Lisa Gardner - Catch Me

D.D. moved on with her analysis: Shooter was most likely someone the victim knew. Victim not only opened the door, but let the unknown subject into his apartment. Furthermore, sitting at the kitchen table implied hospitality. Would you like something to drink, that sort of thing.

D.D. crossed to the kitchen sink. Sure enough, two chipped blue mugs sat inside the grimy stainless steel basin. With gloved hands, she lifted the first mug and peered inside. No noticeable dried residue, so either a clear liquid or the mugs were rinsed.

She returned the mugs, which would be bagged and tagged by the evidence techs, then did a double take.

Mugs had been rinsed, then placed in the sink? Because nothing else inside the apartment looked like it had been rinsed, wiped, or otherwise tended in at least six months. The countertops were sticky and grungy. Ditto with the urine-splattered floor, grime-covered floorboards, and stained walls.

She glanced back at the wooden table, which also appeared suspiciously pristine. She ran a gloved finger along the battered surface. Old yes, battle-scarred definitely, but clean. So two mugs rinsed, one wooden table wiped.

She looked up at Neil, who was smiling even more broadly now.

“Shooter cleaned up after himself,” she murmured.

He wouldn’t reply, but given his terrible poker face, he didn’t have to.

Next up, D.D. wrenched open the refrigerator door. She discovered an opened can of dog food that smelled even worse than the rest of the apartment, a six-pack of beer, wine coolers, Hostess Twinkies, containers of leftover Chinese, half a dozen condiments, and the remains of a rotisserie chicken dated ten days prior.

So the victim liked fast food and had a sweet tooth.

D.D. tried some of the cupboards, discovering paper products in lieu of plates, plastic products in lieu of silverware, as well as multiple shelves of chips, crackers, cereals, and store-bought cookies. Last cupboard seemed to be for the dog-bags of dry puppy food, plus more canned food.

D.D. continued to build her mental profile. Middle-aged single white male, living a bachelor life in a low-income housing project.

Why this building? White guy had to stand out, feel uncomfortable. Lonely? Was that why he got a puppy? But he entertained. Had someone here, whom he invited in for a drink, perhaps, maybe come over, see my new puppy. Have a drink, have a snack.

D.D. got that feeling. It was a distinct physical sensation that started at the base of a good detective’s spine, before zipping straight up the vertebrae to the back of her neck, where the tiny hairs stood up and made her shiver.

She glanced at Neil, who beamed larger.

“No fucking way!” she said.

“Way.”

“What’s Phil found?”

“Don’t know about the computer, but we already discovered two shoeboxes of photos tucked beneath the bed.”

“Is the vic in the system?”

“No hits thus far, though we’re still running his name and prints through the national database.”

“But the photos?”

“All boys, all under the age of twelve, mostly black, but other ethnicities as well. I’d say he selected his victims based on opportunity, rather than race.”

“Son of a bitch!” D.D. exclaimed. “He’s a pedophile. Set up shop right in the middle of his target population-unloved, unsupervised, highly vulnerable kids. Gets their attention when he’s walking his puppy, then invites them up for a cookie, chips, a bottle of beer. Son of a bitch.”

“D.D.”

She glared at the dead guy, the twin holes in his forehead, the melted wax face. “Kid struck back,” she muttered, then considered the carefully wiped down surfaces. “Or maybe a parent or an older sibling or a friend. Someone got wise, then he got dead. Good.”

“D.D.”

“What?”

“It gets better.”

“What’s better than one less pervert in the city?”

Phil came walking out of the bedroom, snapping off his gloves. “You tell her yet?” he asked Neil.

“Tell me what?”

“You were on maternity leave,” Phil said, as if that explained everything.

“Tell me what!”

“Not one less pervert in the city,” Neil said happily. “Mr. Wanna See My Puppy over there makes two.”

PHIL AND NEIL HAD TO WALK HER THROUGH IT. It was four weeks back, meaning Jack had been six weeks old, a plump little form that spent his days curled up on her chest, feeling like a hot water bottle except fragile and in need of constant diligence, so she’d spent hours just sitting in the rocking chair with him, counting fingers and toes and touching the impossibly soft wisps of hair that cradled his skull-so she’d definitely not been watching the news, because she’d been being with her baby in a way she’d never been in any moment before. Totally. Completely. Without word or thought or interest in anything else. Alex would come home from work each day, glance at her and Jack in the rocking chair and smile at her in a way no man had ever smiled at her before. Then she’d get a strange feeling in her chest. Of belonging. Of being. Contentment maybe.

For her eight weeks of maternity leave, she’d reveled in it.

So, four weeks prior, D.D. had been nesting with her baby in Waltham, while a level 3 sex offender had been shot in his apartment near the Suffolk County hospital. Not in his kitchen, Phil was quick to add. In the entry. As if he’d answered the door, and boom. Double tap from a. 22, expertly placed.

No witnesses, though a couple of neighbors reported having seen a young man, maybe a teenage boy, loitering about. Further search of the vic’s home had revealed pornographic videotapes as well as an extensive collection of photos on the vic’s computers, all showing boys and girl between the ages of six and twelve involved in various sex acts.

Just owning the computer was a violation of the victim’s, Douglas Antiholde’s, parole, so investigators felt it was safe to assume the vic had gone off the straight and narrow and was back in the business of destroying young lives.

“Leads?” D.D. asked now.

Phil shrugged. “If you see a white male between the age of sixteen and twenty-five in a dark winter coat with a navy blue knit cap, let us know.”

“Bet the hotline’s ringing off the phone with that one.”

“Please, the neighbors are just doing the happy dance he’s dead. No love lost there, and that was before they heard what was on his computer.”

D.D. pursed her lips. “Did he have a puppy?”

Phil shook his head.

“We’ll have to cross-reference the photos of the victims,” she mused out loud, and immediately felt something inside her recoil. To go from Jack to those images…

She hesitated. Beside her, Phil, father of four, appeared equally queasy.

Neil spoke up. “I’ll do it.”

Phil and D.D. looked at him.

“It’s not like I want to,” he said, shrugging awkwardly. “But I don’t have kids. And both of you…So, you know, it’d probably be easier for me to study them. ’Sides, I handle the bodies all the time. How much harder can this be?”

“Way harder,” Phil said immediately. “Dead people…worst has already happened. These kids…”

Neil shrugged again. “Somebody’s gotta do it, right? Better me than you.”

Phil nodded slowly. “I think he’s growing up nicely,” he told D.D.

“Obviously we’ve raised him right,” she concurred.

Neil rolled his eyes at both of them. “Since it’s my first time through, any advice?”

“Don’t just look at the people,” D.D. informed him. “Cross-referencing the victims is step one, but you also want to examine the backgrounds of each photo-look for patterns in curtains, carpets, bedding. Sometimes, it’s not the who that matches, it’s the where. Either one gives us a link between our dead pervs. When you’re done, we’ll send the photos to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, where they have trained experts who will do the same thing all over again, except comparing them against a national database. They also have some facial recognition software, which helps them get the job done.”