by Aiden Bates
"The thing is, I know too much. He didn't like to let me out of his sight, and even when I was high as a kite or half passed out from pain I still knew what was going on around me. So I paid attention, you know? And he hated that more than anything else. He can't stand that I know any part of his business, and he'll do anything to try to get rid of me." She smirked. "Especially if I'm talking to cops about a twenty-year-old murder. Even if Harbaugh was a dirty cop, he was still a cop. And no one wants to be caught for being a cop killer."
Ozzy shook his head. "No. No they don't. We're going to take him down, Dawn. We're getting closer every day."
"I believe you," she said, meeting his eyes.
Chapter Twelve
Pete picked up more work as the summer stretched out before them. There was plenty of it to be had. Summer always brought an increase in violent crime along with it. That increase in violent crime came with an increase in newspapers, magazines, and online outlets doing think pieces on the sharp increase in violent crime, as though it hadn't happened just last year and as though they couldn't just tie that same increase to rising temperatures and the lack of air conditioning in lower-income areas.
Pete was willing to take their money, although he'd given a few moments' thought to re-using old photos from previous jobs. That, in turn, gave him an idea, and he reached out to another freelancer who did amazing work. They put together a project that demonstrated the correlation between violent crime and rising temperatures, sold it to the Times, and made a pile of money that almost felt obscene for a feature piece. That article, in turn, became a reference piece for a number of other pieces, and got both Pete and his friend some recognition from such diverse groups as poverty reformers and climate activists.
Pete didn't think that was half bad, considering that he'd been confined to bed rest only a few short weeks ago.
Ruth was settling in nicely, too. She laughed and joked with both Pete and with Ozzy, and she was great with Marissa. She traveled with him on the occasions when Pete had to travel, although he was trying to keep that sort of thing to a minimum still. There weren't many people that Pete wanted to be stuck with for a long car ride, but Ruth quickly showed herself to be one of them.
Marissa was old enough to show her little personality now, and Pete fell more in love with her every day. She still didn't do much, just ate and slept and crapped, but she watched the world through her huge brown eyes now and seemed to be genuinely curious about things. She kicked at things on her play mat and grabbed at her blankets. She couldn't speak, of course, but she could express herself through her facial expressions just fine. A furrowed brow usually meant that a diaper change was in the near future. She would purse her lips just before demanding to be picked up and held.
And then there were the smiles. Oh, the smiles. Pete sometimes thought that he could die from the smiles. It didn't matter if he hadn't gotten a lick of sleep all night; one of her toothless smiles would have him awake and dancing with joy for the whole day.
Ozzy wasn't around enough to see many of those smiles. "We're getting close," he told Pete. "We're getting close, I can taste it. I know that it's hard, and I want to be there with you guys, but I'm trying to coordinate with two different departments and one other agency, and we know that some of them are dirty. I'm doing everything I can to come home as early as I can, babe. I promise."
"I know you are." The funny thing was, Pete did trust Ozzy. With almost any other alpha, he would have had to suspect that something was wrong by now, but Pete knew in his heart that Ozzy was faithful. That didn't make the long nights any warmer, or any better. And it wasn't always Marissa keeping him up at night, either.
He went to his six-week postpartum checkup. His doctor checked him out all over, let him get dressed again, and then asked him to sit down in his office. "Tell me, Pete," he said, "How are things with you?"
Pete shrugged. "They're okay, guess. Why?"
"The time right after a person has a baby can be challenging. Sleep deprivation alone can cause a lot of problems, never mind the hormonal changes. It's difficult for most parents—people with partners, people without. People with a huge family with a big support network have just as much trouble adjusting to their new lives as lone wolves. You're not alone, however it's working out. I'm here to listen."
"Doc, it's fine. I have a healthy, beautiful baby girl. What could be better than that?" Pete spread his hands wide.
"Humor me, Pete. I know that you're used to doing everything for yourself, but this really is part of my job. Tell me. How are things with that alpha of yours?" The doctor leaned forward, looking at him expectantly.
"I mean, he's busy at work and everything." Pete rubbed his arm. "I don't really mind. I mean I do, but it's something that he needs to do. He's convinced himself that Marissa and I won't be safe until he deals with this one case. And he might be right, I don't know. This is his profession, I don't know enough about this kind of thing, you know?" He rubbed at his temples. "There's a part of me that's afraid he's never going to look at me again, which is ridiculous because he didn't know me before I got pregnant. But what if he's got unrealistic expectations, and I'm just not meeting them?" He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm being absurd. Ozzy's not that shallow. I know he's not."
"Well, I don't know about that, but I can tell you that you weigh less now than you did before your pregnancy." The doctor looked down at Pete's chart. "I think you need to sit down with your partner and have a little talk with him. You might be experiencing a bout of postpartum depression, which is perfectly normal and nothing to be ashamed of. I'd say that your symptoms are comparatively mild, which means that I don't think we need to medicate or ask you to seek counseling yet. I think we can take more of a watchful waiting approach and see how things go."
