“Baby, baby-whoa!”

It was a photograph of a thin, dark-haired girl, wearing an emerald green bra and panties while holding a gun, by all appearances the same.22 recovered at the scene.

“Perri,” Mrs. Delacorte said. “In my underwear.”

“Who took these photos?”

“Now, that,” she said, “is the ten-million-dollar question.”

Lenhardt almost literally braced himself on the table between them. He hadn’t liked Delacorte, but he hadn’t picked up a pervert vibe from the guy. Okay, the girl was eighteen, technically legal, not pedophile stuff, but it still disgusted him. Maybe Jessica would be better off getting a mall job when she was old enough to work. Even if the father of the house wasn’t some sicko, Lenhardt wasn’t sure he wanted Jessica free to roam another household. Look what this one girl had found-lingerie, a digital camera, a gun. And that’s just what they knew so far. There could have been more. Unlocked liquor cabinets, drugs, legal or not. How could he control for that? Lenhardt’s wife didn’t know it, but before he allowed Jessica to go on sleepovers, he ran the parents through all the state and national criminal checks.

“So enlighten us,” Lenhardt said. “Because we don’t have ten million dollars, and we don’t have all the time in the world.”

“Maybe my husband didn’t always work late. Maybe he sneaked home early on some Thursday afternoons.”

“Maybe?”

“I mean, I can’t prove anything, which is utterly, utterly unfortunate,” Mrs. Delacorte continued. “You see, with a digital camera, there’s just no way to establish what my lawyer calls ‘provenance.’ Date and time-yes. This photo was taken on May third. But can I prove who clicked the shutter? No.”

“What?” Infante said, although he knew full well what the woman meant. He was just having trouble catching up, now that she was finally on topic.

“There’s no way to prove who took the photos. It’s my camera, after all. Besides, digital photos can be altered. They were of no use to my lawyer.”

“But your husband-”

“Oh, he would just deny everything. I haven’t even bothered to show this to him. The only person who can tell us what happened is Perri, and she’s probably going to die, which is too bad.”

“Too bad that she might die or too bad that she can’t talk?”

“Why, both, of course.”

Had the husband’s surprise about the gun and his ignorance about the baby-sitter been genuine? Lenhardt thought so at the time. In fact, the guy had seemed unnerved to learn that his wife had a weapon, and now that Lenhardt had met her, he could see his point. Discovering in hindsight that you had dared to close your eyes when this lunatic had a gun at hand was no small thing.

“Does it have a timer?” Infante asked of the camera, turning it around and examining it. “Can it be set so someone can take a photo of herself?”

“I’m not big on reading instructions,” Mrs. Delacorte said airily. That must be one of the perquisites of beauty, Lenhardt thought, not reading instructions because someone else would do such things for you-read your instructions, carry your packages, waive your speeding tickets, assemble your furniture. Then again, Mrs. Delacorte probably didn’t have the kind of furniture that needed to be assembled. At least, not during her marriage to Mr. Delacorte.

“You said you found this ten days ago. The shooting happened five days ago.”

“Ten days, five days, whatever.” She didn’t get the point he was making, didn’t get it at all. “I needed to consult my lawyer, of course. He’s the one who told me it would be impossible to prove that Stewart took them, so we shouldn’t show it to Stewart’s lawyer.”

“I’m just not sure,” Lenhardt said, “why that was your primary concern. You knew about the shooting, right? And that your old baby-sitter was involved? Didn’t you think the police would want to know you had a dated, timed photograph of her with the gun that she apparently used?”

“Well…there are liability issues. Right?” She sounded like someone guessing on a multiple-choice test, throwing out a term she had heard but not quite understood. “I mean, yes, I found the photo, but I didn’t see any urgency.”

“The law requires that you report a stolen firearm ASAP. You had a photo of an eighteen-year-old girl posing with your gun, a gun you knew had been missing for several weeks. If you’d come in here last week instead of today-”

“But I couldn’t know, from a photo, what she planned to do. It was taken in my home-I recognize the maple drawers of my walk-in closet-so I don’t even know for a fact that she took the gun. I thought she was just acting, playing a part. Acting for someone else’s benefit, don’t you think? She probably meant to erase it and forgot, or didn’t realize there was one photo left on the camera.”

“We don’t sit here and make up stuff that might be true,” Lenhardt said, angry and out of patience. “We try to establish what is factual, what really happened.”

“What if my husband asked Perri to do it? I saw that on a Law & Order once.” The way this woman’s brain worked, it was like those science fiction movies Jason loved so much, where people moved in defiance of gravity. Up, down, sideways.

“Excuse me?”

“A man was having an affair with his stepdaughter, and he convinced her to shoot her own mother. Only maybe…I think there was another twist, and it turned out it was the girl’s idea. Or, no, that was the one about the private school-”

“Mrs. Delacorte, we’ve never even established that your husband knew the Kahn girl, much less the victim. He couldn’t even pick Perri’s name out of a list or describe her to us.”

“He knew Dale Hartigan.”

But Delacorte had readily admitted as much to Lenhardt.

“I know. I talked to your husband Sunday.”

Her worried look told him that she hadn’t known that. “You can’t believe a word he says. He’s the most horrible liar.”

“Be that as it may, to your knowledge, your husband doesn’t know the victim, has a cordial relationship with her father-or did, at least, before this happened-and may never have even spoken to your baby-sitter. Meanwhile this is your digital camera, your gun.”

“Your underwear,” Infante put in. “I mean-that’s what you said.”

Mrs. Delacorte nodded, as if she had been complimented. “Yes. And I’m just trying to be helpful. You are free to use this information in any way you deem necessary if it will help you in your investigation of this horrible tragedy. Give it to the state’s attorney, even release it to the press.”

Release it to the press? To what purpose? To what publication? Lenhardt finally understood why this good citizen had come forward.

“And, maybe, it would help you, too, to have this photo in circulation? I mean, it’s not admissible in your divorce, but if it were part of a homicide investigation, someone might leak it to the Beacon-Light. What can’t be proven in court can still be potent in a divorce.”

She lifted her chin, a grand-lady mannerism that didn’t really suit her. “I have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“But you hope that your husband does, even if you can’t prove it. Me, I’m now more convinced than ever that your husband doesn’t know anything about this. How do we know that you didn’t take this photo, just to cause all this trouble? Took the photo, then gave Perri Kahn the gun, as a parting gift, to do with as she pleased?”

“That’s just ridiculous. I’m not exactly inclined that way.” Toward women? Toward blackmail? Toward arming adolescents? Lenhardt waited, but Mrs. Delacorte didn’t elaborate. Instead she rose and held out her hand for the camera, but Infante shook his head, closing his fist around it. She left the room with the same rushed flutter with which she had arrived.

“Tempting,” Lenhardt said.

“Her?”

“No, erasing this photo just to get back at her. But at least we have it for now and the time stamp is a good break for us.”