by Sarah Biglow
“I know you’re right but it just makes me so angry. The way they just threw around all of these accusations like they’re fact.”
“But from what you said, it sounds like it isn’t just speculation.”
Kalina rubbed at the pressure building in her temples. She didn’t want to argue with her sister over this. “Just forget it, OK?”
Jillian held up her hands in surrender. “Fine. I think all of this detective work is stressing you out. It’s not good for you.”
“These were kids we knew, Jill. Don’t we owe it to them to find out what happened?”
“Yes. I guess they deserve to have their story told, even if it isn’t a happy ending.”
Jillian disappeared back to the front of the store just as Kalina’s phone buzzed, displaying Chris’s work number. She answered on the second ring. “Hi. Before you ask, yes, I’ve got my feet up.” Breath caught in her throat as a sharp pain lanced across her belly. She grimaced and bit down on her lip to keep from groaning audibly through the pain.
“Good. I figured you’d like to know we got a hit on Verona’s computer. We found a bunch of messages on OK Cupid between her and Logan. It doesn’t seem like she knew who he was based on the messages but they were definitely in contact.”
The pain subsided and she blew out a breath. “Have you had any luck tracking him down?”
“We’re working on it. The last communication between them was from a day before the murder. They agreed to meet in town.’
“Did they say why here? Neither of them was living in town anymore.”
“It sounded like Logan wanted to check out the beach. Or so he says.” Muffled voices crackled over the phone connection. “I think we may have found something on his location.”
“Keep me posted.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Half an hour later, restless energy and a sense of anticipation compelled Kalina out of the shop and on a walk along Main Street. The pain had come and gone a time or two but she was doing her best to ignore it. She assumed Chris had found Logan by now. She was curious to know how it had happened. Had he known he’d found his sister when he and Verona first connected? And if he hadn’t, when did it click for him? She strolled along the street with the fading sunlight falling in little patterns on the sidewalk for a while longer until she found herself standing at the front lawn of the Fischer estate. For a place that had been vacant for over a year, it looked oddly lived in. The front mat was askew and the curtains in the front room had been opened to allow the natural light in. She didn’t get the feeling that Bethany Fairfax had been by to keep up appearances. Keeping Patrick a secret sent the very clear message that she didn’t approve of her sister and her brother-in-law and their parenting style. Before she could even set foot on the front walk, wailing sirens erupted nearby and a squad car came screaming up the street. Jimmy jumped out of the passenger side before the car had come to a full stop. Chris followed suit moments later and Kalina stepped out of their way. From somewhere at the back of the house, a door slammed loud enough to echo throughout the yard.
“He’s going around back,” Chris called and Jimmy took off like a shot.
Chris moved methodically toward the front of the house and tried the front door. It swung inward on oiled hinges, barely betraying his entrance. His shout of “Police Department!” ruined any chance of stealth he had.
Kalina watched her husband disappear into the house and her heart beat faster in her chest. Until he came out, gun holstered, she couldn’t breathe. Jimmy appeared moments later dragging along a man in his late 20s who looked like Logan Fairfax with his hands cuffed behind his back.
“I didn’t do anything!” Logan shouted.
Jimmy said nothing as he pushed him into the backseat of the cruiser. Chris stopped on his way to the car to place a hand on Kalina’s arm. “What are you doing here?’
“I don’t know. I was just out for a walk and ended up—” Breath caught in her chest as pain shot through her belly. She bent double until it passed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I’m fine. It’s just a little pain.”
“You don’t look fine. Has this happened before?”
Kalina met Chris’s gaze and knew she couldn’t lie to him about this. “A few times. Maybe four times in the last hour. But, really, it passes and I’m OK.”
“Honey, it sounds like you’ve started to have contractions. We need to get you to the hospital.”
“No. It’s too early. And my water hasn’t broken.”
Chris turned and waved at Jimmy. “Call for another car and get him back to the station.”
“OK but why, sir?”
“We’re going to the hospital.”
Jimmy’s face broke out in a broad grin and he pulled Logan from the backseat of the cruiser with one hand, the other already reaching for his radio. Kalina didn’t protest as Chris ushered her into the passenger seat and they took off at what most would consider an unsafe speed. With the flip of a switch, the sirens blared to life, announcing their presence.
“The siren isn’t necessary, Chris,” Kalina said but Chris’s attention was focused on the trip across town to the hospital.
He pulled the car to a screeching halt in front of the Emergency entrance. The siren still wailed and a nurse came running with a wheelchair. Taking a slow breath, Kalina unbuckled the seatbelt and calmly exited the car.
“I can walk, thank you,” she said and stalked past the nurse.
Ten minutes later, they were escorted to a private room and Kalina settled on the bed to wait for the doctor to check in. Chris paced anxiously by the window.
“Sit down,” she said and patted the bed next to her.
“Sorry. I’m just nervous,” he said and settled next to her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. “I don’t think either of us expected this to happen quite so soon.”
“I think Jill was right and this case is stressing me out,” Kalina said and rubbed her belly.
