Shades of Limelight

8: Inquiring

After the initial sting of getting cropped out of my second front-page story wore off, Ryan was ready to help me with interviewing football players until we got some kind of lead we could use. I certainly wasn't expecting one of the guys to rat out another, but at the same time, I wanted to believe that most of them truly had no idea what happened to Courtney.

She didn't get sick out of nowhere. It wasn't just alcohol. Someone was trying to hurt her and get away with it, and what kind of reporter would I be if I just let it happen? Even Isabel, who was apparently much sneakier and conniving than I originally believed, was on my side in this one instance. With everything else, though, she was out to get me.

With Ryan humming a tune to himself that I didn't recognize, we knocked on the door of our first potential witness, a football player by the name of Deiondre Hill. I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to ask him, but hopefully, he would do most of the talking anyway. I did, in fact, have a signed permission slip from Corey.

Deiondre opened up the door. He was built exactly like I thought he would be as a linebacker—tall, with strong legs and muscular arms—and he dressed the part too, with his Adidas sweats.

"You can't be serious right now. You're here after what you did to my boy Hansen?" he said.

He must not have seen the school paper website in the morning, then, but I took in a breath and reminded myself to remain professional, even if two could play at that game. "Hi Deiondre. Corey actually sent me because he thinks you may have seen or heard about something that happened during that party a few nights ago."

"I didn't see shit. What the hell are you implying?"

I help my hands up defensively. "I'm not implying anything. He just gave me a list of people that he knew were at the party. It says nothing about you, and we're not judging the list in any way. I just—here." I held out the signed note from Corey. It was ridiculous I even needed it in the first place. "It just says that Corey is working with me to figure out who's responsible for what happened to that sorority girl Courtney."

"I can read," he said.

Ryan held back a snicker beside me, even though he knew that I didn't mean anything by that explanation.

"Well, if you have any sort of information about what you saw or heard at all during the party, it would be helpful to us. I'm sure you know, but my name's Layla Gaudreau, and this is my colleague Ryan Hoffman, and we're with the Badger Herald. We're just trying to get to the bottom of what happened to Courtney Maddox on the night of the eighth," I said.

Deiondre hesitated for a moment. "Is this going to take long? I have practice in an hour."

I shook my head. "It'll take as long as you give us. We can get coffee if you'd like. My treat."

He nodded. Smart man. "Let's do that."

Ryan gave me a nod of approval. It certainly wasn't the first time I had to defuse a tiny situation to get someone to talk to me, and if my career panned out the way I wanted, it wouldn't be the last.

Even though someone had done something so terrible, I hoped many more people would be willing to help than harm.

***

"This has been a productive day," Ryan said as he opened up the door to the news room for me.

Deiondre didn't tell us anything about Courtney that we didn't already know, but he was able to confirm that Corey wasn't lying when he said that he didn't arrive until everything was starting to go downhill. Even though the list was all I had, it convinced me that it was at least a valid place to start.