Catch Me (30 page)

Her father took her mother’s hand, as if to calm her. “Will you be back?”

His voice had a quiver she didn’t remember hearing before. And now, as she looked closer, she saw fresh lines around his eyes, skin sagging beneath his chin, age spots on the backs of his hands. Seventy-eight, it occurred to her. Her parents were seventy-eight years old. Not ancient, but definitely getting up there, and how many more of these trips would they be able to make? How many more years would they have with her and their baby grandson?

“Probably not for dinner,” she whispered.

“So we’ll see you in the morning.”

“I could do an early breakfast, if you’d like, or maybe catch up for lunch if that’s better for you.”

“I don’t understand,” her mother interjected, still sounding disapproving. “It’s seven o’clock at night. You just got off work, now you’re going back to work, and still the best you can do is an early breakfast?”

“Welcome to Boston homicide.”

“What about Jack? You have a baby now. What about him?”

D.D. hadn’t even greeted her son yet. She’d kissed her parents, spoken to Alex, but her baby…

She bent over his car seat. Jack was asleep, oblivious to the growing drama around him. His lips were pursed into a little rosebud, his hands fisted on his blue-clothed tummy. A new bib around his neck proclaimed, “Someone in Florida loves me.”

D.D. glanced up at her parents. “That’s adorable, thank you.”

Her pager chimed again. She closed her eyes, feeling the relentless pull.

“Go,” Alex said softly. “It’s okay. I’ll handle it.”

“I owe you,” she mouthed at him, over their son’s sleeping form.

He nodded, a shade grim, so apparently her parents’ charms weren’t lost on him.

D.D. placed her lips against Jack’s forehead. She inhaled the scent of baby powder, felt the silky wisps of his hair. And for a second, she could actually agree with her mother. What was she doing, walking away from this?

“I’ll call you in the morning,” D.D. said to the table.

She walked back through the restaurant, bracing herself for the cold as well as the relentless weight of her mother’s disappointment.

A
S THE CROW FLIES,
Copley Square was only a hop, skip, and a jump from the waterfront. Given Boston traffic, further snarled by a wintry mix of light snow and icy sleet, it took D.D. nearly forty-five minutes to navigate the handful of miles. She didn’t bother with the legalities of parking, but pulled up on the curb right behind a string of police cruisers.

She stepped out of her car to find Detective O already waiting for her.

Whatever plans D.D. had had for the evening, O’s had obviously been better. The young detective had her dark hair piled on top of her head in a loose knot of curls. Mascara touched up her exotic eyes and deep red lipstick enhanced her lips, while beneath her long, black wool coat, she wore a knee-length dress paired with black leather stiletto boots. She looked softer, rounder, more feminine. A look D.D. herself had never been able to pull off, but that some guy somewhere had probably really appreciated.

O caught her stare. “Police pager: best birth control invented by man,” she drawled.

“Funny, I used to say the same thing.”

O arched a brow, given D.D.’s new mom status.

“Condoms aren’t a hundred percent effective either,” D.D. said defensively.

“I’ll remember that.”

D.D. shut her door. Donned her fleece-lined black leather gloves, pulled down her black wool hat. “So, what do we have?”

“Dead kid, back alley. Scared kid, back of patrol car.”

“I thought this was related to our sex offender shootings.”

“Dead kid was the offender. Scared kid the victim.”

D.D. digested this, eyes widening. “Scared kid didn’t pull the trigger, did he?”

“Nope. But he saw who did. Lone female.” O broke into a grim smile. “Small build, small gun. World’s craziest blue eyes, he said, and brown hair, scraped back into a ponytail.”

“Charlene Grant,” D.D. breathed.

“Aka Abigail.”

D.D.
TENDED THE CRIME SCENE FIRST.
Given the high traffic around Copley, the ME’s office had already removed the body. No sign of Neil, so maybe he’d accompanied the body to the morgue. She’d given Phil the night off, which left her and O to do the honors. As O had obviously been at the scene for a bit, D.D. did her best to come up to speed.

Squatting down inside the crime scene tape, D.D. could just make out the faint impression of the already-removed corpse, which formed a literal snow angel on the white-dusted alley. Victim had been tall. Long splayed legs, one dangling arm.

