“WE SHOULD ARREST HER. Immediately. Girl’s already squirrelly. If she figures out how close we are to identifying her as the shooter, she’ll bolt in a second.”
D.D. sighed. She rubbed a throbbing spot on the back of her neck that had less to do with Detective O’s investigative zeal and more to do with the hours of sleep she didn’t get, followed by a breakfast with her parents she never should’ve scheduled. But other than that…
She picked up her fourth cup of black coffee, eyed the way her hand performed the over-caffeinated mambo, and took a sip. “On what grounds?” she quizzed her eager young colleague.
Phil nodded with equal skepticism. He sat beside Neil, the whole team assembled to debrief from last night’s shooting and this morning’s ongoing discoveries. Murder investigations had a tendency to ebb and flow. This one was currently flowing. Hell, it was nearing flood stage.
“Charlene Grant matches the description of the shooter,” O stated.
Phil was already shaking his head. “At best, gives us grounds to bring her in for a lineup. But we can’t go around arresting all the females in Boston who have brown hair and blue eyes.”
“She owns a twenty-two, same caliber as the murder weapon.”
“As do thousands of people, probably in just this city block.”
“Handwriting analysis,” O snapped, glancing at D.D. “Especially given the note within the note.”
D.D. shrugged. “I dropped off Charlie’s handwritten list of two names plus the three crime scene notes with Ray Dembowski. He’s going to test the notes from the first two shootings this afternoon to see if they have the same hidden message, Catch Me. Then, he’ll analyze the lemon juice scrawl versus the ink script to determine if the same person wrote both messages on the sheets of paper. Finally, he’ll analyze the handwriting of both messages against Charlie’s list. But it’ll be at least Monday before he has a formal report for us, and he’s already complaining about feeling rushed.”
“Motive, means, opportunity!” Detective O threw her hands up in the air. “Come on, I can’t be the only one who thinks Charlie’s guilty!”
O had exchanged last night’s little black dress for a more sedate light blue Brooks Brothers button-up shirt. It was expertly tailored, perfect for the up-and-coming young detective. Would also look good on TV, D.D. thought, should camera crews catch her making a major arrest.
“It’s not a matter of what we think,” D.D. said, less patient, more curt. “It’s a matter of what we can prove.”
Neil spoke up. “I think we should arrest her.” He had a sullen look on his face, his carrot top mane uncustomarily smoothed down, his lanky shoulders rounded. He’d barely spoken since the meeting started, opting to stare at a fixed spot on the table instead.
O pounced, having finally found an ally. “She’s a flight risk. If we spend too much time getting our ducks in a row, she’s bound to fly the coop.”
“Which is why we generally don’t share our investigative strategies with our prime suspects,” Phil muttered.
“How is she not going to figure it out?” O exclaimed. She pointed a finger at D.D. “She wants to call her in for a lineup. Think that won’t give our game away?”
“I didn’t say call her in for a lineup,” D.D. corrected. “I said that’s all a matching physical description can do for us. Now, put that finger away before you hurt someone.”
O glared at her, hand falling to her side. “What’s the alternative? Request a warrant to search her room or seize her twenty-two? Sure, we’ll gain some evidence. And boo hoo, she’ll be in Canada before we can snap on the handcuffs.”
D.D. sighed. She looked at O, she looked at Neil. Finally, she turned to Phil. “Kids these days,” she murmured.
The father of four nodded in agreement. He’d gotten to sleep last night, which thus far had made him the only sane person in the room. D.D. took a fortifying sip of coffee, and got to it.
“Neil,” she announced, “when were you going to tell us you broke up with Ben?” Ben being the medical examiner, whom Neil would’ve encountered last night when accompanying the latest shooting victim to the morgue.
“No one’s business,” her red-haired colleague mumbled.
“Oh, but it is. Maybe your relationship wasn’t dipping the pen in the company’s well, but it was dipping in the company’s brother’s well. We work with the ME’s office. The end of your relationship has on-the-job consequences and you know it. So dish. What happened?”
“We’re on a break.”
Phil rolled his eyes. “Oh, good Lord-”
“He says I’m too young,” Neil burst out. “He says I’m too green. I gotta go…sow wild oats or some such bullshit.”
“Become a man?” D.D. suggested.
“Fuck you!”
“Won’t solve your problem. You are young, you are green. You’re also a very promising detective who spends way too much time hiding behind his partners. You want to grow up?”
“Maybe.”
D.D. gave him a look.
