Catch Me

Chapter 34

SATURDAY. 7 A.M. Thirteen hours and counting.

Maybe less? Maybe more?

What did I know? My shift was due to end, but my replacement hadn’t appeared, leaving me trapped at a desk, comm lines still ringing with various Boston citizens in various states of panic.

I’d arrived to a slew of motor vehicle incidents. Car versus cat. Motorcycle versus telephone pole. Drunk teenager A versus drunk teenager B.

By 2 A.M., the bars had closed and the phone lines heated up. Tina Limmer from 375 Markham Street called to report that her boyfriend was an asshole. Guess she caught him balling her best friend. Sadly, being an asshole was not yet a prosecutable offense, so I’d been forced to end the call. Just in time for Cherry Weiss from 896 Concord Avenue to report the smell of smoke in the stairwell of her apartment building. Two officers were dispatched, not to mention the fire department. Officers arrested two drunken seventy-year-old men who were trying valiantly to prove that you could light a fart on fire. Fire department laughed, took in the show.

Which brought me to Vinnie Pearl of 95 Wentworth Way. He wanted to report that he’d lost his nose. With a bit of searching (I managed to direct him to the bathroom of his own apartment), he located said nose in the mirror. Turned out, Vinnie had spent most of Friday brewing homemade limoncello. Which explained his call back ten minutes later to report he’d lost his lips, couldn’t feel them anymore, his entire mouth was gone.

I ordered Vinny to take four aspirin, drink three glasses of water, and good luck in the morning.

That call ended just in time for the first of three bar brawls, followed by two calls of domestic violence and yet another motor vehicle incident, Hummer versus three parked cars.

Parked cars lost. Hummer didn’t fare so well either, and completely drunk-as-a-skunk Hummer driver was arrested, as they say, without incident.

Sometime around 3 A.M., I ate my cold chicken breast and half grapefruit while still sitting at my desk. At four thirty, the call volume lulled enough I could actually pee. Five thirty, I attempted to log onto Facebook from the PD’s computer; I wanted to check the page honoring Randi and Jackie.

I got eight minutes to marvel at the long list of friends, the outpouring of shared memories and bittersweet tears, then the monitor lit up again, this time car versus pedestrian. The pedestrian was injured, but still able to make the nine-one-one report, as the offending vehicle sped away.

Randi hadn’t suspected a thing on the twenty-first. That was my best guess. The police had never uncovered any sign of threatening notes, suspicious behavior. She’d lived a small, self-contained life, her closest friend probably her yoga instructor, who said Randi hadn’t commented on anything out of the ordinary. Meaning the twenty-first had dawned as just another day. Get up. Go through the motions. No idea, no inkling, this would be her last day on earth.

Is it better that way? To never see death coming, or to spend the past year as I have, counting down every minute, planning out every second toward looming demise?

Jackie had cried the morning of the twenty-first. I’m sure of it. She would’ve woken up with the same heavy feeling I had. This was it. The one-year anniversary of Randi’s death, and still the police had no leads, no major breaks in the investigation. Our childhood friend had been senselessly murdered and we remained with more questions than answers.

Jackie would’ve started off the day quiet, reserved. Maybe she would’ve donned a string of pearls in memory of Randi. Or bought fresh flowers, or listened to Randi’s favorite band, Journey, during her drive to work.

Being in New Hampshire, I’d driven to Randi’s grave that morning, bearing a grocery store bouquet of yellow roses. I’d been nervous I’d meet her parents and not know what to say. But the cemetery was empty, and I’d stood alone on the hard-packed snow, shivering in the single-digit chill, while feeling the tears fall, then freeze on my cheeks.

Jackie had probably been preoccupied on the twenty-first. But still probably hadn’t thought about herself, felt a lingering tension, a fissure of fear. Maybe that’s why she’d gone out to a bar. She’d been sad, not afraid, and maybe figured a night out would cheer her up.

The police said she met a woman that night. A stranger made the most sense, as no friend or known acquaintance had stepped forward to say that she’d been with Jackie those final hours. So she’d gone to a bar, met someone she liked, someone who seemed nice enough, decent enough to welcome into her home.

No struggle.

That’s the part I kept coming back to. To not just die, but to die without putting up a fight.

I couldn’t imagine it. When J.T.’s hands had closed around my throat, I’d been shocked, momentarily paralyzed. But then came the instinct to breathe, the desire to strike back, struggle furiously for air.

Randi had been sweet, but Jackie had always been hard-edged. A woman who could battle her way to being vice president of a major corporation by the time she was twenty-six wasn’t a quitter.

So what had happened that night? Who could she have met, what could have transpired, for her to submit so passively to her own death?

I churned the matter over, as I’d been churning it for the past year. Finding no answers, just a fresh case of nerves.

The phone lines rang. My hands trembled. And I worked and I worked and I worked, my teeth clenched, my body jumpy, and my hands desperate for the feel of my Taurus.

Seven A.M. to eight A.M. to nine A.M.

Nine fifteen, Sergeant Collins appeared in the doorway to announce that my replacement had come down sick. They were working on finding a sub now; in the meantime, they needed me to continue to hold down the fort.

It was a statement, not a question. Such is the nature of the job. Nine-one-one phone lines had to be covered, meaning you couldn’t leave until the next person had arrived and planted butt in chair. No replacement meant no going home for me.

Nine A.M. to ten A.M. to eleven A.M.

My last hours, winding down as I sat in a darkened comm center, dealing with other people’s crises, solving other people’s problems.

So this is how the world ends, I thought, remembering the T. S. Eliot poem from high school. Not with a bang but a whimper.

I wanted to fight. Whatever happened tonight, I wanted to be the one who finally inflicted damage, caused bodily harm. Win or lose, Detective D. D. Warren and her team would get some fresh evidence from my crime scene. That was my resolution.

Eleven thirty. Shirlee Wertz appeared, black curly hair held back by a red bandana, overflowing book bag slung over her shoulder. We ran through the call log, I caught her up on drunk Vinnie and his disappearing body parts. Then I transferred my headset to her, stepped away from the desk, and took one look back.

Would I miss this?

I’d be taking a two-week vacation, that’s all I’d told the higher-ups. No drama over my departure this way. No burning questions about my future, life after the twenty-first.

It’s funny, but my throat felt tight. I stared at the ANI ALI monitor and I was choked up.

I’d liked this job. I cared about my officers, felt the burden and honor of watching their backs. I felt that, in a small, feeble way, in this dark room, manning these lines, I’d spent the past year making a difference.

Eleven forty-five A.M. Eight hours fifteen minutes.

I found my messenger bag. I exited the Grovesnor PD. And I forced myself not to look back.

I went straight for my gun. Far edge of the parking lot, beneath the prickly bush. I looked right, looked left. Coast clear, so I bent down to retrieve it.

Except it wasn’t there. I dug around. Little more to the left, little more to the right, then abandoning all pretense and frantically unearthing the snow mound with two hands, like a terrier pawing away the earth.

Nothing.

Gun was gone. All that remained was an icy hole, topped with plow sand and city dirt.

In the distance, sirens sounded. One, two, three patrol cars.

Who could’ve taken it?

I’d told no one. Hidden it only at the last moment, when no one was watching. How could someone foresee something I hadn’t even known I would do?

The hairs prickled to life on the back of my neck. I finally understood.

The killer was in Boston.

He/she was watching me.

And he/she was already one step ahead.

This was it. No more countdown.

My own murder had officially begun.

I couldn’t help myself. I staggered away from the dirty, grimy snowbank. Then, unarmed and genuinely panicked, I began to run.