Catch Me

by Lisa Gardner

  I tried homing in on the rage. Fear would get me killed. Anger was the only hope I had left.

  “Who are you?” Stan boomed again. “I don’t owe nobody nothin’, so who the fuck are you?”

  I didn’t answer, but traced the sound of his voice toward the hall to the left of the kitchen. I could just make him out, his gray sweatshirt a faint glow on the dimly lit floor. He’d shimmied out into open space. Probably to sneak around on me, but also to keep himself from getting cornered. The tiny kitchenette was no good to either of us; too small and cramped. Family room was better. Rear bedroom, with its open window leading to the fifth-story fire escape, best yet.

  But for me to get to the bedroom, Stan had to get out of the hallway. Fine.

  I shot him again.

  For a big guy, Stan moved pretty fast. Sprang out of his crouch and leapt through the doorway into the kids’ room. Couldn’t tell if I’d got him or not, and didn’t wait to see. I bolted down the short hallway into the back bedroom, as he opened fire behind me. Carpet exploded at my feet. Sheetrock rained down from overhead.

  He was an even worse shot than I was. Course, spending the past few hours in a bar probably didn’t help his aim, thank goodness for me.

  I took four zigzagging steps and staggered into the rear bedroom. Another ringing shot, and I was hurling myself over the windowsill, wincing as I flopped awkwardly onto the metal fire escape. I could feel the rickety deck sway upon impact. Couldn’t stop. I’d be trapped on the tiny fenced-in balcony, and he’d come for me, like shooting fish in a barrel.

  I didn’t think anymore, I moved. Crabbing around, trying desperately to find the top rung of the descending metal ladder in the dark. I banged my head against another set of metal rungs, the ones heading up, staggered back, and a meaty fist clamped onto my shoulder.

  Stan thrust his massive head and shoulders through the window and held tight.

  “Gotcha! Gonna make you hurt, girl. Gonna get my ax, gonna get my hammer, gonna get my knife. Gonna make you pay.”

  Which was a funny thing for him to say, given that I was the one holding a gun. One small twist, and I had the barrel of my. 22 pressed against his temple.

  Stan stilled. His eyes rounded. His mouth formed the proverbial O and he sucked in a breath, as I dug the barrel of my gun harder against his fat head. Big ol’ Stan had made a mistake. He’d grabbed me with his left hand, and given the width of his massive shoulders wedged through the narrow window frame, his right hand, the one holding his own gun, was trapped uselessly in the bedroom. He’d need to release me and bring his left shoulder back inside the apartment, in order to get his right arm through again.

  Battles are won in the first two seconds, or in the final two minutes.

  The fire escape swayed unsteadily, making me feel as if I were surfing on air. I smiled at Stan. I exhaled and watched my frosty breath mist in the cold night.

  The scene felt exactly right.

  Shoot. Pull the trigger. For Tomika and Michael and Mica.

  For Stan’s hammer and his family’s fingers and their long, terrified nights.

  I wanted to. I needed to.

  For that little boy in Colorado, whom I still couldn’t forget. For all the crying kids, all the terrified women who called 911, except they had problems too big for any dispatch operator or patrol officer to help.

  Pull the trigger.

  Baby. Crying down the hall. I could hear her again, so close, so clear. Baby, in my mother’s house, crying down the hall.

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

  Sugar and spice and broken glass, I should’ve told the nurse. If only I’d told the nurse. Why hadn’t I told that nice nurse?

  PULL THE TRIGGER!

  Pull the fucking trigger!

  But I couldn’t do it. I stared at Stan Miller, peered into the whites of his eyes, pressed my nickel-plated semiauto deeper and deeper into his temple…and I couldn’t do it. My hand shook too badly.

  I pulled back my arm and pistol-whipped him instead.

  Stan howled. Let go. Stumbled back through the window.

  I bolted. Down the ancient fire escape, rusty metal rungs shaking, whole structure swaying from my rat-a-tat impact, as I half slid, half jumped from metal decking down to metal decking, desperate to hit the street five stories below.

  Stan was gonna get his right arm out now. Stan was gonna hunt me down. And Stan would shoot a woman in cold blood.

