Laura Lippman - To The Power Of Three

“You’re not the only family affected,” Sergeant Lenhardt reminded her, almost apologetically. “But I wouldn’t worry so much about civil trials right now. We just need to have a clear picture of what happened, so the state’s attorney can decide what sort of charges are merited. There are a lot of distinctions, even within a homicide case.”

“Homicide?” Josie asked.

“A girl is dead. You knew that, didn’t you? The Hartigan girl died immediately.”

Josie nodded. Of course she knew. She just hadn’t thought of it as a homicide . It was such a television word, freighted and somber. It was hard to see how it had shouldered its way into her life.

“But I don’t know what I can tell you. Perri came into the bathroom and started shooting. It was…crazy.”

“Just walked in and opened fire? Didn’t say anything or do anything else?” Sergeant Lenhardt pulled a microcassette recorder from his blazer pocket. “Mind if I tape this? My own memory’s not the greatest, and Infante’s notes”-he gestured to the younger man, who had produced a narrow steno pad and pen-“are darn near illegible.”

“No problem,” Josie said. Her voice sounded faint and thin in her ears.

“So you’re in the bathroom with Katarina Hartigan.”

“Kat. No one called her Katarina.”

“Okay. You and Kat are in the bathroom. Is anyone else there? Does anyone come and go before Perri Kahn comes in?”

“No.” The other detective seemed to find that interesting, underscoring whatever he had written on his pad.

“And why are you there?”

“Well, you know, the usual reasons.”

“Of course. That was silly of me. Why does anyone go to the bathroom just before school starts? In my day kids smoked, but I guess that’s not so common anymore.”

“Some girls smoke,” Josie said. “But not in the bathrooms. You get suspended for that. The whole school is smoke-free, by state law, so the kids who want to smoke go to the woods, just beyond the athletic field. That’s not school property.”

“Yeah. You don’t look like a smoker anyway.”

“I’m a gymnast. I have an athletic scholarship to College Park. At least…I did.” Josie indicated her foot. She had been proud of that scholarship. Maryland was the first school in the country to offer cheerleading as a Title IX program, and it was hard to get into College Park. Only five students from her class had made it.

“A gymnast. That’s very admirable. So you and Kat are…well, where, exactly, when this other girl comes in?”

“Standing by the sinks.”

“Washing hands? Putting on makeup?”

“Kat had a lipstick.”

The other police officer wrote something, then waited for her to continue.

“And Perri came in-”

“You knew her, right?”

Josie hesitated, and her mother, ever helpful, rushed in, “The girls have been close friends since they were eight, all three of them, although their interests took them in different directions in the past year. Josie and Kat were doing cheerleading, and Kat was knocking herself out with all sorts of extracurriculars, to make sure she got into Stanford. Perri had concentrated on drama.”

You can say that again, Mom.

“Oh. Oh. So did the three of you normally meet in this bathroom before school? I mean, would someone know you would be there?”

“No. We didn’t even have homeroom or classes in the north wing, Kat and I. But Perri’s homeroom teacher was the drama teacher, so she was in that wing.”

“So why were you there?”

“Because Kat said she needed to do something in that part of the school.”

“What?”

“She didn’t say.”

“So you just followed your friend on some errand, although you didn’t know what it was?”

“They were extremely close,” Josie’s mom said. “Kat drove Josie to school almost every morning.”

“If you don’t mind, ma’am, it’s better if we just let your daughter tell the story.” Josie’s mother blushed, embarrassed at being corrected in any way, although the sergeant’s manner was gentle.

“So you and Kat are in the north wing, getting ready to do something-you don’t know what-and it’s a place where you don’t normally go, at least before school, and this other girl that you know, who used to be your good friend, although you don’t see her so much anymore, just comes in and starts shooting when she sees you, although she has no reason to suspect that you’ll be there.”

It did sound odd, the way he said it. “I guess that’s what happened.”

“It’s not a test, Josie. The only right answers are the ones you know.”

Josie’s head was beginning to ache, her foot to throb.

“She shot Kat,” she said. “Then she shot me in the foot when I tried to grab the gun from her. And then she shot herself. Those are the right answers.”

“Did she say anything? Perri Kahn, I mean.”

“Not really.”

“Not really?”

“I mean no, no, she didn’t say anything.”

The sergeant did not say anything for a while, and yet the detective wrote and wrote and wrote, filling his pad. What could he be writing if nothing was being said?

“So you’re at the sink, and Perri comes in,” the sergeant began, as if there had been no long silence. “Is the gun in her hand, or does she have to get it out of something?”

“It was in her knapsack, but in the outside pocket. I think.”

“So”-the detective pantomimed holding a knapsack in his left hand, pulling a gun out with his right-“she just comes in, whips out the gun, and starts shooting. No preamble, no warning.”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t do anything else?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t lock the door?”

Shit. “Well, yeah, she must have locked the door.”

“Really?” The sergeant returned to his mime with the knapsack and the gun. “How does she do that if she comes through the door and immediately gets her gun out?”

“I didn’t see her lock the door, but she must have, because it was locked when the police came.”

“You didn’t know the door was locked until the police got there and asked you to open it?” Her words, recast as his, sounded odd. Suspect, even.

“No, not for sure.”

“You didn’t go to the door at any time?”

“No.”

The sergeant made a great show of being puzzled. If he had been in one of the school’s productions, Josie thought, the drama teacher, Old Giff, would have told him to dial it down a notch. That had been his most frequent note to Perri. Dial it down a notch, make it real.

“The thing is, there’s this trail of blood. Just a little, from one corner to the door. Dot, dot, dot, like a trail. As if it were leaking from something, but not a lot.”

“I was still bleeding a little when the paramedics took me out,” Josie said.

“On a gurney?”

“What?”

“They took you out on a stretcher with wheels, the kind that goes up and down?”

“Yes.” She remembered the way it had risen and collapsed beneath her along the way, bringing her up to the paramedics in the bathroom, then down again at the door to the ambulance, up again at the hospital. Up and down, up and down. It had reminded her of her old trampoline after a fashion, although there had been no joy in these movements.

The young detective turned a page, filled it with a big, looping scrawl, turned another page.

“Probably not important,” the sergeant said. “Now, who got shot first?”

“Kat.”

“Perri just walked in-locked the door, although you didn’t see her lock the door or notice her turning back-pulled the gun out of her knapsack, and bam, shot Kat Hartigan right in the heart.”