Laura Lippman - To The Power Of Three

But it was never too late. Nothing was truly over, as long as you were alive.

“We’ll startwhen my partner gets here,” Lenhardt said.

“Okay,” Josie said.

“We’re going to record it, on a little microcassette recorder that he’s bringing.”

“Okay.” Her voice was low, but even and sure.

“And you’ll need to read this statement, indicating this is voluntary-”

“It’s not a confession,” her lawyer put in. “I want to be very clear on this. My client is not confessing and is not going to be held liable for any charges.”

“Gloria, if you want to make a deal, make a deal. Tell me what you want up front, and I’ll call an ADA, and we’ll see what we can do. But until then, if your client cops to a felony, I’m not going to promise what charges she’s going to face. She called us, remember?”

“Is it a felony to shoot yourself?” Josie asked.

“Josie!” her lawyer all but yelped.

“Depends,” Lenhardt said.

Her parents, sitting side by side on the sofa, were wide-eyed.

“Because I did, you know. I shot myself in the foot. But you knew that, from the very beginning. How did you know that? Was it because of the angle or because it was my right foot? If I had shot my left foot, would you have been fooled? Or because you couldn’t find my sandals. I took them off, right before, because I didn’t want to ruin them. That was stupid, wasn’t it? But they were brand new.”

“Josie,” her lawyer repeated in that same yelping-warning tone.

“Josie,” her father said sorrowfully. “What have you done?’

“Please,” Lenhardt said. “Let’s wait until my partner gets here with the recorder.”

Several old pathswound through the underbrush along the reservoir, and Peter led Eve by the hand down one of these until they found a small clearing with a felled tree where they could sit and drink their beers. At least, he was drinking. Eve, gulping nervously, had finished hers in a matter of seconds, but she continued to bring the can to her lips. It gave her something to do with her hands. She wished she had a cigarette with her, but they were back in Val’s car. Along with her regular shoes. It was going to be a bitch shimmying barefoot up the drainpipe and back into her room. And she couldn’t throw the shoes up on the roof, because they would make an enormous clatter. She really hadn’t thought this through. But what did you do when Peter Lasko asked you to go for a walk? Even Val, who took a dim view of ditching girls when a boy crooked his little finger-that was Val’s expression, “crooked his little finger”-could not object to such a monumental opportunity.

“So did you know Kat and her friends?”

“I was a grade behind them. But my father’s farm-it’s between the Hartigans’ property and that new development, Sweet-water. So I used to see her sometimes. Around.”

“She was great.”

Eve lifted a shoulder, wanting to be agreeable but not wanting to lie out and out. “Great” was not the word she would use to describe Kat Hartigan.

“I mean, she was such a sweetheart. She never hurt anyone.”

“Not directly.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. Just…well, you don’t have to hurt people if other people will do it for you, right?”

“You mean Perri? The way she used to talk shit? You can’t blame Kat for Perri.”

“Look, it’s not important. She’s dead, and that’s sad, and I don’t want to say anything bad about someone who’s dead.”

“They’re both dead now. So I guess we’ll never know what happened.”

She pressed the can against her mouth again, pretending to drink. It was no longer truly cold, but the metal felt good on her mouth. Above them cars were pulling out of the gravel lot, trying to stay ahead of the patrols. Evading the police was the only real excitement of the night. Eve wondered if the Ramble was always so anticlimactic. So far the best part had been sliding down the roof, running silently down the drive to where Val and Lila waited.

You’re here with Peter Lasko, she reminded herself. An almost movie star. But he didn’t seem particularly interested in her. Abruptly, she dropped her empty can, letting it roll down the hill, and knelt between Peter’s legs, reaching for the fly of his jeans.

“What-?”

“Don’t you want to?” It was amazing, how he moved beneath her hand-not hard yet but already twitching a little. She thought of those gliding airplanes sold from the mall kiosks, the ones that seemed to fly by magic. It was almost as if she had that kind of control over him, as if her lightest touch could make him respond. She could be with him now, and years later, when he was a famous movie star, she would have that memory. Or if she was good enough, if she did it well, maybe he would want to see her again. Maybe he would want her for his girlfriend. That would be worth anything.

But before she could get started, he pulled her up by the armpits, so they were face-to-face.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Eighteen,” she lied reflexively.

“No you’re not. You said you were a year behind Kat in school.”

“I’m old enough. I’ve done it lots of times. Come on, it’s just sex. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

She reached for him again, plunging her hand down into his open fly, hoping she was doing it right. Hadn’t Graham liked what she had done? It had seemed so at the time. And she hadn’t wanted to be with him, whereas she would give anything, absolutely anything, to get with Peter Lasko.

He took her hand away, gently yet firmly, and zipped himself up. “Actually,” he said, “sex is a big deal. Kat and I never did it.”

“Really?”

“Really. I never told anyone that, but it’s true. I dated her all summer, and we never did it.”

“Don’t you wish you did? Now that she’s dead?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it that way.”

“Well, I bet she wishes she had. If I were your girlfriend, I wouldn’t be like that.” Adding hurriedly, “Not that I want to be your girlfriend. I’m just saying I’m not a cocktease.” Hadn’t Lila said that was the worst thing a girl could be?

He finished off his beer, crumpling the aluminum can in his hand. “That’s what I told people that Kat was. I wish I hadn’t.”

“It doesn’t really matter what you say or don’t say. People think what they want to think. You can tell them the truth, but it doesn’t make a difference. Everyone’s saying Perri shot Kat because she was jealous of her for some reason. That’s not the way it was, but that’s what people want to believe.”

“How do you know?”

She studied his face, as handsome as any movie star’s. But then, he was one, or about to be. She wanted to give him something, anything, to remember her by. She had thought sex would be the best way, but any girl could give him sex. All Eve had was a secret, but it seemed to be a secret he would value.

“Because I know someone else who was there.”

“Binnie Snyder,”Josie said. “Binnie Snyder was there, hiding in a stall. There was a struggle for a gun-no one meant for anything to happen-and we were so scared, and it was so stupid. I could have run-Binnie told me to run-but I couldn’t leave them.”

“Start at the beginning,” Lenhardt coaxed the girl. “Start at the very beginning.”

He had no way of knowing that the beginning, as Josie defined it, was her first day of third grade, ten years ago. He was used to more straightforward confessions- Tater shot Peanut over drugs, I cut my wife to shut her up . Sometimes, for variety, the wife cut the husband.

He was a murder police, well into his third decade, and he thought there was nothing new under the sun, no motivation unknown to him, no scenario he had yet to document. And he was right. The story Josie told, haltingly yet determinedly, had the usual elements. Jealousy, covetousness, anger over slights so tiny that it was hard to believe they had resonated for even a moment, much less years.