Catch Me

She handed me a sheet of paper, a pen. Then she picked up a stack of files, clearing a space on top of a gunmetal gray filing cabinet for me to use. “There you go. And while you’re at it, write down the full names of your parents and your aunt.”

  “Why my parents?”

  “Basic background.”

  “My mother’s dead. My father’s not part of my life. Don’t think it’s relevant.”

  The good detective wasn’t going to let me off that easy. “Didn’t you come to me for help?”

  I looked at her.

  “You were standing outside my crime scene,” she continued, and this time there was an edge of challenge in her voice. “You said you were there because you Googled me. Though, now that I think about it, you never approached me. You were walking away. I ran you down.”

  “I wasn’t going to approach you.”

  “But you said—”

  “I just wanted to see you. I wasn’t, I didn’t,” I waved my hand around her office defensively. “I never expected any of this. You’re my precaution built into a precaution. I figured I’d write you a letter, provide details on my own case. That way, if I didn’t get it done on the twenty-first, you’d have a better shot at finally catching the guy on the twenty-second. You’d provide justice for my aunt, closure for Randi and Jackie’s families. I wasn’t researching you for me. I was studying you for them.”

  D.D. narrowed her eyes. “Two of your friends have been murdered,” she stated bluntly. “You believe you will be the third.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’ve left behind your home, the people who know you. You’re hiding out in the big city, no registered phone or utilities. You have no computer, no e-mail, no Internet footprint to trace. But you’ve kept your name.”

  I had my chin up. “Can’t change everything.”

  “You’re training, boxing, running, shooting. Preparing to make your last stand. But you’re going to send the dog away.”

  “Yes.”

  “And maybe you looked me up, but it was never with the mind-set of asking for help before the twenty-first. Not to mention, you’re a woman with a target on your back who hasn’t asked her own officers for assistance.”

  I didn’t say anything, just returned her steely blue stare.

  “Can’t figure you out, Charlene,” she drawled at last. “You trying to live January twenty-one? Or are you trying to die?”

  “I don’t want to die.”

  “But do you want to live?”

  I remained silent. D.D.’s gaze dropped to my scarred hand, and in those fine white lines, I figured she read the answer.

  Earlier today, Tess had said that adults could change, that children grew up. But some things in life were very hard to transform. For example, taking the little girl who’d once stood there passively while her mother ironed her fingertips and training her how to throw a punch. Or taking the same little girl, who’d willfully chewed and swallowed a shattered lightbulb, and teaching her how to pull the trigger.

  I was trying to move forward. Some days were certainly better than others. But in the end, I’d only had 363 days as a fighter. I’d experienced far more as the victim, the child who did whatever her mother wanted her to do, because that was the price of love, and that little girl had lived too little and loved too hard and lost too much.

  “Names please,” Detective Warren said, and gestured to the blank piece of paper.

  I took my time, mostly because my hands were shaking. I formed each letter carefully, wanting the result to be neat and legible. I wrote two names, following an instinct I couldn’t explain, but that felt right.

  I took one last moment, to study my carefully printed letters.

  Then, I handed over the piece of paper.

  I collected my dog.

  I collected my gun.

  Three P.M. Thursday afternoon. Fifty-three hours and counting.

  Tulip and I headed out into the city’s stark, snow-frosted landscape.

  Chapter 22

  DETECTIVE O WAITED until Charlene had exited the homicide unit, then she returned to D.D.’s office, closed the door, and collapsed in the desk chair across from her.

  “Could we really be that lucky?” she asked, her voice incredulous. “I mean, is it just me, or is Charlene Grant a perfect fit for our shooter?”

  “Don’t know if it’s luck,” D.D. mused, frowning. “Remember, I first encountered her outside the second homicide. When I ran her down, she claimed she was checking me out to handle her own case. But maybe that was just fast thinking on her part. She offered up her own troubled history to distract me from the fact she was loitering outside an active crime scene.”

