I WAS TWITCHY when I first took Detective Warren’s call. Twitchier, by the time I departed for BPD headquarters. I left my aunt behind, nestled with Tulip in my room. Given her exhaustion from the early morning drive to Boston, it hadn’t taken much to convince her to rest. I’d told her I needed to tend to a few things before work. No need to mention my conversation with a local homicide investigator. That Detective Warren had located my mother. That she had more information on the baby sister and baby brother I myself had just remembered a few hours ago. No need to mention my growing conviction that the past was closing in on me for a reason. That I was remembering my failings just in time for judgment day.
Three P.M. Friday afternoon. Twenty-nine hours before 8 P.M. Saturday night. Sky had finally cleared and turned that crystalline blue that marks bitterly cold winter days in Boston.
The brightness hurt my eyes, encouraged me to keep my head down and my shoulders hunched, when I should’ve been walking shoulders back, eyes straight ahead, taking constant inventory of the world around me. Trees cast skeletal shadows on the white snowy ground. Corners were mushy with slush and filled with blind spots caused by heaping snowbanks.
What if the killer had gotten bored with January 21 as the annual day to murder a young, defenseless woman? Maybe he’d realize there was more opportunity on the 20th, when his third victim, namely me, wouldn’t be expecting it yet. Eight P.M. was also an arbitrary time, a rough average between two approximate times of death in two separate homicides. Maybe morning was better for the murderer this year. Or later Saturday night or even Sunday morning. A lot could happen in a year. The killer could’ve moved, gotten a new job, maybe fallen in love, had a child.
He or she could be following me. Right now. Maybe he/she had started a week ago. Or a year ago: Officer Tom Mackereth, carefully scoping me out on the job. Or my aunt, suddenly showing up on my front door, after nearly a year apart. Or a long-lost friend, that kid from high school I couldn’t remember but would vaguely recognize, having spent yesterday flipping through the yearbook. Someone I wouldn’t immediately assume was a threat. Someone smart enough, practiced enough, to walk right up to me without tripping any of my internal alarms.
Twelve months later, I still had more questions than answers. Mostly, I felt the stress of too many sleepless nights, the ticktock of a clock, so close now, so unbelievably close to a very personal, very gruesome deadline.
I walked down the sidewalk toward the T stop in Harvard Square, jumping at every unexpected noise, while thinking that it was a good thing I’d left my Taurus at home, because at this stage of the game, I was a danger to myself and others.
I wished it was already January 21. Frankly, I needed the fight.
A crunching sound behind me. Footsteps, fast and heavy breaking through the crusty snow. I jumped to the side, turning quickly. Two college students strode past me, the bottom half of their faces hidden behind thick plaid scarves. The boy glanced up at my acrobatics, gave me a funny look, then put his arm around the waist of the girl, pulling her closer to him as they walked past.
My heart rate had just resumed its normal pace, my feet turning back toward the Cambridge T stop, when the cell phone in my pocket chimed to life.
I pulled it out, half-curious, half-fatalistic. I flipped it open. “Hello.”
And heard nine-year-old Michael’s voice. “She called him. Last night. She’d been drinking and then she started crying and then she called him.”
I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t find the words through the rush of guilt and shame that flooded through my veins. Michael, and his sister Mica and his mother Tomika, the family I’d tried to save. Little Michael, whose father I’d taken from him, iron spikes protruding from his bloody chest.
“But he didn’t answer the phone,” Michael continued now, voice flat and quick, getting his story out. “Tillie, our next-door neighbor, answered, and he-she said Stan fell off the fire escape. He-she said Stan’s dead.”
“He-she?” I asked, the only words I could muster.
“Our neighbor Gary Tilton. ’Cept now he’s a she, so we call Tillie him-her or he-she, but never it ’cause that gets him-her mad.”
“Okay.”
“Charlie…is Stan really dead?”
“Yes.”
“Good!”
The vehemence in his young voice startled me, made me wince.
