There was no message, only an attachment. Shrew downloaded the image, and as it appeared in high resolution on her screen, she felt a thrill that made her understand what people meant when they said their hair stood on end.

“My word,” she muttered. “Oh, my dear Lord,” she exclaimed.

Marilyn Monroe’s nude body was stitched up like a rag doll on top of a shiny steel autopsy table, her blond hair wetly clumped around her dead face, which was a bit swollen, but recognizable. Shrew began zooming in on every detail, the mouse clicking like mad as she did exactly what the fans were bound to do. She gawked and enlarged and gawked some more at the puckering and flattening of the movie goddess’s once gorgeous breasts caused by the dreadful railroad track of sutures that ran in a V from her collarbones to her cleavage, then all the way down her once gorgeous body, past old surgical scars, before disappearing in pubic hair. Her famous lips and blue eyes were shut, and at the highest magnification the software could muster, Shrew came upon the truth that the world had always wanted and certainly deserved.

Just like that, she knew, and could prove it.

It couldn’t be more obvious.

The details were there. Evidence: The recently dyed blond hair without a hint of dark roots showing. The perfectly plucked eyebrows. The manicured finger-and toenails, and smoothly shaven legs. She was slender, not an unseemly ounce to spare.

Marilyn had been fastidiously attending to her grooming and pampering herself, and keeping a keen eye on her weight right up to her tragic last breath. And severely depressed people didn’t do that. The photo was proof positive of what Shrew had always suspected.

She excitedly typed the copy. It had to be short. The Boss was the writer, not Shrew, and she was never allowed to craft more than fifteen words for a cutline or any sort of text on the site:

MARILYN MONROE MURDERED! (VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED)

AN ASTONISHING NEVER-BEFORE- SEEN AUTOPSY PIC PROVES WITHOUT A SHADOW OF A DOUBT THAT FILM GODDESS MARILYN MONROE WASN’T DEPRESSED AT THE TIME OF HER DEATH, AND DID NOT COMMIT SUICIDE.

DETAILS CLEARLY VISIBLE DURING THE AUTOPSY PERFORMED ON AUGUST 5, 1962, IN LOS ANGELES, REVEAL INDISPUTABLE EVIDENCE THAT EVIL—NOT AN ACCIDENT OR SUICIDE—ENDED MARILYN’S LIFE.

Shrew should stop at that, for heaven’s sake. A word count of sixty-two, not including numbers and punctuation, almost five times the legal limit. But certainly the Boss would make an exception in this case and in fact would give Shrew a bonus and praise for once.