Catch Me (34 page)

“Goal,” she informed Neil, and to a lesser extent Phil, because he knew his business, “is to be sympathetic, accuse their son of nothing, and get your hands on his electronics.” She eyed Phil, their own computer whiz, on the last part. “Smartphone was seized at the scene last night, but that still leaves computers, iPad, iPod, gaming systems—you’d be amazed where perverts hide their electronic data these days. Search warrant is broad and I want you to use it. We’ll let the forensic wizards manage this one—see if they can’t dig out exactly what Barry was doing online and, even better, how our vigilante shooter might have tracked him.”

“Sixteen. Couldn’t be a registered sex offender,” Neil spoke up, frowning.

“No record,” D.D. confirmed. “Not even a sealed juvie file.”

“Then how’d the shooter know—”

“Charlene Grant,” O repeated promptly, “knew about his
behavior because she’d already taken calls from his victims. Further proof our shooter has insider knowledge, say from her job as a comm officer with a local police department.”

“Or our shooter baited him online,” Phil said neutrally. “Reached out to various registered users on the animal website. First one that sent her porn became the next target.”

“Which is why your goal,” D.D. said to Neil and Phil, “is to seize all electronics. Our sixteen-year-old victim has several key differences from our first two victims. Young, not yet in the criminal justice system, etc., etc. Connect him to the first two victims, and we’ll finally answer some questions.”

“Analyze his cell phone,” O said dryly. “Search the call log for the last time he called nine-one-one.”

D.D. rolled her eyes at the sex crime detective’s one-track mind. “Which brings us to the next matter at hand—how to wrap up our current homicide investigation, by trapping Charlene Grant.”

“Finally!”

“Here’s the deal.” D.D. regarded Neil and O. “You’re both right: We’re dealing with a suspect who’s half-feral and probably will bolt at the first hint of suspicion. Which is why we have to proceed with caution. For example, we could request a warrant to seize her twenty-two on the grounds that she matches the general description of our shooter. Which, as O pointed out, would probably gain us the murder weapon but lose us the murderer as Charlene heads for the hills. Or, we can wait for her to show up for her eleven
P.M.
shift tonight at the Grovesnor PD, at which point they’ll seize it for us.”

Detective O frowned, clearly trying to follow this logic. “She had her gun on her yesterday,” the detective murmured slowly, “when you called her in from work. Meaning, she must carry it with her at all times. Which would be—”

“Against department policy,” D.D. finished for her. “Grovesnor PD has the right to seize her weapon, not to mention then authorize any tests they’d like, such as a ballistics test, to see if the rifling on Charlene’s Taurus matches the rifling on the six slugs recovered from three separate shootings.”

“She’ll fight that,” O warned. “She believes she needs the gun for the twenty-first…which would be tomorrow.”

D.D. shrugged. “Then she needs to spend more time reading her employer’s rules and regs. Her mistake, our opportunity.”

O nodded. “Smart,” she said finally, which D.D. would’ve taken as more of a compliment if the beautiful young detective hadn’t sounded so surprised.

“Gee thanks.” D.D. pulled together her notes, rapped them into one eight-and-a-half-by-eleven stack, then rose to standing. “Now you just have to keep it our little secret while speaking to her this afternoon.”

“We’re speaking to her this afternoon? Why?” O looked puzzled. “We don’t have any developments from the Facebook page yet. People are just starting to friend it. Frankly, I’m not sure eight
P.M.
tomorrow night is enough time, even by the viral standards of the Web.”

“It’s not about the Facebook page. I have news for her, however. Worth her paying us a visit.”

Neil had also risen to standing. “You know who killed her friends?” he asked.

“Nope. I found her mother.”

D
ID ALL DAUGHTERS FEAR THEIR MOTHERS?
It was food for thought, after D.D.’s own breakfast with her parents. Even now, three hours later, she couldn’t decide which moment was the most humiliating. Maybe when she’d first showed up in the lobby of the Weston Hotel in Waltham, and her mother had pointedly asked, “Isn’t that the same outfit you were wearing last night, dear?”

