Corinne Abernathy

Corinne Abernathy is 23 and studies fine arts. Born in Eugene, Oregon, the daughter of a librarian and a bus driver, she arrived in Berkeley with a secondhand suitcase and the certainty that art can change the world. Sweet and dreamy, she talks about painting and peace with an enthusiasm that infects her classmates, and cries easily, from joy as much as from sadness.

She spends her days in the art school's studio, a large high-ceilinged room with scattered easels, canvases leaning against the wall and wide windows that let in the gray light of the bay. She paints abstract landscapes, big patches of blue and mustard, and hangs on the walls the ones that didn't work. At night she returns to apartment 3, across the hall from Delia, with whom she became friends in September.

She is thin and freckled, with straight, long light brown hair parted in the middle and held by a cloth band on her forehead, and restless green eyes. She wears an embroidered Indian tunic under a mustard corduroy jacket and bell-bottoms. She speaks softly and smiles easily, but looks away when the conversation nears hard subjects, and soon begins talking about colors.

About her neighbor, her account is one of affection: they painted together on the porch almost every late afternoon since September, and Delia is the only rich person she knows who apologizes for being rich. She remarks that the family's driver leaves his post every Monday, around 9, and only returns after 9:30, and that the diner where he says he eats dinner closes early on Mondays.

Corinne knows the friendly neighbor, who shared the porch and the hallway with Delia, is one of the few people who knew the routine of that door. When the detective says she helped kidnap her friend, her eyes fill with tears, she recalls that she cried all night and speaks of calling a lawyer. It could be the hurt of a friend unjustly pointed at. It could be someone using tears to buy time. The detective will have to decide which.