I remembered that. The warm, hard feel of a man’s skin beneath my hand. The coarse rasp of beard, the hungry taste of a man who wanted me as much as I wanted him. It made me feel a little reckless, a little wild.
Maybe what most of us feared wasn’t dying, but dying alone. Without ever really touching. Without ever really connecting. Having inhabited this earth, but without leaving any impression on it.
The thought hollowed me out. Took all my fatigue and restlessness and spiraled it dark and low, until I did want to sleep with a virtual stranger. I just wanted, for one moment, to feel like I mattered.
Officer Mackereth hit Harvard Square. He slowed, allowing for the morning congestion of lights, cars, and college students. He followed the road as it looped around brick buildings, slid under the overpass, took a left at one of the many green spaces, and formed a direct line to my house.
In the back, Tulip whined, sensing we were close. Four blocks. Three, two, one. Officer Mackereth tapped the brakes, turned right, traveled half a block down, then halted right in front of my landlady’s gray triple-decker.
I already had my fingers on the door handle-good news, front seat passengers were allowed to come and go as they pleased from police cruisers. “Thanks for the ride,” I said.
“Dinner?” he asked evenly. “Tonight. Before our shifts. I could pick you up. Cook you dinner at my place if you’d like to bring Tulip. Or take you out if you prefer.”
“Thank you for the ride,” I said again.
He sighed. “You’re a tough nut to crack, Charlie.”
I didn’t disagree, just climbed out and released Tulip from the back. She bounded out gratefully, racing a little circle on the snow-covered sidewalk.
Officer Mackereth didn’t say anything more. Just studied me through the window as I closed the passenger door in his face. A heartbeat later, he put his cruiser in drive and pulled away.
Tulip and I stood side by side, watching him depart.
I waited until the patrol car was out of sight. Then I finally exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and turned toward my landlady’s house. At the last second, a movement caught the corner of my eyes. I glanced up sharply, just in time to catch the silhouette of a person standing in the second-story window of the house next to mine.
The second I spotted the figure, he or she stepped back. Blinds came down. The window blanked out, leaving Tulip and me once again alone on the street, with the hairs prickling the back of my neck.
Chapter 8
“I WANT IN.”
“What?” D.D. looked up bleary-eyed from the stack of interview statements she’d been skimming. She already felt bewildered, but that didn’t surprise her. Jack, so cute and peaceful over dinner, had been up all night crying again. She’d taken the first shift, rocking him. Alex had taken the second. Come morning, they were both wrecked.
A fellow detective leaned over her desk. Ellen O. She had a real last name, but it was too long and involved too many consonants. When the newly minted detective had first joined the force two years ago, someone had shortened her name to O, and, half the time, no one bothered with even the Ellen part, but simply referred to her as Detective O.
O was fifteen years younger than D.D. and fifteen pounds heavier, but in all the right places. She had dark exotic eyes and glossy brown hair nearly the same shade as cinnamon. In the beginning, male detectives had been very interested in mentoring the young sex crimes detective. When she was less than receptive to their attentions, rumors had started that she was a lesbian.
D.D. doubted that. From what she could tell, Detective O lived and breathed her job. She was actually more intense than even D.D., which was not, in anyone’s mind, a good thing. While D.D. would admit this to no one-no one!-the rookie detective scared her a little.
“Your dead perv,” O prodded now. “Possibly one of two. I want in.”
D.D. started with the obvious: “You’re a sex crimes detective. This is a homicide investigation.”
“Where the victims are suspected pedophiles, which just so happens to be my area of expertise. Trust me, you need me.”
D.D. gave O a look. They’d both been around long enough to know that as arguments went, trust me was never the right approach.
O slapped a sheath of papers on D.D.’s desk. “Forensic analysis of the first perv’s computer. I’ll give you three minutes to review it, then you tell me the relevant findings, because I already know.”
“Three minutes?” D.D. scowled. She hadn’t gotten to reviewing details of the “first” shooting yet. She was still working on the homicide that had happened on her watch, not the one that hadn’t.
“Three minutes was all it took me,” O declared boldly. She crossed her arms over her chest. The sex crimes detective was wearing a white button-down shirt over a blue tank. Nothing wrong with the ensemble, perfectly professional. It was all D.D. could do not to reach over and fasten the top button.
Apparently sleep-deprivation made her petty. And bitchy. And way too tired for this.
D.D. sighed and gave up. She pushed the report back to O. “Fine, you’re the expert, and yeah, especially if these two shootings are related, we could use some help. What do you got for me?”
O appeared genuinely startled. Maybe D.D. was, too. She’d never caved easily, or gracefully, before. Hah, she wanted to say. You’re younger and prettier, but I’m older and wiser. That would probably ruin the moment, however, so she didn’t.
“All right,” O said. She uncrossed her arms, took up position on the edge of D.D.’s desk, and got serious. “Douglas Antiholde, level three sex offender, shot four weeks ago in the doorway of his apartment. Double tap to the left forehead.”
“Yeah, know that much.” D.D. made a motion with her hand for Detective O to speed it along.
“’Kay. So most pedophiles specialize, particularly when it comes to MO. Some use coercion, some use force, some use opportunity. Either way, all of them start by ‘grooming’ their targets. And they have preferred methodology for that as well, the latest and greatest being the Internet.”
“Douglas Antiholde was an Internet predator,” D.D. filled in dryly. Another hand gesture to move it along. Not her first rodeo.
“You know the target age group for online predators?” O asked.
“Fourteen-year-old girls,” D.D. guessed.
“Nope. Five- to nine-year-old boys.”
“Really?” D.D. sat up a little straighter. Okay, she had not known that.
“Antiholde’s Internet log is textbook,” O was saying. “He was a registered user of every major kiddie website out there, plus Facebook, plus Spokeo, plus Chatroulette. You gotta understand, these guys are like day traders-this is what they do, twenty-four seven. They surf the Internet, identifying targets, initiating relationships, and then grooming, grooming, grooming. Just like stockbrokers, they understand that not every target is going to pay off. So they build a ‘portfolio’ of ten, fifteen, twenty victims they’re actively following and researching. They don’t expect all to bear fruit. They just need one to work out, and it’s worth it to them.”
D.D. had a feeling her mouth was hanging open. She’d never pictured sex predators as working professionals before. That level of discipline. That level of focus. “Ummm, aren’t there safety protocols or security software that help block sex predators’ access to kids?”
“Yes and no. See, most five-year-olds join websites that feature their favorite toys, where they can become a member. Now, these sites certainly advertise to parents their security protocols. Stuff like they have trained professionals hanging out on the websites patrolling for bullying, that sort of thing. And they impose limits on communication, mostly on instant messaging where it appears Virtual Animal A is talking to Virtual Animal B using dialogue bubbles. Virtual Animal A can ‘chat’ with Virtual Animal B, but only by selecting from stock phrases. This gives parents a sense of security. Cute fuzzy Animal A can’t type in a dialogue box, Hey want to meet after school, because that’s not a stock phrase.