Catch Me (7 page)

“Won’t be me,” D.D. said.

“Why not?”

“You rent a place in Cambridge, right? Not my jurisdiction.”

“Oh.” Apparently, Charlie hadn’t known this. “Perhaps I won’t be murdered there.”

“Your friends were. In their own homes, right?”

“It’s not really my house,” the girl said. “I just rent a room.”

“Semantics. Your profiler describes these murders as an intimate crime, right? Not stranger-to-stranger. Known perpetrator to known victim.”

“Yes.”

“So he’ll strike where you feel comfortable. That’s part of the process, the methodology. Sneaking up on you on the subway won’t do it for him. You gotta see him coming. You gotta welcome him with a smile. It’s part of the drill.”

“Then I guess I won’t go home on the twenty-first.”

D.D. was curious despite herself. “So you left your town, came to the big city. Figured it was easier to get lost here, maybe hide in a crowd?”

The girl nodded. “And I run, and lift weights and box and train with firearms. I’m not defenseless.”

“Licensed to carry?” D.D. asked sharply.

“Yes.”

“How’d you manage that?” Unlike other states, where it was legal to have a gun in one’s vehicle, home, or business, Massachusetts required a gun license to even possess a firearm. A license to carry was one step above that, granting the person permission to carry the firearm outside his or her home or business. The license usually required some kind of underlying reason—the person seeking the license worked in security, was a business owner who routinely carried large amounts of cash, that sort of thing. Being young and paranoid probably wasn’t a check mark on the form, D.D. guessed.

The girl, however, had her jaw set in a stubborn line. “I’m legal,” she said, and folded her hands in front of her.

D.D. continued to regard her levelly. “All right. You’re legally armed and training to be dangerous. But you kept your name, Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant. Why take all those steps and
not
change your name?”

Girl looked away. “I have to work. And the only experience I
have is in dispatch, which means I have to pass a background check. Even if I invented a new identity, I don’t know how to create one that would stand up to that level of scrutiny.”

“No.”

The girl startled, look up at her sharply.

“Come on, don’t waste my time. You lie about one thing, then I gotta worry about you lying about other things and for the record,” D.D. glanced at her watch, “you have only three minutes left, so let’s not waste it on games.”

“I have only three minutes left?”

“Yep. It’s called lifestyle,” D.D. informed her gravely. “Forty years later, I’ve decided to give it a chance. So don’t fuck with me. Look me in the eye, and tell me why you kept your name.”

“I want to go home.” And the way the girl said it, D.D. understood she didn’t mean to a rented room in Cambridge. She meant her town, her people. She meant the place she had belonged in the days before her childhood friends had started dying.

She meant a place that D.D. herself was just starting to identify, and that spooked her a little, made her shiver, because there was a plaintive tone there, a longing that D.D., with three minutes to go, understood.

“You want the killer to find you.”

“I can’t go home until he does.”

“Has he made contact? Notes, phone calls, any kind of warning or threat?”

The girl shook her head. “I understand,” she said, almost kindly, “that there’s nothing you can do. No threat, no assault, no murder, means no crime, means no jurisdiction. I’m just a fairy tale you’re listening to today.”

“You should change your name,” D.D. said. “Or at least tell your story to your own officers. You’re dispatch. You have their backs, they’ll watch yours.”

“It will be someone I know, someone I trust,” Charlie said, and shook her head.

“Ah, but the Grovesnor PD didn’t know your friends. No link, making them your safest bet.”

But, for whatever reason, Charlie still seemed unconvinced. Just because you were paranoid, D.D. thought, didn’t mean they weren’t out to get you.

She glanced at her watch. Three minutes were up. Interview was over. Time for the new and improved D. D. Warren to report home. She stood.

“Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant, what kind of firearm do you carry?”

The girl regarded her mutely.

D.D. returned the stare.

“I carry a Taurus twenty-two LR pistol,” the girl supplied crisply. “I train with J. T. Dillon at the Massachusetts Rifle Association in Woburn.”

“Yeah? How good a shot?”

“I can hit bull’s-eye at fifty feet.”

“Sounds like you’d be really good at a double tap to the forehead.”

“Risky target,” the girl replied levelly. “Center mass is a better bet.”

