“Professor?” There was a tug at his sleeve that startled him, brought him out of his walking reverie.
     “Hello, Kimmi.” Will was aware of the chill in his voice. The library was just ahead, it’s gracefully arched windows beckoning.
     She didn’t seem to notice his rudeness. “I need to talk to you.” Her face appeared, if possible, paler than usual. She was trembling and her eyes kept darting, right and left, as though disaster was stalking her.
     Too late, Will was thinking, disaster has already struck. “Talk,” he said.
     “Not here. Too public.”
     How had she found him? DeChris? Was Kimmi doing DeChris’ work now? “We could go in the library,” he offered and continued to walk.
     She kept in step with him, looked toward the library, considering it. “I love the library. I love books,” Kimmi looked at Will. “You don’t even think I can read, do you?” She shrugged one shoulder. “We have to go somewhere private. Where we won’t be overheard.”
     Will sighed. They were at the bottom of the steps. He jiggled his keys in his pocket, felt the key to his office at PSU. Schuyler hadn’t mentioned it when he told Will to take the summer off. He probably assumed I would have the sense to stay away, Will thought. “I have an office at the university, up the street.”
     Kimmi’s eyes followed the motion of his hand. She nodded.
     He saw Schuyler just as he was putting his key in the door. “My daughter,” he said, nodding at Kimmi, “and I are just getting some of my personal things.”
     “Well now, Will, you don’t have to clean your office out. You could leave those things. But since you’re here, maybe it would be best if you dropped the key off with my secretary.”
     Schuyler gave Kimmi a good once over. Will was fairly certain the old bastard didn’t believe she was his daughter. Not that she was dressed any different than a lot of young women, even from the “best” families. The fishnet stockings, heavy working boots, black leather shorts as tight as skin, and the spaghetti strap, sleeveless t-shirt that the kids called a wife-beater, were all a variant of one of the endless uniforms that crossed economic class boundaries. But Kimmi was different in a way that Schuyler was unlikely to miss. Her skin didn’t have that healthy undertone glow and her eyes betrayed her with sadness and defeat. And anger.  Kimmi returned Schuyler’s rudeness with a defiant glare. One thing about giving up—it leaves you with less to lose. Her look was apparently strong enough to embarrass Schuyler and he abruptly turned away.

     Will held the door open for Kimmi and she stepped into his office. He couldn’t help contrasting her with the many students who had been in and out of this office. Compared to them, what did Kimmi have to contribute to the body of knowledge represented by all those books lining the shelves around his office? Is that how I think, Will wondered, that a person’s value is limited to their contribution to academic knowledge? Might there not be other kinds of knowledge, things that a person like Kimmi would know, which had never slipped into these histories; outside of political theory, untouched, except by some few literary adventurists? He tried to look at the office through Kimmi’s eyes. It was just a narrow room. The desk, three chairs, and bookshelves were covered with a month’s worth of dust. A tall multi-paned window looked down on the trees of the South Park Blocks. Under his desk, the tower CPU of his computer silent; on the desktop above it, its monitor screen slept peacefully, a blank, square, charcoal gray eye.
     Kimmi took a seat in one of the chairs facing the desk. Will sat in his wood swivel chair. He saw her glance slip sideways toward a shelf of books. He waited for her to speak. Now that they were seated in private, she seemed to be uncertain. Her gaze came back to him, settled on his face; whatever she saw there did not alter her own demeanor.
     “He’s going to kill me.”
     Will raised his eyebrows. What had he expected Kimmi to say? “Colin is in jail. How is he going to kill you?”
     “Not Colin. Connie,” Kimmi said.
     “Connie Crage is going to kill you? What possible reason does Connie Crage have for killing you?” Maybe Lucy is on the right track, Will thought. But the source is the same. This young woman.
     “Connie pays for my place and I kind of pay him back. He lives way out of town and he sleeps over, sometimes. I know about him. You saw the shop. That’s where we met. He’s one of our best customers.”
     Will felt impatient. Kimmi was circling around. Nothing she said was reason for her to be scared of Connie. He folded his arms across his chest. “Why are you telling me this? I don’t see what any of it has to do with me.”
