One Wild Night

Although it was a Saturday morning, Amy walked into her office with a displeased look on her face as she joined four of her colleagues who were already gathered there and were waiting for her. 

"Why did you all have to keep ringing my line?" Amy asked in annoyance as she eyed them. The rest of them were still dressed in the clothes they had worn the previous day unlike her who was dressed in tennis shorts, an oversized polo t-shirt, and a pair of sneakers. 

Seeing the empty styrofoam cups of coffee on their desks, it was clear that they had slept in the office and had worked over the night. It served them right?

"We are sorry, okay? We are all a team and we need your help to do this, please," One of the men pleaded. 

"I don't see why you're doing any of this when you already concluded that she was guilty. I was on my way somewhere when you called," Amy said impatiently.

"Tell her what you learnt," the other men, told one of the ladies who stood with both arms folded across her chest.

"She might not be guilty as we thought..."

"Point of correction, as YOU thought. I never thought she was guilty, and even if she did kill him, I'm positive she had good reasons for doing so," Amy cut in, and the others sighed.

"You're right. We spent most of the night going through articles on the case eight years ago, and I called an acquaintance of mine who was in that school at the same time as Miss Perry," the lady who was giving Amy the breakdown of all they had done said, looking shamefaced.

"And?" Amy asked with a slightly raised brow.

"He said he vividly remembers the incident with Miss Perry because his best friend was assaulted by the college student in question. According to him, the guy used to confront and assault any guy that showed interest in Miss Perry, claiming he was her boyfriend," the lady added. 

"But he wasn't her boyfriend?" Amy asked, shuddering involuntarily at the thought of a guy doing that to men who were interested in her.

"No. I don't think he was. According to Miss Perry's best friend's testimony..."

"Why don't you tell her who Miss Perry's best friend is?" The second lady in the unit asked, unable to conceal her excitement since she was the one who had made the connection between Miss Perry's best friend, and the CEO's younger brother. 

Amy tried to hide her curiosity as she turned to look at the lady. Although she had been worried the previous day when the CEO ordered them to prove Lucy's innocence or lose their jobs, she had been reassured by Lucy's words the previous day and had decided to let her teammates do the job alone while she focused on her weekend sports as usual. Seeing how much they had uncovered, and how excited they were to share what they knew, she somehow wished she had joined them. 

"Miss Perry's best friend is Sonia Smith!" The second lady who couldn't wait for her colleague to say it blurted it out herself.

"Sonia Smith?" Amy asked, trying to recall where she has seen or heard that name recently.

"Come on, Amy! Don't tell us you don't who Sonia Smith is!" One of the men exclaimed in disappointment when they saw how her brows furrowed as she tried to figure out who Sonia Smith was, and why they were excited about her being Miss Perry's best friend.

"Who is she?" Amy asked dourly.

"She is Bryan Hank's fiancee who just broke up their engagement yesterday. And just in case you don't know who Bryan Hank is, he is the CEO's younger brother," the first lady explained, and Amy's eyes widened slightly as realization dawned on her.

"That explains why the CEO made her his personal assistant, and it also explains why he is taking her side. He probably already knows about what happened since she is like his sister-in-law, right?" One of the men asked.

"And more important than that, Miss Perry's best friend, Sonia is the half-sister of the college student who the media claims she murdered. Would you remain friends with your best friend if she murdered your half-brother and your parents?" The second lady asked.

"Now back to what I was saying, according to the articles we saw on the news, Miss Perry couldn't say a word during the court proceedings because according to the doctors she was still in shock, and so her best friend spoke in her defense, and some of their male classmates also testified. Sonia's half-brother stalked her, and then he abducted her on her prom night..."

Amy shuddered and raised both hands to stop her, "Is this a movie or you're actually being serious?" She asked in horror.

One of the men raised the printed article for Amy to see, "It was in the news. Maybe if we had done proper research before jumping to conclusions, we wouldn't have said all that we said about her yesterday without knowing the truth," he said sadly.

"So can you all let me speak without interrupting me anymore?" The first lady asked irritably.

"Sorry. You can go on," the others said.

"So as I was saying, he abducted her, and her parents reported her missing when they didn't see her after twenty-four hours."

"It took them twenty-four hours to realize she was missing? Does that make sense?" Amy asked in disbelief. At that age, her mother would realize she was missing within an hour because the woman never ran out of errands to send her.

