Alone in the Dark

Brady tried to read between the lines to pick up on what the veterinarian wasn’t saying. “You told him to stop?”

“In a way,” she allowed. “I said that it wasn’t really proper, that I couldn’t accept gifts for doing my job.”

Why did he have to drag the words out of her? he wondered impatiently. “And?”

Patience shrugged, blocking the edgy frustration that pushed its way forward. “He kept leaving them anyway.”

He knew that these things almost always escalated unless there was forceful police intervention. “What made him finally stop?”

“I put out a formal photograph of my family in dress blues. Made sure he saw it.” Patience nodded at the far wall.

There, hung in prominent display was a group photograph he’d seen more than once on his visits to her office. He looked at it with fresh eyes. The last time he’d seen that much blue was at a patrolman’s funeral. He had to say it was impressive.

Patience allowed a small smile to surface. “I guess that put the fear of God into him. Or at least the fear of the Cavanaughs.” Her smile widened a little. “Walter hasn’t sent a poem or a single flower in the last six months. And he hasn’t been by.”

Brady looked down at the rose. King eyed it, as well. “Until now.”

She nodded, suppressing a sigh. “Until now,” she echoed.

If this was the resurgence of the stalker, she was being entirely too blasé about it. “You should report this, you know.”

Calmer now, she thought of the mousy little man, of the stunned expression on his face when she’d made reference to her family and had shown him the photograph. She’d overreacted, she told herself, because of Katie. But this was different and she didn’t want to stir things up. “He’s harmless.”

In Brady’s book, no one was harmless in the absolute sense. Everyone had a button that could be pressed, setting them off. “Every killer was once thought of as harmless.”

She looked at him for a long moment. “You’re trying to scare me.”

“Damn straight I am. I’ve seen enough things in my life to know when a woman should be scared, Doc.”

She’d been around members of the police department all of her life. Beyond her father, she couldn’t recall any of them being as world-weary as Coltrane appeared to be. Not even Patrick. “God, you sound as if you’re a hundred years old.”

“Some nights, I am,” he told her matter-of-factly. “So, you want me to take a statement?”

“No, that’s all right. If I get really worried about Walter, like you said, I’ve got my own boatload of police personnel to turn to.”

It wasn’t difficult to read between the lines. “But you won’t.”

Patience didn’t feel comfortable, being read so effortlessly by a man she couldn’t begin to read herself. Rather than get into it, she gave him her reasons—or, at least, the primary one. “I don’t want to upset them unnecessarily.”

“How about necessarily?”

“Walter’s harmless,” she insisted. It felt odd, championing a man she wished, deep down, had never crossed her path. “He thinks he’s just pursuing me, like in the old-fashioned sense. Courting,” she added, fishing for the right word. Walter Payne always made her think of someone straight out of the fifties, when things had been simpler and persistence paid off. “He stopped once. If I ignore him, he’ll stop again.”

“And if he won’t?” Brady challenged. King barked, as if to back him up.

Tacoma moved closer to her mistress, offering her protection. She absently ran her hand over the dog’s head, scratching Tacoma behind the ears as she spoke, trying to keep the mental image of Katie’s photograph at bay. “Then I’ll deal with it. I have a number of people to turn to.”

Damn but she was one stubborn woman. One could see it in the set of her mouth, in her eyes.

But before he could say anything further to her, the bell above the door jangled and a woman came in, struggling with a battered cat carrier. The occupant of the carrier paced within the small space.

“I know I don’t have an appointment, Dr. Cavanaugh, but Gracie’s been hacking all night and I’m worried sick.” The statement came out like an extraordinarily long single word, each letter breathlessly woven to the one before and the one after.

Feeling the dog stiffen beside him, Brady looked down at his companion. The fur on King’s back was standing up as he stared intently at the carrier. Had he not been as well trained as he was, Brady was sure the animal would have gone after the cat, carrier or no carrier. The cat obviously sensed it, too. Hissing noises began to emerge from the carrier.

In contrast to King, Patience’s dog seemed bored and trotted over to the far corner to catch a nap beneath the rays of the early morning sun.

Taking a firm hold of King’s leash, Brady spared Patience one last look.

“Report it,” he told her much in the same voice that he used on King when he verbalized his commands.

“I’ll handle it,” Patience repeated firmly. She turned her attention to the frantic older woman. Work was the best thing for her right now. “Right this way, Mrs. Mahoney. As it happens, my first patient of the day isn’t here yet.”

And neither was her receptionist, she added silently. But then, Shirley had a very loose concept of time. Too bad. The young woman had a crush on Brady that was evident to everyone but the man himself. Shirley was going to regret not being here a tad early this morning.

Patience turned to look back at Brady and mouthed, “Thank you” before she disappeared.

She could thank him all she wanted, Brady thought as he exited the clinic. In reality, he hadn’t done anything. Doing something was up to her. He unlocked his car. The hell with it, this was her business, not his.

Holding the door open, he gave King a nod. The dog jumped into the back seat.

“Not our concern, boy,” Brady said as he got behind the steering wheel.

He placed his key in the ignition. Glancing up into the rearview mirror, he could see King staring at him. Brady tried not to read anything into the intent brown eyes, but the dog seemed to be saying that he was wrong, that she was their concern. Because they knew her.

Brady sighed. King always had a way of setting him straight. But this time, the dog was wrong. Couldn’t help someone who wouldn’t help themselves. He’d learned that a long time ago.

It had been one hell of a long day from start to finish. A bad night’s sleep didn’t help matters. Not that he ever really got a good night’s sleep. His sleep pattern would have sent any self-respecting hospital-affiliated sleep clinic into a tailspin. He amassed his sleep in snatches, never getting more than a couple hours at a clip, usually less. Each night turned into a patchwork quilt of sleep and wakefulness.

The trouble was that he couldn’t shut off his mind, couldn’t find peace even in repose. Half the time he dreamed of what he had experienced during the course of the day or, more than likely, during his earlier years.

He supposed, in comparison to that time period, anything he experienced now was a cakewalk, even if he did deal with the scum of the earth at times. At least he had the consolation of knowing that he was ridding the world of vermin, making it safer for people in Aurora, people like Patience Cavanaugh, to sleep at night.

Contributing to the restlessness he now felt was the fact that Dr. Patience Cavanaugh hadn’t been off his mind for more than thirty minutes at a stretch. Usually less. He just wasn’t comfortable about her lack of action with this stalker thing.

The first free minute he’d had, he’d deliberately investigated if any new stalker complaints had been filed today. They hadn’t. Big surprise. Maybe she’d turned to someone in her family with the problem. No, he had a bead on her. For all her friendliness, all her vibrancy, Patience Cavanaugh was stubborn and independent like the rest of the Cavanaughs. That meant that she didn’t relish appearing as if she were vulnerable, as if she couldn’t take care of whatever was going on in her life all by herself.

“Still not our problem,” he told the dog that went home with him every night.

King gave him the same penetrating look he’d given him that morning.

Brady sighed. Who the hell did he think he was fooling? “Yeah, right, we’re police officers. That makes everything our problem.”

Muttering something ripe and piercing under his breath, he started up the lovingly restored Mustang that served as his single private mode of transportation from the time he had left Georgia behind in his rearview mirror. The only original thing left of the cherry-red car was its outer shell. Everything beneath the hood was new, or at least had been replaced once if not twice. The vehicle was in prime running condition. He made sure to keep it that way. Working on cars helped soothe him whenever he felt particularly agitated.

Brady paused before pulling out of the lot. He knew he should go home, maybe tune up his engine to work the frustration out of his system.

Instead he turned his car in the opposite direction and headed back to the animal clinic.