To The Power Of Three

32

Alexa liked the bar- “No, really,” she found herself saying over and over. “It’s so real.” Oh, Lord, she was being condescending, silly, but it confused her, seeing this man and being reminded how middle-aged he was, how much older than she, almost old enough to be her father, which should make the racing feeling in her stomach dissipate. Only it didn’t.

“It’s a place,” Lenhardt said. “ Baltimore County doesn’t have a real cop bar per se. But then, Baltimore City doesn’t have one anymore either. The place we went back in the day, it’s”-he leaned across the table, lowering his voice-“a lesbian bar now.”

“Oh.”

“Not that I’m prejudiced. I worked a murder at a lesbian joint once. Cleared it, too. This was back in the city, and the bar was kind of a secret, this place down in Little Italy before Flag came down.”

“Before…?” Had he said flag or fag? Maybe she didn’t like him as much as she thought.

“Before Flag came down. Flag House, one of the last high-rise projects. Two kids approached this woman about a block from the place, shot her, took her purse, disappeared into Flag. No witnesses, of course. But the people who cared the most about it-the women who went to the bar, the residents of Little Italy-they made a big stink, but they didn’t want any publicity.”

“Why?”

“The women were…uh, discreet about their private lives. And Little Italy traded on this rep as a place where crime never happened. You know-wink, wink, nudge, nudge, crime doesn’t happen here because we take care of our own? Totally hypocritical because they’re the first ones to bitch about ethnic stereotypes. Not to mention apocryphal.”

“What?”

“You surprised that a police knows a big word?”

“No, no, I just didn’t follow,” she lied. “Who takes care of their own?”

“The Italians. Everybody. Now, what was it you wanted to meet about?”

“Is it okay if I order something to eat?”

“Go ahead. Nothing here will kill you.”

She ordered a turkey club with fries and a Coors Light draft, because that’s what he was drinking.

“I think I’ve stumbled on something pretty vital,” she began.

“Yeah?”

She had his attention now.

“Earlier this week the principal-Barbara Paulson-told us that Perri’s diploma could not be awarded. No one expected it to be announced at the ceremony, of course. But she says that Perri will never be recognized as a graduate of the school-even though her work might be complete.”

“Well, that’s a matter for the school board and her parents to hash out. It’s not really a police matter.”

“Yes, but-Barbara ordered Perri’s teachers to destroy any work that turned up, to say she hadn’t done the work. Isn’t that wrong? I mean, obstruction of justice and all that?”

“Still sounds more like a civil matter. Unless Perri’s work included a confession.”

“I’m pretty sure that Perri did submit her final paper to me that Friday morning, only it’s missing.”

He didn’t say anything, but his look was clearly an “And?”

“Here’s the thing: What kind of a girl turns in her final work when she’s planning to kill her friend, then kill herself?”

“Well, there are two ways to look at that. One, she’s unstable. So she does things that don’t make sense.” His eyes were on the television set above the bar.

“And the other way?”

“What?”

“You said there were two ways to look at it.”

“The other way is…probably not something I should be talking about.”

“You mean, someone other than Perri might have done this.”

“I didn’t say that. In fact, I’m now more sure than ever that the Kahn girl brought the gun onto school property.”

“Well, I think I know a student who might have been there. Another student. A fourth girl.”

His attention was complete now, unwavering. “Tell me her name.”

“I don’t think I should. If the police were to visit her…She wouldn’t tell you anything, and she’d never trust me again. It’s better if I keep trying to get through to her.”

“With all due respect, there’s been a murder, Ms. Cunningham-”

“Alexa. Even my students call me Alexa.”

“There’s a way to talk to people, to get information that’s not prejudicial.”

“I was a communications major at American. My field is actually rhetoric. I got the teaching credential so I could work in public schools, but I’m more of an ethnographer than anything else.”

“That word I don’t know.”

She was charmed. Men so seldom admitted not knowing something.

“I study teen culture.”

“Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

“What do you do, the Reader’s Digest Build Your Word Power?”

“Yes, in fact. That and lots of crossword puzzles. I hear they stave off memory loss.”

