But before she could get started, he pulled her up by the armpits, so they were face-to-face.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Eighteen,” she lied reflexively.
“No you’re not. You said you were a year behind Kat in school.”
“I’m old enough. I’ve done it lots of times. Come on, it’s just sex. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
She reached for him again, plunging her hand down into his open fly, hoping she was doing it right. Hadn’t Graham liked what she had done? It had seemed so at the time. And she hadn’t wanted to be with him, whereas she would give anything, absolutely anything, to get with Peter Lasko.
He took her hand away, gently yet firmly, and zipped himself up. “Actually,” he said, “sex is a big deal. Kat and I never did it.”
“Really?”
“Really. I never told anyone that, but it’s true. I dated her all summer, and we never did it.”
“Don’t you wish you did? Now that she’s dead?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it that way.”
“Well, I bet she wishes she had. If I were your girlfriend, I wouldn’t be like that.” Adding hurriedly, “Not that I want to be your girlfriend. I’m just saying I’m not a cocktease.” Hadn’t Lila said that was the worst thing a girl could be?
He finished off his beer, crumpling the aluminum can in his hand. “That’s what I told people that Kat was. I wish I hadn’t.”
“It doesn’t really matter what you say or don’t say. People think what they want to think. You can tell them the truth, but it doesn’t make a difference. Everyone’s saying Perri shot Kat because she was jealous of her for some reason. That’s not the way it was, but that’s what people want to believe.”
“How do you know?”
She studied his face, as handsome as any movie star’s. But then, he was one, or about to be. She wanted to give him something, anything, to remember her by. She had thought sex would be the best way, but any girl could give him sex. All Eve had was a secret, but it seemed to be a secret he would value.
“Because I know someone else who was there.”
“Binnie Snyder,” Josie said. “Binnie Snyder was there, hiding in a stall. There was a struggle for a gun-no one meant for anything to happen-and we were so scared, and it was so stupid. I could have run-Binnie told me to run-but I couldn’t leave them.”
“Start at the beginning,” Lenhardt coaxed the girl. “Start at the very beginning.”
He had no way of knowing that the beginning, as Josie defined it, was her first day of third grade, ten years ago. He was used to more straightforward confessions-Tater shot Peanut over drugs, I cut my wife to shut her up. Sometimes, for variety, the wife cut the husband.
He was a murder police, well into his third decade, and he thought there was nothing new under the sun, no motivation unknown to him, no scenario he had yet to document. And he was right. The story Josie told, haltingly yet determinedly, had the usual elements. Jealousy, covetousness, anger over slights so tiny that it was hard to believe they had resonated for even a moment, much less years.
He let the girl go, allowed her all the extraneous details she thought so essential to her story. It seemed only fair, his having pressured her for the past week, to let her speak to her heart’s content.
It was past midnight when Peter, at Eve’s instruction, stopped at the end of her father’s outlaw driveway, the one he had created at the edge of Sweetwater Estates.
“I was going to stay out all night,” she said. “But there doesn’t seem to be any point.”
Was she still leaving the door open for some kind of sexual encounter? Peter was tempted. But he also wanted to go home, call Mr. Hartigan, tell him what he had learned.
“You know what? Nobody ever does. They say they’re going to, but even the seniors are home by two. It’s just so boring around here. Now, New York – New York is a city where you can do some damage, no matter what time it is.”
“I’d like to go there,” she said. “Not to do tourist stuff. But, like, go to clubs.”
“It’s a great city.”
“Can I call you, if I go there?”
No. “Sure.” He wasn’t going to be there anyway. He and his agent had mapped out the strategy. After SusquehannaFalls wrapped, he was going to go to L.A. for pilot season and meet a lot of people but not commit to anything until they had a sense of what the gathering buzz was on the movie.
“Cool,” she said.
“Is that where Binnie lives?” he asked, pointing to the dark house in the distance, a house where no lights burned, not even a porch light.
“Yes, but you promised-” Her voice was shrill, almost hysterical.
“I know. I promised I wouldn’t tell. And I won’t.” Actually, he had been very precise, promising Eve he wouldn’t tell the police. “But you should think about it, Eve. If she’s telling you the truth, she doesn’t have any reason not to come forward.”
“Binnie always tells the truth-which is more than I can say for Kat and her friends.”
“Okay, okay.” He was going for a big-brother vibe with her. Should he have fucked her? No, discretion really was the better part of valor sometimes. “Just think about it. Promise me? Think about it. Turn in those cell phones, the ones you said you hid in the compost pile. You can do it anonymously, I’m sure. It could be bad for you if it’s not as Binnie said. You could be an accessory.”
“I’ll think about it.”
He wasn’t fooled. She would think about it, but she wouldn’t do anything. That was okay. He didn’t need her to, and he wouldn’t tell anyone of her involvement. All Dale Hartigan needed to know was that a fourth girl was there, a girl who could explain, once and for all, what had happened.
It was so dark here, with no streetlamps, yet Eve’s eyes were bright, wet, and hungry. She seemed to want a kiss, so he gave her one. He was surprised at how tentative she was, how reserved, as if she had never been kissed.
He watched her run lightly up the drive, sandals in hand. She wasn’t going to talk to her friend, and even if she did, she would be tentative, unwilling to press for the right thing. The loyalties, whatever the reason, ran too deep. Maybe it was the legacy of being redneck girls, growing up among these pricey houses. Or maybe it was some kind of deeper girl shit, the kind he never got.
What if he went to the Snyders’ house, just knocked on the door, told them what he knew? Okay, so it was after midnight and her parents would probably freak. But if he just walked over there, announced himself, and told them what he knew and that their daughter had to come forward, he could put the whole thing to bed tonight and no one, not even Dale Hartigan, would be able to deny his part in it.