Bojan, page 14
“Right, just because you’re pregnant, everybody thinks you are ready to blow up.”
“I think blow out might be a better phrase,” Lacy muttered. “Everybody is just afraid you will have the babies while they’re around, and honestly they all want to be far away.”
At that, Leia burst out laughing. “That’s probably true, isn’t it?”
Lacy gave her a big, fat grin. “Hey, babies are not for everybody. Toddlers are good—and kids when they’re fun and cute—but delicate newborns tend to make a lot of grown men pretty edgy.”
“Well, they better all get used to it because I don’t know of a single woman here who doesn’t hope to have a family of her own, and an awful lot of people live here now.”
“I understand that some of them will be moving?”
“Yeah, there will be changes,” she acknowledged. “I think some of them will go to Australia. Some of them are moving over here. Some of them may switch out to our Tunisia base.” She shrugged. “The Australia base is not even set up yet, in any formal fashion, but discussions are underway.”
“So, you didn’t want to go to Tunisia?”
She sighed. “It’s his favorite location, but not mine,” she admitted. “Though I would be totally okay with spending some time in Australia too.”
“You like the climate?”
“I like this climate as well. I don’t know what we’ll end up doing, but I would like to be away from as much of this craziness as possible, particularly if we are raising a family.”
“Nobody will slight you for that,” Lacy noted. “So, you better tell him, and you might be surprised at his reaction too.”
“Of course I always feel the pull to get back to my island,” she shared, with a laugh, “but not until after the babies come.”
“And probably not for a while after that either,” Lacy stated, with a warning tone. “You will have your hands full.”
“And that’s another thing. I was wondering about hiring some people, but so many wonderful women are here already. Yet I didn’t know if I should ask if any of them wanted to be involved in a bigger way.”
“How would you feel about it if they were?” Lacy asked curiously.
“I would be totally fine with it. We have a really great relationship with everybody here,” she shared. “We’re so blessed honestly. We have been blessed in so many areas of life that sometimes I have to pinch myself, and part of me is afraid it’ll all blow up in my face because it’s not real.”
“Understandable,” Lacy agreed. “I find myself in that same situation right now.”
At that, Leia looked at her in growing understanding. “You guys need some time together to sort it out, don’t you?”
“We’re getting there,” she murmured. “At the same time, you’re right. Time alone would be great, but it won’t happen anytime soon.”
She nodded. “You mentioned I would deliver early.”
She waited and then nodded. “Yeah, earlier.”
“But how much earlier?”
“Sorry, I don’t have anything at the moment,” Lacy said.
“Every day is a blessing,” Leia repeated, as she settled back. “You would tell me if I needed to know something, right?”
“I already have,” she declared, looking over at her. “And believe me. At times I worry that I did the wrong thing.”
Leia shook her head. “No. You definitely did the right thing. How can we make a proper decision unless we are fully informed? We all have to make our own choices on how we will handle information like that, but we’re still better to have it.”
“Are we though? No doubt many people wouldn’t agree.”
“Well, as for me, I am grateful to know,” Leia declared. “I’m working my way around to being accepting, if it doesn’t go our way, and I have to admit to being quite thrilled to hear Bojan suggest the potential for another pregnancy in the future,” she muttered. “I didn’t think I would ever have this opportunity, and now I’m doubly blessed.”
At that, Lacy looked at her friend and smiled. “You are blessed. Just keep remembering that, and let’s hope that everything works out okay.”
Leia sighed. “And, of course, knowing that you have some answers, that means I want all the answers.”
Lacy burst out laughing. “If it were that easy, I would give them to you. But it isn’t that easy, and I can’t.” Just then, the door opened, and Bullard walked out.
“There was a delivery,” he began, looking at Leia, “ten or so days ago.” He held out the delivery log and looked at her. “Do you remember what this guy dropped off?”
She looked at the log and frowned. “Good God, I have no idea.”
“I also don’t have any record of an order being placed and shipped by this delivery company,” he added.
She winced. “Okay, that doesn’t sound good.”
“No, we had a lot of deliveries coming in that week in particular, but we also had an awful lot of family and other people delivering things too. I’ve checked with everybody who was here, and nobody has any record of this particular delivery.”
“So, something was delivered by the shooter, I presume,” Lacy noted, “but you don’t know what it was, and that’s likely why this guy is pissed off?”
Bullard stared at her, frowning. “Go on.”
“If he thought that whatever he delivered would get a reaction or some sort of response, … and who knows, maybe any reaction would do,” she explained. “However, if it didn’t happen, so then shooting me was another message, like, Hey, smarten up, or something of that nature.”
“Or maybe Pay attention to me,” Leia suggested.
“Exactly,” Lacy agreed. “I’ve been shot now, and we still didn’t know what was going on. In retrospect, it’s quite possible that he expected you to understand what it all meant from the beginning.”
“Yet I don’t,” Bullard admitted, frowning at her. “I don’t have a clue, other than recognizing Charlie as the shooter.”
She nodded at that.
“By the way”—he looked over at Leia—“the guys went to the shooter’s place and found his roommate dead, and there’s no sign of our shooter.”
