Lisa Gardner - Catch Me

Abigail eyed me. I returned her gaze levelly, waiting to feel something. Woozy, a burning in the back of my throat, maybe tingling down my arm. Most of our mother’s tricks were meant for instant gratification, but I didn’t feel a thing.

Abigail nodded, apparently satisfied, then made me strip my coat and hand it to her, immediately divesting me of most of my homemade weapons, which I’d stuck in the pockets. Next she patted me down, claiming my cell phone, but overlooking the ballpoint pen tucked into the back of my hair and the duct-tape knife covered by my ragged jeans, thick wool socks, and worn winter boots. Once I’d passed inspection, she opened the door wider, letting me into the darkened hall.

“Randi never even felt it,” she said, as if that should mean something to me. “Your other friend, Jackie, she turned around when I pricked her. I told her there had been some kind of thorn stuck to the back of her shirtsleeve and she believed me. Aunt Nancy saw me coming with it, though. I let her. I wanted her to know.”

Abigail led me past my own bedroom to the large living room, with its multiple seating areas plus kitchen. I’d been right earlier-no one’s lucky day. Both Aunt Nancy and my landlady, Frances, were present. Frances was slumped, pale and weak-looking, in a faded wingback chair, the farthest from me. My aunt was closer, reclined on the camelback sofa, eyes closed, eyelids fluttering in a way that didn’t appear good.

I rushed to her immediately and felt for a pulse. I found it, but it was weak. My aunt’s skin was clammy, and she was shivering uncontrollably.

“What did you do?”

“You mean she never tried it on you?”

“What?”

“Insulin. Crashes the blood sugar. Leads to coma, possibly death. Or a free trip to the emergency room.”

She delivered the words flippantly. I understood the untold story behind them, the countless episodes she must’ve endured at our mother’s hands. I would’ve liked to offer her compassion. Instead, I faced off against her, legs spread for balance, and pleaded my case.

“I’m here, you have what you wanted. Now, let me give Aunt Nancy and Fran some sugar cubes, and we’ll send them on their way.”

“Frosting,” Abigail stated. “Works better. I gave it to both of your friends right at the end. Otherwise the postmortem blood tests would’ve revealed low blood sugar, giving away my little game. But a little frosting applied at the right moment…You’ll find a spray can of it behind you on the kitchen counter.”

Her ready agreement to let me treat my aunt and landlady puzzled me. Instead of being relieved, I felt even more on edge as I turned around and headed toward the darkened kitchen. Halfway to the center island, my legs suddenly faltered. I missed a step, stumbled slightly, then caught myself. I shook off the episode, blinking my eyes against a sudden bout of light-headedness. The insulin, going to work. I retrieved the silvery spray can of decorator’s frosting sitting in the middle of the counter and returned with it to my aunt’s side.

“You may give them the frosting. Take any for yourself, and I will shoot you.” Abigail had pocketed the needle. In its place she now held a. 40-caliber Sig Sauer.

“And take away all your fun?” I asked lightly.

“I didn’t say I’d kill you. I just said I’d shoot you.”

It took me a bit to figure out the spray nozzle, which came complete with four decorative tips. Color was white, flavor vanilla. Decorate cookies, rouse a loved one from impending death. My hands were shaking. I had to concentrate to make my fingers do what I needed.

I tended first to my aunt, who seemed worse off. Next, I crossed to Frances, jamming the nozzle into her slightly gaping mouth and squirting in more frosting.

Then I stepped back, and both my sister and I studied them.

“How did you become Detective O?” I asked. I stood six feet from her, slightly in front of her, her Sig Sauer aimed at my left shoulder. Without any lights on, the room was dark, a series of larger and smaller lumps which indicated furniture, other objects that could be used for cover.

I thought the lack of lighting gave me the advantage, as I knew the space better than her. But she still held the gun, and looked very comfortable with it.

“Patron,” she said.

“Patron?”

Her features remained flat, hard. A cop’s face, a victim’s face. I had never realized until now how little separated the two.

“When I was fourteen, I left dear old mom. We were living in Colorado by then. She’d stopped hurting me and started selling me instead. See, her looks were no longer what they used to be, and a girl’s gotta pay rent. She still brought home the boyfriends, only they didn’t stay in her room anymore.”

I didn’t say anything.

“One night, it occurred to me that as long as I was selling my body, I ought to call the shots. So I waited for the right guy to come along-you know, one with lots of cash-and I made him a deal. I’d become his exclusive property, if he’d take me away.

“Turns out, I picked well. He was a successful attorney, had plenty of assets, and had always envisioned himself as one of those wealthy men with a little something-something tucked away on the side. I got my own apartment, and with a bit more negotiation, I got a new identity-you know, so Mommy Dearest couldn’t track me down and take me away. Perfectly legal, of course, which is the advantage of prostituting yourself to a legal eagle. Eventually, I enrolled in some online courses and earned my GED. Only problem became when I turned eighteen, and I wanted to go to college, and he wanted to keep me in a gilded cage.”

She stopped talking. On the couch, my aunt moaned, her eyes fluttering opened. She stared at both of us, but her eyes were still glazed over. I doubted she was seeing anything.

“When’d you kill him?” I asked conversationally.

Abigail smiled. “That’s not the relevant date. You should know the relevant date.”

“January twenty-one.”

“Absolutely. But why, SisSis? What’s so important about January twenty-one? You tell me.”

I studied her. I tried to remember our time together, the past I’d worked so diligently to forget. “Your birthday?”

She eyed me funnily. “No.”

“My birthday?”

“Please. Your birthday is in June.”

Frances was awake. Her breathing had changed, evened out. She wasn’t sitting up any straighter, but I could tell she was more alert. I wondered if Abigail could tell the same.

But my sister wasn’t paying any attention to my aunt or my landlady. She was staring at me. She appeared, for the first time, uncertain.

“Did you really forget…everything?”

I shrugged, feeling half-foolish, half-ashamed. “Most things, yes.”

“Even me?”

“I’m sorry, Abigail. I’ve tried and tried to remember, but I swear, I just…You’re a baby and then you’re not there anymore. I was so sure she’d killed you. Like Rosalind. Like Carter. These beautiful little babies, so perfect and precious and then…”

“I watched her kill the boy.”

“You did?”

“I remember everything. He was crying, and she took a pillow. It was bigger than his entire body. She pressed it down on him. ‘This is what we do when babies cry, Abigail,’ she told me. ‘Don’t be a crier.’”

“You would’ve been just a toddler yourself.”

“I think I was two. You would’ve been four.”

“How can you remember what happened when you were two?”

“How can you forget what happened when you were four?”

My aunt, sitting up straighter, moved her hand at her side.

“I wanted to die,” I heard myself say. “I woke up in the hospital, and the doctors were talking about how they put me back together and it had been touch and go, but I’d be okay now. Except, instead of feeling grateful, I wanted to kill them for saving me. I was so…angry. I was so…depressed.” I took a small step away from my aunt, easing toward the rear door, willing Abigail’s attention to follow me, and turn farther away from the two now waking women.