Seth reached into his jacket pocket and put his phone on the table between them, screen face down. She looked at the phone. Then she looked at him. “The angle is from across the courtyard,” he said. “You can see clearly that Briggs initiates contact. You can see clearly what you do after.” He paused. “You can also hear Derek’s voice. Not every word, but enough.”
“Seth.” “I wasn’t there,” he said quickly. “My study group member filmed it on her phone because she had it out and it happened in front of her and she didn’t think about it. She just recorded. She sent it to me because she knew I was in the library with you last night.” He looked at her steadily. “I know I should have asked before accepting it, but I’m not sorry I have it.”
She looked at him for a long moment. This earnest, careful, genuinely decent person who had been learning one event at a time over the last two days. The difference between watching something happen and being part of what happened. She thought about what he had said the night before about waiting for someone else to go first. “I need to show it to someone,” she said. “I know. That is why I brought it.”
She took her phone out and he AirDropped it to her. She watched it twice. He was right about the angle. She was right about what it showed. She sent it to a folder she had created that morning and labeled simply as evidence. She looked up at him. “I need to ask you something,” she said. “Okay.” “If this goes to the full disciplinary hearing on Friday. There is a chance you will be asked to provide a witness account of what happened in the cafeteria yesterday. Not just the video, but a direct account of what you saw.”
Seth was quiet. “I know I didn’t do anything yesterday,” he said. “That is not what I am asking. I am asking if you will do something now.” He looked at the table, then back at her, the processing look, slow and thorough. The look she had come to understand was what genuine consideration looked like on his face. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll do it.” She nodded. They worked in silence for a while. The library’s quiet settled around them like something habitual.
After about forty minutes, Ren’s phone rang. She looked at the screen. Tusk. She stepped away from the table and answered it. “I talked to her,” Tusk said. “Her name is Deanna Marsh, no relation to the professor. She graduated two years ago. She is in Columbus doing civil engineering and she listened to what I said and she was quiet for a long time.” “What did she say?” “She said she withdrew her complaint because two days before the formal hearing, her academic scholarship was placed under review for unrelated reasons that were never clearly explained to her. And that when she inquired about the review, she was told it would likely be resolved quickly if the situation at the hearing level could be managed without institutional disruption.”
Ren closed her eyes for a moment. She understood what that meant. Tusk continued. “She was a first-generation college student. She needed that scholarship to stay enrolled. She made a decision she has thought about every day since.” “Is she willing to put that account on record?” Tusk paused. “She said she needs to think about it overnight.” “That is fair.” “She also said something else.” He paused again and in the pause she could hear something in his voice that she had not heard before. Weight to it. “She said she is glad someone is still trying.”
Ren stood in the corridor outside the library’s north stairwell and said nothing for a moment. “Call you in the morning,” she said. She went back to the table. Seth looked at her face when she sat down. “Good news or bad news?” he asked. “Both,” she said. “At the same time, which is usually how it works.” He nodded. She opened her notebook and added an item to the second column.
She was still writing when her phone buzzed with a text. Unknown number, no name. It said, “Withdraw your report and this stops. Don’t and it won’t.” She read it. She took a photo of the screen with her second phone, the old one she kept charged for exactly the kind of situation where you needed a record of something that might be deleted. Then she added the photo to the evidence folder. Then she set her phone down and went back to her notes.