D.D. digested this, still not sure what she thought of the girl’s presence outside an active homicide scene, and still not liking all her answers to D.D.’s questions. But seeing as gawking at crime scenes still wasn’t considered a criminal offense…

D.D. pushed away from the table. “All right. We’re done.” D.D. paused a beat. “For now.”

The girl blinked a few times. “Meaning?”

“Go home. Take care of yourself. Avoid future crime scenes.”

“Including my own?” Charlie smiled wanly, then rose to standing. “You can’t help me.”

“You were right before. No crime, no jurisdiction.”

“I keep my room spotless. I plan on bleaching the floors, walls, sheets the night before. Know that, on the twenty-second, when there is a crime, when you do have jurisdiction, or can consult with the detective that does. Anything found at the scene is from him. Plus, check my nails. I’ve been growing them out, and you better believe, blood, hair, skin, I’ll be going for all the DNA I can get. I
won’t give up. Remember that, on the twenty-second. I’ve been preparing, planning, and strategizing. He catches me, I’m not going down without a fight.”

D.D. stared at the girl. She believed her. At least this much was true.

“I’m gonna die trying,” Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant informed her. “Remember that, Detective Warren. After that…it’s up to you.”

“M
OMMY
, I’
M HOME
!” The boy burst through the front door of the apartment, tossing his Red Sox backpack to the left, while kicking his snowy boots to the right. Navy blue snow coat he dropped dead ahead, then amused himself by leaping over it in his stocking feet. He landed with a satisfying thump, then flipped his hat into the air. He didn’t wait to see where it landed, but bolted to the kitchen for a snack.

“Jesse,” his mother chided him from down the hall. “Not so much noise. I’m on the phone.”

Jesse didn’t answer back; he knew his mother didn’t expect him to. His entrance, her response, was as much a part of his after-school ritual as say, grabbing Twinkies for a snack.

Jesse’s mother worked on the phone. Sales stuff. Lucky she had the job, she’d told him many times. Lucky she could work from home, so he didn’t have to do the dreaded after-school program, where they fed you, like, granola bars and not even the good chewy kind, but the hard crunchy kind no self-respecting kid liked, but parents bought ’cause they were cheaper by the box.

In the kitchen, Jesse climbed onto the countertop, opened the top cabinet, and grabbed a blue plastic cup. Cup down, he leapt from the countertop onto the floor—another satisfying thump. This time, the floor thumped back.

Mrs. Flowers, the gazillion-year-old lady who lived beneath them. She didn’t like it when Jesse bounced around. “Sounds like you’re raising an elephant!” she’d complained to his mother many times.
His mother would then laugh uncomfortably. “Boys will be boys,” she’d say, while shooting Jesse a look that meant he’d better straighten up his act,
or else.

Jesse sighed, tried to use his quiet feet as he padded to the fridge and tugged hard on the door. This was the deal: He could eat Twinkies, but only if he drank a glass of milk.

Good deal. Jesse poured himself a glass of milk, then sucked the cream filling out of his Twinkies.

First after-school ritual completed, he went into the family room. He wasn’t allowed TV or video games after school. TV rots the brain, his mother always said, and Jesse would need his one day if he wanted to have a
better life
. Plus, TV and video games made noise, which wasn’t good for his mother’s job.

So, another deal. He was allowed on the computer, which sat on the kitchen table in the corner of the family room. The table sat four, but since there was only him and his mom, that left two open spots. The computer occupied one. He was supposed to put his homework and school papers in the second spot. After dinner, his mother would review his school papers, then it was homework time. He’d do his, his mother would do hers.

She was in school, too. Nursing. One more year to go, then she could have a better job, she told him. One with more money and benefits, and maybe they could move to a better apartment in a building with a playground, where boys could run around and be boys, without ancient Mrs. Flowers pounding her ceiling with a broom handle.

Jesse took a seat. Booted up the laptop. It was old, a gift from his mother’s last boyfriend, who’d been okay. He’d liked the Red Sox, would play catch in the park, and had bought Jesse his first stuffed bear (holding a ball and bat), which he’d registered on the AthleteAnimalz site. Homerun Bear, his bear was called, and Jesse liked that. He wanted to be a baseball player, too, some day. Be just like Big Papi.

