Chapter 214: Another 2 Children Go Missing

Chapter 214: Chapter 214: Another 2 Children Go Missing

Zoe Sawyer pointed to a line of text on the screen, motioning for Officer Lee to stop and see what it was about.

Soon, they found a match for a name.

Murphy Lynch.

The shopping account had only a single purchase record for a jacket. According to the location Officer Lee pinpointed on the map, her delivery address was next to a small factory.

"I’ll call this number and see what’s what," Evan Keller said, taking out his phone and quickly dialing.

It rang several times. Just as Evan Keller thought no one would pick up, the call was answered.

"Hello?"

An elderly voice came from the other end of the line.

Since Evan Keller had the call on speakerphone, the "Hello?" echoed through the office for everyone to hear.

Upon hearing the voice, Zoe Sawyer and the others couldn’t help but look disappointed. ’Did we get the wrong person?’

A moment later, a different person was on the line. "Hello? Yes? Who are you looking for?"

This new voice had a thick accent, but Zoe Sawyer and the others could still make out the words.

"Hello, this is the police department. I’d like to ask, is the owner of this phone number, Murphy Lynch, available?" Evan Keller didn’t waste any time. After identifying himself, he went straight to the point.

"Murphy Lynch? Oh, you mean Lynn. She isn’t here. You can just tell me, and I’ll pass the message along when I see her." The woman on the other end thought for a moment, finally putting a face to the name Evan Keller mentioned.

Evan Keller wasn’t in a hurry to hang up and continued with his questions. "How old is this Lynn? Does she work at the factory next door? How long has she worked there?"

After Evan Keller asked his questions, the voice on the other end grew wary. "Why are you asking so much?"

Zoe Sawyer immediately recalled the chief saying this was a sweatshop. ’Perhaps the person on the phone is the one who controls the employees’ cell phones,’ she thought.

Asking so bluntly would definitely make the other party suspicious.

Evan Keller seemed to realize this too. He softened his tone and said, "Here’s the situation. Someone claiming to be Lynn’s friend came to the station. She said she couldn’t get in touch with her and was worried something might have happened, so she asked us to help make contact.

We don’t have much information to go on, so we suspect the Lynn you mentioned might be the person we’re looking for. We just wanted to verify that."

The woman on the other end didn’t answer right away. Instead, she asked a question of her own. "How old is that woman?"

’That woman?’

’Ms. Sherman?’

"Around thirty," Evan Keller replied after a moment’s thought.

Hearing this, the woman on the other end seemed to relax. "That’s impossible," she said with a sigh of relief. "Our Lynn is just a teenager, still a kid. Why would she be friends with a thirty-year-old woman? You’re looking for the wrong person."

The next second, she hung up with a sharp CLICK, giving Evan Keller no chance to say another word.

Evan Keller wasn’t angry about being hung up on. In fact, his face lit up with excitement.

’Another match!’

A teenage girl who bought that jacket in the last few days and works in a factory.

"This is important. I’ll send it to our colleagues in the field so they can follow up," Evan Keller said, taking a photo of Murphy Lynch’s file and sending it over.

However, the woman on the phone said that Lynn was at the factory working right now.

Meanwhile, the girl Ms. Sherman described had stopped replying to messages and was considered missing.

The exact situation was still unclear. They decided to wait for more concrete evidence before heading to the factory to investigate.

"Good work, everyone. Let’s head to the cafeteria and get something to eat," Evan Keller said, standing up and noticing most of the people in the office rubbing their eyes.

But before they could even get up, a young officer rushed in, clutching a thick stack of files.

A sense of dread washed over Zoe Sawyer and the others. ’Don’t tell me there’s another one.’

And sure enough, a moment later they heard the officer’s anxious voice.

"Two more kids have gone missing! Here are the files!" As soon as he spoke, he thrust the stack of documents into Evan Keller’s arms. "I’ve got other work, so I’ll have to leave this with you all. Thanks for your hard work."

He rushed off before he even finished his sentence.

Evan Keller looked down at the files in his arms, then at the faces of his colleagues, and waved a hand. "Alright, go in shifts. Just eat quickly and get back here."

But even as he said it, he sat back down and started poring over the new files.

The others didn’t bother with formalities, heading out in shifts for lunch.

It wasn’t the time for courtesy. The best thing to do was eat fast so Evan Keller and his group could go next.

Polite refusals would just mean everyone went hungry.

Evan Keller passed the files to Zoe Sawyer and the others beside him. Once they’d had a chance to look them over, he asked, "What do you all think?"

"These three cases share a common thread: all the kids downloaded this app.

And their home lives might not have been very happy," Heath Hale said, pointing to a few lines in the file.

It was because of that app that the cases were immediately flagged to the chief’s department as soon as the children were reported missing.

Once the connection was confirmed, the cases were quickly consolidated.

The two latest missing children, a boy and a girl, were both in their first year of middle school.

Judging from the chat logs and statements provided by their parents, both children lived under immense pressure at home.

The girl, Linda Pierce, had a daily schedule that Zoe Sawyer and the others found suffocatingly intense.

She woke up at six every morning to run, stretch, and read for half an hour before eating and heading to school.

During her two-hour lunch break, her parents would deliver her meal, after which she had to complete a Math Olympiad worksheet.

Then it was back to regular classes. School let out at five, but she then attended three different cram schools, not getting home until around nine at night.

There was no rest once she got home. After finishing her homework from school and her tutors, she had to complete extra worksheets assigned by her parents.

Finish the work, correct it, and review it.

By the time all that was finished, it would be around eleven o’clock.

At that point, depending on her performance that day, Linda Pierce’s parents might let her use her phone for ten to thirty minutes.

Then, she had to be in bed before midnight.

And so the cycle repeated, day after day.

Saturdays and Sundays meant no school, but her time was completely filled with various tutoring sessions and extracurricular classes.

Looking at her schedule, it seemed the only chance the girl got to relax was during school hours.

And even with all that, her parents still felt it wasn’t enough and were looking for ways to squeeze in yet another class.

"Are kids’ lives really this intense now?" Zoe Sawyer gasped as she read Linda Pierce’s schedule. "Learning so much in one day... can their brains even keep up?"

No friends, no free time.

A completely suffocating life, lived entirely under her parents’ control.