Catch Me

by Lisa Gardner

  I already had my fingers on the door handle—good news, front seat passengers were allowed to come and go as they pleased from police cruisers. “Thanks for the ride,” I said.

  “Dinner?” he asked evenly. “Tonight. Before our shifts. I could pick you up. Cook you dinner at my place if you’d like to bring Tulip. Or take you out if you prefer.”

  “Thank you for the ride,” I said again.

  He sighed. “You’re a tough nut to crack, Charlie.”

  I didn’t disagree, just climbed out and released Tulip from the back. She bounded out gratefully, racing a little circle on the snow-covered sidewalk.

  Officer Mackereth didn’t say anything more. Just studied me through the window as I closed the passenger door in his face. A heartbeat later, he put his cruiser in drive and pulled away.

  Tulip and I stood side by side, watching him depart.

  I waited until the patrol car was out of sight. Then I finally exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and turned toward my landlady’s house. At the last second, a movement caught the corner of my eyes. I glanced up sharply, just in time to catch the silhouette of a person standing in the second-story window of the house next to mine.

  The second I spotted the figure, he or she stepped back. Blinds came down. The window blanked out, leaving Tulip and me once again alone on the street, with the hairs prickling the back of my neck.

  Chapter 8

  “I WANT IN.”

  “What?” D.D. looked up bleary-eyed from the stack of interview statements she’d been skimming. She already felt bewildered, but that didn’t surprise her. Jack, so cute and peaceful over dinner, had been up all night crying again. She’d taken the first shift, rocking him. Alex had taken the second. Come morning, they were both wrecked.

  A fellow detective leaned over her desk. Ellen O. She had a real last name, but it was too long and involved too many consonants. When the newly minted detective had first joined the force two years ago, someone had shortened her name to O, and, half the time, no one bothered with even the Ellen part, but simply referred to her as Detective O.

  O was fifteen years younger than D.D. and fifteen pounds heavier, but in all the right places. She had dark exotic eyes and glossy brown hair nearly the same shade as cinnamon. In the beginning, male detectives had been very interested in mentoring the young sex crimes detective. When she was less than receptive to their attentions, rumors had started that she was a lesbian.

  D.D. doubted that. From what she could tell, Detective O lived and breathed her job. She was actually more intense than even D.D., which was not, in anyone’s mind, a good thing. While D.D. would admit this to no one—no one!—the rookie detective scared her a little.

  “Your dead perv,” O prodded now. “Possibly one of two. I want in.”

  D.D. started with the obvious: “You’re a sex crimes detective. This is a homicide investigation.”

  “Where the victims are suspected pedophiles, which just so happens to be my area of expertise. Trust me, you need me.”

  D.D. gave O a look. They’d both been around long enough to know that as arguments went, trust me was never the right approach.

  O slapped a sheath of papers on D.D.’s desk. “Forensic analysis of the first perv’s computer. I’ll give you three minutes to review it, then you tell me the relevant findings, because I already know.”

  “Three minutes?” D.D. scowled. She hadn’t gotten to reviewing details of the “first” shooting yet. She was still working on the homicide that had happened on her watch, not the one that hadn’t.

  “Three minutes was all it took me,” O declared boldly. She crossed her arms over her chest. The sex crimes detective was wearing a white button-down shirt over a blue tank. Nothing wrong with the ensemble, perfectly professional. It was all D.D. could do not to reach over and fasten the top button.

  Apparently sleep-deprivation made her petty. And bitchy. And way too tired for this.

  D.D. sighed and gave up. She pushed the report back to O. “Fine, you’re the expert, and yeah, especially if these two shootings are related, we could use some help. What do you got for me?”

  O appeared genuinely startled. Maybe D.D. was, too. She’d never caved easily, or gracefully, before. Hah, she wanted to say. You’re younger and prettier, but I’m older and wiser. That would probably ruin the moment, however, so she didn’t.

