Lisa Gardner - Catch Me

“I confronted Charlene Grant the moment she walked in the door,” Grovesnor PD Lieutenant Dan Shepherd continued. “Said there’d been reports of her bringing a firearm to work and that was against department policy. She said I was mistaken; she’d brought a dog to work. It wouldn’t happen again.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake!”

“She let me inspect her bag. No sign of a twenty-two, Detective. Game over.”

“And that’s what happens when you fuck up an interview,” D.D. murmured, more to herself than Shepherd. “Overplay your hand, spook the subject, walk away with nothing. I’m going to have ‘I Told You So’ tattooed backwards across Detective O’s forehead, so that in the future, when she’s about to question someone, she can first study herself in the mirror.”

“Excuse me?” Shepherd said.

“Just thinking out loud. Did you pull Charlene’s time cards?” Earlier in the day, when D.D. had called Shepherd about the possibility one of his civilian employees was carrying, she’d also asked him to check Charlene’s work schedule against the first two shootings. Douglas Antiholde had been shot January 9. They were still awaiting exact TOD on the second victim, Stephen Laurent, but probably somewhere around January 11 or 12.

“Charlene pulled graveyard the ninth of January,” Shepherd reported now.

“Eleven P.M. start?”

“Yep. Eleven P.M. start, seven A.M. finish.”

D.D. nodded against the phone receiver, adjusting Jack slightly in her arms for comfort. Antiholde had been shot late afternoon, early evening. Plenty of time for Charlene to have pulled the trigger and still been on time for work.

“She also worked graveyard on Jan eleven, with OT that kept her till noon.”

“She worked a thirteen-hour shift?”

“Sixteen hours is the maximum.”

“Gee, sounds like detective’s hours right there.”

“Police dispatch is not for the faint at heart,” Shepherd commented. “Now Jan twelve was Charlene’s night off, which was another reason she probably worked so late.”

“’Kay.” D.D. would have to follow up with the ME, Ben, to better pinpoint Laurent’s time of death. Given the location of the Grovesnor PD, earliest Charlene could’ve made it to Laurent’s neighborhood would’ve been one P.M., and that’d be pushing things.

Meaning, the way these things went, Charlene had no alibi for the first victim and the third victim, but remained a maybe for victim number two.

D.D. had pursued many suspects with less. She returned to the more pressing matter at hand. “You ever hear Charlene talk about bringing a gun to work?”

“Of course not. I would’ve addressed the situation immediately.”

“She talk much about her past, how she grew up?”

“Detective, graveyard is a solo shift. Working alone by definition discourages idle chitchat.”

“What about the other officers on duty?”

“They’re paid to patrol, not hang at the station.”

“What about breaks? Dinner break, lunch, whatever the hell you call a middle-of-the-night meal?” She started to build Charlene’s shift schedule in her head, looking for opportunities for the girl to, say, sneak out and commit homicide, without anyone noticing.

“One thirty-minute meal break. Most brown bag it, eating in their patrol cars or, in Charlene’s case, at her desk.”

“That’s it? Per eight hours?”

“Two fifteens, which half our officers use to grab a smoke. Not Charlene, if memory serves. She’s the fitness buff.”

“What if she has to pee?”

“She declares code ten-six, takes a comfort break.”

“But if she’s the only one on duty, who covers the phone?”

“Working supervisor, generally a uniformed sergeant.”

“So there is someone else who works with her at night.”

“True. But the sergeant sits in the main station, whereas the comm center is its own enclosed space, basically a former closet now bristling with monitors, phones, and radios.”

“Would you know if she left the comm center? For example, had clocked in, but left the station?”

“Not possible.”

“Why? According to you, she and the sergeant can’t even see each other.”

“But they hear each other. Charlene backs up all patrol officers. Meaning, they not only check in with her during their shifts, but she checks in with them if she hasn’t heard them on the airwaves. Calls out their patrol number, makes sure each officer is accounted for. Nine twenty-six to dispatch, nine twenty-six to dispatch, that sort of thing. How long has it been since your patrol days, Detective?”

“A while.”

“Airwaves are never quiet. Even on graveyard, Charlene’s job is to be talking and listening. And our headsets aren’t so cutting edge she can wear them out into the parking lot and still get reception, let alone down the street.”

“So when Charlene’s on the job, she’s on the job.”

“Exactly.”

D.D. pursed her lips, considering. Made sense, and didn’t destroy their case one way or another.

“Can I ask you a question?” Shepherd spoke up now.

“Sure.”

“Why are you investigating our comm officer? I mean, I don’t have the opportunity to work with Charlie directly, but I can tell you, she’s good. She’s reliable, trustworthy, takes care of our officers. We like her.”

“From what she says, none of you even know her.”

“Graveyard isn’t for social butterflies.”

“You background her?”

“Course.”

“Anything stand out?”

“She had a good recommendation from Colorado-”

“What?”

“Arvada, Colorado. Her first dispatch job.”

D.D. felt a chill. “How close is Arvada to Boulder?”

“Hell if I know. I’m from Revere.”

D.D. pursed her lips, mind racing. Charlene’s dead mother, the unidentified body found in Boulder. Charlene, hearing that news today, never even mentioning she’d lived in the same state. What were the odds of that?

Not to mention that in the past ten years, Charlene’s mother and two best friends had all died. Meaning one woman had left behind a trail of three dead bodies across multiple states. Seemed to D.D. that it was pretty risky to know Charlene Grant these days. Heightened your odds of meeting an untimely demise, and even worse, given Charlene’s fickle powers of recollection, she wouldn’t remember you afterward.

You can both know things and not know things, Charlene had said. Coping mechanism for the childhood-challenged.

Multiple personalities, each remembering only its individual piece of the puzzle, Detective O had countered. Explaining Charlene’s spotty memory, conflicting notes within notes, the girl’s seeming ability to mourn some murders while committing others.

D.D. turned over both Charlene’s statements and O’s theory in her head, not liking either of them.

“I want that gun,” she murmured in frustration.

“Sorry, Detective. Did my best.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” D.D. asked a couple of more questions, talked a little shop, and then, when she had nothing else to show for her efforts, ended the call.

Jack was asleep, bottle lying to one side of his swaddled form. She rose from the rocking chair, placed the empty bottle on the coffee table, and took a moment to hold her son close.

She cleared her head of the case. She let go of Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant and pedophile shooters and BFF murderers.

She held her baby. She inhaled the sweet scents of formula and talcum powder and newborn innocence. She watched her son’s little chest rise and fall. Admired the scrunched up lines of his face, his ten perfect little fingers curled into two loose fists.

She marveled at the tiny miracle that was her child.