D.D. hadn’t even thought about it, given that she pulled a lot of all-nighters on the job and wardrobe change was generally the least of her concerns. She’d brought that up. Her father might have even appeared sympathetic. Then they’d sat at the table. Her mother had wanted to know where Alex and Jack were. D.D. had answered that Alex had to teach today at the academy, so Jack was at day care.

Her mother had gotten that look again. Like she was sucking on
lemons. Which had pissed D.D. off, because if memory served, her mother hadn’t exactly played house when D.D. was a baby. Her mother had gone back to teaching, too close to tenure to give up now. D.D. had gone to day care. Hell, D.D. remembered loving day care. There were other kids who rolled and tumbled and got dirty and laughed hard. Day care was nirvana. Home was all “Sit still, don’t make that face, for God’s sake can’t you stop fidgeting for just one minute?”

No was the general answer. D.D. couldn’t be patient, couldn’t sit still, couldn’t stay in one place. Even now, she was forty-one, and within the first two minutes of breakfast she was compulsively folding and unfolding her napkin on her lap. It was either that or scream.

Her mother had ordered a bowl of fruit. Her father had asked for toast. D.D. had gone for eggs Benedict with extra béarnaise sauce.

Her mother had arched a brow. Fat, cholesterol—should D.D. really be eating such things at her age?

Interestingly enough, her mother’s lips had never moved, her throat had never vocalized the syllables. Turned out, she didn’t have to actually speak. She could communicate an entire range of disapproval all with the single lift of her brow.

If D.D. hadn’t been so thoroughly infuriated, she would’ve been impressed.

They didn’t speak while waiting for their food. They just sat there, a father, a mother, a daughter, who all these years later couldn’t bridge the divide. And eventually D.D. had stopped feeling so angry and simply felt depressed. Because they were her parents and she loved them in her own way and understood they loved her in their own way, and what a shame it didn’t make bearing each other’s company any easier.

Food came. They ate gratefully.

D.D. had thought she just might survive the meal, when her mother chewed her last piece of cantaloupe, set down her fork, looked D.D. in the eye, and stated, “This is what I don’t understand: If Alex is good enough to father your child, why isn’t he good enough to marry? I mean really, D.D., what are you waiting for?”

D.D. had frozen, forkful of eggs Benedict midair, and stared at her
mom. Then, belatedly, she’d turned her gaze to her father, who was resiliently studying the white linen tablecloth. Coward.

“I’m glad you like Alex,” D.D. had mumbled at last, then set down her fork and bolted for the bathroom. By the time she’d returned, her mother sat pinch-faced, staring straight ahead. Her father had his hand lightly on hers, but whether that was offering comfort or asking forgiveness, D.D. couldn’t tell.

They were an attractive elderly couple, she realized, approaching the table. They fit together in a way you could see from across the room. And maybe that was the problem. They were the unit. And she was forever the outsider, looking in.

She kissed her mom on the cheek, feeling the rigidness of her mother’s spine. She kissed her father as well, feeling the dry brush of his lips on her cheek. Then she paid the bill and got out of there.

At a certain point, you had to agree to disagree, even with your own parents. Logically she could accept that. But it hurt. It would always hurt.

At least she knew, somewhere deep down inside, that her mother loved her.

She wondered what Charlene thought about her mother, a woman who’d physically abused her most of her young life. But at least she’d let Charlene live, which based on the police reports D.D. had read just this morning, was more than Christine Grant had done for her other two children.

Parents and children. Mothers and daughters.

Love and forgiveness.

And homicide.

D.D. picked up the phone and made the call.

I
WAS TWITCHY
when I first took Detective Warren’s call. Twitchier, by the time I departed for BPD headquarters. I left my aunt behind, nestled with Tulip in my room. Given her exhaustion from the early morning drive to Boston, it hadn’t taken much to convince her to rest. I’d told her I needed to tend to a few things before work. No need to mention my conversation with a local homicide investigator. That Detective Warren had located my mother. That she had more information on the baby sister and baby brother I myself had just remembered a few hours ago. No need to mention my growing conviction that the past was closing in on me for a reason. That I was remembering my failings just in time for judgment day.

Three
P.M.
Friday afternoon. Twenty-nine hours before 8
P.M.
Saturday night. Sky had finally cleared and turned that crystalline blue that marks bitterly cold winter days in Boston.

