Catch Me (Detective D.D. Warren, #6)(128)

But my aunt hadn’t just walked way. She’d gone straight from her sister’s ratty apartment to the Boulder police. Apparently, it took a few hours to arrange a face-to-face with a detective, then a bit more time as the police made arrangements with the tactical unit as well as family services. But within five or six hours, the police had raided my mother’s apartment, intent on arresting a wanted murderer and rescuing a young child.

Unfortunately, as my aunt later confided, sister knows sister. Christine had never believed for a moment that her older, dutiful sibling would simply walk away. So while my aunt had been summoning the cavalry, Christine had packed her bags, rounded up Abigail, and disappeared once more into thin air.

Abigail never got to see my aunt’s return, or the tactical raid that had been put together for her benefit. She just followed her mother to yet another town, her last impression of her aunt being the older woman who’d left her.

My aunt had tried, my aunt had failed. And she hadn’t told my sister the full story during those dark hours in Cambridge because she hadn’t been trying to explain herself. She’d been trying to draw Abigail’s attention so that I could get away.

All these years later, my aunt was still prepared to sacrifice her life for me.

I guess you could say she is as different from her sister as I am from mine.

Of course, there are other consequences from January 21. I haven’t spoken to Tom since. Apparently, you can steal a man’s truck, but beating him unconscious is much harder to overlook. I understand, of course. Deceit and general mayhem is no basis for a relationship.

I miss him, though. One of those things, I often tell myself, feeling lonely, feeling blue. Different time, different place…

Maybe someday soon, I’ll drop him a note: I’m still a train wreck, if you’re still interested.

You never know.

In the meantime, I’ve moved back to J-Town. Returned to the mountains, my aunt, the community where everyone knows my name. Tulip approves. She lives a happy life as a B&B dog now. Welcomes guests, chases squirrels, comes and goes as often as she pleases.

I’m also helping out at the B&B, working the busy weekends while my aunt continues her recovery. During the week, turns out my own little town needed a dispatch officer. I work graveyard, Tuesday through Friday. And don’t let the small town fool you. Just the other night, someone stole a golf cart and ran amok on the course, dumping bleach in zigzag patterns across the greens. However, my brave caller and ninety-year-old witness helped crack the case, based on the baked pineapple pieces left behind.

I still run. Still box. And sometimes, after a long stretch of sleepless nights, I’ll head out to the range and make happy with some targets.

But I’m trying for a kinder, gentler life now. I remember my sister and thirty-three murders that didn’t do a thing to make her feel safer. I think of Stan Miller and my own choices along the way.

Not just insanity is genetic, you know.

Violence is, too.

I have vowed to make the best of this second shot at life. I will follow the straight and narrow, I remind myself, as I take certain calls. I will color within the lines, I think, as another child cries in my ear. I will not overstep the bounds of morality, I tell myself, as yet another hysterical woman sobs for help.

I wonder how long my resolution will last.

Another one of those questions I can’t answer.

Yet.





Chapter 45


IT TOOK D.D. SEVERAL WEEKS, not to mention several favors, to get the report she desired. When she finally had it, read it, processed it, she nodded in satisfaction. And then, because it didn’t mean much, couldn’t mean much, she locked it away in a file and went home to her two favorite men.

“You look happy,” Alex said, when she walked through the door.

“Because I was right.”

“Ah. Generally does the trick.”

“Got back a ballistics report. Confirmed what I had suspected: Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant might not have shot those three pedophiles, but she did commit a murder.”

Alex spooned pale mush into Jack’s mouth. They were trying out baby’s first food: rice cereal. So far, it looked very attractive on Jack’s ruddy cheeks.

“When will you arrest her?”

“Not anytime soon.”

Alex tried an airplane noise. Jack wasn’t buying it, so D.D. took over. She still wore one of her favorite tailored black suit jackets but was feeling lucky.

Alex sat back, eyed her curiously. He’d had the day off, spending it with Jack. Hence the new food, splattered kitchen, general state of disaster.

“Not arresting people generally doesn’t make you happy,” he said now.

D.D. sucked in her cheeks, making a fishy face. Jack imitated, puckering his little lips into an O, and she got the first spoonful of white mush successfully delivered. Like a pro, she thought, and went for mouthful number two. “Legal standing of ballistics report is highly debatable. Did I really have probable cause to test a legally registered firearm owned by someone who wasn’t a suspect in that particular case? Not to mention, said firearm was seized from the apartment of a cop, who turned out to be a murderer who’d already tried to frame Charlie for three other shootings. Meaning my chain of custody is crap, meaning my report is crap.”

She made a giant happy O. Jack giggled. Spoonful number two. She shoots, she scores.