HE CHECKED THE sidewalk then backed into the gap in the hedge. Sure that no one had seen, he slid up against the wall, inched toward the window, heard all three voices. He pulled his hat down further, his jacket collar up, and glanced through the one-inch gap in the curtains.

Caitlin Bergman, the redheaded professor from the graduation ceremony, and the Anjale girl—a vocal part of the investigation from the beginning—all ate pizza beneath a wall of Angela Chapman information.

He stepped back and considered his position. Less than two weeks in town and Caitlin nearly had all the pieces.

His presence outside the apartment wasn’t just playing with fire, it was walking a tightrope over an active volcano. He had Paige. Paige would have to be enough. A bird in the hand always beat hiding in the bushes.

He checked the sidewalk again, stepped out, and ran to his car.

Chapter 40

CHAPTER

40

CAITLIN PARKED THE hybrid by the fence across from the Bro-duce farm just before eleven AM and saw only Fodor’s blue SUV in the driveway. She fixed a flexible tripod to the camera, then mounted the rig on her open window sill. With a video app on her laptop showing the live feed, she’d be able to get some work done without looking up every five seconds.

She searched her documents for the collegiate sexual abuse study and found a passage Lakshmi hadn’t quoted.

Women and men, undergraduate and graduate students alike, reported experiencing sexual harassment or assault before arriving at IU at rates similar to, or higher than, those they experienced while at IU. These results speak to a need to better address this issue in our high schools and communities.

While presumably accurate, the section didn’t address the obvious differences between high school and college. The maturity gap between ages fifteen and twenty-one, the availability of alcohol and controlled substances, the freedom of diving into a freshman class of ten thousand.

The big question: Were men worse now than twenty years ago? A house full of guys Caitlin knew in college shared two VHS tapes and a stack of Hustler magazines. Today’s youth dialed up pornography on their phones, where every woman not only enjoyed anal but begged for it.

On the opposite side: Had social media and education empowered victims to find one another, heal together, recover faster?

She opened her writing app and started her piece:

*   *   *

In the spring of 97, my editor at Indiana University’s student-published newspaper assigned me the Breaking Away story, an annual fluff piece celebrating the time Hollywood immortalized the sleepy college town in a film of the same name. I remember saying, “This is the worst thing you could possibly do to me.”

Two days later, I’d be beaten and raped by Troy Woods.