“She was gonna take him back. She was gonna take us back. Not even two days and already life was too hard and she needed her man even if he did break our fingers. I yelled at her, Charlie. I told her no. I told her she promised not to do that to us, but she just cried harder and picked up the phone. Why is she like that, Charlie? Why doesn’t she love us more?”
Michael’s voice broke. He wasn’t talking in a flat rush anymore, he was crying, a little boy consumed by giant, wrenching sobs, and I continued to stand there, back against a snowbank, searching for words that would both comfort a child and assuage my guilt.
I’d saved this boy by murdering his father. I’d played angel and avenger. I’d hurt in the name of hope.
Which I guess made sense, as nine-year-old Michael both mourned his father and was grateful he was dead.
“I’m sorry,” I said at last.
“Is she gonna be all right?” he asked at last, quieting his sobs. I understood he didn’t mean his little sister, but his mother.
“Give her time, Michael. Your mom’s never been on her own before. It’ll take some practice.”
“She’s just gonna find some other asshole,” he predicted, probably accurately.
“Are you guys staying put, or is she talking about moving back?” I hadn’t considered that news of Stan’s death might encourage Tomika to return to their old housing project, maybe even tell people of what she did, how I’d helped her.
“Can’t. They’re closing down the building. Gotta fix it.”
“Do you like the new place?”
“I like the yard. There are trees and stuff. And the apartment’s sunny. Mica likes the windows. She spent all yesterday standing in front of them. She even smiled.”
“Good, Michael, I’m happy to hear that.”
“Mom says we don’t gotta pay yet.”
“No, you’re okay for a bit.” I’d prepaid the first two months of the rental, the top floor of a converted house, within walking distance of a park, as well as a decent elementary school. I’d worked hard to find the apartment, hoping that a nice unit, conveniently paid up, would help Tomika realize that she could live alone and be happy. But maybe that was naïve of me. I wanted to judge Tomika, call her up and tell her to grow a backbone. But mostly, I remembered being a little kid in a big emergency room, injured once again by my own mother and never saying a word.
“Mom wants to go to the funeral. She says now that he’s dead, maybe we could get some money.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know.
“I don’t think we should go. We’re supposed to be gone. We should keep it that way. Safer, if you ask me.”
“Maybe the three of you could have a funeral for your father.”
“No,” Michael said, and his voice was hard again, a boy sounding as angry as a man.
“It’s okay to miss him, Michael. He wasn’t always a bad guy. I bet sometimes he was nice to you. I bet you liked those moments. I bet you miss that dad.”
He didn’t answer.
“My mother used to stroke my hair,” I whispered. “In the middle of the night, when I had a bad dream. She would stroke my hair and sing to me. I loved that mom. I miss her.”
“You gonna see your mom?”
“No.”
“Are you…are you still afraid of her?”
I wanted to tell him no. That I was all grown up now, ready to shoot, hit, and chase all the shadows in the dark. But I couldn’t lie to Michael. I said, “Yes. Always.”
“How’d my daddy die, Charlie?”
“All is well, Michael. You’re a strong boy and your mother and sister are lucky to have you.”
The ground beneath my feet started to tremble, announcing the arrival of a subway in the tunnels below. “I gotta go now, Michael. Thanks for calling. I might be away for a bit. If you call and I don’t answer…Know that I’m thinking of you, Michael. I have faith. You’re a strong boy and you’re gonna be okay.”
“Charlie…Thank you.”
He hung up quickly. I slipped the phone back into my bag and ran for the train.
I MADE SURE I LOOKED BOTH WAYS before boarding the subway car. I took a seat with my back to the far wall, where I could watch all doors, monitor all people coming and going. My black leather messenger bag sat on my lap, my hands fisted around it.
I studied faces, met stares.
Until one by one, each of my fellow passengers stood up and moved away from me.
I sat alone, and even then, I didn’t feel safe.
