“Bite your tongue,” Stella said. “The one thing—probably the only thing—we have going for us is that Aidan doesn’t have a girlfriend.”
When I got home, I stood in the open door, staring down at the box, afraid to open it. Finally I crouched down and jerked off the lid as if ripping off a Band-Aid. My pulse was racing when I looked in, but Steve had been right, just some ordinary files.
I pulled one out at random. It was for a girl named Trisha Campbell from 2006. Inside were photocopies of a hodgepodge of Ridgedale University records—transcripts, dorm information, food-plan data. Trisha had been a good student, a double major in English and history who’d studied in Spain her junior year. I had Trisha’s file open in front of me as I pulled out another, this one from 2007. A girl named Rebecca Raynor. Inside was a slightly different mix of records. Rebecca had been a biology major with less impressive grades but several awards for music achievement. I put Rebecca’s file next to Trisha’s. Then I saw a name I recognized: Rose Gowan, 2014.
When I looked back at Trisha’s file, sure enough, there it was: VW, in the middle of her senior year. Rebecca had voluntarily withdrawn as well. As it turned out, every one of the students in that box—six, all female—had withdrawn voluntarily from Ridgedale University. One in 2006 and two in 2007, the remaining three from 2012 to 2014. The only obvious connection I could find was between the three girls who’d withdrawn in 2006 and 2007: They’d all taken the same American studies class, taught by a Professor Christine Carroll. Otherwise, the remaining girls’ schedules and backgrounds were completely different.
I rushed out of the house, gripping the box of files, intent on confronting Director of Security Ben LaForde. But as I drove toward campus, I began to wonder what I was confronting him about. A series of improperly investigated sexual attacks on campus that led half a dozen women to leave school—that’s what I was thinking. I felt sure that Ben LaForde was hiding something. But what proof did I have?
Six young women had withdrawn from Ridgedale University in about a decade. What was an average rate at any university? Perhaps many male students had withdrawn as well. There was no note in the box of files, nothing to explain what their assemblage meant. My theory was based largely on the fact that Stella suspected Rose Gowan had been raped on campus and then withdrawn. It was something of a leap to assume that the box implied that the same bad thing had happened to all the other girls.
By the time I’d reached campus, it had occurred to me that I would at least need some evidence the assaults happened before I started making accusations. Instead of parking and heading for LaForde’s office, I circled back toward home, taking the long way past the Essex Bridge.
I was struck with unexpected sadness when I saw only a single police car parked along the road near where the baby had been found. As though everyone else had already given up. Forgotten. Moved on. I slowed as I rolled past, but the officer in the car didn’t look up, his eyes locked on a cell phone. When I was a few yards past him, I noticed the driveway across the street, tucked between a couple shaggy trees. It curved right, to a run-down ranch house with a clear view of the road and the near side of the creek.
I jerked my car left and into the driveway. Surely the police had interviewed whoever lived there. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t also.
The house was more decrepit up close, the edges of the foundation disintegrating into the lawn, a rusted gutter unhinged, a garage window cracked, a lopsided shutter. The lawn was all crabgrass and tall weeds, mostly brown from winter, with a crumbling flagstone path leading up to the front door. There was a threadbare flag beside the front door. Even the house numbers had shifted, revealing rusty shadows in their wake.
I knocked hard, rattling the screen. I waited a minute with no response, then counted to twenty before knocking once more. There was a truck in the driveway, but that didn’t mean anyone was home. I took a couple steps to the side, thinking about heading back to my car, when suddenly the front door opened.
“Hello?” an angry-sounding man shouted through the screen door. “Who’s out there?”
He was big, tall and heavy if not quite overweight, with a head of straggly gray hair and a very large face. He was wearing pajama pants and a snug black T-shirt with a big Nike swoosh on the front. It hugged his big belly like a fabric sack.
“Oh, hi,” I said, stepping forward so he could see me, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted him to. “I’m Molly Sanderson, a reporter with the Ridgedale Reader, and—”
“A reporter, huh?” He sounded intrigued. “What do you want?”
Nothing, I thought of saying. So I’ll just be going now.
“I’m working on a story about the baby they found across the street,” I began. What if he’d had something to do with it? It wouldn’t be the smartest thing in the world to dump a dead body across the street from your house. Then again, he didn’t seem like the most thoughtful fellow. “I was hoping I might talk to you for a minute.”
He narrowed his eyes, then pushed open the door with one meaty hand. “You coming in or not?” he asked when I didn’t move forward.
“Oh, yes, thank you,” I said, stepping inside.
Since when was it safe for me to go into the house of a huge man I did not know, an angry, possibly unstable man who, despite his age, could have easily overpowered me? Was this really the best use of my rediscovered moxie? For all I knew, that baby belonged to some poor woman this guy kept locked in his basement.