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“Page fourteen,” Raffy told her. “But what you’re looking for is on page twenty-one.”
Josie bypassed fourteen and flipped to twenty-one to a profile of a man called Ron Abbott. His profile photo showed a man likely in his thirties with a thick head of blond hair and a moon face. As she paged through screenshots of his messages and comments, Raffy narrated.
“Like, five years ago, after the Collinses’ book went viral or whatever, and about a year after that, they started doing the show at the studio, this guy was trolling the station social media hard. He was nasty. Really nasty. Saying all kinds of things about Mr. Collins. Made it sound like Mr. Collins had done something to him personally. At that time, I was just starting to manage the social media platforms, so I was the go-to guy for stuff like that. Margot hadn’t started yet. I kept blocking him, but he always came back under some dumb, fake username. I kept taking the stuff to my boss but again, either it wasn’t anything he felt ‘rose to the level of a threat,’ or he promised to just ‘pass it along to Beau and let him deal with it.’ One day, Abbott just stopped. I figured, great. I’m done with that, finally.”
“But he wasn’t done,” Josie said. Skimming over Abbott’s words, she felt the cold fingers of foreboding trail up her spine.
I hope you die a horrible, slow death.
You and your bitch wife deserve to be tortured.
Someone should hack you into pieces and make your dumb wife watch.
Raffy’s cell phone began buzzing once more. Brooke again. He heaved a sigh and dismissed the call for the third time. Then he set the phone to silent. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Ex-girlfriend. She can’t let go. Anyway, what were you saying?”
“That Ron Abbott wasn’t finished with his hate campaign,” Josie said.
“No, not at all,” Raffy replied. “He’d just found another way in. That was when the Collinses shut down their personal platforms and created single accounts for the show. Then they put Margot in charge. Apparently, Beau and Claudia had been blocking him on their personal accounts for ages. But when the new profiles were created, Abbott went right for them. That’s how Margot and I met, actually. Over this Abbott guy. He kept coming back under different names, but you could always tell it was him by the language. Anyway, I don’t think she was prepared for him. Like, at all.”
“Well,” said Josie, pointing to a screenshot. “Here he suggests that Beau Collins deserves to have his genitalia violently removed and then used to do some pretty disgusting things to his own person.”
Noah leaned over for a look. He gave a low whistle.
Raffy said, “That’s not even the worst of it. If you keep going, you’ll see.”
“But he words it so that it doesn’t sound like a threat,” Josie said. “He isn’t saying he’s going to do this, he’s only saying it should happen.”
“Right,” said Raffy.
Josie’s stomach dropped when she got to the screenshots of what Claudia deserved.Someone should take hot pokers to both of her eyes. She deserves to suffer just as much as her piece of garbage husband.
“These may not be direct threats,” Josie said. “But they’re certainly enough to justify a restraining order. Did you ever find out why neither Beau nor Claudia went to the police?”
Raffy stood up and stepped between Josie and Noah, poking his head into the hallway. He scanned one way and then the other before turning back to them. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this. I only know about it because I overheard Beau talking with my boss, but this Abbott guy? He was a patient.”
“A patient of whose?” asked Noah.
Raffy sat back down in his chair and laced his hands behind his head. “I’m not sure, but probably Beau’s, since most of his ire was directed toward Beau. I think they were just trying to keep it quiet, especially with the show just starting to gain traction.”
Josie flipped to the end of the packet, to the last of the fake accounts that Ron Abbott had ostensibly created to terrorize the Collinses. “These stopped last year. Do you know why?”
He shook his head. “On my end, monitoring just the WYEP content, they stopped long before that. You can ask Margot, but sometimes these people just stop showing up on social media and we never know why.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
DIARY ENTRY, UNDATED
He knows. I’m not sure what tipped him off. Maybe a thousand little things that I can no longer control. All my careful planning for how to tell him was for nothing. I wanted us to do it together, and I wanted to be able to leave this terrible home right after we told him so he couldn’t hurt me. Somehow, he just knew. He was cruel and angry. He did hurt me but it wasn’t anything he hasn’t done to me before. Part of me is relieved. The worst is over. I hope. Maybe it will be okay. I keep telling myself that even after what I’ve done, I don’t deserve this. My lover tells me all the time that I deserve more and better than this. A real life with true love. I can’t even bring myself to write his name down. Even now.
I’m going to meet him now and tell him the news. We don’t have to hide anymore.
TWENTY-NINE
Josie handed the packet over to Noah and left him with Raffy. They’d been speaking to him for several minutes, and Margot had not yet returned from the restroom. Either she was in some kind of distress, or she was actively avoiding them. The nearest ladies’ room was at the end of the hall. Josie pushed through the door and began checking stalls. All of them were empty except for the last one. Two delicate feet in black ballet flats quickly disappeared upward the moment Josie approached the stall.
“Miss Huff,” Josie said. “I know you’re in there.”
Silence.
