Catch Me (46 page)

“O told me about a case she’d worked as a sex crime detective: the evil stepdad was drugging his twin stepdaughters with insulin. Their blood sugar would crash, rendering them nearly comatose and unable to resist. Later, he’d bring their blood sugar levels back up by administering frosting.

“Insulin,” D.D. said softly. “Available over the counter. Easy to administer, just a quick prick to the back of the victim’s arm, into the subcutaneous fat. Within fifteen to twenty minutes, the victim would be rendered unconscious and O could do whatever she wanted. And there’d be nothing they could do to stop her.”

Neil stared at her. “Insulin,” he repeated. “Yep, that would do it.”

D.D. rose to standing. “We need to locate Detective O,” D.D. stated firmly. “And we need to find Charlene Grant. It’s three forty-three on January twenty-first, gentlemen. Abigail is once again on the hunt. And no amount of boxing or running is going to save Charlie, if Abigail, and her insulin, finds her first.”

I
STARTED AT MY AUNT’S
C
AMBRIDGE HOTEL.
A frugal woman, she’d looked up budget motels in the Yellow Pages and called for rates before making her decision. Given that she would’ve used a credit card to check in, I figured it wouldn’t be too hard for a Boston cop to track her down. Detective O could follow the credit card transactions right to my aunt’s hotel door, flash her badge, and my aunt would let her in.

I parked a block away. Telling Tulip to stay, I approached cautiously, trying to appear inconspicuous, while simultaneously scoping out the area for a sign of my aunt and/or Boston cops. The cheap no-tell motel formed a two-story horseshoe built around a central parking area. I followed the covered stairs up to my aunt’s room on the second story. Door was closed, but the curtains of the main window had been drawn back to reveal a brightly lit, perfectly kept, empty brown-and-gold space. I stood there a minute, absorbing the deliberateness of such a gesture. No woman in her right mind stayed in a hotel with the curtains drawn back to expose her entire room. And my aunt never left the lights on. Wasting money, you know, not to mention burning energy and ruining the planet.

Detective O. Had to be. Letting me know the room was empty. Letting me know, she had my aunt.

I headed back to Tom’s truck, hands thrust deep in my coat pockets, head down, ears acutely tuned for the sound of fast-approaching footsteps that might or might not signal an ambush from behind. But nothing. Just a dark, bitterly cold Saturday evening, where the
rest of the world was hunkered down safe in their homes, laughing with the ones they loved, while I walked the empty streets of Boston, realizing that I was too late and it was going to cost me.

Clearly, Detective O had reached my aunt first. But she hadn’t strangled her in the middle of the hotel room; instead she’d taken my aunt elsewhere. Why?

Because a hotel room wasn’t her home. They had to die in the safety and security of their own homes.

Why? Because we never had safety and security? Or to heighten the terror, make it worse?

My hand went unconsciously to my side, I rubbed my scar.

And for an instant, I could almost feel it. My ribs, wet and sticky, my legs trembling, starting to go. Watching flames leap up a wall. Thinking it was strange, to feel so cold while staring at fire.

SisSis,
a voice called to me.
SisSis!

Sorry, I said. Sorry.

M
Y CELL PHONE RANG.
Twenty feet away from Tom’s truck, I answered it.

“Do you remember yet?” my sister asked.

“The house was on fire.”

“Dear old mom. Always had a flair for the dramatic.”

“You beat out the flames.”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

I hesitated. “SisSis. You called me SisSis.”

This time, she didn’t answer right away. When she finally did, her voice was bitter.

“You promised to always take care of me. You promised to keep me safe. But you didn’t keep that promise, did you, Charlene? You left me. Then you forgot me completely. So much for sisterly love,
SisSis
.”

I didn’t know what to say. It didn’t matter, she was already filling the silence: “Tell me, Charlene, are you still a good soldier?”

“Why?”

“Because everyone has to die sometime. Be brave, Charlie. Be brave…”

I felt the chills go up my spine. Not just because of the words she spoke, but because of the way she spoke them. A voice, rising out of the grave. My mother, whispering across the years.

