The Last Good Girl (21 page)

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After everything was in motion, Anna and Sam left. Steve would wrap up the final part of the search. As Sam drove them to the LaRoses' house, Anna called BlueTube. A young man answered the phone and introduced himself as Chandler Andrews, a senior tech. Anna introduced herself and said, “I'm calling to make sure you received our subpoenas—and to see how quickly we can get the videos.”

“Let me see here.” Chandler spoke over the click of a keyboard. “I see you're trying to get some video logs that were posted by someone named Emily Shapiro.”

“Right.”

“Unfortunately, those videos were removed from our site.”

“I'd like to find out how, when, and why those videos were removed,” Anna said. “And if BlueTube can recover the videos, we are asking for copies of them.”

“Let's see.” There was a long pause. “It looks like the user herself took the videos down on March 19, 2015. And we don't have any copies saved here at BlueTube.”

“That's too bad,” Anna said. “Please send me all the paperwork related to the account, as required in the subpoena.”

“Will do.”

Sam pulled the SUV into the LaRoses' comfortable suburban neighborhood. Anna lowered her phone and looked around. The streets were lined with pretty houses on wide yards, the driveways covered in bikes and toys. It was obviously professors' housing, not students'. They stopped in front of the LaRoses' address. A man stood inside his redbrick colonial, looking out through his storm door. He watched as they parked in the street, got out of the car, and came up the sidewalk. He opened the door.

“I'm Landon LaRose. Come in.”

Landon was an attractive man buried somewhere below terrible grooming. When he smiled at them, his teeth were yellow and grainy, as if they hadn't been brushed in a while. His cheeks held a week's worth of mangy stubble. He had a full head of graying sandy hair, but it was matted on one side and sticking straight up on the other. He wore stained jeans and a rumpled button-down shirt that emitted a slightly sour smell, making Anna wonder how many days he'd been wearing them.

Landon led them through a living room, where a girl and a boy, maybe two and three years old, were playing with Legos on the floor. A flurry of toys, dirty socks, and Veggie Booty bags were strewn about them.

Taking Sam and Anna into the adjacent kitchen, Landon gestured for them to sit at a table covered with sticky residue and two bowls of soggy Froot Loops. Anna took the bowls to the sink. Dirty dishes were piled there and on every available space on the counter. She stacked them onto another pile of bowls.

“Your kids?” Anna asked, nodding toward the living room as she sat down.

“Yes. Maddie and Grayson.”

“They're adorable,” Anna said. They were, but they were as disheveled as their father. The kids both had crusty noses, dirty clothes, and tangled hair falling into their eyes. The boy was wearing a dress. Anna wondered if it was a style choice or just the last remaining clean clothes.

Landon said, “They're having a hard time getting over their mother leaving. But does she care? No. She's an ambitious bitch who loves her career more than her kids.”

Anna saw the children look up at the mention of their mother. She got up and closed the door between the kitchen and living room. She lowered her voice so the children couldn't hear.

“Sir, you said you had a tip about who killed Emily Shapiro. Can you tell us what you know?”

He ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up even more. He looked at Sam then Anna. “What you have to understand,” he said, “is how perfect our marriage was before.”

“Okay.”

“We met in grad school. I was her thesis adviser. Kristen was a top student in the English program. At the time, I didn't realize that she wanted me because I held something she was going for. We've been married eight years. I thought we had it all. Beautiful house, beautiful kids. Discussions so much deeper than the average marriage—we'd talk about poetry and beauty and meaning in life.”

Anna nodded, hoping this would connect up with Emily's disappearance soon.

“Then she left me. Out of the blue. I was in shock. Until I heard who she was leaving me for. The college president. Of course. She'd been angling to be the dean of English for years. And now that she's with Barney Shapiro, she'll get it. Nothing has ever been able to stop Kristen from getting what she wanted. Until Emily.”

“How so?” Anna glanced at Sam and saw the agent was taking notes. Good.

