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CNN had perched correspondents in front of the singe r’s apartment building, but none of them were going live with new details. The New York Times had posted only a brief, bare-bones mention of the tragedy on its website, a sort of preobituary that had come from the AP. Meanwhile, Parker gloated, Gnos.is had pages and pages of information, including dozens of photos and videos uploaded from smartphone users on the street.
    “Pills were found in the apartment, but a cause of death has not been determined,” he read from the text in its current form. The paragraphs updated themselves, sometimes more than once a minute, as new reports were uploaded and confirmed. Parker frowned. “Hang on. Several sources also report that a knife has been found on the scene. There is at least one report claiming that the singer hung herself in a closet.”
    “See, no one knows anything, so they just publish everything,” Kera said, standing to clean up from dinner. “Wha t’s to keep me from submitting my own made-up version of the story? These quote-unquote reports could be coming from some bored idiot at work on the West Coast—or in Tokyo, for that matter.”
    “The reports are filtered against each other and against established facts,” Parker said. Kera listened, assuming a layperso n’s understanding of the site. “False reports are discarded, and the users who submit them are flagged. I’m not saying i t’s a perfect system. But i t’s still a useful tool.”
    “Useful for what? The latest celebrity gossip. What Gnos.is provides is hardly news.”
    Parker shrugged. “I t’s what people want. I t’s entertainment.”
    “ I’v e never understood wha t’s entertaining about what most people call entertainment.”
    It was not the first time the y’d had this conversation. Parker came down on the side of technolog y’s inevitability and its uncanny knack for improving, on balance, the lives it inevitably disrupted. He usually seemed more enthusiastic about the conversation than Kera, who secretly liked to see his passion stoked. She envied him this outlet, to be able to discuss openly what he did at work.
    Parker got up to pour another glass of wine. Minutes passed without any update. The image h e’d left on-screen was a photo of Rowena Pete taken at a show earlier that year.
    “What was she, twenty-eight?” Kera said, studying the photo. “A few years younger than us. I always wanted to see her perform live.” She entered “Rowena Pete” into the Internet radio player and sat for a moment, her glass of wine in hand, listening in the way you do only when i t’s too late to not take something for granted. There was a raw quality that Kera liked about Rowen a’s music that was missing from most other music she listened to. Something honest and present. The year before, sh e’d almost bought them tickets to see Rowena Pete at the Bowery Ballroom. She remembered now why she had n’t . During her first months in the city, sh e’d been tempted from all sides by concerts and museums and Broadway shows. So much happened in this city every day of the week, and the chance to see a Rowena Pete show had felt, like everything else, as if it would always be there.
    Ker a’s phone chirped to life on the counter. She looked at the time. It was after ten.
    “Shit. I t’s Gabby.”
    Parker looked up at her for a moment with raised eyebrows, but then returned his attention to his computer.
    “Are you at home?” Gabby said over a background din of voices and vehicle engines, the occasional bleat of a car horn.
    “Yeah, wha t’s up?”
    “Can you join me at a fresh scene at Fourth and Bowery? Branagh himself sent me out here, and I want you looped in,” she said, referring to Dick Branagh, Haw k’s reclusive director and the only person higher up the chain than Gabby.
    “A scene?” It was unusual for Hawk personnel to be present at a physical crime scene. Hawk agents lived almost exclusively in the digital world,