“I’m actually with Special Agent Bryn out of the Chicago FBI office. He has a couple questions for you,” Dad said.
“Do we need Ms. Addison for this?” I asked.
She’d been very insistent that we do exactly that if we ever talked to the FBI.
“I have her on hold. Let me three-way her in,” Dad said.
When she came on the line, she told us to answer all the questions Special Agent Bryn had for us truthfully. She reminded us that telling an FBI agent an untruth was a felony. That caught Tim and Wolf’s attention. He’d already interviewed everyone at home, including Tim and Wolf’s parents, so he didn’t have a lot to ask us other than if anyone from the university had contacted us. To date, no one had.
I did learn that Wolf and Tim had each received five thousand in cash with a note similar to mine, which only said ‘Go Blue.’ My friends weren’t happy when they found out that Special Agent Bryn planned to confiscate the envelope, note, and money, for now, as evidence.
Dad had already handed over the money given to the charities and provided the FBI access to the GoFundMe accounts. The FBI planned to backtrack the transactions for any clues as to who sent them.
Special Agent Bryn said that if he had any other questions, he would be in touch. When he left the room, Dad asked us to hold on as he said goodbye to Ms. Addison. A moment later, Mr. Morris, my sports attorney, was on the line with my dad.
“I wanted to give you an update on my conversation with the NCAA.”
“You do represent us now, right?” Tim asked.
“Yes. We think it best that I represent all three of you in this,” Mr. Morris agreed.
“Okay, just checking,” Tim said.
“Like you, they suspect that the money came from Southwest Central State, but there is no concrete proof. I understand that the school hasn’t contacted any of you. Is that correct?”
All of us agreed.
“I’ll call the NCAA and assure them of that. From what they said, and my experience working there, they can’t really act on it. My guess is that they’ll turn the information over to their investigative team to verify everything. If what we have shared is the truth, then we have nothing to worry about,” Mr. Morris assured us.
“This is where you need to tell us if there’s anything you left out,” Dad said, playing … well, a dad.
“Do you think Stewart Chadwick will be the investigator?” I asked.
“I think you can count on it. He was the one who was working on this originally,” Mr. Morris said.
And finally, frick! Hindsight being 20/20, I shouldn’t have pissed him off. But I hadn’t been in the mood to maintain the charade that I had any interest in playing football at Southwest Central State. I also didn’t like how Stewart had tried to bully me into continuing with his sting operation.
“Do you think that will be a problem?” Dad asked.
“No. His bosses know that everyone has done everything by the book. It was all I could do to not share Mr. Chadwick’s threats. I agree that we can’t really do anything until he acts on them,” Mr. Morris said.
The looks from the other three at the table told me that I would need to explain all that. I was a little surprised that Brook hadn’t told Cassidy, given Brook had shared her mom and dad’s problems.
“He will act on his threats,” I predicted.
“He might,” Mr. Morris agreed. “But he doesn’t wield as much power as he thinks he does.”
Dad wrapped up the call with Mr. Morris and then asked to talk to me alone. I took a stroll for some privacy. I noticed Cassidy at my side, so I just put Dad back on speaker. If it was something I wanted to keep from Brook, I could turn it off. I trusted Cassidy.
“Mr. Voorhees is pushing for a settlement. Zander’s lawyers went to the judge and asked to see all the video Zak had. Zak’s lawyers agreed to show the judge and let him decide. He suppressed the rest since it had no bearing on the case. That essentially stopped Zander’s lawyers from turning this into a potential problem for Zak.
“The judge did strongly suggest that Zak get releases from everyone on the videos to cover his butt. If Zak could produce those, then he wouldn’t have to worry about any other repercussions,” Dad said.
In a way, it was both good and bad that Zak had set up cameras in his downstairs bedroom and recorded people getting frisky at his parties. On the bad side, recording people without their knowledge was both wrong and illegal. That was why we had signs in our house and other private places I occupied, like hotel rooms. It was to notify everyone that for security purposes, we had video set up.
Doing it in public was a different matter. That was how the paparazzi could park their butts on a hill and record celebrities through their windows or around the pool. When that happened, the rules could get sketchy, and that was why I had my security and attorneys around to figure it all out.
“Do you think Zak’ll have a problem getting the releases from the people he videoed that night?” I asked.
Dad laughed.
