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“Because he was going to torch the place.” When Auggie didn’t say anything, Jem added, “The cuts and stuff, nobody would be able to tell because the bodies were burned. It would look like an accident, like you died in a fire. It’s harder to do that if they find bullets in the bodies.”
“Jesus,” Auggie said.
Jem shrugged.
There didn’t seem to be anything else to say about that, so Auggie went back to the videos. He played Shaniyah’s final piece, the one that she had made before she had been killed: the footage of Keelan and Leon fighting in the high school commons; the play rehearsal at the community theater; the party. Now that he knew who he was looking at, he recognized Ambyr doing her stupid dance—and, in the process, making a total fool of herself as she fell and exposed herself. He guessed Merlin was the one going after Leon, screaming.
“This was on TikTok?” Jem asked.
“No, she never posted it. Never posted any of it, actually.”
Jem wrinkled his nose. “People watch that stuff?”
“Oh yeah. You don’t?”
“There are some barbers I follow, and some lifestyle ones. And then all the random animal ones. I’m trying to teach Scipio how to sing like this one Lab I found. Oh, and then those stupid challenges, even though Tean says I’m encouraging bad behavior. But it’s hilarious when these dumbass teenage bros slap each other in the face or shoot each other with paintballs in the ’nads or even the old standbys, like the shaving cream in the hand, that kind of stuff.”
“Yeah, the challenges are lit right now. You wouldn’t believe how many companies want to get in on it. But I tell them it never goes the way you want—the people doing this kind of stuff, the ones who make it go viral, are idiots, and they’ll do something that ends up making your product look bad. Like the stuff with Tide pods, for example.”
Jem gave him a considering look and asked, “How about this stuff? Do companies want to do this?”
“God, I bet the true crime networks and TV shows would love to find a way to capitalize on it. Actually, that’s not a bad idea. But the amateur stuff on TikTok, what these people call investigations, they’re not actually doing much investigating—not really.”
“Ok.”
“I’ll give you an example. The video we just watched, that’s the exception—Shaniyah had exclusive recordings of people fighting with a kid who disappeared. That’s a legit investigation. But a lot of what you’ll see on TikTok is stuff like this.” He scrolled through the contents of Shaniyah’s drive and found another video.
In this one, Shaniyah spoke while a series of screenshots appeared. “So, I’ve come across some scary stuff connected to Leon Purdue’s disappearance. Take a look at his public Spotify playlist. Back in June, the first six songs were by Orville Peck. But look now—he’s got three by The Cure, and one by The Smiths. If you listen—” A snippet of music played. “—you can hear that’s some seriously depressing shit. It’s obvious that something significant happened in Leon’s life in June, and it changed things for the worse. No one has explored the possibility of suicide, and it makes you wonder why.”
“Uh, maybe because nobody cared he was missing,” Jem said. “For real? That’s a TikTok investigation?”
“I mean, there’s a whole range, but yeah, a lot of it is stuff like that. They’ll analyze people’s posts on social media, looking for clues. Did they change their profile picture? Did they post something vague, something that can be interpreted a million different ways? Did they follow an account, or unfollow an account, or like a post?”
“That’s nuts.”
“Oh yeah, it’s crazy.”
“But people like it?”
“It’s definitely got a following.” Auggie was quiet for a moment. “Shaniyah was so smart. So talented. I mean, if she’d approached me with this, I don’t know what I would have told her because honestly, it’s right up her alley. She wanted to do smart, creative work, like that piece about social media and teens, the one she was originally working on. But this is even better. She could have been a kickass journalist, but maybe she would have been something else.” He stopped because it felt melodramatic to say,But someone took that away from her. It was enough, for Auggie, that he knew it.
“I want to talk to the dad,” Theo said from the opening to the living room. He held his coffee like he’d forgotten about it, and in the background, Lana and Evie’s excited voices carried clearly. “Merlin Purdue. I want to talk to him.”
Auggie nodded, but he said, “He wasn’t exactly receptive the last time we tried.”
“He’s the one we haven’t talked to yet, so I want to talk to him.”
“Who’s this guy?” Jem asked. “What’s the problem?”
“This boy who went missing, Leon. His dad’s name is Merlin—”
“No shit?”
“It really is. He and Leon’s mom split up in the spring, and that’s when Leon got emancipated. A few months later, Leon had vanished. Merlin’s in that montage—he’s the guy fighting with Leon in the final clip.”
“And Dalton told us that they’d had a fight,” Theo said. “He told us that Merlin threatened to kill Leon.”
“According to Leon,” Auggie said, and when Theo gave him a look, he added, “That’s important, Theo. We don’t actually know that it happened.”
