To The Power Of Three

Tuesday
23

Back when Lenhardt was coming up, he had a sergeant, Steve Waters, who was about as good a murder police as anyone he had ever known. Waters was unflappable, nothing got to him. Except for one suspect, who was brilliant in his stupidity. Although the guy’s story was implausible, it wasn’t impossible, and he stuck to it with unwavering conviction, refusing every opportunity to change it even a bit. Waters finally lost it, just lost it, screaming into the guy’s face, then running out of the interrogation room and punching a Coke machine, accomplishing nothing but a broken hand.

It was a funny story-when it was happening to someone else.

Not so funny when the stubborn subject with the monotone voice was key to one’s own case. Less funny when one considered she was a teenage girl. Josie Patel wasn’t a genius. She wasn’t even a particularly skilled liar. But two hours into his second interview with her, Lenhardt was more than ready to assault a vending machine. Whenever challenged on her inconsistencies, she simply said, “Well, that’s the way I remember it. But it happened so fast.”

“Tell me again. Tell me what you do remember.”

And she did. She told it again and again and again, and she always told it the same way. Perri Kahn came into the bathroom where Josie and Kat were primping. “Why there?” Don’t know, Kat said she wanted to go there. “Why?” She didn’t say. Perri Kahn came in, shot Kat, shot Josie in the foot during a brief struggle, shot herself in the head.

“Was-is-Perri right-handed or left-handed?”

“Right-handed.”

“Yet the injury is to your right foot.”

She didn’t jump in, the way some subjects might. Where an adult man or woman might feel obligated to explain or account, she offered nothing. She didn’t have the nervous citizen’s tendency to be helpful or the too-smart perp’s compulsion to explain. She was, in fact, like a kid stuck on a teacher’s question, a kid who just stared back, waiting for the teacher to provide the answer out of frustration.

“See, Perri Kahn was right-handed. She’d be more apt to shoot you in your left foot. And she’s tall, which should have affected the trajectory. But your X-rays show a pretty straight entry, before the bullet glanced off this one bone here.”

He held up the X-ray, and not for the first time. Josie inspected it with interest but said nothing.

Gloria Bustamante, never particularly patient, was beginning to boil over. “Are you suggesting my client shot herself in the foot? That’s ridiculous. She has an athletic scholarship to the University of Maryland, College Park, which such an injury could void.”

Lenhardt chose not to respond to Gloria’s challenge, keeping his focus on Josie. Gloria had to be in the room, but nothing required him to acknowledge her.

“As you know, Josie, we took your blood today. We’ve also taken your fingerprints. Are those going to match any of the prints we found on the gun?”

“But I told you,” Josie said, “I tried to grab the gun. I almost got it, too. So of course my fingerprints are on it.”

“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.”