The 7th Month (7 page)

D.D. eased closer to Alex, trying to give Joe more room to maneuver.

Natalie stood in the bedroom doorway of the trailer. Apparently she’d been here even before they’d arrived, giving her plenty of time to listen to their shakedown of Donnie B. Now, her pale face was grim, her blue eyes resolute.

While they’d been talking, she’d obviously done some thinking, and D.D. had a feeling they wouldn’t like the conclusion she’d reached.

“You,” she pointed her gun at D.D. “Gun, now.”

D.D. made a big show of opening up the left side of her long winter’s coat. Reaching slowly, very slowly for her shoulder-holstered weapon. Not resisting, but not rushing things, either.

“I’m confused,” Joe spoke up again, clearly trying to distract Natalie. He turned toward Alex. “You said Donnie was the killer. Right height given the blood spatter, the smear caused by the signet ring. So how come she’s the one holding the gun?”

“I might have lied about the blood spatter evidence,” Alex replied. “It’s possible, I haven’t even visited the scene. You actors play cops, why can’t we cops be actors? Of course, there is real evidence. What’s it going to tell us, Natalie?”

“Shut up. Just . . . shut up.”

“You killed Chaibongsai,” D.D. stated, forcing the blonde’s attention to ping-pong between the three of them. When cornered, distract, buy time, pray for the life of your unborn child. Abruptly, the muscles around her stomach spasmed harder, as if feeling her tension. Her eyes widened at the unexpected pain, then she forced herself to breathe deeply. Relax. Be cool, calm, in control.

“
Gun,
” Natalie yelled.

Reluctantly, D.D. handed it over. The blonde took it, then turned to Alex. “You, too.”

“Lab geek,” he tried, still playing to his cover. “No gun.”

Natalie narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Take off your coat,” she ordered.

“But I’m cold.”

Natalie pulled the trigger. A bullet flew within an inch of Alex’s shoulder and added new ventilation to the trailer. Behind D.D., Donnie Bilger made a low, moaning sound which would probably precede a fainting spell. D.D. didn’t spare him a glance. She kept her hands on her clenching stomach, and her eyes on the homicidal blonde.

Alex calmly opened his jacket to reveal a gunless torso.

“Not an active-duty officer,” he said, which, as an academy professor, was the truth. “I don’t carry a weapon.”

Natalie grunted, finally seeming to relax a fraction. She kept the gun pointed at D.D., as she chewed her lower lip and seemed to contemplate next steps.

“Samuel promised to help me,” she said bitterly. “Teach me some cop tricks. I could take over the female lead. Why not? I’m good enough! Samuel said he would help, put in a good word, assist with
private
lessons. Men,” Natalie spat angrily. “Always only want one thing, especially from blondes.”

“I hear you,” D.D. muttered, gesturing to her swollen, achy belly.

“Shut up. You’re a cop. Men respect you.”

“Oh, honey—”

“Shut up!”

D.D. gave up trying to play the sister card, thinning her lips as her belly contracted again. Long. Hard. She panted lightly. Alex glanced back, gaze clearly questioning. She did her best to summon a reassuring smile.

Then it occurred to her: Her lower back pain all day, lack of appetite, on-again, off-again stomachache. Just over seven months. Twenty-nine weeks. Oh no, oh no, oh no.

“I arrived this afternoon at Samuel’s place for more
rehearsal
,” Natalie was exclaiming. As her agitation grew, a faint accent colored her words. Eastern European, D.D. thought. Perhaps Russian. “Except this time, Samuel was all, I know who you are, I know who your boyfriend is, how you got your job. He was all . . . big cop. Big man around town. He’d do me a
favor
. All I had to do was sleep with him, and he’d keep my ‘casting couch’ a secret.

“
Pulll-eeze
,” the woman stated, holding herself further erect in her black widow’s costume. “I am Andréas Chernkoff’s girlfriend. Like I need some retired beat cop for protection. Andréas, he likes me for a reason. I’m not afraid of blood. And I can handle my own dirty work. Plus,” the actress added, “I do a Google search: How to kill a man. Find a most excellent website. Everything you need to know. So of course, I go out, buy a baseball bat, show Samuel I am already diva material.”

