CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Within less than twenty minutes, Nancy Briggs’s apartment had taken on the frantic energy of an urgent crime scene.
Two CSI technicians now moved through the living room in a slow, overlapping pattern; one processed the area around the body while the other worked the front door and the entry wall.
The medical examiner had arrived twelve minutes after Kate and Sloane and was now crouched beside the body, speaking in low tones to an assistant.
A third technician had appeared from the kitchen and was photographing the champagne glass on the counter from multiple angles.
Detective Middleton stood near the hallway, coordinating quietly with a uniformed officer and making sure to keep the corridor clear.
Kate and Sloane had pulled two chairs from the small dining table and set them near the window.
The intent was to stay away from the center of the activity but to remain close enough to observe the room out of everyone's way.
Both of their laptops were open, and the Fresh Horizons forum glowed on both screens.
Kate figured this made a hell of a lot more sense than retreating back to the field office.
They had already made contact with all three people who had commented on Nancy's post. The calls had taken less than twenty minutes combined: a woman named Susan Park who had responded with a string of encouraging words and been reached at home, audibly shaken by the news and entirely without useful information. Next had been a woman named Terri Voss who had typed Rooting for you! She’d checked out easily, as she had been at a dinner party with six other people all evening.
Lastly, there was a user named, simply, MontyL who had left a simple heart emoji and turned out to be a sixty-one-year-old retired schoolteacher in the process of visiting his grandchildren in Boston.
All three cleared easily. All three had simply seen a post from a woman they knew from the forum and responded to it encouragingly.
Kate had already forwarded both the forum URL and the linked Facebook group page to the bureau's tech team with a request for a deeper infrastructure pull—IP addresses behind usernames, account creation dates, login patterns, anything the surface-level view wasn't showing them.
That was running in the background now, which meant the forum itself remained their most immediate tool.
She knew such a task would take hours, but it was nice to know they had it as an option.
Across the room, the ME's assistant began the preliminary documentation of Nancy Briggs's wounds.
Kate looked up briefly to watch her work and then back at her screen.
She tried to recall when, exactly, her job had become more about staring at screens than rushing around in the field…
not that she could actually do much rushing these days.
"I've been cross-referencing engagement patterns across all three victims," Sloane said, not looking up.
"Who interacted with Carol, who interacted with Donna, who interacted with Nancy, and where those sets overlap.
" She scrolled slowly, her eyes unblinking as she delved into focus.
"Most of the overlap is exactly what we'd expect.
Core members of the forum who are active with everyone, consistent commenters… that kind of thing."
"But?" Kate said.
"But… there are two names that sort of strike me a bit differently.
" Sloane turned her laptop slightly toward Kate.
"The first one is a man. His username is CoachSteve—real name Steve Marlo—and his profile describes him as a certified dating and confidence coach.
He joined the forum about eight months ago. "
Kate looked at the profile. The photo showed a man in his mid-forties with a broad, easy smile. His bio included a link to an external website and a line that read: Helping you find love after loss. DMs open.
"He's been quietly advertising in the forum," Sloane said. "Posting general advice in threads and then steering people toward his services. Nothing aggressive, but he is consistent." She navigated to a thread from six weeks ago. "Carol Paige called him out directly. Right here, in this thread."
Kate read it. The exchange was not long.
CoachSteve had replied to a member's post about feeling nervous about re-entering the dating world with a paragraph of general encouragement that ended with a mention of his coaching packages and a link to his booking page.
Carol had replied underneath it: This forum is a private support space, not a marketplace.
Please keep the advertising off these threads.
Several other members had liked Carol's comment. CoachSteve had not replied.
"No response?" Kate asked.
“None that I could find. He could have reached out to her privately through the messaging portion, but…”
“But that’s going to be with the tech team and I doubt they’ve even started plugging away at this.”
"It looks like he may have simply gone quiet for about two weeks and then resumed posting, though without the direct links after that.
" Sloane scrolled further as she continued to explain.
"He also interacted with Donna's posts on three separate occasions, and liked two things Nancy put up. Including the post from tonight."
Kate looked at the name. Steve Marlo. She pulled up a new window and searched the name against the bureau database.
