He’d started to say he had a surprise for me. My dog. Tom had searched the city for Tulip and brought her to me.
Possibly, my eyes blurred as I worked the key remote for the police cruiser, opening the door, releasing the dog who was definitely my dog and feeling the solid weight of her as she hurled herself against my shaking form. I scooped her up and held her close. I was sorry for her, and sorry for Tom and sorry for my baby sister, whom I still loved, and sorrier still for my aunt, who might even now be paying for my sins.
I closed the police cruiser door. Too conspicuous.
Instead, I located Tom’s dark green Ram truck, and opened both doors. Tulip rode shotgun.
We set off into the night.
Twenty years later. Once the victim, now the cavalry.
Chapter 40
D.D. CALLED NEIL AND PHIL into her office for an emergency meeting. In the next thirty minutes, she needed to report to her boss, the deputy superintendent of homicide, about the latest developments involving possible criminal actions taken by a fellow investigator, Detective O. First, D.D. wanted to get her ducks in a row.
She started without preamble. “Where the hell is Detective O, what did she do, and why didn’t we figure this out sooner?”
Phil went first. Given that O wasn’t answering her cell phone, returning official pages, or replying to requests for contact from police dispatch, chances were she’d gone rogue. They hadn’t issued a full BOLO yet, but word was out among Boston cops: if anyone spotted Detective O or her Crown Vic, they should contact HQ immediately.
In the meantime, Phil was blitzing his way through her official file. Given her young age and limited time on the job, it made for quick reading. O had joined Boston PD two years prior, transferring from a smaller jurisdiction in the burbs. Was known for her hard work and tireless dedication. Perhaps a bit rigid in her approach, perhaps didn’t always play well with others, but the sex crimes investigator also got results with some pretty tough cases in a pretty tough field.
Certainly, nothing in her annual eval suggested that she was a nutcase waiting to crack.
“On the other hand,” Phil reported, “she spent eight years living in Colorado, including the time frame when Charlene worked in Arvada dispatch, and Christine Grant’s body was discovered.”
D.D. sat across from her squadmates, totally poleaxed. “She did it. I’ll be damned, but O—or Abigail, or whatever the hell her name is—killed her own mother. Told me all about it, too. That she’d held a pillow over her face and suffocated her, just as her mother had suffocated her own babies.”
“Why?” Neil asked.
“When we find her, we’ll have to ask.” D.D. chewed her lower lip. “We need Charlene. We need more info on twenty years ago, and the final incident, which left Charlene nearly dead, and her mother and younger sister on the run. Only thing that makes sense. Something happened, maybe her mother snapped, actually tried to kill Charlene instead of just maim her. Then panicked, grabbed the younger kid, and hit the road.”
Neil spoke up. “I don’t get it. How did Charlene forget an entire sister? How did the police, investigating that ‘final incident,’ never figure out there was another kid?”