To the Power of Three

by Laura Lippman

  “And you were shot while you and Perri struggled?”

  “No. I tried to grab the gun. I almost got it. She yanked it back, out of my reach. Then she shot me.”

  “So when the gun went off, your hand wasn’t anywhere near it?”

  Josie nodded, even as her lawyer smirked. Gloria knew it was a.22, so even if they had tested Josie, it wouldn’t have mattered. They could never prove she had fired the gun, and she had a somewhat plausible explanation for why her fingerprints were on it. The only reason he had asked her to submit to a test was to see how panicky she would get at the suggestion. Very, in Lenhardt’s opinion.

  “Did you see Perri shoot herself?”

  The girl nodded, her eyes beginning to fill with tears. She always misted up at this point in the story.

  “Show me where she held the gun, Josie.”

  She started to shake her head, as if the scene were too graphic to confront in her memory, but then relented. “Here.” She aimed at her own temple with an outstretched index finger.

  “Yet the bullet goes into her cheek, an upward angle.”

  Josie Patel nodded.

  “You see, what you’re saying doesn’t match.”

  “It’s how I remember it,” she said. “I’m not saying my memory is perfect, though. I could be wrong about stuff. Ms. Cunningham once told us that about sixty percent of all eyewitness identifications are false.”

  “Ms. Cunningham?” Lenhardt echoed, even as his brain provided the information a beat late—the fluffy little blonde.

  “She’s a guidance counselor, but she also teaches a couple of classes on—well, I’m not sure what they’re on, really. Language. Communication. I just did the mandatory sessions, but Perri did two independent studies with her.”

  This was the longest unbroken sentence the girl had uttered so far, and the only new piece of information. Worthless, but new.

  “Tell me again, Josie. Tell me again.”

  And she did, in just the same way, in almost the exact same words. It was not that she was rehearsed, although there was a rote quality to her statements. It was more that she had a teenager’s knack for stonewalling and the shrewdness not to overreach. If she had come in without a lawyer, Lenhardt knew he could have broken her down, told her made-up stories about Perri Kahn regaining consciousness and asking for Josie Patel’s forgiveness. Or he could show her the letter, which was in fact from Perri Kahn, and bluff her, say they knew the “truth” to which Perri alluded. Heck, he’d use the old trick of pretending the photocopier was a lie detector machine, although that had lost some of its punch since it had been re-created on national television. Under Gloria Bustamante’s eagle eyes, he didn’t dare try such tricks.

  “Josie, was there someone else there? In the stall?” He had asked this before, of course.

  “No. It was just the three of us.”

  Her response, although also consistent, always seemed a fraction too quick, like someone slamming a door shut. Okay, he’d let that go for now. He had been promised fast results on the blood, so he’d pull her back in a day or two on that pretext. He thought about telling her that they thought a fourth girl might have been there, watching everything unfold from behind that locked stall door, but he didn’t want Gloria to get that bit between her teeth. At this point rumors of a fourth girl only helped Perri Kahn’s lawyer.

  “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 watched through 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.”

  24

  The lot in Loudon Cemetery was 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.

  Wherever you go, there you are.

  The nonsense sentence jolted into Dale’s consciousness as if it were another pothole along Frederick Road, whose neglected surface made even the funeral home’s town car bounce and rock. It was a line from a film, although Dale wasn’t sure which film, or if he had the wording exact. But he recognized it as stoner humor, hilarious if you were high. And Dale had been high a lot in high school.

  Then one day, when he and Glen were seniors, he had watched Glen make the most ungodly mix of melted chocolate, butter, raw eggs, and flour. “It’s brownie mix,” Glen had said, proffering the bowl. “You left out the sugar, Glen.” “Oh. Yeah. I thought it tasted kind of bitter.” Dale had sworn off pot from that day on, while Glen had pretty much majored in marijuana. He had probably smoked a bowl this very morning, judging by his eyes—and how Dale envied him for that. Maybe that would blunt the pain. Alcohol clearly didn’t work, although he had given it every chance. Alcohol and Ambien and Tylenol PM, all worthless. He had even tossed down a couple of Percocet, left over from Susannah’s dental surgery two years ago, but the painkillers were helpless in his body. They needed a literal inflammation, something they could dull and still.

  “The old house,” Glen said. They were passing a section of row-houses with Tudor touches that had been intended to make them distinctive but only served to make them odd and cheap-looking. “We’re going by the old house, Dad.”

  Susannah, always gratifyingly interested in Dale’s past, made a point of craning her neck and looking at the house before it was out of sight, but Thornton Hartigan didn’t even turn his head to the side.

  “Those houses,” he said, “were pieces of shit.”

