’s minions.”

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