I stood at a window. It was tall for me. I was on my tippy toes so I could peer out, and I’d been watching for a while, because my toes ached and my calves burned, but I couldn’t stop looking. The wink of the spade. Up, down. Up, down.
My mother wore her favorite nightgown. It was pale yellow with tiny blue flowers and green leaves. The rain had plastered it to her skinny frame, molding wiry legs and whip-thin arms as she bent and heaved spadefuls of dirt. Her long brown hair was loose, wet hanks stuck to her hollowed out cheeks.
Up, down. Up, down.
The hole grew bigger. Not too big. Big enough.
Then, the baby, crying down the hall.
My mother heard it at the same time I did. Her head came up. The shovel stilled in her hands. She turned toward the window. She looked right at me. She smiled, her mouth a gaping black maw, and her hair suddenly turned to hissing snakes around her head.
I let go of the windowsill. I fell back. Bumped my head against a coffee table, but I didn’t cry out. I scrambled to my little feet and I began to run.
Down the hall. Baby crying.
Had to get there first.
The creak of the back door opening. My mother, stepping through the back door into the filthy little kitchen, bare, boney feet caked with mud.
Down the hall. Baby crying.
Had to get there first.
My fisted hands chugged. My little knees went up and down as fast as my mother’s spade had. Running, running, running. Hearing my panting breath, feeling my pounding chest. Running, running, running.
“Charlie,” my mother sang out behind me. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Down the hall. Baby crying.
Had to get there first.
“Come to your mommy, Charlie. Remember Charlie…Don’t make me angry.”
Then I was there, yanking open the closet door. No crib. No bassinet. A dresser drawer, padded with blankets and placed on the floor.
Footsteps, closer. Steady. Sure.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
The wink of the shovel blade, up, down, up down, up down.
I scooped up the baby, grabbed the pile of blankets, and ran for the front door. I bolted out into the wild night. Whipping wind. Lashing rain. Thundering sky. Couldn’t notice. Couldn’t care.
“Charlie. I see you. Charlie! Don’t make me angry.…”
I headed straight into the woods. Knew where I was going. Practiced this. Had known. Had to try. Had to do something. With my small little hands and my small little legs, but my big heart, nearly bursting in my chest.
“Charlie…Don’t make me angry.”
The broad-leafed tree was a dozen trunks back. Last-second pause, taking the longest blanket and using it to tie the baby in a sling against my chest. I’d practiced this before, too. Sometimes, I carried the baby around the house this way, because then she didn’t cry, and when she didn’t cry, life was better for all of us.
Blanket was wet. Baby was wet. I was wet.
My mother’s voice, not so far behind me now. “Charlie Grant, come here this minute. Charlene Grant, don’t make me angry!”
I reached for the nearest branch, low, slippery, not too big, and with determined little fists, I grabbed it with both hands and scrambled up to the first tree branch.
Moving fast and desperate. All up, no down. Tree wasn’t that big, but neither was I. If I could just keep moving, monkey-climb my way to the top…
My mother was afraid of heights. She would follow me out, she would follow us down, but she would never follow me up.
Below me, her sudden screech.
“Charlene Grant! You come down here. Right now! Do you hear me young lady? Charlene Grant you do as your mother says!”
Swinging up and up. Not looking down. Not wanting to think about the drop, the fall, the squirmy weight of the baby. Not wanting to see my mother standing below, her hands on her hips, glaring at me with her snake-like hair and black maw mouth and the shovel that would go up down, up down, up down. Forming the hole. Not too big. Big enough.
At last I ran out of branches. Had to stop, nestled in the junction, shivering uncontrollably, rain streaming down my face, one hand clinging to a branch beside my head, the other wrapped around the baby.
My mother still screamed, but the wind was now whipping her words away. From this height, she was smaller, harder to see. From this height, I didn’t have to be scared of her anymore.
