“You planned on attending?”
He eased himself into the chair one over from Alexa’s at the long counter beneath the makeup mirrors and rotated on its wheeled base, taking in the room. “We didn’t have anything like this at my high school. When we did shows, we had to get dressed in the wings or the boys’ lavatory.”
“Oh, it’s pretty standard stuff for schools these days,” Alexa said, wondering at her own reflexive defense of Glendale. Among her friends she was quick to mock how overdone the school was in the physical details, how lacking in basic amenities-such as space for its faculty. “But the auditorium is large, large enough to hold the entire student body. Feel free to sit in the back or to watch from the wings.”
“Actually, I was hoping I might speak. Me, or my partner, if you think the kids would be more responsive to him.”
“He’s not my type,” Alexa shot back, then blushed.
“I was just thinking, him being so handsome and all. And he’s younger, you know, closer to their age.” Again that slow easy smile. “But I’m happy to hear he’s not everyone’s type. We go to lunch, the waitresses swirl around him, offering seconds and specials and thises and thats. Me, I sit there pointing at my empty coffee cup until someone takes pity on me and pours me a refill. Even then it turns out to be decaf.”
Alexa doubted this. The sergeant clearly had his own kind of charm, and he wasn’t unaware of it. She could imagine him as a shopping-mall Santa, a good one, who never made children cry. Not that he was fat, although his middle was a little bulky. There was just something in his demeanor that made it seem possible, attractive even, to whisper in his ear.
“I don’t understand why either of you wants to address the students.”
“The usual stuff. Remind kids that they should come forward with anything they know. With the promise of confidentiality, of course.”
“Are you hoping to find out something about the motive?”
“Not really.”
“Excuse me?”
“Motives can be interesting. And when you don’t have anything, they’re a good place to start. But they’re not how you close cases, much less get convictions. I prefer eyewitnesses, hard physical evidence.”
“It’s pretty obvious what happened, right? Perri killed Kat, shot Josie, and then tried to kill herself.”
“That’s what everyone seems to think, yes.”
“But you don’t?”
“I’m not saying that.”
“Then what do you think the students could tell you, if you already have an eyewitness and physical evidence?”
“I’m an open-minded guy. That’s my stock-in-trade.”
He rested one arm on the counter, his gaze unnervingly steady. Alexa’s eyes slid away, toward her own reflection. At twenty-eight she still looked twenty-two, although she worried about the way she might age. Time was unkind to blue-eyed blondes, judging by her mother. Were you always pretty? the girls asked, wistful and resentful at the same time, as if someone who was pretty in high school could never understand them. Not in my head, Alexa replied, and it was a good answer, true even. In high school she had not understood how blessed she was. No girl did.
“It’s a bad idea,” she said.
“Being open-minded?”
“Talking to the kids at the assembly.”
“Why?”
“Two reasons. One is that the anti-snitch culture is alive and well in high school. Once you ask kids to talk to you, some will feel pressure to do anything but. The kids who do come forward will most likely be the drama queens and kings, desperate for attention. Or looking for a reason to get out of class for an hour.”
“Interesting,” he said. “I hadn’t thought about that. So should I go about it a different way? Are there any individuals I should seek out?”
She thought of Eve but hurriedly pushed the girl out of her thoughts, as if fearful that this policeman could read her mind. Eve was hers.
“Well, Josie Patel, obviously. She’s the only eyewitness, right?”
“Right,” the sergeant said in his agreeable tone, so why did Alexa have the feeling he wasn’t really agreeing with her? “Still, I’d like to speak at this confab. Just for two minutes, maybe at the very beginning. Then you can get down to the serious business at hand.”
“You sound a little…sarcastic.” Like her brother, the day before. She was tired of people making fun of what she did.
“Do I? I don’t mean to. I think grief counseling is a good thing. Posttraumatic stress, all that stuff. They talk a lot about it in my shop.”
“Have you…?”
“Oh, it’s not for me.”
“No, I wasn’t asking if you’ve had it, just if-Well, you must have seen a lot. As a detective.”
“I’m in homicide. My whole life is posttrauma. But it’s not what I’ve seen that’s likely to bother me. It’s what I’ve heard. The confessions. The rationalizations. The lack of rationalizations. You can’t believe how thoughtlessly some lives are ended, how little goes into the decision. Makes me sad.”
Me, too, she wanted to say, yet she knew it was inane, a guidance counselor claiming kinship with a homicide detective. Still, it was amazing, the stories that teenage girls confided, once they felt safe. Their confused notions of sex, the things they were willing to do for the tiniest scrap of male attention, the viciousness of other girls.
“Look, you really shouldn’t go before the assembly. You’re just going to end up trying to sort a lot of chaff from the wheat, the attention hogs and liars.”
“Everybody lies. It’s the cardinal rule of homicide investigations.”
Alexa blushed, feeling that he had seen through her own omissions, her refusal to mention Eve. But there was no way she could turn Eve over to police. The girl would never trust her again.
His cell phone rang, a strangely straightforward ring to Alexa’s ears, inured to the elaborate tones that the kids downloaded. ABBA was big, for some reason. “Dancing Queen” and “ Waterloo ” always seemed to be coming out of someone’s purse or backpack these days. There also was a lot of hip-hop, at least among the boys, a hilarious affectation at Glendale, where only 5 percent of the student body was African-American and almost everyone was well-to-do.
The sergeant took the call, his monosyllabic responses revealing little about the information conveyed. Really? Do we need a lab tech? Okay. Okay. Okay.
“I guess it’s all moot for now,” he said, snapping the phone shut and placing it back on his belt. “Something-well, maybe nothing, really, but it takes priority. You could ask for us, though, couldn’t you? Ask the kids to call me or my partner, give out our numbers. In whatever way you think would elicit the best responses.”
He hit the word “elicit” hard, as if he expected her to be surprised by the usage. As if she thought he was stupid, when she was now quite sure he was anything but.