“What else?”
“Multiple domestic calls. We’ve been out to the house four times in the past year. Mrs. Montclair declined to press charges, so there was nothing we could do.”
“He was abusing her?”
“That’s the odd thing. All four times, she swears she didn’t make the call. That yes, they were fighting, and yes, it was bad, but she hadn’t called the police.”
“Nine-one-one have the records?”
“The calls came from her cell phone.”
“Sounds like buyer’s regret to me. Pretty typical.”
“Yeah. There’s not a lot to go on here, that’s for sure. Clearly there were problems, clearly she’s bailed. The question is, did she leave of her own volition, or did he help her along?”
“How do you propose to answer that?”
“Time, sir. It’s going to take more time for me to sort through it all.”
“Get some sleep. Hit it fresh in the morning. That’s an order.”
“Yes, sir.” They hung up. But she couldn’t sleep. She lay in her comfortable bed, thinking about the photos she’d seen at the Montclairs’. They seemed so happy. So settled and content. The three of them, beautiful and glossy. And then tragedy struck, the baby died, and their whole world collapsed. Anyone’s marriage would fall apart under those circumstances. Anyone’s.
So why did she feel like she was missing something?
VOICES, I HEAR VOICES
Me again. How’re you getting along? Me, I’m a bit annoyed.
I have to ask, was that bad of me, the call? Should I not have turned the screws on Ethan so soon? It’s only been a day, and the cops are heading in the right direction, yes, but they’re so sloooow.
I want to see him twist.
I want to see him hurt.
I want to see him bleed.
And I want it to happen now.
Lest you think I’m some sort of mustache-twirling villain, let me assure you, Ethan deserves every moment of torture he’s receiving. He is a bad man. A tin man. A man without honor, without a soul, without a heart.
Forgive me. Or don’t. But I really don’t think people are taking this seriously enough. My friends are such a disappointment. I mean really, one confrontation, that’s all? That’s the best they can do? I teed them up and made sure they had all the ammunition they needed, and not one of them has had the guts to come forth and point the finger.
I have to move things along.
I wasn’t planning on doing this quite so soon, but now I don’t know that I have any choice.
I’ll give the cops another day to put it together. But time is running out.
Tick tock. Tick tock.
ANOTHER DAWN IS DAWNING
Six in the morning, the sun’s weak light radiated through the windows. Holly rubbed her eyes, stretched, felt a pleasant series of pops down her spine. She’d been up too late, hunched over the computer after trying and failing to sleep. The call ate at her. The hissing voice, the animosity. Someone truly hated Ethan Montclair.
She knew the couple better now. There was so much information online about the Montclairs. They were—had been—literary darlings for several years. The death of their child and the subsequent fall from grace had been documented in alarming detail. It made Holly uncomfortable. People did so love a tragedy.
She was trying to pin her mind on the something she was missing, the something that wasn’t quite right about the house on Third Avenue and the stories of the people within. Her scattered dreams had been infused with horror scenes: women, covered in blood, screaming; children walking through walls, beckoning to her to follow.
She shoved a pod into the coffeemaker, stood watch as the dark liquid purled in the cup. Took it and a granola bar into her small study, booted up her laptop.
She lived in the house she’d grown up in. The study was an annex off her bedroom, still filled with the detritus of her teenage years. Her parents had taken a maintenance-free condo in downtown Franklin a few years earlier, leaving the house to Holly and her sisters. Holly was the only one who wanted to stay in town. She wanted to be a part of the community. To change lives. To protect people. Her sisters got the hell out of Dodge the first chance they had, running to New York and LA, respectively, both pursuing acting careers, one on the screen, one on the stage, but Holly stayed. She was that kind of girl. The kind with staying power.
She was stuck, so she took a lesson from her dad’s playbook. Drank her coffee, cleared her mind, and started over.
The first step was a global search for Sutton Montclair. The results came immediately, by the thousands. These were public people. There were as many articles online about the “incident,” as Ethan Montclair had referred to it, as there were reviews and stories about the baby’s death. There were a number of stories about Ethan Montclair and his stratospheric rise to the top of the literary world, and the subsequent disappointment of his canceled novel. The rise and fall of ages, the push and pull of celebrity; it was a fickle beast.
Holly chose to focus on Sutton’s fall from grace.
She pulled out her notes from the night before. In a nutshell, Sutton Montclair, historical fiction author, had received a one-star review on a popular review site and had gone ballistic. It started simply, asking for the review to be changed, arguing that the review had no merit, and then, when the reviewer went public, saying she felt like she was being threatened, that she didn’t feel safe and was scared, it all devolved. The attacks moved on to Montclair herself, who was disparaged in the most horrible ways. Her books were loaded up with one-star reviews, and she was forced to abandon all of her social media accounts. A trade magazine had done a huge piece on the situation, ascribing her actions to the phenomenon they called “Authors Behaving Badly.”
There was a single quote in the piece from Sutton Montclair, taken from the blog on her website. A paragraph of denial.
This entire incident is a sham. My accounts have been hacked. Nothing you’ve seen with my name on it in the past forty-eight hours came from me. I know that sounds like an excuse in the aftermath of bad publicity, but I assure you, I would never, and have never, threatened a reviewer for not liking my books. I fully encourage open and honest reviews, and have never tried to censor anyone’s opinion of my work, nor will I ever do so.
People hadn’t bought it. There were nearly five thousand comments, where the battle had raged on for weeks.
Holly clicked further. Found a magazine article that mocked Sutton Montclair as a lunatic who stalked her reviewer. The article claimed the reviewer had been forced to take out an order of protection against the author.
Bingo. Finally, something to go on. Something Ethan Montclair hadn’t mentioned.