Catch Me (Detective D.D. Warren, #6)(93)

“You think she’s crazy?” Detective O asked.

“She hurt me. She killed two babies. Of course she’s crazy!”

“You didn’t even remember. What does that make you?”

I drew up short, staring at the young detective. And in that moment, I finally got it. Detective O wasn’t spending this conversation horrified by my mother’s actions. She was horrified by me.

The girl who lived it and barely remembered it. The girl who at least got to roam through a house, while her baby sister and baby brother lived and died in a coat closet. The girl who then stole her dead siblings’ names.

I’d spent my whole life fearing I’d hurt my mom. Now I wished I could go back and do exactly that. Maybe if I’d done such a thing, I would’ve had at least one moment in my life worth remembering, one recollection that brought comfort.

“She’s dead,” Detective Warren stated now. “Listed as a Jane Doe in Boulder. It occurred to me that she probably adopted an alias after the night she stabbed you—”

“What?”

Both detectives paused, looked at me. I placed my hand on my side, eyes widening in comprehension.

Detective O spoke up first. “Seriously? You were stabbed, and you forgot that, too?”

“I was in the hospital. They’d removed my appendix, some other…things. I remember the doctors talking.” I shrugged, feeling my inadequacy again, the depths of my self-imposed stupidity. “I understood that I’d been cut open, then stitched back up.” I shrugged again. “When you’re eight years old, does it really matter why?”

Detective O shook her head.

D.D. cleared her throat. “According to the police report, there was some kind of altercation in the house. You ended up stabbed. Your mother must have fled, because apparently you’re the one who dialed nine-one-one.”

That intrigued me, given my line of work. Again, a person can know and not know all at the same time.

“Doctors were able to patch you up, but your mother was never found. Now, given your mother’s history of moving, I figured she left the area immediately. Only way she could stay beneath the radar that long was if she adopted an alias. So I started with neighboring states and worked my way out, looking for a woman of the same approximate age and description as your mother, including a pineapple-shaped birthmark on her right buttock. Thanks to a federal initiative, descriptions of unidentified remains have been recently compiled into a national database. I found a match in Colorado. Of course, you should submit a DNA sample to be sure, but in addition to the birthmark, the body has two distinct tattoos: the name Rosalind and the name Carter, both scripted above the left breast.”

“I hate her.” The words left my mouth before I could catch them. Once said, however, I didn’t take them back. “How dare she? First she kills her babies, then she tattoos their names above her heart? As if she loved them? As if she deserves to keep them close to her?”

I was out of the chair, pacing the conference room. My hands were fisted, I wanted a heavy bag. I wanted to punch my fist through the drywall. With any luck, I’d find a wooden stud and shatter my wrist. At this stage, I’d welcome the physical pain.

“How did she die?”

“Unknown. Body had been dead for a bit before being found, making an official ruling on cause of death difficult. According to the note from the coroner’s office, however, most likely cause of death was complications from advanced alcoholism, for example, liver failure.”

“Did it hurt? Did she suffer? Were her last moments terrible and filled with agonizing pain?”

Detective O’s eyes had widened. She stared at me as if transfixed, then leaned forward. “You’re angry.”

“Damn right!”

“Feeling helpless?”

“’Cause I didn’t get to kill her first!”

“Wishing you could change the past? Maybe go back. Would you save your sister and brother this time?”

“Yes!”

“Maybe you could save other kids. Make sure they never have to suffer the way you and your siblings did.”

“It wasn’t right. She hurt me, she suffocated them, and no one helped us. No one did a damn thing!”

“How did you know they were suffocated?” Detective Warren asked.

“I mean, I’m assuming. That’s how women normally do these things, right?”

Detective O picked up the beat. “The police failed you.”

“Yes.”

“’Course, you work with the cops now. You know that in most situations, their hands are tied.”

“Yes.”

“I mean the calls you must get, night after night. Little boys getting beaten by their fathers, little girls molested by their caretakers. What can you do, what can anyone do? Take down their name and number. Hey, little kid, your life is a living hell, let me take a message for you. Bet by the time you go home at night, you’re all fired up, itching for action. Bet you’re thinking you’re not a cop, your hands aren’t tied. You can shoot, you can hit, you can run. You can make a difference.”

Too late, I saw the trap looming. Too late, I stopped talking. Backpedaled furiously in my mind, trying to remember exactly what they’d asked and I’d answered. But, of course, I had a terrible memory and it was too little too late.