Death Before Facebook

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