Death Before Facebook (6 page)

“Something wrong with that?’

“Who’s dead?’

“Guy named Geoff Kavanagh.”

“Oh, shit. Not Vidkid.”

“I’m asleep; I’m dreaming. This isn’t really happening to me.”

“The autopsy report and all that stuff—the people who did that are all on the TOWN, right?’

“Don’t tell me you are too.”

“What happened to old Vidkid? I’m sorry to hear about this.”

“Obviously, you haven’t been logging on, or you’d know.”

“Not in about three months, actually. I burn out on it after a while.”

“You’re going to love this.” For once, she was unfettered by the police code of secrecy, since almost everything she knew about the case was public—had been public before the murder. And he
was
going to love it; Steve was a sucker for a good yarn, and also an excitement junkie.

He was beside himself. “I can’t believe what I’ve been missing.”

“You can know a person and not really know him.”

“What do you mean?’

“I had no idea you were a TOWNsperson.”

“Well, you know I’m heavy into computers.”

“Oh, yeah. You took some sort of course recently.”

“Some sort of course that changed my life, that’s all. But the TOWN—I guess I never talk about it because it’s so boring.”

“Oh, right.”

“Well, this
is
our first homicide. Really low crime rate, usually.”

“Do you post or lurk?”

“Got the jargon already, I see. I lurk, mostly, but now and then—” He paused for a long time.

“What?”

“I was just trying to figure out what. I can’t explain it; something comes over you.”

“Like a spell?”

“An evil spell.”

“Oh, great. First virtual sex. Now black magic. What’s your user ID?”

“I’m afraid it’s a little unimaginative.”

“Hit me with it.”

“Steve.”

“Steve?”

“Don’t be so merciless. Look, you’ve got to get on this thing.”

“My thought, exactly. But I don’t want them to know I’m lurking—and you can’t hide it, right?”

“Oh, sure you can. Nobody asks for your driver’s license. All you really have to do is join using someone else’s credit card. The TOWN bill goes to them, but you can log on from anywhere; so if you’re working at home, you’ll just get the phone bill yourself. Pretty neat, huh?”

“But not very inventive, criminally speaking.”

“Well, here’s something even less inventive—but more elegant. Why don’t you be me?

“Can I do that?”

“Sure. All I have to do is tell you my password.”

“And you’d do that?”

“I’m not so sure. It’s a little embarrassing.”

“Why?”

“Oh, hell. Just get a pencil, okay?”

“Got one.”

“You can’t use real words because there are programs that can go through the dictionary until they get to your password.”

“You lost me.”

“Hackers do this. They’ll break into your personal file and into the whole TOWN if they want to.”

“Oh, who could be bothered?”

“Did anyone ever tell you there are a lot of strange people out there?”

She was almost angry at the senselessness of it. “Why don’t they just get a life?”

“A lot of them are computer wizards working in computer jobs. They do the whole day’s work in an hour or two, maybe three, but they can’t leave or the boss would notice. So they screw around.”

“I see what you’re saying. These are people who literally have nothing better to do.”

“Idle hands are the devil’s playthings—or however that goes.”

“How about the password?”

He said something that sounded like “Skip to my Lou.”

“Huh?”

“I said it was embarrassing.”

“I think it’s sweet.” Wow. Not just sweet. It was downright moving.

“Take it down—Skip2mLu. My darlin’.”

“Aren’t you romantic.”

He was silent.

“Hello?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s a good question.”

“What’s a good question? What are you talking about?”

“We’ll talk about it later.”

“What? We’ll talk about what later?”

“I’m just not ready yet. I can’t talk about it now.”

She hung up with fear at the back of her throat. It wasn’t like Steve to put her off, to say ambiguous things.

He’s met someone else
, she thought.

Why wouldn’t he have? There were two thousand miles between them. They couldn’t go on like this forever, and they didn’t plan to. Steve talked all the time about moving to New Orleans. He loved it, it was becoming his second home. Or so he used to say.

And now she knew she would call Jimmy Dee. Anyway, he had a computer and she didn’t. On second thought, why call?

She popped over.

“Auntie!” Eleven-year-old Kenny ran for her. He was still cuddly, still a little boy.

“That sounds sooo dumb! Why don’t you just call her Skip?” said Sheila, the thirteen-year-old.

