“She talk much about her past, how she grew up?”
“Detective, graveyard is a solo shift. Working alone by definition discourages idle chitchat.”
“What about the other officers on duty?”
“They’re paid to patrol, not hang at the station.”
“What about breaks? Dinner break, lunch, whatever the hell you call a middle-of-the-night meal?” She started to build Charlene’s shift schedule in her head, looking for opportunities for the girl to, say, sneak out and commit homicide, without anyone noticing.
“One thirty-minute meal break. Most brown bag it, eating in their patrol cars or, in Charlene’s case, at her desk.”
“That’s it? Per eight hours?”
“Two fifteens, which half our officers use to grab a smoke. Not Charlene, if memory serves. She’s the fitness buff.”
“What if she has to pee?”
“She declares code ten-six, takes a comfort break.”
“But if she’s the only one on duty, who covers the phone?”
“Working supervisor, generally a uniformed sergeant.”
“So there is someone else who works with her at night.”
“True. But the sergeant sits in the main station, whereas the comm center is its own enclosed space, basically a former closet now bristling with monitors, phones, and radios.”
“Would you know if she left the comm center? For example, had clocked in, but left the station?”
“Not possible.”
“Why? According to you, she and the sergeant can’t even see each other.”
“But they hear each other. Charlene backs up all patrol officers. Meaning, they not only check in with her during their shifts, but she checks in with them if she hasn’t heard them on the airwaves. Calls out their patrol number, makes sure each officer is accounted for. Nine twenty-six to dispatch, nine twenty-six to dispatch, that sort of thing. How long has it been since your patrol days, Detective?”
“A while.”
“Airwaves are never quiet. Even on graveyard, Charlene’s job is to be talking and listening. And our headsets aren’t so cutting edge she can wear them out into the parking lot and still get reception, let alone down the street.”
“So when Charlene’s on the job, she’s on the job.”
“Exactly.”
D.D. pursed her lips, considering. Made sense, and didn’t destroy their case one way or another.
“Can I ask you a question?” Shepherd spoke up now.
“Sure.”
“Why are you investigating our comm officer? I mean, I don’t have the opportunity to work with Charlie directly, but I can tell you, she’s good. She’s reliable, trustworthy, takes care of our officers. We like her.”
“From what she says, none of you even know her.”
“Graveyard isn’t for social butterflies.”
“You background her?”
“Course.”
“Anything stand out?”
“She had a good recommendation from Colorado—”
“What?”
“Arvada, Colorado. Her first dispatch job.”
D.D. felt a chill. “How close is Arvada to Boulder?”
“Hell if I know. I’m from Revere.”
D.D. pursed her lips, mind racing. Charlene’s dead mother, the unidentified body found in Boulder. Charlene, hearing that news today, never even mentioning she’d lived in the same state. What were the odds of that?
Not to mention that in the past ten years, Charlene’s mother and two best friends had all died. Meaning one woman had left behind a trail of three dead bodies across multiple states. Seemed to D.D. that it was pretty risky to know Charlene Grant these days. Heightened your odds of meeting an untimely demise, and even worse, given Charlene’s fickle powers of recollection, she wouldn’t remember you afterward.
You can both know things and not know things, Charlene had said. Coping mechanism for the childhood-challenged.