“CHARLENE ROSALIND CARTER GRANT.”
Detective D. D. Warren uttered my moniker slowly, allowing each name its own weight and space. She’d met me in the lobby. Asked about my dog, asked about my gun, appeared genuinely surprised, perhaps even skeptical, that I’d dared to journey to Roxbury without either of them.
Instead of her tiny office, she’d led me to a modest-sized conference room, furnished with a table large enough for eight. Only other person in the room, however, was Detective O. She stood against a huge whiteboard, wearing a button-up men’s dress shirt in light blue.
When Detective Warren moved to her side, I realized they matched, as D.D. wore nearly the same shade of blue, but in silk. She’d paired hers with black slacks, while O had charcoal gray trousers with pencil thin stripes of blue and gray. D.D. had her short blond hair down, in loose curls that almost softened the hard lines of her face, while O’s rich brown hair was pulled back in a fat knot at the nape of her neck.
Two coordinating and contrasting images of female cop. One older, one younger. One athletic, one more feminine. One with direct blue eyes, one with deep brown eyes.
Both of them all business.
I wished I’d brought Tulip, just to have a friend in the room.
“Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant,” D.D. repeated, testing each word. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Turns out, my past is a work in progress.”
She eyed me suspiciously. “You gave us the two names to run, Rosalind Grant, Carter Grant.”
I nodded.
She tossed a file on the table. It landed with a faint thwack and I flinched. “There you go. Full report. Sister. Brother. Mother. Ever read it?”
I shook my head, eyed the manila file folder, made no move to touch it.
My aunt said the doctors had advised her that I should remember on my own. That forcing the issue, before I was ready, might do greater emotional harm.
Greater harm than what? Waking up each morning, knowing that when I had nightmares of my mother digging midnight graves with coiling, hissing snakes in lieu of hair, I wasn’t totally wrong?
A perfectly pale and still baby girl. The nearly marble-like form of an even smaller baby boy. That is what I’d spent the past twenty years trying to forget. Rosalind Grant. Carter Grant. The baby sister and baby brother I’d once loved, then lost to my mother’s madness. The babies, crying down the hall, that I’d known, even as a toddler, that I needed to help. Tell a nurse. Bolt with them out into the rain.
I’d tried in my own way. But I’d been small and vulnerable, my mother all-knowing, all-powerful. In the end, what I couldn’t change I’d opted to forget.
One crazy mother. Two murdered siblings.
Was it any wonder my head was so fucked up?
I stared now at the manila file. I thought it was unfair that my sister and brother’s entire lives could be distilled into a single thin folder. They had deserved better. We all had.
“Why you?” Detective O spoke up crisply. “You lived. They died. You must think about that, have some theories on the subject. Were you more cooperative, the good little girl? Maybe they were sniveling little brats-”
“Stop.” I wanted my voice to come out firm. It sounded more like a whisper. I cleared my throat, tried again. “You want to beat me up, fine. But not them. You don’t get to pick on them. They were just babies. You leave them alone, or I’m outta here.”
Detective Warren was scowling at her partner, clearly agreeing with me. Or maybe not. Maybe this was just the latest episode of good cop, bad cop. But then I realized a couple of things: They didn’t need me to come down to HQ to talk about two twenty-year-old homicides from an entirely different state. Nor were they mentioning the Facebook page, or how to bait a killer in preparation for tomorrow evening’s murderous deadline. Instead, they had a single manila folder holding police reports from my childhood.
They wanted something from me. The question was what, and how much it would cost me.
“What do you remember?” Detective Warren asked me now. “About your childhood?”
I shrugged, gaze still on the closed file. “Not much. I can’t…I don’t…” I had to clear my throat, try again. “I don’t even remember a baby brother. Not a smile, not a whimper…Just, his body. His perfect little form, so still, like a statue.” I paused, cleared my throat again. Still wasn’t working. I looked away from both detectives, stared at the carpet. “I’m sorry.”
