Lisa Gardner - Catch Me

Let me tell you, a girl doesn’t work police dispatch for the money.

I thought of Officer Mackereth, felt myself flush, and reminded myself sternly I didn’t work at police dispatch for that either.

To enter HQ, I had to go through security. The first officer, a mountain of a black man, got a little excited about my. 22. I showed my license to carry, but he remained skeptical. Leave it to Massachusetts to create a gun policy so paranoid that even when you took the proper legal steps no one believed you.

Of course, I’m not sure what legal steps were taken to secure my gun permit. J.T. had done it for me, given the stringent standards. Probably called in a few favors. I never asked, unanswered questions being the whole key to my relationships.

“What do you do for a living?” the BPD officer asked me now.

“Comm officer, Grovesnor PD.”

“Oh.” His massive shoulders came down. He gave me a grudging measure of respect. Officers liked dispatch operators. We took care of them, and they knew it.

He kept my gun, handing me a tag. “You can claim it on your way out. Same with the dog.”

“You can’t take my dog.”

Officer Beefy got puffy again. “Honey, my house, my rules.” He jerked his thumb toward the glass door. “Dog goes outside; say pretty please, and I’ll keep an eye on it.”

Having now gone twenty-four hours without sleep, I didn’t take this news well.

“Look, your detective invited me here,” I informed him, beyond caring if he was three times my height and four times my weight. “This is my dog, and I’m not tying her outside in this weather or in this neighborhood. If Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren wants to see me, then she gets both of us. That’s the deal.”

“Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren?” The officer’s dark face broke into a broad grin. “Ha, good luck with that.” He motioned to the desk sergeant, sitting on the other side of the security scanner, “Got a visitor, with dog, for Detective Warren.”

“With dog?” the desk sergeant called back.

“She sniffs out doughnuts,” I informed the sergeant. “Took years of training.”

“Sounds like a Detective Warren dog,” the sergeant drawled. Tulip and I were finally allowed into the lobby, where we roamed the enormous glass-and-steel space while waiting for our date to arrive.

Urban police stations should be dingy, with yellow-stained drop ceilings and tiny barred windows, I thought crabbily. Not modern art monstrosities, boasting cavernous lobbies filled with glass and gray winter sky, let alone the wafting odor of coffee and fresh baked goods. Rather helplessly, Tulip and I followed the tempting scents to the open doors of the building’s cafeteria. I hadn’t eaten in twelve hours, and neither had Tulip, but being out of cash limited our options. As it was, Tulip and I would have to muscle our way onto the T if we wanted to get home.

D. D. Warren finally appeared at the other end of the lobby. I recognized her by the bounce in her curly blond hair and the laserlike quality of her crystalline blue eyes. She spotted me, then Tulip, and zeroed in.

“What happened to you?” she demanded. Guess I was starting to bruise.

“Boxing.”

“Aren’t you supposed to wear gloves?” She pointed to my hands, where the knuckles on both pinky fingers had turned bright purple.

“I will remind my attacker of that on the twenty-first,” I assured her.

“And the bruises around your neck?”

“Hey, you should see the other guy.”

“Legally speaking, I’m not sure you want that.”

“True.”

She stared at me a minute longer, as if trying to figure out just what kind of crazy she was dealing with today.

Then she surprised me. “Nice dog.” She held out her hand for Tulip. “I like dogs for women. One of the best lines of self-defense. Better than guns. Guns can be taken and used against you. Not a good dog.”

I shook my head. Should’ve known the detective would have a point.

“I don’t plan on having Tulip around on the twenty-first,” I informed D.D. “I’m sending her to live with my aunt.”

“Then you’re an idiot.”

“I prefer the term responsible adult.”

“Martyr.”

“Considerate friend.”

“Self-sacrificing fool.”

“Self-sufficient fighter.”

“Idiot,” Detective Warren said again.

“Are we done yet?”

“I don’t know. I find that now that I have a newborn, I appreciate adult conversation more. Want coffee?”

“Who’s buying?”

She eyed me, eyed my dog. I categorized D. D. Warren along with J. T. Dillon and his wife, Tess; like them, D.D. didn’t just look, she saw.

“Come on, my treat.”

Tulip and I followed D.D. into the cafeteria. I selected a roasted chicken sandwich for me, bread and cheese for Tulip. Then I added two cookies, a bag of chips, a cup of coffee, and a bottle of water. The detective didn’t say a word, just paid the bill.

She led us back to the desk sergeant, who gave me another look, then handed the detective my tagged. 22.

“She had this in her bag. Licensed to carry,” he informed her.

“Tattletale,” I mouthed at him.

D.D. glanced at me.

“Nothing,” I said.

She sniffed my gun. “Recently cleaned.”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Why am I helping you again?”

“I pay taxes.”

“In that case…” D.D. handed the desk sergeant my beautiful nickel-plated Taurus with its rich rosewood grip. “It’s legal, so when she’s on her way out, she can have it back.”

The desk sergeant took my gun, handed me a visitor’s pass. I snubbed my nose at him.

It’s possible I’d gone a little too long without sleep.

We went upstairs to the homicide unit, where D.D. turned on her computer and I stopped breathing for the second time that day.

RANDI’S PICTURE CAME UP FIRST. Her beautiful wheat blond hair blown out straight, one side tucked behind her right ear, long bangs swinging gracefully down the other side, drawing attention to huge, doe brown eyes. She was sitting next to a planter of pink petunias, maybe on her front porch in Providence, because I didn’t recognize the backdrop. But I felt the weight of her large, soft smile. The familiar gesture of her fingertips, brushing across the strand of pearls above the neckline of a dove gray cashmere sweater.

Her grandmother’s pearls, gifted to her on her sixteenth birthday by her parents. Jackie and I had oohed and ahhed over them. We weren’t pearl people, but we understood how much Randi loved them. We knew that she’d wear them every day, whether entertaining or gardening or grocery shopping, and look perfect doing so. And if Jackie was jealous her best friend had received such an extravagant necklace, she didn’t show it. And if I was jealous my best friend had inherited a family piece from a grandmother who’d known and loved her, I didn’t show it. We were happy she was happy.

Randi had glowed that day. She’d opened that box, and her normally quiet face lit up until she appeared even more lustrous than the pearls.

I couldn’t help it. I reached out. Touched the image on the flat monitor, as if I could still feel the warmth of my friend’s skin, feel the indent of her dimple, hear her call my name.

Charlie, Charlie, Charlie! Look at this! Can you believe it? My grandmother’s pearls. Oh, Charlie. Aren’t they beautiful?

The words came out before I could stop them. “I failed her.”

D. D. Warren was watching me. Looking and seeing. “Why do you say that?”

“I was the glue. That was my job. Jackie organized us, Randi energized us, and I…I held us together. Through petty fights and minor squabbles and all the ways three girls can become two against one. We were better together. I appreciated that. So it was my job to keep us on track, reminding us even when it was difficult that three was better than two which was better than one. Except then we turned eighteen and drifted apart.”