by Lisa Gardner
She thought of Abigail. A long-lost baby? A splintered personality? A fragment of Charlene Grant’s fickle memory? It didn’t matter what Abigail was, D.D. decided. It mattered who she was.
Abigail. Brown hair, blue eyes, willing to introduce herself to a witness after cold-bloodedly killing a child molester. Connected in some manner to Charlene Grant. Connected therefore to the BFF murders as well? The central link, the missing piece of a puzzle. The reason January twenty-one mattered, happened at all.
Abigail.
D.D. stared at the Randi Menke and Jackie Knowles crime scene photos. And the more she stared, and the more she thought, the more she knew she was on the right track. Abigail had done this. The crime scene photos positively reeked of Abigail.
Feminine, Quincy had called the homicides. The neat and tidy rooms, the fluffed pillows, the spotless floors. Both victims could be sleeping, sprawled awkwardly to be sure, but their faces were not horrified, their necks not broken by brute force, their limbs not skewed painfully.
Even in the close-ups, the bruising around each of their throats was minimal, almost delicate. The killer had applied just enough pressure to get the job done.
And the victims had not fought back, not offered up even token resistance.
What had Abigail known, what had Abigail done that enabled her to kill two grown women so precisely, so neatly, so…gently?
Not a crime of violence. D.D. paused, moved to the whiteboard, wrote that down. Whatever drove Abigail to kill, it wasn’t bloodlust or savagery. She didn’t hate her victims. She didn’t torture, maim, or inflict any postmortem damage.
She got in, got the job done, and cleaned up afterward. Almost clinical in nature.
Not personal. D.D. added this line next to the whiteboard.
Abigail killed both of these women, but it wasn’t personal to her. If so, she would’ve been compelled to perform such classic dehumanizing touches as slashing their faces, or maybe attacking their hands or cutting off their hair. Or, on the other end of the spectrum, a killer who was driven by an overwhelming compulsion to murder often felt shame or remorse afterward and covered the victim’s body, particularly the victim’s face, as if to hide what she had done. But no on both counts. No anger, no shame. Clinical.
Abigail had killed two women because it had needed to be done. She’d kept it relatively painless. Performed her ritual simply and expediently. Then she’d cleaned up. Perhaps also a matter of business—covering her tracks. Or maybe the first sign of remorse, D.D. thought. An apology woman to woman. Sorry I had to kill you, but here, I did the dishes, righted the sofa cushions, mopped the floor.
Motivation, that’s what D.D. needed. If it wasn’t personal, why had Abigail done it? Financial gain? According to Quincy’s reports, nobody gained substantially from either death. Personal gain—bumping off a rival for a man’s affection, competition in the workplace, the cheerleader that just took your daughter’s slot? Again, no one thing tied together Randi Menke and Jackie Knowles. They certainly weren’t rivals for a man’s attention, they didn’t share the same job, they didn’t even live in the same state. They were just Charlene’s friends, and even that connection was dated.
D.D. frowned. Made a note in a fresh column. Frowned some more.
Decided to attack the problem from a different angle.
Forget the why for a moment. How? How did one female—and D.D. was certain now the killer was female, had to be female, as Quincy had predicted—how did one female so effortlessly murder another?
Physically larger and stronger? Even then, someone choked you, you fought, you struggled, you clawed at hands with your fingernails, you kicked back with your feet, you jabbed with your elbows. Even if the rooms had been cleaned up afterward, there would be massive physical evidence left behind on each murder victim. Contusions, lacerations, postmortem bruising.
There should have been hair and fiber tangled in each victim’s clothing; skin cells, even blood samples recovered from beneath each victim’s fingernails. And the bruises could be just as helpful. D.D. had seen them in the shape of the perpetrator’s ring, imprints from belt buckles, even the shape of one woman’s barrette clearly indented into the cheek of her rival after a particularly vicious catfight.
But as D.D. went over the photos again and again and again, she came up with the same results: nothing, nothing, and nothing.
