“No, no. I’m sorry, Mr. Lynch, I just—I don’t understand. My information didn’t say anything about his having passed away.”
“I don’t know how you can know Amanda and not know that she killed her father. Not that it was her fault. My brother William always was a fucking asshole.”
My ears were ringing.Holy. Shit.
“I’m sorry, what?” My voice was high and shrill.
“Amanda killed her father. Twelve, thirteen years ago,” he said, with less of an edge this time. “But he deserved it for sure.”
“What happened?”
“Apparently Amanda came up on William in the bathroom on top of one of her girlfriends. They’d been spending the night at that dump of a trailer on prom weekend, of all damn things. William was drunk and, um, violating the friend, or trying to. Cops said the friend was already dead by then—William had hit her head on the bathtub. My guess is that part was an accident. He probably didn’t even notice. William was so damn huge, bigger than me. I know that doesn’t make what he was doing better, but …”
Xavier glanced up at me. His eyes were sad now, and ashamed.
“I’m sorry,” I said reflexively.
“Yeah, well, Amanda tried to save her friend, I guess. There was a straight razor sitting right there on the sink. And that was that.” Xavier shook his head, looked down, and kicked at the doorframe. “And that was that. Fucking waste. My brother never was right, though, not even as a little kid. Not crazy, just wrong. As a grown-ass man, he was one sick son of a bitch.”
My mouth felt glued shut. I swallowed hard.
“What was Amanda’s friend’s name?” I asked, pressing my heels down. The ground felt unsteady beneath me. “Do you know?”
Xavier looked up toward the sky. “Cathy or Connie …”
“Carolyn?”
“That’s it. Carolyn,” he said with a nod. “Her and Amanda were like sisters. Or that’s what people said. I got to be honest—details were lost on me back then. I had a lot of problems. That’s why I’ve stopped drinking—that garbage will ruin your life.”
KRELL INDUSTRIES
CONFIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION
Attorney-Client Work Product
Privileged & Confidential
July 2
To:Brooklyn Country Day Board of Directors
From:Krell Industries
Subject:Data Breach & Cyber Incident Investigation—Progress Report
Interview Summaries:
A total of 56 families have come forward to be interviewed regarding hacking of their personal information. Each occurrence involved the theft of personally compromising information. In no instance did anyone comply with the demand for money. Nonetheless, in no case was the threatened retaliatory action ever taken—no potentially defamatory information has yet been made public.
Preliminary Conclusions:
Evidence continues to suggest that the individual responsible:
Had some change in circumstance with respect to Brooklyn Country Day in April or May of this year.
Stands to benefit in some secondary way from the harassment, such as a reporter who would then move in to cover the alleged hacking.
It is possible a Brooklyn Country Day student is seeking to inflict discomfort or embarrassment on fellow students. We will work with the administration to isolate any such students.
