Page 71 of Jar of Hearts
“A little.” He feels his jaw clench, tries to stop it, but she catches it and knows instantly what the facial tic means.
“Kai,” Kim says, shocked, and he can hear from her tone in that one syllable that she knows what he’s been up to. But he doesn’t want to hear about it, not from her. They’re both guilty of bad judgment, and she’s in no place to lecture him. She does, anyway. “You can’t be serious. She’s a person of interest in this case.”
“She has nothing to do with it.”
“It’s completely inappropriate.”
He turns to her. “Pretty sure I don’t need a lecture from you about which relationships are inappropriate,” he says softly.
Kim’s face reddens. “Okay, I deserved that,” she says, admonished. She looks over her shoulder to make sure nobody nearby can hear them. “But still, if you’re involved with her because you’re upset with me, I really think—”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Kaiser says with a small smile. “Seriously. I’m happy you and Dave are back on track. We fucked for a while, it’s over now, and it’s cool. But it means my personal life is no longer your concern. Got it?”
Kim looks as if she’s been slapped. Her cheeks flush deep crimson and her eyes fill with tears. She turns away, wiping her face quickly, pulling herself together.
He knows they’ll never speak of it again, and he won’t be surprised if she puts in for a transfer once this case is closed. That’s the thing with affairs. They are, by definition, a temporary relationship. They always end, one way or another, and they almost always end badly.
“Detective?” A different officer is standing behind Kaiser, cell phone in his hand. He touches Kaiser’s shoulder. “The parents just arrived at the precinct.”
“That was fast.”
“They both work here in Seattle,” the officer says. He indicates the phone in his hand, the call from the precinct still connected. “What should I tell them?”
“I’m on my way.”
***
Grief manifests differently in different people, and Kaiser learned a long time ago to stop judging. You can’t tell people how they’re supposed to feel, when they’re supposed to feel it, or how they’re supposed to show it. Daniel Rudd and Lara Friedman, Emily Rudd’sparents, nearly collapse at the news of their young daughter’s death at first, crying and shaking and wanting details Kaiser doesn’t have yet. He assures them her death was quick, and that there were no outward signs of abuse.
They demand to see her, but the bodies are being examined in the morgue. Kaiser shows them a picture instead—the kindest one he has, where it appears the little girl might be sleeping—and they confirm it’s their daughter. Less than an hour later, they’re calm and polite, almost professional in their demeanor. Their eyes are bloodshot, but dry. They sit close to each other, breathing and speaking normally, but not touching. Daniel Rudd is a cardiothoracic surgeon at Harborview Medical Center, and Lara Friedman is a pediatric surgeon at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Kaiser can only assume that their professions are the reason they’re able to compartmentalize this way.
They have two other children, twin boys conceived via in vitro fertilization. Shawn and Shane are six years old, and Lara Friedman shows Kaiser a picture of her sons sitting on a park bench, with their little sister in between them. Emily bears no physical resemblance to her brothers—they’re blond and blue-eyed while she had dark hair and dark eyes—but the bond among the three of them is unmistakable. Their parents confirm Emily was adopted.
“Even after the twins, it didn’t quite feel like our family was complete,” Lara says, hands in her lap. The coffee Kaiser brought her from the precinct’s break room is cooling in its paper cup, untouched. “I couldn’t go through IVF again, so we started the adoption process through a Christian agency that specializes in placing babies born to unwed teenage mothers.”
“What can you tell me about Emily’s biological parents?” Kaiser asks.
“Why is that important?” Daniel Rudd frowns beside his wife. “They’re not in the picture. Sasha wouldn’t even tell us the father’s name. He’s not aware she even had a child.”
“Sasha’s the biological mother?”
“Yes.” The man stares at him. “Again, why does it matter? She never had a relationship with Emily after she gave birth.”
“It’s relevant to the case,” Kaiser says gently. “That’s all I can say for now. But I would appreciate any details you can give me.”
“Her name is Sasha Robinson,” Lara says, giving her husband a look that shuts him up. “She was actually a sweet girl. We met about halfway through her pregnancy. We invited her to our house to spend time with us and the boys. She was eighteen then, living with her grandmother in a trailer park. High school dropout, recovering drug addict. She grew up poor, and it was clear that it was extremely important to her to have her baby go to a family with money. She emphasized that she wanted her child to have access to the best education, and she thought it was great we already had twin boys, because the baby would always have big brothers to protect her.…” She stops then, her voice choking.
“We saw her twice during the pregnancy, and then once right after she gave birth,” Daniel says, sounding defeated. “Then we didn’t see or speak to her again for over two years. It was her choice. She was doing drugs again, she was in no shape to see Emily. We told her if she got clean, we’d be okay with limited contact, but she said she didn’t want to meet Emily even if she was clean. Deep down, it was a relief. That kind of thing can get complicated.”
“But you had contact with Sasha when Emily was two?” Kaiser asks.
“We called her,” Lara says. “We were experiencing serious behavioral problems with Emily. Hyperactivity that was well beyond what was normal for a child that age. She was quick to anger, and very aggressive, even violent. Hitting, biting, clawing, shoving—she even tried to choke Shane once when he wouldn’t let her play with a toy she wanted. There were actually times when the boys were scared of her.”
“The obvious decision was to medicate,” Daniel says. “But we opted not to. Those meds for ADHD can turn a kid into a zombie. We put her in therapy instead, changed her diet, hired an extra nanny part-time to take some of the burden off Maria.”
“Maria is…?”
“The full-time nanny,” Lara says. “She lives with us.”
