Catch Me

Chapter 19

TRAINING EQUALS PREPAREDNESS. You drill a pattern of movements over and over again, so that when the moment of attack occurs, rather than freezing in shock, you fall back into a series of instinctive responses that quickly renders your opponent useless.

That’s the theory at least.

Tulip and I left the Grovesnor PD a little after 8 A.M. No Officer Mackereth to drive us home. The morning sun was weak, barely penetrating the thickening clouds. I could already taste the snow building on the horizon, feel the frosty bite through my coat, hat, and gloves.

Within a matter of minutes, Tulip, with her short tan-and-white fur, was shivering.

It distracted me. That was my excuse as I hustled us both to the corner, where I began the competitive game of hailing a taxi at the height of the morning commute.

After five minutes, I’d had no luck, and Tulip was shivering harder.

Bus pulled up. Number was right for my purposes, so I boarded, hefting Tulip up with me.

The bus driver, a heavyset black woman with crimped gray hair and a face that had seen it all, shook her head. “Service dogs only.”

“She is a service dog. Lost her collar. Some jerk took it off her right outside the police station. How d’you like that? Now look at her. She’s out of uniform and freezing to death.”

Tulip helped me out by giving the driver a particularly pathetic glance.

Four other people shoved up behind me, trying to board, impatient with the holdup, particularly given the freezing temperature.

Bus the driver ignored them, stared at me.

“What’s your disability?” she demanded.

“Peanut allergy.”

“There’s no dogs for peanut allergies.”

“Are too.”

“Are not.”

“Are too,” muttered the man behind me. “Come on. Let her on or kick her off. It’s fucking cold out here.”

I glared at him, then took in the row of passengers already filling the seats. “Anyone eat peanut butter this morning?” I called out. “Or have peanuts in your purse?”

Couple of tentative hands went up. I turned triumphantly to the bus driver. “See, I need my dog. Otherwise, I might die on your bus, and think about the paperwork. Nobody wants to do that kind of paperwork.”

I swiped my commuter card and dropped Tulip into the aisle, as if that decided the matter. As I headed toward the back of the bus with Tulip in tow, I could tell the bus driver still didn’t believe me. But it was fucking freezing out, and nobody liked paperwork.

I lied. I got away with it. It made me a little triumphant, a little cocky. Second mistake for the morning.

Really, it was only a matter of time.

I had to stand. Right hand up, holding the overhead bar for balance. I had the end of Tulip’s leash encircled around my left wrist, with my left hand pressed flat against the closed flap of my messenger bag. Protecting the contents, particularly my weapon.

Now, here’s a rule of mass transit: The colder it is outside, the hotter it will be inside.

Heat blasted through the vents, and pretty quickly, the wool coats and fleece-lined hats that made so much sense outside, became suffocating inside. Tulip started to pant. I started to sweat. More people jammed in, hot bodies pressing together, adding to the sauna.

Twenty minutes into my fifty-five-minute ride, I started to feel nauseous. The swaying suspension system, rolling beneath my feet. The beads of sweat, rolling down my hairline to pool on my overheated neck. The stench of too many bodies crowded too close together, only some of whom had bothered to shower recently.

Another five minutes, and I raised my hand from my messenger bag long enough to loosen my scarf, remove my hat. I breathed marginally easier, then the bus was off and bouncing again, passengers bobbing, windows fogging.

I managed to stuff my hat in my coat pocket, then I had to move my left hand again. Unbutton the top button of my jacket, second, third, fourth.

I wore an oversized navy blue fleece pullover beneath my coat. The kind of soft, bulky sweatshirt perfect for cozying up with a good book on Sunday afternoon. It was strangling me now, the collar damp with sweat, the compressed sleeves squeezing my arms.

Thirty minutes down, twenty-five more to go.

Bus stopped. Passengers got off. More passengers got on. Tulip whined and panted. I loosened my grip on the sweat-slicked metal bar, wiped my forearm over my brow.

Bus lurched forward and so did my stomach.

Was I still holding on to the messenger bag? Maybe. Maybe not. I was hot, uncomfortable, fighting motion sickness. So first distracted, then cocky, and now partially incapacitated.

Cities operate by jungle rules, you know: The weak and infirm are immediately targeted to be culled from the herd.

Stop after stop. Block after block. With me panting almost as hard as Tulip. Not paying attention to my fellow passengers. Not noticing my surroundings. Just counting down the blocks. Wishing desperately to get off that damn bus.

