Lisa Gardner - Catch Me

“Must be my charm.”

“Look at the n,” Detective O said after another minute. “First in the note writer’s cursive ‘everyone’ then in Charlie’s printed ‘Grant.’ Looks similar to me.”

D.D. shrugged. “Looks like an n.”

“Top arch is nice and round. The lines going up the left side of the letter and down the right side are almost exactly parallel. You write an n. See how rounded your top is and how perfectly parallel your sides are.”

For the sake of argument, D.D. gave it a try, first in cursive, then in print. Either way, her n looked dreadful. Like an upside down v. No neatly arched top, no nicely parallel sides, just a tiny, shuttered-up scrawl.

“You write like a doctor,” O declared.

“In my family, that’s a compliment.” D.D. automatically snuck a glance at her watch again. “Okay, Charlene’s n is certainly closer to the note writer’s n than mine. Now, if only those were grounds for arrest.”

“You could have the handwriting expert write up an analysis-”

“Which he’s already said won’t be admissible in court, given that graphology is considered a pseudoscience.”

“This isn’t graphology. Theorizing that the letter writer is anal-retentive is graphology. This is straightforward forensic analysis of penmanship, author of letter A most likely also wrote exhibit B.”

“But he needs multiple exhibits. Still,” D.D. amended herself, “I’ll make a copy of Charlene’s names, get him started. Might take a couple of days, however, for him to do his thing. In the meantime, we need something more tangible.”

“A smoking gun.”

“Which ironically, we just handed back to her.”

“What?”

“Her twenty-two. We had it in custody downstairs.”

“Really?”

“Really. But still can’t run a ballistics test without probable cause. I tell you those constitutional rights are making our job more difficult every day.” D.D. continued to stare down at the notes, frowning.

Rosalind Grant. Carter Grant. Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant.

Why those names? What was Charlene trying to say?

“I like her,” she murmured. “Who knew, but I actually like the girl, and would prefer not to arrest her for murder.”

Detective O sat back, steepling her hands in front of her. “Want to hand over the case? I could take the lead.”

D.D. nearly laughed. “What, don’t they keep you busy enough in sex crimes? First you want on the case, now you want to lead it.”

“I take my responsibilities seriously.”

“And I’m a slacker?”

“Well…you have other obligations now.”

“Is that the politically correct way of saying I’m a working mom?”

“Fact of life: Baby’s gotta get picked up when the baby’s gotta get picked up.”

“Another fact of life: The trick to this job isn’t working hard, it’s working smart.”

“Is that a politically correct way of saying I’m not as experienced as you?”

“Yes.”

Detective O opened her mouth. Detective O closed her mouth.

“Touché,” she said at last.

“Let’s review.” D.D. forced her gaze off the wall clock and back on her upstart new partner. “Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant. Obviously knows where the second victim, Stephen Laurent, lives, as I found her in the neighborhood. Has a permit for a twenty-two, same caliber as the murder weapon, and has stated she can hit a bull’s-eye at fifty feet.”

“Physically fit,” O supplied. “Also tiny, nonthreatening. If a pedophile opened his door to her, he wouldn’t automatically assume the worst.”

“Relatively young,” D.D. continued. “And with an almost childlike build. Even more reason for perverts not to slam the door right away.”

“She would have ability to research pedophiles through her police dispatch job. Maybe hear about them on the scanner or via incoming calls, but also, she can log on to police databases, registered sex offender lists.”

“Access to information would not be a problem,” D.D. agreed.

“And in terms of the profile developed by the graphologist-”

“Our daily dose of quack.”

“She fits the requirements of being anal-retentive.”

“Though I appreciate the help with my pictures.”

“Definitely a bit of a control freak. What’s the deal with the hair anyway? She’s not just wearing a ponytail, she’s basically seized the strands in a choke hold. And none shall ever escape.”

“Very controlled hairdo, but very sloppy clothing. Oversized, baggy. Maybe her way of trying to look larger and tougher than she really is?”

“Pretty blue eyes,” O commented. “Hair down, better clothes, she could talk her way into most men’s apartments, pedophiles or not.”

“But would she leave the puppy?” D.D. asked.

“Pardon?”

“In Stephen Laurent’s apartment. The killer left a young puppy to fend for itself. It’s one thing to kill a suspected pervert. It’s another to abandon a puppy without food or water. Charlene must have some sympathy for dogs, as it appears she’s adopted a street mutt. So would she leave the puppy behind?”

“Calculated gamble. Odds are the victim’s body will be found soon versus later, and the puppy rescued.”

“Possible,” D.D. said, but the detail bothered her. Felt not as right to her as the other variables.

“She suffered abuse as a kid,” O continued, “making it easy for her to identify with the victims.”

“She also feels powerless,” D.D. filled in. “Both of her friends have been murdered, the police have no answers, she’s convinced she’ll be the next one to die. She’s trying to prepare, but mostly, she’s waiting. Someone is about to kill her, and there’s not a thing she can do about that.”

“Whereas attacking pedophiles…”

“Would make her feel powerful. Now she’s the one in control, taking charge, righting wrongs. Pulling the trigger probably beats Xanax for anxiety reduction, that’s for sure.”

“Unless she’s the one who murdered her friends,” O pointed out.

“Possible.”

O studied her. “But you don’t think so.”

D.D. shrugged, tried to put her thought, which was really more of an instinct, into words. “As a former profiler explained to me just this morning, two murders don’t provide enough data points for thorough analysis. Who knows if Charlene is really a target, or if there will even be another murder on the twenty-first. But I believe Charlene believes it. Because of the marks on her knuckles and the fingerprints bruising her neck. She’s training that hard. She’s willing to be attacked and pummeled and choked, because she believes that’s what she needs to do in order to survive January twenty-one.”

“And assuming she believes she really will die in a matter of days…”

“Then she has some incentive to color outside the legal lines.”

“Exact vengeance for young, powerless victims everywhere.”

D.D. nodded. She looked up at O. “One thing’s for certain.”

“What?”

“If it really is Charlene Grant, she only has two days left. Given she’s probably cleared her calendar for the twenty-first, that means sometime in the next twenty-four hours…”

“Another pervert will bite the dust.”

“With the twenty-two semiauto we just returned to her.”

FOUR THIRTY P.M. Sky was already dark, snow drifted lazily outside the apartment window, and Jesse was nearly frantic.

He’d been asking to go to the Boston Public Library for, like, the whole afternoon. He’d wanted to take a bus after school, but his mother had said no. She didn’t want him on the bus in this weather, meaning there were, like, six snowflakes on the sidewalk and now the whole world had to grind to a halt.