“How’d you get the drop on a cop?” D.D. couldn’t help but ask. The bands of her stomach muscles were tightening again. A slow, definitive ache. In the way true partners could, Alex was on to her discomfort. Slowly but surely, he was nudging her farther and farther behind him. Parenthood, D.D. was discovering, happened way before birth. She was keenly aware that both she and Alex were in jeopardy. And already, stubbornly, resiliently, she was plotting ways for her child to live. They were expendable. The baby,
no
.

“Vodka,” Natalie said. “He nodded off. I picked up the bat, went to work. It’s not so hard, almost like breaking a watermelon. Oh, I have an alibi,” the aspiring actress finished brightly. “I was at home, watching
M*A*S*H
. That silly Hawkeye.”

D.D. peered out at the woman from behind Alex’s shoulder. Natalie seemed genuinely pleased with herself. She had killed a cop, and she was proud of it. D.D. made a mental note never to work as a film consultant ever again. Then she held on to her stomach, as the bands tightened impossibly hard, and a shooting pain raced up her spine.

Oh, yeah. Definitely in trouble. Right now.

In front of her, Alex tensed, as if preparing for action. She wanted to grab his coat. She wanted to yell
No, I can’t do this without you
. But the iron bands of her stomach had squeezed the breath from her lungs and she couldn’t talk, couldn’t speak. She panted, like a cow calving, she thought in the back of her mind.

As Alex took a step forward.

As Joe said, “Hey, Natalie, I got an idea—”

And Donnie Bilger yelled, “Noooo!”

The film producer careened off the sofa. He shoved D.D. to the ground, where she dropped like a sack of bricks, still holding her stomach, still panting. Then he was charging Natalie, body ducked low, aiming for the legs, as Joe and Alex, recognizing the opportunity, went high.

The gun:
Boom, boom, boom.

Then Natalie was screaming and falling backwards and Joe was cursing and Alex was saying nothing at all.

Please speak. Please curse, please scream, please exclaim
, D.D. willed with all of her heart. But nothing from Alex as Natalie went down, and the gun got kicked across the floor of the trailer, and D.D. on her hands and knees, resiliently tracked it down between labor pains.

She got the gun. Clutched it between her hands. Turned to kill the woman who’d harmed her Alex, except Alex was there, standing up, holding a kicking and squirming Natalie between him and Joe, while Donnie Bilger sat up before her, eyes opened, but dazed, as he held a hand to the blood on his forehead.

“She shot me,” he said.

“I’d help,” D.D. ground out, “but I think . . . maybe . . . I could use an ambulance.”

Alex, still standing, but going pale. “D.D?”

“Hey, Joe,” D.D. gasped, “think you can handle booking?”

“Been known to have some competence,” he answered.

“Oh, good. Hey, Alex, think you can handle becoming a father?”

“It’s too early!” he blurted out.

“Yeah. Not disagreeing. Oh, would you look at that. Breaking water . . . is just like breaking water.”

Donnie Bilger chose that moment to pass out cold.

D.D., however, remained absolutely, positively awake. As Boston police, then FBI agents flooded the scene. Natalie was stuffed into the back of a patrol car right about the same time D.D. was stuffed into the back of an ambulance.

Alex went with her, holding her hand and reminding both of them to breathe.

Six hours later, they named the baby Jack.

The Boston FBI field office sent flowers to the hospital. So did Donnie Bilger.

So did Chernkoff. One of his last moves before he was arrested for money laundering, with Donnie Bilger becoming the key witness for the prosecution.

Alex read her the story in the newspaper the next day, as D.D. lay in the hospital bed, nursing Jack. Born six weeks early, their boy was impossibly small, more kitten than baby, she thought. He’d been whisked away to the NICU first thing, some issue with stabilizing his blood sugar levels. But this morning he was back, and she was holding him; the doctors said all was well, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt as happy.

“What about Natalie?” she demanded now, still gazing down at her fuzz-topped child.

“Arraigned for murder, currently being held without bail.”

“Great, a drama queen in jail. Hope they pay the COs double.”

“Maybe they’ll organize a play on life skills. Could be a valuable educational opportunity for all.”

