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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

She nodded. “It makes sense. Candace was a do-gooder. She didn’t want the poor guy to end up in jail. But from everything that I could glean from the police and media reports, Abernathy was over the edge. A serious alcoholic, but coherent enough to ride the rails. Maybe her sorority sisters were right to be intimidated or afraid of him. I wouldn’t be too happy if I walked out of my dorm and saw a guy taking a leak against the fence.”

“Can you honestly say Candace disappeared for more than a week if she was seen by different people through to Tuesday? When she checked into her dorm, and someone saw her outside the library?”

She smiled. Her dad was already as invested in the case as she was.

“None of those sightings came up during the police investigation.”

“Incompetence?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think they talked to everyone in the sorority, but did they expand to the rest of the twenty thousand students? How do you reach everyone if most of them don’t even open their campus email? We know she didn’t sleep in her dorm that night because her roommate came in late—after one o’clock, according to her statement—and Candace wasn’t there. If she in fact entered late Sunday night, why did she leave again? She didn’t attend classes, she didn’t sleep in her dorm. My guess? She had another place to stay. She had two boyfriends, after all, although both were cleared by the police.” She took a long gulp of coffee, considered what they knew, and said, “I think she really disappeared Tuesday morning, after the library sighting. She was preoccupied, possibly angry, ignored a classmate. Conflict in the dorm? Anger over the argument? Maybe she thought one of the girls had called the police on Abernathy. Maybe she was trying, on her own, to help him. There are many things she could have been doing, but why not tell someone?”

“All good questions. Maybe you should have been a detective instead of a marshal.”

She smiled, shook her head. “Marshals have cooler toys.”

He laughed. “You plan to reach out to the FPD detective? Young?”

“Not yet. I want to talk to Lucas again. This is his podcast, his schedule. I’d like to reach out to Young, see if there’s anything he might tell me that he wouldn’t tell Lucas. I might be a civilian now, but the Merritt name still holds a little weight.”

“A little?” John said with mock insult.