“Might be that you never saw him alive,” D.D. suggested. “ME’s office consulted a forensic anthropologist on the remains. Based on the size of the skeleton, the baby boy was approximately full term, but could’ve been born a few weeks premature, maybe even died in utero. Either way, let’s just say he didn’t make it long in this world.”
“Boys are icky,” I heard myself say. “Boys just grow up to be men who want only one thing from girls.”
Not my words, but the memory of an audio fragment, playing back. I caught myself, shook my head slightly, as if to clear the words from my brain. “When was he born?”
“Don’t know. No birth certificate.”
“His name was Carter. I know that, even if I don’t know how I know that.”
“It was written on the outside of the Tupperware container.”
I winced. “She killed him. Gave birth, killed him, that’s what you think.”
The older detective shrugged. “Technically, your mother was charged with abuse of a corpse and concealing the death of a child. Given the skeletal remains, there’s no way to prove if the baby was stillborn, or was killed after birth. Logic would dictate, however…”
“What do you think?” Detective O spoke up, her voice more demanding. “You lived with the woman. You tell us what might have happened.”
“I don’t remember a baby boy. Just his name. Maybe she told it to me. Maybe I found the container. I don’t know. I saw the body. I remember the name Carter. I took it, made it part of mine. My own way of honoring him.”
“But you just said you didn’t remember him.”
I looked up at Detective O. “It’s possible to lie to yourself, you know. It’s possible to both know and not know things. People do it all the time. It’s called coping.”
“Tell us about Rosalind,” the younger detective demanded.
“I loved her. She would cry, and I would try…I loved her.”
“Was she born first?” D.D. asked.
“I don’t know. But she lived longer. Right?”
“Probably a year,” the detective said quietly.
I resumed staring at the floor. Carpet wouldn’t come into focus. My eyes were swimming, turning the blue-gray Berber into a moving sea of regret.
“I was in the ER,” I heard myself whisper. “My mother had fed me a crushed lightbulb. I was in the ER, vomiting blood and there was this nurse, this kind-looking nurse. And I remember thinking I needed to tell her. If I could just tell her about the baby. But I couldn’t. I didn’t. My mother trained me well.”
The detectives didn’t say anything.
“I don’t understand,” I said after another moment. “My aunt is nice, my aunt is normal. I’m really fond of puppies and kitties and I’ve never played with matches. And yet my mom, my own mother…She did such horrible things to me just to get attention. And that still made me the lucky kid.”
“Is that how you view yourself?” Detective O pounced. “As lucky?”
I looked up at her. “What are you, fucking nuts?”
The young detective’s eyes widened in shock, then D.D. stepped between us, placing a hand on her colleague’s shoulder.
“What we’re both trying to understand here,” D.D. stated, with a pointed look at her partner, “is how you survived such a tragic childhood and how it might impact your current situation.”
I stared at her blankly, not following. “I don’t know how I survived. I woke up in a hospital, my aunt took me away, and I’ve done my best never to look back since. The few things I recall mostly come to me as dreams, meaning maybe they’re not even true? I don’t know. I haven’t wanted to know. The first eight years of my life I’ve purposefully blanked from my mind. And if that means the past twenty years are spotty as well, that’s just the way it goes. You rattle off your first day of school, the dog you had in third grade, the dress you wore to prom. I’ll do it my way.”
Both detectives regarded me skeptically.
“You really expect us to believe that?” Bad cop Detective O spoke up first. “You’ve blanked your entire childhood from your own mind?”
“Please, I’ve blanked most of my life from my mind. I don’t remember things. I don’t know how else to tell you that. The first week of my life, the last week of my life. I don’t know. I don’t dwell on things. Maybe that’s freakish, but it’s also worked. I get up each morning. And from what I do remember of the brief time before my aunt came to take me away, I didn’t want to get up anymore. I was alive, and I was deeply disappointed by that.
“Eight years old,” I whispered. “Eight years old, and I already wished I were dead.”
