“Like has nothing to do with it. I’m just thinking out loud. Good detectives argue. It’s the fun part of our job.”
“She grew up with a killer. Maybe watched her mother suffocate two babies. Maybe did it herself—”
“Big assumption.”
“Still, ritualistically abused. Think of the bonding that never took place. Lack of empathy. The free spirits of the world would have you believe a little bit of love eases all pain. Cops know better.”
“She claims to have loved Rosalind.”
“Didn’t make a difference. Maybe it was even baby Rosalind’s death that put her over the edge. She blew up. Fought violently with her mom, would’ve killed her if the mom hadn’t stabbed her first.”
“Another big assumption.”
“Mom exited stage right, Charlie went to the mountains of New Hampshire. New house, new rules, new stability. Maybe it worked for a bit. Until her friends scattered, and poor old Charlie was once more all alone. Maybe she decided to track her mother down, finish old business.”
“Would really like a witness, any proof at all that Charlie even knew her mom lived in Boulder.”
“Seize her computer.”
“She doesn’t have one.”
“Bet her aunt does. Bet it’s in New Hampshire. Get it, pore through old docs. There’s an e-mail somewhere, an Internet search. Always is in this day and age. Plus, bet she still has access to a computer, maybe checks out one of the laptops at the Boston Public Library and uses it to hunt pedophiles, before returning it to the help desk. Nobody lives totally off the grid, and everyone leaves tracks, as you were explaining to Neil today. We just gotta keep digging. Maybe eight years ago Charlie searched for her mom, Charlie found her mom, Charlie killed her mom. And it felt good. Justice done.”
D.D. couldn’t argue with that; the death of Charlie’s mom did appear to be justice done. And she certainly hoped everyone on the Internet left tracks. She’d talked to Phil right before dinner, and he and Neil had seized eight separate electronic items from Barry’s bedroom. They now hoped the techies found lots of tracks, including ones that tied Barry to two other pedophiles, as well as revealing how one blue-eyed “demon,” in the words of their witness, tracked him down.
“So, Charlene Grant killed her own mother,” D.D. filled in now, “and liked the feeling so much, she decided to wait eight years, then systematically hunt down Boston sex offenders for more righteous kills?”
“Maybe she didn’t wait eight years. Maybe there are other dead sex offenders in other jurisdictions. We just know the three on our watch. Not to mention, stress is a major trigger for killers, and you can tell just by looking that Charlene Grant’s a little stressed out right now.”
“She’s a good girl, until her stress level rises too high, then she loads a gun and lets off a little steam?”
“Why not? Worse reasons to kill sex predators.”
“More big assumptions.”
“Which is why,” Detective O replied curtly, “I followed her tonight, got my hands on her twenty-two, and delivered it to the lab. Tomorrow, fuck assumptions. We’ll have a ballistics report.”
“Hope so,” D.D. murmured, “seeing as we just seized a potential murder victim’s legally registered means of self-defense, on the eve of the big day.”
“Forget the other murders,” O shot back, sounding almost irritated. “This is all about Charlene. What happened when she was a kid, to her and her siblings. I doubt she’s even a target tomorrow. I bet she’s the instigator. I mean lots of people are abused as kids, and they still manage to grow up remembering such a minor detail as being stabbed by their own mother. Then there’s Charlene, who claims she forgot it all. I think that’s her first lie.”