by Lisa Gardner
Then we transfer the call and walk away. Not our problem. We’re simply the messengers that yeah, life really sucks out there.
Now, here’s a question for you: If you only had four days left to live, what would you do?
Remain on the sidelines? Or get in the game?
And if, say, you’d spent the past year learning how to run, fight, shoot, how to stop being and start doing, would that change the answer? And if, say, you had insider’s knowledge of the kind of crimes the system can’t handle, where the perpetrator wins and the victim loses, would that change the answer?
I’d spent months contemplating this question. Then I’d arrived at a decision.
It helped me now, as I reached out and tapped my keyboard. As I deliberately and consciously broke the law, disconnecting my caller from the recorded dispatch system and picking her up on my prepaid Wal-Mart phone instead.
“Hey,” I said again. “It’s okay. It’s me, Charlie. I’m going to help. One more day, sweetheart, and you will never be hurt again.”
Chapter 6
“BAD NEWS,” D.D. informed Alex over dinner. “In the war over sanity in the city, the lunatics are winning.”
She’d done the honors of picking up Jack from day care at five forty-five. By six thirty Alex had made it home, where, being an enthusiastic cook, he’d put the finishing touches on a Crock-Pot version of chicken cacciatore he’d started that morning.
Now they were seated across from each other at the kitchen table. Alex had a glass of red wine; she had a glass of water. Alex had two hands for eating and drinking. She had one hand cradling Jack against her shoulder, the other wielding a fork.
Jack was currently asleep, half of his chubby face smashed into the curve of her neck, where he was making the most ridiculously adorable snoring sounds. This was probably as close to domestic bliss as she was ever gonna get, D.D. figured. Her baby snuggled against her chest, while she and Alex enjoyed a leisurely Italian dinner and talked shop.
“First I was wrapping up a shooting that may or may not be part of a broader vigilante crime spree,” she was telling Alex now. “Then I end up chasing down a suspicious woman, who claims she wants me to investigate her own murder, four days from today.”
Alex paused with a forkful of chicken in a midair. “She’s planning ahead? I don’t remember ever seeing a spot for appointing your own homicide detective on the estate planning forms.”
“Oh, they’re there. The beautiful young trophy wives just white ’em out before having their husbands sign on the bottom line.”
He thought about it. “Makes sense.” He resumed eating, then paused again. “Seriously, this woman is planning on being murdered?”
“Her two best friends were each murdered on January twenty-first. First one died two years ago, second one last year, meaning this year…”
Alex stared at her, clearly perplexed.
D.D. sighed. She set down her own fork and stroked Jack’s plump cheek. “This is the crazy part—I looked it up on the computer when Jack and I came home and she’s right. Randi Menke was murdered in Providence two years ago on the twenty-first, Jacqueline Knowles in Atlanta same date last year. How creepy is that?”
“Creepy,” Alex agreed, and set down his fork. Alex taught crime scene analysis at the police academy and had a tendency to take a cerebral approach to homicide. D.D. appreciated that. Figured it was a good balance for her own shoot-first-question-later style.
“No jurisdiction,” he said now, opening salvo of an ongoing analysis.
“Yep. I asked about threatening letters, phone calls, contact. Nada. Sounds like her life is very quiet, if you exclude the annual funerals. Two murders in two different states complicates matters, as well. She said the FBI gave the homicides a cursory glance, but couldn’t find any obvious connections between the two. Ironically enough, third time has a tendency to be the charm, meaning this year, after the twenty-first…”
Alex nodded. As a former investigator, he understood crime was really a numbers game. Twice was a coincidence, and no one blew their budgets on coincidences. Third murder, however, established a pattern. That got investigators more excited.
“Girl paid for a report from a retired FBI profiler,” D.D. continued now, readjusting Jack’s snuffling form. “I’m thinking of maybe contacting him, or perhaps the Rhode Island detective involved in the first murder. Asking a few questions.”
