text: “I just don’t understand. She was fine, when she called. She had just gotten home, I could hear her unloading the grocery bags!” Paul Sansky wept into his gloved hands, breath coming out in puffs of steam on the chilled night air. He sat on the back-end of the ambulance where the paramedics had led him immediately after his arrival, anguished screams erupting from his chest. Their services weren’t needed here. His fiancé was dead. Detective Harvey Deluth looked down on the body in the snow, her skin like ivory in the moonlight, her lips an eerie shade of the palest blue. Andrea Tatum’s orange hair ringed her head like a fiery halo, eyes gazing upward, unseeing. He bit down hard, grinding his back teeth, furrowing his brow. A sigh escaped him, and he straightened himself, turning his attention to his friend. “She--she said she’d call me right back. I don’t understand!” Sobs wracked Paul’s whole body now. Deluth lay a hand on his shoulder, comforting him, as best he could. Deluth was not a man of many words, and though he’d known Paul for years, this was the eighth death in Darrow this winter, and it was only January 16th. His heart, like the earth outside, was becoming colder and harder; desensitized, with each passing day. Still, for it to be someone he knew...again. “I’m so sorry, Paul. Look, we are gonna do everything we can to figure out--to put together what’s happened here, okay? I just need you to answer a few more questions. Please, come inside.” Deluth nodded solemnly to the medical examiner, and he nodded back, kneeling somberly in the fresh snow to zip up the body. As in the seven prior deaths, Andrea’s seemed completely unassuming. There were no outward signs of trauma to be observed. It was as if she had literally walked outside her front door, down the sidewalk into the yard and just dropped dead right there. By now, Deluth was ready to ask the right questions, he just needed to dance into it slowly. Questioning grieving persons had never been his forte. “Paul, did Andie say anything when she said she’d call you right back? Was there...a reason? Did she hear something? See someone?” He sat across from Paul in the living room recliner, where her coat was still draped where she’d thrown it when she came in. Grocery bags were visible in the kitchen floor where she’d sat them down. The door had been wide open, no sign of forced entry; and this is how it had been at every house that came before. A life interrupted; just stopped dead. “Umm...uhh.” Paul wiped the tears from his ruddy cheeks with the back of his sweater sleeve, breathing heavily as he attempted, fruitlessly, to recover from the heaving cries. “Harvey, she just said, ‘Paul, honey, lemme call you back, ok?’ And then she just hung up. She didn’t give me a reason to think--I mean, I just don’t know, why would she have gotten off like that?” He stared at Harvey, his eyes bloodshot, heart clearly broken. “Paul, I really wish I had an answer for you, but you know, at this point I just don’t.” There was a moment of silence that passed between them, Paul’s head back into his hands, before Harvey reluctantly resumed his line of questioning. “Paul, was...err...there a possibility that Andie might’ve been...pregnant?” The broken man’s head shot up from his hands, mouth agape. “How could you know? We--we hadn’t told anyone!” “Because Paul...” “But how? She was adamant, we don’t tell anyone until--“ “The others were too, Paul. They all have been.” More silence. It was eerie, how silence invaded that space in a dead woman’s home, the flashing blue lights of the officers cars outside still pulsating through the frosted windowpanes. Harvey cleared his throat and shifted his weight. Suddenly the wool of his coat was very scratchy and uncomfortable. He hated these sorts of exchanges. “I am not supposed to comment on open investigations. I’m sorry, that won’t happen again. We don’t have all the pieces, all the information...” Paul continued to stare, then stood up and paced, hands frantically tousling his own hair. “You’re saying she’s dead because she was pregnant? Someone is killing pregnant women? Who did this? Who did this to my Andie?! Harvey!” His voice rose in a panicked crescendo, resonating off the walls, and Deluth stood, stopping him, grasping him by the arms. “Paul! Get ahold of yourself.” They stood still, locked onto one another, Paul’s eyes wide and heavy breaths passing between them. “I--I uhh--okay. Okay.” Paul stammered, shakily sitting down. Deluth gave him a hard pat on the shoulder. “Is there someone I can call for you?” “Uhh...no. No. My mother, I called her. She’s coming in from Hawesville. She’s on her way.” Deluth hesitated only a moment, and then nodded. “I’ll be in touch, Paul. Again, I’m...I’m so very sorry.” He turned toward the door, placing his hat back onto his slicked back hair, and closed it behind him. On the way to the car, he paused, looking down at the imprint in the snow where Andie had fallen, dead; likely before she hit the ground, if her autopsy followed the same pattern as the others. No outward or inward signs of trauma. No sign of struggle. No explanation for death other than sudden and inexplicable cardiac arrest. He grumbled, sighed, and opened the door to the vehicle, leather squeaking as he sat down in the seat. He turned his gaze to his partner, Vick, who had declined to go in. He’d known Andrea too, and at the sight of her body had become ill and vomited. “Does she fit?” He asked weakly, “She does, Vick. She was pregnant too. Like the others.” Vick shook his head, rubbing his clammy hands on his uniform pants. “My God, Harv. Jesus. Who is doing this? Why? Deluth furrowed his brow and clicked his teeth, twisting his mouth in thought, then placed his hands on the steering wheel and shifted the vehicle into drive. “It’s not a someone. It’s a...something. I’m sure of it now...” The tail-lights of his vehicle faded away into the winter night, exhaust billowing up into the air behind him.