Laura Lippman - To The Power Of Three

She had a cell phone in one hand, which she threw to the tiled floor with such force that its battery pack fell off . The body of the phone skidded on the bathroom’s slick tiles, and Binnie, her long, pale arms windmilling wildly, reached for the gun in Perri’s hand even as Josie thought, but could not find the voice to say, No, Binnie. It’s a game, a play, an act. Don’t, Binnie. Perri is just staging a big moment. It’s probably not even a real gun. Where would Perri get a real gun? No one we know has guns.

Perri tried to hold the gun away from Binnie, but Binnie managed to grab her wrist and then the gun itself, her hand closing over Perri’s as they struggled. Josie could tell that Perri was trying to hold the weapon as far away from her own body as possible, and that was the only reason her arm was pointing straight out, toward Kat, when the gun went off. A second or two passed, seconds in which hope abounded, for Kat looked more puzzled and surprised than anything else. Then she sank to the floor and, in her very Kat-like way-polite, silent, asking for nothing-died.

Was there a scream? If so, whose was it? All Josie could remember was feeling as if her green-and-yellow sandals were made out of concrete, or stuck to the floor with some invisible glue. Just a few feet away, Perri was making odd, strangled moans, quite unlike any sound that Josie had ever heard. Josie knew she should go to her, help her, but she was frozen. Perri pressed the gun against her temple, even as Binnie swatted at it, screaming “No.” But all Binnie achieved was moving the gun a few inches, so the bullet entered closer to Perri’s cheekbone, transforming that dear, sharp face into something horrible.

Through all of this, from the moment that Perri had entered the room, Josie had not moved, had not spoken.

“We were never here,” Binnie said, breathing so hard her chest heaved up and down, as if she had just been in a race, and her features were tight and ugly. Her thinking face.

“But-”

“We have to leave now. They’ll find them, and it will look like what it is. Perri shot Kat, then killed herself. That’s all anyone needs to know.”

“But-”

“Josie, there’s no time. Let’s go .” Binnie gathered up the cell phones-the broken one she had dropped, the one that Kat had placed next to her lipstick, the one from Perri’s knapsack.

“We don’t want them to see the call logs. Now, let’s go.”

“I can’t go,” Josie said. “They’re hurt.”

“They’re dead, Josie. And if you’re smart, you’ll leave yourself out of it. As for me, I was never here. You owe me that much.”

She left with her armful of cell phones, running in her strange, loping style, and it was only when she was gone that Josie thought of objections, arguments, counterpoints. She owed Binnie no loyalty. She wasn’t going to lie for Binnie. But if she told why Binnie was there, she would have to tell the other whys, and Kat would never want that. Even with Perri holding a gun, Kat had tried to hold on to this secret.

So what should Josie tell the police when they arrived? Why was she here? Why hadn’t she left and gone to get help for her friends? Binnie was right; she should have run, but it was too late now. Rescuers could arrive at any moment, catch her trying to slip away. But if they found her here, then there should be a reason she couldn’t leave, right? She should be injured, too. If she were injured, she would not be questioned. And no one would have to know that she had simply stood there, incapable of doing anything, as her friends died.

The gun had fallen next to Perri’s body. Josie picked it up, examined it. How hard could it be to fire a gun? This one had gone off by accident, after all, and gone off again even as Binnie tried to prevent Perri from firing it. She hadn’t wanted to live, Josie realized. With Kat dead, Perri didn’t want to live. Should she make the same choice? Did she owe her friends that much? She placed the gun to her head, as Perri had. But the fact was, she did not want to die. Stranger still was the shame she felt at this thought. A good person, a true friend, should want to die.

Instead Josie sat, extended her legs, and braced her feet against the wall, aiming the gun at the place where the thong, topped off with a lovely tulle flower, separated her big toe from the others. The sandals cost $125, an amazing extravagance for Josie, but her mother had agreed they went so beautifully with her graduation dress that they were worth the splurge. She took them off, put them in her knapsack. Then she aimed again, and fired.

Fuck. It hurt, it really hurt. And there was more blood than she thought there would be. Kat had hardly bled at all, although Perri’s blood was still flowing, terrifyingly constant. Shit, it hurt, it hurt, it hurt.

The door. She had forgotten to lock the door. Perri had locked the door, so the door should be locked, right? She did not stop to think this through but forced herself to hop to the door, turn the lock, and then hop back again. And the gun. She had touched the gun. What if they took fingerprints? She would explain that she tried to take the gun away from Perri, tried to keep her from shooting herself. Shooting herself or Kat. And Perri shot Josie in the foot, then shot herself. Yes, that was it. Josie had grabbed for the gun, trying to take it away from Perri, but Perri had shot Kat, then shot Josie and shot herself. That all worked. That would make everyone happy. Binnie wouldn’t be here. And Josie wouldn’t be a coward who had failed to save one friend, then failed to die with another.

If she had to do it over again, she would have told the truth from the very beginning. She wouldn’t have let Binnie leave. She wouldn’t have gotten up to lock that bathroom door, leaving those drips of blood that had showed she was lying almost the very start. She wouldn’t have removed her sandals and hidden them in her knapsack, much less arranged for Binnie to come get them later on, hiding them wherever she had tossed the cell phones. If she had to do it over again-but she did, Josie realized. That was the epiphany that had come to her onstage at graduation. She had to tell the truth, because Perri wasn’t going to do it for her. Until the moment she had heard of Perri’s death, she had been counting on just that. Perri was the talker. Perri was the one who was supposed to explain things. Let Perri tell.

“And you wouldn’t have shot yourself,” the sergeant put in.

“No,” Josie said. “I think I still might have done that.” Then she flushed, as if she hadn’t meant to say that last part out loud.

“How can you say such a thing?” her father demanded. “The risk you took, picking up a gun, shooting yourself. You could have hit a major artery in your leg and ended up bleeding to death. How can you not see how foolish it was?”

“We made a vow,” Josie said. “I told you-we made a vow.”

Every August in Maryland,there comes a moment when the wind shifts and, although the days remain hot and the nights humid, it is clear that something has changed. Summer is giving up, preparing to leave. It may linger for another few weeks, but its back has been broken, and everyone knows it. People suddenly have more energy, and only the youngest children mourn the passing of summer and the coming of school. Everyone else is eager for fall to arrive.

It was on such a day that Sergeant Harold Lenhardt asked Vik and Susie Patel if he could talk to their daughter, just one more time. They gave their permission reluctantly. They knew, intellectually, that the homicide sergeant had not caused them any harm; he was nothing more than a messenger, one who had no way of knowing what he was delivering. Still, they didn’t like him much and couldn’t help feeling he was somehow at fault for what they had been through.