Maximum Exposure

by Allison Brennan

  Ultimately, she had to decide if this was what she wanted to do with her life—or at least the next few years. Right now, she was very comfortable. She liked what she did; she liked her freedom.

  It didn’t take long before Ian strode purposefully to her table and sat down. He had combed his hair back, so it wasn’t falling in his eyes as much. She smiled, pushed her papers back in a folder, and sipped her coffee. “What can I get you?”

  He put a water bottle in front of him. “I can’t eat right after I work out. But thanks.” Ian looked around the quad sheepishly, as if he didn’t want anyone to see him talking with her. “I don’t understand why a reporter is interested in Scott,” he said.

  “I specialize in cold cases. My Web site lists the articles and books I’ve written.”

  His eyes widened. “You’re writing a book about Scott?”

  “Not a book, an article. I spoke to his mother, Adele Sheldon, and she asked me to look into his disappearance.”

  “Oh.” He stared down at his hands, not meeting her eyes. “I met Ms. Sheldon when we moved in. Her and Scott’s sister, Ashley. And then when she came to get his things. It was—uncomfortable. I felt bad.”

  I felt bad. “Bad” didn’t cut it. Max had been much closer to Karen than Ian had been to Scott; the pain and rage she’d allowed to simmer were a dark fuel that drove her for the year after Karen disappeared. But Karen was not Scott; Max was not Ian.

  “I understand that you didn’t know Scott before you became roommates.”

  He shook his head. “We got paired up by the school. Same major, and like me, he’s neat. Some of the guys in my dorm—well, they’re slobs. I didn’t want a slob. So we got along.”

  “I read the police reports. You told Detective Horn that Scott was quiet, you never saw him do drugs or drink, that he kept to himself. Is that accurate?”

  Ian nodded. “He wasn’t a bad guy once you got to know him.”

  That was an odd comment. “But before someone got to know him? Did other people not like Scott?”

  “No, of course not.” He frowned, drank some water.

  “Ian, no one’s perfect.”

  He shrugged. “No one had a problem with him.”

  Max switched focus. “You told police that he went camping with friends on Friday, October thirtieth. He didn’t return with the others, but you didn’t contact campus police.”

  “It’s not my fault he got lost!”

  “I didn’t say it was your fault.” She assessed him. He was upset, but why? “You didn’t go on the trip, did you?”

  “No. I feel bad about the whole thing. I mean, if I thought I was supposed to call the police when he didn’t come back, I would have. I didn’t know the guys he went with, not well. Scott was—he was a little strange, okay? But one-on-one, he was cool, we got along. Not best friends or anything, but okay. He just hung out with different people.”

  “Can you give me some names?”

  “Don’t you have the police report? I’m sure they all talked to the police. He didn’t have a lot of friends.”

  “Tom Keller, Arthur Cowan, Carlos Ibarra,” Max read from her notes, though she knew the names by heart. “Did he know any of them before?”

  “Before what?”

  “From high school, his hometown.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What about you?”

  “No. I didn’t like Scott’s friends. I don’t even think Scott liked them much, but they hung together.”

  “What I don’t understand is why no one contacted campus police immediately. Why they waited for so long.”

  He reddened. “You’re talking about me.”

  “Should I be?”

  “I should have called, okay? But I didn’t think about it.”

  “Even after the storm Saturday night and Sunday.”

  “I just— Look, I’ve felt like shit since I found out he wandered off and died on that mountain. I wish I could have changed it, but you weren’t there, you don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “Then tell me.”

  He wanted to talk about it. She could see it in his eyes. He was torturing himself over something.

  “Look, I didn’t think. Scott was out, I had a girl in, I figured he was hanging with his friends. We’re in college. It’s not like we keep tabs on each other. He said they were going camping for the weekend. When the storm hit, I thought he and the others might have gotten stuck getting out. But I didn’t think anyone was in danger. I figured if they were in trouble, someone else would have known about it.” His knuckles were white as he gripped the table. “I didn’t know Scott had gotten lost until Monday morning when campus security came by looking for him.”

  Max could see it. A nineteen-year-old boy, on his own for the first time. Probably didn’t even think Scott was his responsibility. Maybe the instinct would have developed over the year; maybe not. But one thing was certain: Ian Stanhope felt guilty about his inaction.

  But did Ian’s inaction cost Scott Sheldon his life? Any more so than that of the boys he went camping with? Max didn’t see that. It was the other three who should have done something, said something, sooner.

  “Do you know why the other three didn’t tell anyone on Saturday that Scott was lost? Do you know why they waited so long?”

  “You’ll have to ask them.”

  “Do you know where I can find them?”

  “You found me.”

  “Because you were Scott’s roommate.”

  He shifted uncomfortably. He looked like a man, but he wasn’t, and his boyish uncertainty shone through. “I didn’t like Scott’s friends. They were all weird, like him.”

  “Weird how?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Not jocks?” she suggested.

  “Not anything. Like, put a dozen loners together and you have a dozen loners in the same room. They weren’t like a team, or a group, or even in the same major, or what.”

