Lisa Gardner - Catch Me

Jackie would’ve started off the day quiet, reserved. Maybe she would’ve donned a string of pearls in memory of Randi. Or bought fresh flowers, or listened to Randi’s favorite band, Journey, during her drive to work.

Being in New Hampshire, I’d driven to Randi’s grave that morning, bearing a grocery store bouquet of yellow roses. I’d been nervous I’d meet her parents and not know what to say. But the cemetery was empty, and I’d stood alone on the hard-packed snow, shivering in the single-digit chill, while feeling the tears fall, then freeze on my cheeks.

Jackie had probably been preoccupied on the twenty-first. But still probably hadn’t thought about herself, felt a lingering tension, a fissure of fear. Maybe that’s why she’d gone out to a bar. She’d been sad, not afraid, and maybe figured a night out would cheer her up.

The police said she met a woman that night. A stranger made the most sense, as no friend or known acquaintance had stepped forward to say that she’d been with Jackie those final hours. So she’d gone to a bar, met someone she liked, someone who seemed nice enough, decent enough to welcome into her home.

No struggle.

That’s the part I kept coming back to. To not just die, but to die without putting up a fight.

I couldn’t imagine it. When J.T.’s hands had closed around my throat, I’d been shocked, momentarily paralyzed. But then came the instinct to breathe, the desire to strike back, struggle furiously for air.

Randi had been sweet, but Jackie had always been hard-edged. A woman who could battle her way to being vice president of a major corporation by the time she was twenty-six wasn’t a quitter.

So what had happened that night? Who could she have met, what could have transpired, for her to submit so passively to her own death?

I churned the matter over, as I’d been churning it for the past year. Finding no answers, just a fresh case of nerves.

The phone lines rang. My hands trembled. And I worked and I worked and I worked, my teeth clenched, my body jumpy, and my hands desperate for the feel of my Taurus.

Seven A.M. to eight A.M. to nine A.M.

Nine fifteen, Sergeant Collins appeared in the doorway to announce that my replacement had come down sick. They were working on finding a sub now; in the meantime, they needed me to continue to hold down the fort.

It was a statement, not a question. Such is the nature of the job. Nine-one-one phone lines had to be covered, meaning you couldn’t leave until the next person had arrived and planted butt in chair. No replacement meant no going home for me.

Nine A.M. to ten A.M. to eleven A.M.

My last hours, winding down as I sat in a darkened comm center, dealing with other people’s crises, solving other people’s problems.

So this is how the world ends, I thought, remembering the T. S. Eliot poem from high school. Not with a bang but a whimper.

I wanted to fight. Whatever happened tonight, I wanted to be the one who finally inflicted damage, caused bodily harm. Win or lose, Detective D. D. Warren and her team would get some fresh evidence from my crime scene. That was my resolution.

Eleven thirty. Shirlee Wertz appeared, black curly hair held back by a red bandana, overflowing book bag slung over her shoulder. We ran through the call log, I caught her up on drunk Vinnie and his disappearing body parts. Then I transferred my headset to her, stepped away from the desk, and took one look back.

Would I miss this?

I’d be taking a two-week vacation, that’s all I’d told the higher-ups. No drama over my departure this way. No burning questions about my future, life after the twenty-first.

It’s funny, but my throat felt tight. I stared at the ANI ALI monitor and I was choked up.

I’d liked this job. I cared about my officers, felt the burden and honor of watching their backs. I felt that, in a small, feeble way, in this dark room, manning these lines, I’d spent the past year making a difference.

Eleven forty-five A.M. Eight hours fifteen minutes.

I found my messenger bag. I exited the Grovesnor PD. And I forced myself not to look back.

I went straight for my gun. Far edge of the parking lot, beneath the prickly bush. I looked right, looked left. Coast clear, so I bent down to retrieve it.

Except it wasn’t there. I dug around. Little more to the left, little more to the right, then abandoning all pretense and frantically unearthing the snow mound with two hands, like a terrier pawing away the earth.

Nothing.

Gun was gone. All that remained was an icy hole, topped with plow sand and city dirt.

In the distance, sirens sounded. One, two, three patrol cars.

Who could’ve taken it?

I’d told no one. Hidden it only at the last moment, when no one was watching. How could someone foresee something I hadn’t even known I would do?

The hairs prickled to life on the back of my neck. I finally understood.

The killer was in Boston.

He/she was watching me.

And he/she was already one step ahead.

This was it. No more countdown.

My own murder had officially begun.

I couldn’t help myself. I staggered away from the dirty, grimy snowbank. Then, unarmed and genuinely panicked, I began to run.

JESSE WOKE UP Saturday morning in his mother’s queen-sized bed. She was rolled away from him, facing the far wall, her arm flung out, snoring softly. Jesse didn’t know what time it was. Probably later than usual, because the room was bright, the sun pushing and shoving at the corners of the drawn shades.

There was a time Jesse would’ve gotten up on his own. Padded into the kitchen for a bowl of cereal. Then he would’ve turned on Saturday morning cartoons. Maybe, if he felt like pushing things, logged onto the Internet and entered the world of AthleteAnimalz.

Now he pressed up against his mother’s sleeping form. He liked the feel of her body, warm and soft, against his back. He smoothed the red-flowered comforter with one hand and peered at the far gray-washed wall.

He was too old to sleep with his mommy. Other kids in his class, they would tease him if they ever found out. On the other hand, maybe he’d stay one more night. Or the night after that. Then it would be the school week, and school would help. His mother said so. The counselor lady, too. Routine would be good for him. They both said that, though when his mother uttered the words, she’d had two small lines pinching her brow, right between her eyes. He didn’t like those lines. He wanted to reach up and brush them away.

He’d hurt his mom. Worse, he’d scared her, and now, just like he couldn’t stop jumping at loud noises, she couldn’t let him out of her sight. So they’d spent all day yesterday huddled together on the sofa, watching stupid TV shows and eating junk food until even Jesse started worrying that he was rotting his brain. He could actually feel it, growing warts and holes and lesions, like a zombie brain, right there inside his skull.

He’d set aside his half-eaten Twinkie and requested an apple.

His mother had burst into tears. He’d immediately picked up the Twinkie, but she’d taken it from him, so apparently the Twinkie hadn’t been the problem.

He’d been a bad boy. That was the issue. He’d broken the rules, followed a stranger, met a demon, and watched a boy die. And he didn’t know how to undo it. It had happened. He’d been bad. And now…And now…?

If he could, he’d go backwards in time, like a video in rewind. Look, here’s Jesse walking backwards to the library, then up the outside stairs, then up the inside stairs, then sitting down with the stranger danger boy except now getting back up and moving away from the stranger danger boy, back downstairs to his mother. Look, here’s Jesse with his mother. Stay, Jesse, stay. Be a good boy, and your mommy won’t cry.