She didn’t see the outline of the right arm. Maybe the victim had it over his chest. Maybe he’d been raising it in front of his face at the time of the shooting. Pedophile or not, that image disturbed her, to be shot down in cold blood.

“How old?” she asked Detective O, who stood behind her, shivering in her short dress and boots.

“Victim gave his name as Barry. Said he was sixteen.”

“And he targeted another kid?”

“Seven-year-old boy. Apparently ‘met’ him on a gaming website. Arranged to meet him at the Boston Public Library. Then lured him outside.”

D.D. shook her head. Even after O’s lecture on sex predators
becoming younger and younger, sixteen was hard to take. “Has the body been identified?”

“Uniformed officers are canvassing the area now. He was on foot, so maybe someone local will recognize him.”

“There’s a doorstop conversation,” D.D. muttered. “First off, we regret to inform you that your son is dead. Secondly, he was most likely killed while sexually assaulting another child. Shit.”

Detective O didn’t say anything; maybe she shared the sentiment.

“So the older boy got the younger boy outside, then led him here.” D.D. looked around. They were tucked in a back Dumpster area, servicing local establishments. It was secluded, rank-smelling. But not totally private. One end was open to the side street, not to mention they stood before a heavy metal service door used by personnel as they hauled out trash.

“Wonder if he scoped the area out before,” D.D. thought out loud. “Learned the traffic patterns of this alleyway, felt comfortable. Or maybe, as you explained before, it was a case of impulse meeting opportunity. The seven-year-old had followed, so the sixteen-year-old decided to see what he could do.”

Detective O shrugged; given that the perpetrator was now dead, there wasn’t any way of answering such questions.

“The sixteen-year-old had just exposed himself,” O said, “when the woman appeared. The victim didn’t recognize her and has no memory of her following them. But she seemed to know the sixteen-year-old, implied that she’d been watching him. She identified herself as a gamer from the same website.”

D.D. stood up, frowning. “Really? So while one user is targeting kids, another user is targeting the predator. And both were able to find their victims in real life? But how? Isn’t that supposed to be the hard part?”

“Sixteen-year-old probably targeted the younger based on his stated interest in the Red Sox. Once sixteen-year-old established that the boy lived in Boston, he sent an e-mail inviting him to the library, which, as a public place, seemed harmless enough.”

“Lured him in.”

“Exactly. As for our Femme Nikita,” O shrugged, “there are
several tools available to her. Personally, I’d start by running my target’s user name through Spokeo, to find other sites he visited. Given ‘Barry’ was sixteen, one of the first sites that would probably come up is his Facebook page. So I’d visit there, study his photo, identify friends, hobbies, interests. Better yet, Facebook has a feature, called Facebook Places or Check In. Meaning that when ‘Barry’ posts while at the Boston library, that site automatically shows up as part of the post. Now, La Femme Nikita can follow all of Barry’s comings and goings, including that he was at the Boston Public Library tonight. Assuming she has a smartphone, she doesn’t even need to lug around a laptop. She simply carries her smartphone in one hand, her gun in the other, and lets Barry tell her exactly where he’s going and what he’s doing. Takes all the fun out of stalking if you ask me.”

D.D. shook her head, gazing down at the snowy shadow of a dead kid. “But you said the sixteen-year-old targeted his victim at a gaming website, not the chat room you and Phil discussed earlier?”

“Not the chat room.
AthleteAnimalz.com
, however, is a major corporate kiddie site. Chances are, our first two pedophiles roamed there as well.”

“Meaning that’s the connection, not the chat room.”

“Or all of the above. The pedophile community isn’t that large. It’s not unreasonable that their paths crossed in several different sites on the Web.”

D.D. could buy that. She straightened, working on getting the choreography established in her head. “Sixteen-year-old boy targets seven-year-old-boy. Lures him to dark alley. Then…this woman appears. What happened next?”

“According to our seven-year-old witness, she was already holding the twenty-two. Pretty much ignored the younger boy, homed straight in on Barry. Of course, at this point, Barry had his pants unzipped and was holding his penis, making himself the obvious target.”

“What’d she say?”

