Catch Me (Detective D.D. Warren, #6)(103)

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.





Chapter 35


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.

The police had taken his computer. Thursday night/Friday morning, he guessed. He’d fallen asleep in the back of the police cruiser, which had taken them home from the station after all the questions, questions, questions. His mother, he guessed, had carried him upstairs to their apartment, all three flights, though he was way too big for that, too. She’d put him on the sofa, where apparently he’d been so exhausted, he’d never stirred even when she’d taken off his shoes.

At 6 A.M., he’d bolted awake screaming the first time. Bad dream. He couldn’t remember it, but it had something to do with a scary thin demon with jagged shards of teeth and too bright blue eyes.

Back to sleep, his mother had said. So he’d tried, only to wake up screaming an hour after that, then an hour after that.

At nine, she’d let him get up. Good news, no school for him, no work for her. They’d have a mental health day, she told him, but that frown was back, those two little lines wrinkling her brow, and he could tell she wasn’t really happy and they weren’t really having fun.

They went out to breakfast, at the little diner around the corner. On the way back, she broke the news. The police needed their ancient laptop to help them with their investigation. She’d handed it over to the officer who had driven them home. They might get it back when all was done, but Jesse’s mother had told them not to bother. She never wanted to see it again.