In Self Defense (7 page)

Dusty Grissom was a thirty-year man, having joined the Seattle Police Department a couple of years after a stint in the military.   There wasn’t much he hadn’t seen in those thirty years, and he had a mind like a computer, filled with the particulars of every case he’d ever worked, and many he hadn’t, that he could access and process at a moment’s notice.

“I’m thinking maybe everyone was wrong about the waitress’s husband, and maybe those two cases are linked, after all,” he said now.  “And I’m wondering if this could be the start of number three.  The timing would be about right.  And I sure wish Frank Pulansky was still alive.”

“We’ve been together too long, partner,” Erin said with a chuckle in her voice.

“Why?” he asked.  “Am I reading your mind?”

“Either that, or I’m reading yours.”

“Mrs. Durant said the calls to her office started about three weeks ago, isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” Erin confirmed.

“Well then, if I remember correctly, and this is our guy,” Dusty observes, “he’s going to start calling her at home pretty soon.  And after that, there won’t be very much time.”

***

Clare was getting a very slow start on Wednesday morning.  She and James Lilly had lingered on at the Children’s Hospital benefit until well after one o’clock when it finally ended, and she had paid for it by oversleeping, so soundly, in fact, that she never even heard Richard when he got up.

For some reason, it took longer than usual to get the children out of bed and ready for school.  And then she misplaced a manuscript she had been evaluating, and she and Doreen had to ransack the house to find it.  Otherwise, she would not have been standing with the housekeeper in the middle of the library at nine-fifteen in the morning when the telephone rang.

“Hello, Clare,” the voice said when she picked up the receiver.

Clare froze.  “How did you get this number?” she gasped.

“Well, you don’t seem to want to talk to me when you’re at the office anymore,” the voice taunted.  “So I thought I’d try you here.  Since you were out so late last night, having such a good time with someone other than your husband, I had a feeling you might still be home.”

The receiver slipped out of her hands and clattered onto the hardwood floor of the library.

“What’s the matter?” Doreen asked, startled by the expression on her employer’s face.

“It’s nothing, nothing at all,” Clare assured her, getting hold of herself and calmly picking up the receiver and replacing it in its cradle.  “I just dropped the telephone, that’s all.”

It was only two days since Detective Grissom and Detective Hall had first come to her office in response to Nina’s report, and one day since they put the tap on her line to record her incoming telephone calls.  They hadn’t said anything much, but she could tell from their demeanor that they were taking this all quite seriously.  And it also seemed to her that the two detectives were continuing to spend a lot of time at Thornburgh House, on such a minor issue, really, talking to co-workers, asking endless questions about everyone she knew.  In an odd sort of way, it was almost as though they were standing guard over her.

But that was there, and this was here, and just maybe the caller was much smarter and knew a whole lot more than anyone realized.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Doreen asked.

“Yes, I’m perfectly all right,” Clare replied with a quick shake of her head.  “It was just one of those dumb crank calls.”  As if on cue, the phone rang again.  “Doreen, get that, will you?  If it’s for me, tell whoever it is that I’ve already left for work.”

The heavyset Irishwoman nodded.  “Hello?” she said into the receiver.  “This is the Durant residence.  How may I help you?”  She turned to Clare.  “There’s no one there,” she whispered.

“Never mind,” her employer said.  “Just hang up.”

***

“He called her at home,” Erin told her partner an hour later.

Dusty nodded.  “I’m not surprised,” he said.  “If this is our guy, what’s going on here is that he’s following a set pattern.  He’s thought the whole thing out and he knows exactly what he’s doing, because he’s doing it just like he did it before.”

“How do you know?”

“I checked back through all the old records.  He called Laughlin for three weeks at the club where she was working, and then he started calling her at home.  It was the same thing with Medina.  According to her roommate, he called her for three weeks at the restaurant, and then he switched over to her apartment.”

“If this is the same guy, he certainly takes his time, doesn’t he?” Erin said thoughtfully. “Three years between targets.”

“I have to tell you, I don’t see another option at the moment,” Dusty insisted.  “The Durant family has no skeletons.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve gone over the list of everyone Clare Durant knows through Thornburgh House, including both her current and past clients,” Dusty said with a nod.  “Even the writers she rejected said they appreciated that she actually took the time to sit down and talk with them about their work.  Socially, the Durants are major supporters of just about every charitable cause around here you can name.  Their friends and relatives, even their acquaintances, adore them.  And in an age of corporate double-dealing, so far as I can tell, Richard Durant is running an honest ship.”

“Well, that’s nice to know, anyway,” Erin said.

“I haven’t come across any unhappy shareholders, either.  The buzz is that Nicolaidis Industries has a very exciting new product making its way through the testing phase, and the stock has been rock solid.  What’s more, I can’t even find any disgruntled ex-employees.  In fact, there aren’t many ex-employees at all, other than from relocation or retirement, in the past ten years.  It’s just a very quiet, profitable, well-run company that’s been managing to hold its own during an up and down economy without having to lay people off or ask anyone to take a cut in pay.”

“Well, if that’s the case, then I guess we need to tell her,” Erin said with a sigh.

***

“A serial stalker?” Clare echoed in disbelief.  “What on earth would a serial stalker want with me?”

“I’m afraid there’s no way to answer that,” Dusty told her.  “But the pattern that’s beginning to emerge here is unmistakable.”

“Maybe not,” Nina said, overhearing, and stepping out of her office across the way.

“Maybe not what?” Erin asked.

“If this guy has a set pattern he follows, that starts with phone calls, then it may not be him,” Nina replied.  “Because it could have started before that.”

The two detectives looked at Clare.

“You don’t know that, and neither do I,” Clare said, glowering at her friend before turning back to the detectives.  “Which is the reason why I didn’t say anything before.”