Kenny looked crushed.

“Because it’s not my name. Auntie is my name.”

“Short,” said Jimmy Dee, “for Aphrodite. Because your auntie is a goddess among women. Or, if you want to know a secret, simply a goddess. It used to be Affie, but she’s so modest she insisted on Auntie so no one would know. Keep the secret, would you, angels?”

“Affie! Affie!” Sheila was convulsed in giggles, giggles of the most contemptuous thirteen-year-old sort. “Affie, Affie, Affie.”

“Stay for dinner?” Jimmy Dee was keeping his tone light, but Skip saw the plea in his eyes. She needn’t have worried about intruding.

“What are we having?”

“To you, fettuccine quattro fromaggi. To Kenny”—he dropped a hand on the little boy’s shoulders, and Kenny smiled up at him—“macaroni and cheese. To Sheila—”

“Pig slop.”

“I beg your pardon, my good young lady. I bet you’ve never seen a pig in your life, much less slop.”

“I used to ride horses,” she said, and stalked out.

Skip said, “You know that expression ‘tossed her head’?”

“I do it often.” He pantomimed removing his head and throwing it to Kenny, who laughed as if it were the first time he’d seen it.

“But some people
really
do it.”

“Come, let’s go toss a salad.”

The kitchen was shiny as a new car and up to the nanosecond. Two teams of workmen had worked for six months to tear out the four apartments into which the gorgeous old house had been divided, and make it whole again. The kids’ mother, ill with cancer, had died in the meantime, and they’d stayed for a while with their grandparents. Skip couldn’t believe it had happened so fast, but here it was—hardwood floors, paint as fresh as a breeze, and perfect, storybook rooms for each of the kids. Jimmy Dee had hired not only decorators, but child psychologists; he had consulted mothers, dads, and kids about how to furnish the rooms, what toys to get for Kenny, what half-teen-half-kid things for Sheila. Predictably, neither had said a word on seeing their perfect new rooms.

Later, Kenny had grudgingly admitted he liked his, and Sheila had begun to complain about hers.

“At least she’s talking,” Jimmy Dee said.

Skip looked at him sideways. “You’re going to wear out your cheeks trying to keep smiling.”

“How do you get a kid to like you?”

“Expensive gifts?”

“Didn’t work.”

“Time.”

“Cut up this tomato, will you?”

“Dee-Dee, really. Her whole world’s been turned upside down. And besides that, she’s thirteen. If she weren’t surly, she wouldn’t be normal.”

“See this hair?” He picked up a strand of it. “It’s turning gray.”

“It’s been gray for years.”

There was a bump from the other side of the house, followed by a loud wail from Kenny and then the sound of running footsteps. Sighing in unison, Dee-Dee and Skip ran to the back, to what Jimmy Dee was pleased to call the library, because he’d put all his books in there, but what, in fact, was more or less a very elegant TV room. It was full of dark wood and flowing draperies that were almost apple green, but deeper than that, with a golden sheen. It was a room so beautiful Skip thought it would make her weep if she ever saw it uncluttered with toys and schoolwork. And yet she liked the way the kids had made it theirs, doing their homework on the low, broad coffee table, pulling pillows off the sturdy cocoa-colored couches to lie on while watching television.

Kenny was just changing the channel. He looked up, his face reproachful. “She kicked me.”

“Sheila!”

Sheila’s chunky frame appeared in the doorway, feet planted apart, long hair snaky. “What?” She had made one syllable sound a lot like “Want to make something of it?” Her jaw looked as if it would take a team of oral surgeons to get it to move.

Kenny pointed a skinny finger. “She changed the channel and then when I went to change it back she kicked me and pushed me over.”

She ran at him. “You kicked me, you little shit!” And this time she did kick him. He fell over howling, holding his injured leg, milking it for all it was worth.

“God damn it, Sheila!” said Jimmy Dee, going for her, grabbing her arm.

“You let go of me.” She wriggled loose on her own, unfortunately having built up enough momentum so that she stumbled forward, fell over her huddled little brother, and landed in a heap on top of him. He set up a new howl, and Skip saw Sheila’s face as she rolled over and came up—not merely flushed and angry and sullen, but absolutely miserable. It was a face that said, “No one loves me; I haven’t a friend in the world.”

