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Back The Sorority Murder
Chapters (61)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. From the Missing Journal of Candace Swain
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. From the Missing Journal of Candace Swain
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. From the Missing Journal of Candace Swain
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-One
  28. From the Missing Journal of Candace Swain
  29. Twenty-Two
  30. Twenty-Three
  31. Twenty-Four
  32. Twenty-Five
  33. Twenty-Six
  34. Twenty-Seven
  35. Twenty-Eight
  36. Twenty-Nine
  37. Thirty
  38. Thirty-One
  39. Thirty-Two
  40. Thirty-Three
  41. Thirty-Four
  42. From the Missing Journal of Candace Swain
  43. Thirty-Five
  44. Thirty-Six
  45. Thirty-Seven
  46. Thirty-Eight
  47. From the Journal of Candace Swain
  48. Thirty-Nine
  49. Forty
  50. Forty-One
  51. Forty-Two
  52. Forty-Three
  53. Forty-Four
  54. Forty-Five
  55. Forty-Six
  56. Forty-Seven
  57. Letter Found in the Journal of Candace Swain
  58. Forty-Eight
  59. Acknowledgments
  60. Booklist
  61. Excerpt

“I interviewed her sister, Chrissy Swain, and aired part of the interview on the first episode of the podcast, a short snippet on the second, and I have more to share. Her parents weren’t responsive. Chrissy says they’re still grieving, but I had the sense that Chrissy is the one who cares the most and her parents were using grief as an excuse. She wants to help, but she’s in South Carolina.”

“Why are you doing this? Why pick this cold case?”

He hesitated, just a second too long, and Regan wondered if he was going to tell her the entire truth. He’d been so forthcoming up until now. “I was interested in Candace’s murder mostly because I kinda knew her. She worked in the writing lab when I was a freshman and helped me get through English comp. She was a senior nursing student. We talked about some of the classes she took that I was going to have to take for bio, and so, you know, I was as surprised as anyone when she was killed.”

“What else?” Because there was more.

He hesitated again, then rubbed a hand over his face. “I saw her that night,” he said with a sigh. “Outside the party. I saw her talking to the homeless guy, Abernathy. She convinced him to leave. I learned later, through the media reports, that he’d been banned from the campus and that Candace didn’t want to call the police on him. I saw him walk away.”

“Did you talk to the police?”

“I didn’t know that I should have. I didn’t know she was missing, and I only heard through the grapevine that she was killed, but none of the details. It wasn’t until weeks later that I heard about the theory that Abernathy had killed her and jumped on a train to escape.”

“It’s plausible.”

“Could he have kept her captive for a week? She was a healthy young woman. She had no drugs in her system, no physical signs of captivity. I don’t see it. Her phone was found in her dorm room. Who leaves without their phone?”

“You mean, who leaves willingly without their phone?”

“Right,” he said.

“Are you reaching the right audience?” she asked. “I would imagine that most people who were at that party have graduated and are no longer in town.”