When Kate walked into the room for the morning brief, she sensed something was amiss. Again.
But she didn’t know what. She’d already had to deal with the dead cat. Did the guys crank it up a notch? Had they planned some other prank? And in front of the sergeant this time?
Why was everyone looking at her funny? Wasn’t yesterday enough for them? Or were they just reliving it somehow?
She spotted Bower leaning toward Zhou, whispering something into his ear.
“Guys, have a seat. Let’s get this over so you can start your day.
“First off, I obviously need to clarify things for some of you.” He looked straight at Kate.
What did I do?
“I can’t believe I’m about to say this. A couple of days ago, when I said to keep your eyes open for the whacko who’s been killing animals, I was just mentioning it to cover my ass. And based on how you all reacted, I was pretty sure we were on the same page. I didn’t expect any of you to take me seriously.” He picked up a small evidence bag and lifted it up. In it was a single bullet. Her evidence bag.
Oh shit. Really?
“I’m not going to approve any ballistic testing on a bullet that killed a fucking cat. Stop wasting my time with this shit.”
The eyes in the room turned toward Kate as a few officers laughed openly.
“Time to join Larson,” Bower said.
A handful of officers chimed in. “Hear, hear.”
No matter how much Kate wished the floor could open up and swallow her whole, it wasn’t happening. She had no desire to leave her patrol duties and work a desk like the only other female officer in their district.
“To be fair, I didn’t request a ballistic report. I bagged the bullet ’cause it was there in plain sight at the scene. And fuck it, guys. The dispatcher’s the one who confirmed I had to file an official report.”
The room rumbled again.
“Quiet, Murphy,” Johnston whispered to her. “Keep talking, and your ass will end up on desk duty like Larson.”
Kate knew Johnston was right, so she inhaled and bit her tongue while rage boiled in the pit of her stomach. Or was that morning sickness about to rear its head at the worst time?
Oh shit, it was.
Kate hurried out of the room and ran to the bathroom.
Great. Now the guys will think I’m a crybaby, she thought as she expelled the contents of her stomach into the porcelain.
A minute later, a Tic Tac in her mouth, she stepped back into the morning brief.
Johnston shook his head at her as she returned to her seat next to him.
“You shouldn’t have left,” he whispered.
Fuck. Don’t I know it.
But exposing her morning sickness would also land her ass on desk duty. She was out of cards.
The morning brief ended with Sergeant Bailey calling out to Kate, “Murphy, in my office. Now!”
“What’s going on here? Did you leave the brief to go and cry in the bathroom?”
Fuck. Gotta lie your way out of this, Kate.
“No, Sergeant. You know I can take it. I’m one of the guys. But I… I had to puke. I must have had a bad burrito for breakfast.”
Sergeant Bailey stared Kate down while stress-induced butterflies fluttered around in her stomach. “I believe you. Your breath smells like bile and Tic Tacs.”
Kate’s hand went up to cover her mouth. As if she hadn’t been embarrassed enough already.
“But that doesn’t explain your ridiculously detailed report about the dead cat.”
“Sergeant, with all due respect, I only did what I thought I was asked to do. I’m sorry for misunderstanding your orders. Or maybe those relayed by the dispatcher.”
The sergeant shook his head at Kate, his eyes showing nothing but resentment toward her.
“But remember Albert DeSalvo?” she added, knowing fair well she was walking on thin ice.
The sergeant walked around his desk and took a seat. “The Boston Strangler? Of course! What BPD cop doesn’t know his name?”
“Did you know that he started out with animals? I believe he shot arrows at dogs and cats, or some sort of animal torture, but the same holds true for many serial killers. What if we have a crazy person who’s just getting started? What if these crimes are about to escalate?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s probably a bunch of unsupervised kids going around playing bad pranks.” Bailey grabbed his coffee mug and took a sip.
“I thought so, too. But the Animal Control supervisor I talked to when the dispatcher sent me to handle the dead cat made me realize how big the problem was. We’re not talking about just a cat or two.”
“Forget it, Murphy. Smile, nod, and keep the public and our mayor happy, but don’t write up any more ridiculously detailed reports on animal deaths. Am I making myself clear?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Kate said after swallowing the knot in her throat.
She turned around and left his office as fast as her legs would let her.
Way to go, Kate. This certainly won’t help your odds of making detective.
In the safe, solitary bubble of her patrol car, Kate reflected on her problems. While being bullied and having her official police notepad tampered with were bothering her greatly, her flailing home life and secret pregnancy took the top spots on her mental podium.
But other than her slightly bigger breasts, she could still hide her condition. She wasn’t ready to tell anyone. First, she wanted to decide whether she would keep it. As long as she followed orders and didn’t toss her cookies while at work, nobody would force her to get a desk job.
She remembered reading the memo about it a while back. Something to do with the department not being held responsible in the event a female officer miscarried at work. They couldn’t legally fire someone for getting pregnant, but they could supposedly act in the woman’s best interest and make her push paper at a desk until the little bugger came out and she recovered from the delivery.
