Concerning Chance ✔

THIRTY

Max helps me corner Baxter once we get to school. We track him down in his P.E. class, tell him that the headmistress wants to see him and then we take a detour. We lock ourselves and him in Greene's counselling office, which sort of feels like my territory, in a way. Greene has, thankfully, decided to have the day off.

"What the fuck is this all about?" Baxter demands, folding his arms across his chest.

Max and I follow our plan, while the recorder on my phone ticks away silently, secretly capturing every syllable.

"We know you met up with Chance through the GoodHoneys app," I cut straight to the chase, not wanting to spend any more time with him than necessary. "Presumably, you had sex. I'm sure you didn't mean to hurt her—"

"Don't be so sure," Baxter spits as he slowly paces around the room; a predator stalking its prey, even though we've cornered him — the tables have turned.

"So what did you do to her?" Max asks with a blank face as if he couldn't care less.

"Wait, why are you asking all these questions?" Baxter questions, furrowing his eyebrows. "You're not like, reporting me or anything, right?"

"No, no," Max replies carelessly. "We're, ah, doing a study on sexual relations."

"Fucking gay girls usually turns them straight. Sometimes but not always." Baxter jams his hands in his pockets. "Didn't work with Chance."

"What did you do, then?" I ask, struggling not to snap.

Baxter is all too keen to share as a cruel sneer covers his face. "You can tell she's a fucking lesbian — no clue how to take dick properly. So, like any decent guy, I tried to straighten her out a little." He chuckles at himself. "Let's just say I tossed her around a bit and gave it to her rough. She might've bumped into the wall with her head once or twice."

It's unbelievable just how easily he gave up the truth.

"Thanks, Baxter. You've been a great help." Max smiles falsely at him and unlocks the door. "Don't worry, we'll give you credit for what you told us."

"Huh, you better," Baxter scoffs as he leaves.

Max shuts and locks the door again, before hurrying over to me. "Please tell me you got all of that."

We stand and listen in silence to the recording which, although slightly muffled by my blazer, caught every misogynistic word that left Baxter's disgusting mouth.

It is people like Baxter who prevent society from progressing; he's one of those homophobic, misogynistic, most likely racist, guys who cling to beliefs that should've died a long time ago.

"I can't believe that..." I shake my head as I turn to face Max. "Why would he...?"

"I don't know." Max sighs softly. "I don't know."

"What do we do with this now?"

"We have to send it to the police."

Fishing out Detective Barrow's business card which I somehow had the hindsight to pocket this morning, I lean against Greene's desk as I send the audio file to the email address on the card, before dialling the number.

I keep it simple and short — I tell her that we knew Chance was using some sort of dating app and we managed to figure out that Baxter was involved — and now the police basically had a full-blown confession. I don't tell her that Lilia stole Chance's phone from the police department; it's an irrelevance considering Heather returned it to the evidence storeroom last night.

"Thank you, Rory," Barrow tells me after scribbling down everything I say on a piece of paper — I could hear the pencil scratching away. "We'd been able to gather intel from Chance's phone, so we knew she was involved in sexual assault, but we didn't know who assaulted her."