Chris nodded but stayed silent. The way his gaze still drifted to the window told her he wasn’t just anxious about the baby. He didn’t like not being involved in the rest of the investigation.
“You’re worried about how the interrogation is going, aren’t you?”
“Jimmy’s grown up a lot in the last year. He’s capable of handling it.”
“I know that. And I’m glad you see that too. Sometimes he doesn’t think you’ve paid attention to his progress. But even though you know he’s capable you don’t like to let cases go.”
“I guess we’ve both got a little control freak in us.”
Kalina snorted. “A little?”
He laughed and the little lines around his eyes crinkled. “OK, so a lot. But I have to realize that investigating the cases isn’t really my job anymore. I’m not a detective. I need to let them do the work.”
“Letting go of what you love is hard.” A lesson she was learning the hard way. Helping to solve these cases wasn’t a calling in the same way that Chris was called to police work, but it satisfied a passion in her. But as she’d told Mrs. Grant, she had no choice but to give it up … at least for now.
A quick knock on the door brought the conversation to a halt. Kalina’s obstetrician appeared in the doorway, an ultrasound machine just in view. “How are we feeling?”
“OK right now.”
“Any more pain since you came in?”
“No.”
“Well, we’re going to check you out anyway and figure out what’s going on. I’m going to have you get undressed and we’ll take a look.”
Kalina stripped down, wrapping the hospital robe around her body before settling back on the bed. Chris stood by her side, his hand wrapped around hers. He squeezed it tight as the doctor strapped on a fetal heart monitor and began a physical exam.
“Well, you look to be a couple centimeters dilated but we’re nowhere near delivering this baby.”
“Is the baby all right?” Kalina asked.
The doctor
pointed to the steady heartbeat on the monitor. “Everything looks good with the heartbeat. There’s no sign of fetal distress.”
Kalina breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t even react to the cool gel that the ultrasound technician squirted on her bare abdomen. “Everything looks fine. I’m going to keep you here another couple of hours just to be sure but my guess is you had Braxton Hicks contractions.”
“So it was a false alarm,” Chris said.
The doctor nodded. “Most likely. But like I said, we’ll keep her here for a few hours just to be sure.”
“Thank you,” Kalina said.
Chris sagged against the bed as soon as they were alone. “Thank God.”
“Honey, they’re going to let me leave in a couple hours. I can have my mom come by and give me a ride home. Go back to the station.”
“No, I should be here with you.”
Somewhere down the hall an alarm blared. Simultaneously, Chris’s phone began to ring. He checked the display and stepped closer to the window for better reception. “Hello, this is Captain Harper.”
Kalina strained to hear what was being said on the other end of the call but he had the volume turned down low and he was facing away from her, distorting her view of his facial expressions in the window. “No I’ll meet you there. Text me when you’ve got a room number.”
“What’s going on?” she asked over the continued blare of the alarm.
“That was the officer on desk duty at the station. Jimmy had to call the paramedic to come sedate Logan.”
“What? Why?”
“Apparently, when Jimmy started questioning him about Patrick Fischer, he lost it and attacked Jimmy.”
“Oh God, is Jimmy OK?”
“I’m not sure. The officer said he had some lacerations. I told them to text me when they have more information.”
“Did they bring Logan here?”
“Yeah, he’s being admitted into the psych ward. Maybe with a doctor’s help we can sort out what really happened and what prompted him to kill his sister after all these years.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Fifteen minutes later, Chris had headed off in search of Jimmy. Kalina remained in hospital. The pain had returned and was coming in closer bouts. Her doctor had been nonplussed about the sudden change. At least she was allowed to walk around. In fact, her doctor had insisted that moving around would help things progress. So after sending a text to Chris, she wandered the halls until she found Jimmy sitting in a curtained off area in the very back of the Emergency Department with a couple of gauze bandages on his arm.
“How are you doing?” he asked when he spotted Kalina.
“OK. Apparently it wasn’t as much of a false alarm as we thought. The doctor said walking is supposed to help labor progress.” She pointed to his arm. “How about you? What happened?”
“It looks worse than it is. He got a hold of my keys. I shouldn’t have kept a pocket knife on there.” Jimmy looked at Chris but didn’t meet his gaze. “He jabbed me a couple times as I was trying to calm him down. Started yelling about how I wasn’t going to hurt Patrick. I think he’s nuts.”
“We’ll let the professionals decide that,” Chris said and clapped Jimmy on the shoulder. “You should take the rest of the day off. We’ll talk about this when the case is wrapped up.”
Kalina saw the hint of fear on Jimmy’s face when Chris turned away and flagged down a nurse.
“Everything will be fine,” she whispered and gave the hand of his injured arm a light squeeze that quickly turned into a vice grip as a contraction came on.
“Uh, boss, something’s happening.”
In a flash, Chris was at her side, rubbing her back as she breathed through the pain. It passed and she relinquished her grip on Jimmy’s hand. He massaged the angry, red marks she’d left on his palm.
“Sorry about that,” she said.
“Let’s get you back to the maternity ward,” Chris said and nudged her forward.
