The Sorority Murder (Regan Merritt, #1)(110)

“Well, I guess that’s it. You can go.”

“I’m waiting.”

“They said it could be a couple hours.”

“I have nowhere else to be.” She wanted to talk to her dad. Shower. Sleep. Visit Lucas, make sure he was going to be okay. Physically? Yes. But he went through a trauma and she wanted to be there for him when and if he wanted to talk.

Brian sensed she wasn’t in the mood to talk, but he stood with her silently, and she appreciated it.

The team emerged nearly an hour later and walked over to the assistant sheriff. Regan jumped out of the truck and strode over to them, Brian right behind her.

“We found two skeletons in a pit about sixty yards down one corridor. It’s going to take some work getting them out,” one of the men said. He glanced at Regan.

“Go ahead,” the assistant sheriff said. “She’s going to hear sooner or later. You found two skeletons?”

“Yes. Based on the pelvic bones, one male, one female. We’ll know more after the autopsy. We’ll have them out before dark. I called in another team to search deeper in the mine, but that won’t be today.”

“Adele Overton and Joseph Abernathy,” Regan said. “Those are the two victims. Of course, you’ll want to confirm. But I’m right.”

She turned to the sheriff. “I’m going to check on Lucas, see if I can take him back to Flagstaff. You have my contact information.”

“How’d you know there were two bodies?” Brian asked. “Why’d you think Abernathy was here?”

“Because she framed him for Candace’s murder. I just can’t figure out why she didn’t bring Candace’s body here as well. It worked for her before. We may never know.”

“It’s a good question,” Brian said. “I still have a lot of work to do on this case, maybe I’ll figure it out.”

“If you do, let me know. I’m curious.” She thanked the assistant sheriff, and Brian, and walked up the hill to where she’d left her truck. She took a final look down into the clearing at the mine, thinking about the senseless loss of life. Adele. Candace. Joseph. Taylor. Even Rachel, though Regan had to really dig down to dredge up sympathy for her.

A pathetic, selfish, sociopath.

Maybe she didn’t have any sympathy.



Letter Found in the Journal of Candace Swain
Dear Mr. & Mrs. Overton,
My name is Candace Swain, and I want you to know what happened to your daughter Adele. This isn’t going to make you feel better, but maybe knowing the truth will give you some peace. If not peace, then understanding.
Adele was my friend. Taylor James, Adele, and I would hang out together, study at the library, eat at the student union. I really liked her and wanted her to rush the sorority Sigma Rho with us, but she said she wasn’t into sororities. Even so, we became friends, and it helped that we all had the same major.
Finals were over, and we were celebrating. One of the new professors had invited us over to her apartment. Rachel Wagner taught our biology class. She’d only been at NAU for a year. She was twenty-nine and acted more like us than other professors, so we all loved her. She had wine, and we made homemade wine coolers. Me, Taylor, Kim Foster, Alexa Castillo, and Adele. Adele was the only one not in Sigma Rho, but everyone liked her because she was funny and always willing to help when we were stuck on something. She was so smart.
Taylor had a couple joints, but Rachel didn’t want to smoke in her apartment. So we walked through the woods outside her complex. We climbed up a hill for the view and quiet. Everyone took a couple drags, except me. I have asthma and didn’t want to smoke anything.
But something was wrong. I think—everyone thought, after the fact—that a hallucinogen was mixed in with the marijuana. Taylor never told us where she got it.
Adele flipped out. She ran, terrified of something. No one moved to help her. Everyone was acting...off. I tried to follow Adele because we were in the middle of the woods and it was dark. She pushed me down and ran. I couldn’t see much, and I was drunk and not really thinking all that straight, and then I heard her scream.
Then silence.
By the time I could get everyone else with it enough to help me look for her, it was an hour later. We used our cell phones to guide our way.
When we found Adele, she was dead. She’d fallen down a cliff and hit her head on a boulder. It was awful.
Because of the drugs and drinking or maybe because we were all just awful people, we left her there. No one called the police or an ambulance.
The next morning, I woke up on the couch in Rachel’s apartment. Only Alexa was there. I called everyone, trying to figure out what happened. That’s when Taylor told me, over the phone, that they were “taking care of it.”
Alexa didn’t remember anything about the night before and kept asking where Adele was. I didn’t know what to tell her.
Two hours later, they all returned. Taylor, Kim, Rachel. I realized then that they hadn’t slept at all. They had gone back to find Adele’s body almost immediately. Kim made it clear to everyone that no one could say a word. That we would all be kicked out of school, Rachel would lose her job and be prosecuted, we could go to jail. Our futures would be over. Alexa asked, “But where is Adele?”
That’s when the story changed. Alexa really didn’t remember, and Rachel used that. She said, “She went home last night, don’t you remember?”
And Alexa didn’t remember anything, but she trusted us.