Death Before Facebook

reaction Pearce had provoked in her before.
    The guy’s a monumental dickhead
.
    “Look, I did it, okay? That doesn’t mean I’m proud of it. She was loaded—I should have just left when I saw how loaded she was.”
    “But you didn’t want to disappoint her.”
    He straightened his shoulders. “I didn’t. Okay? I thought she might hurt herself.”
    “What do you mean hurt herself?”
    “I mean commit suicide.”
    “Why did you think that?”
    “She was self-destructive. You could see it from twenty paces. This was a woman with ‘tragedy’ written all over her.”
    “So you fucked her like the good friend you are.”
    He flared. “Why are you crawling all over me?”
    She spoke calmly and slowly. “Because it’s what you deserve. Because I’m a police officer. Because, as you yourself said, I’m the only friend you have in this department. If it was some other cop, have you got any idea what you’d be going through?”
    “Oh, jeez. I wish I were dead.”
    “What was the thing you forgot?”
    “My coat.”
    “I don’t think so, Pearce. If it was your coat you’d have said, ‘my coat,’ not ‘something I left.’ Also, you’d have noticed as soon as you got outside. It wasn’t your coat, Pearce. It was something of Lenore’s, wasn’t it? You waited till you thought she was asleep and in fact went to the back because you knew it was open—you deliberately left it open yourself—and you thought you’d just sneak in and burglarize Lenore.”
    “No!”
    “Well, then, did you kill her?”
    He covered his face with his hands. Two more officers had arrived. One, a blond who looked like a football player, got out of a car and came over to Pearce and Skip. “There’s a baby here?”
    Skip introduced herself. “In the house. Her mother drowned.”
    “What about her father?”
    “I don’t know. The mother didn’t live with him. But she has a grandfather—something Marquer. A woman named Kathryne Brazil would probably know—she was the mother’s best friend.”
    The blond nodded. “We’ll take care of it.”
    Skip turned back to Pearce. “Okay, I’m giving you a whole new lease on life. This is your big opportunity, Pearce—to tell the truth for once. What was it you went back to get?”
    He looked at her appraisingly, seemed to weigh his options. Finally, he lowered his head, just as he had when he apologized, and said in a low voice: “Geoff’s journal.”
    It was all she could do not to repeat the phrase at top volume, followed by a chain of mental exclamation points. For that matter, it was all she could do not to jump on his chest and beat him senseless. Instead, she spoke gently, not wanting to risk losing the thread. “You want to tell me about that?”
    “We found it in her car a couple of days ago—in his backpack. She didn’t know it was there; I guess she’d forgotten. She opened up the backpack and there was his journal.”
    “Did you read it?”
    “She wouldn’t let me.”
    “Right. She wanted to make love.”
    He shrugged.
    In fact, Skip had spoken only half in sarcasm. The notion of Lenore—loaded, needy Lenore—snatching it away from him and clawing at his clothes, was all too believable.
    “She went to sleep holding it.”
    “Or you’d have stolen it then.”
    “I’d have read it then. Don’t you think someone should have read it? This is a murder case, right?”
    “That does bring up the interesting question of why both of you withheld evidence.”
    She was just needling, but to her surprise, he addressed it. “Lenore wasn’t up to it, don’t you understand that? She’d fallen into some kind of a funk that turned her inward. The first few days she was all over the map, getting coroner’s reports, posting in ninety-three conferences, calling people up… but she was losing it. Somebody else died—her old music teacher—and she just couldn’t handle it.”
    “That leaves you, Pearce.”
    “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