“I mean the calls you must get, night after night. Little boys getting beaten by their fathers, little girls molested by their caretakers. What can you do, what can anyone do? Take down their name and number. Hey, little kid, your life is a living hell, let me take a message for you. Bet by the time you go home at night, you’re all fired up, itching for action. Bet you’re thinking you’re not a cop, your hands aren’t tied. You can shoot, you can hit, you can run. You can make a difference.”
Too late, I saw the trap looming. Too late, I stopped talking. Backpedaled furiously in my mind, trying to remember exactly what they’d asked and I’d answered. But, of course, I had a terrible memory and it was too little too late.
Detective O kept charging, full steam ahead. “When did you first make the decision that at least one scumbag deserved to die? How’d you pick the target? A call you took personally, a case that caught your attention? Maybe shop talk, a couple of officers, debriefing from a situation they’d encountered on duty. How little they could do, and how much it sucked, and you listened and you remembered. You knew what you didn’t want to know…your mother’s house, the containers in the closet, the way no one helped you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“How did it feel afterward, knowing you finally saved a child. Must have been quite the rush. You can tell us about it you know. I mean, we’re detectives, but we’re people, too. We get what you’re doing, why it must be done.”
I pulled myself together, chin up, shoulders back. Detective O’s eyes were probing. I forced myself to meet her stare.
“You don’t know me.”
“Oh, but I do. The question is, how well do you know yourself?”
“I’m leaving.” I grabbed my messenger bag.
“Running away.”
“Got a warrant?”
“Avoiding. Fleeing. Doing what you do best.”
“I was just a kid.”
“So how did you know they were suffocated?”
I blinked, hands clutching the straps of my messenger bag, still poised for flight, except suddenly Detective O wasn’t talking to me anymore. She was talking to D.D.
“I’ve studied Munchausen’s by proxy. Never encountered a case where the mother abused one child for attention, while secretly killing others. However, in several instances, the mom made a big fuss over being pregnant. Milked it for attention. Then, when the babies were born, suffocated them in the middle of the night, and claimed crib death. Oh, the drama, the outpouring of public support, the endless supply of neighborly casseroles. You could see how it would work with someone of that psychological makeup. How they’d even feel compelled to do it again and again.
“But never heard of a Munchausen’s mom resorting to secret infanticide. Where’s the fix, outpouring of public support, the emotional satisfaction? Makes me wonder what else Charlene fails to remember. What else she might have done.”
“I would never—”
“Look me in the eye, Charlene.” Detective O, suddenly rounding the table, walking closer. “Look me in the eye and tell me you’re not a killer.”
I opened my mouth. I closed my mouth. I opened my mouth again, and a word came out, but it wasn’t what I expected.
“Abigail,” I whispered.
“What about Abigail?”
“Abigail,” I repeated mournfully. And my hand came up. I reached out, as if to touch someone who wasn’t even there.
“Charlene—” Detective Warren began.
But I didn’t wait to hear anymore. They didn’t have a warrant. They couldn’t arrest me, they couldn’t hold me.
In the back of my mind, I realized this might be the last chance I ever had.
One year of intense training later, I sized up my opponents. Then I turned and fled.
Chapter 30
“OH YEAH, she’ll never guess we’re onto her after that conversation. Subtle. Smooth. Confidence-building. I bet Charlene’s headed home right now to make us both friendship bracelets. What do you think?” D.D. snapped.