Harm’s Reach

‘What’s he doing getting all up in our business anyway?’ said Janine.

‘I know,’ said Ren. ‘He is out there directing his wrath at people whose sin is to love? He should be pointing his daggers at the kind of people who would take a pregnant lady’s life. OK … deep breaths. Deep breaths.’

‘Yup,’ said Janine, ‘take your rantin’ pants off.’

‘I like that – rantin’ pants,’ said Ren. ‘I’ll get home, swap them for my fornicatin’ pants.’

‘Is yo’ man paying you a visit?’ said Janine.

‘No,’ said Ren. ‘Sadly. Realistically? We’re talking pajama pants tonight. Ah, the challenges of the long-distance relationship.’

Ren arrived home at nine thirty to an exceptional welcome from Misty, her black-and-white border collie and beloved friend. For a little over a year, Ren and Misty had been house-sitting a beautiful Gold-Rush-era home in historic Denver. It was owned by Annie Lowell, a Bryce family friend who had been a widow as long as Ren had known her. She was eighty-two now and busy traveling across Europe. She had been due back two months earlier, but had fallen in love with so many places on her trip, she kept extending it. Ren loved Annie … and loved that she was having such a good time.

Ren had recently auditioned dog walkers to look after Misty when she was working. She had settled on Devin, a sweet student from across the street, who loved Misty like she was her own. Ren had recently told Devin that Misty was a cadaver dog in her spare time, but it hadn’t broken Devin’s dog-walking stride.

When Ren walked into the hall, there was a box of Mike and Ike Berry Blast on top of the newel post with a pink Post-it stuck to it. Devin always left little things for Ren inside the door: notes or candy or something totally random.

Aw. Always something sweet to come home to.

She read the note.

Sugar rrrrrrush! Hope you cleaned up the streets today! Misty ran a marathon! Still no dead bodies, tho!

Devin

Ren laughed as she walked upstairs. She lay on her bed and called Ben.

‘Ben Rader, this is a time for hugs.’

‘What’s up?’ said Ben.

‘What’s up is we found a pregnant girl dead on the side of a road.’

He listened quietly as she told him everything.

‘Well, I wish I was there to give you those hugs,’ said Ben. ‘I’m sending you some down the phone. And there’ll be real ones at the weekend.’

‘Thank you, man.’

‘Make yourself some hot chocolate. Crank up the comfort. I need you to be there this weekend. I can’t have you running away to a lady commune …’

‘No chance,’ said Ren. ‘And don’t worry – here is always cozy. It just feels like home.’

‘Well, I can’t wait to be home with you,’ said Ben.

Ooh … home. Sounds a liittle too committed.

11 (#ulink_595d0236-763f-573d-821c-a86062507112)

The following morning, Ren was in the office by seven. She sat at her desk in the small space where, over the years, the team-within-a-team had been cemented: Ren Bryce, Robbie Truax and Cliff James. There had been a fourth – Colin Grabien, IT and financial expert, and nemesis to Ren. He had resigned from Safe Streets five months earlier, not long after Ren had punched him in the face and told him she knew he had gotten his position by shafting the other candidate. She had kept it quiet; she didn’t want to ruin his career. She hoped he saw the error of his ways. He requested a transfer, and attributed it to the changing career of his soon-to-be-wife. Since then, Gary had drafted in different financial and IT experts from 36th Avenue, but he hadn’t made a decision on his permanent replacement.

Ren could see Robbie Truax’s computer was fired up. He was the only one in. Robbie was ex-Aurora PD, a solid member of Safe Streets. If honesty, earnestness and goodness could take a physical form, it would take Robbie Truax. He walked into the bullpen and gave her a weary hello.

‘You know what I can’t help?’ said Ren, ‘when anyone else sits in Grabien’s chair, I’m kind of thinking that I’ll come in some day and they will have morphed into him … morphed into an asshole. Like the chair itself changes people.’ She started up her computer. ‘I think the chair has taken on an ominous vibe,’ she said. ‘Stephen-King style.’

‘So no matter who sits there, we’re in trouble,’ said Robbie.

‘Maybe,’ said Ren.

‘There’s a lot of darkness in there,’ said Robbie, pointing to her head.

‘Caused by the absence of lightbulbs.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ said Robbie. He never let her beat herself up too much, even when she was joking.

Cliff arrived into the office, looking shattered. He mustered up enough energy to give Ren one of his gorgeous smiles and a wink.

‘Hey, big guy,’ said Ren. ‘Were you two pulling an all-nighter or something?’

‘Are you saying I’m fat?’ said Cliff. He stretched back on his chair. ‘Why is it that women can say to men they look like crap, but men can’t say it to women?’

‘Who said anything about looking like crap?’ said Ren. ‘Maybe I meant you smell like you slept in your clothes.’

‘I slept in the nudie, as always,’ said Cliff.

‘There is no greater gift than those intimate mental snapshots,’ said Ren.

‘Mental?’ said Cliff. ‘They can’t be better than the photo books …’

‘The pages are getting tattered,’ said Ren. ‘They’re worn through.’ She paused. ‘Now, speaking of pages, I am about to enter the Facebook world of Laura Flynn.’

‘Facebook …’ said Cliff. And his tone expressed exactly how he felt about it.

‘This is bizarre,’ said Ren after a few minutes’ trawling. ‘There is no mention of her pregnancy anywhere. She’s not a major poster of photos, but the ones she has put up are all head-and-shoulders shots.’ She scrolled down through the images. ‘Looks like this was a secret pregnancy … but from who? The father? The Princes knew … but they’re not Facebook Friends. So maybe the father is connected to one of these twenty-two Friends she does have. And this is also weird: there’s no Nessa Lally, the girl she was to have stayed with in Chicago. But then, I guess, not everyone is on Facebook.’ She paused. ‘Could this be a surrogacy situation? Could Laura Flynn have been acting as a surrogate for the Princes? Ingrid Prince could well have a Moonbump and a prescription for Prednisone.’

‘And I am going to ask you what the heck both of those things are,’ said Cliff.

‘Prednisone is an anti-arthritis drug,’ said Ren, ‘but it causes weight gain that mimics pregnancy weight gain – like water retention in the face and neck. And a Moonbump is a faux pregnancy belly – they’re used in movies or by women who are adopting or using a surrogate and would rather people not know for whatever reason.’

‘Gee whizz,’ said Robbie.

‘Let me Google Ingrid Prince and see whether there are any suspect baby bump photos …’ said Ren, ‘the kind that fold and the like.’ Ren typed, then paused. ‘Four months is probably a little too early for that … I was thinking six months.’

‘So there’s a two-month difference in their due dates,’ said Cliff.

‘That way the baby comes before the paparazzi start sniffing around,’ said Ren.

She went back to scanning Laura Flynn’s Facebook posts.