Eventually she would wear herself out. Eventually she would return inside and, caked in mud and filth and leaves, curl up on the couch and fall asleep. Then I would carefully make my way back down.
I would change the baby’s diaper, wrap her in fresh blankets I’d left warming on the radiator. I’d feed her a cold bottle, sitting cross-legged on the floor with her propped on my lap.
The baby would fall asleep. Then I would return her to the nest in the hall closet, before heading back outside and refilling the tiny hole, working, just as my mother had done, by the glow of a flashlight.
If I did everything right, in the morning, there would be no sign of tonight. It would be erased, a bad dream that never happened. And my mother would wake up happy, maybe singing lightly under her breath, and she would dance around the house with me, giddy and gay, and she would kiss and hug the baby, and everything would be all right again. She would love us.
For a little bit, anyway.
I nestled deeper into the tree limbs. Felt the warmth of the baby against my chest. Hoped she felt my warmth, too, as I wrapped my other arm around her and held on tight.
“It’s okay,” I whispered to her now. “Almost done now. Almost safe.”
She was no longer crying. Instead, she stared up at me with big brown eyes.
Then her little face lit up in a giant toothless grin.
She beamed up at me, my beautiful baby sister, Abigail.
Chapter 25
D.D. MADE IT TO THE RESTAURANT ON TIME. Alex had selected the Legal Seafood on the water, next to the Boston aquarium. It was close to the airport, offered good food and great views. D.D. knew the restaurant well, had used to walk there from her North End condo. Walking, however, was much easier than navigating the crush of rush hour traffic.
She plodded up 93, then looped through an elaborate off-ramp pattern that mostly involved sitting at red lights for three to four turns at a time.
By the time she arrived at the waterfront location, she was tense, frazzled, and pretty sure she had sweat through the blue silk blouse she’d bought the week before, in anticipation of meeting her mother.
Across from the restaurant was a public parking garage. D.D. wound her way up the levels until she was lucky enough to discover an empty space, way in the back, as far away from the stairwell as one could get. The space was marked COMPACT ONLY. She wedged her Crown Vic carefully into the narrow confines, then eased open her door.
As she stepped out of her car, the icy cold sliced through her like a knife. She went from overheated to shivering in a matter of seconds.
She should start walking, warm herself up.
She stood there instead, feeling like a little girl again, dragging her feet as she got home from school, because she had another note from her teacher in her backpack and her mother would be angry again. Worse, her mother would never say a word. She’d just thin her lips and look at her in a way D.D. knew too well.
I am a grown adult, D.D. reminded herself. A top detective, respected by cops, feared by felons.
It wasn’t working for her yet. She wanted it to, but it wasn’t working.
She thought of Alex and baby Jack instead. The way Alex was no doubt sitting patiently with her parents, easing them into their visit, encouraging them to fuss over their grandchild. The way Alex would look up when she finally walked into the restaurant. The way he would smile, instantly, genuinely, as she appeared table-side.
D.D. started walking, one black booted step in front of another as she made her way across the garage
, down the stairwell, then across the snowy street until she arrived in front of the bustling restaurant.
Final deep breath. Reminding herself that a woman who worked death investigations could surely handle one dinner with her own parents.
Her hands trembled.
She went in.
ALEX AND HER PARENTS WERE SEATED in the very back, in a corner booth. It was slightly quieter back there, but still busy enough given a Thursday night at a major Boston restaurant. A waiter had performed the high chair trick—turning it over so that Jack’s car seat fit snuggly between the wooden legs. Alex sat on the right side of the booth, her parents side by side on the left.
Her mom, Patsy, sported a Florida tan, beautiful silver-blond hair, and an elegantly carved face that had obviously served as the model for D.D.’s own. She was wearing linen slacks and a sea foam green sleeveless sweater over a thin white shirt—a snow bird trying to adjust for the northern climate, but forgetting just how cold and bitter January in Boston could be. D.D.’s father, Roy, equally fit and trim, also appeared as if he’d been plucked from the golf course, wearing a navy blue sports jacket over a white-and-blue striped polo shirt.
