“They’re here as my friends, helping to look for my nephew.”
“You’ve been told you’re not allowed to participate in this investigation.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m well aware of what my boss told me, but I sure do appreciate you refreshing my memory. That’s very helpful during this difficult situation for my family.” Sam pushed by her, prepared to put the captain on her ass if she got in the way, and took the stairs two at a time, propelled by rage. Why did people have to be dicks? What possible thrill did Ruiz get out of busting her balls at a time like this?
She found Archie seated in the hallway in front of the desktop computer.
“What’s up?” Sam asked.
“Mike helped me gain access to their bank and cell accounts. The bank card showed only the purchase of the Metro ticket today. I’ve been reading Ethan’s text messages to his friends and thought you’d want to see this.”
Sam glanced over her shoulder to make sure Ruiz hadn’t followed her.
Archie brought multiple exchanges from that afternoon up on the screen that showed Ethan texting with Tomas and Brecken about a girl who’d called them incels.
“What does that mean?” Sam asked.
“Involuntary celibate,” Archie replied. “It means the girls purposely choose not to have sex with them.”
“Wait, what? These kids are eleven!”
“Read this.” Archie pointed to a message from Brecken.
I don’t know bout u, but I don’t think she shld get away w that. Need to teach her a lesson. Who wit me?
“Oh my God,” Sam whispered. “Are you able to see who they’re talking about?”
“They’re careful not to name her.”
“Did Ethan reply to that?”
“No, but Tomas did. He said he wasn’t sure about that. ‘Maybe she doesn’t know what that means.’ To which Brecken replied, ‘Fuck that shit. She knows.’”
“Is there any way to find out who this Brecken kid is?”
“Not without a warrant to trace his phone to the account, which’ll take days because the phone companies are never helpful that way.”
“Is there a back-office way to do it if someone’s life is at stake?”
“Not that I could do without endangering my career.”
“What the hell are we dealing with here, Archie?”
“Could be anything from aiming to have words with this girl to wanting to assault or kill her.”
“They’re babies,” she whispered, her heart racing with fear. “How can they be involved in something like this?”
“We don’t know for sure Ethan is involved. Maybe he’s trying to talk them out of doing something stupid.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I don’t know him. What do you think?”
“I haven’t seen as much of him in recent months as I used to.” Sam felt enormously guilty about that. Since Nick had become president six months ago, their lives had been more complicated than ever. “Tracy told me recently that he’d been giving them some trouble. She said since he got the phone for his eleventh birthday, he’s been withdrawn and secretive and dropped most of his friends from elementary school. He’s got only phone and texting on the cell phone, but no internet.”
“He has access to the internet on this computer, which Mike didn’t realize. Mike says he spends hours on it every day doing homework and playing games. He and Tracy were under the impression that the games had been downloaded to the computer, but that’s not the case. He plays live online.”
“Are you able to look at the history?”