  “So you haven’t seen any of them in the last six months.”

  “One of the guys, Tom Keller, is in my math class. But we don’t meet today. Tomorrow at ten. Pike Hall, if you want to stake it out.”

  “I’m here today.”

  It took him a good minute before he said, “Jess Sanchez. She was a friend of Scott’s, she’s okay. She’s the only one who seemed to be worried about Scott at the time, anyway.”

  “You weren’t?”

  “Look, I said Scott was weird. Honestly? I thought he’d show up Monday and be all, like, why were you so worried? I’m really sorry about everything, but I don’t know what I could have done different.”

  Max considered that. If she and Karen hadn’t become close friends while they were roommates, would Max have worried if Karen was out all weekend? Probably not. She might even have been relieved to have the room to herself.

  “I’ll talk to Jess,” Max said. “Where can I find her?”

  “She works at the bookstore on campus. You can’t miss her. She wears all black, has a nose ring, and is tiny. She looks like a freak, but like I said, she was the most normal out of all of them.”

  Ian left and Max read over the police report again.

  Jess Sanchez hadn’t been one of the group that Scott went camping with and Scott’s mother hadn’t said anything about a girlfriend. Was Jess a friend or something more? Why hadn’t she contacted campus police if she was worried, as Ian implied?

  Time to find out.

  Chapter Three

  Ian’s description of Jess Sanchez was accurate. She was indeed tiny in every way—barely five feet tall, not even one hundred pounds. Black hair, brown eyes, naturally tan skin, a nose stud, and multiple piercings in her small ears. She looked more American Indian than Hispanic as her name suggested. She agreed to talk to Max after Max told her she was a reporter writing about Scott Sheldon’s disappearance, but her tone was indifferent. She told the guy she was working with that she’d be back in ten minutes; then they stepped outside.

/>   “It’s freezing,” Jess complained as she zipped up her coat and pulled a cap over her short hair.

  “Is there a lounge where we can sit?” It was cold, but the sky was so clear, it looked like it would shatter.

  “I’m fine. So why are you here after nearly six months? No one cared when he got lost.”

  “No one?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Right. Search and rescue. Too dangerous, they said, to look for him in the storm. So Scott’s probably dead because it was too cold for everyone else.” She shoved her hands into her pockets and walked briskly. Fortunately, her legs were short and Max easily kept up with her.

  “Jess, search and rescue did everything they could with the information they had. And, like you, I don’t think Scott survived.”

  The girl stopped walking. Her cheeks were bright from the cold. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Let’s look at the possibilities: One, Scott ran away, voluntarily disappearing. There’s no evidence to support that. Two, Scott stomped off in anger like his friends said, and has built a shelter and survived for six months. Or three, Scott died on that mountain before anyone started looking for him.”

  Jess frowned, but didn’t say anything. Max continued. “There’s no evidence that Scott ran away or that he survived. I’m pretty certain he’s dead, and so is search and rescue. Even his mother, and parents are the most likely to believe that their child found some way to survive the unsurvivable. But I think there’s more to what happened that weekend than what your friends told the police.”

  “My friends?”

  “Tom Keller, Carlos Ibarra, and Arthur Cowan.”

  “They’re not my friends.”

  Max raised an eyebrow. “No?”

  “Art and Carlos used to be. But not anymore.” She averted her eyes, and the anger in her voice went down a notch.

  “Why?” Max asked bluntly.

  She shrugged, still didn’t look Max in the eye.

  “Because of what happened with Scott?”

  “No.” Jess was being evasive.

  “What do you think happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Maybe not, but she knew something.

  “I have to go back to work.” Jess turned abruptly and headed back the way they’d come.

  Max followed. “Jess, I’m not leaving until I find the truth. Scott’s family deserves to know what happened. They deserve to bury a body, don’t you think?”

  Jess stopped walking. She stared straight ahead, not facing Max. “I wasn’t on the camping trip. I don’t know what happened. I just—”

  “What?”

  “I just don’t think what they said happened did. But if it didn’t, they’re not going to say anything about it now, so we’ll never know the truth.”

  She spoke fast, but Max understood. Jess thought her friends—her former friends—had lied.

  “Tell me what you think.”

  “I can’t. I mean, I don’t know what to think! Look, I really have to go.” She opened the door to the bookstore.

  “Where can I find them?” Max asked her.

  “Art and Carlos are on the top floor of Canyon Hall. Room four-twelve. Tom’s in the same dorm, but I don’t know his room.”

  Jess closed the door on her. Max decided to let her go—for now. She’d be back to push Jess after the guilt and suspicion had had time to do their job.

  Max almost smiled. She hadn’t even been here a day, and already her suspicions were proved right—meaning, she wasn’t the only one who thought what happened the weekend Scott disappeared was odd. Time to track down Scott’s so-called friends and dig for the truth.

  * * *

  No one, answered when Max knocked on room 412. She considered her options.

