Death Before Facebook (34 page)

“Goddammit Skip, I’m a reporter.”

“Okay, I’m leaving that one alone. So you got back to Lenore as quickly as you could….” -
In fact, you came back for the sole purpose of getting your hands on the journal…

“Yeah. I did. But she came out with the garter belt the minute I stepped in the door.”

“What did the journal look like?”

“Book-size, I guess. Covered with Chinese silk—a blue pattern. And it had some leather on the side; cheap leather, nothing fancy.”

“Okay, stay here a minute.” If he tried to run, she had plenty of policemen to chase him. She went in and told Gottschalk about the book.

When she came back, she said, “Did you drink anything when you were in there?”

“Some bourbon. Why?”

“Did she drink anything?”

“I think she had some wine.”

“Was anyone else there?”

“What? Skip, we made love, remember?”

“Did you see another person at Lenore’s tonight?”

“No. Could we sit down? I’m tired of standing up.”

“I’ll send you to headquarters. You can wait there for me.”

“Oh, hell. This is okay.”

“Did you see her suicide note?”

“You guys found a suicide note?”

“Did you see it, Pearce?”

“No.”

“So what did she look like?”

“What?”

“Let’s go back to when you got there the second time—you went around back and then what?”

“The light was on, which it hadn’t been before. This sort of see-through thing she’d been wearing was floating in the pool. And then I saw her arm and the back of her head, floating.”

If he was telling the truth, the body must have floated sideways as well as up and down; who knew how many positions it had assumed before being removed—a silent sentry in the universe, subject to the whims of wind and water, performing a static, pathetic ballet.

“What did you do?”

“I got out of there. Fast.”

“You got out of there. Did you try to pull her out?”

“Hell, no. I just split. Period.”

“Maybe she was alive.”

“No way. She was a former human being.”

“I guess that’s better than never being one.”

“What?”

“Are you telling me you didn’t even check to see if she was dead? That you made love to this woman and you couldn’t even get your clothes wet finding out if she was alive or dead? You couldn’t even call 911?” She was furious.

“I told you. There was no question. She was dead.”

“Did you see her face?”

“No. She was floating facedown.”

“Then how could you possibly know she was dead?”

“I just did, that’s all.” He was shouting. She’d finally made him mad.

“On the way over, you told me she’d been murdered. What made you think that?”

“I didn’t know that. I just said it to get your attention.”

Time to let him think that one over. “Okay, look, I’ve got a crime scene to take care of. You want to go back to headquarters and wait for me?”

“How would I get there?”

“An officer will take you.”

“Do I have to?”

She waited a long time before answering, and narrowed her eyes when she did. “It would show good faith.”

“Okay. Sure.” He even tried his cocky grin again.

She went and got the first two officers to take Pearce to Homicide. Then she canvassed the neighbors—which turned up the usual nothing—nobody heard anything, nobody saw anything.

Finally, she went out for coffee—for herself and Gottschalk. She sat on the front porch, sipping, while waiting for him to finish. When he left, he still hadn’t found the journal, so she turned the house upside down.

It wasn’t there.

Next came the computer problem. The machine was off now, the keyboard filthy with fingerprint powder. She turned it back on, wishing she had a pair of rubber gloves. She logged on as Steve Steinman, suffering a slight twinge, thinking it wasn’t quite ethical to use your boyfriend’s TOWN account when you’d just dumped him.

Where had Lenore posted her suicide note?

Since Layne was the caller, it couldn’t have been in the women’s conference. It might be Confession, in one of the topics on Geoff, she thought, and went to the first, which had now split into two. She tried the second one, the more recent.

There was a post by Lenore at eight-fifteen, riddled with typos, but not the one Layne had mentioned. To Skip’s mind, it was almost more intriguing.

“Opened car trunk and guess what>?” it said. “Who knew? It was like a ghost come back from the dead. His backpack was thereQ@ Talk about freaked out. There it was, Heoff’s backpack, right in my car. And guess what weas in it? Hiw journal. It was like Geoff could talk to me now, could talk to me over that biggest bridge of all. I lost someone else besides Geoff, all in a week. thsi means a lot to me, habving a little bit of geoff. I know a lot more about what hwappened than i did before, but don’t want to talk about it yet. somebody fucked him over. We have to have a TOWN meeting to figure out wehat to do.”

