Page 37 of Badlands

The gleam in his eyes, combined with the expressionless face, unnerved her. Normally it was not good to begin an interview by answering questions instead of asking them, but with Driver she would make an exception. Taking her cell phone out, she placed it on the table beside her water glass. “May I record this conversation, Mr. Driver?”

He glanced at the phone, then nodded. She tapped the button, stated a few particulars about the impending conversation, then looked back at the man.

“I can’t tell you much at this point, as we haven’t gotten back any lab work. What I can tell you—” she swallowed—“is this: Mandy wasn’t the first woman to die in this manner.”

The man took in a deep, long breath, his eyes on her. She knew the police hadn’t told him about Molly Vine—and so far, that investigation had been kept under wraps.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Sir, what I’m going to tell you is confidential.” She went on to sketch out, as briefly as possible, the discovery of Vine’s remains, and how that in turn led to a helicopter search and the finding of Mandy. As she spoke, Driver remained as stone-faced as ever.

When she had finished, he sat in silence, and then spoke. “Let me see if I get this: Both women were found naked, in the desert, having taken off all their clothes. No water, no cell phone, no ID—no nothing. Holding green rocks in their hands.”

“That is correct. The main difference is the time period. Molly Vine has been dead around five years—your daughter, two months.”

“And this other girl—you say she was studying archaeology at UNM as well?”

“Yes, sir. Did your daughter know Molly, by chance?”

“That motherfucker Oskarbi,” Driver burst out, not answering the question. “Wrecking students’ lives with his mind games.”

This was completely unexpected, and Corrie quickly revised her line of questioning. “Mind games, Mr. Driver?”

“I met that bastard twice when Mandy was starting grad school—that was enough. Smooth-talking, drug-taking, jive-ass hippie punk.”

Driver’s face, which before had been stoic, seemed now to move through a range of emotions: grief, anger, disgust, loss.

“Um, can you elaborate on that?”

“When I was a young man in Detroit, I worked for a while in the dean’s office of the local community college. I must have seen half a dozen of his type go through the disciplinary process—

professors. It’s a type. Passing themselves off as hip, dope-smoking mystics, more interested in getting laid than teaching. I had him pegged from the jump.” Driver shook his head. “But he was slippery. When I asked him about Mandy’s future, what kind of job she’d get, how she was going to make a living, he went all woo-woo on me, telling me that she would ‘figure it out in her own time.’ And him there, just slavering.”

Corrie frowned. “Slavering? Are you implying that Oskarbi, ah, slept with her?”

“I’m notimplyingit. That’s what he did. And not just her. I saw those girls he surrounded himself with.”

“Was he sleeping with them, too?”

“Sleeping with them or trying to. I was fixing to come after him just before he disappeared.”

Corrie took a moment to consult her notes and let Driver cool off. “To get back to an earlier question, did Mandy know Molly?”

He shook his head. “Probably. They were in the same department with that bastard.”

“Just so I understand,” Corrie went on. “You believe that Oskarbi was—what? Psychologically manipulative with his students?”

“That’s putting it mildly. He was a narcissist. He went around implying that book he’d written was a sacred text. Mentioned it both times we spoke. And to hear him talk, that was just the beginning. The next one was supposedly going to be arealhumdinger.”

“The next one? You mean next book?”

“Right. That’s what he kept telling Mandy, anyway.” He shook his head, scoffed. “Made Mandy his lab assistant. Filled her head with a lot of nonsense.”

Corrie glanced up again at the pictures framing the walls. Mandy Driver had been exceptionally pretty—even more than the reconstructive software had shown. “Did Mandy tell you she was having a relationship with him?”

“No, she was closemouthed about it, but I knew.”

“Did you share your concerns about Oskarbi with her?”

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