“You know,” he leans toward me, “a journalist wanted to talk to me on my way in here.” He gestures to the handful of people outside the glass entrance. “I think I might tell him how my son’s being treated, when it’s clear he’s done nothing wrong.”

I look at the crumpled boy on the bench behind him. He’s gray faced with a bruise-colored shadow under his right eye. A pale reflection of his father, still in flip-flops and board shorts, but with a hoodie pulled up tight around his ears. And I know immediately what his role in all this was.

I sigh. “What’s your son’s name?”

He puffs out his chest. “Ryan Bennett.”

His son flinches. I turn to study him, but he refuses to meet my gaze. He pulls his hoodie sleeves over his fingers so that the fabric swallows any visible flesh, and rocks back and forth on his toes. I feel sorry for him, but his father will find out eventually, and I think if I’ve judged him right, telling him now will get him out of my face and keep him away from the press.

“Mr. Bennett,” I say as Oliver appears behind him. “Are you aware of what was found in the basement of Kappa Phi Omicron?”

“My son had nothing to do with that.”

For a split second, I think Ryan’s lips have moved, but when I look at him, he’s staring at the floor.

“Your son,” I say, and take a breath, knowing by the hollows of Ryan’s cheeks and the way he folds in on himself that I’m right, but that being right won’t make this any easier, “was locked in that basement.”

I wait. Confusion colors the father’s face. He opens his mouth and shuts it again. All the pieces are reorganizing in his mind, and I can tell he never, not even once, not with all the fraternity suspensions in the news and everything we know about hazing, considered that his son might be the victim of such violence, instead of its perpetrator.

If he hasn’t seen the photos, I’m sure he’s heard the rumors—whips, pliers, buckets of waste. He shakes his head and turns, looking at his son as if he’s seeing him for the first time.

Ryan crumples like the weight of the world’s on his shoulders, and his father takes two steps toward him, hands raised, before he deflates.

I leave him standing helplessly in the middle of the waiting room surrounded by his son’s tormentors.

Oliver’s lips tighten when I approach. He’s wearing the same clothes as last night and smells of burnt coffee.

“There was a better way to go about that,” he murmurs.