  She considered searching their room, but there were a lot of people going in and out. And if Cowan and Ibarra returned and found her inside, she might have a difficult time getting them to talk to her. Not to mention that being kicked off campus would make it harder to uncover the truth.

  She walked down the staircase and passed three girls who were chatting about a party in another dorm. They’d heard about it on Twitter.

  Max snapped her fingers. Social media. These were college kids; they made a career out of telling the world where they were and what they were doing.

  She leaned against a wall on the first floor, just inside the main entrance, and pulled out her phone. She opened her social media app and found Arthur Cowan’s social profiles through his affiliation with Cheyenne College. Once she found Cowan, she found Tom Keller through a common association. Arthur and his roommate, Carlos Ibarra, had privacy settings on their accounts, so she couldn’t see their status reports or pictures, but Tom posted publicly—apparently everything he did when he did it.

  Tom had been tweeting for the past hour from his English class about how bored he was, and it took Max only a few minutes to learn he was in Edwin C. Becker Hall. While walking across the campus, she pulled up his social media photos and found a recent likeness. She also found photos of Cowan and Ibarra and now could pick them out in a crowd.

  She asked a passing student what classroom Mr. Thurston taught in, and was directed to the second floor of Becker Hall.

  Max leaned against the wall outside Thurston’s class and thought about how to approach Keller. He seemed to have found his wild side in college. Numerous photos showed him visibly intoxicated at parties. Didn’t these kids know that everything they posted on the Internet was permanent? Max supposed a future employer might overlook a few drunken college parties, but Tom was going to have to grow up.

  She could use that.

  The English class was over at 12:10, so Max had a few minutes to dig into Keller. There wasn’t much more than what she’d found on his social media pages. He was interested in video games, drinking, girls, and not much else. There was also something missing.

  She scrolled back through his photos as far back as they went—nearly three years—and there were no pictures taken while camping, fishing, or hiking. If fact, he appeared to have no interest in camping. Odd, considering where he went to college.

  It might not mean anything, but she felt the twinge she got when information didn’t fit. She wished she could scour the pages of Cowan and Ibarra. She was able to scroll through their friends—Jess Sanchez was in both lists. Would Jess let Max use her log-in to access their pages? Max would definitely ask.

  Students began to exit the class a few minutes before it was officially over. Keller was one of the first kids out, and Max immediately followed him. He was a tall and gangly kid, not quite beefy enough to fill out his frame. He slouched slightly, as if he’d grown early and never been comfortable with his height.

  “Tom,” she called out when they were at the base of the stairs.

  He turned and spotted her, gave her an obvious look up and down. “You’re not in my class,” he said with a flirty grin. “Unless you’re the new teaching assistant.”

  “Maxine Revere, reporter.” She handed him her card. “Let’s talk.”

  He stared at her card, his brows pulled together. “Reporter?”

  “Scott Sheldon.”

  He handed back her card. “I need to go.”

  “I have a few questions.”

  He brushed past her. “I have nothing to say.”

  “Why? If what you said happened is true, why don’t you want to talk about it?”

  He turned and stared, his eyes narrow. “If? What’s your deal? What do you mean, ‘if’? I told everyone what happened. Why do you care?”

  “Scott is classified as a missing person. Were you aware that the rangers are still looking for his body? When they find him, they’ll know what happened.”

  The kid, already white, paled even more. “They know what happened because we told them what happened. You have no right to harass me.”

  Keller’s voice rose, squeaky and worried. Others in the hall looked over, overtly curious. Max didn’t care. She wasn’t the
one with something to hide.

  “I’m not harassing you, Tom.”

  “I don’t have to talk to you.”

  He bumped into a group of students in his haste to get away from her. He scowled at them, then pushed open the double doors and hurried outside into the steadily falling drizzle.

  Something was definitely up.

  * * *

  Max went back to the bookstore to talk to Jess about her social media password, and Jess told her she couldn’t talk.

  “When do you get off?” Max asked.

  “Two thirty. I really don’t want to get involved.”

  “You already are, and I think you know that.” But Max could wait if it would encourage Jess to cooperate. She said, “I’ll be back in two hours. Just to talk, okay?”

  “Whatev,” Jess said, and went to ring up a student.

  Max went outside and frowned at the wet sky. If she was here on campus until three or later, she wouldn’t have time to visit the campsite. Tomorrow, she’d do it first thing.

  She located the campus security office on the map and walked briskly to the small building west of the main administration wing. By the time she arrived, her coat and hair were more than a little damp.

  The office was dry, warm, and set up like a police bull pen with a front desk separated by a low partition and ten or twelve desks, each backing to another. Four of the desks were currently occupied. The receptionist smiled. “May I help you?”

  She handed the woman her card. “I called two days ago, but no one returned my call.”

  The receptionist returned Max’s card. “You can go to the administration building and talk to the public affairs director.”

  “I need to speak with the head of security.”

  “Is it a security matter?”

  “Yes.”

  It was, after all, a matter of how they conducted their security operations.

  “You’re not a student.”

  “No.”

  “You’ll have to speak to the public affairs director. I can’t help you.”