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

excited about.  We talked about the tests.  But I certainly don’t recall him saying anything to indicate that he was cutting his trip short.”

“Had he ever done that sort of thing before?” Erin inquired.

“What?” Clare responded.  “Cut a business trip short so he could spend a clandestine evening with a mistress?”

“Well, cut a business trip short, and not tell you about it.”

“If he did, then how would I know?” Clare asked politely.

“Obviously, what I mean is, did you ever find out that he had done that before?” Erin rephrased the question.

“No,” Clare replied, and then frowned.  “Where are you going with this?  What is it you’re trying to get me to say?  That I was finally so humiliated by Richard’s years of infidelity that when I heard he was coming home early I decided to shoot him?”

“Did you?” Erin countered.

Clare sighed.  “I loved my husband very much, Detective Hall,” she said.  “But I suspect he was just like any other man.  He had his strengths and he had his weaknesses.  I valued the strengths and I learned to live with the weaknesses.”

“And you’re saying you didn’t know your husband was coming home early, and you didn’t shoot him on purpose,” Erin clarified for the record.

Clare was just about to respond when the telephone rang.  She put down her teacup and rose from her chair.  “Richard’s death was a terrible thing, and I will agonize over it for the rest of my life.  But I shot what I believed was a man who was coming to kill me -- what you believed was a man who was coming to kill me,” she reminded the detective as she crossed to the desk and picked up the receiver.

“Hello, Clare,” the voice said.  “It’s been a long time since we’ve spoken, hasn’t it?”

Her startled gasp was clearly audible, and even from halfway across the large room, Erin could plainly see the panic in her eyes.  “What do you want?”

“I would have called sooner, but I know how busy you’ve been,” the voice said.  “All those people, in and out, day after day.  For a while I thought they would never go home.  And all I wanted to tell you was how sorry I am about your husband.”

“Sorry?” Clare cried into the receiver.  “It was all your fault, you sick son of a bitch!  It was you I meant to shoot.”

There was a deep chuckle at the other end of the line.  “Why Clare, I do believe you care.  And all this time I didn’t think you did.  Oh, we really have to get together, you and I.  And I can’t think of a single reason why we shouldn’t . . . now that you’re free.  Let’s make it soon, too . . . very soon.  In the meantime, I just want you to know that I thought you put on a beautiful funeral, very touching, very uplifting.”

Clare stared at Erin in alarm.  “You were there . . . at the church?” she whispered.

              “I wouldn’t have missed it,” the voice said, and hung up.

Clare stood there, with the dial tone ringing in her ear, for perhaps half a minute.  Then she replaced the receiver and returned to her chair.

“Let me tell you something I’ve learned in the last few weeks, Detective Hall,” she said softly.  “It really doesn’t matter what we do or don’t do.  It doesn’t matter how good we are or how hard we try.  None of us is going to get out of this world alive.  You can’t protect me from this maniac.  Look what happened when you tried.  I’m on my own, and I know it.  I can only hope that when he finally does come for me, it’ll be quick and painless, like it was for Richard.  And that he takes me someplace where no one will ever find me, so that my children won’t ever have to see what I saw that night after I turned on the bedroom light.”

***

Erin got back to headquarters just as Dusty was cleaning up his desk for the day.

“What?” he asked, seeing the expression on her face.

“He called again, while I was there,” she replied.  “To tell her he was at the funeral.”

“He’s really playing this for all it’s worth, isn’t he?” Dusty said thoughtfully.  “Do you think he was telling the truth?  Do you think he was at the funeral?”

“Who knows?” she said with a touch of frustration.  “We didn’t even think to video the service.”

“No, we didn’t,” he conceded.  “But there’s no point in beating ourselves up about it now.”

“I won’t, if you don’t put your coat on just yet,” she told him.

“What’s up?”

Erin shook her head.  “There’s something going on here that we’ve missed.  Call it woman’s intuition, call it PMS, call it anything you need to call it, but there’s something here that just doesn’t feel right.”

“You’ve said that before,” Dusty reminded her.  “Can you maybe give me just a little hint about what it is you’re thinking?”

              “That’s the problem,” she said.  “I don’t know.  It’s clear we’re being manipulated.  It’s just that I’m not sure anymore by who.”

              “What does that mean?” Dusty asked.

“It means I want to go back and take another look,” she told him, starting to shuffle things around on her desk in her search for the relevant files.

“Another look at what?”

“At everything, right from the beginning.  I want to talk to people we’ve already talked to, only I want to ask different questions this time.  I want to get a better handle on what was really going on.  And I want to go back to that house, and replay that night.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure,” Erin replied slowly.  “But there was something Clare said. . . . something about the light.”

***

Dr. Ahrens had not yet cleared Clare to go back to work.  “All things considered,” he said, “it really won’t hurt you to take another week or so off.”

              So Nina continued to play courier between Thornburgh House and Laurelhurst.  “It gives me a