In Self Defense by Susan Sloan (phonics books .TXT) 📕

“We’ll try not to let that happen,” Erin assured her easily.  “But now I need to ask if you would have any problem with our putting a tap on your phone?”

“Can you do that here?”

“Yes, I think we can.  There’s a main number listed for the company, but as you pointed out, many of the sub-lines go directly to individual phones, so we ought to be able to isolate yours without having to interfere with any of the others.”

Clare sighed.  “If you can do that, and not bother anyone else, I don’t suppose I’d have a problem with it.  But I think you should talk to Mr. Thornburgh first.”

“My partner is doing that as we speak,” Erin told her.

The telephone rang again, and without hesitating this time, Clare picked it up.

“Hello, Clare,” the voice said.  “I must have missed you earlier.  Or are you letting my calls go to voicemail now?”

Clare stifled a gasp.  “I’ve been busy,” she managed to say, motioning to Erin to come closer, and then moving the receiver out just a bit so that the detective could listen in.

“Yes, I’m sure, but don’t do that again,” the voice advised flatly.  “I have no interest in talking to a machine.  When I call, it’s because I want to talk to you, and it’s going to make me very unhappy if you try to brush me off, do you understand?”

Clare did not respond.

“Do you understand?” the voice repeated.

“Yes,” Clare whispered.  “I’m sorry.”

“Good,” the voice crooned.  “Because all I wanted was to say goodnight to you before you left work for the day.”

Erin gestured at her to keep talking, and Clare tried frantically to think of something she could say.  “That’s very nice of you,” was the best she can do.

“Why Clare, I think that’s the first kind word you’ve ever spoken to me,” the voice declared with just a hint of mockery.  “Dare I hope it means you’re starting to like me just a little?”

Without even hesitating, Clare slammed down the receiver.  “What did you have to make me do that for?” she demanded of the detective, an unmistakable shiver running the whole length of her body.  “My God, now he thinks I’m encouraging him.  Don’t you understand -- I don’t want to encourage him?”

“It’s all right, take it easy,” Erin reassured her calmly.  “I just wanted to listen to him for a minute.”

Clare hit the button that accessed her voicemail.  “You want to listen to him?” she said with a shudder.  “Here, be my guest, listen to your heart’s content.”

Among the dozen or so messages left for Clare this day were three from the caller.

***

Erin sat at her kitchen table, going through her notes on the Durant case.  It wasn’t a kitchen, exactly, as kitchens were usually defined, but rather a kitchenette, a corner of the studio apartment on Capitol Hill she had called home for the past fifteen years that housed a small refrigerator, a two-burner stove, a sink, a counter, an upper cabinet, a lower cabinet, and a microwave oven.

Given her circumstances, she knew she could have afforded a considerably bigger and better place to live, but this one was familiar and comfortable, the neighbors were quiet and minded their own business, and it was certainly easy to keep clean and neat.  There was a minimum amount of furniture -- a sofa, a chair, an end table, a coffee table, a bed, a nightstand, a bureau -- but an overabundance of books that filled a floor-to-ceiling bookcase.  Material things had never been very important to Erin.  Ideas were.

She had grown up in a house that held too many people to allow for a lot of clutter, but there had always been ample occasion for serious conversation -- around the dinner table, in front of the television set, out on the back porch.  Her father took advantage of every opportunity to instill in his seven children the need for education, intellectual achievement, and success.

Native Americans didn’t always get a fair shake in this country, even after almost four hundred years of occupation, he often told them.  But that didn’t mean you sat around and cried into your whiskey about it.  And it didn’t mean you sat around and waited for good fortune to drop into your lap, either.  It meant you got up off your butt and went out and made it happen for yourself.

He was proud of how he earned his living as a cop, but he wanted his children to do better, if they could.  It took.  One of Erin’s brothers was an Indian Rights attorney, two were engineers -- one computer and one mechanical, and the fourth was a veterinarian.  Both of her sisters were teachers.  Erin, the youngest, was the only one who had forsaken college and followed in her father’s footsteps, and she had never really been sure whether he was pleased about that or not.  She didn’t ask him when she could, and now it was too late.  He was killed in the line of duty six years ago next month, four months before he was scheduled to retire.  But what she could do was be the best damn police officer she knew how to be, and for that, she had a great role model.

The notes in front of her included everything she had been able to lay her hands on about Clare Durant and her husband.  For example, she now knew that Clare was thirty-eight years old and the only child of Gus and Helen Nicolaidis, both deceased.  She also knew that Clare graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in English literature, and that she had worked as an editorial assistant at Thornburgh House from 1997 to 2000.  It wasn't clear in anything Erin had read whether hiring her had been because of a personal connection to the family, but Glenn Thornburgh’s brother had worked for Gus Nicolaidis.

Clare married Richard Durant in 2000, gave birth to their first child, a girl, two years later,