“Roommate shot in the head,” Lacy noted.
Bullard glanced at her sideways and nodded. “Did you just figure that out or—”
“I took a peek into Bojan’s mind,” she said.
“Okay,” Bullard replied. “Is there anything in Bojan’s mind that will help?”
She chuckled. “Not at the moment, though he’s running through the possibilities.” She pondered that. “I’m not sure.”
“Well, … if there is anything, let me know. I mean, tracking this guy stat would be the best idea. We better find out what the hell he wants, but, with his roommate dead, it could mean our shooter killed him, or somebody else killed him, or suicide.”
“They don’t think it was a suicide,” Lacy stated, frowning, staring off in the distance.
“Which means,” Bullard added, “either Charlie, our delivery guy and shooter, did it himself, or somebody else did it. So, the question is, why would Charlie shoot his own roommate? Maybe if the roommate was a partner in crime, and things blew up, or maybe the roommate wanted to turn in Charlie for his own crimes. Who knows? Maybe Charlie just got pissed off. I mean, I had to fire him like ten years ago because he had some real anger issues back then. I haven’t had much interaction with him since then. So I don’t know what our shooter’s mental stability level is like in today’s terms.”
At that, Lacy paused, frowning. “I think I do know what his mental state is like, and it’s not … sane,” she shared, slowly standing up. “Let me talk to Bojan real quick.” Then she closed her eyes, reached out to Bojan, and, with the finesse of a bull in a china shop, she slammed into his mind and asked, The energy you picked up from the doorway after I was shot, did that have the energy of a sane mind?
Bojan responded, It was splintered, like fractured somehow, but I don’t know what that means. I’m not used to picking up that kind of energy.
She winced. I’m wondering whether we might have somebody with brain damage or maybe on medication or something along that line. Maybe he sees Bullard as some kind of a bad guy. Or maybe Leia.
Lacy came back to full awareness to find Bullard and Leia both staring at her, their curiosity evident in their expressions. Lacy hesitated a moment. “Is it possible Charlie sees Leia as a replacement or as the wrong partner for you somehow?”
Bullard stared at her. “What? No, I don’t think so. … It’s not as if I’ve had any serious relationships over the years, largely because of the work I do,” he said, by way of explanation.
“I get that, but something’s off about this shooter guy, and I’m just wondering whether he believes that you let him or somebody in his family down in some way.”
“Well, I had to fire Charlie because he wasn’t doing the work he needed to do, and he was definitely unstable at the time,” Bullard noted, tilting his head to study her curiously. “There was something wrong with him, and I couldn’t quite figure out what, but that was many years ago. It was pretty heated when I let him go, and he took off. I’ve not really heard any more about him … until now.”
She nodded. “It makes you wonder why now, if all this happened in the past.”
“Exactly.”
“Unless somebody helped to keep him balanced and sane,” Leia suggested, “and now something has happened to his caregiver maybe, interrupting that somehow.”
Bullard hesitated. “He had a sister he was pretty close to, at one time.”
“That would make sense. Do you want to see if you can track down the sister?”
“Yeah, I’m on it,” he said, eyeing the logs of all the recent deliveries in his hand. “I’m still stumped about what Charlie would have delivered, as in something personal from him to me. Nothing among these noted deliveries jumps out on that. You guys toss that around, while I go see if I can rustle up a contact number for the sister.” And, with that, he took off, leaving the two women on their own.
Lacy looked at Leia thoughtfully. “What’s the protocol on the parcel delivery here?”
“In general all parcels must be signed for and are just left in the front hall. Anybody who is expecting something generally picks it up, or, if the deliveries begin to stack up, somebody will let people know that parcels are here for them. There should have been a name on that delivery, and, if it was for Bullard, somebody should have let him know it was there.”
At that, Lacy nodded. “I’ll go check the front hallway.”
“Surely you don’t think it’s still there?” Leia asked curiously. “That would have been several days ago now.”
“Depending on how big it is, it may have gotten overlooked or misplaced somehow.” Lacy shrugged. “It won’t hurt to go check.”
With that, she walked inside and headed toward the front door. She passed several people working in the living room, trying to track down information. When she got to the entry area, she stopped near the big double doors, and even now a stack of parcels sat there for various team members. As she went through them, nothing had Bullard’s name on it. Just to be sure, she looked behind and under the furniture in the area. Under the bench that sat in the entryway, she found a small envelope with Bullard’s name on it.
She picked it up, knowing instinctively it was from that same energy. She walked over to where Bullard sat with several of his team and held it out. “I think this is what he delivered.”
He frowned at her, then at the envelope, as it if were some snake ready to strike. “Where did you find that?”
“It was still in the front hall but had fallen under the bench.”
He stared at her and then took it from her. “I presume there are already fingerprints all over it,” he noted, staring at it carefully.
“I would assume so. I didn’t necessarily sense any danger, but it is from him. I got the same energy as from when the moron shot me. At the moment, I’m not getting anything off this.”
“It’s not even sealed. There is no return address, no stamps, no nothing?”
