Catch Me

by Lisa Gardner

She parked, got out, opened the back door, and contemplated the girl again.

  Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant simply climbed out and stood up.

  “You don’t talk much,” D.D. said.

  “You don’t believe me. What’s there to say?”

  D.D. nodded. “Fair enough. Want coffee?” She strode across the street, keeping the girl beside her.

  “Yes please. Are you charging me with something?”

  “Should I be charging you with something?”

  The girl sighed. “Have you spoken to the Grovesnor PD?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then you know I’m not a total fruitcake.”

  “Why’d you leave a note on my windshield?” D.D. asked.

  “What note? I didn’t leave a note.”

  “Note you watched me bag and tag.”

  “Not my note,” the girl said. “Didn’t even see it, let alone know that car was your vehicle. Trust me, to us non-law-enforcement types, all Crown Vics look alike.”

  D.D. didn’t comment, but thought it was a fair observation. In a street chock-full of police cruisers and Crown Vics, had the author of the note known enough to target D.D.’s car specifically, or a detective’s vehicle generally? Something to consider for later.

  D.D. escorted Charlie inside HQ, then upstairs to homicide. The homicide department was a nice space, D.D. always thought. More business suite than gritty cop show set. As a squad leader, D.D. had her own tiny office, complete with a laminated wood desk, laptop, and plush black leather desk chair. Very civilized.

  D.D. didn’t take her charge there, but instead led Charlie to a small interview room, where she took the girl’s coat, then plunked her down at the table. D.D. went off in pursuit of beverages. Coffee for the girl, which made D.D. waver, eye the pot. But no, she’d been decaffeinated this long, she could make it another hour.

  She’d initially given up coffee during her pregnancy, or rather, Jack had rebelled so insistently she couldn’t stomach the dark brew. Then, she’d stayed off the caffeine as she’d breast-fed for the first six weeks, surprising herself by desperately wanting to nurse, and had only weaned Jack at the six-week mark because she had to return to work and no way her schedule allowed for all that pumping and stuff other working moms heroically endured.

  She missed it. Didn’t talk about it, not even to Alex, because what could she say? She had to return to work. So her baby took a bottle and was now being watched eight hours a day by a nice lady down the street. That was life. If D.D. could walk a homicide scene, surely she could handle parenthood.

  D.D. poured a cup of coffee for Charlie, grabbed a bottle of water for herself.

  Ninety-three minutes before she went home.

  She reentered the interview room, took a seat across from her person of interest, and got down to business.

  “WHERE YOU FROM, CHARLIE?”

  “J-Town, New Hampshire.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Three hours north, near Mount Washington. Small town. One of those places where everybody knows your name.”

  “Why’d you leave?”

  “Because I believe the person who will try to kill me on January twenty-first will be someone I know. So, first line of defense is to run away from everyone I know.”

  The girl grimaced. She’d taken the coffee from D.D. but wasn’t drinking it. Just holding it between her hands as if for warmth.

  According to the preliminary background report, Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant was twenty-eight years old. In person, with her long brown hair scraped tightly into a ponytail, she appeared even younger. She had a slight frame, D.D. decided, further hollowed out by nerves or stress or something. The girl’s pale cheeks were gaunt, her blue eyes bruised from sleepless nights. She wore an oversized shapeless black sweatshirt, the kind favored by street thugs and vandals, paired with broken-down jeans and cheap snow boots. An outfit guaranteed to blend into almost any urban landscape.

  A good ensemble, D.D. figured, to be either predator or prey.

  “Why January twenty-one? And why do you think you’ll know your killer?”

  The girl started talking then. It was impressive really. About her first childhood friend murdered two years ago on the twenty-first, then her second friend murdered one year later on the exact same date, leaving Charlie as the last man standing. Charlie had names of lead detectives, even volunteered a report written up by a retired FBI profiler, Pierce Quincy, analyzing the crime scenes.

