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Moscow, Idaho

D aniel Ramirez, a journalist for the Argonaut, the University of Idaho’s student newspaper, is getting coffee at the drive-through with the Argonaut ’s editor, Haadiya Tariq, when their phones ping simultaneously with a Vandal Alert warning students to shelter in place.

Ordinarily, this sort of Vandal Alert is issued when there is a moose on campus.

This time it says there’s been a homicide.

The alert also tells them to stay away from the King Road area.

So they do what every good journalist would: They head straight for 1122 King Road.

They see the multitude of police cars and the tape. Standing in front of the house, directing the others, is Tyson Berrett, whom they recognize because he’s the campus-police commandant.

They ask Berrett for a statement, but he only repeats the Vandal Alert with no further details.

So Haadiya and Daniel head to the Argonaut newsroom on the top floor of the Bruce M.

Pitman Center to see what they can learn online.

The students are conversing on the college-chat app Yik Yak, a kind of anonymous, closed version of Twitter, and there is huge confusion because at three p.m., another Vandal Alert is posted, this one saying that there is no threat to the community.

What does this mean? Daniel and Haadiya can see that the students are confused and scared. Can they really walk around safely?

The student journalists want to be able to report on this, but what can they say that is accurate?

Conspiracy theories are already flying on Yik Yak. So too are the names Xana, Ethan, Maddie, and Kaylee, but not in such a way that Daniel and Haadiya feel they’re reportable.

They are student journalists, yes, but they consider themselves journalists first, students second. They take their job seriously.

On Yik Yak, the consensus seems to be that 1122 King Road is a party house, so a lot of students are suggesting that fentanyl must have been involved.

Maybe, it’s even posited, the homicide has something to do with Emma Bailey, who was seen in the Whites, the apartment building next to the house, the weekend before.

(The following spring, Emma will be charged with the delivery of a controlled substance in connection with the death of another UI student.

Prosecutors will dismiss the case.) Could she have been at the King Road house last night?

At around five p.m., a friend of Daniel’s in a Catholic students’ group forwards something that Daniel deems the most reliable source so far as to the victims’ identities—the students have been urged to pray for the four victims, whose names are given.

Even so, Daniel and Haadiya wait to publish anything until they get confirmation from the police. And they know from bitter experience that it’s going to be tough to get much from the Moscow PD.

Haadiya is still waiting for the public information officer, or PIO, to get back to her about someone she refers to as “knife guy.” A man dressed in black riding a bicycle and holding a knife had harassed a couple of people on Paradise Street back in September.

Haadiya had written that up and done a follow-up piece, because the police had issued a report saying he was no longer a threat to anyone but didn’t explain why.

Just like she’s waiting for answers about the two other campus deaths that have occurred while she’s been at the Argonaut .

One student died of an overdose, a suspected suicide, in the spring. The Argonaut never wrote about it because the police never got back to Haadiya about it.

Another student, Hudson Lindow, was found dead in the creek in May; sources said it was a direct result of hazing.

He’d been made to drink out of a five-gallon bucket and was then abandoned by the people who’d made him do it.

Haadiya wanted to report what her sources told her, but with no confirmation from the police, she couldn’t. She felt that would be irresponsible.

So now she and Daniel have nothing official to go on regarding what happened at King Road.

Yik Yak, meanwhile, is exploding with all sorts of speculative storylines.

One is that a group of men dressed in black entered the house.

Another is that they were killed by members of a Colombian drug cartel who had known Xana’s mother in prison and wanted payback.

Another is that one of the four victims had been about to expose the Greek houses for sex trafficking (the idea being that new sorority members were coerced into dating fraternity members).

Yet another is that they were killed to cover up some kind of hazing sexual assault.

Another is about a love triangle involving Ethan, Xana, and either Maddie or Kaylee.

Every minute, there’s a new invented plotline. This is like no story the duo has covered before. They aren’t sure of protocol.

Surely it isn’t right to start reaching out to the victims’ families so soon? Haadiya feels that would not be respectful. She assumes—incorrectly, as it turns out—that other journalists will feel the same way.

That evening, Daniel sees that PBS appears to have a lead no one else does.

A segment on the four homicides in Moscow comes on the news. According to the PBS report, the students were shot.

Daniel and Haadiya look at each other. How on earth can PBS know that? Did the police tell PBS something they are not telling other news organizations? Surely PBS can’t have gotten it wrong. Can they?

The two are confused but also beginning to feel an emotion that will become all too familiar in the coming weeks as members of the national media descend on their town and report a barrage of nonsense in the absence of facts.

What they feel is disappointment.