Now
So two people were now pointing fingers at Ethan Montclair—Ivy Brookes and the anonymous caller. The blogger wanted $50,000 for information, and they might now have a year-old murder on their hands. The moment word got out, the whole town would be turned on its collective ear. But before Holly did anything, she had to write things down. She didn’t want to screw up. So she sat in her car and transcribed her notes, everything she’d just learned, about Wilde, about Montclair, about the bottle of diphenhydramine, and about Ivy Brookes. When she felt like she had things clear in her head, she called Moreno, ran him through her day thus far. She finished with, “We need to find this blogger, now. Jim in IT already has the files. I can call and ask him to start a trace.”
“I’m three steps ahead of you. You ain’t going to believe this. You need to come in. Right now.”
*
Holly walked through the halls of the Franklin Police station, her heart kettle-drumming in her chest. Moreno had commandeered a conference room, and that’s where she headed. The stench of burnt coffee clung in the air. Wanted posters lined the walls, along with framed motivational quotes—their chief was big on supporting her troops.
Jim from IT was sitting at the table, three laptops open in front of him. His square black glasses were sliding down his nose, as usual. He gave her a big smile when she walked in, shoved the glasses up. He was cute, Jim, in a geeky kind of way.
“There’s the champ. Great job, sister. You’ve gotten everything we need to nail this son of a bitch.”
Three other detectives and Sergeant Moreno were also present. Moreno looked up from a stack of papers. “Graham, you know everyone?”
She did. Alex Young and Walt Teal were from Missing Persons, both young and agile. Carlie Cox was a homicide detective with a reputation for closing cases. They were all seasoned, experienced investigators, and Holly felt a short qualm.
“Hi there.”
Moreno said, “Graham has been on this case for a couple of days now, and she’s managed to extract a ton of information from both the suspect and the victim’s friends. Tell them everything you just told me.”
She didn’t have time to be nervous, or worry about missing something. She opened her notebook and began to speak.
“We have a he said, she said. Ethan Montclair insists he had nothing to do with his wife’s disappearance. He’s been convinced his wife disappeared on purpose, but now he’s worried someone hurt her. The wife’s friends are split on whether Montclair is responsible, but one, Ivy Brookes, who appears to be the closest to them both, just broke it all open. She claims Montclair killed the baby, was abusing his wife, that there are photographs on Mrs. Montclair’s phone to prove this, and she is convinced he’s done something to her. Brookes also handed over a bottle of generic Benadryl she claims was used to OD the baby. Which is odd to me, because Montclair also allegedly got his wife pregnant by switching out her birth control pills. It seems strange someone who wanted a baby so much would kill it.
“Brookes also pointed out that Montclair’s timeline could be completely off, that it’s possible he’s lying about when he saw his wife last. We’ll have to figure that in to everything.
“Montclair claims he’s being blackmailed by an online blogger who’s been hassling the family for months. He tried to pay the ransom but the blogger never showed. Happily, there are a number of loose threads—phone calls, texts, and emails—which means Jim will be able to sort through them all. Montclair’s phone is now tapped, as I understand it, so if there are any more demands from the blackmailer, we’ll know right away.
“The one fact we have, there has been no word from Sutton Montclair for at least forty-eight hours. Even though the note she left is compelling, the revelations of the past two days are too important to ignore. I believe someone has hurt Sutton Montclair. I’m not entirely convinced it was her husband.”
Moreno nodded to Jim. “You’ll change your tune when you see what Jim’s found.”
Jim crooked a finger. “Come here. Check this out.”
Holly obliged. The screen was filled with numbers. “I’m not the most tech savvy, you know that.”
“Then I’ll use small words and speak slowly.”
She smacked his arm and they all laughed. “Okay. Enough foreplay. Tell me.”
He clicked a button and the screen turned black, showing a dotted-white outline of the United States. There were multiple solid lines that looked like tracer fire shooting out of a small green dot in the middle of Tennessee.
Jim started tracing the lines. “The friend, Brookes, is telling the truth, or at least her suppositions are right. Looks like Ethan Montclair was trying to drive his wife batty. All of the traffic from the past couple of days, and before, is coming out of the Montclairs’ house. All the contact with the reviewer, all the contact with the blogger, all the contact with the friends, and with us, is shooting through the router in Ethan Montclair’s office. The emails, the phone calls, the whole shebang.”
“How is that possible?”
“A very sophisticated VPN, a virtual private network, which I was able to trace back to Ethan Montclair’s world. He purchased the program over a year ago. We have the credit card statements going back three years, so we looked for anomalies and found this. Also, he bought spoofing equipment, so he could make calls to the house look like they came from outside, and burner phones. There’s a rather sophisticated keystroke analysis program on Sutton Montclair’s computer, too. Everything she did, every move she made, he’s been tracking. All the files are on the router, in a hidden directory.”
Holly couldn’t help but think of Montclair’s beseeching eyes when he’d asked her, “Is it possible for passwords to be changed remotely?”
“How hidden?”
“Took me about an hour to find it once I knew what I was looking for. The IP address on the email view wasn’t a fluke. It looks like Mr. Montclair is behind this whole thing, and was betting on us not finding this hidden directory. It’s a slam dunk, Graham. Dude’s guilty as hell.”
Moreno shut the file in front of him. “We’re in a unique situation, Officer Graham. We’ve done this backward. Mr. Montclair gave us permission to search his files and his wife’s computer, something we’d normally need a warrant to do. We’ve found enough to open a possible homicide investigation. We are getting a warrant right now to search the house. We’re also revisiting the baby’s death. Carlie’s on that.”