  I felt the fire escape groan again. Heard, more than saw, Stan squirm and heave and twist his considerable homicidal bulk onto the narrow fifth-story decking.

  Faster, faster. Not much time now. Gotta move, move, move.

  As the fire escape heaved, sighed, gave an ominous creak.

  “Gonna get you, girl,” Stan bellowed from above. “Big Stan gonna run you down. What’d ya do to my family? Where’s my Tomika? Tell me now, girl. Talk, or I’ll shoot out your damn bitch brains.”

  The first metal bolt attaching the fifth-story decking to the crumbling brick building went ping. Then the second, third, fourth.

  Go, go, go I urged myself. No time to lose. Jack, racing the giant down the beanstalk. Run!

  The whole fire escape swayed above me. Making the sharp corner two flights below, I knew the moment Stan figured out what was happening, because he dropped his gun. It went sailing by me, just missing my head. Stan didn’t need his pistol anymore. He’d grabbed for the railing instead.

  Except that wouldn’t help him any. I knew, because I was the one who’d ratcheted loose all the bolts attaching the rickety fifth-story fire escape to the ancient bricks of the dilapidated building.

  A precaution built into a precaution built into a precaution.

  I’m only a hundred and five pounds. Too small to fight a giant like Stan. But lighter and faster to beat him down a collapsing fire escape.

  The wobbly metal ladder was shaking beneath my feet now. Above me, I heard a terrible screech as the fifth story decking swung out into midair, then felt it, like a giant chain, start ripping the corresponding layers of decks and ladders from the side of the cheaply constructed housing unit. Ping. Ping. Ping.

  Stan screamed.

  Metal groaned. People inside the building began to yell at the unexpected commotion, while the ladder beneath my own feet suddenly lurched down and away. One story above street level. Wasn’t gonna make it.

  I jumped, dropped, and rolled. To the side, away from the collapsing metal structure thundering down and across the street.

  More screaming. More yelling. More groaning.

  Stan Miller plunged five stories to the frozen pavement below.

  Then the screaming stopped. Gritty sand and dirty snow ballooned up, settled back down.

  I staggered to my feet, cleared my eyes, registered a pain in my ankle. Now was not the time. People pouring out. Residents of the unit who’d been immune to gunfire and screaming, but not this. No one, no how, had seen anything like this. They gathered on the street, yapping, dialing cell phones, shaking their heads, and then, when they spotted Stan’s hulking body, skewered on multiple shorn metal rungs, the first woman screeched in horror, before several more joined her.

  I stared at the carnage, the twisted heap of wreckage, the blood pooling on the front of Stan’s shirt.

  Then, I ran.

  I didn’t look back. Not for the screaming women. Not for the growing cries, not for the startled exclamation from the lone kid who spotted my escape.

  I ran and I ran and I ran, my body shaking uncontrollably.

  Round the block, I paused long enough to grab my messenger bag from beneath a snowy bush. Then I was off and running again.

  9:56 P.M.

  Seventy hours left to live.

  What would you have done?

  Chapter 14

  BABY JACK WAS CRYING AGAIN. He was not a happy camper and he wanted everyone to feel his pain.

  “He gets that from me,” D.D. said. It was 9 P.M. Jack had
been crying off and on ever since she picked him up from day care, where apparently he’d spent a very fussy day. No temperature. No spitting up. But he scrunched his face and fisted his hands and churned his legs as if he were jogging a marathon.

  So far, they’d given him droplets specially designed to relieve baby gas. Not particularly effective droplets, D.D. thought.

  “We could call the pediatrician,” Alex said. He was sitting on the couch, while she attempted to soothe Jack in the rocking chair.

  “And admit we don’t know what we’re doing?” D.D. said.

  Alex regarded her strangely. “We don’t know what we’re doing. And we’re not the first new parents who harassed their doctors with middle-of-the-night questions. For heaven’s sake, that’s what they’re there for!”

  Alex’s unexpected display of emotion finally caught D.D.’s attention. She took in his salt-and-pepper hair, currently standing on end. The dark shadows beneath his eyes. The gaunt lines of his face.

  He looked like hell, a man who hadn’t slept in years. Did she look that bad? Come to think of it, Phil had clapped her on the shoulder four times today with clear sympathy. Suddenly, she got it.