“Tell us about your dreams,” D.D. said.
“Sometimes, I dream about a baby crying. That one feels real enough. Last night, however, I dreamed of my mother digging a grave in the middle of a thunderstorm. And her hair was filled with snakes, hissing at me, and I grabbed a baby girl out of the hall closet and ran away. Except, obviously my mom’s hair wasn’t made out of snakes, and oh yeah, there’s no way a toddler can climb a tree holding a baby, not to mention that in the dream, the baby’s name was Abigail, when of course, it was Rosalind.”
“Abigail?” Detective O asked sharply. She and Detective D.D. exchanged a glance. “Tell us about Abigail.”
I shook my head, rubbing my temples where a headache had already taken root. “You tell me. Do you have a record of an Abigail? Because I mentioned it to my aunt, and she said no. There were two babies. Rosalind and Carter. No Abigail.”
“No birth certificates, remember? No way to be sure.” D.D. was staring at me as hard as Detective O. “In your dream, what did Abigail look like?”
“Like a baby. She smiled at me. Big brown eyes.”
“Brown eyes,” Detective O interrupted. “What about blue?”
“I don’t know. In my dream, they were brown. But…maybe. Don’t all babies start with blue eyes?”
“But you remember brown,” D.D. said. “Blue eyes could darken into brown, but a baby wouldn’t start with brown eyes, that then turned blue.”
I shook my head, confused by both of them and their intensity. “My aunt said two babies, that’s all the police found.”
“It’s possible there were other babies,” D.D. said softly. “According to the police report, your mother moved around a lot, rarely spent more than a year in the same area. Probably helped her disguise the pregnancies, while keeping people from asking too many questions. The officers searched former rental units, of course, but she might have buried other remains, disposed of them in the woods, that sort of thing.”
“What kind of woman does such a thing?”
“A psychopath.” D.D. shrugged. “Munchausen’s by proxy is all about narcissism, a woman objectifying, then harming her own child in order to receive sympathy. Infanticide isn’t that much different. She would’ve viewed the pregnancies as inconvenient, maybe even considered an infant as a rival for attention. She acted accordingly.”
“What do you think, Abigail?” Detective O spoke up.
“What?”
Detective Warren frowned at O, then turned back to me. “You ever try to find your mom?”
“No.” I hesitated, fingered my side. “I, um, I assumed something bad had happened. I know I ended up in the hospital, seriously injured. Then my aunt arrived. I never saw my mother again and my aunt never brought it up. I assumed…I assumed maybe I’d done something to her.”
“Police received a nine-one-one summons to the residence. They found you, covered in blood. Further search turned up two plastic bins with human remains in the hall closet. A warrant was issued for your mom, but she was never arrested.”
“But you said you found her.”
“You said you’ve been talking to your aunt,” O interjected, demanding my attention. “She here, visiting? Or did you talk to her by phone?”
“She’s here-”
“Where?”
“My room-”
“When did she arrive?”
“This morning.”
“What about last night?”
“What about last night?”
“Where’d you go after speaking to us yesterday? You talk to your aunt, hang out with friends, take the dog for a walk?”
“I went home. I’d worked the night before and I hadn’t slept. I was exhausted.”
“Was your landlord home?” D.D. spoke up, swinging my attention back to her. “Did she see you coming or going, can she vouch for you?”
“I don’t know. Wait. No. I had Tulip, and Tulip’s not allowed inside, but it was too cold for her outside so I snuck her in the back door.”
“Meaning no one saw you come home.” Detective O’s turn.
“That would be sneaking.”
“What about this morning?” Detective Warren again.
“I left at four-”
“A.M.?”
“Couldn’t sleep. Used to working nights remember? I went to the gym.”
“So at four A.M., people saw you.” Detective O. “But not before that.”
“I don’t know!” I threw up my hands.
“Yes, you do. You were trying not to be seen and you were successful.” Detective Warren. “Ergo, no one saw you.”