She quickly found a business registration in the city for a sole proprietorship called Marlo Confidence Coaching, which had been operating for three years.
Another simple search showed that he had no criminal record.
"Who's the second one?" Kate asked.
"Bridget Hanover." Sloane pulled up the profile.
"She's been a forum member for about fourteen months.
She completed the Fresh Horizons program and stayed active in the community…
even going so far as to try organizing a few little day trips here and there with members.
On the forum itself, she reads as very warm.
Enthusiastic, engaged, always one of the first people to like or comment on a new post. She has commented on all three of our victims' posts at some point in the past.”
"What are her comments like?"
"That's what caught my attention." Sloane pulled up a series of screenshots she had taken.
"On Carol's post about her date: So happy for you, you deserve every good thing!
On Donna's post about feeling hopeful, she said, This is everything, we love this for you!
And then, on Nancy's post tonight, she said, Yes!
! Go get it girl, you deserve this!" She looked at Kate with a tired frown.
"It reads completely normally for this forum, which is where it gets interesting. "
“Why?”
"I found her Facebook profile through the link she has on her forum bio," Sloane said.
"Her public activity there is completely different.
She's not warm at all. She's sarcastic, she argues in comment sections—especially when it comes to politics.
She's dismissive toward people she disagrees with.
There's a real consistency to it, just not a flattering one.
" Sloane looked at her screen, shaking her head.
"The person who comments on Facebook and the person who comments in that forum are not the same person. At least they don't read that way."
"Some people code-switch for different communities," Kate said.
"Sure. But the gap here is pretty significant.
It's not just tone. It's the degree of enthusiasm in the forum versus the degree of contempt she shows externally. I mean, she calls for violence against certain people in online spaces that usually aren’t very charged.
" Sloane tapped the edge of the laptop. "And she has no posts of her own in the forum.
In nearly a year, she has not once shared anything personal about her own experience. She only ever responds to others."
Kate thought about that. The forum's entire structure was built around mutual vulnerability. All kinds of people—mostly women—sharing their progress, their fears, and their small victories. The dynamic required participation in both directions. Someone who had been active in that space for over a year and had never once offered anything of themselves was using it differently than it was designed to be used. Lurkers on a platform like that were almost certainly there for toxic reasons. Sure, there were shy people, but Kate thought Sloane’s concerns about Hanover were spot on.
A camera flash went off near the body and Kate glanced up. The ME was finishing his preliminary and the technician near the front door had moved to the entryway closet. He moved slowly as he methodically checked the interior.
She looked back at the screen, considering their options. “How do you feel about dividing it?”
Sloane nodded. "It makes the most sense, because it’s getting late."
“Why don’t you take Marlo?” Kate said. “We know that there’s a very good chance he has some bad blood with Carol and he's been operating in that forum with an agenda.
We need to know whether that agenda extends beyond selling coaching packages.
" Kate closed her laptop and set it on the chair beside her.
"I'll take Hanover. If she's just pretending to be flowery and sweet in the forum while wearing a different face elsewhere, I want to understand what she's actually getting out of being part of that community. "
“Sounds good,” Sloane said. She opened up another window on her laptop and said, “I’ll hit the database up for addresses.”
While she worked, Kate looked around the apartment one more time.
The CSI technician had finished with the champagne glass and moved on to the cabinet handles below the kitchen counter.
The ME's assistant was packing up the preliminary kit.
Middleton had come back into the living room and was reviewing something on his phone near the hallway.
The scene was being taken apart piece by piece, every surface looked over, every object handled and documented, and sealed into evidence bags that would eventually tell a partial story.
Nancy Briggs was still on the floor near the front door, waiting to be moved. The ME’s team was preparing to do just that when Kate looked away.
“Okay, I’ve got Hanover’s address,” Sloane announced.
Kate plugged it into her phone as Sloane read it out loud. And once she had it saved, she opened up her texts and started to compose one for Allen to let him know she was going to be later than usual getting home.
And then she started on her way, curious to see who she might find at the address: the sweely supportive Birdgett or the one who had been issuing death threats.