Catch Me (Detective D.D. Warren, #6)(90)

“All is well, Michael. You’re a strong boy and your mother and sister are lucky to have you.”

The ground beneath my feet started to tremble, announcing the arrival of a subway in the tunnels below. “I gotta go now, Michael. Thanks for calling. I might be away for a bit. If you call and I don’t answer…Know that I’m thinking of you, Michael. I have faith. You’re a strong boy and you’re gonna be okay.”

“Charlie…Thank you.”

He hung up quickly. I slipped the phone back into my bag and ran for the train.


I MADE SURE I LOOKED BOTH WAYS before boarding the subway car. I took a seat with my back to the far wall, where I could watch all doors, monitor all people coming and going. My black leather messenger bag sat on my lap, my hands fisted around it.

I studied faces, met stares.

Until one by one, each of my fellow passengers stood up and moved away from me.

I sat alone, and even then, I didn’t feel safe.


“CHARLENE ROSALIND CARTER GRANT.”

Detective D. D. Warren uttered my moniker slowly, allowing each name its own weight and space. She’d met me in the lobby. Asked about my dog, asked about my gun, appeared genuinely surprised, perhaps even skeptical, that I’d dared to journey to Roxbury without either of them.

Instead of her tiny office, she’d led me to a modest-sized conference room, furnished with a table large enough for eight. Only other person in the room, however, was Detective O. She stood against a huge whiteboard, wearing a button-up men’s dress shirt in light blue.

When Detective Warren moved to her side, I realized they matched, as D.D. wore nearly the same shade of blue, but in silk. She’d paired hers with black slacks, while O had charcoal gray trousers with pencil thin stripes of blue and gray. D.D. had her short blond hair down, in loose curls that almost softened the hard lines of her face, while O’s rich brown hair was pulled back in a fat knot at the nape of her neck.

Two coordinating and contrasting images of female cop. One older, one younger. One athletic, one more feminine. One with direct blue eyes, one with deep brown eyes.

Both of them all business.

I wished I’d brought Tulip, just to have a friend in the room.

“Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant,” D.D. repeated, testing each word. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Turns out, my past is a work in progress.”

She eyed me suspiciously. “You gave us the two names to run, Rosalind Grant, Carter Grant.”

I nodded.

She tossed a file on the table. It landed with a faint thwack and I flinched. “There you go. Full report. Sister. Brother. Mother. Ever read it?”

I shook my head, eyed the manila file folder, made no move to touch it.

My aunt said the doctors had advised her that I should remember on my own. That forcing the issue, before I was ready, might do greater emotional harm.

Greater harm than what? Waking up each morning, knowing that when I had nightmares of my mother digging midnight graves with coiling, hissing snakes in lieu of hair, I wasn’t totally wrong?

A perfectly pale and still baby girl. The nearly marble-like form of an even smaller baby boy. That is what I’d spent the past twenty years trying to forget. Rosalind Grant. Carter Grant. The baby sister and baby brother I’d once loved, then lost to my mother’s madness. The babies, crying down the hall, that I’d known, even as a toddler, that I needed to help. Tell a nurse. Bolt with them out into the rain.

I’d tried in my own way. But I’d been small and vulnerable, my mother all-knowing, all–powerful. In the end, what I couldn’t change I’d opted to forget.

One crazy mother. Two murdered siblings.

Was it any wonder my head was so f*cked up?

I stared now at the manila file. I thought it was unfair that my sister and brother’s entire lives could be distilled into a single thin folder. They had deserved better. We all had.

“Why you?” Detective O spoke up crisply. “You lived. They died. You must think about that, have some theories on the subject. Were you more cooperative, the good little girl? Maybe they were sniveling little brats—”

“Stop.” I wanted my voice to come out firm. It sounded more like a whisper. I cleared my throat, tried again. “You want to beat me up, fine. But not them. You don’t get to pick on them. They were just babies. You leave them alone, or I’m outta here.”

Detective Warren was scowling at her partner, clearly agreeing with me. Or maybe not. Maybe this was just the latest episode of good cop, bad cop. But then I realized a couple of things: They didn’t need me to come down to HQ to talk about two twenty-year-old homicides from an entirely different state. Nor were they mentioning the Facebook page, or how to bait a killer in preparation for tomorrow evening’s murderous deadline. Instead, they had a single manila folder holding police reports from my childhood.

They wanted something from me. The question was what, and how much it would cost me.

“What do you remember?” Detective Warren asked me now. “About your childhood?”

I shrugged, gaze still on the closed file. “Not much. I can’t…I don’t…” I had to clear my throat, try again. “I don’t even remember a baby brother. Not a smile, not a whimper…Just, his body. His perfect little form, so still, like a statue.” I paused, cleared my throat again. Still wasn’t working. I looked away from both detectives, stared at the carpet. “I’m sorry.”