“I don’t know anyone well enough to be a friend or an enemy. I’ve kept to myself for the past year. I think you can attest to the general state of my warmth and fuzziness.”
Tom grunted in agreement. “Someone seems to think you’re a killer. Or,” he caught himself, “someone wants others to think you’re a killer. Because that’s what this is, right? A classic frame-up. Someone has submitted a gun, claiming it’s yours, that’s now been matched to three homicides.”
“But it’s not my Taurus. My license,” I started, then stopped. My license to carry included only the class of gun I was permitted to own, no detailed description of a specific firearm, such as a. 22 with a rosewood versus checked rubber grip. “It’s not my gun,” I repeated more firmly. “And my firearms instructor, J. T. Dillon, can testify on my behalf. He’s trained me for the past year on my Taurus; he knows what it looks like.”
Tom grunted. “Well, at least you got the first witness for the defense.”
I understood his point. With time and effort, I could argue the Boston PD were wrong; whatever. 22 had been submitted in my name wasn’t mine. But in the meantime, they’d already issued a warrant for my arrest. Meaning first I’d be tossed in jail. Later, it would be sorted out.
I didn’t have later. Not given that today was D-day, January 21. The day I’d spent a year training for. I was supposed to greet my killer, armed and ready for battle. Now, after twenty minutes or less, I was defenseless and on the run from the law.
But how? But who?
Slowly but surely, my brain kicked to life. “A cop submitted the real murder weapon. Only way there could be a match, right? Joe Blow can’t show up at the Boston PD lab and say here’s Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant’s gun. Please conduct the following test.”
“Bingo.”
“But thinking ahead, the same cop also seized my real Taurus semiauto. So I couldn’t quickly produce it, head straight to HQ with my own twenty-two, saying hey, there’s been a mistake.”
“Maybe.”
“I don’t understand,” I said again, and I hated how weak I sounded, how confused.
“Who all knows you have a twenty-two? I do. What about other cops in our department, or Boston PD?”
“I’ve been working with Boston Detective D. D. Warren and this other detective, O. Both of them know about my Taurus. Detective D.D. had promised to look into the murders of my friends, see what she could find out for today. And O’s been building some Facebook page, trying to bait the killer…”
My voice trailed off. Except last time I’d been there, they’d asked me lots of questions that had little to do with the death of my friends. They’d drilled me on my mother, my childhood, my dead siblings. O, in particular, had cycled back to my feelings of “frustration and helplessness.” How I of all people knew how much children out there suffered and how little the police could do to help.
Unless, of course, I was running all over town assassinating pedophiles.
They thought I did it. Of course. And I hadn’t denied anything, because I wasn’t exactly guilt free. Different crime, same blood on my hands.
But how did I go from being suspected by two detectives to being framed by at least one of them? And which one?
Then I got it. I knew exactly what had happened. I stared at Tom. “Detective O,” I said. “She did this. Oh my God, she fucking framed me for her own crimes.”
Tom eyed me from the driver’s seat of the parked car, his expression already skeptical. “Why?”