Lisa Gardner - Catch Me

Neil looked at her.

“We gotta get you to the National Academy,” she informed her younger partner, as she did at least once every six months. The National Academy was a ten-week course in advanced police training offered at Quantico, considered de rigueur for any up and coming cop. When D.D. had attended, she’d spent an entire day with the folks at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which not only helped her understand the resources they had to offer for local law enforcement agencies such as the BPD, but also made her grateful she was a city detective and not a criminologist swimming against the tide to rescue sexually abused children.

She stared at Neil now. He looked away, as he did every time the subject of the National Academy came up.

“Perpetrator’s right-handed,” he mumbled, changing the subject. “Given the angle of the gunshot.”

“Doesn’t limit our suspect pool that much,” D.D. retorted with a shrug.

“Daytime shootings,” Neil offered next.

“How do you figure?”

“Because in both neighborhoods, nobody would open their doors after dark.”

“But no witnesses,” D.D. pushed back.

“Because in both neighborhoods,” Neil repeated, “people are trained not to see anything. And they certainly aren’t gonna tell us about it if they do.”

“True.” D.D. turned to Phil. “While Neil handles the photos, I need you to oversee both victims’ computers. Pedophiles are networkers. They visit chat rooms, post blogs, seek out others like themselves. Even if our two victims never met each other in person, doesn’t mean they haven’t crossed paths online. Find that common denominator, and maybe we can get some traction.”

“The Antiholde computer has already been processed,” Phil informed her. “Meaning we just gotta dissect this one, and I’m ready to rock and roll.”

“We’ll pull local video,” D.D. mused out loud, referring to the various video cameras that dotted any Boston city block, whether owned by the city or an area business, or even in some cases by a concerned citizen trying to protect him- or herself against crime. “You never know, maybe we can find footage of a sixteen- to twenty-five-year-old white male in a black winter coat with a navy blue knit hat.”

Phil and Neil smiled at that, but D.D. wagged her finger at them. “Seriously! Forget the wardrobe and age range. Think white kid. How many of them do you see outside? In this neighborhood, Caucasians stand out. Let’s use that to our advantage.”

“Gonna get the media involved?” Phil wanted to know.

She had to think about it. “Maybe, if we can get a better profile of the shooter. Until then, I don’t see the point.”

Neil seemed surprised. “But there have been two shootings, second one already half a week old. Meaning, maybe even now, we got a perpetrator out there, targeting a third victim.”

“Third pedophile, you mean,” Phil muttered.

D.D. was more circumspect. “Two homicides performed by the same shooter? Are you sure? Do you have a witness telling you he or she absolutely saw the same person here and there? Do you have a report from ballistics stating the slugs recovered from this crime scene absolutely positively match the slugs recovered from the Antiholde crime scene?”

Neil shook his head.

“Well then,” D.D. declared briskly. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I wouldn’t want to panic the good citizens of Boston unnecessarily. And…maybe I wouldn’t want to encourage the city’s pervert population to practice undo caution either.”

Neil’s eyes rounded slightly. He got the implication of D.D.’s decision, glancing quickly at Phil, whose face was just as stony as D.D.’s.

“Wow,” Neil murmured. “And I wondered if motherhood would make her soft…”

His voice trailed off. At the last minute, the youngest member of the squad seemed to realize he probably should’ve kept that thought to himself.

But D.D. just clapped him on the back. “Missed you, too,” she informed him, cheerfully. “Now then. Nothing personal, but I gotta be home by five, which gives us,” she glanced at her watch. “About six more hours to catch a killer. Let’s do it.”

HOURS LATER, D.D. finished overseeing the processing of the murder scene. She’d long stopped registering the ammonia-like scent of urine, let alone the rank odor of puppy poo. Instead, she clambered back down the stairs of the tenement building and out the front doors contemplating many thoughts at once: She should get home soon, she should contact the lead investigator from the first shooting, she should order a rush on the ballistics test from this shooting to compare with the previous shooting. What were the odds of her boss, Cal Horgan, letting her have an extra body to help view all the video footage? Or maybe she’d just have to do that herself. Phil, after all, would need days to pour through all the computer data. Neil would probably soon be in a state of depression going through all those photos, the kind of work D.D. and Phil had done before and would probably do again, but not any sooner than they had to. Didn’t matter how objective and analytic you made yourself, photos of kids hurt. So adding to her mental list, check on Neil, see how he was coping with his assignment; did he require any mental health resources, or even a therapeutic night out over beers? Sergeants managed their people as much as their cases, and D.D. prided herself on both.

She cleared the building steps and hit fresh air, inhaling several deep breaths. No flash of media cameras awaited her; a shooting in a Boston tenement hardly rated coverage. Of course, once the media caught wind of what they’d found in the vic’s photo boxes and, not being dumb bunnies, connected this incident with another shooting four weeks prior…

But for now, all was quiet, and D.D. was gonna enjoy it while she could.

She pushed through the last of the gawkers, most of them looking bored, an actual murder investigation not being nearly as exciting as what they’d seen on TV. D.D. buried her hands in her pockets, ducked her head against the biting January chill, and headed down the block to her car.

Fifty yards away, she spotted it. White, like a blot of snow, at the bottom of her windshield. Except when the wind caught it, it started flapping, and she realized it was half a piece of paper, shoved under the left wiper.

Maybe an advertisement or flier. She didn’t pick up her pace, just kept walking, huddling inside her BPD field coat for warmth.

As she hit the hood of her car, she could see enough to realize it wasn’t a flier-the letters were handwritten script, not block printed. She faltered, footsteps slowing. Keeping her hands in her pockets, she leaned forward, studying the half sheet of paper more closely.

The script letters were thin, almost spidery looking but curiously flat at the bottom, as if the person had used a ruler to set an edge. The note wasn’t addressed or signed. It contained two sentences:

Everyone has to die sometime.

Be brave.

Immediately, D.D. glanced up, looked around. There, across the street, a figure disappearing around the corner in a black down coat.

D.D. started to run.

AS SHE SPRINTED ACROSS THE STREET, D.D. had two thoughts at once: Running was not a good idea for a woman who’d given birth ten weeks ago; things bounced that had not bounced a year ago and none of it was comfortable. Second, chasing a potential suspect all alone was not a good idea for a new mom who hoped to kiss her baby boy on the cheek in approximately three hours.

Bad news: Uniformed officers might carry radios, but detectives did not. Meaning she should’ve stopped at her car for the radio, yelled over her shoulder at another officer, something.