Alex, as she’d predicted, spotted her first. He wore one of her favorite dark red cashmere sweaters over a black turtleneck. When he saw her, his blue eyes lit up, and the corners crinkled with the full force of his smile.
She faltered. She went to take a step and actually stumbled a little. Because it hit her, halfway across the extremely loud and crowded restaurant, that the most handsome man in the place belonged to her. Smiled for her. Sat patiently, with their baby and her parents, for her.
And it terrified her, because for every ounce of love she felt for him, she felt simultaneously, like a bank of black clouds across the sun, that she wasn’t worthy. That a man this handsome, accomplished, and smart belonged more to the likes of her parents than to the likes of her.
Which pissed her off all over again. All these years later, she did not want to feel that small. Maybe she hadn’t been the child her parents had wanted her to be. But she was the adult she needed to be, and that ought to be enough.
D.D. thrust up her chin and strode across the restaurant.
She arrived in front of the table. Opened her mouth to declare loudly, “Welcome Mom, howdy Dad, have a good flight?”
Just as her pager chimed to life.
ALEX SPOKE FIRST. “Everything okay?”
D.D. unclipped the pager, read the brief message. Closed her eyes. “I gotta go.”
“What?” Her mother, addressing her for the first time, already sounded strident.
“I’m sorry.” D.D. did her best to gather her wits. She leaned over, kissed her mother on the cheek, then her father. When she spoke, however, she looked at Alex, as his expression was easier to take. “Another shooting,” she informed him.
“Same case?”
“Exactly. Near Copley, so at least I’m close.”
“I don’t understand.” D.D.’s mother again.
“I’m in the middle of a major case, a string of murders. Another just happened. I have to go.”
“But…but…you just got here.”
“Apparently, the killer didn’t get that memo.”
“D. D. Warren—”
“Mom,” D.D. held up a hand, strove for a neutral tone of voice. “I appreciate you coming up from Florida. I know it’s cold and you don’t like it here. But…This is my job. I’m not just a detective, I’m the lead investigator. Buck stops here.”
Her father took her mother’s hand, as if to calm her. “Will you be back?”
His voice had a quiver she didn’t remember hearing before. And now, as she looked closer, she saw fresh lines around his eyes, skin sagging beneath his chin, age spots on the backs of his hands. Seventy-eight, it occurred to her. Her parents were seventy-eight years old. Not ancient, but definitely getting up there, and how many more of these trips would they be able to make? How many more years would they have with her and their baby grandson?
“Probably not for dinner,” she whispered.
“So we’ll see you in the morning.”
“I could do an early breakfast, if you’d like, or maybe catch up for lunch if that’s better for you.”
“I don’t understand,” her mother interjected, still sounding disapproving. “It’s seven o’clock at night. You just got off work, now you’re going back to work, and still the best you can do is an early breakfast?”
“Welcome to Boston homicide.”
“What about Jack? You have a baby now. What about him?”
D.D. hadn’t even greeted her son yet. She’d kissed her parents, spoken to Alex, but her baby…
She bent over his car seat. Jack was asleep, oblivious to the growing drama around him. His lips were pursed into a little rosebud, his hands fisted on his blue-clothed tummy. A new bib around his neck proclaimed, “Someone in Florida loves me.”
D.D. glanced up at her parents. “That’s adorable, thank you.”
Her pager chimed again. She closed her eyes, feeling the relentless pull.
“Go,” Alex said softly. “It’s okay. I’ll handle it.”
“I owe you,” she mouthed at him, over their son’s sleeping form.
He nodded, a shade grim, so apparently her parents’ charms weren’t lost on him.
D.D. placed her lips against Jack’s forehead. She inhaled the scent of baby powder, felt the silky wisps of his hair. And for a second, she could actually agree with her mother. What was she doing, walking away from this?
“I’ll call you in the morning,” D.D. said to the table.