Other people had posted afterward—innocuous notes of good cheer like, “Hang in there, Lenore”; “What a spooky thing!” But there was also a “More, more!” contingent, people who had read the post as if Lenore knew who the murderer was, who’d interpreted her request for a TOWN meeting (whatever that was) as a call for a public hanging. There was the scent of virtual blood in the air.

Lenore had been back online about three hours later—at twelve-eleven, with the note Layne must have meant: “Don’t think I can go on anymore. Life’s just too much. Can;t think of a single thing that makes me happy any more, too much death; too mush sickness, toomuch incompetence (mine), i read that you ahve to love yourself to be happy just howthehell are you supposed to do that? id fomeboy knows would they kuuist kgivbe me lessons, please? don;t know if i was cut out for motherhood - - blowing it copletely. Caitlin de serves better, and anything would be better. Iwant to die.Q@! I could, too. I have a sweilling pool. I woulc just get in and hit bottom and never come up. Frankly, i think bottoem is where i am now.”

Skip scrolled down to the present time. It was Lenore’s last post in that conference. Since E-mail wasn’t saved in the sender’s file, Pearce could have safely lied about Lenore’s having summoned him. Instead, what might have happened was, Pearce saw the first post, came over to her house, got the journal, left, read it, and found it incriminated him. Then Lenore, realizing she’d been used for something a lot more humiliating than a sex toy, had drunk everything in sight, taken every pill she could find, and begun rambling incoherently on the TOWN. Then Pearce, fearing that Lenore had also read it, and seeing a fine opportunity, had dashed back, done the deed, and pretended to find the body.

That might explain his bizarre behavior in failing to call 911—the more attention he could draw to himself the better, since a murderer would never do such a thing, but would simply sneak off into the night. It was a distinctly inelegant plan, poorly suited to a person of Pearce’s low cunning, but once again, that might have been its appeal for him.

I’m too exhausted
for this kind of stuff.

But I’d better go see him.

She was about to turn off the computer when the tattered bit of paper taped to the hard drive suddenly gave her an idea. The word didn’t seem to be English; indeed had all the earmarks of a made-up word. And it had capital letters where there usually weren’t any.

A made-up word with internal caps—it followed the rules for a password exactly. She logged in as Lenore and then typed “EtiDorhPa.”

On her way to the police station, she stopped for more coffee and breezed in, speeding on caffeine, in a mood that came close to good. “Brought you some coffee.” She slid a cup over to Pearce. His expression didn’t change.

“So. How was that diary?”

“I told you. She wouldn’t let me see it.”

“Did she tell you what was in it? Taunt you or anything?”

“Taunt me?” He was doing his best to feign puzzlement.

“Oh, well, there was that post of course.”

“What post?”

“You know. The one in which she stopped just short of revealing the contents.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You didn’t see it?”

“All right, I saw it. You think Lenore found something in that journal that incriminates me, don’t you? And tried to blackmail me. But Lenore would never do that. I don’t even have any money, Skip. That ought to be obvious to you. No one in their right mind would try to blackmail me.”

“It could have been for drugs. But my guess is, it wasn’t that. More likely it was love. What do you think of that?”

“I don’t begin to understand this.”

“See, I think it went kind of like this: ‘You’re my man now and it’s our secret.’ Boom.
Fait accompli.”

He shrugged. “She never mentioned the damn diary to me. I was the one always bringing it up, which just made her mad.”

“Did you see it tonight?”

“No.”

“Do you happen to know Lenore’s password?”

“Now, how would I know that?”

“It’s taped to her computer. But maybe she told you what it was—”

“Hey, she did. I do know her password. Or I could if I worked out where the caps are. She told me it’s Aphrodite spelled backwards.”