  “All right,” O said. She uncrossed her arms, took up position on the edge of D.D.’s desk, and got serious. “Douglas Antiholde, level three sex offender, shot four weeks ago in the doorway of his apartment. Double tap to the left forehead.”

  “Yeah, know that much.” D.D. made a motion with her hand for Detective O to speed it along.

  “’Kay. So most pedophiles specialize, particularly when it comes to MO. Some use coercion, some use force, some use opportunity. Either way, all of them start by ‘grooming’ their targets. And they have preferred methodology for that as well, the latest and greatest being the Internet.”

  “Douglas Antiholde was an Internet predator,” D.D. filled in dryly. Another hand gesture to move it along. Not her first rodeo.

  “You know the target age group for online predators?” O asked.

  “Fourteen-year-old girls,” D.D. guessed.

  “Nope. Five- to nine-year-old boys.”

  “Really?” D.D. sat up a little straighter. Okay, she had not known that.

  “Antiholde’s Internet log is textbook,” O was saying. “He was a registered user of every major kiddie website out there, plus Facebook, plus Spokeo, plus Chatroulette. You gotta understand, these guys are like day traders—this is what they do, twenty-four seven. They surf the Internet, identifying targets, initiating relationships, and then grooming, grooming, grooming. Just like stockbrokers, they understand that not every target is going to pay off. So they build a ‘portfolio’ of ten, fifteen, twenty victims they’re actively following and researching. They don’t expect all to bear fruit. They just need one to work out, and it’s worth it to them.”

  D.D. had a feeling her mouth was hanging open. She’d never pictured sex predators as working professionals before. That level of discipline. That level of focus. “Ummm, aren’t there safety protocols or security software that help block sex predators’ access to kids?”

  “Yes and no. See, most five-year-olds join websites that feature their favorite toys, where they can become a member. Now, these sites certainly advertise to parents their security protocols. Stuff like they have trained professionals hanging out on the websites patrolling for bullying, that sort of thing. And they impose limits on communication, mostly on instant messaging where it appears Virtual Animal A is talking to Virtual Animal B using dialogue bubbles. Virtual Animal A can ‘chat’ with Virtual Animal B, but only by selecting from stock phrases. This gives parents a sense of security. Cute fuzzy Animal A can’t type in a dialogue box, Hey want to meet after school, because that’s not a stock phrase.

  “Unfortunately, parents are missing the obvious. Just joining these sites, becoming a part of a virtual community where you are encouraged to make virtual friends and rewarded for hanging out, is starting the grooming process. A five-year-old now thinks it’s good to be online. A five-year-old now thinks it’s something special to be a member of an Internet community. And a five-year-old now thinks it’s fun and desirable to invite perfect strangers to be friends. From an online predator’s point of view, a kiddie website does all the up-front work for him. Then he just has to show up and close the deal.”

  “But how?” D.D. asked. “According to you, they can only communicate using pre-scripted phrases.”

  “Sure, on those sites. Which is why they serve as the first step in the grooming process. Look, a guy like Antiholde picks a popular kids site, say AthleteAnimalz.com. He logs on to the site, enters his animal’s code, becomes a member. Then, for the first few weeks, he does what any user does—he plays like mad. He masters games, he builds up points, he wins whatever there is to win. B
oys, in particular, are acutely status-conscious. From an early age, they want to win and they want to be friends with winners. So Antiholde becomes that winner. He builds a virtual image as the most popular, most successful member of the site. The high school quarterback everyone wants to high-five in the school halls. Then he goes to work.

  “He starts monitoring other users. He’s looking for the members that play regularly. Remember, he’s a day trader. He’s got a lot of stocks to watch, so he doesn’t want the random visitor to the site. He wants someone with fairly predictable hours, the kid that goes on after school or after dinner most days of the week. The kid that day in, day out, he’s gonna find there.

  “Now he starts friending. Invites other users to be his buddies. Asks them to play games with him. And again, the website is going to do his work for him, by providing the perfect team-building exercises. Think of any of the virtual combat games—Antiholde’s character will be the one that magically has your back. He’ll save your character again and again. Which will make you feel good about him, again and again. In a matter of weeks, you’re happy to see him logged on to the site, excited to be on his team, and even more thrilled when he invites you to log on and play with him at certain times during the day. You’re not just friends now, you’re friends.”

