Inside the van, a startled Dusty and Erin looked at each other. Apparently, their stalker knew far more than they realized, and he was taking great pleasure in letting them know it.
***
Richard was as good as his word. First thing Saturday morning, he took Clare out onto the back lawn, and showed her how all the parts of the Beretta 9mm semiautomatic worked.
“A gun is not a toy,” he told her. “And you never point it at someone unless you intend to shoot.” He took her hands and wrapped them around the gun. “Get a feel for it, for how heavy it is, for where the balance point is. Get comfortable holding it.”
It was a heavy, cold, ugly thing. “Is it loaded?” she asked, properly intimidated.
“No, it isn’t,” he said. “First things first.”
After she had held it for a while, he showed her how to release the hammer, and then how to curl her finger around the trigger and pull it back. Click. Click. Click.
“How many times will it fire?” she asked.
“The clip holds sixteen rounds,” he told her. Then he showed her how to aim. “If your target is within fifteen feet of you, just point the damn thing in the general direction and fire,” he said. “You’re sure to hit something. Maybe not fatally, but enough to slow him down anyway. But if the target’s farther away than that, then you’ll want to hold the gun up to eye level and look down the barrel to aim. Each time you fire, there’ll be a recoil, so you have to try to keep it as steady as you can.”
He let her practice for a bit, while he put a metal bucket on a wooden stake, and stuck it into the ground, perhaps thirty feet away. Then he slipped a clip into the gun, which almost doubled its weight. “Okay now,” he said, “pretend that bucket is coming at you.”
Clare held the gun with both hands, raising it to eye level and looking down the barrel as he had showed her, and then slowly she squeezed the trigger. Several shots exploded within a second and the bucket bounced high in the air.
“I hit it! I hit it!” she cried.
“Yes, you did,” Richard conceded, a bit surprised. He retrieved the bucket, noting there were two punctures in its exterior before he put it back on the stake, and stuck it back in the ground, this time about fifteen feet away. “Okay, now try it.”
Clare dropped the Beretta to her side for a moment, thinking how odd she must look in bathrobe and neck brace, shooting a pistol at a defenseless bucket. Then she swung the gun up, pointed it in the general direction of the bucket, and started firing. This time, several of the bullets punctured the metal.
“I did it -- I hit it again!” she cried, delighted.
“I don’t think you need any more instruction,” Richard told her with a little chuckle, trying to pry the gun from her fingers. “I think you can defend yourself just fine.”
“I hope I never need to us this,” Clare said, giving the Beretta up. “But it’s nice to know that it’s there.”
***
“Hello, Clare,” the voice said.
It was late, after eleven o’clock. Clare was in bed and almost asleep, and Richard was sprawled on the loveseat in the alcove, rereading a report from the plant in Burlington. They were supposed to have attended a major fundraising event for the Seattle Repertory Theater that evening, being, as it was, one of Clare’s special projects. But because of the accident, they had begged off.
“Hello,” she said.
“You didn’t go out tonight,” the voice observed. “And it was such an important affair that I was worried about you.”
“You needn’t have been worried,” she said. “I was just tired, that’s all.”
“I’m glad to hear that. You see, I didn’t want you to have a setback. Because it’s almost time.”
“Time for what?”
“Time for us, of course.”
“Is that why you called?”
“Yes, I wanted to tell you not to worry, it won’t be much longer. I’ll be coming for you very soon. Do you know how I picture our first meeting?”
“How could I?” she asked.
“I picture our coming together as an unexpected delight. You’ll be lying naked in a field of orange poppies, with your hair spread out over the petals. And when I come upon you, almost by accident, I’ll take one of those petals and draw it slowly over your creamy body.” There was a sound of sucking breath from the other end of the line. “I get really excited dreaming about that.”
“And that’s exactly where it will stay,” she said as she hung up. “In your dreams.”
“Okay, that’s it,” Richard declared. “I’m canceling my trip on Tuesday.”
“Don’t be silly,” Clare told him. “You have to go to Burlington and evaluate those tests for yourself. Didn’t you tell me that was the only way you’d know whether the new design was really working or not?”
“So that’s the plan -- I go off to Vermont, while you sit here and wait for this lunatic to show up?”
“I’m not afraid of him anymore,” she said, and meant it. “I promise I won’t leave the house unless it’s for a good reason, and even then, I won’t go alone. Doreen will be here. And if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll keep the gun under my pillow.”
“What about Thursday?”
Doreen regularly had off from one o’clock on Thursday afternoons to one o’clock on Friday afternoons, as well as every other Sunday. “I’ve already taken care of that,” Clare said. “I can’t ask Doreen to give up her day off again. It wouldn’t be fair, and besides, she needs it. So I’ve asked Nina to spend the night with me.”
Richard sighed. “And the police -- they really think this is a good idea?”
“They want to catch him, and I want him out of our lives,” Clare said reasonably. “I have no idea whether it fits his plan or not, but it sounds like your being out of town next week may be just what he’s waiting for. And if it is, I know that Detective Hall and Detective Grissom are going to be ready.”