  “What’s with her hands and throat? Looks like she’s been mugged—”

  “Training.”

  “So she really thinks someone will try to kill her on the twenty-first?”

  “Randi Menke and Jackie Knowles really are dead.”

  Detective O paused. Then her eyes widened. “Motivation. Think about it. Charlene’s police dispatch. She takes the calls, she hears these kids. Maybe she wants to help them, but she’s not sure how. In the meantime, she’s boxing, shooting—”

  “Gaining skills.”

  “And, even more importantly, counting down to her own death. Meaning, at a certain point, what does she have to lose?”

  D.D. stilled, regarded the other detective. “Charlene decides to do something with the limited time she feels she has left. Maybe right some past wrongs, given a history of child abuse.”

  “She’s saving other kids,” O continued. “Doing what she no doubt wishes someone had done for her, when she was that age, and Mommy Dearest was pulling out the insulin.”

  “Insulin?”

  “Oh, other case I worked. Evil stepfather, actually. A diabetic. Came up with the idea to inject his beautiful twin stepdaughters with insulin. Their blood sugar would crash, rendering them semi-comatose, he’d do what he was going to do, then squirt spray cans of frosting into their mouths to bring their blood sugar back up. Later, after he’d perfected his technique, he’d leave cans of frosting out on the counter just to mess with their heads.”

  D.D. stared at her. “Your job sucks.”

  “No,” the young detective said seriously. “The cases suck. My job, putting evil stepfather away for twenty years and ensuring those little girls will never be hurt again, pretty much fucking rocks. Which you, of all people, I’d think would understand.”

  “Touché. So, back to the matters at hand. Motivation. Means. Opportunity. Yeah, Charlie looks pretty good as a vigilante killer right now.” D.D. glanced down at the piece of paper in her hand, unfolding it and holding it out to Detective O. “Handwriting, however, is not a perfect match.”

  “No flat edge,” O agreed, taking the paper. “Then again, she had to execute her penmanship with both of us watching. Girl’s not stupid. If she did write the other notes, you’d think she’d take some steps to make her handwriting look different.”

  “She wrote in print here, not cursive like the notes, but check it out, the letters are neat in appearance, carefully formed.” D.D. turned toward one stack of paperwork on her desk. She couldn’t help glancing at her watch, simultaneously aware of the amount of work she still had to do and of her parents’ flight landing in a matter of hours. She rifled through the pile of papers until she found what she was looking for, scanned copies of both notes left at the shootings.

  Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave.

  She pulled the copies, placing them on the blue-gray carpeted floor between her and O. O positioned Charlene’s recent writing exhibit between the other two sheets, and both peered down.

  “Rosalind Grant,” O read. “Carter Grant. Who are they?”

  “Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant,” D.D. recited Charlene’s full name. “Maybe her middle names are in honor of her mother and father?”

  “I thought she wasn’t going to give us her parents’ names.”

  “Must be my charm.”


  “Look at the n,” Detective O said after another minute. “First in the note writer’s cursive ‘everyone’ then in Charlie’s printed ‘Grant.’ Looks similar to me.”

  D.D. shrugged. “Looks like an n.”

  “Top arch is nice and round. The lines going up the left side of the letter and down the right side are almost exactly parallel. You write an n. See how rounded your top is and how perfectly parallel your sides are.”

  For the sake of argument, D.D. gave it a try, first in cursive, then in print. Either way, her n looked dreadful. Like an upside down v. No neatly arched top, no nicely parallel sides, just a tiny, shuttered-up scrawl.

  “You write like a doctor,” O declared.

  “In my family, that’s a compliment.” D.D. automatically snuck a glance at her watch again. “Okay, Charlene’s n is certainly closer to the note writer’s n than mine. Now, if only those were grounds for arrest.”

  “You could have the handwriting expert write up an analysis—”

  “Which he’s already said won’t be admissible in court, given that graphology is considered a pseudoscience.”

