Death Before Facebook (Skip Langdon #4) (Skip Langdon Mystery) (The Skip Langdon Series)

by Julie Smith

  “Oh, no, it was ‘Murder in Nice Neighborhoods’ or some such thing. I don’t know. Somebody just got the idea to post about that phenomenon of everyone saying, ‘He was such a nice, quiet young fellow’ whenever a serial killer gets arrested. And then to ask if people knew anyone they thought was capable of murder. Needless to say, that got interesting, and then the topic changed slightly to something you might call ‘Murder at Home,’ only it had a slightly different name.”

  “You’re losing me again.”

  “Well, don’t worry, I’m about to catch you up. Murders in people’s own lives that weren’t called that, or for which nobody was arrested. Like the guy whose grandma fell out a window with his grandpa in the room. Did he push her or not? The topic went on for about a week and then Geoff posted that he thought he’d actually seen a murder once.”

  “What?” Skip sat forward, unable to keep still.

  “The murder of his father.”

  She sat back. “Keep talking.”

  “He said he’d had this weird dream when the topic first came up about yelling in the night, somebody trying to break in; scary stuff. He wrote it down, trying to figure out what it meant, and he thought he could actually remember something like that. The feeling, anyway. Being real scared.

  “And what he actually knew was this: when he was four years old, he and his mother came home one night to find his father dead on the bedroom floor. Shot with his own revolver—he was a cop.”

  “A cop!”

  “In your very own department. Geoff thought he could remember coming home—climbing the stairs with his mother, going into the bedroom, and finding the body. But once he’d asked her, and she said it wasn’t like that at all. She said Geoff ran right up the stairs and went to the bathroom; meanwhile Marguerite—that’s his mother—went into the bedroom and turned on the light. It was all she could do to keep from screaming, but she didn’t want little Geoffrey to know what was going on, so she turned out the light, closed the door, and went downstairs to call the cops.”

  “Pretty damn cool.”

  “Well, who knows what really happened? That’s just what she told Geoff. Anyway, it got him to thinking his own memory was bogus—or might be. And after he had that dream, he kept getting these weird flashbacks, if you want to call them that, like incest survivors are supposed to have—little half-memories. Like being in bed and hearing an argument. Running down the hall. His mother’s face. His dad on the floor… actually, he had that one all the time, from before his mother told him he’d never seen that. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

  “He posted this stuff?’

  “Yes.”

  “Under his own name?”

  “You can’t hide your identity on the TOWN—you have a user ID, but anyone can check you out in about two seconds. Geoff was Vidkid.”

  “So if it was true, if he really had witnessed the murder, or had even been in the house when one was committed, he was putting it out there for the world to know. Is that what you’re saying?’

  “That was our reasoning, yes. When we found out about the ‘accident’.”

  Skip could see why this was the talk of the TOWN. “Okay, anybody on the TOWN could find out who Geoff was. Was there any way for him to know who was reading the posts?”

  Layne shook his head. “Absolutely no way in hell. The TOWN has almost ten thousand subscribers all over the world. Someone in Marrakech could have seen the posts and come to New Orleans for the sole purpose of dispatching Geoff before he got that final damning memory.”

  Or maybe he’d already gotten it; and confronted the murderer. It needn’t be anyone on the TOWN at all—all it had to be was someone who knew he knew.

  “What was he thinking of?” she wailed.

  “To post like that? Well, it’s kind of a TOWN tradition. When you’re going through something bad—and he was—you come to your buddies for aid and comfort.”

  “He didn’t even know these people.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Excuse me. Ten thousand of them?”

  Layne looked uncomfortable.

  “Good God!” she continued. “This is what shrinks are for.”

  “The TOWN’S a hell of a lot more accessible—and cheaper.”

  “Not in this case.”

  Now he looked downright sheepish. “It might have been one of us. We know that.”

  “What’s the deal with the autopsy report?”

  “Lenore got it—don’t ask me how. She posted it and RX, who lives in Portland, Med from Pensacola, and Sayah of Savannah, all gave their medical opinions. A lot of the stuff on today is about whether or not we should notify the cops.”

  Skip sighed. “You might as well show me what the monster looks like.”

  Layne grinned like a kid. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  His computer room looked a lot like the Starship Enterprise. Clearly, much more thought had gone into the design of this than the decor of the rest of the apartment. Skip sat down in front of the color monitor.

  “Okay, I’m logging on. See? I’m typing my user ID—Teaser. Now it’s going to ask for my password.” He hit keys, but nothing appeared on the screen. Then the announcement: “You’re On The TOWN!”

  “Who knows your password?”

  “You and the sysop. That’s it.”

  “Come again?”

  “The systems operator.”

  She nodded.

  “Shall we go straight to Confession?”

  “By all means.”

