“There’s plenty left,” John said when he heard Regan in the kitchen. She poured coffee, then dished up potatoes and eggs and sausage.
“And you said you couldn’t cook,” she said as she sat down.
Her father, who still preferred a physical paper to the internet, put his sports page down. He said, “Breakfast is easy. I can make you some toast.”
“This is good.”
She sipped her coffee. She hadn’t talked to her dad, not more than a few words, since she’d walked out on Monday night. “I’m sorry about Monday.”
“I know.”
“It’s hard for me to talk about it.” By it she meant the murder of her son. She didn’t want to say it out loud. That probably wasn’t healthy, but she didn’t care.
“Regan,” John said, “I miss him. It’s not the same as your loss, but I miss Chase.”
She cringed hearing his name spoken. “I know.”
“When you’re ready to find answers, I’ll be here for you. You know that.”
Answers. She’d left Virginia because her search for answers about the why of Chase’s murder had left her angry and raw. She didn’t like the person she had become, not in the months after she buried her son. Worse, the more she looked for answers, the more questions she had—questions that she couldn’t answer. It tore her up, because her ex-husband believed it was her fault. Her job, her career, her life that had made their son a target.
It wasn’t. She couldn’t believe she was to blame in any way and still draw breath.
But she couldn’t prove her career hadn’t been the reason. When Chase’s killer was stabbed to death in prison, everything shut down. Her private investigation, the Marshals investigation, the local investigation. She’d reached an impasse and decided to leave it all behind.
To save herself, she’d had to walk away. She still didn’t know if it had been the right decision.
A moment later, when it was clear she wasn’t going to talk more about Chase, her dad said, “I listened to the podcast last night.”
Good. Change of subject. “Thoughts?” She shoveled eggs into her mouth.
“That dumb kid needs to turn everything over to the police.”
“Lucas said they dismissed his theory. And he’s not dumb, Dad. He’s young, not seasoned, obviously not a cop, but he’s anything but stupid.”
“So you think he gave them all the information he had?”
“I have no reason to doubt him, but I think…” She hesitated, unsure what she was going to say.
“You think…he knows more.”
“I wouldn’t say he’s withholding information so much as I believe he hasn’t told me everything about his interest in the case.”
“Another reason for getting involved?”
“Perhaps. Maybe he has personal information about Candace that he hasn’t revealed. Gossip? A deeper relationship? I can only speculate.”
“Ask him. Direct questions yield more honest answers.”
“I will. But before that I want to learn more on my own. I think he’s a good kid.”
“You always had the best instincts of anyone in the family.”
She smiled, got up with her half-empty coffee mug, and kissed his cheek. “I get my instincts from you.” She walked to the counter to top off her coffee. After sitting back down, she said, “I’m going to track down Taylor James, who argued with Candace that Friday.”
“The argument about the homeless guy hanging around.”
She nodded. “It makes sense. Candace was a do-gooder. She didn’t want the poor guy to end up in jail. But from everything that I could glean from the police and media reports, Abernathy was over the edge. A serious alcoholic, but coherent enough to ride the rails. Maybe her sorority sisters were right to be intimidated or afraid of him. I wouldn’t be too happy if I walked out of my dorm and saw a guy taking a leak against the fence.”
“Can you honestly say Candace disappeared for more than a week if she was seen by different people through to Tuesday? When she checked into her dorm, and someone saw her outside the library?”
She smiled. Her dad was already as invested in the case as she was.
“None of those sightings came up during the police investigation.”
“Incompetence?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I think they talked to everyone in the sorority, but did they expand to the rest of the twenty thousand students? How do you reach everyone if most of them don’t even open their campus email? We know she didn’t sleep in her dorm that night because her roommate came in late—after one o’clock, according to her statement—and Candace wasn’t there. If she in fact entered late Sunday night, why did she leave again? She didn’t attend classes, she didn’t sleep in her dorm. My guess? She had another place to stay. She had two boyfriends, after all, although both were cleared by the police.” She took a long gulp of coffee, considered what they knew, and said, “I think she really disappeared Tuesday morning, after the library sighting. She was preoccupied, possibly angry, ignored a classmate. Conflict in the dorm? Anger over the argument? Maybe she thought one of the girls had called the police on Abernathy. Maybe she was trying, on her own, to help him. There are many things she could have been doing, but why not tell someone?”