“Nope. But it’s addressed to you,” she noted, with a big fat smile, “so the next move is yours.”
He snorted at that. “Yeah? Well, I would take a holiday with my wife if I could.”
“And you will have to soon enough because there will be babies.”
At that, he bolted to his feet and asked, “Is she in labor?”
“No.” Lacy groaned. “Sit down already.”
“Good God.” He collapsed back into his chair, glaring at her.
“Stop taking everything so literally. And, for the record, she won’t pop today.”
“Yeah, you say that now, but then you say she will be early,” he muttered, with a frown. “What do you expect us all to do?”
She laughed. “I expect you to calm down and to let the babies come in their own time.”
“Well, that’ll be fine,” he groused, “so stop telling us it will be early.”
“Right,” she said, with an eye roll. “I’ll stop telling you anything.”
“Hey, that’s not fair,” he protested, turning the envelope in his hands before dumping the contents onto the table. There on top was a picture of a beautiful woman. He picked it up, staring at it, then looked at the back of the photo, where there was a notation. “She’s still waiting.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Lacy asked.
“I’m not sure,” Bullard said, “but that’s Charlie’s sister.”
“That brings us back to the same question that came up earlier. Did you have a relationship with her?” Leia asked, as she walked into the room, studying the photo.
“I did, yes,” he admitted, with a sigh, “but we’re talking about something that was an awfully long time ago, like fifteen or more years back.”
“Yet some people don’t ever really forget,” Leia murmured. “If this woman was the person who kept Charlie stable and something happened to change that, maybe that has set him off somehow. Particularly if he is thinking you were supposed to look after her, to protect her somehow, or, I don’t know, be with her maybe,” she added. “That could certainly explain the threat against me.” When she looked to Lacy for validation, Lacy nodded.
Bullard looked over at his team. Each nodded.
“Charlie’s decline is definitely connected to that woman, and you were looking for a way to contact her, right?” Lacy asked.
“Yes, but there’s a date on this, so, if she’s deceased, it’s only just recently happened. Sit tight and let me check on this.” Stepping away, Bullard made a series of phone calls. He came back and nodded. “She was killed several days ago,” he told everyone, “like fourteen days ago.”
“About ten days ago Charlie would have probably just buried her,” Leia suggested, “and would be sitting there alone, wondering at the emotions in his life, particularly if he’s on medications and his sister was looking after him.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a phone call in to his doctor right now,” Bullard said. “We should have answers very soon.” Pacing for a moment, he looked over at the women again. “The problem is, we didn’t even see this letter, but honestly I don’t know that, even if I had, I would have understood what it was all about.”
Lacy spoke up. “No, but you might have looked into it or at least recognized the photo and realized that somebody you had known had passed away. Maybe he was expecting you to reach out. Maybe he was expecting …” She stopped and shrugged. “I don’t know, but, if he has a broken mind, he would be even less likely to cope with his loss and to understand what was happening, much less to reach out in a more rational way.”
Bullard nodded. When the phone rang, he hopped up. “It’s his doctor.” He quickly identified himself, and they could barely hear Bullard, as he left the living room.
Lacy looked over at Leia. “We could go sit outside again.”
“It’s too hot for me out there now. I’ll go lie down for a bit.” With a wave of her fingers, she headed up to her bedroom.
Lacy looked over at the others. “It’s nice that she trusts Bullard enough to make all this go away.”
At that, Eton smiled. “I think, at this point in time, she knows that Bullard would go to the ends of the earth to keep her safe,” he declared comfortably. “You will have that same reassurance, once you and Bojan get your crap together.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” she muttered, stifling a sigh. “And yet … somehow, I think that process will take some time.”
“Not all that much time, I don’t think,” Eton disagreed, looking over at her. “You guys have come a very long way already, so give him the ability to move a little closer, and I think you’ll be fine.”
She smiled. “I’m really glad telling you guys our story didn’t result in everybody hating him or me.”
“No, it all made us realize how precious the time we have with our loved ones really is and how lucky we are to have them in our lives,” Eton shared. “I can’t imagine everything you guys went through, and I don’t even want to spend time or energy in that direction because it sounds horribly painful. The bottom line is that we’re all doing what we can do, and hopefully you guys will find your way through.”
Not a whole lot to say to that, but she agreed wholeheartedly. It was one of those scenarios where you hoped for the best, and meanwhile you kept on pushing forward and looking for answers.
When Bullard came back in a little bit later, his face was grim. “That’s exactly what we have going on here. With his sister there for support, Charlie has been fully functioning. He works for the delivery service. Apparently, after I fired him, Charlie had some sort of episodic break. He was on heavy medication, but then, on top of all that, losing his job with me, losing his mom, he was in a car accident and sustained more brain damage, and his condition worsened. He was under careful supervision with the sister, but she died unexpectedly after a stroke several days ago. The doctor knew that much, and the brother was supposed to go into a home, where his care could be managed, but he moved into an apartment with a friend instead and has become increasingly unstable. They’ve been looking for him so that they could get him back into a nursing home of some kind to be reevaluated.”