“We should investigate the murder blog,” D.D. said. “Natalie said she found some script online that helped her plot out Chaibongsai’s killing. Call me crazy, but we should investigate that.”

“Internet postings fall under freedom of speech.”

“I’m not saying we arrest the blogger for the postings. I’m saying we search the blogger’s basement for dead bodies, then nail him for those crimes.”

Alex folded up the paper, tucked it under his arm. “You know you’re nursing our child.”

“Yeah.” She glanced down. Ten impossibly tiny fingers, ten impossibly tiny toes. She counted them at least every hour.

“And you’re discussing dead bodies in crawl spaces.”

She looked at Alex. The next word came out flat: “Yeah.”

He said, “I love you.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“But I’m in a maternity ward, holding our newborn, talking violent crime.”

“I didn’t realize I was having any trouble following the conversation.”

“Alex, I’m a cop. I can’t quit, I can’t give it up. I love you, and I really, really,
really
love him. But I’m a cop.”

“I know, D.D. And I’m partial to blood spatter.” Alex moved closer, taking a seat on the edge of the hospital bed, where he could touch her cheek, then brush the top of Jack’s downy head. “I love you, Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren. It would make me happy if both you and Jack moved into my house. And I’m only saying my house, because your condo is too small. Or we could buy, or rent, or build a place on the moon if you prefer. But I love you. And I really, really,
really
love him, and I want us to be together. A criminalist, a detective, and a baby boy who’s going to grow up in a very interesting family.”

“I don’t like being scared,” D.D. mumbled.

Alex smiled down at her and their now sleeping child. “Honey, we’re parents. Better get used to it.”

D.D. and Jack went home to Alex’s house. Her squadmates Phil and Neil helped pack up the few things she had in her condo, while a couple of neighbors helped paint the nursery. In a matter of days, it was done.

Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren, on maternity leave, sharing closet space.

Life is good, she decided, holding her baby close.

And for six whole weeks, it was.

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Catch Me

On sale February 7, 2012

Chapter 1

My name is Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant.

I live in Boston, work in Boston, and in four days, will probably die here.

I’m twenty-eight years old.

And I don’t feel like dying just yet.

It started two years ago, with the murder of my best friend, Randi Menke, in Providence. She was strangled in her living room. No sign of a struggle, no sign of forced entry. For a while the Rhode Island cops thought maybe her ex had done it. I guess there’d been a history of domestic assaults. Nothing she’d ever told me, or our other best friend, Jackie, about. Jackie and I tried to console ourselves with that, as we wept together at Randi’s funeral. We hadn’t known. We just hadn’t known or of course we would’ve done . . . something. Anything.

That’s what we told ourselves.

Fast forward one year. January 21. The anniversary. I’m at home with Aunt Nancy in the mountains of northern New Hampshire, Jackie’s returned to her corporate life as a VP for Coca-Cola in Atlanta. Jackie doesn’t want to mark the occasion of Randi’s murder. Too morbid, she tells me. Later, in the summer, we’ll get together and celebrate Randi’s birthday. Maybe we’ll hike to the top of Mount Washington, bring a bottle of single malt. We’ll have a good drink, have a good cry, then sleep it off at the Lake of the Clouds AMC hut.

I still call Jackie on the twenty-first. Can’t help myself. Except she doesn’t answer. Not her landline, not her work line, not her mobile. Nothing.

In the morning, when she doesn’t show up for work, the police finally give in to my pleas and drive by her house.

No sign of a struggle, I will read later in the police report. No sign of forced entry. Just a lone female, strangled to death in the middle of her home on January 21.

Two best friends, murdered, exactly one year and roughly one thousand miles apart.

The locals investigated. Even the FBI gave it a whirl. They couldn’t find anything definitive to link the two homicides, mostly because they couldn’t find anything that was definitive.

Bad luck, one of the guys actually told me. Sheer bad luck.

Today is January 17 of the third year.

How much bad luck do you think I’m going to have on the twenty-first? And if you were me, what would you do?

I met Randi and Jackie when I was eight years old. After that final incident with my mother, I was sent to live with my aunt Nancy in the wilds of New Hampshire. She came to fetch me from a hospital in upstate New York, two relatives, two strangers, meeting for the first time. Aunt Nancy took one look at me and started to cry.