He straightened his spine. “Yes!”
“Then let’s get you to the National Academy. It’ll get you more training and experience. Plus, being a smart guy with some promising detective skills, you might even like it.”
“When?”
“You’re gonna have to make some calls to figure that out. Preferably, before Phil and I are driven to beat you.”
“Horgan will agree?”
Cal Horgan was the deputy superintendent of homicide, who’d have to nominate Neil for the academy, as well as authorize the funds should Neil then be invited.
“I’d use your nice voice,” D.D. advised.
Neil pursed his lips, tapped on the tabletop a few times with his hand. “Okay.”
D.D.’s turn to roll her eyes. “You’re welcome. Now, as long as you’re learning new skills, why don’t you accompany Phil to interview the family of the shooting victim.”
They’d finally gotten an ID on their sixteen-year-old shooting victim/child molester. Barry Epsom. Formerly of Back Bay. Rich kid, one of four, they were told. Father a bigwig with Hancock Insurance, mother known to be a patron of the arts. Private school, where he hadn’t necessarily shined academically but also wasn’t known for causing trouble. Ironically enough, he had a reputation as a computer whiz kid.
Family had already lawyered up. They were grieving, admitting nothing, and the mid-morning interview was doomed to be the kind of long, dragged out, dramatic affair that yielded no useful information but killed the rest of the day. Better to let the rookies cut their teeth on it.
“Goal,” she informed Neil, and to a lesser extent Phil, because he knew his business, “is to be sympathetic, accuse their son of nothing, and get your hands on his electronics.” She eyed Phil, their own computer whiz, on the last part. “Smartphone was seized at the scene last night, but that still leaves computers, iPad, iPod, gaming systems-you’d be amazed where perverts hide their electronic data these days. Search warrant is broad and I want you to use it. We’ll let the forensic wizards manage this one-see if they can’t dig out exactly what Barry was doing online and, even better, how our vigilante shooter might have tracked him.”
“Sixteen. Couldn’t be a registered sex offender,” Neil spoke up, frowning.
“No record,” D.D. confirmed. “Not even a sealed juvie file.”
“Then how’d the shooter know-”
“Charlene Grant,” O repeated promptly, “knew about his behavior because she’d already taken calls from his victims. Further proof our shooter has insider knowledge, say from her job as a comm officer with a local police department.”
“Or our shooter baited him online,” Phil said neutrally. “Reached out to various registered users on the animal website. First one that sent her porn became the next target.”
“Which is why your goal,” D.D. said to Neil and Phil, “is to seize all electronics. Our sixteen-year-old victim has several key differences from our first two victims. Young, not yet in the criminal justice system, etc., etc. Connect him to the first two victims, and we’ll finally answer some questions.”
“Analyze his cell phone,” O said dryly. “Search the call log for the last time he called nine-one-one.”
D.D. rolled her eyes at the sex crime detective’s one-track mind. “Which brings us to the next matter at hand-how to wrap up our current homicide investigation, by trapping Charlene Grant.”
“Finally!”
“Here’s the deal.” D.D. regarded Neil and O. “You’re both right: We’re dealing with a suspect who’s half-feral and probably will bolt at the first hint of suspicion. Which is why we have to proceed with caution. For example, we could request a warrant to seize her twenty-two on the grounds that she matches the general description of our shooter. Which, as O pointed out, would probably gain us the murder weapon but lose us the murderer as Charlene heads for the hills. Or, we can wait for her to show up for her eleven P.M. shift tonight at the Grovesnor PD, at which point they’ll seize it for us.”
Detective O frowned, clearly trying to follow this logic. “She had her gun on her yesterday,” the detective murmured slowly, “when you called her in from work. Meaning, she must carry it with her at all times. Which would be-”
“Against department policy,” D.D. finished for her. “Grovesnor PD has the right to seize her weapon, not to mention then authorize any tests they’d like, such as a ballistics test, to see if the rifling on Charlene’s Taurus matches the rifling on the six slugs recovered from three separate shootings.”
“She’ll fight that,” O warned. “She believes she needs the gun for the twenty-first…which would be tomorrow.”
D.D. shrugged. “Then she needs to spend more time reading her employer’s rules and regs. Her mistake, our opportunity.”
O nodded. “Smart,” she said finally, which D.D. would’ve taken as more of a compliment if the beautiful young detective hadn’t sounded so surprised.
“Gee thanks.” D.D. pulled together her notes, rapped them into one eight-and-a-half-by-eleven stack, then rose to standing. “Now you just have to keep it our little secret while speaking to her this afternoon.”