It was as if Randi Menke and Jackie Knowles had stood there and simply let themselves be strangled. One, a woman who’d had the fortitude to leave an abusive marriage. Another, a woman who’d climbed up the corporate ladder before she was thirty.
D.D. didn’t believe it. These women knew how to fight. So why hadn’t they?
Female killer…
Drugs, she realized. Weapon of choice of most female murderers. Abigail had drugged her victims, then killed them.
Only thing that made sense.
Except…D.D.’s head ached. She pulled first Randi’s tox report, then Jackie’s tox report. Jackie had died with a blood alcohol level of. 05, consistent with a woman who’d had a glass of wine or two at the bar. Randi Menke nothing.
D.D. pulled out a chair, flopped down in it, and scowled at the report again.
Phil came in. He had a brown bag in his hand, which he held up. Apparently, she’d said yes to lunch. She could eat.
“She drugged them, definitely,” D.D. muttered, accepting the bag.
“She?”
“Abigail.”
“Abigail?”
“Woman who killed Randi Menke and Jackie Knowles.”
“Okay.”
“Only thing that makes sense. Neither victim resisted manual strangulation. Had to be because they were already incapacitated.”
“Okay.”
“Except the tox screens came back clear for drugs.”
“Then Abigail didn’t poison them.”
“But she did! I know it.”
“All right, think of it this way: Abigail rendered them incapacitated using a substance not covered by most tox screens.”
“Rules out barbiturates, opium, narcotics.” D.D. opened the brown bag, unwrapped a roast beef sandwich, took the first bite. “Meaning no weed, no meth, no cocaine, no ecstasy, no oxycodone, no vicodin…what’s left?”
Phil shrugged, took a bite of his own tuna fish sandwich. “What would make you passive, but not leave behind a pharmaceutical fingerprint?”
D.D. frowned again. “Hypnosis?”
Phil shook his head. “Doubt it. Whole drawback to hypnosis is that you can’t force someone to act against their will. Voluntarily submitting to manual strangulation definitely violates most people’s free will.”
“I’d like to think the victims would snap out of it and fight back,” D.D. agreed. She chewed another bite of sandwich. “I don’t get it. Abigail killed two women, for no apparent good reason. Wasn’t angry, wasn’t driven by compulsion, wasn’t for any clear personal gain. Just killed them because it had to be done. What’s worse do you think? Being murdered, or having your own murderer not that personally invested in your death? Just, you know, getting the job done.”
“Murder for hire?” Phil asked.
“Would still have to be someone somewhere who gained. I can’t figure out how the deaths of these two women lead back to any one person’s gain. The only real connection between the two is Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant.”
“Maybe the killer gained Charlene,” Phil said. “Access to Charlie, attention or affection from her, something of that nature.”
“Actually, we think Abigail is Charlene.”
“Really? When’d that happen?”
“Late this morning. Ballistics matched Charlene’s gun to the sex offender murders. Meaning, Charlene shot the pedophiles, and given that the killer identified herself as Abigail during the third shooting, Charlene is Abigail.”
“That gives me a headache,” Phil said.
“Me, too!”
D.D.’s cell phone rang. She glanced down, half
-afraid it might be her mother, half-hopeful it would be Detective O with word of Charlene’s arrest. Instead, it was a number she recognized from having called the day before.
“Speak of the devil,” she murmured, answering her phone. “Good afternoon, Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant. Or, seeing as it’s January twenty-first, would you prefer to be called Abigail?”
“NOT MY GUN,” Charlene said without preamble.
“Excuse me?”
“Your ballistics report. It wasn’t run on my weapon, and I can prove it.”
“How?”
“You. You saw my gun at HQ. Remember? Taurus twenty-two, nickel-plated with a rosewood grip. Gun that was tested last night had a rubber grip. Not my gun.”
D.D. pursed her lips, glanced at Phil, then motioned for a pen and paper. She quick scrawled, ballistics report? Because truth was, she hadn’t seen the final report yet. She’d only heard of it.
“Maybe you have two guns,” D.D. said.
“I don’t. Just my legally registered Taurus with the rosewood grip.”
“Prove it.”
