Authors: Lisa Gardner
“You rifled through my messenger bag?”
“You took a ten-six. I happened to be looking for you. You weren’t there, but your bag was. So I looked inside.”
“You invaded my—”
“Be grateful, Charlie. I saw your peashooter. Nice piece, I remember thinking, especially the rosewood grip. So if you’re carrying a twenty-two with a rosewood grip that we definitely
didn’t
seize last night, why does Boston PD have a twenty-two with a rubberized grip they clearly believe belongs to you and, better yet, ties you to a string of shootings?”
“Why’d you check my bag?”
“History of being attracted to train wrecks, remember?”
“But you didn’t report me.”
“Hadn’t made up my mind yet. Your turn. Spill.”
I was silent for a moment, chewing the inside of my lower lip. “I don’t know,” I said at last. “I didn’t shoot three sex offenders. I own one handgun, which I hid after our…conversation…last night. Except, I just looked for it ten minutes ago and it was gone. So maybe the Boston cops have it, except according to you, it’s a totally different handgun they’ve matched to the shootings—though, given the arrest warrant, they don’t know that yet.” I frowned, turned the matter over in my head, frowned again. “I don’t get it.”
Cruiser had slowed some more. Tom put on the blinker, turning left. “Who’d you piss off?”
“I don’t know anyone well enough to be a friend or an enemy. I’ve kept to myself for the past year. I think you can attest to the general state of my warmth and fuzziness.”
Tom grunted in agreement. “Someone seems to think you’re a killer. Or,” he caught himself, “someone wants others to think you’re
a killer. Because that’s what this is, right? A classic frame-up. Someone has submitted a gun, claiming it’s yours, that’s now been matched to three homicides.”
“But it’s not my Taurus. My license,” I started, then stopped. My license to carry included only the class of gun I was permitted to own, no detailed description of a specific firearm, such as a. 22 with a rosewood versus checked rubber grip. “It’s not my gun,” I repeated more firmly. “And my firearms instructor, J. T. Dillon, can testify on my behalf. He’s trained me for the past year on my Taurus; he knows what it looks like.”
Tom grunted. “Well, at least you got the first witness for the defense.”
I understood his point. With time and effort, I could argue the Boston PD were wrong; whatever. 22 had been submitted in my name wasn’t mine. But in the meantime, they’d already issued a warrant for my arrest. Meaning first I’d be tossed in jail. Later, it would be sorted out.
I didn’t have later. Not given that today was D-day, January 21. The day I’d spent a year training for. I was supposed to greet my killer, armed and ready for battle. Now, after twenty minutes or less, I was defenseless and on the run from the law.
But how? But who?
Slowly but surely, my brain kicked to life. “A cop submitted the real murder weapon. Only way there could be a match, right? Joe Blow can’t show up at the Boston PD lab and say here’s Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant’s gun. Please conduct the following test.”
“Bingo.”
“But thinking ahead, the same cop also seized my real Taurus semiauto. So I couldn’t quickly produce it, head straight to HQ with my own twenty-two, saying hey, there’s been a mistake.”
“Maybe.”
“I don’t understand,” I said again, and I hated how weak I sounded, how confused.
“Who all knows you have a twenty-two? I do. What about other cops in our department, or Boston PD?”
“I’ve been working with Boston Detective D. D. Warren and this
other detective, O. Both of them know about my Taurus. Detective D.D. had promised to look into the murders of my friends, see what she could find out for today. And O’s been building some Facebook page, trying to bait the killer…”
My voice trailed off. Except last time I’d been there, they’d asked me lots of questions that had little to do with the death of my friends. They’d drilled me on my mother, my childhood, my dead siblings. O, in particular, had cycled back to my feelings of “frustration and helplessness.” How I of all people knew how much children out there suffered and how little the police could do to help.
Unless, of course, I was running all over town assassinating pedophiles.
They thought I did it. Of course. And I hadn’t denied anything, because I wasn’t exactly guilt free. Different crime, same blood on my hands.
But how did I go from being suspected by two detectives to being framed by at least one of them? And which one?
Then I got it. I knew exactly what had happened. I stared at Tom. “Detective O,” I said. “She did this. Oh my God, she fucking framed me for her own crimes.”
Tom eyed me from the driver’s seat of the parked car, his expression already skeptical. “Why?”
