The Suicide House by Charlie Donlea

Author:Charlie Donlea [Donlea, Charlie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Amazon: B07ZPKQDRV
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2020-07-27T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 44

O

N A CRAPPY

M

ONDAY MORNING,

R

YDER PULLED HER CAR TO THE

curb outside the South Bend house belonging to the wife of the man who had disappeared more than a year ago. It was one of the leads listed on the shit list her editor had handed her the Friday before. The story was not new to her. Ryder had done her research on the mysterious case of the father of two who left one day on a business trip and never returned home. Ryder had originally written about it on her blog the previous year—Local Man Goes Missing Without a Trace—it was exactly what her blog was about. The true-crime fans who followed her were eager to chime in on unsolved cases and chase leads that the police and detectives had given up on. Any nugget of evidence the citizen detectives turned up that might aid in solving the mystery was considered a success.

The interest in the missing South Bend man died, however, after news of the Westmont Prep Killings stole the cover of every Indiana newspaper. As gruesome details of the school crime scene trickled in, interest grew until the entire nation started following the case. In just two days, the twenty-four-hour cable news cycle was saturated with Westmont Prep stories. It was the lead on the network morning shows, and the queen of morning television herself—Dante Campbell—had even clicked her high heels through the once unknown town of Peppermill.

With the media overanalyzing every detail of the story, when the first break in the case came—the discovery of a teacher’s wall safe manifesto that described the specifics of the slaughter that had occurred at the abandoned boarding house—the news spread like wildfire. When that teacher, Charles Gorman, had then attempted suicide, coverage of Westmont Prep and the killings in Peppermill, Indiana, was wire to wire. The missing father of two from South Bend was forgotten. Interest in his whereabouts up and vanished, just like the man.

Ryder was as much to blame as any other journalist. She had jumped on the Westmont Prep bandwagon along with all her colleagues. The only difference was that Ryder had not so easily accepted what the police offered on the Westmont Prep Killings. When Dante Campbell and the other lords of the news media moved on to fresh stories and new outrages, Ryder lingered in Peppermill. She, and her followers, thought there was more to the story, and Ryder had spent the better part of a year chasing leads and uncovering inconsistencies in the case. Her hard work led only to Mack Carter landing his own podcast and stealing her story. Now, not only was Mack and his podcast gone, Ryder’s chance at discovering anything more about Westmont Prep was slipping away.

She had thought long and hard about the best way to respond to her demotion. Her first reaction was to quit. Had she still been able to count on the income from her YouTube channel, she would have told her boss to piss off. But YouTube had shut her down, and it was unlikely she would see another dime from her channel.

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