Pete blinked back at his doctor. "What does that mean?"
"It means just how it sounds. I want to see you back here in a couple of weeks. We'll weigh you and see how you're feeling, in general. We'll do this for a while until you're doing better. Okay?"
Pete buried his face in his hands. He wouldn't lose it, not here and now. "I'm a complete failure as an omega and as a parent." He rubbed at his face. "Awesome."
"Hey." The doctor grabbed Pete's hands. "You're not a failure. You're doing just fine. You showed me pictures of a happy, healthy baby. Like you said, your partner has a lot going on right now, and that's going to have an effect on your relationship. It happens. It happens in all couples, even mated couples, and you'll work things out. I promise. The important thing for you to know, Pete, is that this isn’t your fault. It's just something that happens, the result of genetics and hormones affecting the brain. It's something that you can work through. Okay?"
"Yeah." Pete managed to force a smile. "Yeah, okay. Thanks, Doc." He shook the doctor's hand and left the office.
He cuddled with his daughter for a little while longer when he got home, and then he explained what the doctor had said to Ruth. He felt beyond humiliated to explain something so personal to her, but he didn't think that it was something he could exactly avoid.
She just nodded, her round eyes sympathetic. "I was kind of wondering if it might not be something like that, but I'm not a mental health professional so I didn't want to speculate. Not a lot of people lose that much of the baby weight that quickly, but then again I don't know you all that well." She indicated his still full dinner plate. "Eat up."
He huffed out a little laugh, but he ate.
He got called out to a photo shoot in Deerfield, for a project commemorating the Deerfield Raid of 1704. He didn't get a ton of historical work, although it was inevitable that he would get some given where he lived and he enjoyed it when he got it. He didn't want to subject Marissa and Ruth to such a long drive, so he went alone and met up with his colleague outside the Barnard Tavern.
They explored the historic district for a little while, taking photos of what there was to see, but the museums weren't what Edison Sumner was after. He wanted to s
ee more of the background, the scars, the visual aspects of the raid and the lingering aftereffects.
There wouldn't be many. Pete didn't have to have a PhD in history to know that. There wasn't a building left in Deerfield that dated back to the raid. They might be able to find foundation stones for something from earlier, if they tried, but they would have to go outside of the main village and into the woods and farmland.
They decided to go pay a visit to the Old Burying Ground too, just to see what they could see. The day was hot, it being July already, and Pete had stripped down to a tee shirt already. So had his buddy, Sumner. When they saw the stranger in the cemetery wearing a full leather jacket in the hot sun, Pete had to sit up and take notice. After all, he might not have been dating a cop for long, but he'd been paying close attention.
He and Sumner wandered through the graves, searching for indicators of the deceased from 1704—or earlier. Pete took photos of those, but he made sure to get a few selfies. As they walked through the once-neat rows, he kept a watchful eye on the stranger. The unknown man watched him, and only half seemed to be trying to hide himself, but didn't approach.
Pete took a selfie with his phone and texted it to Ozzy. This guy is following us around the cemetery in Deerfield. Seems odd.
"Dude," Sumner said, leaning in. "What's with all of the selfies?"
"That guy's been following us through the cemetery." Pete smirked but kept his voice down. "Now we've got proof."
"Oo-oh." Sumner high-fived him. "I get it. What are you doing now?"
"Complaining to my state trooper fiancé about being followed. There's this thing going on." He rolled his eyes as the response text came in. I'll have a unit there in twenty. "All we need to do is hang out in a visible location for another twenty minutes and it should be okay." He used the phone's zoom feature to take a closer look at the stalker.
He didn't like what he saw. Ew. I'm pretty sure that's the guy who passed us the note when we were on that date.
You sure?
The hands are familiar.
I'll tell them to step on it.
They found some of the headstones they were looking for, and some from before. Sumner was looking to write a book about patterns of Native resistance to colonization during the settlement of New England, and Deerfield seemed like a fantastic subject for him. Not only was it the site of a disastrous raid in 1704, but it had also been the site of pitched and bloody battles during Metacom's War decades before. Finding the tombstones was a fantastic stroke of luck—although maybe not for those buried beneath them.
It did, however, give the two men something to do while they waited for the cavalry to arrive. Pete took pictures. Sumner took notes and tried to take rubbings, which was a bad idea and didn't work out all that well anyway.
Ten minutes after they set up for their activities, the strange man approached. "Hiya, Pete." He held out a spotted hand. "We weren't properly introduced the last time we met, but my name's Russ."
Pete could barely hear anything over the roar in his ears. He hadn't been all that afraid of this guy the last time they'd met, but that was before he knew what Russ was. Now that he knew that Russ was a stooge for one of the worst gangsters in Massachusetts, he couldn't shake the image of his own body laid out on the ground.
