Lisa Gardner - Catch Me

“Eight years old,” I whispered. “Eight years old, and I already wished I were dead.”

“Tell us about your dreams,” D.D. said.

“Sometimes, I dream about a baby crying. That one feels real enough. Last night, however, I dreamed of my mother digging a grave in the middle of a thunderstorm. And her hair was filled with snakes, hissing at me, and I grabbed a baby girl out of the hall closet and ran away. Except, obviously my mom’s hair wasn’t made out of snakes, and oh yeah, there’s no way a toddler can climb a tree holding a baby, not to mention that in the dream, the baby’s name was Abigail, when of course, it was Rosalind.”

“Abigail?” Detective O asked sharply. She and Detective D.D. exchanged a glance. “Tell us about Abigail.”

I shook my head, rubbing my temples where a headache had already taken root. “You tell me. Do you have a record of an Abigail? Because I mentioned it to my aunt, and she said no. There were two babies. Rosalind and Carter. No Abigail.”

“No birth certificates, remember? No way to be sure.” D.D. was staring at me as hard as Detective O. “In your dream, what did Abigail look like?”

“Like a baby. She smiled at me. Big brown eyes.”

“Brown eyes,” Detective O interrupted. “What about blue?”

“I don’t know. In my dream, they were brown. But…maybe. Don’t all babies start with blue eyes?”

“But you remember brown,” D.D. said. “Blue eyes could darken into brown, but a baby wouldn’t start with brown eyes, that then turned blue.”

I shook my head, confused by both of them and their intensity. “My aunt said two babies, that’s all the police found.”

“It’s possible there were other babies,” D.D. said softly. “According to the police report, your mother moved around a lot, rarely spent more than a year in the same area. Probably helped her disguise the pregnancies, while keeping people from asking too many questions. The officers searched former rental units, of course, but she might have buried other remains, disposed of them in the woods, that sort of thing.”

“What kind of woman does such a thing?”

“A psychopath.” D.D. shrugged. “Munchausen’s by proxy is all about narcissism, a woman objectifying, then harming her own child in order to receive sympathy. Infanticide isn’t that much different. She would’ve viewed the pregnancies as inconvenient, maybe even considered an infant as a rival for attention. She acted accordingly.”

“What do you think, Abigail ?” Detective O spoke up.

“What?”

Detective Warren frowned at O, then turned back to me. “You ever try to find your mom?”

“No.” I hesitated, fingered my side. “I, um, I assumed something bad had happened. I know I ended up in the hospital, seriously injured. Then my aunt arrived. I never saw my mother again and my aunt never brought it up. I assumed…I assumed maybe I’d done something to her.”

“Police received a nine-one-one summons to the residence. They found you, covered in blood. Further search turned up two plastic bins with human remains in the hall closet. A warrant was issued for your mom, but she was never arrested.”

“But you said you found her.”

“You said you’ve been talking to your aunt,” O interjected, demanding my attention. “She here, visiting? Or did you talk to her by phone?”

“She’s here-”

“Where?”

“My room-”

“When did she arrive?”

“This morning.”

“What about last night?”

“What about last night?”

“Where’d you go after speaking to us yesterday? You talk to your aunt, hang out with friends, take the dog for a walk?”

“I went home. I’d worked the night before and I hadn’t slept. I was exhausted.”

“Was your landlord home?” D.D. spoke up, swinging my attention back to her. “Did she see you coming or going, can she vouch for you?”

“I don’t know. Wait. No. I had Tulip, and Tulip’s not allowed inside, but it was too cold for her outside so I snuck her in the back door.”

“Meaning no one saw you come home.” Detective O’s turn.

“That would be sneaking.”

“What about this morning?” Detective Warren again.

“I left at four-”

“A.M.?”

“Couldn’t sleep. Used to working nights remember? I went to the gym.”

“So at four A.M., people saw you.” Detective O. “But not before that.”

“I don’t know!” I threw up my hands.

“Yes, you do. You were trying not to be seen and you were successful.” Detective Warren. “Ergo, no one saw you.”

“You said you knew where my mother was!”

“I do.”

“Where?”

“She ever call you Abigail?” Detective O.

“What? No. I’m Charlene. Charlie. Just because I added two names doesn’t mean I don’t know my own.”

Detective O arched a brow. “Oh, seems to me there’s plenty you don’t know.”

“I want to know where my mother is!”

“Colorado,” D.D. said.

“You have an address?”

D.D., watching me. “In a manner of speaking.”

“I want it.”

“Don’t worry, she’s not going anywhere.”

I paused, regarded both detectives more warily. “Is it a prison? Did they finally catch her?” Then a heartbeat later. “No, because if she’d been arrested, there would’ve been a trial and someone would’ve contacted me. I would’ve been a witness.” Another hesitation, the wheels of my brain churning. “Mental hospital? She cracked, finally revealed her inner lunatic, and they locked her up.”

“You think she’s crazy?” Detective O asked.

“She hurt me. She killed two babies. Of course she’s crazy!”

“You didn’t even remember. What does that make you?”

I drew up short, staring at the young detective. And in that moment, I finally got it. Detective O wasn’t spending this conversation horrified by my mother’s actions. She was horrified by me.

The girl who lived it and barely remembered it. The girl who at least got to roam through a house, while her baby sister and baby brother lived and died in a coat closet. The girl who then stole her dead siblings’ names.

I’d spent my whole life fearing I’d hurt my mom. Now I wished I could go back and do exactly that. Maybe if I’d done such a thing, I would’ve had at least one moment in my life worth remembering, one recollection that brought comfort.

“She’s dead,” Detective Warren stated now. “Listed as a Jane Doe in Boulder. It occurred to me that she probably adopted an alias after the night she stabbed you-”

“What?”

Both detectives paused, looked at me. I placed my hand on my side, eyes widening in comprehension.

Detective O spoke up first. “Seriously? You were stabbed, and you forgot that, too?”

“I was in the hospital. They’d removed my appendix, some other…things. I remember the doctors talking.” I shrugged, feeling my inadequacy again, the depths of my self-imposed stupidity. “I understood that I’d been cut open, then stitched back up.” I shrugged again. “When you’re eight years old, does it really matter why?”

Detective O shook her head.

D.D. cleared her throat. “According to the police report, there was some kind of altercation in the house. You ended up stabbed. Your mother must have fled, because apparently you’re the one who dialed nine-one-one.”

That intrigued me, given my line of work. Again, a person can know and not know all at the same time.

“Doctors were able to patch you up, but your mother was never found. Now, given your mother’s history of moving, I figured she left the area immediately. Only way she could stay beneath the radar that long was if she adopted an alias. So I started with neighboring states and worked my way out, looking for a woman of the same approximate age and description as your mother, including a pineapple-shaped birthmark on her right buttock. Thanks to a federal initiative, descriptions of unidentified remains have been recently compiled into a national database. I found a match in Colorado. Of course, you should submit a DNA sample to be sure, but in addition to the birthmark, the body has two distinct tattoos: the name Rosalind and the name Carter, both scripted above the left breast.”