A bullet between the eyes would be too good for you.

Think you can hide from us? Wherever you go in America people will know. Everyone is watching you and your asshole kid.

The vitriol didn’t surprise me. What amazed me was the fact that people left their real names attached to such venom.

I put the phone down on the counter and said to Gloria, “Have you thought about shutting down your Facebook page? You’re just giving these people a way to get in touch with you.”

“I have to defend myself,” Gloria said. “I can’t let people get away with saying those things about me.”

“You’re giving them an outlet to say it,” I pointed out.

She closed her eyes briefly and sighed. Clearly she’d had to explain her position on this before.

“They’d be saying it anyway. This way, I know who it is and can respond.” A tear formed in the corner of her right eye. “They don’t understand. They have no idea.”

“How did these people become your friends in the first place?” I asked. “Don’t people have to ask, and then you accept?”

Grant Finch gave me a tired look. “We’ve talked about this.”

“I like to know who my enemies are,” Gloria said defiantly.

“It’s like you’ve opened the front door for them,” I said. “What about actual phone calls? Have you been threatened that way?”

She shook her head. “Bob insisted we change our numbers, unlist them. We were getting calls every hour of the day.”

Bob said, “There’s more than just the Facebook stuff. Madeline, have you got your laptop handy?”

Ms. Plimpton disappeared from the kitchen and seconds later reappeared carrying one of those super-thin Macs. Bob lifted up the lid, opened a browser, and made a few lightning-quick keystrokes.

“I can’t bear to look at this anymore,” Ms. Plimpton said. She went to the fridge, grabbed a can of Coke. “I’ll take this out to Jeremy.” She exited the kitchen.

Bob turned the Mac towards me, and I read the headline across the top of the page: “Teach the Big Baby a Lesson.” There was a graphic, what they called a GIF or something, of a whining infant that repeated every three or four seconds. Below that, people had commented about what they would like to do to Jeremy Pilford. Some recommended he be run over with a car, just as he’d done with his victim. Someone else called for beheading, ISIS style. Someone else liked the idea of hitting him with a car, but with a difference. They wanted him to live, as a cripple, so he could be reminded every day of what he’d done.

“This isn’t the only site like this,” Bob pointed out. “There’s one sort of like Anonymous. You know? The network who’ve exposed government secrets online, who’ve hacked websites? Except this site, they promote a more hands-on approach. None of this social-network shaming. They advocate actual violence. There’s a contest, did you know that? A ‘Spot the Big Baby’ contest on the site. People are invited to send in tips where Jeremy might be. The whole world’s looking for him. If he goes anywhere, someone tweets about it with a hashtag of #sawthebaby or #babyspot. Some yahoos are even offering cash rewards for whoever finds him, even more money for who finds him and does something to him. For all we know, there are hacker types out there trying to figure out how to track his every move.”