Page 61 of My Child is Missing

“Yes,” said Shelly. More tears slid down her face. “Now she won’t even be able to go.”

THIRTY-NINE

Josie stopped in the first-floor breakroom after Shelly Patchett left. The coffee pot had one cup left in it, but it was thick and smelled scorched. Josie turned the coffeemaker off and took the pot to the sink to rinse it out. She was mentally calculating which would take longer—cleaning it and brewing a new pot or walking down to Komorrah’s, when Noah walked in. “There you are,” he said. “Everything go okay?”

Josie used a sponge to scrub the bottom of the coffee pot. Flakes of burnt coffee came off its glass surface. “Dave Patchett thinks we’re incompetent and lazy but other than that, I suppose.”

She told him about her conversation with Shelly.

He leaned against the doorway, crossing his arms over his chest. “Interesting.”

“What did the Evanses want?”

“They just had a lot of questions about how this works—a murder investigation. They also spent a lot of time complaining about the Patchetts. I think it was easier to focus on them than the loss of their daughter. They were upset that Kayleigh had accused Felicia of plagiarism, even though from the text exchange between the two girls you showed me upstairs, it looks like Kayleigh was right.”

“And her own parents didn’t even believe her,” Josie said.

“Pretty sad,” Noah agreed.

“Did you happen to ask them what an SJ story was?”

“They didn’t know. Maybe it has something to do with the after-school program. I’m not sure it really matters.”

Josie got the last of the scorched coffee remnants out of the pot and started rinsing the soap from it. “I guess it doesn’t. What really matters is trying to locate this boyfriend. Especially since he made threats, according to Kayleigh.”

Josie filled the coffee pot up with fresh water and dumped it into the reservoir. “It’s just strange to me that Kayleigh had proof and didn’t use it. Even Felicia basically admitted that Kayleigh had the proof.”

“Felicia bluffed on having screenshotted her other stories.”

“If those stories were sick, like Felicia said, then it wasn’t for school.”

“Right,” Noah said, crossing the room and opening the overhead cabinet next to Josie. He fished out the coffee and handed it to Josie. “They had to be somewhere that Felicia could access them and screenshot them. Where would—”

Josie froze midway through scooping coffee into the filter. “An app! Noah, the story Felicia stole—all of Kayleigh’s stories—were on an app. I can’t believe I didn’t notice.”

“Notice what?”

“They’ve both got the same app on their phones: StoryJot. The Patchetts told me it was an app where Kayleigh could read fan fiction from her favorite video games. An app that allows for fan fiction would be an app where users could both read stories and write their own. The content must be user-generated. The SJ story. It has to be StoryJot. Kayleigh uploaded a story to the app and Felicia stole it and passed it off as her own. Can you get Kayleigh’s phone from the evidence locker and meet me at my desk?”

“Of course.”

Josie abandoned the coffee, her adrenaline driving her back up the stairs to her desk, where Felicia’s phone waited. The StoryJot logo danced across the screen as the app opened.

It took a couple of minutes for her to familiarize herself with it. It was not user-friendly. By the time Noah arrived with Kayleigh’s phone, she had found the menu.

“This app has a messaging feature.”

Noah wheeled his chair over to her desk and plopped into it, watching over her shoulder as she accessed Felicia’s messages via the app. There were no personal messages, only messages from the app itself promoting particular stories and encouraging her to upload content. Evidently there was a ranking system according to how engaged you were on the app. Felicia had the lowest ranking, which meant she only read stories and hadn’t uploaded any of her own.

Noah handed her Kayleigh’s phone. “Try hers instead.”

Kayleigh had been far more active on StoryJot. Her ranking was high. She’d read thousands of stories by other users and uploaded almost one hundred of her own. Her private mailbox was filled. The messages appeared in the app more like conversations and were listed by the name of the user she’d been messaging with. They were ranked according to the person she messaged with the most—that person receiving five stars after their name and the conversation sitting in the top of the inbox.

“Look, the user Kayleigh messaged the most is someone named Ajax2733.” Josie held the phone closer to Noah. “Look at Kayleigh’s username. AshesLove887.”

“That’s got to be the boyfriend,” Noah said. “Maybe his name is Ash? Ash’s Love. As in his love interest.” He pointed to her username. “Looks like she changed it about a year ago.”

Josie tapped it to see Kayleigh’s profile. A note beneath it read “modified” with a date that was mid-May of last year. She clicked to see the history. “She used to be StoryGirl887. So she met him and changed her username.”

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