“Emily refused to accept Kristen. There was some dinner at Shapiro's place. They announced they were getting married. And Emily said she'd die before she'd accept Kristen as a stepmother. Shapiro was so upset, he postponed the wedding. You see what was going on? All that was standing in the way of Kristen and everything she ever wanted was this girl.”

“So . . .” Anna said.

“So Kristen took her out.”

“You're saying your ex-wife, Professor Kristen LaRose, killed Emily Shapiro?”

“Yes. Can't you see? Take a very close look at where Kristen was the night Emily disappeared. When she wants to get something done, she finds a way to do it.”

A key part of any investigation, Anna knew, was keeping an open mind. The obvious answer wasn't always the right one. Things happened that were random, unexpected, unbelievable. You couldn't make them up—but they were the truth. Anna once had a case where a woman named Glenda was repeatedly physically abused by her boyfriend. Like many victims of domestic violence, Glenda kept going back to this terrible boyfriend, despite friends and family members who warned that he would eventually kill her. Finally, after a particularly terrible beating, she agreed to leave him. She went to the police, and they put her up in a hotel. The next morning, Glenda was found beaten to death in the hotel room. Everyone assumed the abusive boyfriend had somehow found her. But in fact, Glenda had gone to a bar the night before, met a different bad man, and brought him back to her hotel. They got in a fight, and the new guy beat Glenda to death. The world was a random place. Terrible things could go down in an infinite number of ways. The most obvious one was not always the one that had actually happened.

Anna pictured the scarf on the floor in Dylan's closet. She thought that was more likely to hold a clue to Emily's case than Landon and Kristen's banal domestic drama. Still, she'd have an agent look into where Kristen and Landon were when Emily disappeared.

“Did Kristen ever actually threaten Emily?” Anna asked.

“Not to her face. But she said it would be convenient if Emily were gone.”

“When did she say that?”

“The night Emily disappeared.”

“Where were you?”

“Here. At my house. She called me.”

“Just to tell you that she wanted Emily out of the picture?”

“No. We were talking about the kids' schedule. And she said it was hard to coordinate our kids with Barney's kid.”

“Has your wife ever done anything violent before? To Emily or anyone else?”

“She bit my finger.”

Anna blinked. “How did that happen?”

“We were having a fight, and I pointed at her to make a point. And she bit it!”

He held out his hand for them to examine. There was, indeed, a small raised scar on his right index finger.

“Did you report this to the police?”

“You're damn straight I did! She spent the night in jail.”

Anna glanced at Sam. “Was she convicted?”

“No. I dropped the charges. Because I didn't want to ruin her life.”

“Mm-hmm. Did you get some concession in your divorce for dropping the charges?”

“Well, yeah. After I dropped charges, she agreed to give me half of her pension. I absolutely deserved that money.”

“Right.” Anna looked at the kitchen door, made sure it was still shut, then lowered her voice. “Sir, we had information that during the course of your divorce, you posted some intimate pictures of Kristen to a revenge porn site. Is there any truth to that?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“That's not important. I'm just asking—can you confirm or deny it?”

“Did Kristen tell you that?”

“Sir, I can't reveal my sources during a criminal investigation.”

“What if I did post some . . . uh . . . erotic videos of Kristen online. Linked them to her phone number and Facebook account. Hypothetically. Would that be a crime?”

“It could be, depending on the circumstances. I'm not your attorney and I can't give you legal advice.”

“I . . . I . . . I'm thinking I don't want to answer questions about revenge porn without a lawyer present.”

He might be crazy, but he wasn't stupid. Anna wasn't sure who was more suspicious, him or his ex-wife.

“Let me give you some nonlegal advice,” Anna said. “Give your children a bath and a hot meal. Try to enjoy them. They're beautiful. Divorce is a hard time for kids. They need you.”

“I didn't call you for parenting advice. What are you going to do about Kristen?”