***
As it turned out, Dusty, Erin, and a good part of the West and North Precincts were going to be ready for the stalker when he made his move.
“We can’t be visible anywhere near the house,” Dusty told a task force of sixteen officers. “Make no mistake, our guy is sharp. He’ll smell a stakeout a mile away. But his downfall may be thinking he can outsmart us.”
“If we can’t be visible, where are we going to be?” one of the officers wanted to know.
“We’ve gotten permission from the neighbors on either side of the Durant home,” Erin told him.
“Permission for what?”
“To use their property,” she explained. “For the next three nights, the Bennetts and the Corcorans are going to be entertaining. We’ll drive right in, in unmarked cars and plain clothes, just as though we were invited, and park in their driveways. And then we’re going to wait and we’re going to listen, from inside and out.”
“Listen to what?”
“We’re going to wire the house,” Dusty said, “and the minute we either see or hear him, we’ll block both ends of the street to cut off his escape, and then we’ve got him.”
“But what if he gets into the house before we can stop him and kills her right on the spot?”
“That hasn’t been his MO,” Erin said. “He took his first two victims out of their homes, to an isolated area by Green Lake. He likes to spend time with them, tormenting them and torturing them, before he rapes and mutilates them, and then kills them. It’s part of his need to be in complete control. And our profiler thinks it’s not the kind of control he can exert in someone else’s house.” The detective sighed. “But again, anything we see or hear that’s not what it should be, we can be in the house in less than two minutes.”
“He could do one hell of a lot of damage in less than two minutes,” someone remarked.
“We’re also going to equip Mrs. Durant with a panic device,” Dusty added. “On the off-chance that she might know he’s there before we do, all she has to do is press the butt
on.”
“Sounds a bit risky, if you don’t mind my saying so,” someone else observed.
“If you’ve got a better suggestion, let’s hear it,” Dusty urged.
“What if we put a couple of us inside the house?” the officer suggested. “We’d have transmitters, so we could communicate. We could be on him before he takes a step.”
“We thought of that,” Erin said. “But we have reason to believe that he’ll know about it, and then we don’t think he’ll bite. He may be certifiable, but he’s not stupid. He wants to beat us, but he’s not going to play against a stacked deck. Based on his history, and on some of the things he’s said in his recent calls, we believe the timing is right, but only if he thinks he has a level playing field.”
“Like it or not, we’re a part of his game now,” Dusty told them. “He knows we’re onto him, and he can’t shake us loose, so he’s going to try to outsmart us. According to our profiler, that would be his crowning glory -- getting her out right under our noses. But his eagerness to show us up just might make him careless.”
“I know it’s our job to get the bad guys,” a third officer commented, “but isn’t it also to protect people like Clare Durant?”
“Yes, of course it is,” Erin replied.
“Well, it seems to me you’re putting her at great risk.”
“That’s not our intention,” Dusty told him.
“Sure it is,” another officer said. “You’re using her as bait, aren’t you?”
The two detectives exchanged glances.
“We’re going to get this guy,” Erin said flatly. “And we believe we can do that without any harm coming to Clare Durant.”
Five
As abruptly as they had begun, the telephone calls stopped. There were no calls on Sunday, nor were there any on Monday.
“What’s going on?” Dusty wondered aloud. “Is he on to us? Did we screw up somehow?”
“Let’s check back on Laughlin,” Erin suggested. “Did the calls stop at any time before he snatched her?”
They went back over the files. Sure enough, the stalker’s phone calls had stopped three days before Linda Laughlin had been abducted from her home.
“If we’re figuring right, this means we should be good for tomorrow,” Dusty told the team.
***
Richard’s suitcase was packed and he was ready to go at six-thirty on Tuesday morning. His Mercedes was waiting out front. He would park it in a special garage at Seatac Airport before taking the cross-country flight to Burlington, Vermont, where a whole new concept in X-ray technology, the most exciting and innovative product that Nicolaidis Industries had developed in decades, was in the process of being tested.
“I don’t have to go,” Richard said, sitting down on the bed beside his wife.
“Yes, you do,” Clare told him. “Now don’t worry about me.”
Richard sighed, looking torn. “If anything happens to you while I’m gone, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself, you know that,” he said.
Clare smiled. “I promise to still be here when you get back,” she said. “Now get out of here, before you miss your plane.”
He kissed her gently on the cheek and left. Clare heard him go down the stairs and out of the house. When she heard the front door close behind him, she took the loaded Beretta from the drawer in the nightstand next to her side of the bed and slipped it under her pillow.
***
It was her first day out of the house since the hospital, and it felt so good to sit beside Doreen in the Plymouth Voyager and watch the driveway slip away beneath them, and then the house grow smaller and finally disappear behind the hedges as they turned onto Lakeview Way. It didn’t look like a prison, but, over the past week, her home had begun to feel a lot like one.
Clare was more than content to have Doreen drive. Unlike what Julie was being taught during her riding lessons about getting right back on the horse if you fell off, she had no interest in getting back behind the wheel herself. Her little brush with death had scared her far more than she was willing to acknowledge.
