Catch Me

Chapter 45

IT TOOK D.D. SEVERAL WEEKS, not to mention several favors, to get the report she desired. When she finally had it, read it, processed it, she nodded in satisfaction. And then, because it didn’t mean much, couldn’t mean much, she locked it away in a file and went home to her two favorite men.

“You look happy,” Alex said, when she walked through the door.

“Because I was right.”

“Ah. Generally does the trick.”

“Got back a ballistics report. Confirmed what I had suspected: Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant might not have shot those three pedophiles, but she did commit a murder.”

Alex spooned pale mush into Jack’s mouth. They were trying out baby’s first food: rice cereal. So far, it looked very attractive on Jack’s ruddy cheeks.

“When will you arrest her?”

“Not anytime soon.”

Alex tried an airplane noise. Jack wasn’t buying it, so D.D. took over. She still wore one of her favorite tailored black suit jackets but was feeling lucky.

Alex sat back, eyed her curiously. He’d had the day off, spending it with Jack. Hence the new food, splattered kitchen, general state of disaster.

“Not arresting people generally doesn’t make you happy,” he said now.

D.D. sucked in her cheeks, making a fishy face. Jack imitated, puckering his little lips into an O, and she got the first spoonful of white mush successfully delivered. Like a pro, she thought, and went for mouthful number two. “Legal standing of ballistics report is highly debatable. Did I really have probable cause to test a legally registered firearm owned by someone who wasn’t a suspect in that particular case? Not to mention, said firearm was seized from the apartment of a cop, who turned out to be a murderer who’d already tried to frame Charlie for three other shootings. Meaning my chain of custody is crap, meaning my report is crap.”

She made a giant happy O. Jack giggled. Spoonful number two. She shoots, she scores.

“And yet you’re happy?”

“Because I knew it. When O and I interviewed Charlie the first time, the girl looked guilty as hell. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t because she was running around Boston shooting pedophiles. But I knew she’d been running around the city doing something.”

“What was the something?”

“Having a shoot-out with a lovely gentleman named Stan Miller. Known as the neighborhood bully. Security guard, wife beater, allegedly had a thing for hammers. He was found impaled on a collapsed fire escape about seven weeks ago. Quite dead, apartment shot to pieces, wife and two kids nowhere to be found. Still missing, as a matter of fact. I’d look harder, but based on neighborhood scuttlebutt, their disappearance is probably in their own best interest.”

“But he died of fire escape, not GSW.”

“Another tricky detail should I pursue a case. Can only prove a person with Charlie Grant’s gun shot at Stan Miller, not that a person with Charlie Grant’s gun killed Stan Miller.”

“And yet you’re happy.”

Baby Jack was giggly. Baby Jack blew rice cereal all over the high chair and half of D.D.’s face. And yet she was still happy. She sat back, stirring rice cereal, waiting for the next chance to use it.

She eyed her partner.

“I like knowing things. I like knowing what Charlie Grant did, and it’s possible I dropped her a note, because I like letting her know that I know what she did. Girl’s a vigilante. She should know a Boston homicide cop is staring over her shoulder. It’s good for her.”

“Ah. You’re torturing her. Now I see why you’re happy.”

“I’m monitoring her. Will help keep her honest, and I like to think at least some part of her will appreciate that.”

Baby Jack stopped blowing zerberts. D.D. reverted to more fishy faces and scored, in rapid succession, two more bites of rice cereal.

“So, I’m thinking September,” she said casually.

Alex eyed her. “Vacation? Getaway.” He closed his eyes, swallowed hard. “We really are going to see your parents.”

“Not if I can help it. But my guess is, they’d come here. Can’t miss their only daughter’s wedding.”

She looked up at him. He opened his eyes, startled, maybe even bemused. Her heart was pounding. She’d figured that might happen, but the depth of her own nervousness surprised her.

“Wedding?” he asked.

“The fall. With all the leaves turning on the trees. I think that would be pretty.”

“Am I involved?”

“I thought I’d be the one in white…okay, ivory, and you’d be the one in the monkey suit.”

He nodded slowly. “Should I ask how you arrived at this decision, or just jam the ring on your finger before you change your mind?”

“Well, it might take us a couple a weeks to find the ring…”

“Shut up,” Alex said. Then, “Stay right there.” He pushed back his chair rather awkwardly, then staggered out of the room, while D.D. sat there, still holding rice cereal, with bits of baby spittle across her cheek.

She turned to Jack, who waved his pudgy fists in the slightly reclined high chair.

“I think your father is loco,” she informed him.

He blew more zerberts.

Alex returned, now holding an unmistakable blue box that made D.D.’s eyes widen. “No way!”

“Fourteen months ago. I have been waiting fourteen months. Have I mentioned yet what a stubborn, infuriating, completely maddening woman you are?”

D.D.’s heart was pounding again. “Not the words of praise I was expecting during a proposal.”

But it didn’t matter. Had never mattered. Alex was on his knee, in their kitchen, with their baby covered in rice cereal and D.D. half-sprayed in rice cereal and it was exactly as it should be.

“D. D. Warren, will you marry me?”

“Alex Wilson, will you marry me?”

“Yes,” they said together, and he opened the box, and she gasped because it was a sapphire studded band, just like something she’d actually wear. Then she cried a little and he cried a little and baby Jack blew more zerberts so they hugged and kissed him, too, until they were all covered in rice cereal, even the sparkly sapphire band.

“I don’t get it,” Alex said, when the dust had settled and Jack was halfway cleaned up and they’d decided to pop champagne. “Why now? You discover you can’t arrest a murderer, and that makes you decide to finally marry me?”

“No. I discovered I could handle a little on-the-job frustration, because I now have more in my world than just the job. I have you, and Jack. Not to mention, when I got the report, I realized I didn’t even care if Phil and Neil knew. I just wanted to come home and tell you.”

She eyed her fiancé, sitting beside her on the couch, and she said more softly, more seriously, “You did what I feared most, Alex. And I had to have that happen, to realize it wasn’t so bad.”

“What did I do?”

“You changed me.” She shrugged. “My whole life, that’s what I’ve fought. I was the oddball in my own family, the little tomboy freak. And my parents didn’t get me, and definitely didn’t approve of me, and while some kids might have worked harder for their parents’ approval, I went the other way. I dug in my heels. And I decided no matter what, I’d always be me, even if that meant I might sometimes be, say…a little prickly, a little forceful. It was okay, because I was being me.”

“A little prickly,” he said. “A little forceful.”

She smiled. “You didn’t back down. And you didn’t try to change me. You’re good for me, Alex. You’re patient and tolerant and exactly the kind of parent Jack needs. Watching you, I’ve realized that I can be that way, too. It’s good to sometimes be patient. And a little tolerance does make the world easier to bear. I’m not saying I can’t still be mean-”

“I would never doubt it,” he assured her.

“But I’m also realizing I can approach things other ways. And I can be happy. I can come home, and for the first time in my life, I can be. Just…be.”

Alex took her hand. He squeezed it and didn’t say a word because he didn’t have to. He got her, that’s what it was all about.

“I love you, Alex.”

“I love you, too, D.D.”

They put Jack to bed, snuggled together on the sofa. Discussed possibly painting the family room. Watched some show on the History Channel. Fell asleep with marines storming some beach in some faraway land.

Midnight, Jack woke up for a bottle.

D.D. fed him, then put him and Alex to bed.

Two A.M., her police pager chimed to life.

She dressed in the dark. Kissed Alex. Kissed Jack. Clipped on her badge, hit the road.

Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren. On the job and loving it.