Death Before Facebook

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