Catch Me

by Lisa Gardner

  Unfortunately, as my aunt later confided, sister knows sister. Christine had never believed for a moment that her older, dutiful sibling would simply walk away. So while my aunt had been summoning the cavalry, Christine had packed her bags, rounded up Abigail, and disappeared once more into thin air.

  Abigail never got to see my aunt’s return, or the tactical raid that had been put together for her benefit. She just followed her mother to yet another town, her last impression of her aunt being the older woman who’d left her.

  My aunt had tried, my aunt had failed. And she hadn’t told my sister the full story during those dark hours in Cambridge because she hadn’t been trying to explain herself. She’d been trying to draw Abigail’s attention so that I could get away.

  All these years later, my aunt was still prepared to sacrifice her life for me.

  I guess you could say she is as different from her sister as I am from mine.

  Of course, there are other consequences from January 21. I haven’t spoken to Tom since. Apparently, you can steal a man’s truck, but beating him unconscious is much harder to overlook. I understand, of course. Deceit and general mayhem is no basis for a relationship.

  I miss him, though. One of those things, I often tell myself, feeling lonely, feeling blue. Different time, different place…

  Maybe someday soon, I’ll drop him a note: I’m still a train wreck, if you’re still interested.

  You never know.

  In the meantime, I’ve moved back to J-Town. Returned to the mountains, my aunt, the community where everyone knows my name. Tulip approves. She lives a happy life as a B&B dog now. Welcomes guests, chases squirrels, comes and goes as often as she pleases.

  I’m also helping out at the B&B, working the busy weekends while my aunt continues her recovery. During the week, turns out my own little town needed a dispatch officer. I work graveyard, Tuesday through Friday. And don’t let the small town fool you. Just the other night, someone stole a golf cart and ran amok on the course, dumping bleach in zigzag patterns across the greens. However, my brave caller and ninety-year-old witness helped crack the case, based on the baked pineapple pieces left behind.

  I still run. Still box. And sometimes, after a long stretch of sleepless nights, I’ll head out to the range and make happy with some targets.

  But I’m trying for a kinder, gentler life now. I remember my sister and thirty-three murders that didn’t do a thing to make her feel safer. I think of Stan Miller and my own choices along the way.

  Not just insanity is genetic, you know.

  Violence is, too.

  I have vowed to make the best of this second shot at life. I will follow the straight and narrow, I remind myself, as I take certain calls. I will color within the lines, I think, as another child cries in my ear. I will not overstep the bounds of morality, I tell myself, as yet another hysterical woman sobs for help.

  I wonder how long my resolution will last.

  Another one of those questions I can’t answer.

  Yet.

  Chapter 45

  IT TOOK D.D. SEVERAL WEEKS, not to mention several favors, to get the report she desired. When she finally had it, read it, processed it, she nodded in satisfaction. And then, because it didn’t mean much, couldn’t mean much, she locked it away in a file and went home to her two favorite men.

  “You look happy,” Alex said, when she walked through the door.

  “Because I was right.”

  “Ah. Generally does the trick.”

  “Got back a ballistics report. Confirmed what I had suspected: Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant might not have shot those three pedophiles, but she did commit a murder.”

  Alex spooned pale mush into Jack’s mouth. They were trying out baby’s first food: rice cereal. So far, it looked very attractive on Jack’s ruddy cheeks.

  “When will you arrest her?”

  “Not anytime soon.”

  Alex tried an airplane noise. Jack wasn’t buying it, so D.D. took over. She still wore one of her favorite tailored black suit jackets but was feeling lucky.

  Alex sat back, eyed her curiously. He’d had the day off, spending it with Jack. Hence the new food, splattered kitchen, general state of disaster.

  “Not arresting people generally doesn’t make you happy,” he said now.

  D.D. sucked in her cheeks, making a fishy face. Jack imitated, puckering his little lips into an O, and she got the first spoonful of white mush successfully delivered. Like a pro, she thought, and went for mouthful number two. “Legal standing of ballistics report is highly debatable. Did I really have probable cause to test a legally registered firearm owned by someone who wasn’t a suspect in that particular case? Not to mention, said firearm was seized from the apartment of a cop, who turned out to be a murderer who’d already tried to frame Charlie for three other shootings. Meaning my chain of custody is crap, meaning my report is crap.”

  She made a giant happy O. Jack giggled. Spoonful number two. She shoots, she scores.

  “And yet you’re happy?”

  “Because I knew it. When O and I interviewed Charlie the first time, the girl looked guilty as hell. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t because she was running around Boston shooting pedophiles. But I knew she’d been running around the city doing something.”

  “What was the something?”

  “Having a shoot-out with a lovely gentleman named Stan Miller. Known as the neighborhood bully. Security guard, wife beater, allegedly had a thing for hammers. He was found impaled on a collapsed fire escape about seven weeks ago. Quite dead, apartment shot to pieces, wife and two kids nowhere to be found. Still missing, as a matter of fact. I’d look harder, but based on neighborhood scuttlebutt, their disappearance is probably in their own best interest.”

  “But he died of fire escape, not GSW.”