Alex nodded abruptly, conclusion reached. “I would.”
“You think she’s in danger?”
“Unknown,” he said crisply. “But here’s the second angle to consider—there is a link between the first two murders. The girl herself. Knew both victims.”
“I would assume investigators looked into that…” D.D. began.
Alex shook his head. “Never assume. Also, you found her loitering outside a shooting, which is…odd. Either she’s scared enough to want protection, in which case she’d most logically plead her case at headquarters. Or, she realizes, as she claims, there’s nothing the police can do, and she continues to go at it alone. But stalking a homicide detective outside a crime scene…From a rational point of view, how does that gain her anything?”
“Personal connection,” D.D. informed him. “Now that I’ve met her, I’m supposed to try harder to find her killer.”
Alex arched a brow. “She’s networking?”
“I’m telling you, it was a day defined by fruitcakes.”
“Tell me more about the note on your windshield,” he asked now.
D.D.’s eyes widened. “The note! Crap. It’s still sitting in my car. I totally forgot to deliver it to the crime lab. Oh my God! How do you forget something like that? How could I…How could I…Oh. My. God…!”
D.D.’s voice trailed off. The enormity of her mistake was too large, nearly incomprehensible. She stared at Alex wildly. “That’s homicide one-oh-one. First-year-out-of-the-academy, don’t-get-yourself-fired basics. I’m an idiot. I went on maternity leave, and I came back stupid!”
“You’re not stupid,” Alex stated calmly. “You’re sleep deprived.”
“I failed to deliver evidence. How could I have done such a thing?” Her voice broke. She was less hysterical, more genuinely panicked. Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren didn’t make mistakes. Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren certainly didn’t forget things like evidence handling 101.
Having children did change you; apparently it had made her worse.
“D.D.,” Alex said evenly.
“I’m going to have to quit my job.”
“D.D.”
“Maybe I could resign from being sergeant. Put Phil in charge in of the squad. He has four kids, and still, brighter than me.”
“D.D.”
“Will the brain cells come back?” she asked Alex plaintively. “I mean, all the baby books mention sleep cycles, so I’m assuming someday Jack will have one. He’ll sleep through the night, and I’ll stop making major mistakes that may or may not allow a murderer to go free.”
“Gee,” Alex interjected more forcefully, “if only the father of your child was an expert on crime scene analysis, who could assist with evidence handling. And, say, even call an expert on forensic handwriting analysis who happens to be a fellow teacher at the academy.”
D.D. stared at him. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Oh.” She looked down at her plate, realized belatedly that she hadn’t eaten much, and picked back up her fork. “Huh, all that and you can cook, too.”
Alex smiled faintly. Done with his dinner, he pushed away from the table, stood, and cleared his plate. “Careful,” he said, his back to her as he crossed to the kitchen sink. “Some girls might be impressed enough to marry me.”
D.D. regarded his retreating form. She said, equally soft, “Yeah, but I think we just established those girls are smarter than me.”
Alex didn’t say anything more. He went to fetch the note from her car.
D.D. remained seated at the table, holdin
g Jack. She kissed the top of his head. “Sorry,” she murmured, though she couldn’t have told either one of them what she was apologizing for.
ALEX RETURNED WITH THE NOTE, encased in clear plastic. With gloved hands, he carefully removed the plain white paper and shot several digital photos. Then he called his fellow academic. They exchanged pleasantries, after which Alex secured permission to e-mail a photo of the note for preliminary analysis.
“He’ll call us back in twenty to thirty minutes,” Alex explained to D.D., sliding the piece of paper back into its plastic cover. “Of course, for a more thorough analysis you’ll want to submit the note to the crime lab in order to fingerprint the paper and run tests on paper and ink type.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Jack was awake now. She sat with him on the sofa, where she had him sprawled on her lap. He peered up at her with wide blue eyes. When Alex came over to join them, Jack turned to his father and waved a pudgy fist.
