Catch Me (Detective D.D. Warren, #6)(96)

Not to mention that tomorrow was the twenty-first. Game day. Definitely, she wanted to be fresh for game day.

“I’ll sleep a couple of hours first, then pick up Jack from day care,” D.D. determined out loud.

“Coming back to the office?” O asked.

“Maybe after dinner. We might have something from the handwriting expert by then. Plus a report from Neil and Phil on their visit with our third victim’s family. Oh, and I’ll follow up with Grovesnor PD, make sure they get Charlene’s handgun. One thing’s for certain.” D.D. rose to standing, glancing at her watch. “For Charlene Grant there’s not much time left.”

“No,” O agreed. “There certainly isn’t.”





Chapter 31


NINE P.M. FRIDAY NIGHT. Twenty-three hours to go.

Sun gone. Temperature plummeting. Sky dark.

My aunt had left, checking into a hotel for the evening. Tulip had left, going wherever the dog that was not my dog went. I paced my tiny room. I loaded and unloaded my gun.

I thought of my mom. I struggled to remember two tiny siblings, a baby sister and a baby brother, who’d never had a chance at life. Apparently, memory is a muscle, and having atrophied mine for most of my life, I couldn’t magically now fire it to life. I tried to picture a house, a yard, a family pet. A woman, a smell, something, anything that felt like my old life.

In the end, I downed two aspirin, then shadow boxed in front of my mirror.

The woman looking back at me was gaunt. Purple bruised throat. Slicked back brown hair. Crazed blue eyes.

I looked like my mom, twenty years later.

Abigail, Detective O had called me. Abigail…

I punched the mirror. Suddenly. Quickly. One two three, bam, bam, bam. Shattered it with my bare hands. Then, watched the broken fragments rain down onto the wood floor, a shower of silver.

And for a moment…

The kitchen. Fingers of silvery moonlight. Fire, climbing the walls.

My landlady, Frances, knocked on the door. “You okay?”

“Sorry. Um…accident. No problem. All’s well.”

I studied my bleeding knuckles. A mirrored shard of glass protruded from the back of my left hand. I picked out the glass. I licked at the welling blood.

Then, even though I’d be an hour early, I left for work.


OFFICER MACKERETH CAUGHT me in the parking lot. He’d just pulled up in his police cruiser. He popped open the driver side door, got out, spotted me walking down the dimly lit sidewalk behind him, and changed his direction from the warmth of the station to the cold of the street, where I was hoofing it from the T stop.

“Charlie,” he said, and there was something in his voice that was already a warning.

I drew up short, one streetlight behind me, one streetlight ahead of me. I planted my legs, left foot forward, gloved hand on the flap of my messenger bag.

Mackereth saw my change in stance and paused ten feet back, his right hand dropping to his holstered weapon, his own weight going forward, onto the balls of his feet. We stood like that for a full fifteen, twenty seconds, him haloed by one streetlight, me haloed by another. Neither of us at an advantage, neither of us at a disadvantage.

“You carrying?” he asked finally.

“Why do you ask?”

“I know. Call came in today. Shepherd is waiting for you inside to take the twenty-two. What’d you do, Charlie?”

I didn’t answer his question, my mind already racing ahead. Boston PD, had to be. They’d figured out what I’d done to Stan Miller. Detective O had basically admitted as much, trying to wheedle a confession out of me. I didn’t know how, but they were putting together the pieces. Maybe Tomika had told a friend of a friend. Maybe someone had spotted me entering the building not once, but twice that night.

Maybe it just made sense. I mean, a girl like me, growing up the way I grew up. Maybe murder and mayhem had always been only a matter of time.

How’d you know they were suffocated, Charlie? How’d you know?

Because I knew. Rosalind’s pale little body, wrapped snug in a pale pink polka-dotted blanket. She’d loved that blanket. Had clutched the soft fleece in her tiny fists, had sucked on the satin trim.

I’d wrapped her up. Afterward.

Take care of the baby, Charlie. Don’t let her cry. Can’t let her cry. Mommy will hurt us both if she cries.

Oh God, what had I done?

“Charlie?”

Officer Mackereth. Not stepping any closer, right hand still hovering at his waist. Ten feet between us. Car went by, then another. My hand was trembling on my leather messenger bag, though I couldn’t have told you why.

“I’m going to die tomorrow,” I heard myself say. “Sometime around eight P.M. I will be strangled to death, and I won’t fight back. No sign of forced entry, no sign of a struggle. I will welcome my own death.”

Officer Mackereth, watching me.

“I’m a good shot. Good fighter, strong runner. I don’t want to die like my friends. I’ve already spent too much of my life taking shit. If I’m going out tomorrow, I want to take the killer with me.”

“Charlie—”

“I need my gun. I know you don’t trust me. Hell, you don’t even know me. But I need my gun. One more day. Twenty-three hours. No, thirty-six. Sunday morning dawns and I’m still alive, Boston PD can have it. I’ll hand it over to you. Let you personally take it to them. I’ll accept whatever happens next. I promise.”