  He typed out a few things and pretty soon “Murder at Home” was on the screen, its actual name being: “What Murderers Do You Know?”

  “This is going to take a long time to read. There are four hundred and eleven poss on this one. Let’s get out of it and I’ll show you Geoff’s.”

  The first post was Layne’s: “Geoff Kavanagh (Vidkid) was found dead at his home this morning, apparently the victim of an accident. Who believes it?”

  The next entry said: “The flashbacks! Somebody saw his posts.”

  Geoff’s body had been found at ten A.M. Thursday—this post was at twelve-thirty P.M., two and a half hours later and about ninety-three hours before the beginning of the police investigation.

  I’m just learning this now, Skip thought, and this cyberpunk knew it three days ago.

  The attached user ID was Gorilla. “Who the hell is that?” she growled.

  “Her name is Nancy, I think, and she lives in Boise or someplace. Want me to look her up?”

  “No. Let’s stay on topic.”

  “Well, it goes on in this vein for a while. Everybody coming to obvious conclusions. Then somebody—Med, I think”—he scrolled down—“got the idea of getting hold of the autopsy report and indeed Lenore was able to do that. She uploaded it and then things really took off—all those doctors saying the report wasn’t consistent with that kind of accident, everybody with their theories.”

  “Has anyone accused anybody?”

  “Not publicly.” Lane looked troubled.

  “But anybody could E-mail somebody. They could know something special they might not want to share, right? And simply contact the person directly.”

  “Yeah. I’ve thought of that too. Blackmail’s what you’re talking about, right?”

  “That or simple grandstanding.”

  He nodded, apparently following completely. “Have you ever been to one of those mystery weekends?”

  “No, why?”

  “Well, I’ve put a few of them together.” He spread his arms modestly. “I do games as well as puzzles. A weird thing happens to people. They all start thinking they’re Sam Spade and they do stuff they’d never do ordinarily. They break into each other’s rooms, they steal phone messages, they shadow people—it’s very disconcerting the first time you see it.”

  “Oh, shit. This is no game.”

  “A strange kind of reality kicks in once you get on the TOWN. It’s kind of like being in a car and yelling at people
you’d never yell at in any other circumstance. You know that feeling of invincibility?”

  Skip felt queasy. “They think because they can’t see the person they’re talking to they’re not really talking to him?”

  “Well, it’s weird. The actual illusion is that you know people intimately when all you see is a few words on a screen. But because that is an illusion, you get bold. The most obvious example is flirting. People flirt online, or anyway it starts out that way and next thing you know, they’re talking dirty to a perfect stranger.”

  “Oh, God, you’re not making me feel any better. They feel safe, is what you’re saying.”

  “Yes.” His brow was really quite wrinkled.

  “How can I get a printout of this stuff?”

  “I’ll make you one if you like.”

  “Now?”

  “Sure.”

  “And I’ll need the sysop’s number.”

  “Okay, but you’ve got to talk to Bigeasy, too.”

  “Who?”

  “Our fearless leader, Bigeasy. He knows more about this stuff than anybody in Louisiana.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  SKIP SPENT THE rest of the day going through Layne’s printouts and waiting for a callback from the sysop, the user ID Wizard. Aside from the terrifying thought that the murderer was monitoring the entire discussion, probably even participating in it, there were other revelations. Plenty of them.

  Geoff had posted, in front of ten thousand people, not only that he thought he might have witnessed a murder and was soon hoping to get a flashback of the murderer’s face, but that he’d always thought it kind of funny his mother got married so soon after his father’s death. She’d waited eight months and married his Uncle Mike, his father’s brother.

  Mike Kavanagh was a name Skip knew. Like his brother Leighton, he was a cop—a working cop even now assigned to Robbery, and a cousin of her nemesis, Frank O’Rourke. This was less than wonderful news. O’Rourke had proved time and again that he’d do anything to sabotage her—why, she didn’t know, except that he didn’t like women, didn’t like cops who came from Uptown, and had the disposition of a copperhead. With his cousin a suspect in the case, no telling what he’d pull, if he was in town. Fortunately, he wasn’t.

  There was another notable thing about Geoff’s posts—they weren’t complete. Sometimes there’d be a blank space with only the word deleted in it.

  Just as she was getting her eighth or ninth cup of coffee, more out of boredom than otherwise, so eager was she to be out in the field, the phone rang.

  “Hello, this is Wizard.”

  “Hi, Wizard. I got a problem down here.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been expecting to hear from you.”

  She felt once again the irritation that had surged up at Layne’s: How dare these people know more than the police? “Can you let me know all your Louisiana users?”

  “I’ve got to talk to our lawyers about anything you ask me.”

  “Okay, that’s Question One. Question Two is technical. Is there a way to recover deleted material?”

  “Not mail. Anything else, yes.”