“Is it really not as bad as it looks?” she asked as they walked side by side through the pristine hospital halls.
“Yeah, it’s minor.”
“Has there been anything new on Logan? Has anyone talked to him?”
“The last I heard they were evaluating him. But you don’t need to worry about that right now. I promise, Paige will get justice. Right now you need to focus on bringing our baby girl into this world, OK?”
“OK.”
“Don’t be too hard on Jimmy when you talk to him. He’s a good officer and he just made a mistake.”
“I’m not mad at him. He already knows what he should have done differently and I don’t have any doubt that he will learn from the mistake. Just between you and me, I was planning on giving him his detective’s shield in a few months.”
“That’s fast.”
“He does good work. And I think the promotion will help propel his career forward. Sometimes you need someone to take a chance on you to show you just what you’re capable of. And he kind of reminds me of myself when I was an officer. He’s got that same drive.”
“I’m glad.” They arrived back at her room to find Jillian and AJ sitting by the window. “You guys didn’t have to come.”
“Mom insisted you not be alone. And I figured you could use your big sister here,” Jillian answered and rushed over to give Kalina a tight embrace.
Her sister’s mood had obviously improved since their squabble over the newspaper article. AJ stayed put and quiet, gazed focused on his phone, as Jillian let go and gave Chris a hug too.
“You doing all right, kiddo?” Kalina asked.
“Huh? I was just reading this article about the woman who was killed,” he said and offered his phone.
A pang of dread tightened Kalina’s chest as she looked at the screen but it disappeared immediately. It was the same article that had gotten her worked up before. Unfortunately, there were no edits or retractions noted. Whoever was handling the PR for the police hadn’t succeeded in getting the article removed. Her nephew kept glancing between the medical equipment and her stomach.
“Why don’t you go see if there’s a cafeteria or something and get your mom and Chris some coffee or something?” Kalina suggested.
Relief washed over his face and he darted out of the room. Jillian sat on the edge of the bed and motioned for Kalina to get under the covers.
“How far apart are your contractions?”
“About ten minutes. They’re more irritating than anything.”
“If you’re anything like me, they’ll speed up before you know it. I thought it was never going to end with AJ.”
“Let’s hope you’re right.”
Chris’s phone beeped with a new text message. “The attendant in the psych ward needs to talk to me about the case.”
“Go. I’ll be here when you get back.”
“Call me if anything … big happens,” he said.
She nodded and he took off at a sprint. Jillian busied herself with plumping Kalina’s pillows and making sure the bed was at a comfortable angle.
“I was a little worried about you earlier. You just took off,” Jillian said.
“I’m sorry. I needed the air.”
“Where did you go?”
“It’s going to sound crazy but I ended up at the Fischer house. Logan … Patrick … whatever he’s going by was staying there. I didn’t mean to go there but I guess my subconscious had other ideas.”
“They found him though?”
“They did. He got violent when Jimmy tried to question him.”
“I wonder what happened to him that made him snap like that.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’d blocked out all the trauma and then seeing her again after all these years triggered those memories. I’m sure Chris will figure out what happened when he talks to the doctor.”
“I still can’t believe they both survived that boat accident. I’d really like to know how that happened.”
“If the doctors can get
him to talk I’m sure we’ll find out.” Kalina grit her teeth as another contraction hit her.
“Do you want me to call a nurse to see about getting an epidural?”
“Not yet. They said they’d do it the next time they checked me.”
On cue, a nurse stuck her head through the door. “How’re we doing in here?”
“I think I’d like that epidural now,” Kalina answered.
“Let me grab the doctor and we’ll take a peek.”
By the time the doctor had checked her and the anesthesiologist had administered the drugs, her contractions were only four minutes apart. Chris was nowhere to be seen despite several texts from Kalina and Jillian. AJ hung back just outside the doorway, watching.
“You can come in, honey,” Jillian said.
“No, that’s OK. I’d just be in the way.”
Kalina was aware of another contraction passing through her as she studied her nephew’s face. “Kiddo, I need you to do me a huge favor and go find your uncle for me. The baby is going to be here soon and if he’s not with me to witness it, we’re going to have another homicide on our hands.”
AJ’s face brightened. “You got it!”
“Thanks,” Jillian whispered as her son took off.
“Like I said before, teenage boys and birth don’t usually mix.”
Ten minutes later, AJ marched into the room with a triumphant grin on his face. “Got him!”
“Sorry! I’m here.” Chris rushed to her side and grabbed her left hand.
“We texted you. What’s going on?”
“I thought we were making progress with Logan but he’s shut down again. I didn’t hear my phone go off. It was on silent.”
Kalina gave him an annoyed sidelong glare as another contraction—this much closer together—faintly rippled through her belly. He’d been the one to tell them to call if anything big had changed. She bit her lower lip to keep from snapping at him. It wouldn’t do anything but frustrate him.
Her doctor reappeared with a new nurse, both in scrubs and face masks. “I’m just going to check to see how far you’ve progressed. It might be time to start pushing.”
“OK.”