“You said it yourself. Cops were joking that instead of arresting the shooter, you should give her a badge. Maybe that’s because the pedophile shooter already has a badge. A frustrated sex crimes detective. You know, the young, earnest rookie learning the hard way she can’t always make her case, save the victim, catch her man. But she can, in the cover of night, shoot him down.”
Tom frowned, but didn’t immediately call me crazy. “This job can be frustrating,” he allowed. “But why involve you? Like you said, you got a couple of witnesses, myself included, who can testify that you carry a Taurus with a rosewood grip, not a checkered grip. Meaning, sooner or later, you’ll talk your way out of this, and then Detective O will be left looking like a bad cop at best, or exposed as the real shooter at worst.”
It came to me. “Because I don’t have sooner or later. As she well
knows, I’m doomed to die today. Hell, I’m perfect. We even look a bit alike, except, well, she’s pretty. But you know, brown hair, general height. She knows I have a twenty-two, has even asked me about it. Just yesterday, she spent an entire interrogation positioning me in the eyes of her fellow officer D. D. Warren as a slightly crazy woman with a dubious memory and traumatizing past. Perfect vigilante killer. Best of all,” I glanced at my watch, “in roughly eight hours, I’ll be in no position to argue my innocence. Dead and presumed guilty. What more could a vigilante cop want in a fall guy?”
Tom frowned again, but nodded slightly. He popped open his door. “Stay,” he ordered.
I ducked my head, doing as I was told, then immediately felt frustrated. All this prep, all this hard work, just to revert back to the role of trained dog? Fuck it. I sat up straight, peering around.
We were parked near a snowbank in front of a brick apartment building. Not tenement housing, but not gentrified. Blue collar, where the real people lived. I’d just connected the dots, when Tom swung open my door and growled at me, “It’s my ass on the line. Do you mind?”
I got out of the car, keeping my head down and face averted from possible witnesses. Officer Mackereth had brought me to his place. Aiding and abetting a fugitive, simply because in his heart of all hearts, he figured it was right.
I followed him meekly inside, up three flights of stairs, to a simple one-bedroom apartment, with a large bay window overlooking the street and blinds pulled everywhere. I blinked at the enveloping darkness, then realized that of course he blacked out his windows. He always worked graveyard, sleeping during the day, out and about at night.
He flipped on some lights, throwing his keys on the cleared counter of the modest kitchen. Place was probably six hundred square feet. One big square of a kitchen and living room, attached to a smaller square that was the master bedroom/bathroom. Carpet was brown. Kitchen featured dark wood cabinets with gold Formica countertops. In the main living area, the beige couch was overstuffed, and a flat screen TV dominated. Bachelor pad. Not pretty,
but clean, functional. Officer Mackereth lived modestly, but respectably.
“I can’t stay too long,” he was saying now. “Gotta get back out there, as long as there’s an outstanding warrant for your arrest. Punch out now, LT will get suspicious.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“They’ll probably keep things ramped up another hour or so. All hands on deck. Then, if there’s no immediate break, we’ll fall back into an ongoing rotation. I’ll get to sign out, rest before my shift resumes tonight.”
“Okay.”
“I think you’ll be safe here. But you’re gonna have to stay inside, shades down. If you watch TV, keep the volume low. One advantage of this neighborhood is that most of my neighbors work during the day. Building’s pretty quiet.” He looked at me. “Gonna be okay without your dog?”
“She’s always kept her own schedule.”
“Anyone you need to call?”
“My aunt.”
“She your closest relative?”
“Yes—”
“Then don’t. They’ll be talking to her next.”
“I don’t want her worried—”
“She know you, she like you, maybe even love you?”
“Yes—”
“Then trust her. That’s what this is going to come down to. Fugitive apprehension one-oh-one: First, check known locations of the subject. That’ll be your place of work, then your landlord. Next, interview known acquaintances. In your case, that’s a bit more of a head-scratcher. Your aunt, for sure. If you’ve mentioned boxing or your firearms instructor to others, then they’ll be next on the list. But you’ve been living for twelve months without leaving much of a trail. That’ll slow things down.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because someone else is out there, watching, waiting, already
plotting my death. I’m supposed to be strong today. Ready, fit, on top of my game. It’s what? One twenty-eight in the afternoon, and look at me. Thanks to Detective O’s machinations, I’m unarmed and hiding with my tail between my legs. Next, you’re gonna leave and that someone else is gonna knock on the door. And I’ll answer. I’ll know I shouldn’t. I’ll know this is exactly what Randi did. Exactly what Jackie did. But I’ll have to do it. Because we’re all curious, we have to know what we have to know, so she’ll knock and I’ll answer.” My voice rose. “The killer will be there. Maybe it’s Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren. Hell, maybe it’s Detective O. Or my aunt, whom I haven’t seen in a year, but who magically arrived yesterday in Boston. So I’ll open the door wider. Because I’ll have to. I’ll want to know what she has to say. I’ll let her in your apartment.