  “Who can delete material, by the way? Can anybody on the TOWN?’

  “Anybody can delete his or her own posts. And the conference hosts or I can do it if we need to—for legal reasons, say. But other than that one user can’t delete another’s.”

  “I notice a lot of Geoff’s are missing. I’d like to know why.”

  “My guess is he did it himself. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “Thanks. Here’s what else I need: everything Geoff Kavanagh ever posted; and everything he posted that ended up deleted. Can you get that for me?”

  “I’ll ask the legal eagles.”

  Legal eagles. He was probably the kind of guy who said “thingie.” They all probably did. They were nerds by definition.

  “Hey, listen,” she said, “what kind of people subscribe to the TOWN? I mean, just in general—do you have any kind of demographic breakdown?”

  “Not really. There are thousands of lurkers who never identify themselves other than to give their names.”

  “What are lurkers?”

  “People who don’t post. You could monitor every conference except the private ones and no one would even know you’re there if you don’t speak up. That’s a lurker.

  “Anyway, we’ve had these sort of self-surveys online, but they don’t really mean anything because the lurkers so far outnumber the posters. On the TOWN, I think it’s about eight to one.”

  “Well, of the posters—or at least those who respond to the surveys—what are most people like?’

  “For openers, they’re all ages. Lots and lots of them are in computer-related jobs, of course. But we’ve got a fair number of writers and actors—we’re near L.A., so I guess you’d expect it.”

  “No dearth of doctors, I noticed.”

  “I think one of them is even a forensic pathologist. Yeah, we’ve got just about everything you can name. I’ll tell you one thing—we have a reputation for being one of the least nerdy bulletin boards.”

  “Did you say something about private conferences?”

  “Yes, anyone can start one. The most popular ones are the Men’s, Women’s, Gays, and Recovery, but we have lots that have just two or three people in them.”

  “Can I find out if Geoff was in any of them?”

  “I’ll talk to the…”

  “… legal eagles. You do that thingie.”

  Another dead end. Disgusted, she packed up and went home.

  There were other things she could have done; she felt a little odd about giving up so easily the first day of a big case, but the truth was, she was feeling overwhelmed by this one. She needed a good night’s sleep to get her mind in cyberspace.

  She had painted her new apartment melon, like the one she had left, in the Big House. As its former tenant, Jimmy Dee, had had it a deep, masculine aubergine, that hadn’t been easy, but it had been worth it. Melon walls, white trim, gauzy curtains, and French doors made a cool, light, airy, happy place, though she could have done without the cool and the air at the moment. She had a beautiful blue-and-white Chinese lamp that stood on an antique table, a shiny, dark wood coffee table, her almost-new gray-and-white-striped sofa, and very little else, except for her cherished Marcia Mandeville painting and a new bed, since she now had a bedroom. In the smaller apartment, she’d just used the fold-out sofa. Next she was going to need a set of fireplace tools, that was obvious. Even with the wide open spaces caused by an unconcealable dearth of furniture, she would have been perfectly happy here if she hadn’t had to wear three sweaters.

  Of course, she could always go over to the Big House.

  She’d been doing that a lot lately, and it had only just turned cold. Jimmy Dee had said he needed her, that’s why he’d given her the garconniere so cheap, and why she’d accepted. That and the fact that it was an offer no one in her right mind would dream of refusing. It was one of the best apartments in the French Quarter.

  But now she was developing a strange uneasiness about intruding in the Scoggin-Ritter family. The kids had been without a father quite a while before their mother died; and they’d never really known their Uncle Jimmy Dee very well. They weren’t used to men; she didn’t know if they knew he was gay, but she was damned sure they weren’t used to gay men. So they clung to her. Which made Jimmy Dee look sad, even though he knew she was the bridge between himself and them; that he’d been right in more than one way when he said he needed her. And it made her feel slightly panicky—panicky because, much as they weren’t used to men, she wasn’t used to kids. She didn’t know how to replace their mother, which was apparently what they wanted her to do. And she knew it wouldn’t solve anything—Jimmy Dee had to be their main parent, no matter how painful it was for everybody.

  So instead of Jimmy Dee, she called Steve Steinman, her California beau: “Something weird’s happening.”

  “What? In the weird capital of t
he world? Stop boring me.”

  “No, really. This is one for the books. I got this murder case—I mean, a coroner’s case that looked like murder. I went out to ask a few questions and all the victim’s friends had already seen the autopsy report, had solicited doctors’ opinions, and been out with their deerstalker caps and magnifying glasses for a good two days before the police ever even heard of it. I was last on my block to know and, let me tell you, it wasn’t fun.”

  It was a good thirty seconds before Steve Steinman stopped laughing.

  “What’s so funny?’ She was impatient.

  “You. You’re such a cop. You people hate it if anybody knows more than you do.”

  “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?”