Free Garden of Darkness by Anne Frasier Page B

room, handed him a sheet of paper, and left, closing the door behind her. “Looks like your iron level is way down,” Ted said. “Everything else looks good. Have you been taking your supplements?”
    “I may have missed one or two. I’ve been craving meat.” She couldn’t bring herself to admit that she’d been craving raw meat.
    “That’s understandable when your body is suffering from an iron depletion. Have you been tired?”
    “Yes, but I’ve been busy. Moving—or trying to move—and then with the body that was found outside of town.” She put a hand to her stomach. “I worry about the baby.”
    “Are you talking about your job? I wouldn’t worry about it unless dealing with death is suddenly bothering you in ways it didn’t bother you before. A lot of mothers work right up until delivery day.”
    “No, I’m fine with autopsies. It’s just . . . everything. I’m stressed out. I worry about the stress.”
    “It’s none of my business. I’m speaking as a friend rather than as your doctor, but have you told the father?”
    “No.” She sat up all the way.
    “Are you going to? Not that I don’t think you’re perfectly capable of raising a child on your own, but I just thought this secrecy might be the source of some of your stress. And I know that if a woman were pregnant with my baby, I’d want to know.”
    “I plan to tell him.”
    “You’re in your third trimester.” A gentle reminder.
    “It’s not that easy. I’ve made a couple of attempts, but he hasn’t returned my calls.” It wasn’t as if she and the father had a relationship. It wasn’t a love affair that had soured. It had just been Tuonela doing what it always did—screwing with people’s heads. “I agree he has a right to know, but I have the feeling he won’t even care.”
    “You know what I always remember about you from school?” He smiled. “How fearless you were.” His smile changed. It became concerned. He could see she was hiding something. “But I see fear in your eyes now.”
    Yes, she was afraid. Of more than he could guess. “Pregnancy changes a person. I worry about everything now.”
    Protect the baby. She had to protect the baby. And the last thing she wanted was people saying her child was a vampire.

 
    Chapter Twelve
     
     
    Now he knew how a killer felt.
    The blind panic. The need to immediately dispose of the body, get rid of the evidence. Now. The illogical thinking that seemed logical.
    Hide it. Get rid of it. Pretend it never happened.
    Alastair drove out of town and kept driving. He drove fifty miles while the stench seeped from the trunk and filled his car. It soaked into his clothes and made his throat burn.
    At the fifty-mile mark, he started looking for some isolated area off a back road. His plan was to dump the skin somewhere remote. Maybe in a river or a lake. Water was a good way to get rid of evidence. But now that he’d been on the road over an hour, he started to calm down and think more clearly. Dumping the skin was too risky. He needed time.
    So he turned around and headed home.
    Think.
    He had to think.
    The criminals who’d been able to hide their crimes for the longest times were the ones who didn’t panic, who didn’t get in a hurry to get rid of the evidence. They were the ones who kept the body close.
    He returned home and parked his car in the unattached garage. The house may have been in town, but it was surrounded by timber Evan had called his buffer zone.
    Alastair went into the house and returned to the garage with several large black garbage bags. He stuffed the skin into a plastic bag, then followed up with two more layers of plastic. When he was finished, he wrapped tape around the whole package, then labeled it DEER. He took the package inside, went to the basement, and tucked it into the bottom of the chest freezer, stacking deer meat on top of it.
    A father did what he had to do to protect his son.
    Alastair took a shower and threw his clothes in the