She walked back through the restaurant, bracing herself for the cold as well as the relentless weight of her mother’s disappointment.
AS THE CROW FLIES, Copley Square was only a hop, skip, and a jump from the waterfront. Given Boston traffic, further snarled by a wintry mix of light snow and icy sleet, it took D.D. nearly forty-five minutes to navigate the handful of miles. She didn’t bother with the legalities of parking, but pulled up on the curb right behind a string of police cruisers.
She stepped out of her car to find Detective O already waiting for her.
Whatever plans D.D. had had for the evening, O’s had obviously been better. The young detective had her dark hair piled on top of her head in a loose knot of curls. Mascara touched up her exotic eyes and deep red lipstick enhanced her lips, while beneath her long, black wool coat, she wore a knee-length dress paired with black leather stiletto boots. She looked softer, rounder, more feminine. A look D.D. herself had never been able to pull off, but that some guy somewhere had probably really appreciated.
O caught her stare. “Police pager: best birth control invented by man,” she drawled.
“Funny, I used to say the same thing.”
O arched a brow, given D.D.’s new mom status.
“Condoms aren’t a hundred percent effective either,” D.D. said defensively.
“I’ll remember that.”
D.D. shut her door. Donned her fleece-lined black leather gloves, pulled down her black wool hat. “So, what do we have?”
“Dead kid, back alley. Scared kid, back of patrol car.”
“I thought this was related to our sex offender shootings.”
“Dead kid was the offender. Scared kid the victim.”
D.D. digested this, eyes widening. “Scared kid didn’t pull the trigger, did he?”
“Nope. But he saw who did. Lone female.” O broke into a grim smile. “Small build, small gun. World’s craziest blue eyes, he said, and brown hair, scraped back into a ponytail.”
“Charlene Grant,” D.D. breathed.
“Aka Abigail.”
D.D. TENDED THE CRIME SCENE FIRST. Given the high traffic around Copley, the ME’s office had already removed the body. No sign of Neil, so maybe he’d accompanied the body to the morgue. She’d given Phil the night off, which left her and O to do the honors. As O had obviously been at the scene for a bit, D.D. did he
r best to come up to speed.
Squatting down inside the crime scene tape, D.D. could just make out the faint impression of the already-removed corpse, which formed a literal snow angel on the white-dusted alley. Victim had been tall. Long splayed legs, one dangling arm.
She didn’t see the outline of the right arm. Maybe the victim had it over his chest. Maybe he’d been raising it in front of his face at the time of the shooting. Pedophile or not, that image disturbed her, to be shot down in cold blood.
“How old?” she asked Detective O, who stood behind her, shivering in her short dress and boots.
“Victim gave his name as Barry. Said he was sixteen.”
“And he targeted another kid?”
“Seven-year-old boy. Apparently ‘met’ him on a gaming website. Arranged to meet him at the Boston Public Library. Then lured him outside.”
D.D. shook her head. Even after O’s lecture on sex predators becoming younger and younger, sixteen was hard to take. “Has the body been identified?”
“Uniformed officers are canvassing the area now. He was on foot, so maybe someone local will recognize him.”
“There’s a doorstop conversation,” D.D. muttered. “First off, we regret to inform you that your son is dead. Secondly, he was most likely killed while sexually assaulting another child. Shit.”
Detective O didn’t say anything; maybe she shared the sentiment.
“So the older boy got the younger boy outside, then led him here.” D.D. looked around. They were tucked in a back Dumpster area, servicing local establishments. It was secluded, rank-smelling. But not totally private. One end was open to the side street, not to mention they stood before a heavy metal service door used by personnel as they hauled out trash.
“Wonder if he scoped the area out before,” D.D. thought out loud. “Learned the traffic patterns of this alleyway, felt comfortable. Or maybe, as you explained before, it was a case of impulse meeting opportunity. The seven-year-old had followed, so the sixteen-year-old decided to see what he could do.”