“Do you know what was in that text?” I asked.
“I didn’t send it,” he said right away. “I swear!”
“That’s fine. I just need to hear what happened,” I said. “From you.”
“Ryan, answer the detective’s question. Do you know what was in the text or not?” the congressman asked.
For the first time, Ryan was looking me right in the eye. He wound the drawstring of a crimson Branaff School hoodie around one finger, then unwound it. Then he wound it up again.
Finally, he said, “Do you think they’re dead?”
“Ryan!” His mother looked horrified. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”
I think he was just trying to change the subject, but I answered him anyway. “I hope not,” I said. Then I tore a page out of my notebook and slid it across the table. “How about if you write down what was in that text, and we’ll call it a morning?”
Ryan twisted around in his chair to look at his father again. The congressman nodded, and I set my pen down for him. He cupped his hand around the page while he wrote something, then turned it over and weighted it under an antique snow globe on the coffee table. For a few seconds, some glittery snow flew around the miniature Victorian house inside.
“Can I go now?” he asked.
“You can go. Thank you, Ryan. That was helpful.”
I waited for him to leave the room. Then I turned the paper over where his parents and I could see it. In a ragged, kid’s handwriting, it said, “Zoe C — I want 2 cum on yr tits.”
“Oh my God.” Mrs. Townsend looked away. “That is absolutely disgusting.”
The congressman took the paper off the table and pocketed it before there could be any question of my keeping it. “We’re going to speak with Headmaster Skillings about this — independent of anything else,” he said.
I could understand their embarrassment, but the profanity seemed like typical middle school bravado to me. Sad, but true. It was just the kind of thing a boy might write to impress his friends, sometime after the hormones started kicking in and before he really understood what it all meant. In any case, I thanked the Townsends for their time and quietly let myself out of the house.
When I got back to the car, I scribbled a single note to myself for later:
“Where is Zoe’s phone?”
I SPENT MOST of that day crisscrossing the city, interviewing other Branaff
students who knew either Zoe or Ethan and socialized with them. Then late in the afternoon, I drove up to Riverdale, Maryland, for one last stop. This one was unannounced.
George O’Shea lived on a corner lot in a gridded, middle-class neighborhood just off the East – West Highway.
I parked under the basketball hoop on his freshly black-topped driveway and went up to ring the bell.
He was smoking a cigar when he answered the door. At Branaff, O’Shea’s custodial uniform was always clean and pressed, but here he was wearing an old flannel shirt, open halfway down his chest. I could hear a game on the TV somewhere behind him.
“It’s Detective Cross, right?” he said, squinting at me through the fly-specked screen.
“Sorry to come by on a Saturday,” I said. “We’re working around the clock on this. Just a few follow-up questions if you don’t mind.”
For a brief second, he looked like he did mind, like he wasn’t entirely sure I was giving him the whole story. And I wasn’t.
Ever since I’d met O’Shea, my mind kept coming back to him. It wasn’t anything I could put my finger on. Just a vague sense that behind all the smiles and the interest in police work, there was something he wasn’t saying. It was only a hunch at this point, but I’ve taken action on less than that before.
“How’s it going, anyway?” he asked. “Any good leads, or whatever you call it?”
“Nothing I can really talk about,” I said.
He nodded and rocked back on his heels. “Right. I understand. Still, it must be interesting work, huh?”
I watched him through the door. What was he thinking about right now?