“Contact J. T. Dillon, my firearms instructor. He helped me purchase the weapon a year ago and has seen me practice with it for the past twelve months.”
“Only establishes that you definitely own at least one weapon with a rosewood grip. Doesn’t say you don’t own a second twenty-two with a rubber grip.”
There was a moment of silence. “Isn’t that burden of proof on you?” Charlene spoke up. “Look at the report again. Are my fingerprints on the second gun? Because it’s not mine, meaning they aren’t, meaning you can’t prove that it’s my gun. I didn’t shoot three pedophiles, and you can’t prove that I did.”
“I’ll tell you what. Come down to HQ, and we’ll sort it out.”
“I’ll tell you what. Today is January twenty-first. My handgun has disappeared and I think your own detective is fucking with me, and I’m not going anywhere near Boston PD.”
“My detective?”
“Detective O. She’s the one who submitted the fake gun. And probably stole my Taurus.”
“What do you mean your Taurus is missing? You mean the one with the rosewood grip.”
“Exactly. I hid it yesterday, when I went to work. I…” There was a pause. D.D. could practically hear the girl do some quick thinking. “After you and O questioned me yesterday, I realized you seemed to think I’d done something wrong. You treated me like a suspect, not a victim. I got spooked. I didn’t want to be without my handgun, but I know it’s not allowed at work. So I hid it under a bush in the parking lot, in a snowbank. Tucked it where it would be safe.”
D.D. nodded, knowing this part from Detective O.
“Except when I finally got off work, my handgun was gone. Then…I heard over the police scanner the bulletin for my own arrest and the chatter on the ballistics report. So I called the lab—”
“You called the crime lab?”
“Sure. I called the lab, said I was Detective O and asked for the details of the report. The second I heard the description of the gun, I knew it wasn’t mine. Except, mine is also gone. Don’t you get it yet?”
D.D. said, slowly, “Why don’t you tell me,” though she had a sudden sinking feeling. She glanced up at Phil, who was listening to the conversation positively wide-eyed.
“Detective O submitted the real murder weapon for ballistics testing,” Charlene stated. “A twenty-two semiauto Taurus with a rubber grip. Except that’s not my gun. That’s Detective O’s gun. She had the murder weapon. She killed the sex offenders. And now she’s framing me for it. Has me unarmed, in hiding, and basically a sitting duck on the day we already know I’m supposed to die. Come eight P.M., Randi and Jackie’s killer will finish me off, and no one ever has to be the wiser. I’m dead, Detective O gets away with triple murder. Four homicides, if you count me, and personally, I think you should count me.”
D.D. stared at the whiteboard. “Detective O shot the sex offenders.”
“That’s what I’m saying! Her gun, not mine. Her crime spree, not mine.”
“Detective O introduced herself to the little boy as Abigail.”
“Yes. Trying to frame me.”
“Trying to frame you?” D.D. tested. “Then why didn’t she introduce herself as Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant, or Charlie. Why Abigail?”
“Abigail’s my sister.”
“Charlie, how would Detective O know that?”
Silence on the other end of the phone line.
“Everyone has to die sometime,” D.D. murmured. “Be brave.”
“Wh-wh-what?”
“What does that mean, Charlie?” D.D. had never told Charlie about the notes linking the three shootings. The contents of a message were the kind of detail a good detective held back, tried to trick a suspect into confessing, not the sort of thing one gave away.
Now she heard Charlie whisper in a faraway voice, “Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave, child. Be brave.”
“Charlie?”
“My mother. My mother said those words to me.”
“To you, Charlie? And maybe to your baby sister, Abigail?”
“Oh my God…”
Oh my God was right, D.D. thought. She stared at Phil. Phil stared back at her, then together they looked at the table, the sprawling, full color collage of two women’s murders.
“Charlie,” D.D. said urgently. “Tell me about Abigail. You need to remember Abigail. Because somehow, some way, she’s become a Boston detective known as Ellen O, who at the very least has killed three sex offenders, as well as probably murdered your two best friends. Your sister’s not only alive, but she’s coming for you, Charlie. In a matter of hours, you’re dead.”