  “Findings?” D.D. had to ask, not that she trusted some Feebie’s report, but, then again…She took some notes. One of the investigators, Rhode Island State Detective Roan Griffin, she knew from training exercises. Maybe she’d give him a call.

  “Given the lack of physical evidence,” the girl said, “no forced entry, no sign of struggle, Quincy theorizes the killer is of above-average intelligence, methodical in thought and appearance. Perhaps someone known to the victims, but at least someone who would initially appear nonthreatening. Probably above-average verbal skills, hence the killer’s ability to talk his way into the home and control his victim’s responses until the last possible moment.”

  The girl recited the sentences flatly. Someone who’d read the crime scene analysis so many times, the words had ceased to refer to people she once knew and loved, and instead had become stock phrases repeated to trained professionals over and over again. D.D. had worked with family members from other cold cases. She knew how this drill went. The slow migration from wounded loved one to staunch advocate. How some family members ended up knowing more about forensics than the experts involved.

  “Sexual assault?” D.D. asked.

  “Negative.”

  D.D. frowned. That surprised her. Most murderers were sexual predators at heart. Particularly given these dynamics, a crime that involved intimate stalking, then occurred up close and personal. Now, in cases of murder-for-hire, or a homicide for personal gain, lack of sexual assault was more typical. Motivation then was materialistic in nature, not sexually driven.

  “Signs of robbery?” she asked now.

  “Negative.”

  “Anything missing at all? Even a special artifact, something meaningful to each victim?”

  Charlie shook her head. “But hard to be definitive,” she supplied. “My friends lived alone, meaning it’s hard to confirm every item in each household. If something small were taken, it could be easily overlooked.”

  “What about inheritance?” D.D. asked. “Anyone obviously better off from your friends’ deaths?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t think Randi had much, being recently divorced. I guess it went to her parents, maybe? Probably the same for Jackie. She was doing very well for Coca-Cola, but even then, I wouldn’t call her rich. She probably had some equity in her house, her car, a retirement account. But tens of thousands, I’d guess, not hundreds of thousands.”

  “You get anything?” D.D. asked her bluntly.

  The girl shook her head.

  “Life insurance?”

  “I never heard of anything. Though,” Charlie caught herself, “it wouldn’t surprise me if Jackie had a policy. She liked to plan ahead. I would guess, however, that her parents or her brother were the beneficiaries.”

  “No husband?”

  “No partner,” Charlie corrected.

  “Lesbian?”

  “Yes.”

  D.D. stared at her. “You ever get involved with her?”

  “We were best friends,” Charlie said evenly. “Lesbians can have female friends you know, just like guys can have female friends.”

  “Gotta ask the question,” D.D. said mildly. “It’s what I do.” D.D. pursed her lips, continuing to mull the matter. Two homicides, a thousand miles apart. Link between the victims, the methodology, and the date, but not enough evidence to provide traction. Hell of a story, she had to admit. Interesting. Intriguing. The kind of thing to tickle a workaholic detective’s crime bone.

  “So what do you want?” D.D. asked f
inally.

  Charlie blinked. Stared at D.D., held her coffee cup again. “What do you mean?”

  “You came to me, remember? Lurked outside an active crime scene. Why?”

  The girl hesitated. Her gaze flickered away.

  D.D. took a swig of water. She enjoyed obvious liars. Made her job easier.

  “I wanted to see you,” Charlie said at last.

  “How’d you know where I’d be?”

  “Police scanner. I’m a dispatch officer, right? I hear all the calls come in. Heard about the shooting, gambled you’d be there.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I Googled you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I Googled you. I searched for homicide detectives in Boston and your name was the one that kept coming up. You helped rescue the state trooper’s little girl, solve the string of family annihilations, find the missing wife in South Boston. I did some research, and…” The girl pushed away her coffee mug, looked up at D.D., and shrugged. “I don’t know what’s going to happen in four days. I guess, I just want to meet the person who might handle my murder. And I want you to meet me because maybe that will help. Maybe, having met me, you’ll try harder. And that will finally catch him. Someone has to.”

