“Jo, we’ll figure something out. I can help with money.” She recalled the glass mansion on Orchard Lake. “Also, it seems Grady has some resources.”
Jody started crying. “I don’t want help, Anna. I’ve never wanted to be a charity case, and I definitely do not want to rely on Grady. I just want my job.”
“Hang in there, Jo,” Anna said. “I’m going to figure this out.”
Fury burned through Anna’s chest. She called Jack. “I want Public Integrity to investigate this.”
“Anna, calm down,” he said. “We don’t have a public corruption case.”
“This is bullshit. He’s taking this out on my sister.”
“She should talk to an employment lawyer. You don’t have any evidence Highsmith had anything to do with this.”
“Yeah, but—”
“And your sister is just coming back from maternity leave.”
“You can’t discriminate based on that.”
“Let’s just see what happens.”
“Why are you being so soft on them?”
“I’m being a realist. If you ask Public Integrity to investigate based on your sister’s speculation, they won’t. And it’ll feed into the story line of you being vindictive, and only serve to distract from the murder case. Let’s just find Emily Shapiro—and go from there.”
By the time they hung up, Anna was even more infuriated. She saw his point. But it was hard to be neutral when her sister was being attacked.
A few minutes later, she got a call from Carla, the chief of the Sex Offense unit in D.C. and her boss. “Anna, hi. I’m sorry to tell you, but a formal complaint has been made against you here in the office.”
“There, too, huh? By Dylan Highsmith’s lawyer?”
“Of course. We have to investigate. But you know I’ve got your back. Don’t let this worry you.”
Carla was a good boss, and Anna trusted that she’d be fair. But all these complaints were nerve-racking. There would be two ethics investigations against Anna: one through DOJ’s OPR and one through the DC USAO, which would also eventually be forwarded to OPR. She’d be navigating the alphabet soup of government sanctions for months, if not years. She could lose her license, her job, and the most important thing to a lawyer: her reputation.
“I’m still on the case?”
Carla paused. “For now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m meeting with the front office later this evening. We’re going to talk about whether it’s time to put a new AUSA on the case.”
“Carla, I’ve got this.”
“I know. We don’t think you’ve done anything wrong. But it’s about appearances. And it might be better for you too. This has gotten very personal. You and your family deserve a break.”
“I don’t want a break. I want to find Emily.”
“I know. You’ve gotten a long way in a short time. Everyone appreciates how far you’ve taken this. If you have to hand it off to someone else, no one will forget that. So get your files in order. Get a good night’s sleep tonight. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Anna understood the message. She had one more day left on the case.
43
The knock came right when he expected it. Wyatt opened his dorm room door. Peter York, Brian Mercer, and David Rankin stood there grinning at him. Peter handed him a thick ivory envelope. Inside was creamy ivory cardstock, with the Beta Psi emblem printed in gold.
WYATT THOMAS BOLDEN
* * *
We are honored to extend to you this invitation to join the hallowed ranks of the men of BETA PSI
“Congratulations,” Peter said. “You’re a brother.”
Brian was carrying a black leather box. They set it on Wyatt’s desk and started pulling out the treasures inside. A bottle of Laphroaig. A sweatshirt embroidered with the Beta Psi letters. A key to the fraternity house. Everything Wyatt wanted.
“We’re having a party to welcome you and your new brothers tonight,” David said. “Greatest party you’ve ever seen.”
Wyatt looked at the guys. He pictured the bar tab signed by President Taft. He felt the solid wood on the yacht mast. He tasted the filet mignon at the Highsmiths’ luncheon. Peter held out the key. Wyatt reached out and took it.
As his fingers closed over the cool metal, he couldn’t push back the other memories. He tasted the vodka after it ran through Alex’s ass crack. He felt the weight of the jug with the red cocktail. He saw the stripper’s white scar pulsing against her purple face as Dylan squeezed her throat.
Slowly, Wyatt put the key back in the black box. He packed the scotch back in too. The sweatshirt was the most difficult. He held its soft material and, for just a moment, let his thumb trace the stitching of the letters. He imagined wearing it around campus. The smiles he would get from girls, the respect he would get from guys. He wanted to wear it so much, it was a physical sensation. He put the sweatshirt back in the box.
“I’m sorry,” Wyatt said. “I can’t accept.”
They looked at him like he was insane. Maybe he was.
“You went through all of Hell Week,” Peter said. “You got all the shit. For Chrissakes, take the reward.”
For some guys, the reward was simple: fun, friendship, parties, status. But for Wyatt, it had become more complicated. It meant keeping Dylan’s secrets, over and over. It meant choosing to be the type of person who would keep those secrets. It was the wretched clawed animal trying to dig its way out of his chest, every day for the rest of his life.
“I appreciate the invitation,” Wyatt said. “But I have to say no.”
Peter stared at him for a long moment. Then he took the box and walked out. As the door slammed shut, the guys were shaking their heads and muttering to one another. Wyatt caught the words douche bag.
He sank back down on the couch and sat looking at the thick ivory invitation for a long time.
