Catch Me (27 page)

“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.”

F
OUR 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 take 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.

Jesse’s mother walked briskly toward the subway stop three blocks away. Jesse darted around her, pretending he was a frost monster, powered by snow, running at the icy flakes, snapping at them with his mouth until his mother told him sharply, to
stop it before he hurt himself.

Then he trotted along beside her, subdued but still happy, because they were finally going to the library and the city was all lit up and there were people everywhere, and surely that meant Pink Poodle would still be hunched over a computer in the Boston Public Library, because it was that kind of night. Cold and busy and bustling.

Zombie Bear’s bandaged head poked out of his pocket, the undead homerun hitter along for the ride.

It took
forever
to finally reach the main branch of the Boston Public Library, on Boylston Street. Technically it was two buildings; the historic McKim Building and the newer Johnson Building. Jesse loved the 160-year-old McKim Building, with its massive stone arches and ornate carvings and the kind of long, shadowed halls that hinted of ghosts and gargoyles. The McKim had mostly the research stuff, however—government documents, historic papers. Jesse and his mom headed for the Johnson Building instead. It was built in the seventies and, according to his mom, looked it. Jesse didn’t much care for the outside, but the inside was pretty cool. It had a special kids’ area, even a teen room.