“Well, suppose you tell us now whatever it is you didn’t tell us before,” Erin suggested.

“She was being poisoned,” Nina said before Clare could even open her mouth.

“Poisoned?” Dusty echoed.

“Please, just wait before you jump to the wrong conclusion, like Nina did,” Clare exclaimed.

“We’re waiting,” Erin said.

Exasperated, but outmaneuvered, Clare gave up.  “All right, it started last March,” she explained.  “I began having these really bad headaches, and I was tired all the time.  And my mind would suddenly go blurry for no reason and I’d get all confused about things.  Of course, the first thing I thought of was a brain tumor, so I went to the doctor, and he sent me for all the usual tests, but it wasn’t a brain tumor and no one could find anything else wrong with me, so he sent me on my way with some advice about stress and some over-the-counter remedies.”

“Which didn’t work,” Nina put in.

“No, as a matter of fact, they didn’t,” Clare conceded.  “And then a few weeks after that, the stomachaches and the vomiting began, and my hands and feet started going numb, you know how it is, like when you get pins and needles?”

Dusty and Erin nodded.

“When I told that to the doctor, he insisted I come back in for more tests.  And this time, he didn’t just take my blood, he took samples of my hair and my fingernails, too.  And a few days after that, he told me he knew what was wrong.”

“You had arsenic poisoning,” Dusty said.

Clare looked up at him.  “Yes.”

“What did you do?” Erin asked.

“Well, the first thing I did was take my children to be tested, of course,” Clare told her.  “Thank God they were all right.  Then I went home and cleaned out my house.  I mean I threw out everything that wasn’t nailed down, not just any pesticides we had around, but anything that could even remotely have become contaminated.  I cleaned out the kitchen, the bathrooms, the garage, the shed.  I even got rid of things the doctor said wouldn’t have arsenic in them, just to be sure, and then I had the whole house scrubbed from floor to ceiling and fumigated.”

“What about your husband?”

“He was fine,” Clare said.  “And so was our housekeeper.  They were both tested.”

“And were you treated?”

“Of course,” Clare confirmed.  “I had to go in for a whole series of injections.  It was the middle of June before my doctor was satisfied I was poison-free.”

“Chelation therapy,” Dusty murmured.  “Did you ever find out what was contaminated?”

Clare reached into the bottom drawer of her desk and pulled out a bottle of spring water.  “We think this was the culprit,” she said.  “I must go through half a dozen of them a day, and I’m the only one in my family who does, which is probably why nobody else in the house got sick.   I have three or four cases delivered every week, and I guess I just must have gotten a bad run of it.  I didn’t know, but apparently it’s not uncommon to find arsenic in water, and I must be hypersensitive to it.  Of course, I switched brands immediately, and I’ve had no problems since.”

“You wouldn’t still happen to have one of those bottles lying around, would you?” Dusty inquired, knowing it was probably too much to hope for.

“Good heavens, no,” Clare replied with a shudder.  “Like I said, I got rid of everything.  So you see, Nina brought it all up for nothing.  It didn’t have anything to do with your stalker.” She stared at the detectives for a moment.  “That is, I mean . . . it couldn’t have . . . could it?”

***

“I think we should check with the water bottler, just to make sure,” Dusty said as he and Erin stepped into the antiquated elevator and waited for it to make its excruciatingly slow descent to the first floor.  “Cross the t’s and dot the i’s.”

Erin nodded.  “And if we can rule out any suspicious arsenic connection, then I think we should assume that these are two unrelated incidents and we really are dealing with the stalker.  Which means, if he’s sticking to the same pattern he’s used before, he’s going to be calling her at home for a couple of weeks or so, and then I think he’s going to try to grab her.”

“We should ask for a tap on her home phone,” Dusty said.  “After that, I think we should talk to the captain about getting enough people on her.”

“This is the first real chance we’ve had in six years to get this guy,” Erin said thoughtfully.  “And with those two other cases still sitting on the shelf, somehow I don’t think we’ll have much of a problem getting all the backup we need.”

“And another thing,” Dusty said as they exited the building and headed for their car, “She didn’t want us do it, but we’re going to have to talk to her husband.”

Erin nodded.  “I know.”

***

At three o’clock that afternoon, the detectives were shown into Richard Durant’s private office.  It was the same spacious corner of the seventeenth floor that once belonged to Gus Nicolaidis.  In Gus’s time, however, the place was filled with plain, serviceable furniture.  Now, it boasted an impressive collection of antiques.

It was Dusty who took note of the Elizabethan armoire and the Louis IV desk, while Erin focused on the man behind it.  He appeared somewhat younger than his forty-eight years, with perhaps only the slightest suggestion of a middle-aged paunch beginning to set in.  He was not exactly what she would consider handsome, at least not in the traditional sense of the word, but he did have a striking look, with angular features, dark hair that was only lightly frosted with gray, and intense blue eyes.  And those eyes were now staring at the two police officers from a face that had gone suddenly quite pale.

“What are you saying?” he gasped.  “That someone is stalking my wife?”

“Unfortunately, that’s the way it’s looking right now,” Dusty was forced to say.

“But why?  Why would anyone want to harm Clare?  It doesn’t make any sense.  She’s a wonderful woman, a perfect wife, and the best mother imaginable.  And she’s totally devoted to this community.  She hasn’t an enemy in the world.  Everyone loves her.”

“Maybe for all those reasons, and maybe for none of them,” Dusty told him.  “Stalkers, especially those like the one we believe we may be dealing with here, don’t always think the way normal people do.  Because of who they are and how their lives have shaped them, it might not be unusual at all for them to target someone specifically because that person is loved and admired by others.”

Richard got up from behind the desk and walked over to the wall of windows that looked out toward the Puget Sound.