And once Perri Kahn was dead, Josie Patel would be untouchable. No one could contradict her, except the phantom fourth girl, and even Lenhardt was beginning to doubt she existed.
Infante was right: It would all go away if they decided things had happened as Josie said, and everyone would be happier for it. Hang it all on the dead girl, get their clearance, move on. The Kahns might squawk a little, but Mrs. Delacorte’s photographs put the gun in the girl’s hand just a few weeks out. He didn’t doubt that Perri was the one who had brought the weapon to school. The only question was who else had known about it. Someone had taken that photo, and Lenhardt was reasonably sure it wasn’t Mr. Delacorte. Was that you, Josie, on the other side of the camera? Is that what you’re not telling us? Why?
Perhaps even Dale Hartigan would be satisfied with this outcome. It was an answer, neat and contained. The girl who had killed his daughter would be dead, and he wouldn’t even have to go through a trial, much less risk seeing the girl acquitted on an insanity defense. All of Glendale would be happy to see this end, so it could go back to being known for its high-achieving graduates and its intermittently successful soccer team.
Yes, everyone would be happy-except Lenhardt and Infante, and their bosses if the day ever came that the fourth girl surfaced for some other reason. Putting down a bad case was much worse than keeping one open.
“We’ve got to talk to Josie Patel one more time,” he said. “Right now, before she knows that Perri Kahn is dying. It may be our last chance to get the truth out of her.”
“But how do we nudge her forward? We can bluff the girl about the physical evidence, but we can’t get anything past her lawyer.”
“We get a search warrant.”
“For…?”
“For a pair of missing shoes.”
“We’ve been over that. If we ask her for the shoes and she doesn’t have them, she’ll just say they got thrown away by accident or something.”
“I don’t care about the shoes. I just want another excuse to talk to her, let her think that we know more than we do.”
Peter slept late, slept in the heavy, dreamless way that he hadn’t known since he was in his teens and his body was perpetually exhausted by the demands of his late growth spurt. Still in his pajama bottoms, he padded barefoot around his mother’s kitchen, looking for something healthy to eat, preferably lowcarb. The refrigerator had plenty of nutritious options, but they were so much effort. Egg-white omelets required separating eggs, a process that Peter understood only theoretically. Salads meant washing and endless chopping.
He nuked one of his mom’s Lean Cuisines, daydreaming while it turned lazy circles inside the microwave. On set, the food-you called it “craft services,” according to Simone, based on her experience as a day player in Good Will Hunting-was constant, a cornucopia. There was always one sit-down hot meal and then, if the day went late enough, a second meal brought in. He would be able to save a lot of his paycheck.
Absentmindedly, he braced himself against the counter and did a few push-ups. He didn’t feel quite as fervent about going out for the Senior Ramble tonight. Chasing gossip seemed less important today than yesterday. But it was something to do, and he was so restless.
Dannon was terrified of being in the room while Perri’s life ebbed out of her, but he did not see how he could refuse the Kahns’ offer. They clearly considered the invitation a great honor, proof that he was like family to them. One of us, one of us, he chanted in his head, then realized it was the litany from Tod Browning’s Freaks. He was no longer so sure that he wanted to be one of the Kahns.
He told himself that the person in the bed was a stranger, someone he didn’t know. But there was no comfort in that.
“Do you want to hold her hand?” Eloise Kahn asked. “Or have a private moment?”
“No.” It was all he could do to keep the panic out of his voice. In The Three Faces of Eve, another one of the old movies that he and Perri had gobbled up during their long afternoons at Dannon’s house, an encounter with a dead grandmother was enough to explain multiple personality disorder. Kiss a corpse, go bonkers. People knew better now. Dannon knew better, but he still did not want to be left alone with Perri, for fear that she would suddenly snap into consciousness, fix those fierce blue eyes on him, and announce, I know what you did, Dannon. I know how you tried to betray me.
“I mean, no, please don’t leave,” he said. “I couldn’t bear it if…”
Everyone in the room knew what could not be borne, or thought they did. Dannon took Perri’s hand. It felt loose and floppy, boneless.
“Talk to her, Dannon,” Eloise encouraged him. “She might hear you.”
“Hey, Perri.” God, that was lame. “So…remember Fatty Arbuckle and Kevin Bacon? I finally figured out how to do it. You go Fatty Arbuckle to Buster Keaton-they made a lot of shorts together. Then Buster Keaton to Zero Mostel, in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Zero Mostel to Woody Allen, The Front. Woody Allen to Elizabeth Shue, Deconstructing Harry. Shue to Bacon, The Hollow Man. Done!”
There was no response. If Perri could talk, she would probably tell Dannon that she didn’t want to spend her last minutes on the planet thinking about a stupid movie game.
“The thing is…” He lowered his voice, leaning closer to her. “The thing is, I cheated, Perri. Just a little. I used the Internet Movie Database to find out if Keaton and Arbuckle were in anything together. I mean, I thought they might be, but I’m not strong on the early stuff, but I knew if I could get the two of them together, I could complete on my own. I wasn’t thinking of Forum, but I knew that Keaton was in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, which meant I could do Annette Funicello or Frankie Avalon, and he’s in Grease, so I could have done Buster Keaton-Frankie Avalon-John Travolta. And Travolta was in Phenomenon with Kyra Sedgwick, and she’s been in a ton of stuff with Bacon since she’s his wife. But I knew you’d like it better if I went through Forum, it being Stephen Sondheim and all. Still, it was cheating. You were always adamant that we shouldn’t use IMDb to figure out Fatty Arbuckle.”
And you wouldn’t approve if you knew I didn’t erase that photo, the one with you in Mrs. Delacorte’s underwear, holding the gun. But I didn’t know what else to do. I had promised you I wouldn’t tell, and I saw what you could do to people whodon’t take your side. You had cut off Kat and Josie because they had displeased you in some way, and they were your forever friends, whereas we had just been hanging out the past year. So I left the one photo in there, thinking someone might find it and call the police or tell your parents. It was so half-assed, so typically me. I should have told or not told. If I had been willing to risk losing your friendship, you might be alive. Jesus, Perri, what were you thinking?