Remain on the sidelines? Or get in the game?
And if, say, you’d spent the past year learning how to run, fight, shoot, how to stop being and start doing, would that change the answer? And if, say, you had insider’s knowledge of the kind of crimes the system can’t handle, where the perpetrator wins and the victim loses, would that change the answer?
I’d spent months contemplating this question. Then I’d arrived at a decision.
It helped me now, as I reached out and tapped my keyboard. As I deliberately and consciously broke the law, disconnecting my caller from the recorded dispatch system and picking her up on my prepaid Wal-Mart phone instead.
“Hey,” I said again. “It’s okay. It’s me, Charlie. I’m going to help. One more day, sweetheart, and you will never be hurt again.”
Chapter 6
“BAD NEWS,” D.D. informed Alex over dinner. “In the war over sanity in the city, the lunatics are winning.”
She’d done the honors of picking up Jack from day care at five forty-five. By six thirty Alex had made it home, where, being an enthusiastic cook, he’d put the finishing touches on a Crock-Pot version of chicken cacciatore he’d started that morning.
Now they were seated across from each other at the kitchen table. Alex had a glass of red wine; she had a glass of water. Alex had two hands for eating and drinking. She had one hand cradling Jack against her shoulder, the other wielding a fork.
Jack was currently asleep, half of his chubby face smashed into the curve of her neck, where he was making the most ridiculously adorable snoring sounds. This was probably as close to domestic bliss as she was ever gonna get, D.D. figured. Her baby snuggled against her chest, while she and Alex enjoyed a leisurely Italian dinner and talked shop.
“First I was wrapping up a shooting that may or may not be part of a broader vigilante crime spree,” she was telling Alex now. “Then I end up chasing down a suspicious woman, who claims she wants me to investigate her own murder, four days from today.”
Alex paused with a forkful of chicken in a midair. “She’s planning ahead? I don’t remember ever seeing a spot for appointing your own homicide detective on the estate planning forms.”
“Oh, they’re there. The beautiful young trophy wives just white ’em out before having their husbands sign on the bottom line.”
He thought about it. “Makes sense.” He resumed eating, then paused again. “Seriously, this woman is planning on being murdered?”
“Her two best friends were each murdered on January twenty-first. First one died two years ago, second one last year, meaning this year…”
Alex stared at her, clearly perplexed.
D.D. sighed. She set down her own fork and stroked Jack’s plump cheek. “This is the crazy part—I looked it up on the computer when Jack and I came home and she’s right. Randi Menke was murdered in Providence two years ago on the twenty-first, Jacqueline Knowles in Atlanta same date last year. How creepy is that?”
“Creepy,” Alex agreed, and set down his fork. Alex taught crime scene analysis at the police academy and had a tendency to take a cerebral approach to homicide. D.D. appreciated that. Figured it was a good balance for her own shoot-first-question-later style.
“No jurisdiction,” he said now, opening salvo of an ongoing analysis.
“Yep. I asked about threatening letters, phone calls, contact. Nada. Sounds like her life is very quiet, if you exclude the annual funerals. Two murders in two different states complicates matters, as well. She said the FBI gave the homicides a cursory glance, but couldn’t find any obvious connections between the two. Ironically enough, third time has a tendency to be the charm, meaning this year, after the twenty-first…”