  “Won’t be me,” D.D. said.

  “Why not?”

  “You rent a place in Cambridge, right? Not my jurisdiction.”

  “Oh.” Apparently, Charlie hadn’t known this. “Perhaps I won’t be murdered there.”

  “Your friends were. In their own homes, right?”

  “It’s not really my house,” the girl said. “I just rent a room.”

  “Semantics. Your profiler describes these murders as an intimate crime, right? Not stranger-to-stranger. Known perpetrator to known victim.”

  “Yes.”

  “So he’ll strike where you feel comfortable. That’s part of the process, the methodology. Sneaking up on you on the subway won’t do it for him. You gotta see him coming. You gotta welcome him with a smile. It’s part of the drill.”

  “Then I guess I won’t go home on the twenty-first.”

  D.D. was curious despite herself. “So you left your town, came to the big city. Figured it was easier to get lost here, maybe hide in a crowd?”

  The girl nodded. “And I run, and lift weights and box and train with firearms. I’m not defenseless.”

  “Licensed to carry?” D.D. asked sharply.

  “Yes.”

  “How’d you manage that?” Unlike other states, where it was legal to have a gun in one’s vehicle, home, or business, Massachusetts required a gun license to even possess a firearm. A license to carry was one step above that, granting the person permission to carry the firearm outside his or her home or business. The license usually required some kind of underlying reason—the person seeking the license worked in security, was a business owner who routinely carried large amounts of cash, that sort of thing. Being young and paranoid probably wasn’t a check mark on the form, D.D. guessed.

  The girl, however, had her jaw set in a stubborn line. “I’m legal,” she said, and folded her hands in front of her.

  D.D. continued to regard her levelly. “All right. You’re legally armed and training to be dangerous. But you kept your name, Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant. Why take all those steps and not change your name?”

  Girl looked away. “I have to work. And the only experience I have is in dispatch, which means I have to pass a background check. Even if I invented a new identity, I don’t know how to create one that would stand up to that level of scrutiny.”

  “No.”

  The girl startled, look up at her sharply.

  “Come on, don’t waste my time. You lie about one thing, then I gotta worry about you lying about other things and for the record,” D.D. glanced at her watch, “you have only three minutes left, so let’s not waste it on games.”

  “I have only three minutes left?”

  “Yep. It’s called lifestyle,” D.D. informed her gravely. “Forty years later, I’ve decided to give it a chance. So don’t fuck with me. Look me in the eye, and tell me why you kept your name.”

  “I want to go home.” And the way the girl said it, D.D. understood she didn’t mean to a rented room in Cambridge. She meant her town, her people. She meant the place she had belonged in the days before her childhood friends had started dying.

  She meant a place that D.D. herself was just starting to identify, and that spooked her a little, made her shiver, because there was a plaintive tone there, a longing that D.D., with three minutes to go, understood.

  “You want the killer to find you.”

  “I can’t go home until he does.”

  “Has he made contact? Notes, phone calls, any kind of warning or threat?”

  The girl shook her head. “I understand,” she said, almost kindly, “that there’s nothing you can do. No threat, no assault, no murder, means no crime, means no jurisdiction. I’m just a fairy tale you’re listening to today.”

  “You should change your name,” D.D. said. “Or at least tell your story to your own officers. You’re dispatch. You have their backs, they’ll watch yours.”

  “It will be someone I know, someone I trust,” Charlie said, and shook her head.

  “Ah, but the Grovesnor PD didn’t know your friends. No link, making them your safest bet.”

  But, for whatever reason, Charlie still seemed unconvinced. Just because you were paranoid, D.D. thought, didn’t mean they weren’t out to get you.

  She glanced at her watch. Three minutes were up. Interview was over. Time for the new and improved D. D. Warren to report home. She stood.

  “Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant, what kind of firearm do you carry?”

  The girl regarded her mutely.

  D.D. returned the stare.

