Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 74379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Surely there was an exception, though. One that said if she tried to murder the love of my life while she was pregnant with my children then she was allowed to get what was coming to her.
“I had no further involvement with her outside of work other than that one coffee run and the one group lunch,” I told them both.
The same coffee run that I knew for a fact that Krisney had seen me while on. The one that had convinced me never to go anywhere alone with Caria again to do anything, no matter how much she begged me to go.
“Okay.” Detective Cree nodded. “Tell me about your experiences with her.”
A command, though put rather nicely, but still a command, nonetheless.
“I didn’t have much of any relationship with her. I barely ever saw her other than at the office, and all of those times were never alone. The other nurse, Opal, who is Reed’s personal nurse, was with her ninety nine percent of the time. The other one percent, Reed was with her.”
“Opal is my nurse, and not a suspect from what I can tell,” I told him. “She’s the one who goes with me to the hospital and helps me by performing vitals, like blood pressures, reading results, sitting in on exams and is basically my right hand.”
He nodded. “We’ve cleared Opal, as well as others in the office. They all corroborate your story.”
“It’s not really a story,” Krisney admitted. “It’s the truth.”
He nodded. “Then they’ve corroborated your truth.”
She nodded.
“Tell me about the day she gave you the oil.”
So Krisney did, recounting everything that happened, including waking up later that night, scared to death.
“Pennyroyal, you say?”
I nodded. “Pennyroyal.”
“I’ll have to research that,” he said. “Dr. Torres, as well as the lab, explained that this was detrimental to pregnancy.”
“Not only pregnancy, but yes,” I said. “Very dangerous.”
Detective Cree pulled out a tiny notebook from his left breast pocket.
“I have two more things,” he said, flipping through the pages. “Are either one of you aware that Caria tried to buy the property that Krisney now owns?”
Krisney’s mouth dropped open in surprise.
Mine didn’t.
I’d known that almost a year ago.
I hadn’t put two and two together, though, until much more recently.
“I blocked her from buying the property,” I admitted. “Apparently her family had owned it at one point. Her grandfather wouldn’t sell it to her, though. His family blocked his wishes for how his wife was to be buried, and he hadn’t talked to them since. When I came along a few years later, I started paying the taxes on his land, as well as ‘rent’ as you could say.” I looked at Krisney. “I don’t know how much of our relationship you know, but we were high school/college sweethearts.”
He nodded. “We had a tragedy occur in my family, and we broke up.”
He nodded again.
Krisney made a weird noise in her throat, making me wince.
“Anyway, that property was by the apartment complex where I used to live during the time we were together. It meant a lot to us, and I wanted to make sure that it was there if she ever moved back home.”
Detective Cree blinked.
“How did you know that Caria wanted the property?”
“The owner told me. He explained that he was struggling financially and that he was going to have to sell. I paid him ten grand not to, and he was happy to do that, because again, like I said, he disliked that entire side of his family for putting him into a bad position during such a hard time in his life.”
Cree watched me, and then sighed.
“Did you know that Caria was in the same school as you, Reed?”
“High school or college?” I asked in confusion.
“Required classes in college…” he pulled up the paper. “Both of you were in the same biology, microbiology, statistics, calculus…”
I held up my hand. “Okay.”
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that she’s likely had you on her radar for a very long time,” he paused and looked at Kris. “From what I’ve been able to gather from looking into her background, she’s always been mentally unstable.”
“Great,” Krisney mumbled under her breath.
Cree’s mouth kicked up at the corner. “She spent two years in a self-imposed psychiatric ward because she said she heard voices telling her to harm other people. Since the institution was privately funded and staffed to maintain the highest levels of patient confidentiality, her nursing background check didn’t pick up that she was institutionalized.”
I growled under my breath.
“I’m not sure when she started to become obsessed with you, but either of those two times would be my guess.” He paused. “Had y’all been together,” he looked between the two of us, “when she first caught sight of Reed, my guess would be that she would’ve done this a whole hell of a lot sooner than she did.”