I crumple the paper and then smooth it out again and leave it at the top of the stairs. I think of the young man who stayed behind over the Thanksgiving holiday, his hallmates complaining of the smell, young men dying all alone in rooms full of people, young men who desperately want to belong and find themselves in prisons and in morgues and in boardrooms as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and in police stations as lieutenants willing to look the other way. I wonder what the point of it all is. If we ever learn anything, if we can change systems so ingrained in money and power, and if there’s such a thing as justice, or if justice is just one of those lofty ideas that sounds nice in theory but is completely without substance in practice.

I’m not asked to testify at the trial. Too risky considering there’s a video of me snooping around the basement of Kappa Phi Omicron, uninvited and without a warrant. But I know that the techs found a strand of Colin’s hair on the driver’s seat of the BMW. Aisha told me that Colin tried to clean the car with Windex but did a shit job, like he started and then lost the will to keep going. But the real evidence came when they canvassed the area. They found a neighbor with a backyard wildlife camera. It’s meant to spot deer and coyotes, and sure enough, on the afternoon of November 12, there was grainy footage of Colin driving past the property in Jay’s BMW.

Michael continued to deny any knowledge of Colin. When pressed about taking Jay’s laptop, he admitted to deleting photos but insisted this was to protect Jay’s family from further emotional pain. He’s never associated with Colin. The fact that Colin was hiding at his lake house was dismissed by his lawyers. They said Jay kept handwritten directions to the house in the BMW. Maintaining the line about the car robbery gone wrong, they argued that Colin stole the car, ran over Jay, and then discovered the address in the glove box. Michael’s name never appears in the paper. The fraternity is given a warning, but no one’s suspended, and President Williams manages to keep everything we found in the basement out of the news.