Social Death: A Clyde Shaw Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page B

minutes of the 911 call and promptly ruled her death a homicide; the cause of death was bludgeoning. The anchors thanked him for his report and we were out.
    I breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
    The feeling lasted, oh, about ten seconds.
    No sooner had Dino—short for Konstantinos—lowered his camera then I got a call from the assignment desk. They wanted another live shot from the crime scene during the 4 o’clock news hour. And this time they wanted a package, a three- to five-minute-long pre-taped segment that included the following elements: B-roll (standard visuals of say, snow falling if it’s a story about a winter storm); voice-overs (the reporter talking over the visuals); taped source interviews; and vox pop .
    If you could get past the jargon, it wasn’t rocket science. Just a hell of a lot of footwork. And I had only three-and-a-half hours to pull it all together. As I hung up the phone, I could feel the adrenaline surging through my veins. Cocaine had nothing on breaking news.
    “Anyone want lunch?” Jen asked. It was ten past noon. Aaron offered to go to a sandwich shop around the corner and started taking orders. “Want anything, Clyde?”
    My given name was Cornelia Shaw, but most everyone called me Clyde. Long story short, as a kid I was tall and on the heavy side, to put it nicely. I also liked to wear clogs. Put it all together and the comparisons to a Clydesdale were inevitable. In high school, I managed to lose most of the weight—I’d ditched food for boys and booze—but the nickname, mercifully shortened to Clyde, had stuck. In college, and while I was pursuing my graduate degree in journalism and for some years after that, I was back to Cornelia. And then one day I made the mistake of mentioning my old nickname to Georgia, who’d adopted it straight away, despite my numerous protestations. “It’s androgynous and unique,” she’d said, shooing me out of her office with a flick of the wrist. “Now quit acting like a whiny schoolgirl and get back to work.”
    For the record, I was never a complainer as a kid. I made better-than-average grades at Livingston and participated in a decent number of extracurriculars. Most of them were of the sedentary variety—we got to eat pastries and cheese in French club—but one year I worked up the courage to join the swim team. It was the fall of sixth grade, following a summer growth-spurt that included, unfortunately, my already well-developed breasts. On my first day of practice, a thin-lipped eighth-grade blonde named Missy McClintock picked me out in the crowd of newcomers. She positioned herself behind me in the line to start our drills, mocking my breasts with a pull-buoy stuffed beneath the chest of her Speedo and making farting noises with her mean little mouth. I’d pretended not to notice as all the other girls laughed.
    It got worse, of course. In the pool, Missy kicked and elbowed me every chance she got; out of the pool, she called me names to my face. Fatso, Tubby, and, on a good day, Dolly P. None of the other girls wanted to have anything to do with me. I sat alone on the bus rides to meets and was excluded from potluck dinners and other team-building events. Finally I complained to Olivia, who was furious with me for not telling her about the situation sooner. “What can you do?” I’d said to her. Missy was older than us, and more popular than both of us put together.
    The next day, Olivia showed up during practice. We were all already in the water warming up, so I didn’t notice her until she was sitting up in the bleachers with my coach, pointing first to the Charles S. Kravis plaque on the wall, then to me, and then to Missy.
    That was the end of the bullying. It was also the first time I realized I’d never have another friend like Olivia. She was one in a million, and now she was gone.
    “Food, Clyde?” Jen asked again.
    I shook my head. Food was the last thing on my mind. “I’ll pick something up later.” I pulled