“You don’t lie well, Jessica,” Erin admonished, handing the young woman the last of the pages. Then Erin rose from her crouch on the ground and reached down to help the younger woman stand. “I know they think I’m hard.”

“They just haven’t gotten a chance to know you.” Silently, though, she had to agree with the students. Despite the woman’s fairy looks, Jessica knew there was nothing soft about the strict, style-challenged Dr. Abbott. The woman reminded her of one of those spinster librarians in bad commercials, the ones with the stodgy buns and boring spectacles who hissed at patrons for silence, then transformed into sex goddesses behind closed doors.

“Jessica?”

Dragging her attention back to the moment, Jessica smiled sheepishly. “I’m sorry. Late nights.”

“I asked if you had the tests ready. I left them in your box to be copied.”

Jessica lifted a smaller stack of papers from Erin’s desk. “Here they are. I had them collated and stapled.”

“Good.” Erin accepted the tests. “Hopefully, I won’t have a repeat of Murder 101’s tests,” she muttered.

“What happened?”

“Oh, I have a couple of students who don’t comprehend the idea of cheating as bad.”

Frowning, Jessica returned to gathering her things. “Who was it? If you don’t mind my asking?”

“Ms. Turner and Mr. Clark seem to believe in share and share alike. Not that I can prove it.”

“Are you going to fail them?”

“Not this time. But they’ll be getting a strongly worded lecture.” Erin loaded the tests into her arms. “Will you be around to help me grade?”

“I can’t, sorry. I’m living in the library getting ready for the committee meeting.”

One of the perquisites of being a professor at a university was service on dissertation committees. Jessica had sought Erin out within days of her arrival at Burkeen, and the grad student had convinced her to oversee her dissertation. Proposals were due. Two others had been able to con Erin into service as well.

“Do you know if Neldra or Walter is presenting next week?” Erin asked.

“Walter is. I think Neldra postponed.”

“Will you let them know I’ll be around?”

Jessica nodded. “Absolutely.”

“Good.” Erin shifted the exams into one arm. “Make sure you take some time to enjoy your break.”

“I will, Dr. Abbott.”

Erin walked out with Jessica, scanning the exams. Five pages, fifty-five questions. Challenging but not impossible.

She entered the lecture hall and set the pages on the desk. Students had already entered and filled the seats, ready to finish the exam and move on. The test asked her criminal psychology class to speculate about the composition of murder. What drove man and, less often, woman to take human life? What churned inside a psyche and erupted in such irrevocable destruction? The harsh, pungent nature of violence drew the class’s imagination in a way little else did.