“Look at that,” D.D. declared triumphantly. “He can already wave hello. Knew he’d be smart.”
“He gets that from me,” Alex said, settling onto the sofa, his right arm around her shoulders. “I’ve always had dynamite greeting skills. Wipe the globe, wipe the globe.” He used his left hand to demonstrate his best Miss America wave. Jack responded by kicking his feet.
“Soccer star,” D.D. said immediately. “Check out the muscle on him!”
“Soccer? Hmm, that must be from you. Given my own coordination skills, I make it a point never to walk and chew gum.”
“My parents were teachers,” D.D. said absently. “College profs before they retired.”
“Then Jack definitely better watch that whole walking and chewing gum thing.” Alex touched her cheek. “They still coming this weekend?”
She finally looked up at him. “It’s not too late to run away,” she said seriously. “Or I could just tell them I buried your body in the backyard. They’ll believe me.”
He grinned, but she could see the gentleness in his eyes. It bothered her that he seemed to think she needed such a look. It bothered her even more that he was probably right, that she had become a woman who required patient smiles and tender glances. Sleep deprivation, she tried to tell herself, but wondered if it wasn’t one of those children-change-you changes, meaning she was doomed to forever be a frazzled, domesticated, slightly more inept version of herself.
“I don’t hate them,” she heard herself say. “I know I don’t have the same relationship with my parents that you have with yours. But I don’t hate them.”
Alex fingered a curly lock of her short blond hair. “How do you feel about them?”
She shrugged, fidgeting with Jack’s tiny fingers in much the same way Alex played with her hair. “I respect them. They’re two intelligent, well-meaning adults leading their own busy lives. They do their thing. I do mine. We’re happy.”
“You didn’t want your mom in the delivery room,” he said quietly.
D.D. shook her head vehemently. “God no. That would’ve been terrible!”
“How come?”
“Because.” She shrugged again, looked down at her plump little baby who smiled back up at her with a big, toothless grin. He had her blue eyes, she thought, but would most likely end up with his father’s dark hair.
“I love him,” she said suddenly. “I love…everything about him. The way he smells, the way he feels, the way he smiles. He is the most perfect baby in the whole entire world. And I can tell you for a fact, my mother never felt that way about me.
“I was an afterthought. A late-in-life oops that happened to two very cerebral people who’d never planned on having kids. And after all that, I wasn’t even a quiet, well-behaved bookish kid. I was a total hellion who climbed trees and crashed bikes and once hit Mikey Davis so hard he lost a tooth.”
“You punched a boy?” Alex asked.
“I was seven,” D.D. said, as if that explained everything. “Split my knuckle, too. My first thought was that I needed boxing lessons. My mother’s first thought was that I should be grounded for the rest of my natural life. We haven’t moved much beyond those positions since.”
“They don’t like you being a detective?” Alex ventured.
“Detective isn’t so bad,” D.D. granted. “Detectives, even in my parents’ universe, command some respect. But when I first became a cop…I believe my mother was just relieved I was on this side of the judicial system.”
Alex smiled at her. “A comment I’ve thought about many of my associates in uniform. Nervous?” he asked evenly.
She looked at him. “Nobody makes me feel as ugly and stupid as my mother does,” she said simply.
“Then we will keep their visit short and focused on Jack. Maybe your mother has never appreciated your right hook, but how can she argue with him, sweetheart?” Alex gestured down to their kicking, gurgling baby. “How can anyone argue with him?”
THE PHONE RANG TEN MINUTES LATER. D.D. put Jack in his bassinet, where he’d hopefully sleep for a bit, then it would be time for his next feeding. She dug out her spiral notepad and minirecorder as she put Alex’s teacher friend on the speaker phone.
“Professor Dembowski? Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren. Thanks for calling me.”
“Ray. Please, call me Ray.”
Dembowski had a pleasant voice. Deep, smooth, maybe fifty to sixty years of age, D.D. thought. She settled in at the kitchen table, the note in its clear plastic sheathing before her.