She was looking at his mouth. Alexa had never cared if men were handsome-she liked to think it was because she was confident enough in her own looks not to need the ego boost of gorgeous guys. But she liked mouths, and Lenhardt had a nice one. Full, but not too full. A little too old for her, but she liked older men, and don’t tell her that it was daddy shit. Older men were so kind. Older men were grateful.

“Look, Ms. Ethnicographer-”

“Ethnographer.”

He smiled, letting her know he had gotten it wrong as a joke. Or that he didn’t mind being corrected by her. She couldn’t quite read him, and that guarded quality was part of what made him so interesting.

“I’m sure you’re good at what you do,” he said. “But I’m good at what I do, and I’m the person who should be interviewing anyone who has information about this homicide, no matter how tangential.”

“But in your view it’s all straightforward, right? You said you’re sure that Perri brought the gun to school. Maybe this other girl’s information is…apocryphal.”

He didn’t smile at what she thought would be a nice shared moment, their first private joke. “If you keep talking to this girl, she’s going to get rehearsed. Or scared. Or she may actually come to believe whatever version she’s giving you. If you tell me her name, I won’t say how we know about her. I’ll just say we developed it from our investigation.”

“Teenagers aren’t stupid. She’d know it was me. And that’s one thing I won’t do, compromise a student’s faith in me. It’s essential to my work. These girls have to trust me. They’ve been betrayed and bullied, often by those who were once their dearest friends. I teach them how to survive.”

“They give credit for that?”

She knew he was trying to make a joke, but she couldn’t help being a little offended. “Yes. And they should.”

Her sandwich arrived, along with his second beer. He drank off half of it in a few gulps, looked at his watch. “I really should be getting along.”

“Don’t,” she said, then wished she could take it back. “I mean…stay with me. Until I finish my sandwich. I’m a quick eater.”

“Until you finish your sandwich. But don’t get indigestion on my account.”

“I never do.”

In the parking lot, she asked him, “Which way do you go?”

“North. Toward Freeland.”

“Oh, I’m south. Beverly Hills.”

“That’s a nice neighborhood.”

“I’m renovating my own house. I bought this amazing buffet at a yard sale, but then I put a new floor down over the weekend.” She waited to see if he would have anything admiring to say about this. “So it’s ridiculous, but I can’t move it back by myself. My brother says he’ll help me when he visits from New York, but that’s not until later this summer.”

The moment yawned. He looked at her thoughtfully, then took a step backward, jangling his keys. “You drive carefully, now. Someone little as you could be over the legal limit, drinking two beers in an hour.”

But Harold Lenhardt did not drive straight home that night. There was no rush, now that it was clear he would never make Jessica’s meet. He still went north but took a slight detour, stopping at a town house in White Marsh, a place he had visited only once before, for a Christmas party.

Andy Porter-the big blond giant, as Lenhardt thought of him, half amused, half intimidated-opened the door.

“ Nancy know you’re coming?” he asked, clearly surprised. As close as Lenhardt and Nancy were at work, they didn’t socialize much outside the office.

“No, but I was in the neighborhood and thought I should check on her.”

“I’ve fixed her up a place in the sunroom. Less moving around that way. A few steps to the bathroom, a few steps to the fridge.”

The family room was a den on the other side of the kitchen, separated by the now ubiquitous breakfast bar. Hey, there’s another word I know, Lenhardt said to the woman who lingered in his head. “Ubiquitous.”

“Sergeant!” Nancy ’s voice squeaked with surprise. She was lying on a flowery sofa, a thin, summer-weight blanket covering her substantial bulk, the television on mute, a stack of paperbacks within easy reach.

“How you doing?”

“They say okay. It is what it is.”

What it was was toxemia, a potentially fatal condition for mother and unborn child, and Lenhardt was pretty sure that Nancy was scared to death, but there didn’t seem to be any reason to call her on her attitude. If she wanted to play strong for him, he was okay with that. A police should front for the boss.

“I can’t help feeling cheated. I counted on you working until the moment your water broke. I was looking forward to seeing how a pregnant woman functioned in interrogations.”

“You know they would have put me on desk work the moment I started showing.”

“Probably.” Lenhardt was tactful enough not to mention that Nancy, a big-boned girl, could have gone longer than most before that happened. “But you’re okay for now? And the kid’s okay?”