Who wants to do that?
Patrolling wasn’t always the most interesting job, but it at least gained her some experience toward the detective promotion she wanted. Filling out forms was not fun. It was already part of her regular duties, but in smaller doses. She didn’t want it to become a full-time job.
But what about telling Matt?
She knew Kenny was right. Matt deserved to know, but she wasn’t ready to tell him yet. She still had to figure out how the pregnancy had happened in the first place.
Earlier that morning, she googled the psychologist’s tea ingredients, but found no indication they could have weakened her birth-control pills. She also googled her particular brand of contraceptives and there hadn’t been any recall. They were 99.99% reliable. No way she was the 0.01% statistics in this. Someone had to have tampered with her pills.
As much as she hated Bower and suspected he was the one who’d orchestrated the dead cat prank and possibly ripped a page out of her notepad, she couldn’t come up with one scenario where he would have had access to her pills. While he obviously knew her locker combination and could have accessed her notepad in there, Kate had never taken her pills to work. She’d always kept them in the privacy of her apartment bathroom.
Bower had never been to her place.
So, the only option was Matt. But why?
Why—and how—would he have tampered with her pills?
She didn’t know how to answer this question. Kate still had the pill she’d found on the floor, but she didn’t have a friend at the lab. She didn’t have many friends at all if she were honest with herself. She couldn’t use the department’s resources, and she wasn’t going to cheat the system either. She could probably find a lab that could test the pill for her, but it would cost money, money she didn’t have.
After writing a handful of speeding tickets and responding to a robbery, she headed back to the station with lots of reports to file. It was unlikely the robbery victim would ever get his electronics back, but who knew? The only thing she could really do was her work: file the report and maybe one day, the stolen items would appear in a warehouse or turn up at a pawn shop.
Unlikely, but possible.
Just like Matt tampering with her pills.
Unlikely, but possible.
Unfortunately, it changed nothing to the fact that a fetus was growing inside of her.
The clock was ticking.
Not only did she have to make up her mind about what she’d do with it, but she also had to tell Matt. Announcing the news to her husband could no longer wait.
She would do it tonight.
Kate arrived home well past sunset.
“Matt? Babe?” she said after unlocking the front door.
No answer, but the sound of a running shower reached her ears.
She walked through the bedroom and popped her head in the bathroom.
“I’m back!” she yelled over the noise of the running water.
“I’ll be out in a few minutes,” Matt replied.
I’ve got some time to figure this out.
She sat on their marital bed, the very place where this new life had probably been conceived. It wasn’t as though they’d had sex in many other places recently. They used to be all over each other anywhere and everywhere. Now, because they were rarely in bed and awake at the same time, they were lucky if it happened twice a week.
“Matt, I’m pregnant,” she rehearsed aloud.
That’s awful. You can do better than that!
“Matt, sit down, I’ve got something to tell you.”
Better. But then what?
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Maybe I can show him with a picture. That’s an idea…
Kate had never been a good artist. She couldn’t draw anything more complex than a stick figure. She looked around the room and spotted Matt’s phone on his nightstand.
I can change his phone background to a baby picture!
Although she’d never accessed his phone without his permission before, she knew his password. She kept nagging him about the importance of using complex passwords and changing them regularly, but he used the same one for everything.
She unlocked her husband’s mobile screen then opened the browser to look for a baby picture online. She found one that showed a baby with a “Congrats, you’ll be a dad!” sign on it.
Good enough.
She had just pressed save to make it his new screensaver when a text message came in.
We gotta do this again.
The sender’s name was Sam.
Normally Kate wouldn’t have thought anything about it, probably someone he’d done business with, but the little picture that accompanied the message was of a woman’s cleavage.
Who freaking uses a thumbnail of their breasts as a profile pic?
Curious—or maybe the pregnancy hormones were clouding her judgment—Kate clicked on the thumbnail to see Sam’s contact information. A larger version of the woman’s huge breasts appeared.
What the heck?
She felt the urge to read the previous messages they’d exchanged, but at the same time, she didn’t want to know.
Kate marked the message as unread and dropped the phone where he’d left it before trading her work clothes for running gear and then heading out the door just as the shower shut off.
As her feet hit the pavement and her breathing settled into a comfortable rhythm, her thoughts kept tumbling around in her head.
There was no incriminating evidence.
She didn’t have proof of anything. Sam could be a woman he’d had a business meeting with and that was all.
But why the shower after a business dinner?
Stop being suspicious, Kate. It’s your husband.
She crossed the street and continued running on the sidewalk, once again noting the streetlights that weren’t working.
I really need to report those.
But she didn’t have her phone right now. She’d do it when she got home.
Shit, did I save the image or not?
Kate was pretty sure she had.
Shit.
Matt would have seen it by now, and he’d probably tried to call her. He might be worried sick. His pregnant wife had yet again gone out running in the dark by herself.
I’ll head back home and see how he reacts.
