“Ms. Bowlby-”

“No!” she said, louder. “Leave me alone! I have nothing to say!”

She shot for the exit. I hung back for a moment, then followed, watching from a distance as she hurried out the main doors of the tower, racing, nearly tumbling, down the front steps, toward the inverted fountain that fronted the tower. The fountain was dry and streams of students converged near the dirty black hole before spreading out and radiating across campus like a giant ant trail.

She ran clumsily, struggling with the heavy bag. A thin, fragile-looking figure, so emaciated her buttocks failed to fill out the narrow jeans and the denim flapped with each stride.

Drugs? Stress? Anorexia? Illness?

As I wondered, she slipped into the throng and became one of many.

Her anxiety- panic, really- made me want to talk to the man she'd accused.

I recalled the details of the complaint: movie and dinner, heavy petting. Tessa claiming forced entry; Muscadine, consensual sex.

The kind of thing that could never be proved, either way.

AIDS testing for him. She'd already gotten tested.

Negative. So far.

But now she was ghostly pale, thin, fatigued.

The disease took time to incubate. Maybe her luck had changed.

That could account for the panic… but she was still enrolled in classes.

Maybe Hope Devane had been a source of support. Now, with Hope dead and her own health in question, was she overwhelmed?

The testing had been done at the Student Health Center. Getting records without legal grounds would be impossible.

Having a look at Muscadine seemed more important than ever, but the acting seminar was one of those weekly things that lasted four hours and was only half-over.

In the meantime, I'd try the others. Patrick Huang would be free in thirty minutes, Deborah Brittain soon after. Huang's class was nearby, in the Engineering Building. Back to the Science Quad. As I started to turn, a deep voice behind me said, “Sleuthing on campus, Detective?”

Casey Locking stood several steps above me, looking amused. His long hair was freshly moussed, and he wore the same long leather coat, jeans, and motorcycle boots. Black T-shirt under the coat. The skull ring was still there, too, despite his remark about getting rid of it.

Glinting in the sunlight, the death's-head grin wide, almost alive.

In the ringed hand was a cigarette, in the other an attachÉ case, olive leather, gold-embossed CDL over the clasp. The fingers sandwiching the cigarette twitched and smoke puffed and rose.

“I'm not a detective,” I said.

That made him blink, but nothing else on his face moved.

I climbed to his level and showed him my consultant's badge. His mouth pursed as he studied it.

So Seacrest hadn't told him.

Meaning they weren't confidants?

“Ph.D. in what?”

“Psychology.”

“Really.” He flicked ashes. “For the police?”

“Sometimes I consult to the police.”

“What exactly do you do?”

“It varies from case to case.”

“Crime-scene analysis?”

“All kinds of things.”

My ambiguity didn't seem to bother him. “Interesting. Did they assign you to Hope's murder because she was a psychologist or because the case is perceived as psychologically complex?”

“Both.”

“Police psychologist.” He took a long, hard drag, holding the smoke in. “The career opportunities they never tell you about in grad school. How long have you been doing it?”

“A few years.”

White vapors emerged from his nostrils. “Around here all they talk about is pure academics. They measure their success by the number of tenure-track types they place. All the tenure-track jobs are disappearing but they groom us for them, anyway. So much for reality-testing, but I guess the academic world's never been noted for having a good grip on reality. Do you think Hope's murder will ever be solved?”

“Don't know. How about you?”

“Doesn't look promising,” he said. “Which stinks… Is that big detective on the ball?”

“Yes.”

He smoked some more and scratched his upper lip. “Police psychologist. Actually, that appeals to me. Dealing with the big issues: crime, deviance, the nature of evil. Since the murder I've thought a lot about evil.”

“Come up with any insights?”

He shook his head. “Students aren't permitted to have insights.”

“Have you found a new advisor yet?”

“Not yet. I need someone who won't make me start all over or dump scut work on me. Hope was great that way. If you did your job, she treated you like an adult.”

“Laissez-faire?”

“When it was deserved.” He ground out the cigarette. “She knew the difference between good and bad. She was a fine human being and whoever destroyed her should experience an excruciatingly slow, immensely bloody, inconceivably painful death.”

His lips turned upward but this time you couldn't call the end product a smile. He put down his attachÉ case, and reaching under the coat, pulled out a hardpack of Marlboros.

“But that's unlikely to happen, right? Because even if somehow they do catch him, there'll be legal loopholes, procedural calisthenics. Probably some expert from our field claiming the prick suffered from psychosis or an impulse-control disorder no one's ever heard of before. That's why I like the idea of what you do. Being on the right side. My research area's self-control. Petty stuff- free-feeding in rats versus schedules of reinforcement. But maybe one of these days I'll be able to relate it to the real world.”

“Self-control and crime detection?”

“Why not? Self-control's an integral part of civilization. The integral component. Babies are born cute and cuddly and amoral. And it's certainly not hard to train them to be immoral, is it?”

He made a pistol with his free hand. “Everyone's making such a big deal about ten-year-olds with Uzis but it's just Fagin and the street rats with a little technology thrown in, right?”

“Lack of self-control,” I said.

“On a societal level. Take away external control mechanisms and the internalization process- conscience development- is immobilized and what you get are millions of savages running around giving free rein to their impulses. Like the piece of shit who killed Hope. So goddamn stupid!”

He produced a lighter and ignited another cigarette. Slightly shaky hands. He jammed them in the pockets of his coat.

“I tell you, I'd study real life if I could, but I'd be in school for the rest of my life and that's a no-brainer. Hope steered me right, said not to try for the Nobel Prize, pick something doable, get my union card, and move on.”

He sucked smoke. “Finding another advisor won't be easy. I'm considered the departmental fascist because I can't stand platitudes and I believe in the power of discipline.”

“And Hope was okay with that.”

“Hope was the ultimate scholar-slash-good-mother: tough, honest, secure enough to let you go your own way once you proved you weren't full of shit. She looked at everything with a fresh eye, refused to do or be what was expected of her. So they killed her.”

“They?”

“They, he, some drooling, psychopathic, totally fucked-up savage.”

“Any theories about the specific motive?”

He glanced back at the glass doors of the tower. “I've spent a long time thinking about it and all I've come up with are mental pretzels. Finally I realized it's a waste of energy because I have no data, just my feelings. And my feelings were knocking me low. That's really why it took so long to get back to my research. That's why I couldn't even go near my data til last night. But now it's time to get back in gear. Hope would want that. She had no patience for excuses.”

“Whose idea was it to barter data for car care?” I said.

He stared at me. “I called Phil up, he said he was having trouble getting the car started, so I offered to help.”