Chapter 39
THE PROBLEM WITH BOXING is that it’s a relatively civilized sport.
You face off squarely against your opponent. You use only your fists. You aim only above the waist.
From a self-defense point of view, this strategy is not as effective as say, an all-out brawl. Certainly, there were other disciplines I could’ve studied that might have been more appropriate for fighting off a murderer, while also being more efficient for a girl.
But from the very beginning, I loved boxing.
I think I’ve waited my entire life to stand before my attacker and stare her in the eye.
Fortunately, my boxing coach, Dick, taught self-defense classes for women. He also hinted of a misspent youth, where knocking heads and kicking ass seemed the easiest solution to all of life’s problems. For the past year, after our bouts, he’d shared some of his secrets with me. J.T., my firearms instructor, had done the same. Trust me, if you want to learn how to fight dirty, ask a guy who used to be Marine Force Recon. Apparently, when it comes to warfare, they really do believe the end justifies the means.
I didn’t complain then, and I wasn’t complaining now, as I went through my final preparations.
Three forty-five P.M. Daylight already fading.
Nightfall would bring me cover. I could leave Tom’s apartment, home in on my final target, and start making amends for past mistakes. Assuming I wasn’t already too late.
I started with the easy tricks. Ballpoint pen thrust into the elastic at the base of my ponytail, where it would be easily accessible. From Tom’s bureau, I’d helped myself to one long white athletic sock. Now I stuffed the foot with the four D batteries, tied a knot in the ankle, then whipped it around a few times experimentally. The heavy weight in the toe stretched it out and would pack quite a punch, enabling me to inflict damage, while also staying out of strike range.
I used the duct tape to fashion a sturdy knife sheath, then attached it to my ankle. Into the sheath I thrust a short, serrated kitchen blade. Not optimal, but if I was at the stage where I needed a knife, I was already in trouble. I didn’t have those kinds of skills. Wasn’t even sure I had that kind of stomach. But desperate times called for desperate measures.
Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave.
I heard footsteps out in the hall and froze. A quiet quick rap.
“It’s me,” came Tom’s low voice, then I heard his key in the lock.
Quickly, I grabbed the remaining items and shoved them in my pants pockets. Already, I was breathing too hard, my heart rate accelerating. At the last minute, I dropped and loosened the laces on both my heavy boots.
I was just straightening up when Tom walked in.
And that quickly, it was game time.
January 21.
Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave.
I’d like to think that Detective D. D. Warren’s shocking declaration had opened the floodgates of my mind. I magically remembered my long-lost sister Abigail. I magically understood Detective O and the relevance of the twenty-first, and why my best friends had to die. I even understood why a respected sex crime detective had started shooting perverts, leaving the same disturbing note with each body, while framing me for her crimes.
I didn’t.
Abigail remained in my mind, a beaming, brown-eyed, chubby, gurgling baby. My little sister, whom I’d loved with all my heart. And lost. Died, I had believed. Except, of course, if she’d died, I should’ve absorbed her name, as I’d done with the others. Charlene Rosalind Carter Abigail Grant.
In Detective Warren’s mind, that was further proof that Abigail still lived and, in some way we didn’t yet understand, had become Boston sex crimes Detective O. Brown hair, brown eyes, just like the baby in my dream.
Except I truly only remembered an infant, maybe nine months old at best. Not a beautiful exotic creature with that hair and those curves, and a solid career as an up-and-coming sex crimes investigator. A young, astute detective who, from the very beginning, didn’t seem to like me.
Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave.
Those words, I recognized. Those words, I understood on a level that chilled my spine, set my shoulders, and raised my chin.
My mother’s favorite expression. That, more than anything, proved Detective Warren’s argument. Abigail lived.
But my baby sister didn’t love me anymore.
“Raid the fridge?” Tom asked now, standing just inside the door. His features were drawn, tired. He’d been up at least eighteen hours by now. We both had. He appeared self-conscious as he took me in from across the room, then seemed to shake it off.