Catch Me (Detective D.D. Warren, #6)(85)

“My headache went away,” I said simply. “I woke up.…It was just a driver’s license, I decided. Not my name. So it didn’t matter. I could…It would be okay.”

My aunt smiled at me, but the expression was sad. She reached out, touching the back of my hand, where the thin white scars threaded through fresh purple bruises.

“You’re a strong girl, Charlene. If you need to forget the past in order to find your future, I haven’t felt it was my place to mess with that. In fact, the doctor told me that forcing you to face things before you were ready would most likely do more harm than good. So I’ve held my council. I’ve kept my vigil. And I’d do it all over again, Charlene. Because I was not there when you needed me, and I’ll never forgive myself for that. But that’s my burden to bear, not yours.”

“My legal name isn’t Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant,” I heard myself say.

“That isn’t the name on your birth certificate.”

“That’s why, at the DMV…It had nothing to do with middle names. It was the birth certificate. You showed it to me, and I became angry. Because there was no Rosalind, no Carter. And my head began to hurt. And my stomach…”

My aunt didn’t say anything.

“But I am Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant,” I tried again, weakly this time, lacking genuine conviction. “I…I feel it.”

“It’s the name you chose for yourself. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Then it came to me, the list I’d made for Detective Warren. The two names I’d felt compelled to record: Rosalind Grant, Carter Grant. Because it had felt right to write them down. To see them listed on a sheet of paper in a detective’s office.

To finally get out what I had failed to tell the nurse.

I looked at my aunt. And I felt the trapdoor suddenly yawn open in the deepest corner of my mind. There was darkness behind it. Ghosts and monsters and things that would make anyone scream in the middle of the night.

Yet I took a step closer. Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant. Rosalind Grant. Carter Grant.

“Baby crying,” I whispered.

“I’m sorry, Charlene.”

“I wanted to tell the nurse. I didn’t tell the nurse.”

Another step. The floorboards of my mind, creaking in warning.

“I was too young. I swear it. I was too young.”

“Shhh.” My aunt was standing, her arms reaching toward my shoulders. At her feet, Tulip whined, rose to sitting. “It’s okay, Charlene. It wasn’t your fault. It was never your fault.”

“I was just a kid myself!”

“I know, honey, I know.”

“Baby crying!” Except she wasn’t anymore. She was pale and still as marble. Blue-lipped as I stroked her cold cheek, tried to get her eyes to open, tried to make her flash that wide, beaming grin.

Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant. Rosalind Grant. Carter Grant.

My aunt’s arms were around my shoulders. Maybe her hands were even upon my throat. It didn’t matter anymore. I sagged into my aunt’s embrace. Dying wasn’t my greatest fear anymore. Remembering was.

Baby crying, down the hall.

First a little girl. Rosalind Grant.

Then, later, a little boy. Carter Grant.

Then…

Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant.

“Shhh,” my aunt murmured. “If I’d known, I would’ve come. Please believe me, Charlene. If I’d known, I would’ve come and taken all of you away.”





Chapter 28


“WE SHOULD ARREST HER. Immediately. Girl’s already squirrelly. If she figures out how close we are to identifying her as the shooter, she’ll bolt in a second.”

D.D. sighed. She rubbed a throbbing spot on the back of her neck that had less to do with Detective O’s investigative zeal and more to do with the hours of sleep she didn’t get, followed by a breakfast with her parents she never should’ve scheduled. But other than that…

She picked up her fourth cup of black coffee, eyed the way her hand performed the over-caffeinated mambo, and took a sip. “On what grounds?” she quizzed her eager young colleague.

Phil nodded with equal skepticism. He sat beside Neil, the whole team assembled to debrief from last night’s shooting and this morning’s ongoing discoveries. Murder investigations had a tendency to ebb and flow. This one was currently flowing. Hell, it was nearing flood stage.

“Charlene Grant matches the description of the shooter,” O stated.

Phil was already shaking his head. “At best, gives us grounds to bring her in for a lineup. But we can’t go around arresting all the females in Boston who have brown hair and blue eyes.”

“She owns a twenty-two, same caliber as the murder weapon.”

“As do thousands of people, probably in just this city block.”

“Handwriting analysis,” O snapped, glancing at D.D. “Especially given the note within the note.”

D.D. shrugged. “I dropped off Charlie’s handwritten list of two names plus the three crime scene notes with Ray Dembowski. He’s going to test the notes from the first two shootings this afternoon to see if they have the same hidden message, Catch Me. Then, he’ll analyze the lemon juice scrawl versus the ink script to determine if the same person wrote both messages on the sheets of paper. Finally, he’ll analyze the handwriting of both messages against Charlie’s list. But it’ll be at least Monday before he has a formal report for us, and he’s already complaining about feeling rushed.”