[6:12PM, EDT, Delta Pi house]

>> Sandra entered the building, noting how empty it seemed... A couple people were wandering around, and Sandra spotted Kate among them…

Kate shook her head. "The girls I spoke with said that he has classes almost all day. I doubt he'd be available until the afternoon."

Sandra thought for a minute, then asked, "Could you maybe find out what his schedule is? Perhaps we can set something up, an appointment perhaps."

"I'll see what I can do," Kate promised, and the two seperated.>>

As soon as Sandra turned and headed off down the hall, Kate reached for her cell phone. There was no reason to think that the psychology department’s secretary would still be in the office, but that was no reason not to try. She found the number she had jotted down on her notepad and dialed.

"Karellon University. Psychology department," an overly cheerful voice answered a moment later.

"I’d like to make an appointment to meet with Dr. Burrell," Kate said.

"New around here, huh," the secretary asked. "Dr. Burrell doesn’t make appointments. He doesn’t believe in them."

"Then how does one go about seeing him?"

"His office hours are one to three every afternoon. Just drop by and I’m sure…"

"That won’t do," Kate said.

"Excuse me?"

"I’m Special Agent Kate Calloway, FBI. I need to speak with him as soon as possible. I’m sure he could spare a few minutes in the morning."

"He has classes all morning," the secretary said, flustered. "He’ll be free at one o’clock. If you want, I can leave him a note that you’ll be in then, but I can’t guarantee…"

"Let me rephrase that," Kate said. "I will be there at nine o’clock. If necessary, I will pull him out of what ever class he happens to be in. But I *will* see him then." She cut the connection before the secretary could respond. Rude, maybe, but she was getting tired of evasiveness. She headed down the hallway in search of Eithne and Flynn, to see if they had had any luck in finding Megan and the other girls, or anything else of interest.

Rounding a corner, she saw Megan running up the stairs. That answered one of her questions. She was about to go after her when she heard someone call her name.

"Agent Calloway?" Kate turned toward an open doorway, where the whispered voice had come from. Corinne was standing several feet inside the door, eyes darting almost wildly from side to side. She was visibly trembling.

Kate walked into the room and found herself in what appeared to have once been a library, although most of the shelves were empty, but for a few games, puzzles and paperback novels. Corinne seated herself at a small table in one corner of the room.

"Erika was the best friend I’ve ever had," Corinne began without preamble. She just stared out the window. "Except maybe Leah, and now they’re both gone."

"Leah?"

"Leah Rubin," Corinne said. She took a kleenex from her pocket and started shredding it as she had been doing earlier. "She’s been missing for three weeks." She shook her head sharply several times and squeezed her eyes shut. "Everyone thought that… I mean, even I didn’t believe her, but maybe she was right. Maybe…" She lapsed into silence, wiping away tears with the remnants of the tissue in her hand, then discarding it and fished out another.

"Corinne," Kate said gently, "why don’t you start at the beginning?"

"About a month ago, Leah started acting strange. Everyone just thought that she was upset about what had happened. That was just after the first… Well, you know. No one really wanted to talk about it, like if we pretended it hadn’t happened, we could make it go away."

"You’re talking about the first murder?"

Corinne looked up at her wide eyed and nodded. "But it was all Leah wanted to talk about. Like she was obsessed with it. That Friday, she said she was going home for the weekend, and asked me to come along. The whole weekend, all she did was sit in her room. She didn’t want to talk or go out or anything. When it was time to come back, I went into her room to get her and she was just sitting there on the floor in the corner, rocking back and forth. It was like she was in a trance or something, and she just kept saying the same thing over and over." She stopped suddenly and turned her gaze to the window.

"What was she saying?"

Corinne took a deep, shuddering breath. She started to speak a couple of times before she continued. "When I called her name, she snapped out of it. It was like she had no memory of what had just happened. She said she was fine, that nothing was wrong, and I believed her. I believed her! I should have… done something! You know? But we just came back to school and on Monday, she went to class and she just never came back."

"Corinne," Kate said rather sharply in a motherly tone that worked on just about everyone except her own sons, "what was she saying?" Corinne looked up at her, seeming not to comprehend the question. "When she was in that trance, what did she say?"

Corinne just stared for several second. When she spoke, her bottom lip trembled with fear and grief. "’The wages of sin is death.’"

That phrase hung in the air for several seconds as Kate tried to figure out how best to proceed. Corinne seemed willing enough to cooperate, but seemed to have a problem answering direct questions. On the other hand, standing there waiting for Corinne to get around to mentioning what she really wanted to know wasn’t an appealing option.

"Why do you think she would say that," Kate asked.

Corinne shook her head, stood and, as she walked out of the room, paused and said, "I don’t know." Then she was gone.

---

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