She resisted cheering; it wouldn’t be seemly.
Inez looked at Fletcher. “Are you sure you should let her do that?”
Fletcher shrugged. “If it shuts her up, I’m all for it.”
*
Sam tapped away at the keyboard. As it happened, she did have a Facebook account, purely for business. She’d joined about a year earlier, ostensibly to get in touch with some friends from her high school, Father Ryan, but in reality to keep an eye on one of her employees whom she suspected was stealing illegal drugs from the evidence lockers at Forensic Medical. One of her former death investigators, a girl named Keri McGee, had set up the account for her and “friended,” as she called it, several of the staffers. Sam wasn’t fond of the site, it felt too much like spying on people to go to their pages and look at their pictures and hear the intimate details of their lives, but the sting worked. The staffer was caught, summarily dismissed, and Sam had biometric locks installed on the door to the evidence room so it wouldn’t happen again.
She hadn’t been back on the site, had meant to close her account, but was now grateful for the oversight. She could do a little investigating of her own without anyone being the wiser.
She typed a name into the search box, careful to get the spelling correct. Loa Ledbetter.
Boom. Up popped the woman’s page.
Sam looked at the profile picture and couldn’t stop the lump from forming in her throat. Ledbetter was a beautiful woman, very natural, with a self-assured smile. She was standing in the midst of a group of Maasi tribesmen, staring right into the camera. Sam read her information; she was a Harvard girl, with a B.Sc. in cultural anthropology, an M.A. in sociology and a Ph.D. in sociocultural and medical anthropology. She owned a market research firm that specialized in ethnographic research. In other words, a very intelligent woman who’d made a good life for herself studying other people’s behavior for a living.
What would she have made of the attack?
Sam clicked through a few of the pictures; not being a friend of the deceased, she was limited as to what she could see. But when she went back to the front page, the “Wall,” as it was called, there was a new status update. From Loa Ledbetter herself. An update from the grave. Sam shook off the chill at the coincidence.
Dear all: I am so sad to have to share that my mother was a victim of the heinous attacks in D.C. yesterday. We are devastated, and appreciate your prayers during this difficult time. When arrangements have been made we will update this page. For now, I will leave you with my mother’s favorite quote: “We must dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.”—May Sarton
Even one death is too many.
Sam took a deep breath to steady herself. This was how it was meant to be. Children were supposed to mourn their parents, not the other way around.
She looked at Ledbetter’s “friends” page and saw there was one person labeled as family. A daughter, also named Loa. She clicked on the profile, but unlike her mother, Loa the younger’s site was closed off to even the most cursory of investigation.
Sam didn’t waste any time. She sent the girl a friend request and a note that read, Please accept my deepest condolences. I am one of the medical examiners on your mother’s case. I would like to talk to you if you have a moment. She left her cell number and email address.
Marc Conlon’s page was very different from Loa’s. It was unrestricted, open for all to see. His friends had been actively posting, there were hundreds of wall entries sending the boy and his family prayers and good wishes, recounting good times had, and numerous tear-jerking replies. Sam was amazed, as she always was, at the openness with which the younger generation lived their lives. Everything they did or said was on display, with no thought to the consequences. The concept of privacy was lost on them.
Sam scrolled through the post until she found his latest entry. What she saw shocked her.
The night before the attack, at one in the morning, he had posted: Operation TEOTWAWKI entering final stage. Will report back on its success or failure. Wish me luck.
“Fletcher?”
He looked up from his desktop. “Yeah? What is it?”
“How much do you know about Marc Conlon?”
“Not my part of the investigation. Why?”
“Look at this.” She spun the laptop around so the screen was facing him. “What does TEOTWAWKI stand for?”
He read the status update. He paled, then turned to Inez. “Get me Bianco, right now.”
She didn’t hesitate, shot up from her chair and marched off in search of their boss.
“Fletch, what? What is it?”
“It’s an acronym for the end of the world as we know it.”
Chapter 19
Washington, D.C.