Murray scrolled eagerly through the thread, but he saw right away that they hadn’t actually exchanged pictures, only discussed rumors that a kid named Brendan had them. Was it the same Brendan that they’d questioned about the party? He would check in with him. He was about to hand the phone back to Dr. Johnson when he decided to see if there were any texts with this kid Brendan. In for a penny, he thought, in for a pound.

He scrolled down through the list of conversations, which seemed to be between the same few girls, looking for Brendan’s name, but it wasn’t there. But buried in the mountain of text exchanges—where did they find the time?—was a local number that didn’t have a name attached as a contact. Murray paused. It looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. He weighed the odds of it being important enough to do this the right way, with a warrant, and quickly decided that it was most likely nothing. He opened the message.

It was a picture of a girl in her bra, with the usual abbreviated texts that accompanied those kinds of pictures. Sexting was becoming more and more common, Detective Murray thought, even among teenagers. U look hot. Hey sexy. He reread the last line twice: Go get those bad guys. Now, that didn’t seem right. Who were these texts with—Batman? He looked at the number on Rosie’s phone again, and then pulled out his own phone and typed it in. Up came the contact info for Jake Tillman, Assistant District Attorney.

Murray held both phones in his hands, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. He was aware of Dr. Johnson and Ms. Grady watching him. “Did you find something?” Dr. Johnson asked.

“Possibly.” He tried to quickly sort through what he knew. A student at New Falls High is exchanging pictures and texts with Jake. Not many, but these might just be the ones she forgot to delete. He’d worked with Jake for several years and shared plenty of beers with him after work. Did this fit in with what he knew about Jake? Absolutely not. Did that mean it wasn’t true? Of course not.