Here Comes the Big One

The PD is doing pretty well, considering; they?ve lost a few to early retirement and suicide, but funding is up and habeas corpus has been suspended?for drug dealers at least?thanks to the Impact Preparation Security and Stabilization Act. It?s just that no one really cares about solving murders when you?re busy Preparing for Impact. And how, exactly, do you Prepare? One of Palace?s colleagues likes to say that ?sometime around late September they?ll start handing out umbrellas.?

That deadpan voice seems to be going around, as genial fatalism rules the day now that the chaos immediately surrounding the initial announcement has calmed. The cops crack deadpan jokes. In dive bars, patrons make deadpan jukebox selections?U2?s ?Until the End of the World,? Tom Waits? ?Earth Died Screaming,? ?and of course that R.E.M. song, playing over and over and over.? And many citizens, all hope for the future gone, have achieved the ultimate in deadpan by becoming actually dead.

Peter Fell, the dead guy in the bathroom, hanged himself, the suicide of choice around here. (In the Midwest, they prefer shotguns to the head, but Concord?s ?a hanger town.?) Nevertheless, Palace thinks something?s fishy about the death, and he pursues the case in the face of everyone else?s disbelief and disinterest. The victim?s relatives don?t care about Palace?s theories. The scumbags he shakes down for information are mostly exasperated by his diligence: ?You know, a lot of cops are quitting,? one says. ?Moving to Jamaica and so forth. Did you ever think about that, Palace?? Even when Palace turns up evidence that Fell may have been wrapped up in something big, his colleagues treat him like an overeager kid. ?I?ll tell you what,? cracks the assistant D.A. ?We?ll call it an attempted murder. It?s a suicide, but you?re attempting to make it a murder.?

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=2c6a676bd2ae7de155f640b3aa686a32

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