     “If he could kill Emmy what’s he going to do to me? What did she know that I don’t know? Connie’s going to kill me.” Her voice was tight.
     “Did he tell you he killed Emmy?”
     “No.”
     “Then what makes you think—”
     “Sometimes he forgets where he is. He trances out; thinks people are trying to off him. And there’s this.” Kimmi opened her purse. Her face dissolved in tears as she extracted a green pint bottle and handed it across the desk to Will.
     He held it in his hands, traced the raised leaves and the letters they entwined, Absinthe. What they had found in that room with Emmy. A bottle like this. He unscrewed the cap. The licorice-like smell of anise. It was the same smell that clung to Kimmi. He couldn’t remember smelling it on Emmy. It was alcohol. He didn’t want to think about Emmy drinking it, endangering their baby. “You are going to tell me, you got this from Connie Crage.”
     “Yeah.”
     “And Connie knew that Colin was also a customer of the leather shop. Did he know about Colin’s playroom?”
     “What do you know about that?” Kimmi’s voice was a whisper.
     “Only what Marta has told me. That Colin kept certain items in the old Bartlett House. What exactly did he keep there, Kimmi?”
     “A sort of leather corset, some cuffs, some leashes. You know, that could be used for tying and stuff.”
     “A hood?”
     Kimmi drew her eyebrows together. “I don’t think so. He liked playing bottom, but he wasn’t into masks.”
     “Bottom?”
     “Yeah. Mostly, Colin wants to be tied up. Not like Connie. Connie’s definitely a top.”
     “I don’t understand any of this,” Will set the bottle down and rubbed his temples. His head hurt. Something Kimmi had said earlier in the conversation, something about knowing everything that Emmy knew. What did that mean? “What did Emmy know about Connie Crage that makes you think he killed her?”
     “I don’t know. I mean it’s not what she knew, it’s who she was,” Kimmi picked up the Absinthe bottle and put it back in her purse.
     “Who was she?”
     “She was Doug Bartlett’s cousin. Emmy wouldn’t've stopped until she got Bartlett to give that house to ROOF. She was a fighter. She would’ve kept Connie from building those yuppie condos and making all that money he loves to throw around so much.”
     People have killed for money and for a lot less of it than the condominiums would be worth, Will thought. Still, I just can’t shake this feeling that it doesn’t have anything to do with money. Why dress her up in bondage gear? It has something to do with that world. If I just knew more about it maybe, I could figure it out. “Kimmi, why did you tell me this? What do you want from me? Did you think I could protect you?”
     “I was hoping…I don’t know. I saw you on the street. I just thought that you might be connected. You can’t help me, can you? I’ve never made the right choice in my whole life,” Kimmi sank in the chair. Her shoulders fell forward.
     “I don’t know if I can help you, but perhaps you can help me.” If Emmy was involved in that twilight world of bondage, he had to know and the only way to find out was to journey there himself. Kimmi was his only passport. “I want to go to a dungeon party. Isn’t that what they’re called?”
     “You want to go to a party?” Kimmi sat up straight.
     “The sooner the better,” Will said, enjoying Kimmi’s consternation.
     “Connie’s having one Friday night. I could take you,” Kimmi said.
     His turn to be amazed. “You just asked me to save you from him. Why the hell would you take me to one of his parties? Doesn’t that frighten you?”
     “His wife will be there and lots of other people. Besides you make me feel safe.”
     “What time and what should I wear?” Will asked. She probably isn’t really in any danger, he told himself.
     “I guess it doesn’t really matter what you wear. You could wear tweed and carry a pipe–come as a professor. Pick me up around 8:00 p.m. Give me a piece of paper.” Kimmi took a pen from the jar on his desk, the jar that Zoe had made out of slab clay when she was in kindergarten in Germany. Kimmi slid her address across the desktop to him.
     He could imagine Zoe seated in the chair next to Kimmi looking at him like she didn’t know who he had become. That accusing look that he remembered from the last time he’d seen her at the airport, turning away from him down the ramp toward Vermont.