  “Another tricky detail should I pursue a case. Can only prove a person with Charlie Grant’s gun shot at Stan Miller, not that a person with Charlie Grant’s gun killed Stan Miller.”

  “And yet you’re happy.”

  Baby Jack was giggly. Baby Jack blew rice cereal all over the high chair and half of D.D.’s face. And yet she was still happy. She sat back, stirring rice cereal, waiting for the next chance to use it.

  She eyed her partner.

  “I like knowing things. I like knowing what Charlie Grant did, and it’s possible I dropped her a note, because I like letting her know that I know what she did. Girl’s a vigilante. She should know a Boston homicide cop is staring over her shoulder. It’s good for her.”

  “Ah. You’re torturing her. Now I see why you’re happy.”

  “I’m monitoring her. Will help keep her honest, and I like to think at least some part of her will appreciate that.”

  Baby Jack stopped blowing zerberts. D.D. reverted to more fishy faces and scored, in rapid succession, two more bites of rice cereal.

  “So, I’m thinking September,” she said casually.

  Alex eyed her. “Vacation? Getaway.” He closed his eyes, swallowed hard. “We really are going to see your parents.”

  “Not if I can help it. But my guess is, they’d come here. Can’t miss their only daughter’s wedding.”

  She looked up at him. He opened his eyes, startled, maybe even bemused. Her heart was pounding. She’d figured that might happen, but the depth of her own nervousness surprised her.

  “Wedding?” he asked.

  “The fall. With all the leaves turning on the trees. I think that would be pretty.”

  “Am I involved?”

  “I thought I’d be the one in white…okay, ivory, and you’d be the one in the monkey suit.”

  He nodded slowly. “Should I ask how you arrived at this decision, or just jam the ring on your finger before you change your mind?”

  “Well, it might take us a couple a weeks to find the ring…”

  “Shut up,” Alex said. Then, “Stay right there.” He pushed back his chair rather awkwardly, then staggered out of the room, while D
.D. sat there, still holding rice cereal, with bits of baby spittle across her cheek.

  She turned to Jack, who waved his pudgy fists in the slightly reclined high chair.

  “I think your father is loco,” she informed him.

  He blew more zerberts.

  Alex returned, now holding an unmistakable blue box that made D.D.’s eyes widen. “No way!”

  “Fourteen months ago. I have been waiting fourteen months. Have I mentioned yet what a stubborn, infuriating, completely maddening woman you are?”

  D.D.’s heart was pounding again. “Not the words of praise I was expecting during a proposal.”

  But it didn’t matter. Had never mattered. Alex was on his knee, in their kitchen, with their baby covered in rice cereal and D.D. half-sprayed in rice cereal and it was exactly as it should be.

  “D. D. Warren, will you marry me?”

  “Alex Wilson, will you marry me?”

  “Yes,” they said together, and he opened the box, and she gasped because it was a sapphire studded band, just like something she’d actually wear. Then she cried a little and he cried a little and baby Jack blew more zerberts so they hugged and kissed him, too, until they were all covered in rice cereal, even the sparkly sapphire band.

  “I don’t get it,” Alex said, when the dust had settled and Jack was halfway cleaned up and they’d decided to pop champagne. “Why now? You discover you can’t arrest a murderer, and that makes you decide to finally marry me?”

  “No. I discovered I could handle a little on-the-job frustration, because I now have more in my world than just the job. I have you, and Jack. Not to mention, when I got the report, I realized I didn’t even care if Phil and Neil knew. I just wanted to come home and tell you.”

  She eyed her fiancé, sitting beside her on the couch, and she said more softly, more seriously, “You did what I feared most, Alex. And I had to have that happen, to realize it wasn’t so bad.”

  “What did I do?”

  “You changed me.” She shrugged. “My whole life, that’s what I’ve fought. I was the oddball in my own family, the little tomboy freak. And my parents didn’t get me, and definitely didn’t approve of me, and while some kids might have worked harder for their parents’ approval, I went the other way. I dug in my heels. And I decided no matter what, I’d always be me, even if that meant I might sometimes be, say…a little prickly, a little forceful. It was okay, because I was being me.”

  “A little prickly,” he said. “A little forceful.”

  She smiled. “You didn’t back down. And you didn’t try to change me. You’re good for me, Alex. You’re patient and tolerant and exactly the kind of parent Jack needs. Watching you, I’ve realized that I can be that way, too. It’s good to sometimes be patient. And a little tolerance does make the world easier to bear. I’m not saying I can’t still be mean—”

  “I would never doubt it,” he assured her.

  “But I’m also realizing I can approach things other ways. And I can be happy. I can come home, and for the first time in my life, I can be. Just…be.”

  Alex took her hand. He squeezed it and didn’t say a word because he didn’t have to. He got her, that’s what it was all about.

  “I love you, Alex.”

  “I love you, too, D.D.”

  They put Jack to bed, snuggled together on the sofa. Discussed possibly painting the family room. Watched some show on the History Channel. Fell asleep with marines storming some beach in some faraway land.

  Midnight, Jack woke up for a bottle.

  D.D. fed him, then put him and Alex to bed.

