Lisa Gardner - Catch Me

“Why my parents?”

“Basic background.”

“My mother’s dead. My father’s not part of my life. Don’t think it’s relevant.”

The good detective wasn’t going to let me off that easy. “Didn’t you come to me for help?”

I looked at her.

“You were standing outside my crime scene,” she continued, and this time there was an edge of challenge in her voice. “You said you were there because you Googled me. Though, now that I think about it, you never approached me. You were walking away. I ran you down.”

“I wasn’t going to approach you.”

“But you said-”

“I just wanted to see you. I wasn’t, I didn’t,” I waved my hand around her office defensively. “I never expected any of this. You’re my precaution built into a precaution. I figured I’d write you a letter, provide details on my own case. That way, if I didn’t get it done on the twenty-first, you’d have a better shot at finally catching the guy on the twenty-second. You’d provide justice for my aunt, closure for Randi and Jackie’s families. I wasn’t researching you for me. I was studying you for them.”

D.D. narrowed her eyes. “Two of your friends have been murdered,” she stated bluntly. “You believe you will be the third.”

“Yes.”

“So you’ve left behind your home, the people who know you. You’re hiding out in the big city, no registered phone or utilities. You have no computer, no e-mail, no Internet footprint to trace. But you’ve kept your name.”

I had my chin up. “Can’t change everything.”

“You’re training, boxing, running, shooting. Preparing to make your last stand. But you’re going to send the dog away.”

“Yes.”

“And maybe you looked me up, but it was never with the mind-set of asking for help before the twenty-first. Not to mention, you’re a woman with a target on your back who hasn’t asked her own officers for assistance.”

I didn’t say anything, just returned her steely blue stare.

“Can’t figure you out, Charlene,” she drawled at last. “You trying to live January twenty-one? Or are you trying to die?”

“I don’t want to die.”

“But do you want to live ?”

I remained silent. D.D.’s gaze dropped to my scarred hand, and in those fine white lines, I figured she read the answer.

Earlier today, Tess had said that adults could change, that children grew up. But some things in life were very hard to transform. For example, taking the little girl who’d once stood there passively while her mother ironed her fingertips and training her how to throw a punch. Or taking the same little girl, who’d willfully chewed and swallowed a shattered lightbulb, and teaching her how to pull the trigger.

I was trying to move forward. Some days were certainly better than others. But in the end, I’d only had 363 days as a fighter. I’d experienced far more as the victim, the child who did whatever her mother wanted her to do, because that was the price of love, and that little girl had lived too little and loved too hard and lost too much.

“Names please,” Detective Warren said, and gestured to the blank piece of paper.

I took my time, mostly because my hands were shaking. I formed each letter carefully, wanting the result to be neat and legible. I wrote two names, following an instinct I couldn’t explain, but that felt right.

I took one last moment, to study my carefully printed letters.

Then, I handed over the piece of paper.

I collected my dog.

I collected my gun.

Three P.M. Thursday afternoon. Fifty-three hours and counting.

Tulip and I headed out into the city’s stark, snow-frosted landscape.

DETECTIVE O WAITED until Charlene had exited the homicide unit, then she returned to D.D.’s office, closed the door, and collapsed in the desk chair across from her.

“Could we really be that lucky?” she asked, her voice incredulous. “I mean, is it just me, or is Charlene Grant a perfect fit for our shooter?”

“Don’t know if it’s luck,” D.D. mused, frowning. “Remember, I first encountered her outside the second homicide. When I ran her down, she claimed she was checking me out to handle her own case. But maybe that was just fast thinking on her part. She offered up her own troubled history to distract me from the fact she was loitering outside an active crime scene.”

“What’s with her hands and throat? Looks like she’s been mugged-”

“Training.”

“So she really thinks someone will try to kill her on the twenty-first?”

“Randi Menke and Jackie Knowles really are dead.”

Detective O paused. Then her eyes widened. “Motivation. Think about it. Charlene’s police dispatch. She takes the calls, she hears these kids. Maybe she wants to help them, but she’s not sure how. In the meantime, she’s boxing, shooting-”

“Gaining skills.”

“And, even more importantly, counting down to her own death. Meaning, at a certain point, what does she have to lose? ”

D.D. stilled, regarded the other detective. “Charlene decides to do something with the limited time she feels she has left. Maybe right some past wrongs, given a history of child abuse.”

“She’s saving other kids,” O continued. “Doing what she no doubt wishes someone had done for her, when she was that age, and Mommy Dearest was pulling out the insulin.”

“Insulin?”

“Oh, other case I worked. Evil stepfather, actually. A diabetic. Came up with the idea to inject his beautiful twin stepdaughters with insulin. Their blood sugar would crash, rendering them semi-comatose, he’d do what he was going to do, then squirt spray cans of frosting into their mouths to bring their blood sugar back up. Later, after he’d perfected his technique, he’d leave cans of frosting out on the counter just to mess with their heads.”

D.D. stared at her. “Your job sucks.”

“No,” the young detective said seriously. “The cases suck. My job, putting evil stepfather away for twenty years and ensuring those little girls will never be hurt again, pretty much fucking rocks. Which you, of all people, I’d think would understand.”

“Touché. So, back to the matters at hand. Motivation. Means. Opportunity. Yeah, Charlie looks pretty good as a vigilante killer right now.” D.D. glanced down at the piece of paper in her hand, unfolding it and holding it out to Detective O. “Handwriting, however, is not a perfect match.”

“No flat edge,” O agreed, taking the paper. “Then again, she had to execute her penmanship with both of us watching. Girl’s not stupid. If she did write the other notes, you’d think she’d take some steps to make her handwriting look different.”

“She wrote in print here, not cursive like the notes, but check it out, the letters are neat in appearance, carefully formed.” D.D. turned toward one stack of paperwork on her desk. She couldn’t help glancing at her watch, simultaneously aware of the amount of work she still had to do and of her parents’ flight landing in a matter of hours. She rifled through the pile of papers until she found what she was looking for, scanned copies of both notes left at the shootings.

Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave.

She pulled the copies, placing them on the blue-gray carpeted floor between her and O. O positioned Charlene’s recent writing exhibit between the other two sheets, and both peered down.

“Rosalind Grant,” O read. “Carter Grant. Who are they?”

“Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant,” D.D. recited Charlene’s full name. “Maybe her middle names are in honor of her mother and father?”

“I thought she wasn’t going to give us her parents’ names.”