3. Rowan #2
The hallway is full of athletes pretending not to listen, so I pull Harper into the trophy-case alcove. “Play it.”
She does. For nine seconds, the phone gives us traffic noise, a horn, wind against a microphone, and one rough scrape that might be fabric or the device moving against a seat. Then a man’s voice comes through, close enough to distort. “Your father’s phone.”
The message ends. Harper lowers my phone. “I called back twice. It goes to voicemail.”
I take the phone and play the message again. Traffic. A horn. The same three words.
Harper points to the log. “Four calls in eleven hours.”
“Aaron worked the accounts.” I close my grip around the phone.
“Yes.” Harper watches me put the pieces together.
“Dad’s phone wasn’t recovered from the crash.” I’ve said that sentence to police, insurance, and Mom often enough for it to sound like a form. “They wrote it off as destroyed or lost.”
Harper glances toward the hallway. “Rowan.”
I replay the voicemail without sound this time. “Erik named Dad from a file somebody handed him. Aaron had Dad’s phone or knew who did.”
“That doesn’t put it with Erik.” Harper steps closer before I can turn that into a conclusion.
I pocket the phone. “No. It puts it with the investigation he controls.”
She understands before I say anything else and hates the answer already. “You aren’t driving to his house.”
I zip my duffel. “I’m going to ask for a phone.”
“At night, at a private estate, from the dean you accused on television.” Harper steps in front of me. “That gives them a complaint before you reach the driveway.”
“Then I won’t make it easy for them.” I move around her. “I need his address.”
Harper catches my bag strap. “I’m not helping you trespass.”
“I’m not breaking a lock, and if anyone tells me to leave, I leave.”
The answer comes too fast, which tells both of us I’ve already started building the defense.
Harper tightens her grip. “Rowan.” I stop because she almost never uses my name like that. Her voice drops. “Evidence beats catharsis, remember?”
I look at the phone in my pocket. “This is evidence.”
It takes three searches to find the address from public donor profiles, then one hardware store to show me how far past reasonable I’ve driven.
The spray paint is on a sale rack near contractor pencils. I pick up one can, put it back, then pick it up again. The red cap looks ridiculous in my hand.
Outside, I sit behind the wheel with the can in the paper bag on the passenger seat. I say character and fitness out loud, then add the rest.
Vandalism, trespass, harassment of a university official, and conduct reflecting adversely on honesty or fitness, all before I drive anyway.
Ashford thins out beyond campus. Streetlights give way to black roads, stone walls, and long driveways with names instead of numbers.
I obey every speed limit with the care of someone building an exhibit for the prosecution.
By the time the navigation sends me onto a private road, the spray paint is just a can in a paper bag.
I’m not here to paint his car. Repeating that would only make the lie more embarrassing. I’m here because Aaron Whitaker called me four times before disappearing behind voicemail, and my father’s phone exists after eighteen months of being treated as gone.
The estate entrance appears after a curve, with two stone pillars bracketing a black iron gate. The gate is open, and I slow before the threshold.
There’s no guard in the small post beside it, and the keypad box has no light. No red standby dot.
Erik has no reason to leave his gate open after yesterday’s press conference. I park outside the entrance and photograph the open gate with the dead keypad in frame. Then I send the image to Harper with one line.
Gate open. Staying outside if anyone tells me to leave.
Her answer arrives before I reach the pillars.
You’re outside until you cross the gate, genius.
I look at the message, then at the drive beyond the pillars. “Noted,” I say to nobody useful before walking through anyway.
The drive curves through trees toward a house set back from the road, larger than any dean’s salary can explain, which isn’t an evidentiary conclusion. Lights burn on the first floor, but no one comes out and no security car rolls down the drive.
My phone buzzes again.
If you get arrested, I’m bringing Evelyn.
I type back while walking.
Don’t call Evelyn.
Harper sends three question marks, then the phone starts ringing. I silence it and leave the apology for later.
The motor court opens in front of the house, pale stone surrounding a center island with winter planters. A black Bentley is near the front steps, and it takes me two seconds to connect the car to Erik.
Of course he drives something that looks expensive enough to have its own attorney.
The trunk is unlatched, neither open nor closed. The lid sits raised by a narrow black line.
I stop beside the center island and run through every legal lecture I’ve ever half-heard. Don’t approach. Don’t touch. Photograph. Leave. Call someone with authority.
The house door stays closed while I take out my phone. I get the Bentley, the plate, the front steps, and the open drive behind me in frame. When my finger misses the button once, I take another, clearer photograph.
Then I walk to the trunk.
The lid rises when I touch the edge with two fingers through my sleeve.
Aaron Whitaker is folded inside with his eyes open.
I step back before I manage anything else. I don’t scream, and I keep the phone in my hand. The can of spray paint sits useless in my bag, a stupid red cap on a stupid choice that has become the least important thing here.
Aaron’s suit jacket is twisted under one shoulder. One shoe is missing.
His right hand is closed around a phone in a cracked blue case with a chip out of the corner.
I know the crack. I know the blue case. I know the chip near the camera because I’ve held that phone a thousand times.
It’s Dad’s.