Page 12 of Reversal of Fate

8 – Desperately Seeking Julie

Los Angeles, Friday, September 26, 2025, 8:45 p.m.

The sun had already set when Carter reached the address Kathleen had given him. He looked up at the three story mansion. All windows on the top two floors were dark, but there was light in a large room to the left from the entrance door. Since no curtains or blinds covered the window, Carter could see into the room. It appeared to be a large living room. He walked closer and listened, but heard no sounds coming from inside the house.

He walked up the three steps to the front door, and found the doorbell. When he pressed it, it chimed inside. He waited, but heard nothing, no doors opening or closing, no footsteps approaching the door or descending from the stairs. He rang the doorbell a second time, but nothing stirred. The house was empty.

This wasn’t good. He couldn’t let another day pass without making contact with Julie. He needed to find her tonight. And to do that, he had to find out where she’d gone. Perhaps she’d left a clue behind in the house.

Carter glanced back at the street. Several cars drove past, but the house was set back from the street, and the light that should have illuminated the porch and stairs to the house had either burned out or been switched off. Every so often casting a look over his shoulder back at the street, Carter walked to the windows and tested them. All windows facing the street were locked.

He left the porch and went around the house, checking on the windows on the side and back, and finally found one where he could push the sash window up and slide through the opening. He got back on his feet and saw that he was in a large eat-in kitchen. A very messy eat-in kitchen. His mother would have been appalled at the stacks of dirty dishes with half-eaten food piled up on every available surface. She would have called the repair service to fix the household robot responsible for cleaning, and given the manufacturer a piece of her mind while she was at it. Yeah, his mother didn’t take shit from anybody, and particularly not from a robot.

He left the kitchen and walked through the rooms on the first floor, careful not to make any noise in case somebody was home sleeping. The rooms on this floor were clearly communal space, and he found nothing that indicated where Julie and her housemates were.

He walked up the creaking wooden staircase and noticed that there was a light on the landing of the second floor. On this floor, several doors led to bedrooms. And as luck would have it, each door had a sign glued to it, indicating whose room it was.

He found the door marked ‘Julie’s room’ and entered it. It was dark here too, but there was sufficient moonlight shining in from the window for him to see that Julie wasn’t here. He looked outside. The room was overlooking the garden and couldn’t be seen from the street. He felt safe enough to turn on the bedside lamp.

The light source was sufficient for him to look around and search for anything that could indicate where Julie had gone. He noticed various items of clothing tossed on top of each other on a chair, as if she had tried on different outfits. There was a calendar on her desk, but no entries pertaining to tonight.

“Hmm,” Carter grumbled to himself. “Think, man, think. Where does a 20-year old girl go on a Friday night?”

Perhaps a girls’ night out with her roommates? That would explain why nobody was home. And knowing what he knew about Julie, she would be documenting the evening with a selfie posted to her social media accounts.

Carter pulled the sleeve of his linen shirt back and tapped on his holocom. He pulled up the file on Julie and scrolled to the information on her social media accounts. The last post on her Instagram account showed Julie and a black girl dressed up to the nines and smiling at the camera. The picture looked like it could have been taken in the foyer of the house. He read the caption: ‘A night out with my roommates before classes start #UCLA #alldolledup #partyon #studentlife #blessed #livingthebestlife #fraternityparty.’

So not a night out just with the girls, but a fraternity party. Even better. It shouldn’t be too hard to crash a fraternity party. Nobody would think he didn’t belong. But which fraternity? Considering that classes at the university hadn’t started yet, he guessed that pretty much every fraternity in town had a party tonight.

He scrolled through the file again to find if Julie had mentioned any particular fraternity. It was quickest to enter a search that went through all files downloaded on his holocom and flag those that mentioned a fraternity.

It took only seconds for the results to appear in the hologram. There weren’t too many. Clearly, Julie didn’t know many students who were part of a fraternity, nor did she mention any fraternity in particular.

There was only one result left. Carter clicked on it. It was a police report. He did a double-take, but he hadn’t made a mistake. Julie had filed a police report on the morning of Saturday, September 27, 2025. As he read on, his stomach turned, and bile rose into his throat.

Carter instantly knew why Julie had turned radio-silent on her social media accounts. It was right in front him.

Julie Schneider had been raped at a fraternity party on the night of Friday, September 26, 2025. A student who was part of the fraternity, Todd Stirling, had slipped her Rohypnol, or a roofie as it was commonly known. Julie had reported that she only remembered having two drinks, one, which she’d poured herself, and one Todd had given her. There were several photos of a bruised Julie, clearly taken at a hospital, and one photo of the perpetrator, which had been taken at a sports event at the university.

Fuck!

Carter looked at the time. He could only hope that he wasn’t too late. He copied the fraternity’s address on Gayley Avenue from the police report into his cell phone to find the fastest way there. Then he rushed out of the house.