Lisa Gardner - Catch Me

“Or Want to see my new puppy ,” D.D. murmured.

“Second victim,” O filled in. “Stephen Laurent. Yep, come see my puppy would do the trick. And most kids are easily manipulated. They are receiving an e-mail from a perceived friend, so they say yes. They show up at what they think is another kid’s house, to see a puppy, except there’s a grown man there. But there’s also the puppy, and they’ve been trained not to be rude to adults, so even if they’re uncomfortable, even if in the back of their mind they think maybe they shouldn’t…” She shrugged. “They go along. Things we’ve trained our children to do without the help of computers.”

D.D. felt ill. She was accustomed to analytically discussing crime. But now she kept seeing Jack, except five years from now, and she and Alex were taking the time to raise him in the right neighborhood with the right locks on the door and attending the right kind of school, except the minute he went online…Her son would disappear down a virtual rabbit hole, with dark alleys and seedy strangers everywhere, except the dark alleys would be dressed up as brightly colored computer screens and the seedy strangers would be cute little bunnies with names like ILuvSk8boardingInHarvardSquare. Dear Lord.

“Do you have kids?” D.D. asked Ellen O.

The detective’s face was serious. “Are you kidding? I go around spouting facts like 40 percent of girls ages twelve to seventeen have been solicited by a stranger online. Doesn’t really go over well on dates. Or at cocktail parties for that matter. Then, should someone pull out a smartphone while I’m in the room…Let’s just say, at least my cats still hang with me.”

D.D. hadn’t thought of that, but it rang true. O had a head filled with the kind of boogeyman stories no one wanted to hear. D.D. was a homicide detective, and even she wasn’t sure how much of this she could take. It made her feel too powerless, as a mom and a cop.

“So,” D.D. ventured, “you’re saying Antiholde’s computer log proves he was an online predator?”

“Profile fits.”

“And Stephen Laurent?”

“I’d like to glance at his Internet log, but figured I should get your permission first.”

“I’d like you to look at his Internet log, too,” D.D. agreed. “At the moment, we’re searching for any kind of link between the two victims-”

“Pedophiles.”

“Murder victims. If they both frequent these websites you’re talking about…”

“Question becomes,” O said, “how’d their cover get blown? I mean, online, they’re gonna appear like any other user, an excited kid. Except someone figured out who they were and what they were doing.”

“Victim in common?” D.D. guessed. “Someone who knows the victim?”

She was thinking of the forensic handwriting expert she’d talked to last night, Dembowski’s theory that their shooter was an anal-retentive female. D.D. didn’t say anything, however. She didn’t want to contaminate the investigation with an assumption, and apparently graphology itself was riddled with assumptions, not to mention the assumption that the person who left the note was the same person who shot Stephen Laurent. Which brought her to another question. She regarded Detective O.

“You read the crime scene report of the first shooting, Antiholde?”

“Yep, late last night.”

Ah, the good old days, when work didn’t shut off at five.

“Any documentation of a note from the shooter?” D.D. asked.

“What do you mean?”

“When I left the Stephen Laurent scene, I found a note on my car. I’m wondering if it was from the shooter.”

Ellen O frowned. “What’d the note say?”

“Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave.”

“Oh. Oh, oh oh . Hang on. Wait here.”

O dashed off. D.D. sat there, wondering what was up. Sixty seconds later, O was back with some crime scene photos. One showed the victim, Douglas Antiholde. Another showed a close-up of the contents of his pants pocket, including loose change, a paper clip, and a crumpled piece of torn yellow legal pad paper that had been smoothed out enough to read: Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave.

Writing was script, with a flattened bottom, every letter precisely shaped.

“I’ll be damned,” D.D. murmured.

“Serial shooter, targeting pedophiles,” Detective O declared triumphantly. “I’m in!”

“Are you ever,” said D.D. “And good luck with that. Good luck to us all.”

I DREAMED OF MY MOTHER.

She stood at the counter in a tiny brown-and-gold kitchen, curtain of dark hair obscuring her pinched face as she crooned to herself. “Sugar and spice and everything nice, that’s what little girls are made of.”

In my dream, I was three years old, crammed into a high chair meant for a baby, my back plastered to the sticky vinyl seat, while a white plastic strap, splattered with dried eggs and fuzzy oatmeal, jammed into my tummy hard enough to hurt.

I wanted out. I whimpered, whined, fussed, and fidgeted. If I could just get my quick little hands on the buckles, I could escape. But I’d done that before. I had a memory of getting out, so she’d changed the straps, and now the buckles were in the back of the sticky seat and I was trapped and uncomfortable, and even though I was hungry, I didn’t want to be there anymore.

My mother had a lightbulb in her hand. She’d taken it from the chipped white lamp in the family room. Unscrewed it, while singing softly to herself.

“Sugar and spice and everything nice, that’s what little girls are made of.”

My mother placed the lightbulb in a blue plastic bowl, picked up a large metal spoon, and slammed down hard. A faint tinkling sound. The older me, the real me, and not the trapped three-year-old version of me, understood the sound was the lightbulb shattering.

The three-year-old trapped me simply watched with big blue eyes as my mother ground the lightbulb, all the while singing, singing, singing.

Then, she looked up at me and smiled.

Next to the bowl was a jar of peanut butter. Now my mother unscrewed the lid. Now she scooped out a big spoonful. Now she placed the peanut butter in the blue plastic bowl with the shattered lightbulb. And stirred.

“Sugar and spice and everything nice,” my mother declared. “That’s what little girls are made of.”

She crossed to the high chair. She placed the bowl on the too-tight white tray. Plopped it down on a piece of congealed egg. I could hear the squishy, popping sound of yolk smooshing against the bowl.

My mother was dressed up. She had gloss on her lips, color on her cheeks. Her brown hair was freshly washed. She’d taken the time to brush it until it fell long and shiny halfway down her back, a waterfall of shimmering brown-red silk.

I wanted to touch that hair. Hold it in my fist. Feel this softer, shinier version of my mother.

My mother looked pretty. It both fascinated and terrified me.

“Sugar and spice and everything nice,” my mother singsonged. “Oh, but Charlie honey, nice girls finish last. You don’t want to be last. The world wants brave little girls, tough little girls. Sugar and spice and broken glass, that’s what little girls should be made of.”

She scooped up the first spoonful of peanut butter. “Here comes the airplane. Come on, Charlie. Be a good girl for your mommy. Open up. Here comes the airplane, into the hangar, vroom, vroom, vroom…”

LATER I VOMITED BLOOD. We went to the emergency room. The nurses rushed me in, fussed all over me. I was poked, prodded, the doctor flashed a light in my eyes. I held my stomach and whimpered. But I didn’t cry. Good girls were brave. Good girls were tough.