  “I carry a Taurus twenty-two LR pistol,” the girl supplied crisply. “I train with J. T. Dillon at the Massachusetts Rifle Association in Woburn.”

  “Yeah? How good a shot?”

  “I can hit bull’s-eye at fifty feet.”

  “Sounds like you’d be really good at a double tap to the forehead.”

  “Risky target,” the girl replied levelly. “Center mass is a better bet.”

  D.D. digested this, still not sure what she thought of the girl’s presence outside an active homicide scene, and still not liking all her answers to D.D.’s questions. But seeing as gawking at crime scenes still wasn’t considered a criminal offense…

  D.D. pushed away from the table. “All right. We’re done.” D.D. paused a beat. “For now.”

  The girl blinked a few times. “Meaning?”

  “Go home. Take care of yourself. Avoid future crime scenes.”

  “Including my own?” Charlie smiled wanly, then rose to standing. “You can’t help me.”

  “You were right before. No crime, no jurisdiction.”

  “I keep my room spotless. I plan on bleaching the floors, walls, sheets the night before. Know that, on the twenty-second, when there is a crime, when you do have jurisdiction, or can consult with the detective that does. Anything found at the scene is from him. Plus, check my nails. I’ve been growing them out, and you better believe, blood, hair, skin, I’ll be going for all the DNA I can get. I won’t give up. Remember that, on the twenty-second. I’ve been preparing, planning, and strategizing. He catches me, I’m not going down without a fight.”

  D.D. stared at the girl. She believed her. At least this much was true.

  “I’m gonna die trying,” Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant informed her. “Remember that, Detective Warren. After that…it’s up to you.”

  Chapter 4

  “MOMMY, I’M HOME!” The boy burst through the front door of the apartment, tossing his Red Sox backpack to the left, while kicking his snowy boots to the right. Navy blue snow coat he dropped dead ahead, then amused himself by leaping over it in his stocking feet. He landed with a satisfying thump, then flipped his hat into the air. He didn’t wa
it to see where it landed, but bolted to the kitchen for a snack.

  “Jesse,” his mother chided him from down the hall. “Not so much noise. I’m on the phone.”

  Jesse didn’t answer back; he knew his mother didn’t expect him to. His entrance, her response, was as much a part of his after-school ritual as say, grabbing Twinkies for a snack.

  Jesse’s mother worked on the phone. Sales stuff. Lucky she had the job, she’d told him many times. Lucky she could work from home, so he didn’t have to do the dreaded after-school program, where they fed you, like, granola bars and not even the good chewy kind, but the hard crunchy kind no self-respecting kid liked, but parents bought ’cause they were cheaper by the box.

  In the kitchen, Jesse climbed onto the countertop, opened the top cabinet, and grabbed a blue plastic cup. Cup down, he leapt from the countertop onto the floor—another satisfying thump. This time, the floor thumped back.

  Mrs. Flowers, the gazillion-year-old lady who lived beneath them. She didn’t like it when Jesse bounced around. “Sounds like you’re raising an elephant!” she’d complained to his mother many times. His mother would then laugh uncomfortably. “Boys will be boys,” she’d say, while shooting Jesse a look that meant he’d better straighten up his act, or else.

  Jesse sighed, tried to use his quiet feet as he padded to the fridge and tugged hard on the door. This was the deal: He could eat Twinkies, but only if he drank a glass of milk.

  Good deal. Jesse poured himself a glass of milk, then sucked the cream filling out of his Twinkies.

  First after-school ritual completed, he went into the family room. He wasn’t allowed TV or video games after school. TV rots the brain, his mother always said, and Jesse would need his one day if he wanted to have a better life. Plus, TV and video games made noise, which wasn’t good for his mother’s job.

  So, another deal. He was allowed on the computer, which sat on the kitchen table in the corner of the family room. The table sat four, but since there was only him and his mom, that left two open spots. The computer occupied one. He was supposed to put his homework and school papers in the second spot. After dinner, his mother would review his school papers, then it was homework time. He’d do his, his mother would do hers.