Then he pulled out his phone and scrolled to the number for Anna Curtis. She answered on the second ring.
“Hi, Anna? It’s Wyatt Bolden,” he said. “I have to tell you something.”
44
Anna and Sam got in the car and drove right over to Wyatt’s dorm. They strode into Stringer Hall, jogged up the steps to the third floor, and knocked on Wyatt’s door.
He let them in. “Thanks for coming over so fast.”
“No problem,” Anna replied, as if it were a casual meeting and not the break in the case she’d been obsessively nurturing and hoping for. “Thanks for calling.”
They sat on his faded brown couch. The room had the clean, spare look of a place that wasn’t used much. Wyatt probably spent most of his time at the frat.
“So, what’s up, Wyatt?”
“Listen,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of bad stuff over the last few months. I want to tell you about it. But I don’t want anyone to know that it came from me.”
“I can try to keep your name confidential for now. But if the case goes to trial, the defendant has the right to know who gave that evidence.”
Wyatt looked out the window. Finally, he looked back at her and nodded.
“I’m not proud of this. But I think that telling you now is better than sitting on it the rest of my life. It’s been tearing me up.”
“A secret can eat away at you. Coming clean is harder at first, but in the end, it’s healthier,” Anna said.
“Okay.” He took a deep breath. “The night that Dylan and Emily were . . . together, I was in charge of the bar. He had a gallon jug of stuff he called Killer Heart Throb Punch. He had me stash it behind the bar and told me not to let anyone else touch it.”
“Did he drink it?”
“No. He only gave it to girls. That night, I saw him pour it for Emily, and then she got really loopy. Stumbling around. Dylan took her upstairs.
“Then, I just thought it was a drunken hookup. It was the first party of the year; I didn’t know better. But I saw that same thing go down, over and over. As soon as a girl start
ed drinking it, she, like, collapsed. It wasn’t just alcohol. That red drink was spiked. He was drugging girls to have sex with them.”
“Do you remember any of the other girls he did this to?”
“I don’t know their names. I might recognize one or two if I saw them again.”
“Did you see any of the other guys using it?”
“I think maybe some of them knew what was going on. But I didn’t see them using it. Just Dylan.”
“Did you ever confront him about it?”
Wyatt shook his head.
“Or report this to anyone else?”
“No.” He looked at his knees. “I wanted to be a brother.”
“We appreciate you coming forward now,” Anna said. “That takes guts. Thank you.”
“That’s not all,” Wyatt said. “Things got really messed up a few days ago. Emily published all these videos talking about being raped by Dylan. There was a whole series of them on BlueTube. When Dylan found out, he freaked.”
“What did he do?”
“Pulled some strings. A couple of Beta Psi alums work at BlueTube, doing tech stuff or something. He got them to take the videos down. I hear Emily was pretty bummed. She hadn’t saved them anywhere else, and once BlueTube took them down, she didn’t have access to them. I guess they were like her diary of the year.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Pledges do chores around the house. I was scrubbing the kitchen floor when Dylan, Peter, and a couple other guys were talking about it. No one really notices you when you’re on your hands and knees.”
“Wyatt, thank you so much for calling,” Anna said. “This is really important, and we’ll follow up on it. You should be proud of yourself. You did the right thing.”
“For once.” He gave her a rueful smile.
When Wyatt smiled, he looked so much like a young version of Cooper. Anna wondered if this was what a son of Cooper’s would look like. And then she remembered that Cooper would have no children. She would never have a child with him. The recollection was like a gut punch, stunningly painful.
“Are you going to tell Cooper about this?” Wyatt asked.
“No. But maybe you should. He’d be there for you.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“By the way,” Anna said, “have you heard from him today?”
“No, why?”
“Just wondering. Thanks a lot, Wyatt.”
Anna and Sam went down to the car. As they pulled out, Sam said, “To BlueTube?”
“Yeah.”
45
BlueTube’s headquarters were in the Southfield Town Center, a set of four black-and-gold office towers in the middle of a suburb. Looking out the twenty-fifth-floor conference room window, there were no other buildings to block her view. Anna could see for miles: a crosshatch of streets dotted with little houses, lawns, and trees.
“Thanks for agreeing to meet with us on such short notice,” Anna said.
Sam handed her business card across the glass-topped able. “We appreciate your help.”
Tara Kennedy, the founder and CEO of BlueTube, took the card and smiled politely. “Please tell me about this ‘urgent situation.’ ”
According to its website, which Anna read on the way over, BlueTube had grown from an operation out of the founder’s dorm room into a company of ten employees. Tara was young enough to project the company’s youthful tech image, but old enough to know what she was doing in business and politics. Anna hadn’t looked, but she guessed that at some point, Tara had donated to Robert Highsmith’s political coffers.
“We’re investigating the disappearance of Emily Shapiro,” Anna said. “Maybe you’ve heard of the case?”
“Heard of it? That’s been the lead on the news every day this week. What does it have to do with BlueTube?”