“Not much. Confirmed the older boy’s Internet identity as Pink Poodle—”

“A sixteen-year-old
boy
is Pink Poodle?”

“Welcome to the Internet. And for the record, that strategy helped him. The seven-year-old agreed to meet tonight in part because he assumed he’d be meeting a girl, and who’s afraid of a girl?”

“Shit,” D.D. said.

“The shooter then identified herself as Helmet Hippo, another user from the website. Teenager tried to defend himself. Argued his age, said he’d change.”

D.D. looked down at the snow angel. “Obviously, that didn’t work.” But it bothered her again. Sixteen years old. Shot down in cold blood. What if he could’ve changed? The courts probably wouldn’t have tried him as an adult, but another citizen had. Tried him and executed him in a matter of minutes.

“The woman stated he’d been a very naughty boy, ordered him to be brave, then shot him.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. Granted, our witness is young and traumatized, but his best guess is that the entire altercation took about three minutes.”

“Be brave, you said. Was there a note?” D.D. asked. “Everyone has to die sometime, yada yada yada.”

“Tucked inside the victim’s coat. Most likely written in advance, as, according to the witness, she didn’t have time to write anything at the scene. He saw her bend over the body, however, probably placing the paper in the victim’s jacket.”

“So definitely the same shooter. Refining her game now. Not just picking off pedophiles, but rescuing their victims.”

“In her mind, I’m sure she had a good night.”

“What happened after she shot the sixteen-year-old?”

“The shooter introduced herself to the witness, told him not to worry, then walked away.”

D.D. arched a brow. “Which way did she exit?”

“To the left. The boy didn’t follow, though. He stood there a minute longer, then bolted back to the library, where his mother had alerted the staff she couldn’t find him. They were going to lock down, police had just been called, when he came tearing up the
steps. He was hysterical, she became hysterical. It took five or ten minutes to sort things out. Then uniformed officers immediately dispatched to this location, while broadcasting the woman’s description, but no hits.”

D.D. wasn’t surprised. Anyone could disappear in Boston. Which is why Charlene Grant had originally moved here.

D.D. thought about it. “That the Internet user was sixteen should’ve startled her. Made her pause, ask more questions, something. But it didn’t. Meaning your theory stands to reason—she’d been stalking her target for a bit, visiting his Facebook page, maybe even following him in person on other occasions. She wasn’t surprised by his age or his actions. She expected both.”

“Premeditation,” O supplied. “Planning. Strategy.”

“Smart. Adept with computers. Patient.”

“Controlled,” O added to their profile of the shooter. “She shot the sixteen-year-old, then walked away. No collateral damage, no fussing with the witness. Just in, out, done.”

“Where’s the witness now?”

“Back of a squad car with his mother. We’re arranging for a forensic interviewer who specializes in children to meet them at HQ.”

“Can he talk?”

O shrugged. “Last time I saw him, he clung to his mother and didn’t say a word.”

“I’d like to try.”

O hesitated. D.D. looked at her. “What?”

“You have any experience with kids?”

“Worked a case where a four-year-old was the prime witness.”

“Look, you may be older and wiser,” O drawled, “but I’m sex crimes, and unfortunately, most of my cases involve questioning kids. So take it from me, you can’t screw this up. You lead the witness here, and that contamination will carry. Then the entire interview will be tossed, and we’ll have no grounds for arresting our prime suspect, Charlene blah blah Grant. You gotta be smart.”

“Then I’ll leave the stupid questions at home.”

O still didn’t seem happy, but she turned away from the alley, returning in the direction of the flashing cruiser lights. The little boy
and his mother were huddled in the back of the first patrol car. The door was open, probably to make them feel less like prisoners. But it also let in the chill, and both the boy and his mother were shivering. The mom held a cardboard cup of steaming beverage, probably coffee, but she wasn’t drinking it. Just holding it, as if willing the warmth to make a difference.

The little boy didn’t look up when they approached. He was leaning against his mother’s side, his tiny form nearly lost in an oversized black winter coat, hat, scarf, and mittens. D.D. had an impression of dark eyes and a pale pinched face, then he turned away from her.

The mother had her left arm around her son. She had the same pale features and haunted expression as the boy. But her jaw was set, her lips thinned into a resolute line.