Lisa Gardner - Catch Me

“I hate her.” The words left my mouth before I could catch them. Once said, however, I didn’t take them back. “How dare she? First she kills her babies, then she tattoos their names above her heart? As if she loved them? As if she deserves to keep them close to her?”

I was out of the chair, pacing the conference room. My hands were fisted, I wanted a heavy bag. I wanted to punch my fist through the drywall. With any luck, I’d find a wooden stud and shatter my wrist. At this stage, I’d welcome the physical pain.

“How did she die?”

“Unknown. Body had been dead for a bit before being found, making an official ruling on cause of death difficult. According to the note from the coroner’s office, however, most likely cause of death was complications from advanced alcoholism, for example, liver failure.”

“Did it hurt? Did she suffer? Were her last moments terrible and filled with agonizing pain?”

Detective O’s eyes had widened. She stared at me as if transfixed, then leaned forward. “You’re angry.”

“Damn right!”

“Feeling helpless?”

“’Cause I didn’t get to kill her first!”

“Wishing you could change the past? Maybe go back. Would you save your sister and brother this time?”

“Yes!”

“Maybe you could save other kids. Make sure they never have to suffer the way you and your siblings did.”

“It wasn’t right. She hurt me, she suffocated them, and no one helped us. No one did a damn thing!”

“How did you know they were suffocated?” Detective Warren asked.

“I mean, I’m assuming. That’s how women normally do these things, right?”

Detective O picked up the beat. “The police failed you.”

“Yes.”

“’Course, you work with the cops now. You know that in most situations, their hands are tied.”

“Yes.”

“I mean the calls you must get, night after night. Little boys getting beaten by their fathers, little girls molested by their caretakers. What can you do, what can anyone do? Take down their name and number. Hey, little kid, your life is a living hell, let me take a message for you. Bet by the time you go home at night, you’re all fired up, itching for action. Bet you’re thinking you’re not a cop, your hands aren’t tied. You can shoot, you can hit, you can run. You can make a difference.”

Too late, I saw the trap looming. Too late, I stopped talking. Backpedaled furiously in my mind, trying to remember exactly what they’d asked and I’d answered. But, of course, I had a terrible memory and it was too little too late.

Detective O kept charging, full steam ahead. “When did you first make the decision that at least one scumbag deserved to die? How’d you pick the target? A call you took personally, a case that caught your attention? Maybe shop talk, a couple of officers, debriefing from a situation they’d encountered on duty. How little they could do, and how much it sucked, and you listened and you remembered. You knew what you didn’t want to know…your mother’s house, the containers in the closet, the way no one helped you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“How did it feel afterward, knowing you finally saved a child. Must have been quite the rush. You can tell us about it you know. I mean, we’re detectives, but we’re people, too. We get what you’re doing, why it must be done.”

I pulled myself together, chin up, shoulders back. Detective O’s eyes were probing. I forced myself to meet her stare.

“You don’t know me.”

“Oh, but I do. The question is, how well do you know yourself?”

“I’m leaving.” I grabbed my messenger bag.

“Running away.”

“Got a warrant?”

“Avoiding. Fleeing. Doing what you do best.”

“I was just a kid.”

“So how did you know they were suffocated?”

I blinked, hands clutching the straps of my messenger bag, still poised for flight, except suddenly Detective O wasn’t talking to me anymore. She was talking to D.D.

“I’ve studied Munchausen’s by proxy. Never encountered a case where the mother abused one child for attention, while secretly killing others. However, in several instances, the mom made a big fuss over being pregnant. Milked it for attention. Then, when the babies were born, suffocated them in the middle of the night, and claimed crib death. Oh, the drama, the outpouring of public support, the endless supply of neighborly casseroles. You could see how it would work with someone of that psychological makeup. How they’d even feel compelled to do it again and again.

“But never heard of a Munchausen’s mom resorting to secret infanticide. Where’s the fix, outpouring of public support, the emotional satisfaction? Makes me wonder what else Charlene fails to remember. What else she might have done.”

“I would never-”

“Look me in the eye, Charlene.” Detective O, suddenly rounding the table, walking closer. “Look me in the eye and tell me you’re not a killer.”

I opened my mouth. I closed my mouth. I opened my mouth again, and a word came out, but it wasn’t what I expected.

“Abigail,” I whispered.

“What about Abigail?”

“Abigail,” I repeated mournfully. And my hand came up. I reached out, as if to touch someone who wasn’t even there.

“Charlene-” Detective Warren began.

But I didn’t wait to hear anymore. They didn’t have a warrant. They couldn’t arrest me, they couldn’t hold me.

In the back of my mind, I realized this might be the last chance I ever had.

One year of intense training later, I sized up my opponents. Then I turned and fled.

“OH YEAH, she’ll never guess we’re onto her after that conversation. Subtle. Smooth. Confidence-building. I bet Charlene’s headed home right now to make us both friendship bracelets. What do you think?” D.D. snapped.

Detective O scowled, pulled out a chair at the conference table, and dropped into it. “She’s guilty. You know she’s guilty. Did you see her face? ‘Tell me you’re not a killer, Charlene.’ She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t do it! ”

“Crap, we’re going to have to assign a patrol car to watch her. Course, we don’t have any proof she’s a suspect, let alone the budget for a patrol officer. Double crap.” D.D. also pulled out a chair, took a seat. The manila file was in front of her. She didn’t open it. She’d studied the crime scene photos at 5 A.M., her first night away from baby Jack.

Interestingly enough, it was not the tiny skeletons that had bothered her. The finger bones the size of grains of rice. The unfused cranial plates of the little boy, collapsed into a heap like a pile of yellowed rose petals.

The girl had mummified slightly, delicate skin shrink-wrapping her tiny frame, keeping her bones more intact. At first glance, the remains appeared to be a macabre doll, complete with long dark hair. It was only upon closer inspection you realized this had once been a real baby, twelve to eighteen months old, who’d probably sat up, crawled, taken a first step.

No, it wasn’t the impossible tiny corpses that had gotten to D.D. It was the blankets. Pale pink with dark pink polka dots for her, dark blue teddy bears against a light blue background for him. First Christine Grant had murdered her children. Then she’d wrapped them up in their own baby blankets. There was something fundamentally maternal about that gesture.

Something…incredibly fucked up.

One P.M. D.D. was feeling the weight of a long night. She didn’t want to open that file again. She just wanted to go home to Jack and hold her baby close.

She pushed the folder away, pinched the bridge of her nose, and tried to figure out what to do next.