Catch Me (20 page)

She gazed up at me.

“Down the hall.”

Tulip placed her head in my lap.

“I screwed up, Tulip. All those years ago, in my mother’s house…I failed that baby. And that’s why I don’t think about my mother anymore. I don’t want to remember. Not that it matters anymore, does it? Too little, too late.”

Tulip nosed my hand.

I smiled down at her, stroked her head. “Funny, I’ve spent a whole year planning, preparing, and strategizing for my last stand. And in the end, I’m probably gonna die just like everyone else—filled with a list of unfinished business.”

Tulip whined softly. I leaned down, put my arms around her neck.

“I’m going to send you up north,” I promised her. “You’ll get to live with my aunt Nancy, become a B-and-B dog. And the mountains are beautiful and filled with paths to run and squirrels to chase and rivers to swim. You’ll like it up there. I certainly did.”

I held her closer. “Remember me,” I whispered.

Tulip sighed heavily.

I knew exactly how she felt.

D
OOR OPENED SHORTLY THEREAFTER.
A dark figure appeared, backlit by the hall light, and it jolted me from my chair. I sprang up, into an automatic pugilist stance, while my desk chair flew across the tiny space.

Officer Mackereth flipped on the light.

“You always work in the dark?” he asked gruffly. He was dressed in his uniform, duty belt clasped around his waist. I’d checked the roster when I started my shift, so I knew he was working tonight. I also knew he’d been called in earlier, along with a dozen other officers, to help handle a homicide in the Red Groves housing project. Dead black male, skewered on a collapsed fire escape of a tenement housing building. Messy scene, according to the radio chatter. The crime scene techs had finally used blowtorches to sever the metal rods in Stan Miller’s body from the fire escape. Then the ME had hauled away the corpse, still shish-kebabbed, in an extra large ambulance the city had recently purchased for transporting extra large patients.

I dropped my hands to my side, flexed my fingers. I wanted to move farther away, but the desk kept me in place. The single-person comm center was strictly utilitarian. Seven feet wide, seven feet deep. The PD’s handicap-accessible unisex bathroom was larger.

Beside me, Tulip perked up. She trotted over to Officer Mackereth, sat before him, and presented her head.

He bent over, scratched her neck. Then, in a move that probably surprised him as much as me, he squatted down and gave Tulip a hug. She licked his cheek.

“At least one of you likes me,” he said.

Under the wash of fluorescent lights, I could see the heavy lines in his face. The price one paid for working death scenes. Would he dream of Stan Miller’s body later this morning? How much would it surprise him to know I’d be having that nightmare, too?

“Tough night,” I commented now, staying next to my console.

“At least no other calls,” Officer Mackereth said.

“Pretty quiet.”

“Figures. We got every uniform buzzing around the Red Groves scene, so of course nothing else comes in.”

“How’s Red Groves?” I stared at my monitor, as if I should be checking it.

Tom shrugged. “Scene’s secured. Body’s bagged and tagged. Neighbors are furious and fearful. The usual.”

“Any witnesses?” I asked. Casually.

“Only three or four dozen—”

“Really?”

Officer Mackereth blew out a huff of breath, stood up. “Hell, we had so many gawkers saying so many different things, who the hell knows? Half of them claimed the vic was yelling at his wife, then must’ve gone to storm down the fire escape, but it collapsed. Others swear there was a shoot-out at the OK Corral, probably drug dealers, maybe Russian Mafia—”

“Russian Mafia?”

“Not likely. Someone sure as hell shot up the apartment, though. Bullet holes everywhere. We’re still looking for the family. Wife, two kids. One of the neighbors saw them leaving earlier in the evening. I’m hoping for their sakes, that’s true.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Messy way to go,” Tom said, rocking back on his heels. “Christ, never seen anything like it. Plunging five stories to land in a bed of metal stakes.”

At the last moment, he must have seen the look on my face. He caught himself, said hastily, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to…Occupational hazard. Cops forget sometimes that other people don’t spend their time staring at corpses.”

“It’s okay,” I said numbly. “I hear enough stuff.”

“Not the same. Hearing is easier than seeing.”

“Is it? Or does it just leave more to the imagination? Especially when I never get to learn the end of the story. Yelling, screaming, crisis, crisis, and now on to the next caller. Oh well.”