Everyone has to die sometime.
Be brave.
Alex sat across from her with a fresh glass of wine.
“So my first question,” the forensic expert spoke up, “is do you have more samples? In my line of work, I’m generally comparing an exhibit against several exemplars. This note would be the exhibit. But where are the exemplars?”
D.D.’s eyes widened. She glanced over to Alex, who shrugged, equally perplexed.
“Exemplars?” she ventured.
“Other handwriting samples to be used for comparison. For example, if you suspect this note was written by subject A, you would submit three other handwriting exhibits from suspect A to serve as exemplars for my analysis.”
“Ummm…I don’t have subject A,” D.D. volunteered. “In fact, I was hoping to work the other way—you could analyze the handwriting on this note to help me find subject A.”
“You mean, judging purely by the script, I would provide age, gender, and probable occupation of subject A?”
“That would be perfect,” D.D. assured him.
In the silence that ensued, it occurred to her she might have taken a misstep. “Ummm…assuming such an analysis is possible?” she asked belatedly.
“No,” Dembowski said.
“No?”
“That’s called graphology, a pseudo-science if you will, where experts claim to read subconscious clues buried in a person’s handwriting. I am not a graphologist. I am a forensic handwriting expert, meaning I scientifically compare documents to determine if the same person authored all the exhibits or not.”
D.D. didn’t know what to say. She glanced across the table at Alex, who shrugged as if to say, Who knew?
“I’m sorry, Ray,” D.D. attempted at last. “I only wish I was far enough along in the investigation to bring you multiple samples. Where things stand right now, however, I have one dead body and this note, left on the windshield of my car outside the shooting. Now, we have reason to believe the shooter is not yet done, so any insights would be greatly appreciated.”
On the other end of the phone line, Dembowski sighed heavily. “You understand, we’re moving beyond the field of science into the realm of conjecture?”
“You prefer to speak off the record?”
“Have to. I’m a forensic handwriting expert, not a graphologist, meaning even if a court of law were willing to entertain the notion of graphology, my analysis still wouldn’t meet standards.”
“Okay.” D.D. nodded, starting to understand how h
er expert wanted to play it. “Let’s call this a chat between colleagues. I got this fascinating note. Say, what do you make of it?”
Another pause, a deep breath, then Dembowski got down to basics. “As someone who studies handwriting, there are several aspects of this note that strike me. First off, the note is written in cursive, versus the more commonly used print. Furthermore, the letters are fairly large in scale, and looping, with the exception of the bottom of each letter, which has been flattened, as if the writer used a straight edge for guidance.”
“I noticed that myself,” D.D. said. Across from her, Alex craned his neck, reexamining the plastic-covered note. Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave.
“Few other anomalies—the average person creates letters of uneven size. For example, common letters, particularly vowels, have a tendency to be smaller in scale, more rushed in execution. In your exhibit, however, each letter is nearly identical in size and scale. Notice the crossbars on the two t’s. They are exactly the same width, down to the millimeter. This indicates someone with a high degree of attention to detail. The use of a straight edge to set the bottom line further supports a writer with a high need for precision. From a graphology point of view, the author of this note is most likely someone with a significant need for control in every aspect of life, a type A personality, a tightly wound anal-retentive, my first ex-wife,” Dembowski laughed hollowly, “etc., etc.”
D.D. pursed her lips, made a note. Given the scene, that made sense to her. The wiped down kitchen, the two mugs carefully placed in the sink. Even the shooting was direct and clean, double shot to the forehead, precisely placed to ensure instant fatality. So a murderer who possessed above average attention to detail and was a neat freak. Interesting.
“When analyzing handwriting, one of the things I always look for is letter slant. A left-handed person almost always has a backward slant to the letters, a right-handed person a forward slant. These letters are nearly perfectly perpendicular. To play the odds, I’d theorize your letter writer is right-handed, but again, exercising rigid precision in the formation of each letter.”