Laura Lippman - To The Power Of Three

“Tell me again, Josie. Start to finish.”

“Sergeant, please.” Gloria was antsy, probably crazed for a cigarette. Or a drink, although she might have spiked her Mountain Dew with vodka. Too bad the girl didn’t smoke. Nicotine deprivation had its merits in interrogation. “This is beginning to border on abusive. Besides, you promised us that if Josie came in to speak to you today, you’d make sure she had time to get to Kat’s funeral.”

“Well, I just don’t feel comfortable hanging a charge on a comatose girl unless I feel ironclad about the details. And it would be just Perri, right? She did all this by herself?”

“Yes.” This time there was a spontaneous note of surprise in the girl’s voice, even resentment, as if she couldn’t imagine why anyone would think she was a coconspirator. But that was the scenario that made the most sense to Lenhardt-two girls luring a third to the bathroom, setting her up. Maybe this Josie girl had started out thinking it was all a prank but didn’t know how to admit she had been duped without being implicated. Maybe she was counting on the other girl dying and all this going away. It wasn’t a bad bet.

Still, how to explain that blood trail that led away from the door, as if this one had locked it after the fact? Or that Perri Kahn’s injury was consistent with being self-inflicted? If anything, the off-the-mark entry wound could have been the result of someone trying to grab the gun away from her. Only Josie Patel, by her testimony, couldn’t do that, because she was lying on the floor with a bullet in her foot, writhing in pain. She had grabbed it earlier, to no avail.

“Josie, what is ‘the truth’?”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“No, the truth that Perri wanted Kat to tell. What was that?”

She looked at her lawyer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You can go,” he said. “For now.”

The girl gathered her crutches. She used them with almost theatrical ease, but then, she was a gymnast, as Gloria kept reminding Lenhardt. A gymnast whose college scholarship was now on the line. “Who would jeopardize her admission to one of the state’s best schools?” Gloria had asked repeatedly.

Someone who thought it was the only way to avoid a homicide charge, Lenhardt had answered, watching Josie Patel’s eyes widen nervously. For one moment she had seemed tempted to speak, but she had restrained herself.

Now, as he watched her make her way to the door, he soaked in every detail. She was pretty, but more in a little-girl way than an overripe-teenager way, with the kind of face and figure that would keep her getting carded well into her twenties. She was wearing a short, full skirt and one of those odd, lacy tops. On a fuller-figured girl, it might have been a little sleazy, like those girl singers who cavorted on television, much to Lenhardt’s horror, although he tried to refrain from commenting in front of his daughter. He didn’t want to make that stuff more desirable by coming out against it. No, this girl looked fresh and sweet, the kind of girl you’d be proud to have as your daughter.

She wore only one shoe, of course-a pink suede slip-on, sort of like an athletic shoe, but not. Jessica had a similar pair, although he was sure there was some subtle distinction he was failing to make.

Only one shoe. That’s what was missing from this little Cinderella story-footwear. Where were this girl’s shoes? Why hadn’t they been recovered at the scene? If you got shot in the foot, you should have a bloody shoe to show for it, right? He checked his notes. The girl said she had propped her injured foot on a knapsack, but she had never said anything about removing her shoes.

The girl caught his gaze.

“I was just wondering what brand those were,” Lenhardt said, “because I think my daughter would like a pair.”

“Pumas. You can get them at Hecht’s.”

“Hecht’s.” He nodded. “Good to know.”

Infante, who had watchedthrough the one-way glass, came in after she cleared the hallway. Of course, Gloria had known people were watching and had probably told her client as much. But Lenhardt had still thought the girl might be a better interview if she didn’t feel outnumbered. He had wanted her to relax, maybe even get a little cocky and trip herself up.

“The shoes,” he told Infante. “Why would she hide her shoes from us? How did she hide them?”

“A paramedic might have stolen them if they were really nice. I mean, if they steal jewelry, they’d steal shoes, too. Right?”

“But only if they weren’t damaged. And if they weren’t damaged…well, explain that. How does someone have the fore-thought to remove one’s footwear before they’re ruined by a gunshot?”

“I don’t know,” Infante lisped, his voice girlishly high. “I’m not sure. It happened so fast. That’s the way I remember it.” Then, switching to his regular voice: “You know, the cell phones are missing, too. The Hartigans and the Kahns both confirmed that their daughters had phones on them, but they weren’t at the scene. If she hid those with her shoes, she was one busy little girl before those paramedics arrived.”

“The phones don’t bug me so much. We can get records from the service providers. But the shoes-I sure would like to find them.”

The lot in Loudon Cemeterywas desirable, assuming such a term can ever be used for a burial site. Remote, but not too remote, near a line of willow trees. It looked especially nice on this June afternoon, banked by displays of yellow roses, pale and pastel as ordered, with rows of white folding chairs facing the freshly dug hole.

School secretary Anita Whitehead walked around these chairs, trying to pick out an appropriate spot. She preferred an aisle, of course, so she could slip out the second it ended and avoid the congestion along the cemetery’s narrow drives, but the aisle seat in the last row seemed antisocial somehow. Perhaps two up? No, the far seat on the front row would be best, providing the access she needed without seeming presumptuous.

But as she settled herself in the less-than-comfortable chair, she was confronted by some undertaker type.

“We’ve been asked to reserve the seats for family and their closest friends, so if you could wait until-”

“I got here early .” Anita could see how it might be a problem if she had arrived late, expecting special treatment, but this was just the typical unfairness that Anita faced everywhere she went.

“I understand, but if you could just wait, miss, until everyone has arrived, and then we’ll be able to accommodate you.”

“I have a condition, ” Anita said. “I can’t be on my feet, especially on such a warm day.”

“It’s just that I have a list-” The undertaker, or funeral director, or whatever such people wanted to be called, was very creepy, in Anita’s opinion. He was a normal-enough-looking fellow, but that was exactly what made him suspect to Anita. A funeral director should be pale and thin, ghostly-looking. This one was tanned and vigorous, with a broad chest and a gap between his front teeth. How did someone who worked with dead people get to be so healthy, not to mention cheerful? He was all wrong.

“Look, I’m just going to sit for now, and if you don’t have enough places, you let me know, okay?” She settled herself with as much dignity as possible. She had no intention of moving, ever. She was on sick leave, after all, her nerves so frayed by the shooting that she might have to go on permanent disability. She had gone to a lot of trouble, driving all the way here from her house, and that was no small thing. Anita was surprised, disappointed even, that the Hartigans, so obviously wealthy, would bury one of theirs in this seedy neighborhood. She was pretty sure she had passed a drug corner or two on her way in, and some black boys had stared into her car at a stoplight. Nonchalantly, she had lifted her left elbow and propped her arm on the edge of her door, as if resting it there. That had given her a chance to lock the door, without hurting the boys’ feelings. Better safe than sorry.