“Please don’t hurt her,” I forced myself to say evenly. “This has nothing to do with Aunt Nancy. This is between you and me.”

“Then you still don’t remember.”

“What do you want?”

“You should know that.”

“Tell me, and I’ll come to you.”

“You should know where I am.”

Then I did. I understood. I opened the truck door. I climbed inside, phone still glued to my ear. I felt the weight of what had to happen next.

January 21. A day twenty years in the making.

“I love you, Abby,” I whispered to the sister who was about to kill me. “Remember, whatever happens, I love you.”

My baby sister hung up on me.

I thought long and hard about what I had to do next.

F
OR MY ENTIRE LIFE,
I understood on some basic level that my mother was insane. Maybe I didn’t dwell on what specifically happened when I was two or four or five. But the flashes of memory I did have were never warm and fuzzy. I didn’t picture my mother reading me a bedtime story or associate her with fresh-baked cookies.

Cold winter nights, when the wind howled through the mountains and the walls quaked from the unsettling power of it, I thought of my mom. Dank basements, the smell of rust, the tang of blood, I thought of my mom. Falling off the monkey bars at school one day, the funny popping sound my shoulder made when I landed, and the even louder sound it made when I whacked it against a tree trunk to pop it back in, I thought of my mom.

She’d been insane in the truest sense of the word. Unpredictable, unstable, unreliable. Driven by wild ambitions and deeper, darker bouts of despair. She loved, she hated. I was her best girl, her favorite
daughter. Now, be a good girl and stand still, while she dropped a bowling ball on my foot.

In my mother’s world, to love someone was to hurt someone. Therefore, the more she hurt me, the more I should feel adored.

Insanity is genetic, you know.

I’d spent most of my adolescence terrified I’d wake up one morning suddenly overwhelmed by the need to hurt someone. I’d start hitting my friends, screaming at my aunt. I’d stop compulsively cleaning my aunt’s mountain B&B and start ransacking the rooms instead.

I’d go to bed Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant, and wake up Christine Grant, terrorizer of small children everywhere.

Fortunately for me, that never happened.

But I don’t think my younger sister had gotten so lucky.

M
Y FIRST THOUGHT WAS
that my sister would take our aunt back to New Hampshire, to her cozy B&B tucked away in the White Mountains. But that involved a three-hour drive north. Plus, just because you’re crazy, doesn’t mean you’re stupid—my aunt ran a business in her home, meaning the place would be crowded with witnesses.

Far better for this final family reunion—my own little Cambridge rental. One room in a historic house occupied by a single older woman. I hoped for my landlady’s sake that she had been out today. I doubted any of us would be that lucky.

I parked across the street, at the Observatory. After 5
P.M.
on a Saturday, the parking lot held only a scattering of automobiles. Dark had fallen completely, the street lamps casting a feeble glow which reflected off the white snowbanks.

I’d planned for Tulip to stay, but the moment I opened the truck door, she bounded out, using my lap as a springboard. She ran a couple of quick circles in the snowy parking lot, clearly happy to be on the move. I contemplated rounding her up, forcing her back into her four-wheeled prison, but in the end, I didn’t have the heart for it.

Instead, I called her to me one last time, kissed her on the top of the head, and thanked her for being the best dog in the world. She
whined a little, wagged her tail, then shook her white-and-tan body as if to ward off a chill. She trotted across the parking lot, moving away from my unit, off on some adventure that maybe someday she’d tell me about, if only I were alive to hear.

I watched until she disappeared around the side of the brick buildings. My throat was thicker than I wanted it to be. I patted my coat pockets, fidgeted with the scarf wrapped tight around my neck.

I had spent a year planning, preparing, and strategizing.

Now I simply heard my mother’s words, back inside my head:
Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave.

I headed across the street for my landlady’s darkened home.

T
HE BOTTOM ROW OF EMPTY WINDOWS
gaped like a toothless smile as I approached. No front porch light burned, no back patio light beckoned. Maybe the front door was unlocked. Maybe my sister was standing on the other side, waiting for me to walk right in.