Finally, as my face went from overheated red, to unsightly pale, to alarming green, the stop. Doors opened in the front. I started the forward charge, leading with Tulip, who weaved effortlessly through a sea of heavy boots and flapping overcoats.

“Excuse me, excuse me, coming through.” Pushing, shoving, and shimmying. Following the siren’s song of fresh air, beckoning through the open door. At last, we made it. The bus driver and I exchanged final scowls, then Tulip and I clambered down the steep bus stairs onto hard-frozen terra firma. We jogged a couple of steps away from the metal sauna.

I was vaguely aware of the bus doors closing, the bus pulling away. I had both hands away from my messenger bag. Opening up my coat, gulping for icy, snow-laced air, trying to draw as much of it as I could into my overheated lungs, through my sweat-soaked fleece.

My leather bag dangled at my hip, my open coat flapped around my thighs.

I was all about the refreshingly frigid air, the feel of it against my face. I was finally off the bus. End of the road. From here, Tulip and I could jog the roughly mile and a half to our destination. Away from the densely packed urban sprawl, into the back roads and rolling countryside that still dotted random parts of Greater Boston.

It felt good to be out of the city. I felt safe. Relieved. Optimistic even.

Right until the instant I was attacked from behind.

HE CAUGHT MY COAT LAPELS FIRST. Jerked the front flaps of my black wool coat back and down. In one second or less, he’d incapacitated my left arm, basically bound it to my side with my own coat. The strap of my messenger bag, however, slung diagonal across my body, trapped the right lapel at the side of my neck, tangling his hand.

I used that second to stand perfectly still, my mouth caught soundlessly open, while my brain screamed (stupidly), But it’s not the twenty-first!

While I made like a statue, my attacker grabbed the strap of my messenger bag, whipped it over my head, and tossed it aside. The weight of the bag tangled with Tulip’s leash. My fingers opened reflexively, releasing her leash, and that quickly, I’d lost my gun and my dog. To be sure about it, my attacker, still standing behind me, kicked my bag away.

Then, his hands closed around my throat.

Belatedly, my survival instinct kicked in. I stopped cataloguing what was happening and started responding. First, I fought against my own coat.

While my attacker squeezed, slowly but surely obstructing my airways, I jerked my coat-bounded elbow backwards into his side. When he shimmied left, I used the air-starved moment to jerk off my coat, finally freeing my hands and arms.

His grip tightened. My mouth gasped, I struggled for air. Could feel pressure growing in my chest, the weight of my own rising panic.

But it’s not the twenty-first!

Fight, I needed to fight. But I was expecting to punch forward. To squat, block, jab. Now I was left with self-defense 101, trying to stomp on my attacker’s instep, kick back into a kneecap. Hurt him, incapacitate him. Do something so that he’d have to let go.

Barking. Tulip, running around our feet, leash trailing.

Hands still squeezing, white spots appearing in front of my eyes.

Forgetting to stomp, to fight. Succumbing to panic and clawing futilely at the fingers at my throat, as if that would make a difference.

So this is how Randi had felt. This is how Jackie had felt.

Such a crushing weight against my chest. The desire, the urge to breathe was so primal, so hardwired that the lack of oxygen led to the most peculiar kind of pain. As if I could feel the cells in my body dying one by one, screaming out their last desperate seconds.

Baby, crying down the hall.

I know, I know. I should’ve told. I should’ve.

I was crying. He was killing me, and instead of fighting back, I was weighed down with old regrets. The baby I’d failed. The mother I’d let hurt me. The friends I’d loved with all my heart and buried one by one.

Tulip barking, then suddenly, a yelp of pain. He’d kicked her. My attacker had hurt my dog.

That pissed me off.

I sagged. In a dimly remembered move from so many rounds of training, I stopped surging up with my legs and turned myself into dead weight instead. The sudden shift of my knees giving out threw my attacker off balance. He lurched forward, and I immediately countered by planting my feet and using my attacker’s own weight to flip him over my head.

Then, I was on him. I kicked at his ribs, punched his unprotected head. This wasn’t boxing. This was street fighting. I inhaled ragged, desperate gasps of air into my searing lungs as I kicked and jabbed and chased my killer across the snowy ground.

My attacker rolled, forearms over his face as he quickly put distance between us in order to regain his footing.