Will he act guilty? Will he blame me? Or will he be happy?
His reaction would tell her all she needed to know.
“Baby! You had me worried! Where did you go?” Matt asked when Kate walked through the door.
He jumped up from the couch and ran toward her, hugging her sweaty body. “We’re going to have a baby! You’ve made me so happy! But why did you leave me that image on my phone and then leave the house? You don’t know what I’ve been through this past half-hour. I… I couldn’t figure out where you’d gone. Why you’d left the house. Are you alright?”
“I just wanted to get my exercise in. You know me.”
“Oh, is that all? I was worried.”
“What were you worried about?” Kate asked.
“Don’t get me started. You know I hate it when you go out running alone at night. And now you have a little us inside of you. You can’t be doing that anymore. And you’ll have to quit your job. It’s not good for the baby.”
“Matt, hold your horses.” She held his hand and walked him back to the couch. She turned off the basketball game that played in the background. “I apologize, I shouldn’t have left you that photo then run out the door. But I think we need to talk. If we’re going to have a baby, we need to be clear about our roles and how things will change… or not.”
“Certainly, baby. We’ll make this work,” he said, gripping her hands then pulling away when his phone beeped. He got up and headed to the kitchen, taking out the phone as he did. “Want something to eat now? How about I re-heat some of that chili you made? Wouldn’t that be great?”
“Sure. That sounds good,” Kate said, wishing she was a little bird so she could have a look at his phone right now. Was it another message from Sam?
Matt was being really nice to her right now, suspiciously so. Like back when they’d started dating. That Matt hadn’t made an appearance in a very long time.
A shiver ran up her spine.
I have to get out of my sweaty clothes.
“Actually, Matt, could you hold off on re-heating my chili? I want to take a shower first.” She peeked her head into the kitchen.
Her husband’s face was glued to his phone. He barely acknowledged her request with an “Uh-huh.”
Kate made her way to the bathroom and let the lukewarm water soothe her worries. Even though she tried, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was up. Matt had acted so… weird. He’d been nice and caring, of course, but strangely so. Like the Matt she’d met years ago when they both used to volunteer at the food bank, when she fell in love with him.
The thoughtful gestures, the four-course meals, the flowers for no reason, the relaxing massages he used to give her. But even as the good memories from the beginning of their relationship filled her mind, Kate couldn’t help but think he was up to no-good with that Sam.
Could Sam be the reason he was so happy? Or maybe he saw this pregnancy as a way to have a family again…
Yeah. That made sense. The orphan in him would be getting a new family. It would be awesome for him.
But unlike Kate, he hadn’t lost a sibling when he’d become orphaned. He had no negative associations with babies.
While her thoughts bounced around, what was left of the warm water disappeared, so Kate stepped out of the shower, grabbed her towel from above the toilet, and then patted herself dry.
She wiped the light layer of condensation off of the mirror and stared at her reflection. She moved her hand across her flat stomach, not feeling anything different, then opened the door. The smell of chili waltzed into the bathroom, and she wrapped herself in her towel before stepping into their bedroom to put on her pajamas.
When she entered the kitchen, Matt was nowhere to be found but had left the pot of chili on the stovetop. She popped open the lid. It was empty, save for a tablespoon worth if she were to scrape it all off.
“Did you save me some?”
Matt didn’t answer. The sound of the basketball game was apparently more important than Kate’s words.
She poked her head in the living room, where Matt sat on the couch. “Did you save me some chili?”
“What? No. There wasn’t enough for two, sorry.”
Her blood boiled in her veins.
“Damn it, Matt. This shit has to stop! First, you offer me some, and then you tell me it’s all gone? This is a fucking dick move! Why is it that your needs always come first? What about my needs? What about caring about me, about what I want for a change?”
“Get over it, it was just chili,” he said, tossing his hand at Kate’s remarks.
She marched over to the TV and pressed the power button.
“Hey! Turn it back on!” he ordered.
“No. Not until you acknowledge that you have to treat me better. I’m your wife, Matt. Not just some tramp you met in a bar. I think we need to go see someone. A professional. Get help with our relationship.”
“Whatever. Turn the TV back on, woman.”
“That’s another thing. We need to cancel the cable plan. We can’t afford it, Matt. I’m tired of having to scrape every penny to find enough money for us to eat. We can’t afford cable.”
“Life without TV is no life at all. Not going to happen.”
Kate inhaled deeply. “You’re such a selfish ass!” She wanted to expand her list of insults but stopped herself before saying something she knew she would regret later. Matt had never turned to physical violence, but deep down she sensed he was capable of it. She spun her wedding ring on her finger, and exhaled loudly, diffusing some of her anger.
She returned to the kitchen, opened the fridge to see what she could put together to eat, but some smell wafting from inside turned her stomach.
She rushed to the bathroom to empty her gut, yet again.
Would raising a baby with Matt make sense? If their relationship didn’t change, the eighteen years to come were going to be very, very long.