  The Hartigans had lived here on Frederick Road in their leanest years, back when it was still unclear if Thornton’s decision to start amassing property in north Baltimore County would accomplish anything more than his complete and total ruin. The place was tiny even by rowhouse standards, two bedrooms and a single bath. Dale and Glen had been literally on top of each other, in a rickety bunk bed, the kind that would now be banned by several federal and state regulatory agencies. The household air was thick with the smells of a family whose resources were stretched thin—onions, potatoes, bacon fat. “The wolf is at our door, Martha,” Thornton had said one night, unaware that the boys were listening from the top of the stairs. The brothers had spent weeks trying to catch a glimpse of that elusive animal. Yet the little house was cozy—one of the advantages of a middle rowhouse, less light but more warmth—and Dale remembered those lean years as a happy time. Did children ever really know if their households are happy, or only if they are happy? Is there a difference? He thought his pretty stone farmhouse was one of the unhappiest places on earth during those last few years with Chloe, but Kat would have given anything to maintain the status quo.

  Naturally Dale had thought quite a bit about whether it was an advantage for a kid to know hard times before being catapulted into good ones. Conventional wisdom held that it was better for children not to be given everything. Yet his own brother, Glen, who had been fifteen when their father finally hit, was as wrecked as any lifetime trust-funder, while Kat had always been sweet and modest. He was not romanticizing his daughter, Dale insisted to himself, as the limousine turned into Loudon Park. Kat had a natural goodness from the day she was born, a capacity for sharing and a marked lack of interest in material things. He liked to believe it was because he and Chloe, whatever their faults as people, had imparted to their daughter the sure message that they would take care of her, that her needs would always be paramount to them.

  Of course, most parents think they’re doing the same thing. Dale’s dad probably credited his ways with instilling Dale’s work ethic. It would never occur to him to ponder the fact that the son he had ignored at the best times, bullied at the worst, had turned out to be the successful one, while Glen, indulged and bailed out at every turn, was a mess. When Dale had tried to make this point to his father—and he had, in a roundabout way, a time or two in his twenties—he was treated to the Hartigan legend, as Dale thought of it. How Glen, as the second twin by three minutes, had briefly been deprived of oxygen, which meant his mere normalcy was an achievement to be celebrated. Dale wasn’t even sure if this story were true, and his mother had always been tactfully vague on the subject. At any rate, it seemed to Dale that Glen had been given unconditional love, whereas he’d had to earn the love portioned out to him.

  The result was that people respected Dale but they loved Glen, a chicken-or-the-egg conundrum, in Dale’s opinion. Was Glen loved because he was charming, or was Glen charming because he had been heaped with so much selfless love from the day he was born? Dale would probably be a pretty collegial fellow, too, if he had been cosseted and cott
on-wrapped the way Glen was.

  Kat, in fact, was one of the few people who hadn’t been beguiled by Glen’s easygoing nature. Oh, she loved him—he was her uncle, after all, and he tried to be doting, although he seldom followed through on his best intentions. His big talk of trips or projects, such as keeping a horse for her on his acreage, tended to peter out pretty quickly. Kat had realized early on that Glen was not reliable, and it was the one thing Kat required in the people around her—constancy, dependability. This was the key difference between Chloe and Glen, kindred spirits in so many respects. Chloe, no matter how scattered and crazy she might be with Dale, was someone Kat could count on. Even in the wake of Kat’s death, Chloe was meeting every expectation as a mother.

  And so she was here, suitably dressed and behaving herself, holding Glen’s hand. What was it like, holding hands with his brother? Did it feel like Dale’s hand? Even when a twin was fraternal, even when you had spent most of your life making sure the physical resemblance was the only resemblance, it was hard not to think such thoughts.

  Peter had thought he could skip the funeral, but when his parents got home Monday night, his mother insisted they go as a family. His mom was a little too much in awe of the Hartigans, in Peter’s opinion, but she had also been genuinely fond of Kat. She was one of the few people who thought Kat looked better before she lost weight, who was always trying to load her up with frijoles, plantains, and arroz con pollo.

  Still, the Laskos hung back once they arrived, determined not to be presumptuous. Mrs. Hartigan motioned to them and insisted they take seats in the second row. His eyes on the ground, Peter stuck out his hand to the dark-haired man at her side, muttering, “I’m so sorry, Mr. Hartigan,” only to have Kat’s mom correct him. “This is Kat’s uncle, Glen. Her father’s over there, with the young redhead.”

  Mr. Hartigan, the real one, had given his ex-wife a sharp look—she hadn’t tried to mute her voice in any way—then taken Peter’s hand with a loose, quick shake that reminded Peter just how much contempt the man had for him. Because I dated your daughter? Or because I stopped? To this day he still wasn’t sure what Dale Hartigan had wanted from him.