Death Before Facebook

sweetly, so she could hardly be mad.
    It was a funny thing. Skip had read somewhere that most police officers, queried as to why they’d chosen their jobs, said they “wanted to help.” How often, she thought, do you really get that opportunity? It wasn’t glamorous, it wasn’t busting scumbags, but there was something satisfying about following Lenore from room to room, holding little Caitlin.
    Lenore went through her jewelry box; her underwear drawer, where she’d stashed a wad of cash; her medicine cabinet, where she had what she called “prescription drugs”; and her living room, where her TV and VCR reposed.
    Skip noticed that some of the candles from the other night were still in place. “You must like candles.”
    “Ummf.”
    The altar had been dismantled, but some of its accoutrements were scattered about the room, including the pentacle plate. “How unusual!” Skip said, picking it up as if to admire it. “What’s it for, exactly?”
    “It’s my lucky star.” Lenore gave her a warm smile. “A friend gave it to me.”
    So much for innocently teasing out cult information. Yet Lenore didn’t seem particularly rattled. She gave Skip a puzzled look, absently holding her arms for Caitlin. “It looks as if everything’s here.”
    “Did Geoff give you anything to keep? A book, perhaps?”
    “No, why?”
    “You must think this has something to do with his death—you asked to speak to me.”
    Lenore took a moment to answer. “I don’t know. Maybe I do. It’s funny, I didn’t think about it. I just saw you at Geoff’s funeral and I thought of you.” She paused, turning the idea over in her head. “You’re the only cop I know.”
    That was New Orleans—you talked to whom you knew, and you just about always knew someone.
    Lenore genuinely seemed to like her. And she had asked for Skip—like a good little citizen—when she discovered her burglary. Could it all be an act?
    Easily,
she thought. “So me a favor, okay?” she said. “Don’t post about this on the TOWN.”
    The girl actually looked puzzled. “Really? Why not?”
    * * *
     
    I had imagined him dead so many hundreds of times, and yet I could not have conceived of the horror of it. I must have seen two hundred dead bodies by that time, but when it is someone you know, no matter how much you may have hated him—and for good reason—no matter how much he may have hurt someone you love deeply, you love life more. It is a fact of biology, of our DNA, and is perhaps as simple and basic, as ignoble in the end, as the urge to rut.
    Whatever my mind told me—my good, rational, U. Va., white male mind— I was ill at the sight of him, would have given anything to pluck out the bullet and repair the torn flesh.
    I believe Marguerite felt the same. She cried torrents, as if he had not made every moment of her waking life a living hell. She was beautiful in her grief, her despair not for Leighton, but for the same thing for which I grieved—for the rawness of life itself. And perhaps for her child; I cannot say that I will ever really know what went on in Marguerite’s mind, only that she is a force of nature.
    She was magnificent today. I believe if I had seen her for the first time in that church, in her severely chic widow’s weeds, instead of so many years ago in the Dream Palace, she would have had the same effect. Cole Terry, on the other hand, is rather a horse’s ass.
     
    PEARCE HAD WRITTEN a little bit of “Regrets,” the thing he cared about, as a sort of warm-up to working on the story about the murder. He really did need to get started on that.
    Because this was the story that was going to resurrect his entire career. And his life. He knew how to do it now.
    He could scrap the damn stupid screenplay he was working on—about the eighteenth story in as many years—and turn this one into a movie. And it would sell too, because it would make national news and maybe People Magazine, which everyone knew was the bible of every producer in Hollywood.
    The plan was simple. He could hardly believe he’d been so brilliant as to think of it—it really did kill quite a few birds with one stone.
    (“If you’ll excuse the expression,” he said to himself, stroking his mustache devilishly.)
    Who first?
he thought.
    But there was really no competition.
    Without even calling first, he drove to Lenore’s. She had decided late last night, at the TOWN dinner, to call in sick again today.
    “Pearce!” she squealed. “I was