Page 46 of Badlands

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 alook, 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.”

26

CORRIE DIDN’T SPEAKmuch on the drive out to Sandoval County Jail, content to let Agent O’Hara take the wheel while she flipped through her notes. Despite Sharp’s reassurances and the mutual apology session with Mandy’s father, Corrie was finding that the aftermath of her disciplinary interview was lingering. Most of the time she managed not to think about it, but there were other times when she’d ended up second-guessing herself—when she wondered if she’d ever be able to shape her excitable, impulsive nature into the ideal of a cool, confident FBI agent.

She’d asked O’Hara to come along this morning, not only because it was pro forma to have a partner under the circumstances, but because it would give her a chance to hang back a little, let someone else do the questioning. She liked Brendan O’Hara; he was a good guy, friendly, intelligent, hard-working, and—unlike his frenemy Bellamy—seemed to have no issues working under a less-senior like Corrie.

She glanced briefly at her notes once more, then looked up as she felt the vehicle slowing down. The jail was in Bernalillo, of course, which was rapidly becoming her least favorite town,a place destined to be for her like those text-based computer adventure games she played as a kid, where you’d end up in a maze, turn left, then right, and somehow end up back in the room where you’d started.

The Detention Center was a cluster of low buildings, painted sand gray, that could have passed for a distribution facility were it not for the chain-link fence topped with concertina wire that surrounded it. There was precious little greenery in the landscape to begin with, but that was all suffocated by a vast concrete expanse the same color as the building.

Corrie followed O’Hara in, letting him take the lead as they showed their IDs, handed over their sidearms at the entry barrier, and were led through a short series of passages to a standard prison visitation room: two pairs of seats facing each other, between them a thick pane of Plexiglas with a circular speaking grill bored through it, and video cameras in the ceiling corners. Although Corrie didn’t tell O’Hara, she’d been in more of these during Quantico simulations than on the job.

She knew they had only a minute or two to themselves. “So, we’re good?” she murmured. “You’ll take the lead, and depending on how cooperative he is, I might or might not step in.”

“It’s your party,” O’Hara said.

The door opened, and a massive figure appeared. Kenneth Curtis stepped forward, then stopped, overtly examining the two FBI agents through the Plexiglas. He had an insolent gaze, and the way he ran his eyes over them implied he’d arranged this interview, not the other way around. Two guards were barely visible behind his bulk. Curtis had his hands cuffed behind his back. One guard undid the cuffs while the other stood back, mace and ugly stick at the ready. Then the guard with the handcuffs withdrew, the door slammed and locked. Only then didKenneth Curtis deign to sit down, massaging his wrists as he did so.

There was a silence while they took the measure of each other. Corrie had seen the man’s rap sheet, of course, but the perp photos didn’t do justice to the menacing presence that now faced them. She guessed he weighed at least three hundred pounds—one of those hulking frames that seemed as much muscle and sinew as fat. His prison shirt was short sleeved, showing off the myriad tattoos encircling his arms and rising up his neck. He’d shaved his head bald, but hadn’t stopped there: the eyebrows were gone, as well.

Corrie had done her homework. Over the last twenty years, Curtis had enjoyed a fraught relationship with law enforcement. Not including the various issues that took place during his divorce from Molly Vine—including a restraining order from Oskarbi—he’d been busted half a dozen times for disorderly conduct and assault. It was the assault charge for busting the ribs of an anti-fracking protestor that had landed him in the pen. He’d pled down to a first-degree misdemeanor and was now in the last week of a ninety-day sentence. Interestingly, he’d been represented with the help of a lawyer provided by his employer: Geo Solutions.

Corrie remained silent while O’Hara ran through the initial questions. She wondered what an educated, sophisticated student like Molly could have seen in Curtis. She reminded herself that people could change, especially over a span as long as twenty years.

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