No way. Not gonna happen. If he got up, no doubt he was gonna be bigger and stronger than me, with maybe a knife or gun or other tricks up his sleeve. So I had to keep him down, where I could loom over him, where I was the biggest badass in town.

I continued to chase. He rolled, at one point made it up onto all fours, but I rewarded his efforts with such a devastating kick to the ribs, he collapsed and scuttled sideways.

He kept his head down, protecting his face, but also making it hard to read his intent. Thus, he managed to surprise me when I lashed out again and his left hand came up lightning fast, grabbed my foot, and jerked hard.

I toppled back, landing with a crack on my right hip. But even gasping in pain, I had the presence of mind to kick with my other foot, dislodging my first leg from his hand. Now we were both on all fours on the frozen ground, scrambling around each other.

Tulip circled as well, no longer barking but whining and uncertain. I couldn’t risk looking at her or our surroundings. I should probably scream, call for help. We were just off the street. It was after 9 A.M.; even on the outskirts of the city no place is ever completely deserted.

But I couldn’t make a sound. My blood rushed in my ears, I could hear the hoarse sound of my own breath. But I couldn’t even whisper. My vocal cords were locked, frozen.

In the horror movies, the plucky victim always screams her terror. In real life, we are more likely to die in silence.

I got my feet under me at the same time he got his. I bounced up, fisted hands up, proper fighting stance finally established, just as my attacker squared off against me.

And I found myself staring into the weather-beaten face of my shooting instructor, J. T. Dillon.

“I GIVE YOU A C,” he said. He straightened, hands dropping to his side.

Still not entirely sure about things, I punched with my right, going for the side of his head. Just as quickly, J.T. blocked my shot with his left arm, then his hands were down again, passive at his side.

“Maybe a D,” he said roughly, his breathing no easier than mine. “You’re still alive, but only barely.”

Slowly, I straightened. “You attacked me as a training exercise?”

“Think of it as graduation.” He fingered his side, where I’d kicked him pretty hard, and winced. “Though, given my age, next time I’m going with a paper diploma.”

My hands were still up. I couldn’t drop them. Not yet. My breathing was too shallow. My throat hurt. I would be bruised in a matter of hours.

“Fuck you!” I said suddenly.

He studied me, eyes cool, inscrutable.

I hit him again. He blocked it again. So I really went for it. Punching, jabbing, and attacking until pretty soon we were chasing each other around in a circle again, him on the defensive this time, me powered with a rage I barely recognized. He had hurt me. I needed to hurt him back.

He’d almost killed me.

And I’d nearly let him.

It burned. My throat, my chest, my pride. All that training, all that practicing, and I’d still nearly died, taken out by a sixty-year-old ex-marine.

Tulip chased us. Not barking or whining. She had seen me spar before, and maybe she understood the situation better than I did. I don’t know. I chased my shooting coach and he let me. Dodging, blocking, recoiling, sometimes slapping back. Moving with a speed I didn’t know a silver-haired former marine sniper could still have.

Problem with hitting, really truly throwing a punch, is that it demands such an explosive release of energy. Even world heavyweight champions can only sustain the action for three minutes at a time.

Sooner versus later, my hands grew heavy. My lungs heaved for air, my shoulders and chest burned. My heart rate had spiked to the edge of nausea, and I no longer chased my opponent as much as I staggered after him, my rage still willing, the rest of me giving out.

J.T. ended the situation, by plopping down beneath a skeletal tree. I collapsed on the snow next to him. My face was beet red, covered in sweat from my exertions. The snow felt good, the gray sky a balm against my flushed cheeks.

Tulip came over, sat beside me, and whined uncertainly. I stroked her head. She licked my cheek. Then she wandered over to J.T. to repeat the ritual. Satisfied all was now well, she plopped between us, burrowing against my side for warmth. After another moment, J.T. got up, trotted over to my messenger bag, and returned it to me.

He sat back down and we passed another moment in silence.

“Why is my firearms instructor beating me up?” I asked finally.

He regarded me steadily. “Nothing wrong with training with a handgun,” he said curtly. “But odds are, you’ll never get off a shot. Or if you do, you’ll be panicked and overwhelmed with adrenaline. You’ll shoot wild till you run out of ammo. Then, you’re back where you started-up close and personal.”

I thought of my encounter with Stan Miller. J.T. had just summarized it quite nicely. Stan and I had both fired wildly. And the situation had ended up close and personal.

“Have you ever killed anyone?” I asked.

“I’ve done my share of damage.”

“How did it feel?”