“We’re speaking to her this afternoon? Why?” O looked puzzled. “We don’t have any developments from the Facebook page yet. People are just starting to friend it. Frankly, I’m not sure eight P.M. tomorrow night is enough time, even by the viral standards of the Web.”
“It’s not about the Facebook page. I have news for her, however. Worth her paying us a visit.”
Neil had also risen to standing. “You know who killed her friends?” he asked.
“Nope. I found her mother.”
DID ALL DAUGHTERS FEAR THEIR MOTHERS? It was food for thought, after D.D.’s own breakfast with her parents. Even now, three hours later, she couldn’t decide which moment was the most humiliating. Maybe when she’d first showed up in the lobby of the Weston Hotel in Waltham, and her mother had pointedly asked, “Isn’t that the same outfit you were wearing last night, dear?”
D.D. hadn’t even thought about it, given that she pulled a lot of all-nighters on the job and wardrobe change was generally the least of her concerns. She’d brought that up. Her father might have even appeared sympathetic. Then they’d sat at the table. Her mother had wanted to know where Alex and Jack were. D.D. had answered that Alex had to teach today at the academy, so Jack was at day care.
Her mother had gotten that look again. Like she was sucking on lemons. Which had pissed D.D. off, because if memory served, her mother hadn’t exactly played house when D.D. was a baby. Her mother had gone back to teaching, too close to tenure to give up now. D.D. had gone to day care. Hell, D.D. remembered loving day care. There were other kids who rolled and tumbled and got dirty and laughed hard. Day care was nirvana. Home was all “Sit still, don’t make that face, for God’s sake can’t you stop fidgeting for just one minute?”
No was the general answer. D.D. couldn’t be patient, couldn’t sit still, couldn’t stay in one place. Even now, she was forty-one, and within the first two minutes of breakfast she was compulsively folding and unfolding her napkin on her lap. It was either that or scream.
Her mother had ordered a bowl of fruit. Her father had asked for toast. D.D. had gone for eggs Benedict with extra béarnaise sauce.
Her mother had arched a brow. Fat, cholesterol-should D.D. really be eating such things at her age?
Interestingly enough, her mother’s lips had never moved, her throat had never vocalized the syllables. Turned out, she didn’t have to actually speak. She could communicate an entire range of disapproval all with the single lift of her brow.
If D.D. hadn’t been so thoroughly infuriated, she would’ve been impressed.
They didn’t speak while waiting for their food. They just sat there, a father, a mother, a daughter, who all these years later couldn’t bridge the divide. And eventually D.D. had stopped feeling so angry and simply felt depressed. Because they were her parents and she loved them in her own way and understood they loved her in their own way, and what a shame it didn’t make bearing each other’s company any easier.
Food came. They ate gratefully.
D.D. had thought she just might survive the meal, when her mother chewed her last piece of cantaloupe, set down her fork, looked D.D. in the eye, and stated, “This is what I don’t understand: If Alex is good enough to father your child, why isn’t he good enough to marry? I mean really, D.D., what are you waiting for?”
D.D. had frozen, forkful of eggs Benedict midair, and stared at her mom. Then, belatedly, she’d turned her gaze to her father, who was resiliently studying the white linen tablecloth. Coward.
“I’m glad you like Alex,” D.D. had mumbled at last, then set down her fork and bolted for the bathroom. By the time she’d returned, her mother sat pinch-faced, staring straight ahead. Her father had his hand lightly on hers, but whether that was offering comfort or asking forgiveness, D.D. couldn’t tell.
They were an attractive elderly couple, she realized, approaching the table. They fit together in a way you could see from across the room. And maybe that was the problem. They were the unit. And she was forever the outsider, looking in.
She kissed her mom on the cheek, feeling the rigidness of her mother’s spine. She kissed her father as well, feeling the dry brush of his lips on her cheek. Then she paid the bill and got out of there.
At a certain point, you had to agree to disagree, even with your own parents. Logically she could accept that. But it hurt. It would always hurt.
At least she knew, somewhere deep down inside, that her mother loved her.
She wondered what Charlene thought about her mother, a woman who’d physically abused her most of her young life. But at least she’d let Charlene live, which based on the police reports D.D. had read just this morning, was more than Christine Grant had done for her other two children.
Parents and children. Mothers and daughters.
Love and forgiveness.
And homicide.
D.D. picked up the phone and made the call.