Stalker in the Shadows. Camy Tang

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СКАЧАТЬ expression grew hard as he read the note, but it grew fierce when he lifted the lid and saw the snake. “Tell me what happened,” he said.

       Monica recited how someone had delivered the gift to the restaurant and Lorianne had carried it to her. “I’ll talk to her later,” he said. “You don’t know who sent this?”

       She shook her head, but her eyes darted to Shaun. “But Shaun mentioned something about his sister,” she told the detective.

       Shaun looked to his dad, whose lined face seemed to have aged a decade. “Tell them,” Patrick said, his voice weak.

       Shaun paused, staring at that hated notecard, gathering his thoughts. Finally he said, “Five years ago, my younger sister, Clare, moved from Sonoma to Los Angeles to work at one of Dad’s hotels and to be closer to her boyfriend, Johnny. She had gotten her MBA the year before, and she was consulting for a free family planning clinic where Johnny was director, which was also down in L.A. But a couple months after moving, she was found dead in her apartment by her roommate.”

       He had to pause, to let the ache in the base of his throat ease so that he could continue. “It looked like suicide—drug overdose. But I knew my sister. She didn’t use drugs. Her roommate said the same thing, and they hung out together a lot. Also, I had spoken to her on the phone the day before. We talked every week. She wasn’t depressed, and she wouldn’t have taken her life.”

       His father nodded slowly. “I spoke to her once or twice a week, too.”

       “When I was going through her things, I found postcards and letters that had been mailed to Clare during the two months before she moved to L.A. and also a few mailed to her L.A. apartment. They threatened her life if she didn’t stop consulting for the family planning clinic.”

       He realized his hand had clenched into a fist, and he willed his fingers to relax. Breathe. You’re just telling the story. Except it hadn’t been just a story to him. It had been a surprising and hurtful discovery to make after burying his only sister. Clare had been the jewel of the family, especially after Mom had died. Losing his sister had shattered them all.

       “Did she file incident reports?” Detective Carter asked.

       “I don’t know if she did for the notes she received in Sonoma,” Shaun said. “I did find a report number in her notebook, but for an incident report she had filed in L.A.”

       The detective scribbled in his notebook. “I’ll look into it.”

       “I confronted her roommate, Angela, about the notes,” Shaun said. “Clare had confided in her about it all. Angela said that Clare had kept this secret from Dad and me and my brothers because we were all too protective of her and we wouldn’t have let her move to L.A. if we’d known.” Shaun fought back the wave of guilt. He had known how desperately Clare wanted to leave Sonoma, which at its heart was a small town despite the heavy tourist traffic. But Clare had been the only girl among four brothers, and their mom had died years ago, so they were naturally a bit overprotective of her. But maybe if they hadn’t been, she might have felt she could confide in her family and Shaun could have protected her.

       “Did the L.A. police look into her death?” Detective Carter asked. “They should have, if she filed an incident report for the notes.”

       “They couldn’t conclusively prove it wasn’t suicide,” Shaun said. “Her boyfriend and roommate had alibis. Also, Angela told me that Johnny had been receiving threatening notes and other death threats for over a year from anti-abortion activists who opposed the family planning clinic, so when Clare first got the notes in Sonoma, she thought they were along the same lines. She also thought the notes would stop once she moved, but the stalker found her in L.A. and kept sending her letters and gifts.”

       At the word gifts, Monica shivered and her eyes slid to the white box resting in front of Detective Carter. Shaun wanted to comfort and protect her as he hadn’t been able to do for his sister.

       As he hadn’t been able to do for any of the women in his life.

       “Couldn’t the L.A. police find anything?” Monica asked him.

       “They focused on the anti-abortion activists angle, but I thought that the notes Johnny got were different from hers. His were violent death threats, but one of her notes quoted from Don Juan by Lord Byron—the same quote as that.” He pointed to Monica’s note.

       Her eyes became wide and dark in her pale face. “So that’s why it caught your attention.”

       When he’d read it, he’d felt a burning in his chest like red hot barbecue briquettes. “I recognized the quote because I had looked it up when I saw it in Clare’s note. It was the only time he ever quoted from a poem. The LAPD even searched the database for any quote from Byron’s poetry being used in any other stalker or murder cases, but they never found anything that tied to Clare’s stalker.” Until now.

       Shaun shouldn’t have let Clare go to L.A. He should have argued more with her. He should have been there for her rather than down south on the border patrol. She might have confided in him. He might have been able to do something about the stalker.

       He happened to look up and he saw Monica’s eyes on him. She seemed to see through the expression on his face, past the words he said to the words he didn’t say, reading his thoughts. Her eyes and her face were filled with compassion, reaching out to him. It was as if she were trying to tell him that it hadn’t been his fault.

       Except she was wrong. It had been his fault. He was supposed to have protected Clare.

       “How did the stalker know she was consulting for the family planning clinic?” Detective Carter asked.

       Shaun shrugged. “Everyone knew. She didn’t keep it a secret.”

       “But how would the stalker have known if she was still consulting for them or if she had stopped?” Monica asked.

       He hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know,” Shaun said. The notes had become more and more threatening, but he hadn’t considered how the stalker knew she hadn’t stopped working on the clinic.

       Detective Carter made notes in his notebook. “I’ll look into that.”

       “What happened to the family planning clinic?”

       “It never opened, but not because of the death threats or Clare’s death. Funding eventually fell through.”

       “And I’m working on funding for my free children’s clinic right now,” Monica said. “What does this guy have against free clinics?”

       “Maybe that’s the connection,” Shaun said. Clare’s stalking had seemed so random, but maybe they’d found a clue that would lead them to the stalker. “We need to check all the other stalking cases involving women working for free clinics.”

       “I’ll look into it,” Detective Carter promised. He then turned to Monica. “Stalkers are rarely rational, and they can also be unpredictable. Be careful. Keep an eye out for suspicious cars, try to make sure you’re not followed when you go home from work. Call me at the first sign of anything unusual.”

       Monica nodded, but they were interrupted by a bustling at the front of the restaurant as her aunt, Becca Itoh, hurried into the dining room. Several of the other customers looked up at the disturbance she created СКАЧАТЬ