Catch Me (Detective D.D. Warren, #6)(108)

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Neither do I,” he stated flatly, and he sounded angry. At himself, me, the situation—I couldn’t tell. “This is what I don’t get: Been chatter over the radio for the past thirty minutes about a break in a major case—string of shootings of child molesters. Finally got a match on the gun, something like that. Bunch of Boston cops been joking that maybe instead of arresting the shooter we should give her a badge.”

Tom took his eyes off the road just long enough to stare at me. “Knew it was you, Charlie. Knew it had to be. The request last night to seize your weapon, the LT pulling your time cards, spending half the night on the phone with a Boston detective—”

“Wait.” I straightened, promptly whacked my head on the underside of the dash. “A string of shootings? Child molesters? What?”

“Yeah, exactly. Because I know for a fact we didn’t seize your weapon last night. Shepherd checked your bag—you were clear.”

I didn’t speak anymore, just listened.

“Which made me wonder,” Tom continued, “how the Boston PD managed to have matched slugs to your handgun. So I called the lab—”

“You called the lab?”

“Sure. I shoot with the head ballistics tech, Jon Cassir, a couple of times a month. So I asked him about it, you know, cop to cop, talking shop. And he said yeah, he’d spent all night shooting into the drum in order to run a ballistics test in a high profile case. Couldn’t pull any prints, though, given the checked rubber grip.”

“Rubber grip?” I was more confused than ever.

Tom slowed the cruiser slightly, blinker on. He tapped the brakes, paused at an intersection. I ducked down again, prayed for invisibility. Then he turned right, accelerating steadily, but killing his light bar, slowing his pace. He seemed to have a specific destination in mind, but I didn’t know where.

“I checked your bag one night,” he said now.

“You rifled through my messenger bag?”

“You took a ten-six. I happened to be looking for you. You weren’t there, but your bag was. So I looked inside.”

“You invaded my—”

“Be grateful, Charlie. I saw your peashooter. Nice piece, I remember thinking, especially the rosewood grip. So if you’re carrying a twenty-two with a rosewood grip that we definitely didn’t seize last night, why does Boston PD have a twenty-two with a rubberized grip they clearly believe belongs to you and, better yet, ties you to a string of shootings?”

“Why’d you check my bag?”

“History of being attracted to train wrecks, remember?”

“But you didn’t report me.”

“Hadn’t made up my mind yet. Your turn. Spill.”

I was silent for a moment, chewing the inside of my lower lip. “I don’t know,” I said at last. “I didn’t shoot three sex offenders. I own one handgun, which I hid after our…conversation…last night. Except, I just looked for it ten minutes ago and it was gone. So maybe the Boston cops have it, except according to you, it’s a totally different handgun they’ve matched to the shootings—though, given the arrest warrant, they don’t know that yet.” I frowned, turned the matter over in my head, frowned again. “I don’t get it.”

Cruiser had slowed some more. Tom put on the blinker, turning left. “Who’d you piss off?”

“I don’t know anyone well enough to be a friend or an enemy. I’ve kept to myself for the past year. I think you can attest to the general state of my warmth and fuzziness.”

Tom grunted in agreement. “Someone seems to think you’re a killer. Or,” he caught himself, “someone wants others to think you’re a killer. Because that’s what this is, right? A classic frame-up. Someone has submitted a gun, claiming it’s yours, that’s now been matched to three homicides.”

“But it’s not my Taurus. My license,” I started, then stopped. My license to carry included only the class of gun I was permitted to own, no detailed description of a specific firearm, such as a. 22 with a rosewood versus checked rubber grip. “It’s not my gun,” I repeated more firmly. “And my firearms instructor, J. T. Dillon, can testify on my behalf. He’s trained me for the past year on my Taurus; he knows what it looks like.”

Tom grunted. “Well, at least you got the first witness for the defense.”

I understood his point. With time and effort, I could argue the Boston PD were wrong; whatever. 22 had been submitted in my name wasn’t mine. But in the meantime, they’d already issued a warrant for my arrest. Meaning first I’d be tossed in jail. Later, it would be sorted out.

I didn’t have later. Not given that today was D-day, January 21. The day I’d spent a year training for. I was supposed to greet my killer, armed and ready for battle. Now, after twenty minutes or less, I was defenseless and on the run from the law.

But how? But who?

Slowly but surely, my brain kicked to life. “A cop submitted the real murder weapon. Only way there could be a match, right? Joe Blow can’t show up at the Boston PD lab and say here’s Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant’s gun. Please conduct the following test.”

“Bingo.”

“But thinking ahead, the same cop also seized my real Taurus semiauto. So I couldn’t quickly produce it, head straight to HQ with my own twenty-two, saying hey, there’s been a mistake.”