Death Before Facebook

about December seventh? I could do the interview then.”
    Eileen sighed. “What murder case?”
    Skip told her and arranged to pick up the clips that afternoon. Next, she went through the department file on the case. The investigating officer had been one Rene Lafont. A call to the pension board produced his address—in Westwego, on the west bank.
    Despite its proximity, it was a place most New Orleanians would never see. She could probably name people who’d been to Australia and six or eight African countries who were probably going to die without crossing the Mississippi. Was it worth a drive over there? Much as she hated the idea, she thought it had to be done. Lafont might be an old grump who’d have to be coaxed to talk.
    An hour later, approaching his small but neat house, she couldn’t imagine how she could have thought that—and revised her opinion when he answered the door. He was a very thick man, thick in the neck and the jaw as well as the belly. Either his hair was still dark or he dyed it It wasn’t brown and wasn’t black, but a kind of steely color, like the muzzle of a rifle, and it was slicked with something greasy. His features, like his body, were thick, his brown eyes narrow above dark pouches dotted with skin tags. He wore khakis held up with a belt that could have fit around a steamer trunk, and a cheap white shirt. He stepped outside the door and simply stood there, waiting for her to say something.
    She showed him her badge. “I wonder if you could help me out with something?”
    “A lady cop. I thought I avoided ’em by retirin’.” The words weren’t the world’s friendliest, but he smiled when he said them, and his whole demeanor changed. She realized that she’d gotten his street-cop look, the one the punks saw, and now she was probably seeing the one his grandchildren knew.
    She decided to play his game. “Can’t avoid ’em. We’re everywhere.”
    “Well, my wife’s got to see this.” He opened the old-fashioned screen door. “Ruthine! Guess what I got here?”
    He ushered Skip through a painfully neat living room—the kind with plastic covers on the furniture—into a kitchen where a stout white-haired woman was loading the dishwasher. She was probably a great cook, judging from the size of both Lafonts.
    “This is Officer Skip Langdon, a bona fide lady cop.”
    “Well, it’s about time we had some of those. How ’bout some coffee?” She reached for a cup even as she spoke.
    Twenty minutes later, Skip had seen pictures of their grandchildren and, sitting in their breakfast room, outlined her own checkered past with judicious editing—noting, for instance, that she had transferred to Ole Miss, rather than flunked out of Newcomb.
    When they knew enough about each other to start their own FBI files, Rene asked what he could do for her. She told him the whole story.
    She had judged her audience correctly. He nodded and grunted loudly at the end of almost every sentence, providing his own punctuation. And when she was done, he whistled so loud Ruthine looked over, startled.
    “That’s some story, young lady. Nothin’ like that ever happens on Prodigy.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Prodigy. That’s the bulletin board we’re on.”
    “You’re kidding. You’re on a bulletin board?”
    “He is,” Ruthine called from the kitchen, where she’d repaired for some chore or other. “It’s kind of his hobby now. Whole days go by I never see him.”
    “Ah, Ruthine, you know that’s not so.”
    “I know it is.”
    “I was wondering,” Skip said hurriedly, “what you could tell me about Leighton’s murder. You were first on the scene, weren’t you?”
    “Well, no, I think a district car got there first. But I was a close second. Terrible thing.” He closed his eyes. “Terrible. I knew Leighton too. I worked with him over to the Fifth District.” He said “woiked with him.”
    “What was he like?’
    “Mean bastard. And none too smart. But you hate to see that happen to a young person. Beautiful wife—nice little boy.”
    “What was Geoff like that night? The boy.”
    “Real scared. Like any kid would be.”
    “Did you get the idea he could have seen anything?”
    “I didn’t question him; he was four years old. And that mama of his—the word ‘hysterical’ was made up for women like that. I’m lucky I got anything coherent at all. Tell you what I thought was strange, though. Two things. It looked like Leighton came home from work