Shakespeare's Counselor

Tamsin was looking lumpy and lost in her Wal-Mart workout ensemble of cotton shorts and black sports bra, topped with a huge T-shirt that must have been borrowed from her husband. Cliff was not faring any better, projecting discomfort and uncertainty though he was wearing an old pair of sweatpants that he must have saved from college and an equally ancient T that was full of holes.



"What a role reversal," Tamsin said, with a wan smile. "Here we are in your place of power, instead of mine."



She hadn't taken the words right out of my mouth, since I never would have said that out loud, but she'd taken the thoughts right out of my head. And it was interesting that she thought of the health center as her "place of power." The assault that had taken place in her own office must have shaken her to her mental and emotional foundations. Considering that, she'd made a great recovery.



"You're gonna start coming in every morning?"



"Well, we're going to try. Cliff and I both have been eating too much; we've just been so nervous. That's what I do when I'm nervous, I head for the doughnuts. Jeez, do you have any body fat at all?"



"Sure," I said, feeling awkward.



"I'm glad you feel well enough to come in this morning," Tamsin said, her dark eyes uncomfortably sympathetic.



"Thanks for your visit while I was in the hospital," I said dutifully. "I enjoyed the flowers."



"When I lost my baby ..." she began, to my discomfort. But just at that moment, Cliff gestured to her to rejoin him, since the young man was explaining yet another piece of equipment.



I left before Tamsin could speak to me again, on purpose. At the moment, I didn't want to assume anyone else's problems, since my own were bearing down on me.



But later that day, I would've been glad to have listened to Tamsin talk her heart out. Correction. Maybe not glad, but I would have tolerated it with a much better grace. Hanging around doing nothing was not a state of affairs I was used to. I cleaned my kitchen cabinets, slowly and carefully, only slightly violating Jack's dictum. I was in a silent house, since Jack had assumed my stakeout on Beth Crider. He called home once on his cell phone to find out how I was feeling and to tell me he was having no more luck catching her out than I'd had.



That night, when he was drying the dishes while I washed, Jack expressed disgust that we hadn't closed the books on Beth Crider.



"Maybe she's really hurt," I said, without conviction.



"Huh." Jack didn't seem troubled by doubt about that. "In the years I've been a private detective, I've investigated one case where the guy was really hurt as badly as he claimed. One. And every now and then, I still drive by his house to check, because I can't quite believe it."



"The level of cynicism here is pretty deep."



"Absolutely. Did you have any time to check Beth's credit rating today?"



"Sure did," I said. Jack had a computer program that seemed able to call up anything about an individual's financial history. To me, it seemed frightening that he didn't have to produce any kind of ID, or explain his purpose, in buying this program. Joe Doe could buy one as easily as law enforcement personnel. "If I did everything right, nothing seems to have changed on her credit history."



"Then she's smarter than most of them, but we'll nail her," he said, confidence running strong in his voice. "Next week, you can take over surveillance, if you feel well enough. I should spend some time in the office, returning phone calls."



I managed to keep my face still, but I had to acknowledge to myself that I was feeling gloomy. Jack would be spending some nights in Little Rock next week. He had rented a room in his friend Roy Costimiglia's house, the room vacated by Roy's son when he'd gotten married the year b t ,;e. Jack could come and go as he pleased and not bother with renting an apartment, so the arrangement suited him perfectly. I'd known when Jack moved in with me that he would have to stay in Little Rock some of the time. I just hadn't counted on missing him.



"Sure," I said. "Listen, did you find out anything else about Saralynn's murder?" Jack and Claude had shared a beer the night before while Carrie and I talked. Claude had kind of taken to Jack, since there were few people in town he could talk to freely. Jack, an outsider experienced in law enforcement and married to a woman who didn't gossip, was heaven-sent to Claude.



"I don't think they're making any progress on the case," Jack said, "though maybe I'm reading in between the lines. And the new detective - well, everyone except the new guy, McClanahan, has come to Claude to complain about her. Too Yankee, too black, too tough."



"You'd think they'd want a fellow officer to be tough."



"Not if she's a woman, apparently. She ought to be able to back them up on the street, but then she ought to let them take the lead in everything else. And she ought not to want to be promoted as much as they do, because they deserve it more, having a wife and children to support."



"Oh," I said, enlightened.



"Right."



"You think she's crippled as a police officer, down here?"



Jack mulled this over, as he brushed back his hair and secured it at the nape of his neck.



"No, but she'll have to try like seven times as hard as a guy, and probably twice as hard as a Southern white woman," Jack said. "I'm glad I'm not in her shoes."



That very day, who should drop by to see me but Detective Alicia Stokes. I opened the door, hoping I didn't look as surprised as I felt. Instead of her career clothes, Stokes was looking good in walking shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt, serious walking shoes instead of sandals at the end of her long legs.



"You feeling better?" Stokes asked, but not as if she actually cared.



"I'm fine," I said with equal enthusiasm.



"I need to talk to you."



"Okay." I stood back and let her into the (by now) spotless little house. "Would you like a Coke?" Letting Jack do the grocery buying had had its consequences. He had gotten a bag of Cheetos, too.



"Sure."



"What kind?"



She stared at me.



"You said Coke. That's what I want."



I didn't bother explaining that I called all soft drinks "Coke," like most Southerners. I just got her some. I didn't often drink carbonated drinks, but I joined her in a glass. Once I'd gotten her settled in a chair, and had satisfied the dictates of hospitality, I asked Alicia Stokes what I could do for her.



"You can tell me what you think about Tamsin Lynd."



"Why do you care what I think?"



"Because everyone in the damn town says you are the one to ask."