He didn't want to offend Russ and hasten that vision's journey into reality. He didn't want to get Sumner into trouble, either, or at least not worse than he already was. "This is Edison," he said, gesturing to Sumner.
"Pleased to meet you, Edison. My friend Pete doesn't work with sub-standard journalists. Pete, you're really looking well since your daughter was born. You're looking downright gaunt."
Pete fought back a snicker. "Um. Okay. Thanks. Not that it's not good to see you again, but I'm curious as to why you're hanging out in a cemetery in Deerfield in the middle of July."
"Oh. Right. I was hoping we could talk, just a little bit. Your boy, he's barking up the wrong tree with Sierzant." Russ smiled then, just a little bit.
"Okay?" Pete spread his hands out in front of him. "Listen, he's a great guy and everything, but I'm going to need more than 'A guy in the graveyard told me that he didn't do it.’ Cops don't just listen to their partners, you know? I have to have evidence."
Russ nodded a few times. "Makes sense, I guess. Unfortunately, I have no way to give him the proof he needs. He's already got the evidence that he needs, if he thinks about it right."
Pete's mind raced, trying to sort through several thoughts at once. Could they get away? If so, how fast could they do it? He still had to keep the conversation going, too. It was no different from that night in the IHOP with Sierzant, except he no longer had a fetus trying to do chin-ups on his ribcage. What could Russ have meant by his comment that Ozzy already had all of the evidence that he needed? "Do you mean the gun that started the whole thing?"
Russ tapped the side of his nose. "You're a smart cookie, Pete. Yeah. The gun should still tell the whole story. I mean, nowadays you've got all kinds of testing, right? You can see the tiniest drops of blood, little bits of skin that get caught where little girls don't think to clean a weapon. That kind of thing." He winked. "In a very real way, Joe and your boy are on the same side. They both want the person who killed Tim Harbaugh to get what's coming to them. Your boy's just more likely to be able to do it in a way that's socially acceptable than Joe is, and your boy's involvement makes it harder for Joe to just take care of it."
"Yeah." Pete took a deep breath. "This many eyes, making Harbaugh look like some kind of martyr, makes it harder to just kill the one that did it. Brings in too much scrutiny and, assuming that he's telling the truth, it looks bad. Makes him look extra guilty."
"Exactly." Russ grinned, less shark-like and more genuine this time.
"What do you think?" Pete tilted his head to the side. "Who do you think killed Harbaugh?"
"Me? Who cares?" Russ huffed out a little laugh. "I just work here. I know exactly who killed Harbaugh. And I know it wasn't Joe. But you know what? I don't care. The bastard had it coming." He stuffed his hands into his pockets. "Any of us working for Joe, we all got it coming, okay?"
A siren wailed in the distance. "That's my cue, boys. It was good meeting you, Edison. Good luck with your project." Russ shook their hands again, and then he faded away among the trees at the edge of the space.
Two police cruisers pulled into the space one minute later. One of the officers ran off into the tree line to look for the criminal. Pete knew they wouldn't find him.
Chapter Thirteen
Ozzy wanted Pete to stop working after the incident with Russ. "It's too dangerous," he said, in a very earnest voice. "I can't keep you safe if you're out there throwing yourself into harm's way like that. I just can't; it won't be physically possible."
"I understand that." Pete sat on the edge of their bed that same night, Marissa in his arms, trying to calm Ozzy down. "I do. You're scared, I'm scared, we're all scared and that's perfectly normal under the circumstances. But my work is important to me and you can't just demand that I stop doing it because the world's dumbest dirty cop decided to act out. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow; do you want to ban buses?"
"Kind of!" Ozzy crossed his arms over his chest and pouted. "A bus isn't going to seek you out and try to harm you to get at me, Pete. This isn't a game. These are real people, bad people, and they don't mean you well."
"That's fine." Pete set his jaw. "It's not the first time I've faced down something ugly, either. I'm not exactly a wedding photographer, remember? No, I don't seek it out, but it's a reality that I have to accept. This is just one more aspect that I need to take reasonable precautions against and try to plan for. It's not something that I'm going to let scare me off."
"Pete, listen to me! This is not just a couple of guys playing with matches!" Ozzy pulled at his hair.
"You know, part of the problem with being what we are, of having that kind of instant and binding connection, is that we don't usually know one anoth
er well before we commit. Go look at my body of work, Ozzy." Pete got up and put his sleeping daughter in her bassinette. "I've done shoots in the middle of forest fires, epic floods, and even tornados. I've gone down to Peru, and Colombia to do jobs on the guerrillas there. I've covered the drug cartels in Mexico. I've covered the militias out in Montana and Idaho. I've covered religious extremists who think people like us should be burned at the stake to purify our souls before God, Ozzy." He remained standing as he turned back to Ozzy.
"This is different!" Ozzy massaged little circles into his temple.