“She’ll say something. I don’t know what. The last words Randi ever heard. The last words Jackie ever heard. They must be good. The mother of all siren’s songs. Because she’ll speak and I’ll stand there, and I’ll do exactly nothing as her hands come up, and her fingers wrap around my throat, and slowly but surely she’ll start to squeeze.
“You’ll finally punch out. You’ll finally come home, and I’ll be dead on the kitchen floor. No sign of struggle. No sign of forced entry. Just January twenty-first.”
Tom looked at me. Then, slowly, he reached up and smacked my forehead with the heal of his hand.
“What are you, fucking Snow White? Snap out of it.”
I blinked my eyes, felt the power of my prediction burst, fizzle out. “Sorry. I haven’t slept in a while.”
“No shit. Now, backtrack a second. You just rattled off three names. Detective Warren, Detective O, and your aunt.”
“Yeah.”
“That was good thinking. Let’s stop arguing hypotheticals and nail down at least one piece of this puzzle.” Tom pulled out his cell phone and started dialing. “Jon Cassir, please,” he said. Then a moment later, “Hey Jon, Tom. Hey, gotta question for you. Don’t want to put you on the spot or anything, but you know the ballistics tests you ran last night? The match is for a gun registered to Grovesnor’s
own comm officer. Yeah, can you imagine? We’re all blindsided, let me tell you. I mean, at least she was shooting pervs, right? But still…So, anyway, couple of guys, we got some questions for the officer leading the investigation. You got a name on the evidence sheet? Detective Ellen Ohlenbusch. Great. Thanks, Jon. I’ll keep you posted. Yep. Next week. Love to hit the range. Bye.”
Tom snapped shut his phone. “There you have it. Detective Ohlenbusch. Turned in ‘your’ gun.”
“Homicidal bitch,” I muttered. “Not that I’m arguing with her need to kill sex offenders, but at least she could take the credit, something. Instead, she’s sacrificing my safety for her reputation. I mean, really.”
“Think of it this way: survive tonight, and tomorrow, you can take her down.” Tom picked up his keys. “Goes without saying, not the landline.” He pointed to his phone.
“I have a disposable cell.”
“GPS tracking?”
“As if I could afford such upgrades on what Grovesnor pays me.”
He finally cracked a smile. He turned toward the door. Then, at the last second, one step back, twisting, reaching out his hand.
I never dropped into a boxing stance. I never even got my hands up. I just stood there, as he yanked me into his body. Then his hands were on my shoulders, his fingers digging in tight, and my hands were smack on his chest as his lips descended.
There was nothing gentle. No asking, no reassuring, no promising. Just his lips, hard and maybe a little angry, but also hungry and needing and demanding. Then my hands made it to his hair, and my left leg wrapped around his left hip and he was devouring but I was even hungrier, even needier, and I wanted and I wished, and we kissed and we kissed and we kissed.
Then he shoved me away. He stepped back. His short-cropped brown hair stood up on end, while his chest heaved, and he held out a hand, as if to steady both of us.
“Not why I did this,” he declared finally, voice still ragged.
“Okay.” I had my hands balled at my side, mostly to keep myself from lunging for him.
“Gotta get back in the cruiser. Report in. You know that as well as anyone.”
“Fucking dispatch,” I said.
“Couple of hours, I promise to be back,” he said.
“Couple of hours, I promise to be still alive,” I said.
He nodded, looked at me, and then…
He left.
I locked the door behind him. Then I stood there and wondered which one of us would be made a liar first.
Six and a half hours. No gun. No dog. No home court advantage.
Screw it all. I started rifling kitchen drawers, until I found the standard junk drawer. Duct tape, ballpoint pen, four D batteries, fishing wire, twisty ties, hammer, spare change.