Death Before Facebook (33 page)

“Pearce, are you armed?”

“Of course not.”

“Would you mind putting your hands up?”

“Why?”

“Let’s not waste time, all right?”

Seeing empty hands, she went through the gate.

“Mind if I pat you down?”

“No.” He was grinning now, apparently beginning to enjoy himself.

Cold bastard
.

“Come on. Let’s go in my car.”

She didn’t speak after that, her silence letting him know how angry she was.

“Did I do something wrong?”

A lot. For openers: “You don’t come banging on a police officer’s door at two
A.M.
It makes us paranoid.”

“Well, look—did you ever think about me? I find a body and I’m terrified. What am I supposed to do?”

“Go to the nearest pay phone and call 911. You know that. Everybody knows that. Why didn’t you do it?”

“I thought you were my friend.”

She sighed. “I have a feeling thereon hangs a tale.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“How’d you know my address?”

He grinned again, making her want to kick him. “I’m an investigative reporter.”

She had her red light on and she was going far too fast for city driving. But the district car beat her.

A uniformed officer, slightly wet, was just rounding the house. She identified herself.

He said, “There was a body in the pool all right, but it’s real ugly. She wasn’t exactly floating—she’s got a concrete block tied to her foot.”

Skip winced.

She ran up the steps and rang the doorbell. As expected, there was no answer. She tried the back door and found it open. Lenore’s phone was ringing. “Check the house—make sure the baby’s okay,” she said to the uniform and stared hypnotized at the phone. She knew she shouldn’t touch it, in fact could wait for the machine to pick up the call, but something told her it was important. She felt in her jacket pocket, retrieved a wadded-up tissue, and used it to grab the receiver. “Hello?”

“Lenore. Thank God.” It was a familiar voice, but she couldn’t place it.

“Who’s this?”

“Skip? What are you doing there? This is Layne.”

“Hang on a minute, will you?”

Though she knew the uniform was perfectly competent, she went to check on the baby, who was sleeping peacefully through the noise—she’d probably had a lot of experience at it.

Returning to the living room, she picked up the phone. “What’s up, Layne? It’s two
A.M.
” She never said “What’s up”; thought it the rudest phrase in the English language. But “rude” would have been a gross understatement in describing her mood—and she hadn’t even seen the body.

“Oh, shit—is everything all right?”

“Goddammit, Layne, this is no time to play games. Why the hell are you calling Lenore at this hour?”

“She left a suicide note on the TOWN. Is she all right?”

“What conference?”

“Is she all right, Skip?”

“Just tell me where the goddamn post is!”

“There’s no need to shout at me. If you feel like being polite you can call me back.” He hung up, leaving Skip staring at the phone as if it had mooed.

She hated herself when she fell into bullying; this was what gave cops a bad name. But the pressure sometimes got to her. Like the combination of Pearce’s inconceivably stupid performance and her distress at Lenore’s death (if it was she who was dead).

She went out to look at the body, thinking that Jimmy Dee must have seen something in Layne that she hadn’t—anybody who could stand up to an angry cop could probably stand up to Dee-Dee, and that was going some.

There was a sea-green garment of some kind floating in the pool. The body had been hauled up on the side in a futile rescue attempt and it was indeed Lenore—Lenore wearing only a black garter belt, black mesh stockings, and a rope around her ankle, the other end of which was tied through a cement block.

The officer who had pulled her out—the first one’s partner—was sitting in one of the white chairs, drenched, she saw now, probably freezing, and trying to collect himself.

“She was just standing in the water,” he said. “See, the light’s on”—he pointed to the backyard light—“so you could see real good. Just the top of her head, her forehead, almost down to her eyes, sticking out. Then when you got close you saw the garter belt and everything—spookiest thing I ever saw in my life.”

Skip saw that the rope on Lenore’s ankle was a couple of feet long, so that if she happened to float up instead of sideways, indeed she would have been standing in the water.

“I’ve got a blanket in my car,” she said, and gave him the key, upset at leaving the baby. She didn’t know the other officer. What if Caitlin woke up? Would he know how to take care of her? “When you’ve got it,” she said, “get on your radio and call the dispatcher. Say we need the coroner and the crime lab, and another car to take a baby to Juvenile.”

Caitlin was still sleeping. Skip spoke to the first patrolman: “If she wakes up, can you take care of her?”

He gave her an Irish grin. “Are you kidding? I’ve got three kids.”

