The 7th Month

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.

“I didn’t know,” she told me that first day. “Trust me, child, I didn’t know or I would’ve taken you years ago.”

I didn’t cry. Saw no purpose for the tears and didn’t know if I believed her anyway. If I was supposed to live with this woman, then I’d live with this woman. Not like I had anyplace else to go.

Aunt Nancy ran a B&B in a quaint resort town in the Mount Washington Valley, where rich Bostonians and privileged New Yorkers came to ski during the winter, hike in the summer, and “leaf-peep” in the fall. She had one part-time helper, but mostly my aunt relied on herself to greet guests, clean rooms, set up tea, cook breakfast, provide directions, and all the other million little odd jobs that go into the hospitality trade. When I came along, I