Lisa Gardner - Catch Me

“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 her 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.”