"That was explained," the first lady said as she went on to tell Amy how Lucy had pretended that she was going to be attending prom, but had told Sonia she would be home with her parents. And how her parents had left her at home by herself thinking she was waiting for her prom date. The drink had been spiked at the party, so her twin brother who was with his girlfriend had been too hungover to notice her absence, and Sonia had stayed at her home all day, leading their parents to believe that Miss Perry had spent the night at Sonia's, until Sonia came visiting that evening, and they all realized that she was missing. It took them a week to find her.

A tear dropped from Amy's eyes as she listened to them, "It took twenty-four hours for her absence to be noticed, and a week to find her. That must have been so scary for a kid at that age," Amy said emotionally.

"I would kill the bastard if she was my sister," one of the men said, and the others nodded. 

"Yet his parents had the guts to accuse Miss Perry of murdering their son when according to Sonia they destroyed every evidence in their son's bedroom that would prove that he was stalking Miss Perry," the first lady said, and Amy felt her blood boil in anger.

"Who was the bastard who put up this news on the internet, and what did the person stand to gain by making the poor lady relive such a horrible experience?" Amy asked no one in particular.

"Who knows? That's why we called you. What should we do with all that we have found? Are we to wait until Monday to talk to speak with the CEO? We would like to apologize to Miss Perry. We already went to all the social media accounts where people are bashing her to defend her. We also sent the message to our friends to do the same, and we reached out to other departmental heads to spread the news in the departmental group chats," the first lady said, as Amy wiped an angry tear from her eyes. 

"I won't say I'm still not disappointed in all of you. But I'm glad you're making an effort to clear her name. Let's all publish the evidence we have on our social media page. I'm sure that will make things easier for Miss Perry," Amy suggested as she went to take her seat.

"Do you think people will believe this? Especially if it's based on Sonia's testimony?" The second lady asked as the others went to take their seat.

"What do you mean?" Amy asked with a frown, and the lady rolled her eyes at Amy's ignorance.

"Sonia has been trending for all the wrong reasons since she broke off her engagement with Bryan yesterday. The media claims they are not in a real relationship and they deceived everyone, but Bryan's agency released an article over an hour ago saying Sonia emotionally blackmailed Bryan into getting involved with her just to ride on his coattail. I don't think anyone is going to believe that Miss Perry is innocent based on Sonia's testimony," the second lady explained, "Not that I believed anything I read," she quickly added when Amy pursed her lips thoughtfully.

"Thinking about it now, what if Sonia broke up the engagement with Bryan when she saw the news about her best friend? That may be the reason she did that, right? Maybe she didn't want to drag Bryan into it?" The first lady asked curiously.

"That is possible, but that doesn't explain the issue about her using Bryan to get fame," one of the men pointed out. 

"I don't think Sonia was using Bryan though. Those people have real chemistry," the first lady said, and the second lady nodded. 

"The lady who interviewed them at the beginning of the show is my cousin's friend, and she said she doesn't think they're faking things either," the second lady said. 

"Why does it sound like the same person that started Miss Perry's issue, is behind this too? Do you all think it is a coincidence that both best friends are having issues at exactly the same time?" Amy asked thoughtfully, and the others paused to consider it.

"Who could be behind it? And why?" One of the men asked. 

"Let's leave that to them to figure out. Your cousin's friend works for a newspaper?" Amy asked the second lady curiously.

"No. Opal's magazine," the lady corrected.

"If I'm not mistaken, that is the most read magazine in the country. Do you think she would be willing to help us cover this? Maybe if I could visit Miss Perry, and convince her so that she and her best friend would clear the air by granting the lady an interview?" Amy asked hopefully.

"I don't see why not. Lots of media houses would be wanting this opportunity. I doubt that either Miss Perry or Sonia would be willing to do it though," the second lady said. 

"Leave that to me. I will try to convince her," Amy said confidently as she stood up to leave for Lucy's house.

"I will come with you. I need to apologize to her," one of the men said, looking very embarrassed.

"It will be best if you all focus on spreading the proof of her innocence on social media while I try to convince her. You can all apologize to her after we have restored her dignity," Amy said before walking away. 

She knew that what she was going to ask Lucy to do was quite difficult, but that was the only way.. Telling the truth was the only way to expose a lie.