She nodded. “As far as we know.”

“And it’s a boy?”

“It’s a boy.”

“That’s good. Boys are…easier. Maybe because I’m a guy, but our boy seems awfully simple next to our girl.”

“Infante told me what you’re working on-murder in the girls’ room. You feeling kind of blue about teenage girls?”

Lenhardt hadn’t realized he was feeling blue, much less that someone might notice. “I don’t think I understand women of any age. I just talked to this teacher-young, younger than you. Swear to God, Nancy, I think she was coming on to me.”

“Ladies like you, Triple L.” That was Nancy ’s nickname for him, Triple L-Living Legend Lenhardt. “Did she touch your hand?”

“No.”

“Because if a woman touches you in any way-on the hand or arm-she definitely wants to sleep with you. That’s what women do.”

“Where do you learn this stuff? I mean, not just you. Women in general.”

“I could tell you-”

“But then you’d have to kill me, I know.”

“No. But if you knew all our secrets, you’d be even more irresistible, have more women chasing you. That’s not what you want.” A pause. “Right, Sarge? That’s not what you want?”

“I can barely handle the two I have.”

“Two?” She furrowed her brow, worried for him.

“Marcia and Jessica.”

They shared a laugh, but then Nancy started to hiccup, and Andy came in, a bottle of water clutched in his giant hands. Lenhardt let himself out, embarrassed that he had imposed on Nancy at such a time. She had too much on her mind to tend to his conscience.

But he had really wanted to know-not just where women learn such things but what he should do about his own daughter, how he could prepare her for this world without sheltering her from it. He didn’t want to think of his daughter in her twenties all but propositioning a married man old enough to be her father. He didn’t want to think about the man who might say yes.

What Lenhardt didn’t want to know was the truth about himself: If he could have gotten away with it, he would have. Under the right circumstances, if he could have had a fling with a girl like that and be assured he could never, ever get caught, he would have done it in a second. But Infante, with his two broken marriages-and, yes, marriage two was to the woman who broke marriage one-was proof that men did get caught.

And Infante wasn’t the only one who could smell crazy on a woman. There was more than a whiff of it on that teacher-not crazy-crazy, but romantic-crazy, the kind of girl who went in saying she knew the rules, and then, next thing you knew, she was calling your house, indifferent to caller ID. A woman like that claimed to be free and easy, but you paid in the end.

Still, if he could have gotten away with it-if there was some parallel universe where actions had no consequences-he would have. Wouldn’t anyone?

His phone rang, and he almost didn’t grab it. Probably Marcia, busting his balls for not making the swim meet. But he weakened and flipped it open, and the female voice that greeted his was refreshingly businesslike-Holly Varitek, the lab tech.

“Tell me something good,” he said.

“Can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you anything definitive. There are at least three sets of fingerprints on the gun, but I’ve only identified two.”

“Perri Kahn and Josie Patel,” he guessed.

“Yup. And not Kat Hartigan. We’ll have to bring the owner in, I guess.”

“What about-”

“Blood type on the tampon doesn’t match Perri, Josie, or Kat. But, fresh as it appeared to be, I can’t place it within a time frame that eliminates the very real possibility that someone else came in, did her business, and left. Sorry, Lenhardt, but it’s not like that damn television show, where a single pubic hair unlocks all the mysteries of the world.”

“I know. Problem is, juries expect it to be that way. So as long as that…that thing is floating around, it raises all sorts of questions without answering any. What do you think, Holly?”

“Sorry, you don’t pay me enough to think. And if you put me in front of a grand jury, all I could swear is that someone changed her tampon that morning.”

If I’d slept with that teacher, he thought, she would have told me the name. Maybe not the first time, but eventually.

When he got home, both Jessica and Marcia were giving him the silent treatment, which was infuriating. So he had missed the swim meet. It had been for work-at least, he thought it was for work when he headed out. And he hadn’t slept with her, had he? A young blonde had all but offered herself up, asking nothing more from him than help in moving a piece of furniture, and he had sent her on her way. A man was always getting in trouble for things he didn’t do, but he never got rewarded for the gauntlets he ran every day. Marcia might have him firmly in the debit column, but Lenhardt knew he had a million credits on his balance sheet.