  “The baby’s winning!” D.D. burst out.

  “That would seem a fair assessment of the situation,” Alex agreed tiredly.

  “He’s only ten weeks old. How can he be beating us already?”

  Alex eyed their squalling son. “Same way youth always conquers age—better stamina, faster recovery.”

  “We’re two strong, intelligent, resourceful people. We can’t be defeated by an infant. I was sure we’d make it until he was at least seventeen and demanding his own car. Which reminds me. When he’s three and wants his own cell phone, the answer is no. And when he’s five and wants his own Facebook page, the answer’s also no.”

  Alex stared at her, eyes sunken, cheeks unshaved. “Got it.”

  “Did you know the target age for Internet predators is five- to nine-year-old boys?”

  Alex’s eyes widened. “No!”

  “Yep. Big bad world out there. And more of it than you think is sitting in that sleek little laptop on the table.”

  Alex ran a shaky hand through his hair. “Well, wasn’t like I was going to sleep tonight anyway. This from your new case?”

  “Yeah, got a sex crimes detective, Ellen O, assisting now. She’s an expert on Internet predators, so she and Phil spent the day poring over reports from the computers of the two vics and talking nerd.”

  “Find a connection between the two pervs?” Alex asked.

  “Many and varied,” D.D. assured him. “Ironically enough, vics’ computers share so many favorite sites, it’s almost impossible to get traction. It’s not a matter of did they run across each other online, but on how many different websites, user groups, and chat rooms. It’s gonna take a bit.”

  “Is Neil still going through the photos?”

  “Sadly for him, yes. He made it through the first of six boxes and already looks like the walking dead. Gonna need some stress time for sure. I tried talking to him once today, but he’s not ready yet. Just gotta get through it, he told me.” D.D. sighed, thought of her young squadmate with genuine concern, and sighed again. “I almost admire his naïveté.”

  She shifted baby Jack to her other shoulder, resumed rocking. Judging by the whimpering in her ear, Jack didn’t like her left shoulder any more than the right.

  Alex stood up. “Want me to take a turn?” He gestured to Jack, who churned his feet fussily.

  D.D. rubbed her son’s back, hating not being able to soothe him. It felt both wrong and inevitable. Proof that she wasn’t maternal enough, just as distant as her own parents. Except she didn’t feel cold and dismissive. She hated that her baby was upset. Wanted desperately to do the right thing, say the right thing that would comfort him. So far they’d tried burping, swaddling, rocking, singing, pacing, and driving. Nada.

  The baby was winning. And they were old.

  “Okay,” she said reluctantly.

  Alex crossed to her. “What about the ballistics report?” he asked as he transferred Jack from her shoulder to his chest. “Got anything to conclusively tie the shooting of victim one to the shooting of victim two?”

  “Got a note,” D.D. said triumphantly. “Left in first victim’s pocket. Exact same phrase: Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave. Written in the exact same tightly wound script.”

  Alex was impressed. Jack was not.

  “Maybe we should try going for a drive again,” D.D. suggested.

  “Not sure either of us is safe behind the wheel.”

  D.D. nodded tiredly. Alex was right about that. They were stupid tired. Which was why they were talking shop. It was the only topic of conversation that came to them naturally.

  “Ballistics report should arrive tomorrow,” she murmured.

  “Before or after your parents’ plane lands?”

  “Crap!”

  Alex stopped pacing with the baby. “Was I not supposed to remind you of that?”

  “We should just run away,” D.D. said. She couldn’t deal with this. She was too tired and her baby hated her. There was no way she could handle her mother, too.

  “I could meet them,” Alex offered bravely. “Pick up Jack from day care, do the honors. Then, if you get stuck at work, it’s not so terrible. You could always meet us later for dinner, something like that.”

  “They’ll never forgive me.”

  “Yes they will. You’re the mother of their grandson. And when he’s not squalling like a howler monkey, he is the cutest, most adorable, most brilliant baby boy ever. Aren’t you?” Alex hefted baby Jack into the air, gave him a little toss, then caught him again.

  Jack stopped crying. He gazed down at his father. He hiccupped, twice.