I decided to do the unexpected. She wanted me here, obviously. There was unfinished business on both sides, so I didn’t think she’d simply shoot me. She wanted to talk. I wanted to listen. She wanted to kill my aunt and hurt me as much as possible. I wanted her to know that I was sorry, that I loved her, and that, even though I didn’t know how to fix the past, doubted it could be done at this stage of the game, I wished it could be.

I wished we both could start over.

No sign of life on the street as I walked to the rear garden fence, opened the gate, and closed it gently behind me. Now free from prying eyes, I approached the back door, the one I used to come and go.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

I knocked. Three times.
Rap, rap, rap.

And ten seconds later, she answered.

The hallway loomed dark and shadowed behind her, while I imagined the Cambridge night sky cast a faint urban glow behind me.

She was dressed in black jeans and a tight-fitting black sweater. She looked leaner and meaner than Detective O, with her hair
scraped back in a tight ponytail and her eyes blazing with crazy blue contact lenses.

I looked at her, and I saw my mother.

I looked at her, and I saw myself.

“Hello,” she said. “My name is Abigail.”

S
HE RAISED HER RIGHT HAND,
revealing a hypodermic needle, which she pointed at me.

“Arm,” she said.

“What is it?” I gestured to the needle.

“You of all people know better than to question. Now, be a good girl, and do what I tell you.”

“No.”

“Charlene Rosalind Carter—”

“Our mother is dead. I won’t go back and neither should you. We’re sisters, and sisters don’t treat each other like this.”

“Arm.”

“No.” I turned and walked away.

“Leave now and she dies,” she shrilled behind me. “Eight minutes. Maybe nine. All your aunt has left. Or maybe you don’t care. Maybe leaving your family to die is what you do best,
SisSis
.”

She had used my old nickname, which I considered a victory of sorts. The beginning of getting both of us to remember. I needed to recall most of my childhood if I was going to survive the next fifteen minutes. And Abigail…I needed her to recall at least some parts when she didn’t hate me so much. When maybe, she even loved me a little.

I turned back toward her. She once again pointed the needle. After another moment’s hesitation, I held out my arm. She moved quickly, before I changed my mind, jamming the needle straight through my coat into the fleshy part of my upper arm. I barely felt it, a faint pinprick that could’ve been a piece of grit caught in the weave of my shirt. She hit the plunger, and the whole thing was done in a millisecond.

Abigail eyed me. I returned her gaze levelly, waiting to feel
something. Woozy, a burning in the back of my throat, maybe tingling down my arm. Most of our mother’s tricks were meant for instant gratification, but I didn’t feel a thing.

Abigail nodded, apparently satisfied, then made me strip my coat and hand it to her, immediately divesting me of most of my homemade weapons, which I’d stuck in the pockets. Next she patted me down, claiming my cell phone, but overlooking the ballpoint pen tucked into the back of my hair and the duct-tape knife covered by my ragged jeans, thick wool socks, and worn winter boots. Once I’d passed inspection, she opened the door wider, letting me into the darkened hall.

“Randi never even felt it,” she said, as if that should mean something to me. “Your other friend, Jackie, she turned around when I pricked her. I told her there had been some kind of thorn stuck to the back of her shirtsleeve and she believed me. Aunt Nancy saw me coming with it, though. I let her. I wanted her to know.”

Abigail led me past my own bedroom to the large living room, with its multiple seating areas plus kitchen. I’d been right earlier—no one’s lucky day. Both Aunt Nancy and my landlady, Frances, were present. Frances was slumped, pale and weak-looking, in a faded wingback chair, the farthest from me. My aunt was closer, reclined on the camelback sofa, eyes closed, eyelids fluttering in a way that didn’t appear good.

I rushed to her immediately and felt for a pulse. I found it, but it was weak. My aunt’s skin was clammy, and she was shivering uncontrollably.

“What did you do?”

“You mean she never tried it on you?”

“What?”

“Insulin. Crashes the blood sugar. Leads to coma, possibly death. Or a free trip to the emergency room.”

She delivered the words flippantly. I understood the untold story behind them, the countless episodes she must’ve endured at our mother’s hands. I would’ve liked to offer her compassion. Instead, I faced off against her, legs spread for balance, and pleaded my case.