Laura Lippman - To The Power Of Three

“We understand you went to the prom with Perri Kahn,” the older guy had started, and Dannon had promptly interrupted him.

“Just as friends. I’m gay. But I suppose Mrs. Kahn told you that.”

“Um, no, that didn’t really come up.” The older guy was so clearly lying, determined to ignore the fact. You would think that Dannon had farted or something. “But you were friends, right?”

“Right.”

“Good friends?”

“Pretty good, but just the past year.” Dannon, used to the fierce precision of the Glendale divas, would never be caught embroidering his social status in any way. That was one of the school’s deadly sins, an offense for which one would be taunted and punished. “We knew each other from theater stuff, going way back, but we didn’t start hanging out together until last fall.”

“Would you say you were close?”

“I suppose so.” I hoped so. I only built the past year of my life on that concept-being Perri Kahn’s new best friend.

“She tell you anything about her…plans?”

“How do you mean?” Shit, that was the wrong way to say it. “No, she didn’t tell me she had planned anything.”

“But she told you something .”

“Not really.” Technically true. She hadn’t told him anything.

“You know, it’s just unusual for a thing like this to happen without anyone having an inkling.”

Inkling. What a funny word. If Perri had been here, they would have exchanged a look or stifled their laughter. Inkling . It was like the riff from The Sunshine Boys, the whole laundry list of what words were funny, what words weren’t. Pickle, cucumber…

“No, I didn’t have an inkling .”

“Back at Columbine,” the handsome cop put in, “there was a Website and everything. And in some other school shootings, kids told people what they were going to do, showed off the gun, told people when it was going to go down.”

“Yeah, only this wasn’t Columbine,” Dannon said. He was feeling strangely fearless. He had always been a behind-the-scenes guy, but maybe he was a better actor than he realized. “I mean, that’s what Ms. Paulson keeps telling us. Columbine was, like, about the school’s social hierarchy. This was something private among three friends that just happened to play out on school property.”

“But why?”

He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know.” And this was true, too. Perri had never explained her anger. Was it because she didn’t completely trust him? Then again, to the extent that she had confided in him, he had betrayed her, so perhaps she was shrewd enough to realize that Dannon didn’t deserve her trust.

“Was she unhappy? Did she speak of suicide? Did she have some kind of grudge toward the dead girl?”

He should never have agreed to speak to these men. Now that he was in too deep to turn back, he should just keep feigning ignorance. But Dannon had never been able to shake his own fascination with the story of the imperious three, broken at last.

“Perri never spoke of it. To me. To anyone.”

“The shooting?”

“No. I mean, yes-she never said she was going to shoot anybody. But she also never told me why she had stopped talking to Kat.”

The policemen didn’t say anything. Dannon understood that their silence was deliberate, one intended to make him feel uncomfortable. Old Giff had once expounded on the possibilities of stillness, citing Kevin Spacey’s The Iceman Cometh, how powerful a pause could be after so much steady, constant talk, talk, talk. Despite this insight into his own manipulation, Dannon just couldn’t shut up. He loved to speak of Perri, relished the fact that he knew her, that he had something to offer.

“There was a lot of speculation over the past year. The divas-”

“Excuse me?”

“The bitchy popular girls. Anyway, they were always a little antagonistic toward Perri because she didn’t follow their dictates, you know? She wasn’t scared of them. But she was friends with Kat, who was, like, the queen of the school, so they left Perri alone. Until she and Kat stopped hanging out together, and then they started all these rumors.”

“Such as?”

“They were rumors . Bogus.”

“Still, it might have bothered Perri. Being gossiped about.”

“It didn’t. She was above that stuff.”

“Dannon.” The older cop was so much like his stepfather it was freaky. Like, right now, the way he placed his hands on his knees when he was trying to show he was very, very serious about something. His stepfather did that all the time. Hands on knees, Bill was getting serious. “Dannon, what did the girls-the divas-say about Perri?”

“They said she was gay, that she had fallen in love with Kat, and Kat had dropped her.”

“And that wasn’t true?”

“No.” He laughed, although he was sure that made him look weird, laughing. “If I’m sure of anything, it’s that Perri Kahn was not gay.”

“But did Kat say those things, too?”

“The only things Kat Hartigan said to me during almost ten years of school were ‘Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!’ and ‘Looking good, Dannon.”’

The older detective smiled at Dannon’s imitation of Kat, but he couldn’t know just how pitch-perfect it was. Dannon was an excellent mimic. He had cracked Perri up, imitating Kat and their principal and the diva crowd, among others.

“That’s basically what Kat Hartigan said to everyone. And that’s why she was popular. She was nice. Not two-faced. But kind of bland, too. Perri said she was banal.”

“And that’s why they weren’t friends anymore? Because Kat was boring?”

“Banal.” It was such an excellent word; Dannon couldn’t imagine settling for boring old “boring” when one could say “banal” instead. Maybe the cop didn’t know what it meant. “She said Kat was banal, and she had a point. No one can be that nice, you know? But Kat would never spread a rumor-not about Perri, not about anyone. Not her style. Then again, she didn’t stop it either.”

“What do you mean?”

“All she had to do was say why Perri was mad at her, instead of letting people gossip. She had that kind of power. But she wouldn’t.”

“And this made Perri angry, her refusal to stop the rumor?”

Dannon allowed himself a melodramatic sigh, only to be surprised by the surge of real emotion beneath it. “Perri didn’t give a shit what people said about her. She was beyond that.”

“Did you know she had a gun?”

Shit . He thought they had moved past that topic. “Um…”

“It wouldn’t be a crime, it doesn’t implicate you in any way. But we do want to establish without a doubt that Perri was the one who brought the gun to school. Did she show you the gun? Did she mention having one or how she came to get it?”

This was a trap. It had to be a trap. If he said yes, there would be more questions, questions he honestly couldn’t answer, but who would believe his ignorance of Perri’s plans once he admitted she had shown him the gun? And if he said yes and the Kahns found out he had known about the gun, they would never forgive him. Oh, he had tried to be strategic, tried to have it all ways-be a friend to Perri, keep her confidences while trying to protect her against her own self-destructive impulses. He was so smart he was stupid.

“Mom? Ma?”

His mother, who had been hovering nearby, appeared instantly. Dannon had many beefs with his mom, starting with his name-a gay boy should not be saddled with the brand name for a product that’s famous for having fruit on the bottom-and continuing through her marriage to his humorless idiot of a stepdad. But, ultimately, she was always there for him, in a way that no one else was. She might not believe in him the way Eloise Kahn did, but she always believed him, taking his side against everyone. Except his stepfather.