Charlaine Harris - Shakespeare’s Counselor

“Okay, let me try.” He turned me around, and taking the precaution of using a dull table knife, he began to experiment. “A graze at the top, a true stab at the bottom, going from the left side of the back to the right.” he said. “So I think you’re right, it would have to be an overhand blow.”

“An overhand blow from someone much shorter, right?” I put our plates on the table and folded a paper napkin beside each plate. Jack got out the bread and mayonnaise, my mother’s homemade. “Cliff’s a little taller than you, huh?” Jack nodded, as he used a fork to put tomato slices on his bread. “Maybe six feet?”

Jack said, “Just barely.”

I could think of no one involved in the episodes who was short, besides a couple of the women in the group, and Tamsin herself. “Maybe Tamsin did it by accident? And they were too embarrassed to say it?”

Jack even looked good to me when he chewed, which is one of the more unattractive activities for a human being. He swallowed. “She could have mistaken Cliff for someone else, I guess, but there’s a streetlight practically in front of their house. He was attacked in the driveway, right? So how, in good light and in a place where she would expect him to be, could she knife him by accident?”

“There’s only one other new person in town,” I said, not able to think of any rebuttal. I told Jack about my conversation with Marshall, about Thea’s new lover. Jack said, “I’ve met him. He runs in the evening.”

“Joel McCorkindale does, too.” I tried to make something of that. Joel ran, Talbot ran, Joel’s wife was in the support group, and she was short. That didn’t add up to anything. This made as little sense as one of those logic problems the first time you read it through. “If Mary has a poodle, and Mary is taller than Sarah and Brenda, and Brenda’s dog is brown, read the following statements to figure out who has the dachshund.” Besides, Sandy McCorkindale might be half nuts, but I simply could not picture her catching a squirrel and hanging it in a tree. It was actually easier to imagine Sandy stabbing someone.

We ate in silence, enjoying our first summer BLT. While we washed the dishes, I asked Jack what would happen next.

“I don’t know. Stalking’s just not that common a crime, and I have no big backlog of experience with it. When I first started my apprenticeship, Roy was handling a case a little like this. The woman couldn’t get the police to take her seriously, because the intruder wasn’t doing anything to her.”

“Intruder?”

“Yeah, he was actually coming into her apartment while she was gone, sifting through her stuff. Leaving her presents.”

I made a face. Disgusting and scary.

“I agree.” Jack looked grim as he scrubbed the skillet. “Finally, she scratched up enough money to pay for around-the-clock surveillance. The spot-checking we were doing just wasn’t effective. But it didn’t take long after that. We caught him jacking off on her underwear the second day. It was her apartment manager. It was a tough case to take to court, because he had a legal key.”

“Did you win?”

“Yes. But of course she had to move, and she found she couldn’t stay in the city even after she’d moved. So he got a slap on the wrist, and her life was changed dramatically.”

Gee, that sounded familiar. I had only heard stories like that about a million times. I sighed, and asked Jack what he planned for that afternoon.

“First, I’m hitting the computer to see what background Alicia Stokes has. Then, we’re going over to Tamsin’s house and look at their driveway. Then, at some point, I plan on us having a serious session in the bedroom, there.”

I got caught between a smile and a frown. “Why are you looking into this?” I asked.

“Because it’s got you going crazy, and I can’t have that. I like you happy. We started this whole thing so you wouldn’t have nightmares any more, and I hate it that this has turned into something that makes you feel even more angry.”

It surprised me that Jack saw me as perpetually angry.

It was true, but I hadn’t wanted him to know that.

So I was being a deceiver, something I despised.

“It’s not you,” I said.

“I know that.”

“I love you.”

“I know that.”

“Does it really bother you?”

“It worries me, sometimes. If it keeps on eating at you, some day it might include me.”

“I can’t see that happening.”

“I wish I couldn’t.”

I looked down, unable to meet his eyes. Maybe he was right. He’d taken a big chance. “Thanks for helping, Jack.”

“We’ll get this solved,” he said.

“Do we have to do those things in the order listed?”

“Why, no, I guess not.”

“Could we reverse the order?”

“I bet we could.” He grinned. The scar crinkled, and his hazel eyes narrowed, the crow’s feet at their corners spreading until the smile affected his whole face.

I took a deep breath. “I’ll beat you to the bed,” I said, and got a head start.

It ended up being a tie.

Later that afternoon, Jack had to confess he was coming up empty. Alicia had no previous record. She had good credit and paid her taxes on time. Her income was not great, but adequate for the time and place. She had once been married, was now divorced. She had never been named as the mother of a child. She had never served in the armed forces.

I decided to mow the lawn that afternoon, while Jack was busy on the computer. It was easy to think while I was mowing, and I liked the look of the small yard when it was even and trim. I even used the weedeater and then swept away the clipped grass from my sidewalk. During all this work, I thought and thought, and I could not come up with any clearer understanding of the vicious cycle surrounding Tamsin Lynd. I must have been looking at it wrong, but I couldn’t seem to find a new perspective.

Jack came outside when the sun was making deep shadows. I lay on the newly cut grass, disregarding the likelihood of fire ant bites and the certainty of grass stains, and stared up into the vast blueness. My backyard is very small and runs into the slope up to the railroad tracks, and it’s overlooked by the second-floor windows of the apartment building next door and by Carlton’s rear window, but it does give the illusion of privacy. Carlton was gone, anyway, because I’d seen him pull out in his car, and the apartment on the end closest to me was vacant at the moment. So maybe we really were unobserved.

Jack stretched in the grass beside me. His hair was loose, had been since our session in the bedroom, and I knew we’d have to pick the grass bits out of it before we went to bed. But there was nothing I would rather do.

It was hot, and quiet, and the smell of the grass was sharp in our noses.

“Let’s review,” Jack said, his voice slow and sleepy.

“Okay.” I sounded just about as peppy as he did.

“Tamsin moves to Shakespeare because she’s been stalked at her previous home in Cleveland.”

“Right.”

“A detective on that case, not the primary, but one assigned to do some of the legwork, is a young detective named Alicia Stokes.”

“Check.” I closed my eyes against the relentless blue.

“Alicia Stokes becomes so fascinated by the case, so obsessed, that when Tamsin Lynd and her husband, Cliff Eggers, move to Shakespeare, eventually Alicia finds herself compelled to follow.”

“ ‘Compelled to follow.’ I like that.” I turned on my side and raised myself up on my right elbow. “Also, within a matter of months, a true crime writer whose real name is Gerry McClanahan signs on with the city police in Shakespeare. He’s a real policeman, so this doesn’t seem fraudulent to him. His secret life as a writer isn’t known to anyone… anyone we’re aware of.”