  “Yeah,” D.D. interjected, “but it’s all still online. A virtual relationship. Creepy, but make believe. Plus what are the odds the kid is from the predator’s same town? I mean, I’ve heard the stories of the sixteen-year-old girl being lured into taking a plane to meet her new soul mate, but a five-year-old?”

  “Sports teams,” O said.

  “Sports teams?”

  “Primary geographic indicator used to target boys. You’re a pedophile in Boston, first thing you do is look for kids who describe themselves as Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins, or Pats fans. Nine times out of ten, you’ve just identified a victim within driving range. And boys love to talk sports. Another innocuous way of bonding, where the kid is giving up a major piece of personal information, without ever being the wiser.”

  D.D. shifted uneasily in her chair. “That’s twisted.”

  Detective O shrugged. “Just because they’re predators doesn’t mean they’re stupid. Computers are tools. We use them to help us analyze evidence and process reports. Internet predators use them to reach beyond the walls of their seedy apartments, into your nice, cozy family room, and make contact with your child without you ever knowing the difference. Some of them even create their own sites. Hamsters Who Play Hockey, whatever. On Website A, where they’ve established the relationship, they trace the kid’s user name back to the child’s e-mail addy—a fairly simple technical exercise. Then they send the kid an e-mail, inviting the child to visit hockey-playing hamsters. Nothing scary or alarming about that, especially as the e-mail came from Cute Animal A, who the child’s been ‘playing’ with for weeks. Kid clicks on the hockey-playing hamster link, and bada bing, bada boom, the child is now on a website controlled by a predator, where content will quickly become more and more questionable as the predator ramps up the next phase of the grooming process. Or maybe the predator goes with a direct outreach. From playing virtual games online, to sending an e-mail saying, Hey, buddy, want to meet after school and play catch in the park?”

  “Or Want to see my new puppy,” D.D. murmured.

  “Second victim,” O filled in. “Stephen Laurent. Yep, come see my puppy would do the trick. And most kids are easily manipulated. They are receiving an e-mail from a perceived friend, so they say yes. They show up at what they think is another kid’s house, to see a puppy, except there’s a grown man there. But there’s also the puppy, and they’ve been trained not to be rude to adults, so even if they’re uncomfortable, even if in the back of their mind they think maybe they shouldn’t…” She shrugged. “They go along. Things we’ve trained our children to do without the help of computers.”

  D.D. felt ill. She was accustomed to analytically discussing crime. But now she kept seeing Jack, except five years from now, and she and Alex were taking the time to raise him in the right neighborhood with the right locks on the door and attending the right kind of school, except the minute he went online…Her son would disappear down a virtual rabbit hole, with dark alleys and seedy strangers everywhere, except the dark alleys would be dressed up as brightly colored computer screens and the seedy strangers would be cute little bunnies with names like ILuvSk8boardingInHarvardSquare. Dear Lord.

  “Do you have kids?” D.D. asked Ellen O.

  The detective’s face was serious. “Are you kidding? I go around spouting facts like 40 percent of girls ages twelve to seventeen have been solicited by a stranger online. Doesn’t really go over well on dates. Or at cocktail parties for that matter. Then, should someone pull out a smartphone while I’m in the room…Let’s just say, at least my cats still hang with me.”

  D.D. hadn’t thought of that, but it rang true. O had a head filled with the kind of boogeyman stories no one wanted to hear. D.D. was a homicide detective, and even she wasn’t sure how much of this she could take. It made her feel too powerless, as a mom and a cop.

  “So,” D.D. ventured, “you’re saying Antiholde’s computer log proves he was an online predator?”

  “Profile fits.”

  “And Stephen Laurent?”

  “I’d like to glance at his Internet log, but figured I should get your permission first.”

