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Back The Sorority Murder Save as PDF
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

“In my Intro to Criminal Justice class my first semester here, one of the lectures was about campus police and their role versus local police. One of the officers came in to explain what they did, and he brought up missing persons—how many college students go missing, why you need to tell someone where you’re going even though you’re an adult, et cetera. I thought of Adele, and after the lecture I asked him if it was possible to get a missing-person report. I told him why—that my girlfriend’s sister had disappeared, and I wanted to know what they did, what the troopers did, that kind of stuff. I was polite, and he said it was public information and to come into the campus-police station and fill out a form. So I did. And in that report was Candace Swain’s name.”

“And Taylor James’s.”

He nodded. “Yeah, but Candace was more accessible, and Taylor was kind of a bitch. I know that’s not nice to say, but I did try to reach out to her, and she ignored me as if I were a gnat. Candace was genuinely a nice person. She worked in the writing lab, and so I made an appointment. I could use the help, anyway. I didn’t know how to approach her, so I went to her for several weeks before I worked up the courage to ask her about Adele. She went from friendly to blank.”

“Blank?”

“Like, we’d chat about a lot of things, and she was nice. Not flirting or anything but just friendly. And at the time, I wasn’t thinking she had anything to do with Adele going missing—I just wanted to know more about her friendship with Adele, to find out if maybe she’d said anything, if she’d been depressed or struggling, had a stalker, I don’t know. Something that would explain why her car was found in New Mexico.

“But as soon as I mentioned Adele, Candace shut down. Went blank. She canceled our next session. Then said she didn’t have time to tutor and recommended someone else. I tracked her down because I knew that it was me mentioning Adele that changed everything. She just said she was upset about what had happened and knew nothing about it, and she was sorry. It was just...weird.”

He stared at his hands, and Regan let him take his time. The truth was coming out, but maybe he was still processing it because he hadn’t told anyone.