  Heartened, Alex gave him another little toss.

  Jack landed in his father’s arms, hiccupped again, then, with a giant belch, finally relieved the gas cramping his tiny tummy, by spewing his entire liquid dinner down his father’s chest.

  Alex stopped moving, held perfectly still.

  “Well, at least he’s not crying,” Alex said at last.

  D.D. scrambled for towels, wet wipes.

  “You are the best father in the entire world,” she assured her sleep-deprived partner. “Come Father’s Day, Jack is gonna get you not one, but two ties. I swear it!”

  D.D. HAD JUST FINISHED getting Jack cleaned up and settled into his carrier, when her cell phone rang. She checked the screen. Blocked number, which could mean any number of things this late at night. Out of sheer morbid curiosity, D.D. took the call.

  “Detective D. D. Warren? FBI Special Agent Kimberly Quincy from Atlanta. Sorry to call so late.”

  “Oh,” D.D. said. “Oh, oh, oh. Not a problem.”

  “Been out all day,” Special Agent Quincy continued in a clipped voice. “Just got your message and was going to call you back tomorrow, then I realized the date.”

  “Only two and a half days till the twenty-first,” D.D. filled in.

  “Exactly. Figured if you were calling me, you had some kind of development, and you’d appreciate a call back sooner versus later.”

  “I have the third friend,” D.D. said. “Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant. I believe you know her.”

  “You could say that.”

  “Well, now I know her, too. Like you said, it’s nearly the twenty-first. Charlie’s preparing for war. As a backup plan, she’d like me to handle her murder investigation.”

  “Huh.”

  “With all due respect, Special Agent, I haven’t slept in ten weeks. I was hoping for more than ‘Huh’ from the FBI.”

  “Big case?” the special agent asked.

  “New baby.”

  “Boy or girl?” Kimberly’s voice warmed up.

  “Boy. Loud, fussy, cranky, beautiful boy.”

  “Two girls,” Kimberly provided. “The seven-year-old wants a cell phone. The four-year-old wants a puppy. Sure you don�
�t want help on the case? I could fly right up.”

  D.D. smiled. “You’re supposed to tell me it gets easier. ‘This is just a phase. Parenting gets better and better every day.’ Lie to me. I could use a good story right now.”

  “Absolutely. Best days are ahead. And FYI, never leave a five-year-old alone with a jump rope and her two-year-old sister, and if your husband works as many nights as mine does, buy the king-sized bed now, because all life-forms will be in your room.”

  “Hard to fit a king-sized bed in Boston real estate. Jump rope?”

  “Technically, the two-year-old was only tied up for ten minutes, then figured out how to wiggle out of the knots. I blame my husband. He’s an outdoorsman, so he keeps teaching the girls ‘skills’ that inevitably result in babysitters never returning.”

  “What’s your husband do?”

  “Mac’s a state cop.”

  “Ah,” D.D. said, connecting the dots. “So your daughters are double–Special Agent kids—FBI on the one side and Georgia Bureau of Investigation on the other.”

  “That might be the other explanation,” Kimberly agreed.

  “My partner is also a former detective, who now teaches courses in crime scene analysis at the police academy. I figure when Jack skins his knee for the first time, he’ll fetch placards to mark the scene of the crime first, then grab a Band-Aid.”

  “Mac’s been taking our eldest, Eliza, to the shooting range with him. He swears her first time out, she clustered three to the chest. Apparently, aiming for center mass is genetic.”

  “Your seven-year-old can shoot?”

  “It’s the South, honey. We like our guns.”

  “I like your daughter,” D.D. assured her.

  “Me, too. So what can I tell you about the Jackie Knowles murder? I’m assuming you’ve read my father’s report.”

  “Your father’s…” D.D.’s voice trailed off, then she got it. “The consultant, retired FBI agent Pierce Quincy, he’s your father?”

  “Yep. He’s the reason I got involved. Generally speaking, a local homicide doesn’t garner FBI attention, but my dad had done the initial analysis of the Rhode Island crime scene. He identified several overlapping variables between the Providence murder and Atlanta homicide, and a predator operating in multiple jurisdictions would be our cup of tea.”