Catch Me (Detective D.D. Warren, #6)(109)

“Maybe.”

“I don’t understand,” I said again, and I hated how weak I sounded, how confused.

“Who all knows you have a twenty-two? I do. What about other cops in our department, or Boston PD?”

“I’ve been working with Boston Detective D. D. Warren and this other detective, O. Both of them know about my Taurus. Detective D.D. had promised to look into the murders of my friends, see what she could find out for today. And O’s been building some Facebook page, trying to bait the killer…”

My voice trailed off. Except last time I’d been there, they’d asked me lots of questions that had little to do with the death of my friends. They’d drilled me on my mother, my childhood, my dead siblings. O, in particular, had cycled back to my feelings of “frustration and helplessness.” How I of all people knew how much children out there suffered and how little the police could do to help.

Unless, of course, I was running all over town assassinating pedophiles.

They thought I did it. Of course. And I hadn’t denied anything, because I wasn’t exactly guilt free. Different crime, same blood on my hands.

But how did I go from being suspected by two detectives to being framed by at least one of them? And which one?

Then I got it. I knew exactly what had happened. I stared at Tom. “Detective O,” I said. “She did this. Oh my God, she f*cking framed me for her own crimes.”

Tom eyed me from the driver’s seat of the parked car, his expression already skeptical. “Why?”

“You said it yourself. Cops were joking that instead of arresting the shooter, you should give her a badge. Maybe that’s because the pedophile shooter already has a badge. A frustrated sex crimes detective. You know, the young, earnest rookie learning the hard way she can’t always make her case, save the victim, catch her man. But she can, in the cover of night, shoot him down.”

Tom frowned, but didn’t immediately call me crazy. “This job can be frustrating,” he allowed. “But why involve you? Like you said, you got a couple of witnesses, myself included, who can testify that you carry a Taurus with a rosewood grip, not a checkered grip. Meaning, sooner or later, you’ll talk your way out of this, and then Detective O will be left looking like a bad cop at best, or exposed as the real shooter at worst.”

It came to me. “Because I don’t have sooner or later. As she well knows, I’m doomed to die today. Hell, I’m perfect. We even look a bit alike, except, well, she’s pretty. But you know, brown hair, general height. She knows I have a twenty-two, has even asked me about it. Just yesterday, she spent an entire interrogation positioning me in the eyes of her fellow officer D. D. Warren as a slightly crazy woman with a dubious memory and traumatizing past. Perfect vigilante killer. Best of all,” I glanced at my watch, “in roughly eight hours, I’ll be in no position to argue my innocence. Dead and presumed guilty. What more could a vigilante cop want in a fall guy?”

Tom frowned again, but nodded slightly. He popped open his door. “Stay,” he ordered.

I ducked my head, doing as I was told, then immediately felt frustrated. All this prep, all this hard work, just to revert back to the role of trained dog? Fuck it. I sat up straight, peering around.

We were parked near a snowbank in front of a brick apartment building. Not tenement housing, but not gentrified. Blue collar, where the real people lived. I’d just connected the dots, when Tom swung open my door and growled at me, “It’s my ass on the line. Do you mind?”

I got out of the car, keeping my head down and face averted from possible witnesses. Officer Mackereth had brought me to his place. Aiding and abetting a fugitive, simply because in his heart of all hearts, he figured it was right.

I followed him meekly inside, up three flights of stairs, to a simple one-bedroom apartment, with a large bay window overlooking the street and blinds pulled everywhere. I blinked at the enveloping darkness, then realized that of course he blacked out his windows. He always worked graveyard, sleeping during the day, out and about at night.

He flipped on some lights, throwing his keys on the cleared counter of the modest kitchen. Place was probably six hundred square feet. One big square of a kitchen and living room, attached to a smaller square that was the master bedroom/bathroom. Carpet was brown. Kitchen featured dark wood cabinets with gold Formica countertops. In the main living area, the beige couch was overstuffed, and a flat screen TV dominated. Bachelor pad. Not pretty, but clean, functional. Officer Mackereth lived modestly, but respectably.

“I can’t stay too long,” he was saying now. “Gotta get back out there, as long as there’s an outstanding warrant for your arrest. Punch out now, LT will get suspicious.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“They’ll probably keep things ramped up another hour or so. All hands on deck. Then, if there’s no immediate break, we’ll fall back into an ongoing rotation. I’ll get to sign out, rest before my shift resumes tonight.”

“Okay.”

“I think you’ll be safe here. But you’re gonna have to stay inside, shades down. If you watch TV, keep the volume low. One advantage of this neighborhood is that most of my neighbors work during the day. Building’s pretty quiet.” He looked at me. “Gonna be okay without your dog?”

“She’s always kept her own schedule.”