That boyfriend had lasted a whole year. Then apparently, he’d met someone else and Jesse’s mother had cried and Jesse had stopped liking Mitchell, had started hating him instead. One night Jesse had
even taken scissors to Homerun Bear and done his best to destroy him. In the morning, however, he’d felt bad. It wasn’t really the bear’s fault, after all. And Jesse didn’t have that many toys, given the “bad economy” as his mother always said.

Jesse had used silver duct tape to fix Homerun Bear as best he could. Attaching each limb, then the bat, then the ball, then the ears. He thought it made his bear look pretty cool. Zombie Bear, he called him now. A homerun hitter, raised from the dead.

Zombie Bear was currently sitting next to the laptop, waiting for their latest after-school adventures. Under Zombie Bear’s steady gaze, Jesse finally got the old computer booted up and launched the AthleteAnimalz website.

Jesse was only allowed to go to three websites on the computer. His mother had checked out each one before giving her approval. He was not allowed to deviate from the list, and once, when he’d accidentally typed in the wrong Internet address, she’d known and asked him about it the next morning. Jesse had heard a TV commercial talk about spyware. He figured his mother had some.

Jesse liked AthleteAnimalz. He liked the games, especially baseball. Course, in the world of AthleteAnimalz, it was never Jesse online, it was Homerun aka Zombie Bear. So Jesse would log in and magically become his bear. As Homerun Bear, he could then move around the site—make friends, join games, compete to collect the most points.

Jesse wanted a million points. But he was only seven, and some of the games confused him. So far, he had 121 points. Not bad, he thought. When he hit 150, he’d get a trophy. He wanted that trophy. So lately, every day after school, he logged onto
AthleteAnimalz.com
and played baseball. He got to join a team with other AthleteAnimalz, including some pink poodle with a soccer ball that was the best homerun hitter Jesse had ever seen. He wasn’t sure a pink poodle should be the best one at baseball, but there you had it. The world of AthleteAnimalz.

Today, he found a baseball game already in play. Each team had enough members, but you could “sit on the bench” and wait for a team to draft you. Generally, you were picked based on points.
Animals with lots of points got drafted quickly. Animals with fewer points, the “rookies,” had to wait longer.

Jesse checked out both teams. Their rosters revealed a long list of monkeys, dogs, cats, bunnies, two snakes, and one hippo, with a wide range of points. Not too bad then; he’d get drafted sooner versus later, he thought. And if his team won, they’d all score ten bonus points, plus one point for every fifteen minutes they spent online. In two hours, Jesse would get that much closer to his 150-point trophy.

A box opened on the screen. A hippo with a batter’s helmet wanted to know if Jesse would join his team. Staring at the computer screen, Jesse’s eyes widened. Helmet Hippo had like a gazillion points. Like, the grandmaster of AthleteAnimalz. Jesse had played with him a couple of times before. Helmet Hippo knew all the moves. Helmet Hippo never lost.

Jesse couldn’t believe his luck.

He quickly accepted the invitation, and on screen, a little icon of his bear appeared on the baseball field. His team was currently fielding. Homerun Bear appeared in center field. Jesse could “catch” the ball by clicking on the mouse once, and throw it by using the directional arrows to aim, then click again. Catching wasn’t so bad, but throwing was more challenging for him—he had a hard time lining up his throw using the arrows. But for Helmet Hippo, he would do his best.

For Helmet Hippo, Jesse was determined to be a winner.

S
OMETIME AFTER FOUR,
Jesse’s mother got off the phone. She wandered into the room, but he barely noticed. Pink Poodle had appeared and immediately been drafted by the rival team. She’d already hit two home runs, and now, in the final inning, Jesse’s team was behind, six to seven, and coming up to bat. By virtue of points, Helmet Hippo was their team leader. He was urging them to be strong. They could do this!

Jesse’s mother paused behind him. “AthleteAnimalz?” she asked.

Jesse nodded absently, eyes glued to the screen. Almost his turn to hit. He was nervous. Didn’t want to let his team down.

His mother nodded at the approved website and made her way toward the kitchen. “Dinner in fifteen, Jesse.”

He nodded again, barely registering. His turn. One out, Helmet Hippo on second base. Right hit, and Jesse could drive in the tying run. Better hit, and Jesse and Helmet Hippo would both score, taking the lead.