“Never as good as I wanted it to.”

We sat in silence again. I stroked Tulip’s head.

“Am I going to die on the twenty-first?” I asked at last. A stupid question, but maybe that’s what life came down to. Stupid questions in waning hours where we stood on the tracks, watching the locomotive bear down on us and wondering how bad it was gonna hurt.

“Maybe,” J.T. said. He looked at me again. “Who beat you? Mother, father, boyfriend?”

I didn’t answer right away. I stroked Tulip’s silky brown ears. “Mother,” I said finally. “Munchausen’s by proxy.”

First time I’d said the words out loud. Aunt Nancy and I had never discussed it. And I’d never told Randi or Jackie. Never even mentioned my mother to them, or where I’d lived before the mountains or any of the days, weeks, months that had existed before I became my aunt’s niece instead of my mother’s daughter.

But I told J. T. Dillon, because physically hitting someone is like that. It forms a bond. Sex, violence, death. All intimate in their own way. Another thing I hadn’t known until the past year.

“You didn’t defend yourself,” J.T. said curtly. “You didn’t fight for you.”

“Eventually I did.”

“No. I kicked your dog. You fought for your dog.”

“She’s a good dog.”

He stared at me. “You gotta get her out of your head,” he said abruptly.

I stiffened, still stroking Tulip’s ears, but feeling myself pull away.

“Mean it,” J.T. said. “You gotta hit for you. You gotta take that rage and shame and silence, and turn it into a weapon. You gotta know, Charlie, you gotta well and truly know it’s not okay to be hurt. You don’t deserve to be punished. Someone attacks you, stop accepting, start fighting back.”

“I’m trying.”

“Bullshit! You hesitate. You go to some place in your head where you’re conditioned to hang out until the punishment stops. Look, I can train you to shoot. Dick can train you to hit. But neither one of us can untrain you to stop playing victim in your own life. You gotta do that. You gotta care.”

I flushed, felt like a little girl chastised for not doing my homework. I didn’t want to be passive. I wanted to be a badass. And yet, when his hands had closed around my throat…When he’d attacked me from behind…

I’d felt like I deserved it. I’d been bad and I deserved my punishment. Conditioned response of abused children everywhere. We all grew up, but none of us ever got away.

“Dying for someone is easy,” J.T. murmured now, as if reading my mind. “Living for yourself, that’s hard. But you gotta do it, Charlie. Honor yourself. Defend yourself. Fight for yourself.”

I nodded finally, tucking Tulip closer to my body to help keep her warm.

“Are we going shooting now?” I asked.

“In a minute.”

He was opening my bag, withdrawing my Taurus. The. 22 looked tiny in his large callused palm, his long fingers better suited for his explosive. 45 than my peashooter. He sniffed at it, looked at me.

“Never put away a gun dirty,” he said.

“Figured I’d clean it after our session.”

“Never put away a gun dirty.”

“Okay.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Good, ’cause I don’t want to know.”

He handed me the Taurus. We both rose to standing.

“She gonna be okay walking?” He gestured to Tulip.

“If we keep her moving. She needs a coat. Maybe later today.”

“Do that. Dog that’s worth fighting for deserves a sweater.”

J.T. started walking; Tulip and I fell in step beside him. It was a mile and a half to his house, tucked away on three acres of land. Perfect for a man with a shooting range in his backyard. Perfect for a man-and his wife-who didn’t much care for company.

“She still alive?” he asked as he walked.

I didn’t need clarification to know who he was asking about. “No,” I heard myself say, another rare admission, a memory barely known and definitely never explored. But if I really thought about it…of course my mother was dead. It stood to reason that if she were still alive, she would’ve contacted me by now. Written a letter from prison or whatever mental institute she was living in. Dropped by the first moment she was released. That’s the whole point of Munchausen’s by proxy-the perpetrator considers herself the victim. It’s all about her-she doesn’t just need sympathy, support, understanding. She deserves it. But I’d never heard from my mother since waking up in the upstate New York hospital. Not a phone call, not a letter, not a peep.

There had been some kind of final confrontation. I’d lived, and my mother…

“Drinker?” J.T. asked.

“No.”

“Drug abuser?”

“Crazy. Just plain crazy.”

“Glad she’s dead then,” J.T. said. “Now get over her.”

“Sure,” I promised him. “Might as well.” I glanced at my watch. “Fifty-eight hours to go,” I muttered. Both of us started to jog.