In Self Defense (35 page)

James thought about that for a moment, and then shook his head.  “If he’s still here, and he’s been following the story, then he shouldn’t be offended, he should be flattered,” he said.  “After all, we were emulating an expert.”

Unexpectedly, her eyes filled up.  “I didn’t want to kill Richard, you know,” she whispered, her words beginning to thicken.  “Really, I didn’t.  I just didn’t want to die.”

James frowned.  “But I don’t understand -- you knew there was no stalker coming for you that night,” he reminded her.  “You knew it was only me playing the part.  So somewhere, down deep, you must have wanted Richard dead.”

Clare shook her head.  “All I really wanted was for him to love me,” she said, choking up.  “For twenty years, that’s all I ever really wanted . . . only he never did.  It was Nicolaidis Industries he loved . . . and then Stephanie Burdick.”

“I remember my mother used to say something like that,” James murmured.  “She used to say all she ever wanted was a man to love her.  I loved her.  And all I ever wanted was for her to look at me, and love me as much as I loved her.  But I was just a kid.  I guess I couldn’t give her what she needed.”  He reached over and gently touched Clare’s hair with the tips of his fingers.  “You remind me of her, you know,” he said.  “She had blonde hair and brown eyes, just like you.”

“Did she?”

“Yes, she did.”

“That’s nice,” Clare said, but it was clear that her mind was somewhere else, lost in thoughts of what could have been or should have been but never was, and she was not really paying attention.

Suddenly, James jumped up and held out his hand to her.  “Come on, this isn’t a time to be gloomy, this is a time to celebrate,” he said.  “Let’s get out of here.  Let’s go for a drive somewhere.  You’ve been cooped up in this place for way too long.  Let’s go find ourselves some nice fresh air to breathe.”

Clare hesitated.  “I really don’t want to have to see people,” she told him.  “I’m not in what you’d call a very social mood.”

“That’s okay, I understand,” he said with a shrug.  “It’s all right.  I know a place we can go.  It’s one of my favorite spots. I go there all the time, and I promise you -- there won’t be another soul around.”

***

“How was your turkey day?” Dusty inquired of his partner on Friday morning.

“It was okay,” Erin said.  “The family didn’t beat up on me too much.”  Actually, it was only one of her brothers who had given her a hard time, and even that was done with affection.

“So then, are you ready to come back on the job?”

Erin sighed, wondering if doing her job would ever be the same again.  “Sure,” she said, “why not?”

“In that case, I’ve got some news that should make you feel a whole lot better.”

              “What’s that?”

“Apparently, the chief has been indulging in one of his semi-annual ‘it’s time to get organized’ spells, and you know what happens when that happens.”

“He starts making waves.”

“Precisely.”

“So?”

“So, the latest wave made its way all the way down to archives,” he told her, “which means that they’ve been doing a heap of cleaning up the past few weeks.”

“What is it -- a slow time at the police department?” Erin wanted to know.

“More like too many instances of evidence going missing, I suspect,” Dusty said.

“And?”
“And you’ll just never guess what they found.”

Erin scowled at him.  “If I’ll never guess, then you’d just better tell me,” she said, wondering why he was playing this silly game with her.

“Remember the audio tapes that were made of our stalker calling Laughlin?” he asked.

“How could I forget?” Erin said.  “Those were the ones we couldn’t find when we wanted to compare them to the Durant tapes.”

“Right,” Dusty confirmed.

“So?”

“So, they found them -- neatly tucked into the wrong evidence box, of course.”

“Well, what do you know?” Erin muttered, shaking her head.  “Better late than never, I guess.”

“Even better than that,” Dusty declared with a big grin.  “They sent them over to the lab and the lab boys ran them, and the report just hit my desk.  We didn’t wind up with egg all over our faces, after all.  They’re a spot-on match.  The guy is so cocky, he didn’t even bother to use a different voice changer.  We were right.  We had our stalker.  We had him right down to the short hairs.”

“Great,” Erin said.  “So we were right before we were wrong.  Now all we have to do is wait four years until he surfaces again, and then let someone else bungle it.”

“Well now,” he said with an even bigger grin, “before you go feeling all sorry for yourself, there’s something else we can add to the profile that should help if there’s a next time, and that might explain why there’s such a long gap between victims.”

“Yes -- what?”

“A bunch of notes left by Frank Pulansky got mixed in with the tapes,” Dusty told her.  “According to him, there was something that Laughlin and Medina had in common that was never made public.  And it fits Clare Durant, too.”

“And just what would that be?” Erin asked.

“They’re all brown-eyed blondes.”