“Right. So you know her password. You could have just made that post yourself—about the journal. And then you went back to drinking with her, even made love with her. Then when she was thoroughly incapacitated, you drowned her and posted her ‘suicide’ note. Not a bad plan at all, except—”

“Bullshit! Why would I come to you in that case? If I was that cagey, why didn’t I just go home?”

“The tipster’s usually the guilty one. Didn’t you know that?”

“Of course. You’re dealing with a journalist here—do you really think I wouldn’t know that? So I would only have done it if I was innocent—and a good citizen, I might add.”

“You’d have only done it if you had to—which you did. Because you screwed up, Pearce. Quite literally, I’d say.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You realized later you’d made the mistake of having sex with her. It suddenly occurred to you you could be nailed by a semen test. So you’d better damn well have a good excuse for being over that evening, even if it meant making up a cock-and-bull story no child would believe.”

“Did anyone ever tell you you’re a bully, Ms. Langdon?”

“Mind calling me ‘Officer,’ Pearce?” She was in such a good mood, she smiled at him.

“Look, if you don’t believe me, go search my house. You’re not going to find any journal.”

Her coffee high vanished.

SHE CONDUCTED THE search as a formality only—he’d signed the consent forms for both his home and car far too willingly for a man who had something to hide. She knew she wouldn’t find anything and she didn’t.

Further making her day was an invitation to meet with her lieutenant, Joe Tarantino, and Cappello. Joe was a hands-on kind of lieutenant who liked working closely with his detectives. But he hadn’t involved himself with this case; the fact that he wanted to meet with her meant he was getting impatient. So what was normally a pleasure—trading ideas with Joe and Cappello—would have a whiff of shame attached.

Joe was holding the lab report on the grandmother. “I don’t believe it, Skip. This started out as a simple little—”

“Accident,” said Cappello. “Skip figured out it was a murder.”

Joe arranged his hands in the “please-back-off” position. “I’m not blaming Skip.” He turned to her. “You know that, don’t you? It’s just that—” He threw the report down in a gesture of pure disgust. “How did someone else get dead, dammit? There’s a one-man crime wave out there.”

“Or one-woman.”

“I’m going to tell you something right now. Woman is right. The key to this is a woman, and that woman is Marguerite Terry. Either she did it or she knows who did.
Cherchez la femme,
Officers. I mean it—get her in here and lean on her like she was a fence post.”

Skip knew he was right; Marguerite had to know more. Skip was dying to bring her in and lean on her—why hadn’t she done it before?

Pity, she realized.

I felt sorry for poor, frail Marguerite. And I discounted her.

Why was that, I wonder?

She just doesn’t seem all there
.

Skip was surprised at the realization.

What is it exactly? Doesn’t she have her faculties?

But she does. She doesn’t seem slow or anything.

What is it then?

By the time she arrived at Octavia Street, she still hadn’t put her finger on it. Marguerite was her usual woozy kind of half-there self, and Cole hovered in the background.

Drugs!
she realized. She seems out of it because she is.

“Mrs. Terry, I’m going to have to ask you to come to the police station with me.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“No, ma’am. Not at this time.”
God. I sound like an automaton. What’s wrong with me?

But she knew. She’d unconsciously adopted a robot voice to get some distance. She felt sorry for Marguerite, and she could keep her at bay by modeling a ’droid. Nobody would bother having a breakdown in front of a ’droid—it has no feelings and therefore wouldn’t be affected.

Ah. There’s information in that. I guess I think she’s manipulative
.

Marguerite wanted to change clothes, but Skip was insistent—this was urgent; they were going now.

Marguerite looked at Cole with big brimming eyes. He put an arm around her. “Of course I’ll go with you.”

Skip said, “That won’t be necessary.”

And Marguerite—fragile, pathetic Marguerite—replied, “I beg your pardon. It’s not up to you to tell us what will or won’t be necessary.”

“I beg yours, Mrs. Terry. You are not the queen and I am not your footman. I am a police officer and you are my invited guest. If I were you, I’d certainly want to keep it that way.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Of course not. Mr. Terry, you could follow in your car if you like—Mrs. Terry might like a ride home afterwards.” She held her breath. Marguerite could refuse if she chose.