“You said you knew where my mother was!”
“I do.”
“Where?”
“She ever call you Abigail?” Detective O.
“What? No. I’m Charlene. Charlie. Just because I added two names doesn’t mean I don’t know my own.”
Detective O arched a brow. “Oh, seems to me there’s plenty you don’t know.”
“I want to know where my mother is!”
“Colorado,” D.D. said.
“You have an address?”
D.D., watching me. “In a manner of speaking.”
“I want it.”
“Don’t worry, she’s not going anywhere.”
I paused, regarded both detectives more warily. “Is it a prison? Did they finally catch her?” Then a heartbeat later. “No, because if she’d been arrested, there would’ve been a trial and someone would’ve contacted me. I would’ve been a witness.” Another hesitation, the wheels of my brain churning. “Mental hospital? She cracked, finally revealed her inner lunatic, and they locked her up.”
“You think she’s crazy?” Detective O asked.
“She hurt me. She killed two babies. Of course she’s crazy!”
“You didn’t even remember. What does that make you?”
I drew up short, staring at the young detective. And in that moment, I finally got it. Detective O wasn’t spending this conversation horrified by my mother’s actions. She was horrified by me.
The girl who lived it and barely remembered it. The girl who at least got to roam through a house, while her baby sister and baby brother lived and died in a coat closet. The girl who then stole her dead siblings’ names.
I’d spent my whole life fearing I’d hurt my mom. Now I wished I could go back and do exactly that. Maybe if I’d done such a thing, I would’ve had at least one moment in my life worth remembering, one recollection that brought comfort.
“She’s dead,” Detective Warren stated now. “Listed as a Jane Doe in Boulder. It occurred to me that she probably adopted an alias after the night she stabbed you-”
“What?”
Both detectives paused, looked at me. I placed my hand on my side, eyes widening in comprehension.
Detective O spoke up first. “Seriously? You were stabbed, and you forgot that, too?”
“I was in the hospital. They’d removed my appendix, some other…things. I remember the doctors talking.” I shrugged, feeling my inadequacy again, the depths of my self-imposed stupidity. “I understood that I’d been cut open, then stitched back up.” I shrugged again. “When you’re eight years old, does it really matter why?”
Detective O shook her head.
D.D. cleared her throat. “According to the police report, there was some kind of altercation in the house. You ended up stabbed. Your mother must have fled, because apparently you’re the one who dialed nine-one-one.”
That intrigued me, given my line of work. Again, a person can know and not know all at the same time.
“Doctors were able to patch you up, but your mother was never found. Now, given your mother’s history of moving, I figured she left the area immediately. Only way she could stay beneath the radar that long was if she adopted an alias. So I started with neighboring states and worked my way out, looking for a woman of the same approximate age and description as your mother, including a pineapple-shaped birthmark on her right buttock. Thanks to a federal initiative, descriptions of unidentified remains have been recently compiled into a national database. I found a match in Colorado. Of course, you should submit a DNA sample to be sure, but in addition to the birthmark, the body has two distinct tattoos: the name Rosalind and the name Carter, both scripted above the left breast.”
“I hate her.” The words left my mouth before I could catch them. Once said, however, I didn’t take them back. “How dare she? First she kills her babies, then she tattoos their names above her heart? As if she loved them? As if she deserves to keep them close to her?”
I was out of the chair, pacing the conference room. My hands were fisted, I wanted a heavy bag. I wanted to punch my fist through the drywall. With any luck, I’d find a wooden stud and shatter my wrist. At this stage, I’d welcome the physical pain.
“How did she die?”
“Unknown. Body had been dead for a bit before being found, making an official ruling on cause of death difficult. According to the note from the coroner’s office, however, most likely cause of death was complications from advanced alcoholism, for example, liver failure.”
“Did it hurt? Did she suffer? Were her last moments terrible and filled with agonizing pain?”
