Freshman Just Wanted Dinner — Until Three Bullies Made a Mistake That Cost Them Everything
Chapter 28
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Claire reached into the side pocket of her backpack: there was a small USB drive, black, the kind you could buy at any drugstore for eight dollars. She held it in her hand."Dot," she said."Don't thank me," Dot said. "Eleanor would have done exactly the same thing, probably faster."Claire almost smiled. She put the drive in the front pocket of her slacks where she could feel it. She looked at the clock on the wall: 7:20. One hour and forty minutes before the hearing.She called Carol Whitfield from a bench on the library steps. It was 7:30. The campus was beginning to move around her: students with coffee cups and backpacks. Carol answered on the second ring."I have the camera footage from Miller's Diner," Claire said. "Friday night, full recording."A brief silence. "How did you obtain it?" Carol said."The manager saved it and gave it to me. She is the sole person responsible for the security system in the building; she has the legal authority to release it.""Do you have it with you?""Yes.""Come to my office," Carol said. "Right now. Before the hearing.""I'll be there in ten minutes," Claire said."Good. And Claire?""Yes?""I have some things to show you as well."She hung up. Claire stood up from the bench, adjusted her backpack, and walked toward Waverly Hall. She thought about Tyler on his phone at 8:53 Friday night. She thought about three folders in a filing cabinet: three names, three students who had left. She thought about paragraph seven. She walked a little faster.Carol's office was brighter on Wednesday morning than it had been on Monday. Or maybe it was the same; maybe it was just that Claire was seeing it differently, with more context—the way the same room looks different when you understand more about why you are in it.Carol was at her desk; two folders were open in front of her. She looked up when Claire came in."Sit down," she said. "We don't have long."Claire sat. She put the USB drive on Carol's desk. Carol picked it up, plugged it into her laptop, and watched the footage for two minutes without speaking.Then she said, "He called someone at 8:53.""Yes," Claire said."My IT contact was able to pull the metadata from the complaint screenshots more thoroughly yesterday afternoon," Carol said. "The device identifier that created the screenshots matches a phone registered to a student account: Marcus Reed's account.""So, the screenshots were created on Marcus's phone," Claire said."At the diner table," Carol said, "while Tyler was on a call in the back.""They coordinated it," Claire said. "Tyler found out I was there, called someone, got confirmation, then Marcus started creating the fake screenshots while Tyler knocked over the water glass as a distraction."