While Regan didn’t think that Lucas was capable of cold-blooded murder, he had certainly landed himself on the suspect list with that confession—especially since he’d never told the police.
She asked, “What did you think would happen if you solved Candace’s murder? That you would find out what happened to Adele?”
“They’re connected. I have nothing to base that on, except that when I finally confronted Candace, after she walked away, she turned back and looked right at me. She said, ‘I’m really sorry.’ I know, you probably think she said that because she couldn’t help me or that she felt sorry for me, but it was how she said it. You had to be there. I decided to give her a little space, a couple weeks, then I planned to reach out to her again.
“I didn’t know Candace had been missing until I found out she was dead. There wasn’t a lot of public information about her murder, and the newspaper said the police were looking for a homeless guy who had harassed sorority girls. And I thought that was it, I would never know what happened to Adele. No one would know what happened to her. And I put it all aside, got on with my studies.
“When I took the internship at the morgue, I didn’t do it with the purpose of investigating Candace’s murder. I was filing reports for the ME, and I came across her file. Read it. That’s when I learned she had been missing for over a week before she was killed, that she hadn’t drowned in Hope Springs Lake, and that there was no physical evidence. I looked into the case as it stood. None of it made sense.
“Candace was popular and always went above and beyond. She volunteered everywhere. She built homes for homeless veterans through a program during the summers in Colorado. She worked at Sunrise Center downtown. I thought, Is that maybe how her killer knew her? But the manner of her death didn’t make much sense, especially since she didn’t drown in the lake where she was found. I read everything I could, and Joseph Abernathy seemed like a good suspect on the surface, but once I talked to Willa March and found out the seriousness of his alcoholism? It didn’t make sense that he could kill her, then move her body and cover up the crime, then disappear on a train. So I came up with the podcast idea because I thought someone must have seen her during that week. Maybe they didn’t know what they knew, but someone knew something. And that’s everything. I swear, Regan.”
“You thought when you started this podcast that Candace knew something more about Adele’s disappearance,” Regan said.
“Yes.”
“Exactly what?”
He didn’t answer. “I didn’t have evidence. Just that Taylor and Candace had lunch with Adele the day she left campus. And then their reaction to me when I started asking questions. Taylor was angry and Candace was sad. That’s it. She shut me out, but I just sensed she knew more. I didn’t know how or why. Adele didn’t belong to Sigma Rho or any sorority. But based on her schedule and digging around social media, I learned that the three of them had shared a class, then Adele and Taylor had had another class together. They’d all had lunch the last day of finals. It reasoned that they had done other things together. In the back of my mind, I thought that if I could figure out where Candace had been when she was missing, I might find out where Adele was—that maybe she’d gone missing for the same reason.”
“Do you think she’s alive?”
He shook his head. “She would never do that to her family. And if she was in an accident with a head injury or something, eventually authorities would have traced her to her family. And I realized my initial hypothesis just didn’t work. It was based on some conspiracy theory that there was a serial killer who kept his victims alive before he killed them, or something stupid like that. None of the physical evidence held with anything bizarre like that. I think Adele’s dead. And the troopers’ theory—that someone created an accident and grabbed her—makes sense. It’s plausible. But then why was Candace acting so odd, so sad, when I talked to her about Adele? Which led me to believe she knew more about Adele’s disappearance.”
Everything Lucas said answered Regan’s questions and concerns. And opened up far more. According to both Candace’s roommate Annie and Richie Traverton, she had changed at the end of her fall semester—just when Lucas was pushing her for more about information about Adele. She had acted out of character, like quitting the writing lab.
“I’m really sorry.”
Guilt? Understanding? Empathy? What was Candace feeling at the time?
Regan wouldn’t think twice about her reaction if Candace was simply empathetic about what Lucas was going through. Lucas overreacted. But Candace was now dead, Taylor was dead, and they were the last two people known to have seen Adele Overton before she left campus.
“I have some evidence,” Lucas said and pulled something out of his pocket. He handed her a photo.
She recognized Taylor and Candace. “Is this Adele in the middle?”
“Yes.”
She turned over the photo. On the back was written Me with my BFFs, last day of classes before finals!
“Where did you get this?”
“Taylor’s house.”
“You said you didn’t go in the house.”
“I went back.”
“Dammit, Lucas.”
“This was all I took, I swear.” He paused. “I wore gloves.”
That didn’t make it better. Before she could admonish him further, he said, “I looked the last day of classes up from that year. November 20. Finals were the next week, then break started on November 30.”
“Did you take anything else?”
“No. I swear. But I think her computer is missing. There were cords for a laptop, but no laptop.”
“The police will have searched her house and made note of that,” she said as she handed the photo back to him. “We’ll keep this between you and me for now.” She was concerned that his impulsive actions might have a permanently detrimental impact on his future career plans.