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Ripley hovered her fingers over her laptop and said, ‘Got it. Let’s see if Gorton had any hint of this. If he suspected he and his friends were being targeted, he might have said something to someone.’
Ella pulled her chair up beside Ripley and helped her navigate her way through the data labyrinth. The software brought up all of the files, media, text exchanges and app contents on James Gorton’s device, in no particular order.
‘Let’s try text messages first. That’s the most obvious place.’
Ripley swept through Gorton’s digital conversations, compiling them in date order. However, the most recent text was over a week ago.
‘Nothing in texts,’ Ripley said. ‘Maybe he wasn’t so popular.’
‘Try his apps. People use those more than standard texts these days.’
Ella's suggestion steered Ripley towards an app named EasyMessage, and by the looks of it, Gorton used it daily. They quickly scanned through the top three conversations, but found trivial banter, exchanges of nothingness, no substance.
'Dead end. These murders only started four days ago, so we shouldn't go much further back than that.'
‘Try his social media messengers,’ Ella said.
Ripley navigated to Gorton's social media apps, moving with urgency. She found the most recent conversation, time-stamped the evening before.
‘What’s this?’ asked Ripley.
Ella squinted at the data. ‘Message from… Tommy Holt. Came through last night, about an hour before Gorton was killed.’
When she saw the sender’s message, the breath caught in her throat.
‘Are you scared yet?’ Ella said, reading the message aloud. ‘Who is this guy?’
‘Wait, James replied to him. Look.’
Ella decoded the data and found James’ reply. ‘I’m not scared of anything.’
Another message from Tommy Holt followed.
Your best friends are being picked off one by one. You should be terrified.
‘James stopped replying after that,’ Ripley said.
Ella analyzed the exchange. At the time this Tommy Holt person sent the first message, he’d have only known about Demi Hart and Mark Jensen’s deaths since Miles Rampell’s demise hadn’t yet been made public.
Was this another of the clique’s old enemies taunting one of their members, or was Tommy Holt – whoever he was – responsible for these deaths?
‘This is no old friend,’ said Ella. ‘This is someone relishing the deaths of these people.’
‘Let’s search this Tommy guy. See if he pops up on the police records.’
Ella hurried back around to her laptop, fired up the police database and searched the name Tommy Holt.
No results.
‘Nothing.’
‘Try Thomas Holt,’ Ripley said.
Ella did. ‘One result. But he’s forty-two and lives fifty miles away. This isn’t him.’
‘Then he doesn’t have a record,’ Ripley said.
Ella was already searching elsewhere. She went back to the Lincoln High social media page and input the same name there.
