The 7th Month

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 Andreas Chernkoff’s girlfriend. Like I need some retired beat cop for protection. Andreas, 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