Charlaine Harris - Shakespeare’s Counselor

“Aren’t they darling? I love those things,” Tamsin said, following my gaze. “My folks started giving me one a year when I was little. Then, Cliff took over.”

Despite her dishevelment, Tamsin seemed calm and in control. I felt encouraged. Maybe this wouldn’t be too bad. As soon as she explained the program, I’d call Jack. “Where do you want me to start?” I stood before her with raised eyebrows, just waiting for her word.

“How about in there?” Tamsin pointed to the hall leading to the back of the house, and I preceded her down the dark corridor.

“In here?” I asked, and turned the knob of the door at the end.

“Yep,” she said, and I just had time to turn the knob and push the door open, all the while thinking she was sounding so cheerful. I was met with a burst of sunlight, and the sight of Cliff Eggers bound and gagged with duct tape and lying on the floor.

Then she did something horrible to me, something that made every atom in my body surge, and I fell down beside him.

I had some seconds of complete disorientation. Or maybe I lost minutes. My legs had no bones in them. Talking was simply impossible, even if I’d been able to formulate a sentence. My mouth was open and I was drooling. I felt wet at my crotch; I had wet my pants. When I became aware that I was still thinking, that my thoughts could form patterns and make sense, my first clear concept was that I should avoid having that-whatever it was-done to me again, no matter what the cost. My wandering gaze happened to meet Cliff’s desperate brown eyes, and I slowly became anchored in the here and now, as unpleasant as that was.

I was still alive. That was the important thing. And I hadn’t called Jack, so I figured he’d be coming sooner or later-unless Tamsin had done something while I was mentally out of the room, something to fool Jack, too.

Of course, I felt like the biggest idiot.

Cliff’s eyes stared into mine. He was scared shitless. I didn’t blame him. But I was just as glad the duct tape across his mouth made talking impossible. I didn’t need anyone else’s fear. I had plenty of my own.

“What you gonna do?” I asked Tamsin, after tremendous effort. It was the first sentence that managed to make it out of my lips. She was holding something in her right hand, a black narrow shape, and I finally recognized it as a stun gun. I took a deep breath of sheer bitterness. Oh, gosh, who had told her where to buy one? Could it have been me? It would have been hard for me to be more angry with myself than I was at this moment, or more sickened by the human race.

“If you’re not outraged by what he’s done to me, I’m going to have to do it myself,” Tamsin said. “Then, I don’t know what I’ll do about you.”

“Why?” Though that was probably a pointless question.

Oddly, she looked like she was thinking of answering me.

“I just realized the past few days. At first, it just didn’t seem possible. That someone living with me, someone sleeping with me, someone who took my dresses to the cleaners, was trying to drive me crazy. The first stuff, the stuff in Cleveland, even that was Cliff.” Instead of looking at me, she was staring off into space, and I swear she had the most disillusioned, heartbroken expression. I would have felt sorry for her, if she hadn’t just disabled and humiliated me. “I figured out just this week that after I lost our baby, Cliff was out to kill me. He thought I did things to kill the baby. And he knew I had a lot of insurance-one big policy through work and another on my own. He thought, in my profession, getting killed wouldn’t be so strange. He was doing my transcripts for me, then. In fact, that’s where we met, at that clinic.” The narrow black device swung in her hand like a television remote control. “So Cliff transcribed my sessions with a patient who had potential for great violence, one who actually might think of killing me. I think Cliff planned to beat me to death.” She got right in my face to confide this. If I’d had the energy, the hair would have been lifting on my neck. “He could count on the investigators going through my patients, finding-this man-and arresting him.”

“And?” If I didn’t try to say too much, it came out okay. My legs were slowly feeling a little more functional. Cliff was moving a little more. She’d bound his hands in front, which wasn’t too competent. He was picking at the duct tape across his mouth.

“We moved once, in the Cleveland area, after I found a snake nailed to the door. Moving didn’t help. Then, as I’ve come to realize these past few days, Cliff stretched his fun out a little too long. Charles, my patient, died in a bar fight. Cliff had to stop. Of course, I didn’t put two and two together then.” Her face became blank, her eyes opaque. “I really thought Cliff suggested this move to Shakespeare because he was concerned about me. He gave up his business and everything to move south with me, and I believed we would be happy here. I didn’t put Charles’s death together with the end of the persecution, the end of the horrible messages on the answering machine. But Cliff told me just a few minutes ago that the police up there did make the connection, did mention-to Cliff -the possibility of my stalker being Charles. They would’ve wondered if the calls had kept coming. So here we are, and we get settled, and I think everything is going so good, and I start getting the calls again. The house is entered. There’s… poop… smeared on the door.”

Cliff had succeeded in ungagging himself. “Lily,” he said in a weak voice, “don’t let her kill me.”

I didn’t even glance at him. “Yeah?” I said to Tamsin, to encourage her to talk. The longer she talked, the more time I had to recover.

“So we decided the police had been wrong. That someone else had followed me down here. It still didn’t occur to me to suspect the most obvious person.” She shook her head at her own naivetй. “We figured-that is, I figured, and Cliff pretended to-that since the calls only came when Cliff was gone, that meant the guy was watching me, knew when I was alone. That made it more scary. Notes slid under the door, notes in my clothes-oh, God!” She shuddered and wept.

My sympathy would have been deeper if I hadn’t been sitting there in wet pants.

“Lily,” Cliff said, “I didn’t do those things. I love my wife… even though she planted the stake in the step for me to get hurt on. If you’ll just let me go, we can work this out.” He was plucking awkwardly at the duct tape around his wrists, but that was going to be much harder.

I said, “Tamsin, why’d you call me here?”

“Because you can kill him.”

I shook my head.

“You can kill him,” she repeated persuasively. “You killed a man before. This one deserves it, too. Think of what he’s done to me. He shouldn’t live!” Her face grew crafty. “What if he gets off and does this to someone else? I know from our therapy group that you have a sense of justice.”

Unhampered by the rules of law, she meant.

“You could kill him for me. We’d all be safer.”

She had condensed Cliff into every man who’d hurt a woman.

“Please do this for me! My mind is too fragile, too delicate, to sustain killing him.” She made it sound like her mind was made out of old lace. “I just don’t have the guts, the determination. I need you to do this favor for another woman.” The empty hand touched her chest. “Help your sister out.”

“You-stunned me.”

“I was afraid you’d run away before I could talk to you if I didn’t do something,” she told me, and her voice was so reasonable that I winced. “I know you, from the group. You wouldn’t sit and listen to me unless I made you. Would you? Just think about it, Lily. You have to understand this. I loved him more than anyone else in the world. He took everything away from me. I think he did something to make me lose the baby. I don’t believe in anything any more.”