Lisa Gardner - Catch Me

For the past two weeks, I’d been trying to picture January 21. J.T. kept walking me through it-visualization as a form of preparation.

I stood in the middle of my charming little bedroom. Twin bed was pushed against the wall to the left, blond Ikea bookshelf behind me, old microwave stand topped with even older twenty-inch TV stationed beside the door. Room to move, fight, defend. Space to fully extend my arms, two-handed grip, my Taurus a natural extension of my body. My pistol was loaded with match-grade. 22-caliber long rifle, or LR, cartridges. The rounds may not pack the biggest boom, but I had nine shots to get it right.

During my twice weekly training sessions, J.T. ordered me to empty my clip every time. Never practice hesitation, he instructed me, over and over again. Evaluate the threat. Make your decision. Commit to defend.

I still couldn’t picture January 21. Mostly, I remembered the police reports-no sign of forced entry, no sign of a struggle.

You gotta see him coming , Detective Warren had said this afternoon. You gotta welcome him with a smile.

I holstered my Taurus, donned my heavy black coat, and headed for work.

THE DOG THAT WAS NOT MY DOG was waiting for me on the front porch. The rear of Frances’s narrow lot was barricaded by a five-foot-high wooden fence; otherwise I was pretty sure the dog would wait at the back door for me. She was that smart.

I called her Tulip. She’d started hanging around six months ago. No collar, no tags. At first she’d just followed me down the street when I went for my afternoon runs. I figured she was hungry, hoping for a treat. But back in those days, I never gave her anything. Not my dog, not my problem. I just wanted to exercise.

So Tulip started to run. All five miles, tongue lolling out, sleek white-and-tan body pounding out the miles. Afterward, it seemed cruel not to provide at least a bowl of water. So we sat together on the front porch. She drank a bowl. I drank a bottle. Then she sprawled beside me and put her head on my lap. Then, I stroked her ears, her graying muzzle.

She looked like some kind of hound. Harrier, Frances had muttered one day. When I looked it up on the library’s computer, the breed turned out to be a small to mid-sized English hound dog. Tulip shared many of the markings-a short tan coat with white stockinged legs and broad white collar. Wire whip tail, floppy ears, broad, handsome face. Tulip was definitely an older dog. A grand dame who’d been there and done that. The stories she could tell, I figured, and knew exactly how she felt.

Tonight, Tulip sat in the middle of the covered porch, away from the snow. She was a very patient dog; Frances said she sometimes sat there for hours waiting for me.

I hadn’t seen her for several days-that’s the problem with a dog that’s not your dog. I didn’t know where she went, or even if she had another home. Sometimes, I saw her daily; sometimes a couple times a week. I guess I got to practice patience, too.

She was shivering when I came around, and immediately I felt bad.

“You can’t keep doing this,” I told her, rounding the corner, watching her rise in greeting and wag her whiplike tail. “January is no time to be homeless in Boston.”

Tulip looked at me, whined a little.

I’d started buying bags of dog food five months back. She was just so skinny, and then when she kept running like that…The first vet visit was two weeks later. No fleas, no ticks, no heartworm. The vet gave her shots, gave me Frontline, then wrote up a bill that made my. 22 semiauto look cheap.

I paid. Worked some overtime. Kept running with the dog that was not my dog. Started pouring dry food into a bowl.

I had a Baggie of food in my pocket, had filled it when Frances had told me Tulip was waiting on the porch. Now I emptied the kibble on the front porch. Tulip advanced gratefully. She looked skinnier to me. I saw a fresh mark near her hindquarters, a tear on her right ear.

I’d put up posters in the fall, trying to see if anyone had lost a dog. I’d even spent precious cash on an ad in the local paper. Once, I’d called animal control, but when the officer started to ask me too many questions, I panicked. I just wanted to know if Tulip had a real home, somewhere where she was loved and missed and needed to get back to. Because I understood that sort of thing, felt it myself.

But I didn’t want her carted off to a pound, then killed, just because somewhere along the way she’d become her own creature instead of someone else’s.

“You need a coat,” I murmured to her now, smoothing back her ears and scratching the heavier folds of skin around her neck. She leaned against me, pressed against my legs, and I could feel her body shiver again. Nineteen degrees and dropping. Couldn’t take her inside, ’cause my landlady would kill us both. But couldn’t leave her outside, quaking with the cold.

I checked to see how much cash I had in my wallet. Enough, I figured.

Then I looked down at the dog that was not my dog, still leaning against me, her eyes closed as she exhaled her exhaustion and worry over some misadventure I’d never know.

“This has to be our secret,” I told her seriously.

I hailed a cab and both of us went to work.

“NINE-ONE-ONE. Please state the nature of your emergency.”

No response.

I studied my ANI ALI monitor in front of me, as the information started to scroll. “Nine-one-one,” I repeated, shifting slightly in my desk chair. “Please state the nature of your emergency.”

“I got a big butt,” a male voice said.

I sighed. Like I hadn’t heard that one before. “I see. And this enlarged gluteus maximus resides at ninety-five West Carrington Street?”

“Dude!” the voice said. Laughter in the background. Giggles really. This is what happens, I reminded myself, when you work graveyard shift.

I continued, in a professional manner: “And does this enlarged posterior belong to Mr. Edward Keicht?”

“Man, how did you know?”

“Sir, are you aware that when you dial nine-one-one, your name and address appears on our monitors?”

Awestruck silence. “No way, dude!” Apparently, Mr. Keicht had been imbibing a little more than just beer this evening.

“And are you aware that a prank call to nine-one-one is a felony offense that could land you in jail?”

“Cool!”

“Say hi to the nice policeman at your door, Mr. Keicht.”

“All right!”

“And remember, this is your brain on drugs.”

I clicked off line one, then contacted one of my officers to do the deed. All calls to nine-one-one required an officer response. Hence that whole felony offense thing. In approximately three to five minutes, Mr. I Got a Big Butt wasn’t gonna be feeling so grand about life.

One twenty A.M. My twin monitors remained blank, the phone lines quiet. Not too bad a night, but then it was only Wednesday. Call patterns had a tendency to pick up as the week went on. Friday and Saturday were madness, a deluge of domestic assaults, drunken disorderlies, and OUIs. Sunday around five was the second busiest time. The witching hour, we called it: five o’clock being the hour when most noncustodial parents were required to return the 2.2 children to the custodial parent. Except judging purely by call volume, feuding parents enjoyed screwing with each other more than being responsible caretakers. By 5:01, we’d have the first call and the first officer involved in the weekly game of “No, ma’am, you may not shoot off his balls just because he’s two minutes late,” to be followed shortly by “Sir, a visitation agreement is a legal document; I suggest you read it.”

I tried to avoid Sundays. Domestic disputes made everyone cranky-the callers, my officers, me.