“We'll look into your tip, sir, along with all the other evidence we're collecting.” Anna stood, gave him her card, and told him to call her if he had any more information. “In the meantime,” she said, “try to remember that old saying. ‘Carrying a grudge is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.' ”

Law Offices of Kaiser, LeGrand & Dillon

1001 K Street, NW

Washington, DC 20001

January 31, 2015

Lisa Sinrod Brey

Vice President

Tower University

Tower, MI 48021

Re: Shapiro v. Highsmith, Disciplinary Case No. 14-073

Dear Ms. Brey,

I write to appeal the sentence of the Disciplinary Committee in the above case. Attached you will find copies of all the paperwork.

While Mr. Highsmith does not dispute the factual determination of the committee (for the purposes of this letter, at least), we believe that the punishment of expulsion is excessive. We ask that you mitigate it.

In support of our request, please consider the following. Dylan Highsmith is in the final semester of his senior year and is due to graduate this May. In fact, Dylan is an honors student, carrying a 3.6 grade point average, and has been on the Dean's List six of his seven semesters. He is also a student leader; he is head of the Greek Council and the pledge master of his fraternity, Beta Psi. In his Greek work, he founded the “Leaders Are Readers” program, which matches college students with elementary-school children with learning disabilities, so that the college students can help tutor the children. As part of that program, he was named a Michigan Young Leader.

Trouble is not in his character. He is a hardworking, compassionate, dedicated young man. He is terribly upset that Ms. Shapiro felt her encounter was not consensual. He believed it was. As you will see from the committee's verdict, no one believes that Dylan forcibly assaulted Ms. Shapiro. What we have, rather, is two intoxicated young people who ended up in bed together, and the shades of gray that result when memories are clouded and intentions blurred by whiskey. Given the entirety of the circumstances, it is a shame to ruin a young man's life because of one alcohol-clouded encounter, which even the complaining witness did not recall with clarity.

And, make no mistake, an expulsion would effectively ruin Dylan Highsmith's life. He is due to graduate this May and has accepted an offer of employment with an investment firm. That offer is contingent on Dylan graduating. If Dylan is expelled, he will have to find a way to finish his education at some other university. He will lose his dream job. He will have a mark on his transcript for the rest of his life.

As you may know, Dylan is a third-generation legacy at Tower University. His father and grandfather graduated from Tower before him. The family has a lot of Tower pride and school spirit and hopes for nothing greater than to have another generation of Highsmith men graduate from Tower.

Of course, some punishment is appropriate. We ask that Dylan be allowed to repay his debt to society through service to the community, specifically, two hundred hours of community service. We would also happily accept a monetary fine, and a written reprimand included in his student file. This would give a consequence that fits the crime, while allowing a well-meaning and hardworking young man to make amends but continue down a positive path in his life.

Thank you for your consideration.

Very truly yours,

Justin Dillon, Esq.

T
he Tower County medical examiner's office was a palace of gleaming white. Pristine white walls, clean white tile floors, glinting steel saws hanging from silver hooks. The bones looked yellow in comparison. They were laid out on twenty different stainless steel tables. Each table had a number on it, indicating where in the underground room the bones had been found, corresponding with numbered placards the FBI photographers placed in the room before taking pictures. The bones had been glued flimsily to the walls—the techs had been able to pry them loose in a couple hours. The one intact skeleton lay on its own steel table; the red Beta Psi baseball cap rested next to its skull. Three technicians in white coats walked among the tables, cataloging the bones, taking notes, and beginning their tests.

Jack stood next to Anna, surveying the results of their search warrant. Anna stared at the sprawling field of bones—hundreds, maybe thousands of vertebrae, femurs, tibia, ribs, knuckles—laid out like knickknacks on display at a store. She thought of all the lives they represented. The sight made her sick and furious.

“We have to get Dylan Highsmith,” she said.

“Yes,” Jack said mildly. “He's not responsible for these remains, though.”

“How do you know?”

“For one thing, these bones look old. He's only been in the frat a few years.”