"THIS IS NOT A SALES CALL!"
The ink was hardly dry on Autumn Pasquale's alleged killers' fingerprints when the robocall interrupted my dinner.
"THERE HAS BEEN AN INCREASE IN CRIME IN YOUR AREA!"
My house is about 8 miles from the street in neighboring Clayton where Autumn lived, and where she died too young and too horribly. Out here on the rural edges of Gloucester County, that's practically around the block.
The recorded message -- which came from (425) 658-8850, a Washington-based telemarketing outfit called Pacific Telecom -- then went on to encourage me to sign up for a home security plan, with a monitoring system.
Remember, it wasn't a sales call.
I listened to their pitch, general enough to be used to play on the fears of any community facing the unaccustomed trauma of a violent crime. Then I pressed the number meant, I thought, to connect me to one of their operators, so I could tell them what a bunch of parasitic vermin they are, but the call disconnected.
It's probably better that way. The psychic energy is surely better spent praying for the two families whose lives have been rent by unimaginable, unknowable evil.
