Archie came into the room and took a seat, his sharp dark-eyed gaze taking in the slides on the screen as he received a printout of the presentation from Avery. “Thank you. Sorry I’m late.”
Ruiz introduced him to Agent Fuller and gave him a brief summary of what’d been covered so far.
“I was working on digging into Mayfield,” Archie said, “and I found something interesting. His father, Asher Mayfield, is extremely active in the local manosphere groups and leads one of them, called the Dead Chads.” Archie handed a stack of stapled documents to the person on either side of him that were passed around.
Sam took one and passed the rest.
The name Asher Mayfield was followed by a list of his affiliations with manosphere groups.
“How were you able to tie him to these groups, Archie?” Sam asked.
“He makes no attempt to hide it. See his social media posts on page three.”
Sam read an X post that said, Who do these bitches think they are, acting like they can have anyone they want while ignoring the rest of us like we’re locusts? They think we’re the problem when we all know THEY ARE. THEY’RE THE PROBLEM, and that problem needs to be solved.
The post had thousands of likes and comments in support of the statement.
Bile burned the back of her throat as she read through the horrific public statements. These people were walking around in society, riddled with anger and brimming with violent tendencies that could explode into action at any moment.
She was terrified for Ethan and Tomas, but even more so for Luna. If Brecken and his father had her…
Fuller went through a long glossary of terms used by these men, including Blackpill, hypergamy, mogged, looksmaxxing and truecel, among many other disturbing expressions. Each of them represented some troubling aspect of the manosphere philosophies.
“Holy shit,” Nick muttered softly.
Sam squeezed his hand, more thankful than ever that he’d accompanied her today. “How do we use this information to find these missing kids?”
“I think we start with finding Asher Mayfield,” Ruiz said. “And his son.”
“Agreed,” Avery said as Jesse Best nodded.
“There’s no way it’s a coincidence that Asher’s son was spouting off about incels to his younger friends, trying to get them to help lure Ahern out, and then the girl who rejected him goes missing,” Jesse said.
“That’s my feeling as well,” Agent Fuller said. “Locating the Mayfields will be critical to finding these missing kids.”
“Then let’s get on that,” Ruiz said. “Right now.”
* * *
Plans were made and assignments doled out before the officers dispersed to continue the search. Fuller and his team were handling the online forums and Mayfield’s social media to look for clues to his whereabouts. Asher Mayfield’s parole officer was notified that the MPD would be issuing additional warrants for his arrest on suspicion of aiding his minor son in the kidnapping of three juveniles. They also issued one for Brecken, since he seemed to be the ringleader of whatever had taken place the day before.
“We need to make the case for the arrest warrants,” Malone said.
“I could take that if it would help,” Sam said.
“Go ahead,” Ruiz replied.
“Should we also update the families that we’ve identified persons of interest?” Sam asked.
“Do you want to take that as well?” Ruiz asked.
Her collegial attitude was a bit jarring, but Sam wasn’t about to look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth. “Sure, I’ll do that.” It occurred to her as she collected her belongings and glanced at Nick to make sure he was with her that he, rather than the story Sam had shared, might be the reason for Ruiz’s change in tone. Maybe the captain didn’t want to act like a dick in front of the president.
Under any other circumstances, she might take a minute to pick that apart. Under these circumstances, she didn’t give a flying fuck why Ruiz was being nice to her as long as Sam was allowed to help find Ethan.
When they returned to her office, Sam fired up her computer and started writing the justification for the Mayfield arrest warrants while Nick took a phone call from his chief of staff, Terry O’Connor, outside the room.
Sam barely blinked as she created a narrative about what they suspected had taken place with Mayfield and his son. She cited the father’s active, public embrace of the so-called manosphere and the associated posts, as well as the text messages between the kids, in which the word incel had been used.