She took a quick look around the house, saw that a bottle of bourbon and a wine bottle stood on the kitchen counter. Someone had dipped into the bourbon—about a cup was missing—and had all but demolished the wine. There were three glasses here—a wineglass and two tumblers, suitable for serving bourbon—as if Lenore had had two guests.

Her computer was set up in a small room in the back, still on—the screen indicated she’d been disconnected from the TOWN. Taped to her hard drive was a bit of yellowed, scruffy-looking paper with a gibberish word written on it in ink: “EtiDorhPa.”

Skip was dying to get started with that computer, but she couldn’t disturb a crime scene. The best use of her time right now was probably to get Pearce’s story.

“I’m going to go talk to the witness,” she told the patrolman.

Pearce was still in the car. Skip, considerably calmer than she had been half an hour ago, no longer wanted to kick his grinning teeth in. “I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

“Snapped! You were a Class A bitch.”

She got up in his face. “Pearce, let’s get one thing straight. I’m a police officer; you either treat me with respect or you get more of the same treatment. Understand?”

“Just because you’re a cop you can’t—”

“I haven’t got time for this crap. Look. You’re a possible suspect. I’m going to read you your rights.”

“What?”

“Before I ask you any questions, you must understand your rights. You have the right to remain silent…” She watched the play of emotions on his face, saw his cockiness change to respect, noted, not for the first time, the sobering effect of the Miranda warning.

“I’ll answer your questions,” he said. “I have nothing to hide.”

“First, let’s hear you apologize.” This wasn’t necessary to the interview, but Skip liked things clean. The suspect had been disrespectful and she was giving him a chance to wipe the slate; she’d feel better about him, be less likely to lose her temper with him.

“Sorry.” He lowered his head like a kid when he said it, practically whispered. It was all she could do not to grin. Like Geoff, this was a man who wasn’t truly a grown-up—except this one was well into his fifties.

“That’s better. Let’s go up on the porch.” The light was on there; she could see his face. “Okay, you said you came and got me out of bed because you thought I was your friend. What did you mean by that?” She had started here to let him know just how precarious his position was—if she was the easiest cop to deal with, he’d better not blow it.

“I’m kind of embarrassed about what happened.”

“How’s that?”

“It might sound crazy.”

She nodded sympathetically. “I listen to crazy stories all day.”

“Well, I’ve been kind of taking care of Lenore since Geoff died—trying to be her friend—and so when she E-mailed me to come over tonight, I felt I had to. I knew she was going through some rough times, and probably needed to talk to somebody.”

“What time was this?”

“It must have been about nine or nine-thirty. I’d just gotten home from dinner with friends.”

“Nine? Or nine-thirty?”

He thought about it. “Closer to nine, I guess.”

“And you came right over.”

“Yes. I got here near ten, I guess, and stayed about an hour and a half, maybe two; then I left. She was in a real bad way—I really felt lousy about it so I ended up in a bar, having a couple of drinks, and then I remembered I left something and I went back for it. She didn’t answer the door, so I went around the back.”

“You went around the back. Did you think she’d be in the backyard?”

Despite the chill—it was a nippy night—he wiped perspiration from his face. “I thought the back door might be open.”

“Oh. Why did you think that?”

“Well, while I was here, we went out the back, for a few minutes—to look at the moon. Lenore had a thing about the moon.”

“You thought she left the door open?”

He shrugged. “She was pretty loaded.”

“Well, if she didn’t answer the door, she was obviously either not home or asleep—did you plan to just walk in?”

He mopped his face again. “We’d been making love.”

She crossed her arms. “Fine. If you’ve made love with someone, that gives you the right to break into their house.”

“Look, it was a stupid thing to do, okay? I just wanted to get the thing I’d left and go home. I didn’t—” He searched for words, didn’t seem to find any. “I didn’t want to run into her.”

Skip hoped she looked as skeptical and disapproving as she felt.

The coroner and Paul Gottschalk from the crime lab turned up. She filled them in quickly, and went back to Pearce.

As if there’d been no interruption, she said, “Why didn’t you want to run into her? It was her house. You were her lover.”

“I didn’t feel too good about what was happening between us. When she invited me over, I thought she just needed someone to talk to, but she met me in this crazy getup with a garter belt and everything—look, I didn’t even want to make love to her. But she grabbed me.”

“She overpowered you. Great big Lenore and little tiny Pearce. Why didn’t you just report her for rape?” Part of her nastiness was meant for effect, but Skip was also aware that an even bigger part was perfectly sincere—that this was the same 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.”