The man swiveled slowly in a shabby office chair, bleeding upholstery stuffing. Kresge wondered if he'd found the chair on the street in his poor graduate student days and kept it for sentiment.

Kresge's nostrils flared against the old-carpet smell, basement water in wool. He had a strong urge to walk directly to the nearest window and fling it wide open. The papers and books filling every available space added to the stifling closeness as did the jumble of old-time photos stacked against the wall. Everything was covered with thin films of dust.

Randy Sayles put a pencil tick next to his place in the massive volume he was reading, slipped a paperclip between the pages and closed the book.

A jay landed on a bush outside the window and picked at a small blond mulberry.

Bill Corde said, "Professor Sayles, we're here to arrest you for the murder of Jennifer Gebben."

Sayles leaned back in the ancient chair. Sorrow was in his face but it seemed a manageable sorrow like that in the eyes of a distant relative at a funeral.

He listened to Corde recite the Miranda rights. Corde unceremoniously took his handcuffs out of the leather case on his belt. Sayles said a single word softly. Corde believed it was "No." The professor's tongue caressed his lips. One circuit. Two. He lifted his hands and rested them on his knees; they looked dirty because of the fine dark hairs coating his skin. Corde noticed that his feet pointed outward. He said, "Will you hold your wrists out, please?"

"Why do you think it's me?" He asked this with unfeigned curiosity. He did not offer his wrists.

"A witness came forward and identified your picture in the yearbook. He saw you by the dam that night. Your hands?"

Sayles nodded and said, "The man in the car. He almost ran me over."

Kresge said, "And your bootprint matches one found at the scene of the killing." He looked at Corde to see if it was all right to volunteer this kind of information.

"My bootprint?" Sayles looked involuntarily at a muddy corner of the study where presumably a pair of boots had recently lain. "You took prints of mine from the yard?"

"Yessir," Kresge said. "Shot pictures, actually."

Sayles fidgeted with his hands, his face laced with the regret of a marathoner pulling up cramped a half mile shy of the finish. "Will you come with me?" Sayles stood up.

"For what?" Corde asked.

"I didn't kill her." Sayles seemed stricken with apathy.

"You'll have your day in court, sir."

"I can prove it right now."

Corde looked at the eyes and what he saw was a load of disappointment – much more than desperation. He motioned with his head toward the door. "Five minutes. But you wear the cuffs." He put them on.

As they left the house Kresge whispered, "So, okay, let me get this straight. If they say they didn't do it we give them a chance to show us some new evidence? I just want to know the rules."

"Wynton," Corde said patiently, "there are no rules."

The two men followed Sayles outside. They walked to the back of the house – ten feet from the place where Kresge had taken photos of Sayles's footprints. Corde recognized the ruddy box elder root from the Polaroids. Corde glanced toward the front of the house. He believed he smelled cigarette smoke. Corde saw Sayles's wife standing in the kitchen thirty feet away.

Sayles walked to a patch of dug-up earth like two wide tread marks about twenty feet long. Small green shoots were rising from precisely placed intervals along the strips.

"Dig here." He touched a foot to the ground.

Kresge picked up a rusty spade. Corde now felt contempt in the air. Sayles's eyes were contracted like nipple skin in chill water. The deputy began to dig. A few feet down he uncovered a plastic bag. Kresge dropped the spade on the ground. He pulled the bag out, dusted it off carefully and handed it to Corde. Inside was a length of clothesline.

"That's the murder weapon," Sayles said.

Corde said to him, "Do you want to make a statement?"

Sayles said, "This is the proof."

"Yessir," Corde said. "Do you wish to waive your right to have an attorney present during questioning?"

"He killed Jennie with it. I saw him. It'll have his fingerprints on it."

"You're saying you didn't kill her?" Kresge asked.

"No, I didn't kill her," Sayles said. He sighed. "Jennie and I had an affair last year."

"Yessir, we figured as much" Corde said.

In the open window, the blond woman rested her chin in her hand and listened to his words without visible emotion. The cigarette dangled over the sill and from it rose a leisurely tentacle of smoke.

"I was quite taken by her." He said to Corde, "You saw her. How could anybody help but be captivated by her?"

Corde remembered the moon, remembered the smell of mint on the dead girl's mouth, remembered the spice of her perfume. He remembered the dull eyes. He remembered two diamonds and he remembered mud. He had no idea how captivating Jennie Gebben was.

Sayles said, "She went to work for me in the financial aid office."

"We just came from there. The scrap of paper we found burned behind her dorm matches computer files in your records. You broke into her dorm and stole her letters and papers. You burned them."

Sayles laughed shortly, the disarmed sound of someone learning that his secrets are not secret at all. He nodded. "You know the financial condition of the school?"

What was it about educators that made them think their school was exactly the first thing on everyone's mind?

Sayles continued. "We've been in danger of closing since the mid-eighties. Dean Larraby and I came up with an idea two years ago. As dean of financial aid I started giving out loan money to students who were bad risks. Millions of dollars."

Corde nodded. "You gave them the money and they paid it to the school then they dropped out and defaulted. You kept the money. Who got, uhm, taken in in that deal?"

"It was mostly state and federal money," Sayles said. "It's a very common practice at small colleges." A professor, Sayles was giving them information, not apologizing. "Times are extremely bad for educational institutions. Auden is being audited in a week or so by the Department of Education. They'll find the loan defaults. I've tried desperately to get some interim financing to put into the loan accounts to cover the deficit but -"

"And Jennie found out about the scam and you killed her," Kresge said.

"No sir, I did not." Corde thought something like a Southern military officer's drawl crept into the man's offended voice. "She knew what was going on. But she didn't care. And I didn't care if she knew. I just arranged for the job for her so we could see each other privately. She took some work home, administrative things. After she died I went to her dorm and burnt those files and her letters. In case she'd mentioned me in them."

"That's why you urged Steve Ribbon to pull me off the case? So this secret of yours didn't get uncovered?"

"I promised him and Sheriff Ellison they'd have university support in the elections come November."

Kresge's face blossomed into a large frown at this first glimpse of law enforcement politics. He'd been on the job less than twenty-four hours.

"But I didn't kill her. I swear it." His voice lowered. "Our relationship never went past sex. We were lovers. Once or twice I thought about marrying her. But she told me right up front she was in it for the sex and nothing else. I was happy to accommodate. It didn't last long. Jennie was bisexual, you know. She finally patched up her relationship with Emily, her roommate, and she and I drifted apart."

"Emily's death was a suicide, wasn't it?"

"Yes, I'm sure it was. She called me the night she died. I went to meet her. She was terribly depressed about Jennie, incoherent. She ran off. I have no doubt she killed herself."