Page 9 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Road Kill

Having bolted for the door, she whirled around in confusion.
“My—my glasses? No, couldn’t be. I left them in my locker.”
Fassner nodded and put what were obviously his own glasses back
in his pocket. Sherrie continued her flight, and I could hear her
footsteps receding down the hall. I looked at the detective. “Nice
trick,” I said, truly impressed. “She might not have admitted to
needing glasses, teenage vanity being what it is.”
He sort of smiled, an unpracticed flexure of facial muscles. “Just
icing on the cake, Holloman. Not a very reliable witness. But she saw
him go over.”
“Is there any doubt of that?”
“Not much. It might help to know why he went over.”
“Why?” I must have seemed quite naive. “Oh, you mean the
insurance. If it were suicide—”
“No need to speculate. Send in the other girl. Maybe she was a
little bit more observant. Or at least has better eyesight.”

<< 3 >>

I opened the door and craned my neck to face Labelle. She was
already on her feet. I stood back and she strode without hesitation
into my office, right up to the desk. She stuck out her right hand.
“Hello. I’m Labelle Gramercy.”
Fassner was probably unprepared to trot out his social graces for a
high school student in grubby clothes, but he stood up, too. This
reduced his ability to intimidate, in at least one dimension: he had to
look slightly up to make eye contact as they shook hands. “Captain
Brad Fassner, West Valley police.”
She sat down, perfectly composed but evidently troubled. I might
not have been in the room for all the attention I got.
“Are you a homicide detective?” she asked, submitting him to a
scrutiny thinner-skinned males might have found discomforting.
He did not smile. Questioners do not like being questioned.
“Unnatural deaths do come under my purview, Miss Gramercy. What
exactly happened this morning up there in the park?”
She frowned and looked down at her hands folded in her lap. They
were larger than most girls’.
“Beginning when, Captain?”

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