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Ashley swallowed and looked up toward the ceiling, then finally back at Alex.
“A girl was raped a month or so ago. She’s a friend of mine and she doesn’t want her name mentioned. It happened when we were at the Delta Chi house. I heard she had gone off with a guy, and I figured, you know, they were hooking up. I wasn’t worried or anything, it didn’t even faze me. But the next day she told me what happened. She blacked out and couldn’t remember anything. When she woke up at the fraternity house the next morning, she knew . . . she knew that she’d been raped. She went to the hospital and when her blood work came back, it showed she had Liquid G in her system.”
“Did the police find the guy who raped her?”
“No. They didn’t even look. They said that because my friend had drugs and alcohol in her system, and because she had no actual memory of the rape, they couldn’t do anything about it.”
“Does she know who the guy was?”
Ashley shook her head. “That’s the thing. All she can remember from that night is bits and pieces. That’s what Liquid G does. It’s a date-rape drug that makes you unable to defend yourself, and then it, like, erases your memory. But . . .”
“But what?”
“But we know . . . my friends and I know who the guy was. We have pictures of them from earlier in the night. We were all together at the party and we took a bunch of selfies. She was with the same guy in all the pictures, and another one of our friends saw them head upstairs late at night.”
“Who was it? Who was the guy?”
Ashley ran her hands through her hair. “I don’t know if I should say any more. This is why Laura was so worried. So many rumors were starting to spread and she wanted to get her story out before it was too late.”
“It might already be too late, Ashley. Listen, no one knows what’s happened to Laura, but the police have decided that Matthew Claymore is involved.”
“Matthew? I told you, he had nothing to do with Laura’s story.”
“Help me make that case. The police have Matthew in their sights, and I’ve been hired to help him. Tell me who raped your friend and I promise to get that information to the police and make them act on it.”
Ashley paused for another moment. “It was Duncan Chadwick. That’s why he and his father held that press conference, because Duncan knew Laura was about to link him to the rape.”
Alex’s fingertips tingled again, as if a jolt of electricity had coursed through her body. Jacqueline Jordan had sent her to find alternative theories as to what might have happened to Laura McAllister. At the moment, Duncan Chadwick was one of them.
“Was Laura finished with the story?”
“Yeah. She was just wrapping things up and sort of polishing my interview, but she was worried that the school would shut her down. It was . . . The rape allegations cast a wide net and a lot of people were implicated in it, not just Duncan Chadwick and his fraternity. The school was trying to keep the story quiet. Because Laura recorded everything at the recording studio, and because the recording studio is owned and operated by the university, Laura said the school technically controls anything that’s recorded there. That’s why she was thinking about just dropping her episode to her social media accounts, and bypassing the studio.”
“So she must have had the episode stored somewhere?”
“Yeah. On a thumb drive. I don’t know how it all worked, I just put on the headphones and spoke into the microphone. Laura did the rest. But I saw her plug a thumb drive into her computer when we finished recording. Laura said that everything that gets recorded at the studio also gets stored on a hard drive and technically belongs to the university.”
“A hard drive at the recording studio?” Alex asked.
“Yeah. But it’s locked. I walked past it the other day. No one’s allowed in there for now. We used to be able to use our school IDs to unlock the door, but when I tried, my ID didn’t work.”
“Too bad,” Alex said. “I guess that’s a dead end. Thanks, though. You’ve been a big help.”
Alex turned and headed down the hallway before Ashley Holms could respond or ask any questions. She pushed through the front doors of the dormitory and headed across campus.
CHAPTER 43
Washington, D.C. Friday, April 28, 2023 4:05 p.m.
ALEX HURRIED ACROSS THE CAMPUS OF MCCORMACK UNIVERSITY, heading toward the school of journalism. She noticed two news vans parked outside the main entrance, with crews pulling cords and preparing to shoot live reports for the evening news. Larry Chadwick’s press conference the week before had summoned the DC press to McCormack University, but Laura McAllister’s disappearance had opened the floodgates to the national media. McCormack University and the surrounding area were teeming with reporters, and it was sure to get worse the longer the girl was missing.
As Alex walked and watched the action, the crews and reporters and vans and cameras all brought back images from that fateful night a decade earlier when Donna had led her out of her home into the hot lights of similar news crews. A bitter taste of bile crept into her throat. The only thing that could be deemed juicier to the press than a young girl gone missing would be uncovering that a woman formerly accused of killing her family was looking into the case.
Alex had a sudden urge to get as far away from the cameras and news crews as possible. While she looked toward the commotion outside the gates of McCormack University, where reporters scrambled for the best location to deliver their reports, she collided with someone on the sidewalk.
“Oh God, I’m sorry,” Alex said, gaining her bearings and realizing she had walked into a woman who was holding a microphone and delivering her own report. The cameraman lowered his camera from his shoulder and waved a hand in disgust.
“Cut,” he said. “Gonna have to do that all over.”
