Charlaine Harris - Shakespeare’s Counselor

And she should have made him unconscious, because he was eyeing me frantically, shaking his head to deny what she was telling me. “Lily, Tamsin has just lost her mind. Don’t cater to her when she’s clearly off her rocker. I love my wife, and I’ve done everything I can to help her through this. Please don’t let her do something worse than this.” I noticed he was making progress on loosening the duct tape binding his wrists. It was difficult, but he was managing. The next time I wanted to secure someone, I wouldn’t call Tamsin to do the securing.

Tamsin went on enumerating her wrongs. Since I was still too weak to move, I had plenty of time to think. I thought it was pretty lucky their baby hadn’t been born, whatever had caused the miscarriage. What if what Tamsin was telling me wasn’t true? She was deeply disturbed. She might be mistaken, and she might just be a liar. What if she just wanted an excuse to kill Cliff, with a reasonable chance of an acquittal, or at the most a light sentence? Pretending he’d confessed his long persecution of her, pretending he’d told her he’d killed Saralynn and Gerry McClanahan, would provide an excellent story to tell a jury.

Especially with a witness like me.

She could have no serious hope that I would take the bait and do Cliff in, but she could provide a good case for herself if I was there to witness her frenzy and her anguish, even if she had to immobilize me to make me watch it. I was pretty sure Tamsin was not quite as crazy as she was making out; I was pretty sure she was making a case for temporary insanity.

But I wasn’t completely sure.

The only certainty I had was that I hated Tamsin, my counselor, who was twisting what she’d extracted from our therapy sessions to serve her own ends: my disregard for the letter of the law, my strong sense of justice. She’d ignored other things about me that were just as important, like my absolute and total hatred of people who made me feel helpless, my loathing of being physically unclean, and my dislike of being bested.

“What happened in your office when Saralynn was killed?” I asked. My speech was better, too.

“I swear to God, exactly what I told the police,” Tamsin said.

“You knew I was there,” Cliff said, his voice ragged. “You knew someone was killing Saralynn. And you hid. I wondered the whole time, does she even care enough to come out? If she’ll come out, if she’ll be brave, I won’t finish… and she yelled for you, Tamsin. You heard her. And you stayed shut in that conference room, doing nothing.”

“Lily, he’s trying to take you in just like he took me!” She was all but wailing, rocking back and forth, the stun gun still in her hand.

“You knew she was being killed,” Cliff repeated, “and you knew it was me.”

Tamsin was breathing like she’d been running, and she was pale and sweating.

“I hear what you’re saying,” I said, unable to stop myself from registering that Tamsin wasn’t the only one who had had a sad disillusionment here.

I was feeling stronger by the minute. I was going to take that stun gun away from her if I had to beat her senseless to do it. In fact, that was starting to sound very appealing.

“I’ll help you out, Tamsin,” I said, staring into Cliff’s eyes. I noticed, as I pulled myself up to my knees, that Cliff had made great progress unwrapping his wrists. In a minute, he would be much more of a factor than he was right now. I gripped the arm of a couch, and pushed myself up. I thought my muscles would all work. Upright had never felt so good.

Cliff began rolling around on the open floor like a giant bowling pin. He had given up plucking subtly at his wrist bindings. His fingers were tearing at the last wraparound of the silver tape, yanking so hard they sometimes broke his skin.

Tamsin, standing in the open doorway, looked absolutely crazed. “Kill him, Lily!” she shrieked. “Kill him kill him kill him!”

They were both using up valuable oxygen, as far as I was concerned. While Tamsin had been enumerating her woes earlier, I’d been learning the room. A sofa and an armchair divided by a small table, a television on an oak stand, and my cleaning caddy; and in it, my cell phone. It was awfully close to Tamsin, too close, I’d decided. I wouldn’t willingly get within range of that stun gun again. Somewhat closer, there was a telephone on the table between the couch and the chair.

I snatched up the phone and hit nine one one before Cliff crashed into me from behind. I went sprawling on the couch, rapping my nose sharply on the edge of the wooden arm. Suddenly there was blood everywhere, and a blinding pain.

I scrambled up as quickly as the pain permitted. Tamsin was shrieking and darting at Cliff with the stun gun, only to dodge away when he got near enough to kick at her. Seeing Cliff still rolling on the floor, his hands still bound, I realized that he was looking for something to roll up against, to provide stability so he might be able to struggle upright. I brought back my foot and kicked him as hard as I could, just as he ripped his bonds apart. I didn’t have time to choose, but my foot connected with his lower back. The jolt ran all the way up to my face and made my nose hurt even more. He bellowed in pain, and I very nearly joined him.

“That’s it, Lily! Kick the son of a bitch!” yelled Tamsin, delighted. She actually had her arms up in the air in a cheerleader gesture. No way she could get the stun gun down in time. I hoped fervently that I’d recovered enough strength to finish this. I took two strides, drew back my fist and hit her in the pit of her stomach as hard as I’ve ever hit anyone in my life. To my intense pleasure, Tamsin finally shut up. I stood swaying on my feet, watching her gag.

The moment of silence was as refreshing as a cool shower, but it ended when Jack dashed in. He stood in the doorway panting, his face dripping with sweat. “You didn’t call. How are you? Your nose is broken.” I nodded. He surveyed the floor, and looked at me. “Well, which one of them did it?”

“Hell if I know,” I said, and called the police.

Because he is a good and merciful man, Claude let Alicia Stokes interview Tamsin. “If you’re smart,” he told Alicia in his deep, rumbly voice, “you’ll learn more about being a cop in the next two hours than you have in the last year.” Jack and I were sitting in the designated waiting chairs as they came through on their way to the interview rooms. Alicia gave me a long, thoughtful look as she went into one interview room.

Claude was in charge of Cliff, whom the hospital had treated and released.

The only part I had left to play was that of incidental victim. My misery and my trembling muscles were the byproduct of the secret war between Tamsin and Cliff. They were victims of each other; at least, that’s how I figured it. How a man and a woman who both set out to do good, at least by their choices of professions, could have gone so far into the red zone of human torment is not something I care to understand.

I had gone to the hospital to have a nose X ray, and then home to shower, before I was due at the police station. I was still shaky and felt very much like some other person who bore only a distant relationship to Lily Bard. Jack made it clear I wasn’t going anywhere without him. I gave him no argument when he said he was going to drive me to the police station.

I was feeling much more like myself by the time Alicia and Claude sat down with me to go over what Tamsin had said before Jack came in like the cavalry. From the direction their questions took, I pieced together the public line they would take in their prosecution.

Claude believed that most of what Tamsin had said was true. But he thought that Tamsin must have realized Cliff’s intentions earlier than she alleged. In fact, he thought the move to Shakespeare had been conceived by Tamsin, who believed a small town’s less experienced and sophisticated police department would not be able to solve any crimes committed on its turf, provided the criminal was clever. Well, as Claude put it, the hell with her.