  Two A.M., her police pager chimed to life.

  She dressed in the dark. Kissed Alex. Kissed Jack. Clipped on her badge, hit the road.

  Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren. On the job and loving it.

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

  By far, my favorite part of the writing process is interviewing fun and interesting people in order to learn fun and interesting ways of terrifying my readers (and sometimes myself!). Catch Me is no exception. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to:

  Ellen Ohlenbusch, Internet safety expert, who absolutely, positively horrified me with her matter-of-fact explanation of all the ways the World Wide Web can be used to stalk and victimize young children. It’s an interesting subject that most parents don’t want to hear about, but what you don’t know can hurt you. Just ask Jesse’s mom, Jennifer, in this novel. Oh, thanks also for the use of your name. What can I say, Ohlenbusch was too good to pass up, especially for a Boston cop.

  Speaking of Boston cops…Wayne Rock, Esquire. I first met Wayne when I was researching another D. D. Warren adventure, Hide, seven years ago. Since then, Wayne has retired from the Boston PD, but still can’t escape my phone calls. From police procedure to pertinent legal details, Wayne is always in the know, much to my deepest relief and appreciation.

  For police dispatch, I’m indebted to a number of folks, including Shannon L. Barnes from the Gardner Police. I think communications officers are one of the most invaluable and overlooked members of the law enforcement community. Thank you for allowing me to share your story, wish I had even more time and space to do it justice.

  On the boxing front, I owe my deepest gratitude to three-time world champion Dick Kimber. He has shared his love of boxing with my entire family. Yes, a family that fights together, stays together. He also shared many tidbits on self-defense, including the pen trick, which I can personally assure you really, really hurts. My forearm was bruised for weeks. Thanks, Dick!

  As always, all mistakes in this novel are mine and mine alone. Hey, I gotta take credit for something.

  Now, for those of you who thought some of these characters had more stories to share, you’re right! Charlie’s shooting instructor, J. T. Dillon and his wife, Tess, first appeared in my novel The Perfect Husband. Rhode Island Sergeant Roan Griffin met his wife Jillian in The Survivors Club. Former FBI profiler Pierce Quincy, and his daughter, FBI Special Agent Kimberly Quincy, share an entire series, including The Perfect Husband, The Third Victim, The Next Accident, The Killing Hour, Gone, and Say Goodbye. Also, brief shout out for FBI healthcare fraud investigator David Riggs, who appeared in The Other Daughter. I’m sure he had no problem gathering evidence against Randi Menke’s evil ex, and only wishes he could’ve put the bad doc away for life. For more information on all the characters as well as other Lisa Gardner novels, please check out LisaGardner.com.

  As for how so many of my characters came to inhabit one novel, you may thank/blame my mother. I told her I’d come up with a great way to bring back J. T. Dillon, as I knew readers missed him. She nodded politely, then mentioned that she really wanted to see Griffin from The Survivors Club. And the more she thought about it, it’d been a long time since she’d gotten to read about Quincy or Kimberly. What about them?

  Once I got over gnashing my teeth, it occurred to me that my accountant mother had a very good idea. So this book is for you, Mom. Because you always cared and you always inspired, even if having a novelist daughter continues to bemuse you. I love you.

  Speaking of love, this book is also dedicated to the real Tulip. Adopted by her devoted family from an animal shelter sixteen years ago, Tulip has lived a grand life as one of the smartest, gentlest dogs around. Her family won the honor of including Tulip in this novel at a charity auction for the Animal Rescue League of NH-North. They said that they understood their time with Tulip was reaching an end, and they wanted to capture her unbelievable spirit, as well as immortalize one of the best dogs they’d ever known. So here’s to Tulip, who continues to inspire.

  As for other real-life fictional characters…Congratulations to Tom Mackereth and Randi Menke for winning the annual Kill a Friend, Maim a Buddy/Mate Sweepstakes at LisaGardner.com. As winners they got to nominate the person of their choice to die and/or be maimed in my next novel. They both nominated themselves. Hope you enjoy the fictional ride. As for the rest of you, the sweepstakes is up and running once mo
re. Swing by LisaGardner.com, and who knows, maybe next year, this can be you!

  Also, congratulations to Stan Miller, who won the honor at another charity auction and to Frances Beals, whose daughter Kim graciously purchased the honor for her at a benefit for the Rozzie May Animal Alliance.

  As always, my love and gratitude to my family: the husband who’s grown accustomed to a wife who stares off into space for long periods of time, and the daughter who every single day asks about the book, demanding a full accounting of what where when why and who, and then, if I’m really lucky, nods her approval. Phew!

  Finally, my deepest appreciation to not one, but two new editors extraordinaire: Ben Sevier of Dutton in the United States and Vicki Mellor of Headline in the UK. Here is to the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

  About the Author

  LISA GARDNER is the New York Times best-selling author of fourteen novels. Her Detective D. D. Warren novels include Catch Me, Love You More, Live to Tell, The Neighbor, Hide, and Alone. Her FBI profiler novels include Say Goodbye, Gone, The Killing Hour, The Next Accident, and The Third Victim. She lives with her family in New England, where she is at work on her next novel.