“Oh, honey,” said Skip, reaching for her.

“Leave me alone!”

Jimmy Dee was trying to comfort the screaming Kenny, whose dignity was no doubt hurt a great deal worse than his leg. Sheila ran from the room.

Sighing, Skip turned off the TV. “Maybe it’s time for homework.”

“You’re going to punish me for something she did?”

“Punish you how?”

“I was watching a show!”

“Actually, it’s time to wash up,” said Jimmy Dee. “Dinner in five minutes.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Dee-Dee, in the manner of parents, had lied about the five minutes, of course. But in fifteen or twenty, they were all four seated at the kitchen table (the kids much preferred this to the dining room), Sheila and Kenny actually looking combed and fresh, as if they hadn’t just been mixing it up like a couple of street thugs.

They were an odd contrast, these two, exactly the opposite of everything everyone said about kids. Boys were supposed to be rambunctious and aggressive, yet Kenny was gentle to a fault, the kind of kid a bully could smell a mile away, and wanted nothing more than to please. He had freckles across his nose and neat brown hair that he actually knew how to part and slick down. When he did that, Skip wanted to rumple it and say, “Lighten up, kid.” But he was so proud of this adult skill that she held back.

She wished sometimes that he’d come home one day with a mohawk, done in pink and purple stripes, and a nose ring.

Sheila was another story entirely. She was big for her age, tall and carrying baby fat, with a lot of color in the face and wavy blond-brown hair with gorgeous sunlit streaks that she let fall over one eye and that was quite often a little on the greasy side—she wasn’t yet at the hairwashing-every-five-minutes stage. She was big and full of beans and she was one tough customer.

While Kenny was content to sit on the floor and color, she flounced about the house seemingly from pillar to post, trying to work off energy, at times kicking or hitting anyone who got in her way, sometimes deliberately attacking her little brother, or so it seemed—physically attacking him, as he’d reported tonight.

If Kenny should lighten up, she should calm down, and Skip had to swallow those words as well. Often, Jimmy Dee didn’t. He lost his temper with her, he yelled at her. These were the reasons she resisted him, but on the other hand, Skip knew perfectly well, she taunted him. He wasn’t used to children; he didn’t have the skills yet to know how to defuse her. He saw her simply as a big kid attacking a little one and his instinct was to defend the underdog.

She had to blame someone for her unhappiness, for her mother’s death, her father’s desertion, for being uprooted and moved to a strange town. Jimmy Dee was simply handy, Skip thought. Sheila had had two sessions with a therapist and after that had put up so much resistance to going it had been easier to let it go for a while.

Skip adored her—adored them both, actually, but she identified with Sheila. Sheila was uncomfortable with her body, as Skip had been with hers most of her life, before she realized size could be an advantage and had become a cop.

Sheila was in a place she didn’t want to be. Throughout her childhood, Skip had felt like an alien who’d somehow wandered into a culture she didn’t understand. Sheila actually was one.

Sheila had a lot of attributes that were supposed to belong to boys; so did Skip.

“Maybe we should just get Kenny some Barbie dolls and Sheila a football,” she had said once.

Dee-Dee had raised an eyebrow: “As if being raised by a gay uncle isn’t confusing enough for them.” But he’d thought about it a minute. “Uh-uh,” he said. “It’s more like this. Kenny might like to do needlepoint, I think. Or knit maybe. And Sheila needs a Samurai sword.”

“You really don’t like her, do you?’

His face twisted into a grimace. “How can you not like a child? But she’s violent. What am I supposed to do with that?”

“Well, let’s see. First we’ll have her pledge Kappa at Newcomb—”

“Oh, cut it out.”

There were two ways to get around both kids—one was to take them on an adventure, any adventure, and promise ice cream as part of it. The other was to have Auntie tell a few grisly cop stories. Skip had to censor, and she felt a little funny about telling stories from the streets, necessarily violent and scary stories, but she knew her tales were nothing compared to what was in the rest of the culture. Anyway, she liked to think she was a good role model.

Tonight she told them about a suspect who vaulted a fence when she was chasing him, and in the course of it lost his wallet, which contained his identity and address. When she got to his house, his wife claimed he’d been in bed with the flu all day. Skip arrested him anyway, but had a bad moment when she came down with the flu two days later.