Catch Me (Detective D.D. Warren, #6)(23)

That’s what he’d been waiting for, good old Vincent. The final provocation to justify pulling the trigger.

Officer Mackereth came in over the radio. He’d pulled it together now, returning to script. I did my best to follow suit. “Nine twenty-six to four sixty-one, is it safe to enter the home?”

I got back on my headphones. “Dawn, it’s Charlie. A uniformed officer is at your front door. He has your husband detained and disarmed. You can come out now, Dawn.”

Then, for the first time since the call began, the sound of her voice. “Is he…is he okay?”

“The police officer or your husband?” Though sadly, I already knew the answer to that.

“My husband,” she said shakily.

“You know, Dawn, why don’t you go downstairs and see for yourself.”

“Okay. Okay. I think I can do that. Charlie…”

I waited. But she didn’t say thank you. Few of them ever did.

Dawn hung up the phone. She went to check on her drunken husband, who five minutes earlier had been prepared to kill her.

And I resumed my seat, my hand now on Tulip’s head, stroking her silky ears.

“Glad to have you here, girl,” I whispered. “Glad to have you here.”

She placed her graying muzzle on my lap, and I kept petting her head, until eventually my hands stopped shaking and both of us sat silently in the dark.


YOU’D THINK THAT WOULD BE ENOUGH for one night, but it wasn’t. Two thirty-three A.M., the other relevant call came in. I saw the info on the ANI ALI screen and was immediately agitated. Then, I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath, and answered.

“Hey,” I said, slightly surprised to be receiving the call through official channels and not on my prepaid cell.

Silence at first, for so long, I thought maybe the caller couldn’t answer. But then, finally, a voice. Small, quivering, scared. The girl then, not the boy. Too young to remember my cell number, so reverting back to the number of first contact: 911.

She was crying and at this stage of the game, I didn’t need her to speak to know why. Dispatch officers…we are more than backup for our men and women in uniform. We are Ma Bell’s version of social services, audio first responders to battered wives, overwhelmed new parents, drunken teens, and terrified children. We hear it all.

Then we transfer the call and walk away. Not our problem. We’re simply the messengers that yeah, life really sucks out there.

Now, here’s a question for you: If you only had four days left to live, what would you do?

Remain on the sidelines? Or get in the game?

And if, say, you’d spent the past year learning how to run, fight, shoot, how to stop being and start doing, would that change the answer? And if, say, you had insider’s knowledge of the kind of crimes the system can’t handle, where the perpetrator wins and the victim loses, would that change the answer?

I’d spent months contemplating this question. Then I’d arrived at a decision.

It helped me now, as I reached out and tapped my keyboard. As I deliberately and consciously broke the law, disconnecting my caller from the recorded dispatch system and picking her up on my prepaid Wal-Mart phone instead.

“Hey,” I said again. “It’s okay. It’s me, Charlie. I’m going to help. One more day, sweetheart, and you will never be hurt again.”





Chapter 6


“BAD NEWS,” D.D. informed Alex over dinner. “In the war over sanity in the city, the lunatics are winning.”

She’d done the honors of picking up Jack from day care at five forty-five. By six thirty Alex had made it home, where, being an enthusiastic cook, he’d put the finishing touches on a Crock-Pot version of chicken cacciatore he’d started that morning.

Now they were seated across from each other at the kitchen table. Alex had a glass of red wine; she had a glass of water. Alex had two hands for eating and drinking. She had one hand cradling Jack against her shoulder, the other wielding a fork.

Jack was currently asleep, half of his chubby face smashed into the curve of her neck, where he was making the most ridiculously adorable snoring sounds. This was probably as close to domestic bliss as she was ever gonna get, D.D. figured. Her baby snuggled against her chest, while she and Alex enjoyed a leisurely Italian dinner and talked shop.

“First I was wrapping up a shooting that may or may not be part of a broader vigilante crime spree,” she was telling Alex now. “Then I end up chasing down a suspicious woman, who claims she wants me to investigate her own murder, four days from today.”

Alex paused with a forkful of chicken in a midair. “She’s planning ahead? I don’t remember ever seeing a spot for appointing your own homicide detective on the estate planning forms.”

“Oh, they’re there. The beautiful young trophy wives just white ’em out before having their husbands sign on the bottom line.”

He thought about it. “Makes sense.” He resumed eating, then paused again. “Seriously, this woman is planning on being murdered?”

“Her two best friends were each murdered on January twenty-first. First one died two years ago, second one last year, meaning this year…”

Alex stared at her, clearly perplexed.

D.D. sighed. She set down her own fork and stroked Jack’s plump cheek. “This is the crazy part—I looked it up on the computer when Jack and I came home and she’s right. Randi Menke was murdered in Providence two years ago on the twenty-first, Jacqueline Knowles in Atlanta same date last year. How creepy is that?”