“Why are you nervous, Lucas?” Regan asked without looking at him.
“I’m not. I guess I’m trying to look at this through your eyes.”
“You have good stuff here, quality research. I think you should have shared all of this on your podcast. It might have jump-started more of a conversation.”
“I plan to. I have the podcasts sketched out while also leaving it open-ended so people will call in with clues.”
“I get that. I’m looking at this as a whole. And there’s an obvious answer.”
“Which is?”
“Someone lied to the police. Your information is incomplete. You have documentation from newspapers, and the original report that indicates they spoke to her two boyfriends, her roommate Annie, Taylor James from the sorority, others from Sigma Rho, a senior who said he saw her talking to the homeless guy the evening of the party. But they must have also spoken to people on and off campus, especially after her body was found. A missing-person investigation is different than a homicide investigation. I’m really good with missing persons, it’s what I did for years. I found people who didn’t want to be found. And nine times out of ten someone lied to me about what they knew. Sometimes lies of omission, other times they lied to my face.”
He was surprised he hadn’t thought of that. But then again, he was a college student, and Regan Merritt was a thirty-five-year-old trained law-enforcement officer.
He asked, “So who’s lying? And why?” and half expected her to already know.
“Those are the million-dollar questions. My guess? Someone in the sorority knew a lot more than they told the cops. Whether it directly led to Candace’s murder, I don’t know. But someone may have helped her disappear. No car, no phone, didn’t use her credit cards—but records show she took out five hundred dollars on the day after the party, from an ATM in Flagstaff, the maximum allowed.”
“How do you know that?”
“Detective Young wrote it in a sort of shorthand I recognized because I was looking for it. She withdrew that money after hours, early Saturday morning, after she left the party. If someone was being frugal, they could easily live on five hundred for a week, longer if they had a free place to stay. To find out where that place was, I need to learn everything I can about Candace Swain.”
She tapped his list of questions. “By the way, it was smart of you to think about stolen vehicles. But more than stolen, I think someone may have loaned her a car. If we believe Abby that she saw Candace in Kingman, and the sister who saw her driving to campus on Sunday night, that suggests she left town after the party, returned, and then left again. But why not take her own car? Because of where she was going? Because her car was so recognizable? And if someone helped her that week, why didn’t they tell the police after Candace was found dead?”
“Because they killed her? Or they were scared? Intimidated?”
Regan shrugged. “Any or all of the above. Or they thought they would get in trouble because they lied to the police about not seeing Candace during the missing-person investigation. We need to find that person, and then I think we’ll break this case open.”
“So you don’t buy into the police theory that the homeless guy Abernathy killed her.”
“I can’t say. Would he have had the wherewithal to move her body, as you suggested? I don’t know enough yet.”
Lucas latched onto her comment.
Move the body.
So Regan believed him. That Candace was drowned elsewhere and dumped in the lake. Somehow, that gave Lucas confidence and hope—even if she didn’t explicitly state it.
“Have you talked to Taylor James?” Regan asked.
“You’re not taking that last caller seriously, are you?”
“Yes, I am. You’re not?”
“The police took witness statements from dozens of people who had been at the party. Three people said they heard the argument, their names are redacted in the report, but one I figured was Taylor. Two other statements were from people not in the sorority who saw Candace talking to Abernathy. We know that he had been run off campus at least twice, and he would be going to jail if caught again. So it makes sense that they would have a disagreement about whether to call the police.”
“I agree. But what if someone else at the party overheard the conversation? Maybe they didn’t think much about it at the time, but now, when they heard your podcast where you state that they were arguing about Abernathy and whether to call the police? And they know that is not completely accurate. Maybe they are just learning that the murder investigation is still open. It might have motivated them to call.”