The brightness hurt my eyes, encouraged me to keep my head down and my shoulders hunched, when I should’ve been walking shoulders back, eyes straight ahead, taking constant inventory of the world around me. Trees cast skeletal shadows on the white snowy ground. Corners were mushy with slush and filled with blind spots caused by heaping snowbanks.

What if the killer had gotten bored with January 21 as the annual day to murder a young, defenseless woman? Maybe he’d realize there was more opportunity on the 20th, when his third victim, namely me, wouldn’t be expecting it yet. Eight
P.M.
was also an arbitrary time, a rough average between two approximate times of
death in two separate homicides. Maybe morning was better for the murderer this year. Or later Saturday night or even Sunday morning. A lot could happen in a year. The killer could’ve moved, gotten a new job, maybe fallen in love, had a child.

He or she could be following me. Right now. Maybe he/she had started a week ago. Or a year ago: Officer Tom Mackereth, carefully scoping me out on the job. Or my aunt, suddenly showing up on my front door, after nearly a year apart. Or a long-lost friend, that kid from high school I couldn’t remember but would vaguely recognize, having spent yesterday flipping through the yearbook. Someone I wouldn’t immediately assume was a threat. Someone smart enough, practiced enough, to walk right up to me without tripping any of my internal alarms.

Twelve months later, I still had more questions than answers. Mostly, I felt the stress of too many sleepless nights, the ticktock of a clock, so close now, so unbelievably close to a very personal, very gruesome deadline.

I walked down the sidewalk toward the T stop in Harvard Square, jumping at every unexpected noise, while thinking that it was a good thing I’d left my Taurus at home, because at this stage of the game, I was a danger to myself and others.

I wished it was already January 21. Frankly, I needed the fight.

A crunching sound behind me. Footsteps, fast and heavy breaking through the crusty snow. I jumped to the side, turning quickly. Two college students strode past me, the bottom half of their faces hidden behind thick plaid scarves. The boy glanced up at my acrobatics, gave me a funny look, then put his arm around the waist of the girl, pulling her closer to him as they walked past.

My heart rate had just resumed its normal pace, my feet turning back toward the Cambridge T stop, when the cell phone in my pocket chimed to life.

I pulled it out, half-curious, half-fatalistic. I flipped it open. “Hello.”

And heard nine-year-old Michael’s voice. “She called him. Last night. She’d been drinking and then she started crying and then she called him.”

I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t find the words through the rush
of guilt and shame that flooded through my veins. Michael, and his sister Mica and his mother Tomika, the family I’d tried to save. Little Michael, whose father I’d taken from him, iron spikes protruding from his bloody chest.

“But he didn’t answer the phone,” Michael continued now, voice flat and quick, getting his story out. “Tillie, our next-door neighbor, answered, and he-she said Stan fell off the fire escape. He-she said Stan’s dead.”

“He-she?” I asked, the only words I could muster.

“Our neighbor Gary Tilton. ’Cept now he’s a she, so we call Tillie him-her or he-she, but never
it
’cause that gets him-her mad.”

“Okay.”

“Charlie…is Stan really dead?”

“Yes.”

“Good!”

The vehemence in his young voice startled me, made me wince.

“She was gonna take him back. She was gonna take
us
back. Not even two days and already life was too hard and she needed her man even if he did break our fingers. I yelled at her, Charlie. I told her no. I told her she promised not to do that to us, but she just cried harder and picked up the phone. Why is she like that, Charlie? Why doesn’t she love us more?”

Michael’s voice broke. He wasn’t talking in a flat rush anymore, he was crying, a little boy consumed by giant, wrenching sobs, and I continued to stand there, back against a snowbank, searching for words that would both comfort a child and assuage my guilt.

I’d saved this boy by murdering his father. I’d played angel and avenger. I’d hurt in the name of hope.

Which I guess made sense, as nine-year-old Michael both mourned his father and was grateful he was dead.

“I’m sorry,” I said at last.

“Is she gonna be all right?” he asked at last, quieting his sobs. I understood he didn’t mean his little sister, but his mother.