Officer Mackereth nodded slowly, as if considering the life of a dispatch operator for the first time. “Clean anything?” he asked abruptly.

I had to think about it. “Not yet.”

“Hit anyone?”

“Not yet.”

“Slow day for Charlene Grant?”

“Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant,” I corrected automatically.

“Not what your driver’s license says.”

My chin came up, I regarded him levelly. “The form didn’t allow for two middle names, so I opted not to include either one.”

“Why the two middle names, anyway?”

“Don’t know.”

“Family names?”

“Maybe.”

“You never asked your parents?”

“Don’t know where they are to ask the question,” I said stiffly.

That seemed to draw him up short. He nodded again, but continued to study me. We were dancing. Around and around. Except I couldn’t figure out: Were we partners on a dance floor, or opponents in a boxing ring?

“Tried Googling you,” he said now.

“What’d you find?”

“There are a lot of Charlene Grants in the world.”

“Maybe that’s why I have two middle names. To distinguish.”

“You don’t have two middle names.”

“Yes I do.”

“Not according to your birth certificate.”

“You looked up my birth certificate?”

“Well, when Googling doesn’t work, what else is a guy gonna do?”

I didn’t know what to say anymore. I blinked at him. Tulip whined softly, sitting between us.

“What do you want?” I asked now. The backs of my legs were still pressed against the desk. Abruptly, that bothered me. I forced myself to take a step forward. Stop retreating. Own the room. Seize control of the situation.

“E-mail addy,” Officer Mackereth said.

“Don’t have one.”

“Facebook page? Twitter account? MySpace?”

“Don’t own a computer.”

“Smartphone?”

“Don’t own a computer, a smartphone, an iPad, an iPod, an e-reader, or even a DVD player.”

“Off the grid,” Officer Mackereth observed.

“Frugal. If I want to go online, I visit the library. I can always check out a good book while I’m there.”

“What are you doing on the twenty-first?” he asked abruptly.

“What?”

“The twenty-first, Saturday morning. What are you doing?”

“Why?” My voice came out too high-pitched. At my sides, my hands were clenched. I don’t know if he noticed, but Tulip slunk over to me, pressing against my legs.

“You refused coffee. Turned down dinner. That leaves brunch.”

“Brunch?”

“Saturday, the twenty-first. One
P.M.
Café Fleuri at the Langham Hotel. All you can eat chocolate buffet. Best offer I got. What do you say?”

I…I didn’t know what to say. Then I didn’t have to. Because next to me, the monitor lit up, my headset started to chime, and I was literally saved by the bell.

I grabbed my headset, turned toward the ANI ALI screen.

“Can’t run from me forever,” Tom murmured behind me.

I whipped around abruptly, but he was already gone, flipping off the light switch and returning me to the gloom.

F
IVE THIRTY A.M.
Jesse snuck out of bed. He used his best quiet feet, padding down the heavily shadowed hallway toward the kitchen table. The door to his mother’s bedroom was still closed. He paused, just in case, listening intently. No sounds from the other side. His mother slept. Good.

Jesse continued on to his target: the ancient laptop. It beckoned from the kitchen table. Battered case folded shut and topped by a waiting Home Run/Zombie Bear.

Jesse’s mother liked rules. One of them was no TV or computer time on school mornings. Monday through Friday they both got up at 6:30
A.M.
They ate breakfast together, then Jesse’s mom packed his lunch while he got dressed, brushed his teeth, and combed his hair. By 7:20, he was thundering down the apartment stairs to the curb below, where he caught the 7:30 bus.

That was the drill. Jesse went to school, his mom went to work.

Monday through Friday, Jesse followed the schedule, played by the rules. It made his mom happy, and Jesse liked it when his mom was happy. She smiled more, ruffled his hair, bought him treats she didn’t really approve of, such as Twinkies. It was just the two of them, Jenny and Jesse against the world, she would tell him. They would snuggle together on the sofa each night, where she would read him Goosebumps novels and he would rest his head against her chest like he was still a little kid and it was all right, because it was just the two of them, Jesse and Jennifer against the world.

Jesse loved his mother.