  “This isn’t graphology. Theorizing that the letter writer is anal-retentive is graphology. This is straightforward forensic analysis of penmanship, author of letter A most likely also wrote exhibit B.”

  “But he needs multiple exhibits. Still,” D.D. amended herself, “I’ll make a copy of Charlene’s names, get him started. Might take a couple of days, however, for him to do his thing. In the meantime, we need something more tangible.”

  “A smoking gun.”

  “Which ironically, we just handed back to her.”

  “What?”

  “Her twenty-two. We had it in custody downstairs.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. But still can’t run a ballistics test without probable cause. I tell you those constitutional rights are making our job more difficult every day.” D.D. continued to stare down at the notes, frowning.

  Rosalind Grant. Carter Grant. Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant.

  Why those names? What was Charlene trying to say?

  “I like her,” she murmured. “Who knew, but I actually like the girl, and would prefer not to arrest her for murder.”

  Detective O sat back, steepling her hands in front of her. “Want to hand over the case? I could take the lead.”

  D.D. nearly laughed. “What, don’t they keep you busy enough in sex crimes? First you want on the case, now you want to lead it.”

  “I take my responsibilities seriously.”

  “And I’m a slacker?”

  “Well…you have other obligations now.”

  “Is that the politically correct way of saying I’m a working mom?”

  “Fact of life: Baby’s gotta get picked up when the baby’s gotta get picked up.”

  “Another fact of life: The trick to this job isn’t working hard, it’s working smart.”

  “Is that a politically correct way of saying I’m not as experienced as you?”

  “Yes.”

  Detective O opened her mouth. Detective O closed her mouth.

  “Touché,” she said at last.

  “Let’s review.” D.D. forced her gaze off the wall clock and back on her upstart new partner. “Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant. Obviously knows where the second victim, Stephen Laurent, lives, as I found her in the neighborhood. Has a permit for a twenty-two, same caliber as the murder weapon, and has stated she can hit a bull’s-eye at fifty feet.”

  “Physically fit,” O supplied. “Also tiny, nonthreatening. If a pedophile opened his door to her, he wouldn’t automatically assume the worst.”

  “Relatively young,” D.D. continued. “And with an almost childlike build. Even more reason for perverts not to slam the door right away.”

  “She would have ability to research pedophiles through her police dispatch job. Maybe hear about them on the scanner or via incoming calls, but also, she can log on to police databases, registered sex offender lists.”

  “Access to information would not be a problem,” D.D. agreed.

  “And in terms of the profile developed by the graphologist—”

  “Our daily dose of quack.”

  “She fits the requirements of being anal-retentive.”

  “Though I appreciate the help with my pictures.”

  “Definitely a bit of a control freak. What’s the deal with the hair anyway? She’s not just wearing a ponytail, she’s basically seized the strands in a choke hold. And none shall ever escape.”

  “Very controlled hairdo, but very sloppy clothing. Oversized, baggy. Maybe her way of trying to look larger and tougher than she really is?”

  “Pretty blue eyes,” O commented. “Hair down, better clothes, she could talk her way into most men’s apartments, pedophiles or not.”

  “But would she leave the puppy?” D.D. asked.

  “Pardon?”

  “In Stephen Laurent’s apartment. The killer left a young puppy to fend for itself. It’s one thing to kill a suspected pervert. It’s another to abandon a puppy without food or water. Charlene must have some sympathy for dogs, as it appears she’s adopted a street mutt. So would she leave the puppy behind?”

  “Calculated gamble. Odds are the victim’s body will be found soon versus later, and the puppy rescued.”

  “Possible,” D.D. said, but the detail bothered her. Felt not as right to her as the other variables.

  “She suffered abuse as a kid,” O continued, “making it easy for her to identify with the victims.”

  “She also feels powerless,” D.D. filled in. “Both of her friends have been murdered, the police have no answers, she’s convinced she’ll be the next one to die. She’s trying to prepare, but mostly, she’s waiting. Someone is about to kill her, and there’s not a thing she can do about that.”

