Page 79 of To the Grave

“Please,” I said, touching his arm. “Just… please.”

He looked into my eyes and finally — finally — stopped walking under a row of trees on either side of the path between buildings. The dappled shade cast strange shadows on his face.

“I asked Michael to leave the law review after an incident with one of my other students,” Professor Alvarez finally said.

“What kind of incident?” Otis asked.

“There was an assault complaint. From a female student against Michael White.”

“And that’s why you asked him to leave?” Wolf asked.

The professor’s face fell. “It was a different time…”

“What happened?” I asked.

He shifted his briefcase from one hand to the other. “There was an attempt at mediation through the administrative complaint process. No evidence of the assault was found.”

I swallowed my disgust. I’d heard stories about how hard it was to prosecute sexual assault claims on college campuses. I could only imagine how hard it had been thirty years ago.

“Then why did you ask him to leave?”

“Because the young woman in question, the one who’d filed the complaint, went missing shortly thereafter.”

I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach, the world receding around me as my ears buzzed.

“You’re saying the same girl who accused Michael White of sexual assault went missing after she filed the complaint?” Otis asked.

Professor Alvarez nodded. “That’s what I’m saying. There was no evidence that it was Michael — he was one of several people who were questioned — but it made the other students on the review uncomfortable. We work long hours, often late into the night. That kind of atmosphere wasn’t good for the paper. Now if you’ll excuse me, I really do have to get to class.”

I was frozen in place, standing in the shaded walkway as he moved away from us.

“Wait!” I called out. Professor Alvarez turned around. “What happened to him? After he graduated, I mean.”

Maybe Professor Alvarez had been contacted for a reference by some big law firm that would keep the trail hot on Michael White.

“I have no idea,” the professor said. “He graduated, I gave him a boilerplate reference for the MBA program at Boston University. Never heard from him again.”

He turned away again, this time moving away from us quickly, like he couldn’t get away from us fast enough.

Chapter 51

Daisy

Back at work on Monday, I was still replaying our conversation with Professor Alvarez.

Because what the actual fuck?

He’d added several new pieces to the puzzle, but we had no more clarity on how it all fit together now than we’d had before the trip to Philly. Was it just a coincidence that the woman who’d accused Michael White of sexual assault had later gone missing?

How had Michael, best friend to Arlo and Mac, escaped Blackwell Falls for an Ivy League school only to become embroiled in a sexual assault allegation? And what had happened to him after graduation?

I hadn’t been the only one rocked by the information from Professor Alvarez. After we’d watched him walk away, we’d sat in the grass to look up the details on the missing girl. We probably hadn’t looked much different from the students lounging there between classes — well, except for the Beasts being twice the size of the other guys on campus — but instead of studying for a calc test or putting the finishing touches onan English paper, we were looking up the sordid details of the disappearance of a student thirty years earlier.

Thankfully she was the only girl who’d gone missing at UPenn and it had only taken us a minute to find her name: April Hedges.

But the other details were scarce. She’d last been seen leaving the library after a study session and had never made it back to her dorm. There were no witnesses to her disappearance and no trace of her had ever been found.

We’d talked about approaching her family, asking them about her accusations against Michael White, but it seemed intrusive. We’d decided to keep working the Michael angle instead, and the Beasts had spent the last few days combing the internet for any mention of him after his graduation from Wharton.

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