“Apparently, Emily posted several videos to BlueTube over the last year. They’ve been taken down since then. We sent a subpoena to your company four days ago. According to an employee of yours, Chandler Andrews, Emily took down the videos herself. But we have a witness who says that BlueTube employees removed the videos.”
“Are you investigating my company?” Tara asked.
“No,” Anna said, “although if there are individuals who lied to us, they might face obstruction of justice charges. But what I’m interested in today is seeing those videos. And finding out as much as I can about the young woman who posted them.”
Tara read over the letter and subpoena. Then she picked up the phone and punched in a number. “Chandler, Aubrey, please come to the conference room.”
Within seconds, two young men walked into the room. They looked slightly older than the frat boys at Beta Psi, but the jaunty swoop of their hair reminded Anna of the boys she’d seen at the frat house. They sat at the table.
“Gentlemen,” said Tara. “I understand that you are alumni of a fraternity called Beta Psi?”
“Um,” said Aubrey, glancing nervously at Anna and Sam. “Yeah, we are.”
“I’ve been informed that someone inside BlueTube may have taken down a series of vlog posts to help a young man who is currently a member of that fraternity. Do you know anything about this?”
Chandler bit his lip. “I’m not sure.”
“Aubrey?”
“I don’t remember,” said Aubrey, looking down at his hands.
“Of course, we’ll be able to figure out who did,” Tara said. “And lying about this would constitute a breach of contract, for which you’d lose your bonus. So let’s try that again. Did either of you take down these vlogs?”
Aubrey and Chandler looked at each other. Aubrey looked back down at his hands. Chandler said, “I’m not sure. We do so much here—”
“If you’ve been doing it so often that you can’t recall if you took down these particular videos, that’s a problem.”
She picked up her phone again. “Security. Please escort Mr. Wattleton and Mr. Andrews to their offices, where they may collect any personal items but may not log onto their computers or take any company property.” She set the phone down and looked at the two young men. “You’re fired.”
“But—but—”
Two security officers walked in and took the young men by their elbows. As they were escorted out of the room, Aubrey started to cry. Anna almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
When Aubrey’s sobbing was no longer audible, Tara turned back to Anna. “I’m so sorry for what’s gone on. I’ll check and see if we can recover the videos. Is there anything else?”
“Thank you,” Anna said. “If you could provide the e-mail and IP address that Emily used to set up the account, that would be helpful.”
“Absolutely. Excuse me for a moment. Feel free to help yourself to coffee while I step out.”
• • •
Twenty minutes later, Tara returned holding a large manila envelope. “Emily Shapiro uploaded several videos, starting in September of 2014 and going to March of 2015. She had her privacy settings on ‘private,’ so no one else could view them. On March 19, 2015, she changed the privacy settings to ‘public,’ essentially publishing her videos for the first time. They were all taken down by BlueTube employees—Chandler and Aubrey—within hours of her posting them. But they’re still on the server. I was able to recover them, and I had them burned onto thumb drives for you. The e-mail and IP address are written down. I made a couple copies, one for each of you. I hope that works.”
“Thank you so much.” Anna swallowed back a lump in her throat.
Tara said, “I have a teenage daughter. I can’t imagine what these parents must be going through.”
When Sam and Anna got back into the car, they powered up the laptop and immediately slid the thumb drive into it. Emily’s happy face appeared on the screen. They started with the vlog entry dated September 1, 2014, and watched them all the way through to one week ago.
VLOG
RECORDED 3.19.15
I feel numb.
Nothing.
Oh God.
Breathe, Emily.
Breathe.
I got the paperwork. They didn’t want to give it to me. They said there were privacy interests. I threatened to get Heide Herrmann and her Title IX protesters involved; I threatened to tweet. They finally turned it over.
The decision passed through a bunch of red tape and administrators. They decided expulsion was too harsh. I mean, poor Dylan, right? So they overturned it. He could just do community service. He could come back and finish off his time at Tower, and graduate along with his class. They turned a slap on the wrist into a pat on the back.
And the signature at the bottom of it all?
President Barney Shapiro.
My dad decided to let my rapist go.
I feel like a wrecking ball hit my chest. Maybe I’m having a heart attack. Do eighteen-year-old girls have heart attacks? I haven’t been able to get a real breath of air since I read that.
It’s funny, because I think the committee only found Dylan responsible in the first place because I’m the president’s daughter. And then he overruled them.
He chose his college over me.
I thought it was bad, getting spit at. Threatened. I thought it was bad when Whitney wouldn’t talk to me. I thought sitting next to Dylan at the committee hearing was bad.
But this. This is the worst.
I hate everyone. Myself included.
And I just don’t care. Fuck Dylan. Fuck my dad. Fuck everyone.
I’m publishing these vlogs. I’m gonna talk to Heide Herrmann and find out what we can do to make sure the world knows this story. I’m gonna write about it in the school paper. I’m gonna call the New York Times, and scream it from the rooftops. So Dylan will finally get the justice he deserves. So this will never happen to another girl. So my dad can rot in his own corruption.
The Last Good Girl Page 25
