Beth placed long, white jade earrings against her neck. They were $200 dollars in this Chinatown store- and she could talk them down some- but she wanted them. She had a meeting with Mac. He had told her he recognized some folks in the photos from Jelly’s machine. She wasn’t ready to talk to him about getting together again, but she was really curious. She had looked over the photos with Sosa, but could only recognize about half the people, and didn’t see any link to the murders. If someone was afraid of being photographed- and that was the entire motive- why would they go to some digerati party where each person had the newest digital SLR, or at least a camera phone? It didn’t make sense to her.
She was glad Mac was helping the SFPD for free. If they knew his rate…
Mac suggested they meet at Luna Park. It was a bad call for various reasons but she knew he had picked it because they had their first date there, ages ago. He thought she liked it, and she didn’t have the heart to tell him it reminded her of everything wrong with the gentrification of the Mission: drunk teenieboppers acting “different” but all the same in their differentness, ordering the hot new drink- Stoli and Cranberry/Cosmopolitans/Mojitos- and trying to talk serious drama about their meaningless affluent lifestyles. Sure, Beth was no different, but seeing them all acting everything out in front of her reminded her of this and depressed her even more.
She was sad without Mac. She wasn’t good alone. All of those projects piled in her vacant apartment didn’t call out to her to finish them, they just reminded her of how rich her life was with him.
He had gotten there early and was waiting for her. She slid into the seat, and they immediately started looking at the photos.
Mac pointed at each person as Beth drank red wine.
“OK, that’s Tom there, and there’s Jelly. There’s um, what’s her name, that other woman who was killed. Man, this is like a who’s who of the iMurder case. Everyone is here.”
“But, is the killer there, like someone who for some reason didn’t want to be in these photos so they had to delete them.” Beth said.
“I don’t get why Jelly is here. She never goes to these things.” Mac said.
“Didn’t you read say she had been doing some journalism-blogging thing in her spare time? About GiggleLoop?”
“She had written about that, she was writing something new, with Joe, the other victim.”
“What was it?” Beth asked. The wine was warming her up.
“I… I can’t remember. I have to get into her account again. Hey look at this. Who is Tom talking to?” Mac pointed at a corner of a photo of three girls, arms around each other, kissing and making out.
“Oh my god that’s the photo that made all the news about how sexy Web 2.0 parties are.”
“So untrue.”
“I know. I don’t know who that is. Wait, he is so tall. Check that out.”
“And it looks like he died his hair black. Some random mysterious goth guy.”
“Yeah. We can ask Tom about it.”