Detective O’s eyes had widened. She stared at me as if transfixed, then leaned forward. “You’re angry.”
“Damn right!”
“Feeling helpless?”
“’Cause I didn’t get to kill her first!”
“Wishing you could change the past? Maybe go back. Would you save your sister and brother this time?”
“Yes!”
“Maybe you could save other kids. Make sure they never have to suffer the way you and your siblings did.”
“It wasn’t right. She hurt me, she suffocated them, and no one helped us. No one did a damn thing!”
“How did you know they were suffocated?” Detective Warren asked.
“I mean, I’m assuming. That’s how women normally do these things, right?”
Detective O picked up the beat. “The police failed you.”
“Yes.”
“’Course, you work with the cops now. You know that in most situations, their hands are tied.”
“Yes.”
“I mean the calls you must get, night after night. Little boys getting beaten by their fathers, little girls molested by their caretakers. What can you do, what can anyone do? Take down their name and number. Hey, little kid, your life is a living hell, let me take a message for you. Bet by the time you go home at night, you’re all fired up, itching for action. Bet you’re thinking you’re not a cop, your hands aren’t tied. You can shoot, you can hit, you can run. You can make a difference.”
Too late, I saw the trap looming. Too late, I stopped talking. Backpedaled furiously in my mind, trying to remember exactly what they’d asked and I’d answered. But, of course, I had a terrible memory and it was too little too late.
Detective O kept charging, full steam ahead. “When did you first make the decision that at least one scumbag deserved to die? How’d you pick the target? A call you took personally, a case that caught your attention? Maybe shop talk, a couple of officers, debriefing from a situation they’d encountered on duty. How little they could do, and how much it sucked, and you listened and you remembered. You knew what you didn’t want to know…your mother’s house, the containers in the closet, the way no one helped you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“How did it feel afterward, knowing you finally saved a child. Must have been quite the rush. You can tell us about it you know. I mean, we’re detectives, but we’re people, too. We get what you’re doing, why it must be done.”
I pulled myself together, chin up, shoulders back. Detective O’s eyes were probing. I forced myself to meet her stare.
“You don’t know me.”
“Oh, but I do. The question is, how well do you know yourself?”
“I’m leaving.” I grabbed my messenger bag.
“Running away.”
“Got a warrant?”
“Avoiding. Fleeing. Doing what you do best.”
“I was just a kid.”
“So how did you know they were suffocated?”
I blinked, hands clutching the straps of my messenger bag, still poised for flight, except suddenly Detective O wasn’t talking to me anymore. She was talking to D.D.
“I’ve studied Munchausen’s by proxy. Never encountered a case where the mother abused one child for attention, while secretly killing others. However, in several instances, the mom made a big fuss over being pregnant. Milked it for attention. Then, when the babies were born, suffocated them in the middle of the night, and claimed crib death. Oh, the drama, the outpouring of public support, the endless supply of neighborly casseroles. You could see how it would work with someone of that psychological makeup. How they’d even feel compelled to do it again and again.
“But never heard of a Munchausen’s mom resorting to secret infanticide. Where’s the fix, outpouring of public support, the emotional satisfaction? Makes me wonder what else Charlene fails to remember. What else she might have done.”
“I would never-”
“Look me in the eye, Charlene.” Detective O, suddenly rounding the table, walking closer. “Look me in the eye and tell me you’re not a killer.”
I opened my mouth. I closed my mouth. I opened my mouth again, and a word came out, but it wasn’t what I expected.
“Abigail,” I whispered.
“What about Abigail?”
“Abigail,” I repeated mournfully. And my hand came up. I reached out, as if to touch someone who wasn’t even there.
“Charlene-” Detective Warren began.
But I didn’t wait to hear anymore. They didn’t have a warrant. They couldn’t arrest me, they couldn’t hold me.
In the back of my mind, I realized this might be the last chance I ever had.
One year of intense training later, I sized up my opponents. Then I turned and fled.