  “Whereas attacking pedophiles…”

  “Would make her feel powerful. Now she’s the one in control, taking charge, righting wrongs. Pulling the trigger probably beats Xanax for anxiety reduction, that’s for sure.”

  “Unless she’s the one who murdered her friends,” O pointed out.

  “Possible.”

  O studied her. “But you don’t think so.”

  D.D. shrugged, tried to put her thought, which was really more of an instinct, into words. “As a former profiler explained to me just this morning, two murders don’t provide enough data points for thorough analysis. Who knows if Charlene is really a target, or if there will even be another murder on the twenty-first. But I believe Charlene believes it. Because of the marks on her knuckles and the fingerprints bruising her neck. She’s training that hard. She’s willing to be attacked and pummeled and choked, because she believes that’s what she needs to do in order to survive January twenty-one.”

  “And assuming she believes she really will die in a matter of days…”

  “Then she has some incentive to color outside the legal lines.”

  “Exact vengeance for young, powerless victims everywhere.”

  D.D. nodded. She looked up at O. “One thing’s for certain.”

  “What?”

  “If it really is Charlene Grant, she only has two days left. Given she’s probably cleared her calendar for the twenty-first, that means sometime in the next twenty-four hours…”

  “Another pervert will bite the dust.”

  “With the twenty-two semiauto we just returned to her.”

  Chapter 23

  FOUR THIRTY P.M. Sky was already dark, snow drifted lazily outside the apartment window, and Jesse was nearly frantic.

  He’d been asking to go to the Boston Public Library for, like, the whole afternoon. He’d wanted to take a bus after school, but his mother had said no. She didn’t want him on the bus in this weather, meaning there were, like, six snowflakes on the sidewalk and now the whole world had to grind to a halt.

  When he’d begged and pleaded and nearly cried with frustration, she’d finally said she’d t
ake him at four, when she got off the phone, because she had some school research she needed to do. Plus, Jesse had said they were studying libraries at school and he was supposed to write three sentences on his favorite library, which is why he needed to go. So they would ride the subway together, to the central branch of the Boston Public Library, then maybe have dinner at the food court in the Pru Center. A big night out, said his mom.

  She’d looked happy about that. A little excited, planning their evening adventure, and that had made Jesse feel bad ’cause he was lying. But he wasn’t lying too much. He really would write three sentences and they could go to dinner in the mall, but first he really, really, really needed to meet Pink Poodle and learn how to hit a curveball.

  At 3:55, he put on his big fat winter coat, then a fresh pair of dry socks, then his boots, his hat and gloves. By 3:59 he was standing next to the door, poofed out three times his natural size, clutching Zombie Bear, and ready to go.

  Except his mother hadn’t gotten off the phone.

  She was talking and talking and talking (“Just a minute, Jesse!” “Jesse, shhh!” “Interrupt me one more time, young man, and no library!”)

  Jesse was now too hot. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck and he hopped from foot to foot because he had to pee, but he didn’t want to get unbundled, because his mother might hang up the phone any second, then it would be time to leave, and they needed to go.

  He walked little circles in front of the door, spent time jumping over the piles of shoes. Jump, jump, jump, the world’s smallest obstacle course.

  C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon!

  Then, when he thought he couldn’t take it a second more, his mother appeared in the hallway.

  “Jesse? Ready to go?”

  “Ahhhhh!” he nearly screamed, then bolted for the bathroom before his bladder burst.

  When he returned, still overheated, but slightly less crazed, his mother was just finishing buttoning up her coat. Without another word, he followed her down the three flights of stairs into the cold.

  Jesse liked the city at night. He liked the lights everywhere, different colors and shapes that bounced off the low-hanging clouds and made the city look like a fun house. He especially liked a night like this one, when the snow was drifting down in big fat flakes, that you could catch on your tongue and feel melt into droplets of rust-flavored water.