Laura Lippman - Every Secret Thing

Alice ’s voice rose, petulant after all these years. Yes, she took the baby, yes, she knew where the baby was, yes, she participated in the conspiracy that kept the baby hidden for four days. But she hadn’t killed her, and she still didn’t understand why the punishments meted out refused to recognize her lesser guilt.

Nancy wasn’t sure she did, either. Her odd connection to the Barnes case had not granted her special privileges, despite what everyone believed, but over the years she had indulged her curiosity about the aftermath. Alice had always been adamant about not being with Ronnie when Olivia was killed, and even had a partial alibi-she was home with her mother, reading, if you could call that an alibi. Whose mother wouldn’t back up that story, under the circumstances? But the alibi was meaningless because heat and other factors had made it difficult to pinpoint the time of death with any accuracy. The medical examiner had provided a twelve-hour window, adding, as only an M.E. could add: “At least nothing chewed on her after she died.” That was an M.E.’s idea of a benediction, not getting chewed postmortem.

“ Alice -” There was so much Nancy wanted to ask her, but the sad fact was, it had little to do with Brittany Little and everything to do with Olivia Barnes. Nancy was face-to-face with a girl who had changed her life as surely as anyone. Except, perhaps, Ronnie Fuller. If it were not for the two of them, Nancy wouldn’t even be here, in the county. If it weren’t for Nancy ’s freak moment of glory in the Olivia Barnes case, there would have been less to live up to and, consequently, less to live down. She would probably still be in the city, a detective in CID, maybe even a sergeant. She would be who she was supposed to be when she grew up, a third-generation police officer in the Baltimore PD. “County police,” her uncle Stan had asked when she decided to come out here. “Do they even have crime in the county?”

You bet they do, she answered her uncle now. The only difference was the ten-to-one ratio. But the detectives worked roughly the same caseloads. And Nancy would have taken fifty never-going-to-be-solved drug shootings over a maybe homicide like this one.

Alice was still holding her plump arms in a prayerful pose. She had a milk-white pallor, almost creepy in its uniformity. Not a nick, not a cut, not even a bruise. It looked as if she never used her hands at all, for anything.

“C’mon, Alice, you say you want to help us. There’s one small thing-it would only take a minute-”

There was a light knock on the door. When Nancy opened it, Infante was there, motioning for her to come out. She did, closing the door on Alice, who looked stricken to be left alone.

Helen Manning was standing in the corridor with a fleshy, dark-haired woman with a strange spotted rash on the left side of her face.

“I’m Sharon Kerpelman,” she said. “I’m Alice ’s lawyer. Charge her or release her. At any rate, she’s not talking to you anymore tonight.”

“Look,” Infante said, “I saw your card. You’re city PD, you got no jurisdiction here. She’s not a juvenile anymore and this isn’t a city case.”

“I already told you, I’m here on behalf of Rosario Bustamante, who has agreed to represent Alice. Ms. Bustamante is…indisposed and asked that I come here to make arrangements for Alice ’s release.”

“I don’t think we can do that.”

“Oh, fuck me . Alice called and left a message on my machine two hours ago, asking me to accompany her here or find someone who could. I got that message twenty minutes ago. But you know, and I know, she can get up and walk out of here on her own steam. I’m certainly not going to let you talk to her at this late hour, when she’s tired and suggestible and would say anything to make you happy.”

“We’ve got her at the scene,” Nancy said.

“Really? That’s funny because I had dinner with Alice last night, and I don’t think she had time to take a child, stash her somewhere, and walk home.” Sharon walked over to the door and yanked it open. “Were you at Westview on Friday, Alice? Don’t be afraid to say what really happened, sweetheart.”

Alice ’s voice came back, tentative and sweet: “Well, maybe it was another day. I mean, I did go there once, and see Ronnie. But it was a week or two ago.”

Sharon Kerpelman looked triumphant. “See? She hears you’re looking for her, and she knows it’s all because of what happened in the past, and she can’t stop trying to make it right.” Maybe it was Sharon, not Helen, who had taught Alice to think of her crime as a past. “And she knows Ronnie’s working at the Bagel Barn, and thinks you should know it, too.”

“But why lie? Why say it was yesterday if it wasn’t yesterday?”

“There’s a lot-” Helen began, but Sharon shushed her with a look and an upraised hand. Then, motioning to Nancy and Infante, she led them down the hall, out of Alice ’s earshot.

“It’s hard, being Alice.” Sharon was trying to be reasonable in tone, conciliatory and conspiratorial, but she wasn’t good at it, and her voice grated on Nancy ’s nerves. “She got caught up in something that was bigger than she was, and she keeps trying to undo it. Seven years ago, she was too scared of Ronnie Fuller to keep her from doing what she did. Now police come around and she sees a chance for, I don’t know, a kind of redemption. She figures if she says what you want to hear, maybe she can balance the scales at last. But Alice didn’t have anything to do with this. If Ronnie Fuller did”-she shrugged-“that’s her lawyer’s problem, however.”

“Does she have a lawyer?”

“Figure of speech. I wouldn’t know.”

Without asking permission, Sharon Kerpelman walked into the interview room and came back out with Alice, her arm slung around the girl’s shoulder. “We’re going to go now. If you want to talk to her again, call me.”

“I thought,” Infante said, “Rosario Bustamante was her lawyer.”

“Right. That’s what I mean. Call her.”

Infante looked at Nancy, who shook her head sadly. They could fight this bitchy PD, insist that Bustamante herself come down before releasing Alice. But they had lost the moment. Alice wasn’t going to talk to them again, not tonight, not with any flow. How odd, to be shrewd enough to call a lawyer, but naive enough to begin speaking without one. Infante turned to Kerpelman and gave a brusque nod, as if it were his decision.

The trio left without another word. But Alice, to Nancy ’s amazement, turned and flapped her hand at her in a vague, shy wave.

Gloria Potrcurzski had cried the first time she saw her daughter in uniform. Nancy assumed it was because her uncle, her mother’s brother, had been injured on patrol in his early years. Injured was almost an overstatement-a bullet had grazed his neck, just whistled right by him, requiring nothing more than an emergency room visit. But the incident had brought the family real pain for a few hours while a local radio station broadcast breathless bulletins about a “felled” officer in the 900 block of Hollins. Everyone in Stan Kolchak’s family knew his beat and knew his hours, so they had no doubt who the unnamed patrolman was. Yet the story’s happy ending just seemed to make the pain more pronounced in Gloria’s memory. So when she sobbed at the sight of her twenty-one-year-old daughter in uniform, Nancy had assumed the old fear was washing over her.

“Oh, honey,” her mother had said at last, “you look awful in that.”

She did, but Nancy had seen that coming. Since entering the academy, she had started noticing that even actresses on the various cop shows looked stocky and awkward in police uniforms. And they had the advantages of wasp waists, tiny butts, and professional wardrobe people. On Nancy, of average height with ample curves, the outfit was spectacularly unflattering-especially the winter one, when she had to wear her sweater tucked in.