  “I’d like you to look at his Internet log, too,” D.D. agreed. “At the moment, we’re searching for any kind of link between the two victims—”

  “Pedophiles.”

  “Murder victims. If they both frequent these websites you’re talking about…”

  “Question becomes,” O said, “how’d their cover get blown? I mean, online, they’re gonna appear like any other user, an excited kid. Except someone figured out who they were and what they were doing.”

  “Victim in common?” D.D. guessed. “Someone who knows the victim?”

  She was thinking of the forensic handwriting expert she’d talked to last night, Dembowski’s theory that their shooter was an anal-retentive female. D.D. didn’t say anything, however. She didn’t want to contaminate the investigation with an assumption, and apparently graphology itself was riddled with assumptions, not to mention the assumption that the person who left the note was the same person who shot Stephen Laurent. Which brought her to another question. She regarded Detective O.

  “You read the crime scene report of the first shooting, Antiholde?”

  “Yep, late last night.”

  Ah, the good old days, when work didn’t shut off at five.

  “Any documentation of a note from the shooter?” D.D. asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I left the Stephen Laurent scene, I found a note on my car. I’m wondering if it was from the shooter.”

  Ellen O frowned. “What’d the note say?”

  “Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave.”

  “Oh. Oh, oh oh. Hang on. Wait here.”

  O dashed off. D.D. sat there, wondering what was up. Sixty seconds later, O was back with some crime scene photos. One showed the victim, Douglas Antiholde. Another showed a close-up of the contents of his pants pocket, including loose change, a paper clip, and a crumpled piece of torn yellow legal pad paper that had been smoothed out enough to read: Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave.

  Writing was script, with a flattened bottom, every letter precisely shaped.

  “I’ll be damned,” D.D. murmured.

  “Serial shooter, targeting pedophiles,” Detective O declared triumphantly. “I’m in!”

  “Are you ever,” said D.D. “And good luck with that. Good luck to us all.”

  Chapter 9

  I DREAMED OF MY MOTHER.

  She stood at the counter in a tiny brown-and-gold kitchen, curtain of dark hair obscuring her pinched face as she crooned to herself. “Sugar and spice and everything nice, that’s what little girls are
made of.”

  In my dream, I was three years old, crammed into a high chair meant for a baby, my back plastered to the sticky vinyl seat, while a white plastic strap, splattered with dried eggs and fuzzy oatmeal, jammed into my tummy hard enough to hurt.

  I wanted out. I whimpered, whined, fussed, and fidgeted. If I could just get my quick little hands on the buckles, I could escape. But I’d done that before. I had a memory of getting out, so she’d changed the straps, and now the buckles were in the back of the sticky seat and I was trapped and uncomfortable, and even though I was hungry, I didn’t want to be there anymore.

  My mother had a lightbulb in her hand. She’d taken it from the chipped white lamp in the family room. Unscrewed it, while singing softly to herself.

  “Sugar and spice and everything nice, that’s what little girls are made of.”

  My mother placed the lightbulb in a blue plastic bowl, picked up a large metal spoon, and slammed down hard. A faint tinkling sound. The older me, the real me, and not the trapped three-year-old version of me, understood the sound was the lightbulb shattering.

  The three-year-old trapped me simply watched with big blue eyes as my mother ground the lightbulb, all the while singing, singing, singing.

  Then, she looked up at me and smiled.

  Next to the bowl was a jar of peanut butter. Now my mother unscrewed the lid. Now she scooped out a big spoonful. Now she placed the peanut butter in the blue plastic bowl with the shattered lightbulb. And stirred.

  “Sugar and spice and everything nice,” my mother declared. “That’s what little girls are made of.”

  She crossed to the high chair. She placed the bowl on the too-tight white tray. Plopped it down on a piece of congealed egg. I could hear the squishy, popping sound of yolk smooshing against the bowl.

  My mother was dressed up. She had gloss on her lips, color on her cheeks. Her brown hair was freshly washed. She’d taken the time to brush it until it fell long and shiny halfway down her back, a waterfall of shimmering brown-red silk.