Lisa Gardner - Catch Me

Kimberly seemed to consider the matter. “What about leaking info?”

“You mean crime scene details?”

“I mean fake crime scene details, maybe a criminology report. Something unflattering. No, I take that back. Something…messy. Our killer likes to be in control, yes? Neat, tidy, thorough. What if you reveal something about the Knowles scene the killer missed. Something that’s now a possible lead in the investigation. Get the killer feeling defensive, second-guessing him- or herself.”

“Get inside his or her head,” D.D. murmured.

“Turnabout is fair play.”

“Got an idea for a detail?”

Kimberly hesitated. “I’d ask my father. He knows both scenes, he was a profiler. Messing with criminal minds. Hell, he’ll love this. Give him a call.”

“Thank you.”

“Not a problem. Keep me posted. Especially on the twenty-first.”

“Will do. Good luck with your growing girls.”

“Good luck with your baby boy.”

Both women sighed, hung up their phones.

I WAS LATE FOR MY GRAVEYARD SHIFT. First time ever. Couldn’t help myself.

I’d had to race all the way to the T stop. Then wait for the train to return me to Cambridge. Then run another seven minutes, snotty-nosed and watery-eyed, all the way back to my one-bedroom rental. Mrs. Beals wasn’t home, but Tulip was sitting on the front porch.

I didn’t even stop to think about it. I scooped up the warm, solidly packed body of the dog that was not my dog and buried my face into the sleek folds of her neck. Tulip leaned her head against my shoulder. I could feel her sigh, as if releasing a great strain herself. So we stood like that, my arms cradling her body, her head on my shoulder.

Maybe I cried a little more. Maybe she licked the tears from my cheeks. Maybe I told her I loved her. And maybe she thumped her tail to let me know that she loved me, too.

I carried Tulip to my bedroom. Didn’t care anymore if Frances discovered and kicked me out. So little time left. What did it matter anymore? So little time left.

Stan Miller. Metal rods, protruding through his massive frame. The blood, dripping down the corners of his mouth. Sightless eyes, forever staring at me.

I tucked Tulip in my room with a bowl of food, then retreated down the hall for a long hot shower. I scrubbed and scrubbed. Shampooed, rinsed, conditioned. Did it all over again.

Was it just my imagination, or could I still smell the gunpowder on my fingertips? I searched my naked body for other signs of the evening’s activities. Blood, bruising, something. I felt altered on the inside, ergo it made sense the outside should change as well.

But…nothing. My leather shooting gloves had done their job and protected my boxing-battered hands as I’d careened down the fire escape. My heavy winter wardrobe had done its job and guarded my already battle-scarred skin as I’d dropped and rolled. Even my ankle felt almost fine, a minor twist that had quickly recovered.

When I got out of the shower, I cleared the steam from the mirror to confirm what I already knew.

I had just killed a man, and I looked absolutely, positively the same as I had before.

Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant meet Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant.

Loving niece, loyal friend, respected dispatch officer, and stone cold murderer.

I started shaking again, so I returned to the shower, cranking up the water as hot as it would go, but still not beating the chill.

ELEVEN FOURTEEN P.M. Tulip and I caught a taxi to work.

Second-to-last shift.

Sixty-eight hours, forty-five minutes.

I kept my arms around the dog that wasn’t my dog and didn’t let go.

“BABY’S CRYING.”

“Wh-wh-what?”

“Baby’s crying. Down the hall. Crying and crying and crying. Nothing helps. Dunno…” A shaky sigh. “Dunno, dunno, dunno. Please, ma’am, tell me how to make it stop.”

Sitting alone in the glow of multiple monitors and a muted TV screen, I rubbed my face and forced myself to focus. Crying baby. Overwhelmed new parent. One of dispatch’s top ten calls. Protocol was to establish basic physical health of newborn and basic mental health of new parent. If both seemed okay, then remind caller that 911 was for emergencies, not for parenting tips, before disconnecting.

I didn’t disconnect my caller. It had been a relatively quiet shift, the police scanner filled with chatter about one major crime, already being handled, with no other emergencies coming down the pike. And I understood, like a lot of dispatch operators who sat alone in darkened comm centers at 2 A.M., that sometimes people just needed to talk.

So I let my caller talk. I learned the name of her nine-month-old baby girl, Moesha. I learned that the baby’s father worked graveyard for a janitorial service company. I learned that my caller, nineteen-year-old Simone, was still hoping to get her GED and wanted to be a vet tech someday. She’d been excited to get pregnant, still held out dreams of getting married. But her baby daughter cried most nights and it was getting tough, and now the baby’s dad was being a jerk and Simone just wanted to go shopping with her friends, but she didn’t have any money and her boyfriend said she was too fat to buy new clothes and why didn’t she wait till she lost all the baby weight, and yo, when might that be?

Simone talked. Simone cried. Simone talked some more.

I sat and listened and stroked Tulip’s head.

Simone talked herself down. Call ended. Screen went blank.

I sat in the dark, smoothing Tulip’s floppy ears.

“Baby’s crying,” I whispered to Tulip.

She gazed up at me.

“Down the hall.”

Tulip placed her head in my lap.

“I screwed up, Tulip. All those years ago, in my mother’s house…I failed that baby. And that’s why I don’t think about my mother anymore. I don’t want to remember. Not that it matters anymore, does it? Too little, too late.”

Tulip nosed my hand.

I smiled down at her, stroked her head. “Funny, I’ve spent a whole year planning, preparing, and strategizing for my last stand. And in the end, I’m probably gonna die just like everyone else-filled with a list of unfinished business.”

Tulip whined softly. I leaned down, put my arms around her neck.

“I’m going to send you up north,” I promised her. “You’ll get to live with my aunt Nancy, become a B-and-B dog. And the mountains are beautiful and filled with paths to run and squirrels to chase and rivers to swim. You’ll like it up there. I certainly did.”

I held her closer. “Remember me,” I whispered.

Tulip sighed heavily.

I knew exactly how she felt.

DOOR OPENED SHORTLY THEREAFTER. A dark figure appeared, backlit by the hall light, and it jolted me from my chair. I sprang up, into an automatic pugilist stance, while my desk chair flew across the tiny space.

Officer Mackereth flipped on the light.

“You always work in the dark?” he asked gruffly. He was dressed in his uniform, duty belt clasped around his waist. I’d checked the roster when I started my shift, so I knew he was working tonight. I also knew he’d been called in earlier, along with a dozen other officers, to help handle a homicide in the Red Groves housing project. Dead black male, skewered on a collapsed fire escape of a tenement housing building. Messy scene, according to the radio chatter. The crime scene techs had finally used blowtorches to sever the metal rods in Stan Miller’s body from the fire escape. Then the ME had hauled away the corpse, still shish-kebabbed, in an extra large ambulance the city had recently purchased for transporting extra large patients.

I dropped my hands to my side, flexed my fingers. I wanted to move farther away, but the desk kept me in place. The single-person comm center was strictly utilitarian. Seven feet wide, seven feet deep. The PD’s handicap-accessible unisex bathroom was larger.