“Smug,” he says instead. “Everything about him—his clothes, his posture, his facial expressions, even his haircut—says: I’m better than you. And it’s intentional. Just like Tripp with his puppy-dog smile, Michael’s learned that these initial impressions get him what he wants. His whole demeanor says his daddy has a lawyer on retainer, so you better not piss him off. But,” Teddy pauses, “Michael looks nothing like the driver. And I checked his alibi. The dozen or so guys Michael ate breakfast with confirmed he was there, thereby also serving as one another’s alibis, but a group like that—I don’t care how much they might have practiced, if it wasn’t true, it would be difficult for them to keep their stories straight. And they all tell relatively the same timeline of events: Monday-night football, small party, handful of girls came over, and then Michael trots down around ten A.M. the next morning. They remember because he kissed some blond bombshell right in front of the dining room, slapped her rear, and sent her on her way, to cheers, apparently.”

I snort. If I wanted a memorable story from this group that’s how I’d do it, too, but if he came down at ten, it leaves little time for him to climb behind the wheel of Jay’s car, drive down Milledge—a street full of crosswalks and pedestrians—and take a left at Five Points, so he could be barreling down Lumpkin by the time Jay’s ready to cross.

“And by all accounts, Michael stayed at breakfast for quite a while regaling the brothers with his conquests—the blonde was girl number two, if you believe him.”

We spend the early part of the afternoon afternoon talking to Jay’s professors. After a few cursory glances through attendance sheets or a quick phone call to teaching assistants, we learn he had almost perfect attendance. He was a good student. His philosophy professor, Dr. Watanabe, tells us he worked all weekend on a paper due Monday and got an A. No one reports any erratic behavior or mentions cheating or the change in grades. But I also get the impression that none of them really remember Jay. He’s a name signed on a sheet, a seat in a chair, a letter grade in an online database. Just a face in a sea of faces, one they know better now from seeing it plastered all over the news than they did when he was present less than twenty feet away in a lecture hall. A couple faculty recognize me, but when I don’t acknowledge my mother neither do they.