Jesse couldn’t sleep last night. He couldn’t stop thinking about Helmet Hippo and their afternoon together on
AthleteAnimalz.com
. Jesse had always enjoyed the website. It was something to do. But yesterday … Yesterday had been way cool. He’d not only had something fun to do, he’d had someone fun to do it with. A real friend who believed in Jesse, thought Jesse could do anything. An older kid who liked him.

Jesse wanted to go back online.

Even though it was a school morning.

He had a plan. First up, he’d set his watch alarm for one hour before his mother woke up. Sun wasn’t even up yet, so his room had been cold and dark as he’d crawled quietly out of bed. He’d paused long enough for his fleecy bathrobe. Then, the soft glow of the hallway night-light had beckoned him out of his dark room, into the apartment, where he followed its glow toward the family room. The sound of his footsteps were dampened by his footy PJs until at last, he arrived, on a school morning, in front of the computer. He chewed his lower lip. Eyed Zombie/Home Run Bear.

Gave in to the impulse.

Quickly, he shoved aside Zombie Bear, popped open the top, hit the power button, and heard the computer whine wearily to life.

The old computer took a while to load. So, while it woke up, Jesse moved on to the next phase of his plan. He was going to feed himself breakfast. Then, he was going to fix his own lunch. Then, he was going to pack his own backpack.

That way, when his mother got up, and inevitably discovered him on the computer, she couldn’t get too mad. He’d eaten breakfast, right? He was all ready for school, right? He’d even
helped
her by fixing his own lunch, right?

Sometimes, rules could be bent a little. It was just a matter of proper mom management.

Jesse tiptoed into the tiny kitchenette. He cracked open the refrigerator, using its glow to guide him as he carefully climbed onto the kitchen counter, eased down a bowl, found the Cheerios, poured the milk. Breakfast took about five minutes. He resisted the urge to check on the computer, as the kitchen table was next to his
mother’s bedroom and activity in there was more likely to wake her. Better to stay tucked away in the kitchen, getting through morning chores.

Next up, lunch. He was a bologna man. Liked it with a little mayo and one slice of Kraft American cheese. He preferred white bread, but his mother only bought wheat. White is like eating a piece of sugar, she told him, which only made him like white bread more.

Jesse got out two pieces of wheat bread. Struggled with the squeeze bottle of mayonnaise. He had to use two hands. First nothing came out, then half the bottle exploded out in a giant white blob. He did his best to smooth it with a knife, but when he finally added the cheese and bologna and put the two slices together, mayo oozed everywhere.

A wet, messy sandwich. The price to be paid for morning AthleteAnimalz. Jesse felt philosophical as he stuffed the gooey mess into a sandwich Baggie and plopped it into his lunch box. He added an apple and a snack-sized bag of pretzels. School would provide a carton of milk.

He zippered up his Transformers lunch box, loaded it into his backpack, and rocked back on his heels, feeling pretty good. He’d done it. Breakfast and lunch, all by 6
A.M.
Not that hard, either.

Except then he glanced at his hands, still covered in greasy mayo. And the kitchen counter, which was dotted with even more mayo, pieces of cereal, and bits of bread. Better clean up or his mother would freak.

Back on the counter. Running the water thinly, doing the best he could with the sponge, smearing around the mayo, chasing the bread crumbs. Another quick rinse, and he hopped down, careful to land on soft feet before taking a deep breath, closing up the refrigerator, and finally creeping out of the tiny kitchen. His hands were maybe a little greasy. But not too bad, he thought. Close enough.

Laptop. Open. No longer wheezing. Waiting for him.

Jesse sidled up to it. He could already feel his heart race with anticipation. One last second, straining his ears for any sound from his mother’s room.…Silence.

Jesse typed in
www.AthleteAnimalz.com
and hit return.

*  *  *

H
E HAD MAIL.
And not from Helmet Hippo, which surprised him. He was still figuring out the rules for mailing another player. From what he could tell, “talking” to another animal during a game was subject to a lot of restrictions; each animal could only pick from the Go Team Go list of expressions to appear in the conversation bubble over its head. But e-mailing…that seemed to be fair game. Helmet Hippo could write anything, a real letter to Jesse. And Jesse could write a real letter back, which he thought was pretty cool. Like a big kid talking to a big kid. This latest e-mail, however, wasn’t from Helmet Hippo. This morning someone else had found him: Pink Poodle.