Chapter 3
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"Amy, are you okay?"
"Teacher asked why you missed class."
"Is that asshole Jack messing with you again? Text me back!"
The final message, sent three days ago: "Amy please just one word I'm freaking out here"
No elaborate secrets hidden in the phone—just the increasingly desperate texts from a friend after a girl vanished. The trail seemed to dead-end here. Or maybe this was where it really began.
Brooklyn Tech isn't exactly Harvard-bound territory—a place where academic strivers share hallways with kids just putting in time. Amy Lin had been one of the strivers.
I rounded up several of Amy's classmates. Their descriptions painted a consistent picture: quiet, studious, kept to herself.
"Always by herself," said a kid with thick glasses. "Either reading or heading to the library."
"Anyone have a problem with her?" I asked.
The students exchanged glances, but nobody spoke up. I focused on the girl I'd identified as Lily. She was gnawing her lower lip, eyes rimmed red.
"Jack Thompson," she finally blurted, voice quavering. "Her half-brother. He thinks Amy stole his dad's attention. Always making trouble for her."
"What kind of trouble?"
"He... he gets these guys from outside school to corner her. They call her names, push her around. Once he dumped all her books in the garbage." Lily's tears spilled over.
In the homeroom teacher's office, a Mr. Davis received me. He looked exhausted, his face a mask of regret and bewilderment over Amy's death.
"I had no idea she was being bullied," he said, massaging his temples. "But I noticed something was off. She seemed distracted, withdrawn. I figured typical teenage stuff, so I called her mother, suggested she keep a closer eye on her daughter."
My pulse quickened. "You contacted Mei Lin?"
"Yes. Recommended she have a heart-to-heart with Amy."
"And then?"
"Then..." Davis hesitated. "Next day, Ms. Lin called back. Said she'd 'handled it.' Told me she'd checked Amy's phone and discovered her daughter was involved in some 'puppy love' that was affecting her grades. Said she'd confiscated the phone."
Back at the precinct, I headed straight for the Surveillance Analysis Unit.
"I need street cam footage from the night Amy disappeared."
On the monitor, images flickered past in rapid succession. Finally, on footage from a corner security camera, we spotted Amy. She was walking quickly, head down, backpack bouncing. Not far behind, two men in hoodies followed at a measured pace—predators who'd locked onto their target.
Amy had clearly sensed the danger.
She made a distinct movement toward her pocket—reaching for a phone. Then a moment's hesitation before breaking into a panicked run.
At that very moment, her phone sat in her mother's drawer—confiscated punishment for "teenage romance."
I finally understood what Mei Lin meant by "I killed her" in the interrogation room.
She wasn't confessing to dismembering her daughter; she was acknowledging a mother's most catastrophic failure. When her daughter most desperately needed help—needed to call for rescue—Mei Lin had personally removed her only lifeline.
She believed her own rigid, obsessive "parenting" had pushed her daughter into the abyss.
