Lisa Gardner - Catch Me

“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.”

“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 wait 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.