Then he looked at the printouts. “So, what’re we looking for here?”
He saw that someone had circled the time stamps at two different places on the page.
One was on the reader comment that followed Stanley Dowbrowski’s comment:
From Death.Before.Dishonor (3:20 p.m.):
What about “Thou Shalt Not Steal”??
The only sad thing about what happen
ed is the gun didn?t empty all of its bullets into that pendejo! Skipper deserved every damn bullet!
Recommend [0] Click Here to Report Abuse “ ‘Skipper’?” Payne read aloud. “How the hell did he know it was Skipper? That’s not exactly a common name.”
“Clearly, there’s some significance to ‘steal,’” Byrth added.
Tony Harris shrugged. Then he pointed to the other time stamp that was circled.
They read that one:
Update (5:44 p.m.): According to the anonymous source inside the hospital, the patient who was shot to death was J. Warren Olde, Jr.
“Is the source there the girl, too?” Payne said.
“I don’t think so,” Harris said, “because she knows Stanley would never leak to reporters, and she follows his example.” He paused. “The interesting thing here is that the newspaper did not even mention the victim’s name until more than two hours after this guy, this Death.Before.Dishonor person, wrote what he or she wrote.”
Byrth offered, “ ‘ Death before dishonor’ is something the gangbangers stole from the old mafia types. It’s a badge of honor that they’ve bastardized, like everything else they’ve stolen. They get the phrase tattooed on them, usually in prison.”
Harris nodded, then went on: “When Stanley noticed that the poster had (a) mentioned Skipper and (b) mentioned him by name two hours before the paper reported the formal name and (c) then took into account the tone of the posting itself, he remembered something. He remembered that both the name Death.Before.Dishonor and the anger were familiar.”
Harris flipped the pages of the printout.
“And so he went back through the newspaper web pages, trying to find this article.”
He pointed to the printout of an article with the headline:2 DEAD AFTER METH LAB EXPLODES, BURNS PHILLY INN MOTEL.
“Here at the bottom”-he pointed-“Stanley posted this comment.”
Payne and Byrth read it:
From Hung.Up.Badge.But.Not.Gun (9:50 a.m.):
Amen to both of you, Indy1 amp; WWBFD. I spent enough time walking the beat to see everything at least once. And nothing is as insidious as what these drugs do to families of every walk of life. I say, Shoot?em all and let the Good Lord sort?em out.
Recommend [4] Click Here to Report Abuse “Really is a good thing he’s not wandering around with a gun and a badge anymore,” Byrth repeated.
Harris chuckled. “That’s just his sense of humor. Stanley’s not the type to go postal.”
Byrth snorted. “I remember when we had that rash of post office workers shooting their coworkers. Somebody said that it just wasn’t right for them to be shooting each other-dramatic pause-because it was only fair that their frustrated customers should get to do it.”
Harris and Payne chuckled.
“Anyway,” Harris then went on, “apparently that shoot-’em-all comment provoked the Death.Before.Dishonor person, because she or he posted a pretty raw comment.”
“About?”
“Stanley said it said pushers sold drugs because people wanted them. And it was no different than what got sold legally-booze, cigarettes.”