I found that inexplicable. But it seemed to me that it would look like I was being falsely modest if I asked for her to tell me more about that, so I shrugged and told her I hardly knew Tamsin well.



"And she's your counselor?"



"Yep."



"Because you were raped."



"Yes."



"All right. What kind of job do you think she's doing?"



"A pretty good one."



"How do you figure that?"



I said carefully, "Those of us who weren't talking at the beginning are talking now. I don't know how she did it, and maybe she didn't have a lot to do with it at all, but it's a fact that we're all dealing with what happened to us, in some way or another." There, hadn't I put that well?



"You think I'd fit in the group?"



"No."



"Why not? Cause I'm Yankee? Cause I'm black?"



"Tamsin's a Yankee. Firella is black."



"Then why?"



"Because you haven't been raped."



"How do you know that?"



I shook my head. "You wouldn't have to worry about fitting in with the counseling group if you had been raped." And that mark just wasn't on her, though I wasn't about to say that. She'd ask me how I knew, and I just couldn't tell her. The mark was not on her.



"So, in your opinion, how can I get close to this woman?"



"Why do you want to?"



"I need to watch her."



I was getting a growing feeling of doom.



"It's her," I said.



"What?"



"It's her. You took a leave of absence from the Cleveland force to watch her."



"How did you know that?"



I shrugged.



"You better tell me now."



"Jack made a few phone calls." I didn't want her to think I'd had a look at her personnel records or learned something out of school from Claude.



She sat back in her chair, tall and black and tense and angry.



"I know about you, too."



"Most people do."



She didn't like that. I didn't like her. I felt a certain grudging admiration for someone who would pursue a case with such relentless determination. At the same time, it seemed kind of nuts. Like the man who'd pursued Jean Valjean... what was his name? Inspector ... Javert, that was it.



"What about this has you so hooked?" I asked, in honest puzzlement.



"I think she's doing it herself," Alicia Stokes said. She sat forward, her long hands capping her knees, her Coke forgotten on the table beside her. "I think she's fooling everyone, and I can't let her get away with it. The man-hours we wasted in Cleveland... enough to work four extra cases, cases where people really needed us. As opposed to trying to protect one neurotic woman who's actually persecuting herself. She had everyone else fooled. Everyone."



I gave Stokes a long hard look. "You're wrong," I said.



"On what basis?"



"She's done good. She can't be that crazy. We would know."



"Oh yeah? You a licensed shrink? You know there have been cases like this before. They're almost all women. All the men, they feel sorry for the poor persecuted woman. They feel frustrated because they can't protect her from the evil demon who's doing this to her. Then it turns out she's doing it all herself!"



Alicia Stokes certainly believed what she was saying. I looked down at my hands, considering. I was trying to reconfigure my world, trying to see Tamsin as Stokes saw her. Tamsin, with her medical transcriptionist husband and her little old house. Tamsin, with her nice conservative clothes and her plump belly, her good mind, her compassionate nature. Nothing I got from Tamsin added up to the kind of emotional horror that could plan and execute such clever schemes against herself.



But I could be wrong. As the detective had pointed out, I was no therapist.



What if Stokes was right? The consequences - to me, to the whole group - would be devastating. We had all placed our trust in each other and begun to build on that; but the basis of this trust was the foundation laid by Tamsin Lynd.



I looked up to find the detective leaning forward, waiting patiently for me to finish my thoughts.



"Could be, couldn't it?"



"I guess," I said, my voice reluctant and unhappy. "I guess you realize that your own behavior is pretty damn fishy."



Stokes was startled, and almost lost her temper. For a long, tense moment, I could see the war in her face. Then she pinched her lips together, breathed in and out, and collected herself. "I know that," she said.



"It's not my business," I said slowly, surprising myself by telling her what I was thinking, "but what are you going to do when this is over? Sooner or later we will know the truth. The Cleveland Police Department may not take you back. Claude will be very angry when he finds he hired you under false pretenses. How did you get past his checking your references?"



"My superior owed me the biggest favor in the world," Alicia Stokes said. She put the palms of her big hands together, bumped her chin with the tips of her fingers. I'd seen her make the gesture before, and it seemed to indicate that she was feeling expansive. "So I knew when Claude called him, he'd get a good recommendation from Terry. I passed the physical and psychological tests, no problem." She smirked. "The others were glad I was going. They wouldn't say anything - or I might stay."



I tried not to let my surprise show on my face. Quite a change of heart, here: Stokes was sharing more than I wanted her to. But then I thought, Whom else could she talk to? And she must want to talk, want it desperately.



Detective Stokes needed a good therapy group.



Something twittered in the room. I looked around, startled.



"It's my phone," Stokes said. She pulled it from a small pouch clipped to her belt. "Yes?" she said into the unfolded phone, which looked very small in her hand.



Her face became hard as she listened, and the fire burned hotter in her eyes. "I'll be there," she said abruptly. The phone went back into the depths of her purse. "Take me to Tamsin Lynd's house," she said.



So she'd walked to my place. As I grabbed my keys, I looked back at the detective. Oddly, Stokes looked almost happy - or at least, less angry.



"Is Tamsin all right?" I asked, venturing onto shaky ground.



"Oh, yes, little Miss Counselor is just fine. It's her husband, Cliff, who's hurting." Stokes was positively grinning.



I could find out what had happened without leaving my car, as it turned out. Cliff was on the lawn bleeding, and the ambulance attendants were bent over him, when we arrived within three minutes of the call.



"Stay here," Alicia ordered, so I sat in the car and watched. I think her goal had been to keep me out of the crime scene, or the situation, whatever it was. If she'd been thinking straight, instead of being so intent on the scene, she would've sent me home. What did she need me for, now that I'd provided transportation?