But it was wonderful to be free. Even just to be going to Ballard for a checkup with her doctor was enough to make her feel euphoric. Clare opened the window, leaned back against the seat, and sucked the mild October air deep into her lungs.
Doreen, glancing over, smiled. Neither of them paid any attention to the nondescript brown car that passed them, driving in the opposite direction.
***
Clare had known Dr. Robert Ahrens her entire life. He was a kindly man, older and more stooped now than he used to be, of course, with a short grizzled beard and thick eyeglasses. After he finished his examination, he straddled a stool in front of her.
“Well, the good news is, you don’t need to wear the collar fulltime anymore,” he said. “Just when you feel the need for a little extra support.”
“That is good news,” Clare told him with a smile.
“The bad news is, I guess I don’t have to tell you what a lucky young lady you are.”
“No, you don’t,” she agreed.
“Fine. Then you’ll do exactly as I say, and continue to take things easy. I don’t mean that you have to stay in bed, but I don’t want you even thinking about going back to work, not for at least another month.” Clare sighed deeply at that, but Ahrens pretended not to notice. “Nor are you even to consider getting behind the wheel of a car any time soon.”
“Trust me, you don’t have to worry about that,” she assured him with a grimace.
“You’re still experiencing headaches and dizziness, which means that the swelling from the concussion hasn’t completely resolved itself yet,” he continued. “And although you’ve regained your mobility and your spine seems to have stabilized nicely, any unexpected tweaks could reactivate the trauma.”
“I promise I’ll behave, Doctor,” she said the way she used to as a little girl.
“Stay home, rest, relax,” he advised wisely. “Take some time to smell the roses. Give your body, and your mind, the chance to heal. This is the third close call you’ve had in less than a year, you know. That’s got to have cost you something, not just physically, but emotionally. Give yourself time to deal with it, to come to terms with it.”
“Does it seem to you that I’ve been putting myself in harm’s way a lot lately?” she asked suddenly.
“Well, I don’t know as I’d put it exactly that way,” Ahrens responded. “But you do seem to have a lot on your plate these days, and I think some time set aside for a bit of quiet contemplation may do you more good than any medicine I could prescribe.”
She didn’t tell him about the stalker. She just smiled, gave him her customary hug, and departed.
***
Clare was quiet on the way home. She leaned her head back against her seat and closed her eyes.
“Even a little trip like this was too much for you,” Doreen observed, as she turned the Voyager onto Lakeview Way and then into the circular drive that fronted the sprawling Tudor house. “I’ll fix you some lunch and then you’re going down for a nap.”
“You sound just like my mother,” Clare remarked with a tired little smile.
“That’s because she keeps talking in my ear,” the housekeeper declared with a chuckle.
Doreen Mulcahy had taken care of Helen Nicolaidis for the last four years of her life, when Clare’s mother no longer had any desire to do for herself. After her death, Clare had coaxed Doreen into making the move from Ballard to Laurelhurst. Once she agreed, the Durants became her responsibility. And it was a responsibility she took very seriously.
She had three grown children of her own, one who lived in Spokane, one who lived in Portland, and the third who had recently relocated to San Francisco. And right up front, before she would even take the job, she insisted on having three weeks of vacation time, because, as she said, she liked to visit each child once a year.
“She drives a harder bargain than some of my customers,” Richard re
marked.
Doreen’s husband, a womanizer from the get-go, had gone out to the store one night, just after their youngest child turned two, and never come back. Nor had any of them heard so much as a word from him since. Richard offered to hire someone to track the deadbeat down for her, but Doreen shook her head.
“I might have taken you up on that a while back, when times were tough, and I needed some help,” she told him. “But now that my kids are all grown and out on their own, I have no use for him. So if it’s all the same to you, let’s just leave him under whatever rock he calls home.”
Now, as she pulled the Voyager to a halt in the driveway and assisted Clare out of the vehicle, she made a mental note to suggest to Mr. Durant that his wife might benefit enormously from a stay at the beach house they owned on Maui.
They walked up the broad stone steps, and Clare inserted her key and unlocked the front door. In the foyer, propped up against the curved wooden stair railing, was a huge mass of orange poppies.
Clare let out a scream.
Doreen gasped. “How did anyone get in here?” she cried. “The house was locked.” But she didn’t hesitate. She ran to the telephone and called the police.
***
“I know how he got in,” Erin declared after she had done her own thorough examination of the house. “One of the back windows was unlocked.”
“I don't know how I could have overlooked it,” Doreen said, shaking her head. “I was sure I checked everything.”
“He’s sending a message, that’s for sure,” Dusty remarked.
“But walking into the house in broad daylight,” Erin mused. “That’s pretty brazen. How did he know there wasn’t an alarm system on?”
“The house does have an alarm system,” Doreen acknowledged. “But this is such a safe neighborhood, I can’t remember the last time we needed to use it.”
“We may have to rethink that,” Dusty murmured.
The doctor was summoned. He arrived within the hour, and Clare was put to bed with a sedative.
In Self Defense Page 9