Shakespeares Counselor Page 0,70

while I packed up the dead man's clothes. Normally, I don't like distractions. But this house was sad. Though it had been years since I had a pet, I almost wished the little dogs were there.

Folding McClanahan's clothes didn't take long. I packed his uniform carefully, wondering if he'd be buried in it. What had this man been, in his core: a policeman or a writer? He had certainly been a researcher. There were at least three shelves of non-fiction books, like Gavin de Becker's Gift of Fear, and David Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. I looked at de Becker's book, repressing a snort. McClanahan hadn't read that carefully enough: he hadn't known to be scared, when he should've been. The only thing I was sure of about his death was that he had seen it coming and not recognized it.

A trio of books actually piled on the desk were more disquieting. They were thinner and had a scholarly look, like books you wouldn't get in a regular store unless you ordered them. The one on top was titled, The Psychology of Two; the Selection of a Mate by Lauren Munger, and the thinner black and blue one underneath it was by Steve Coben and called Pathological Pairs: Duos with Bad History.

I felt a flash of rage so intense I had to sit down. Despite everything he'd said, it was evident that Gerry McClanahan had planned to write about Jack and me. He had been studying us. Maybe his interest had begun as a sidelight to the stalking drama of Tamsin Lynd, but that interest had evolved. I took some deep breaths, told myself over and over that nothing could be done about it now, and packed those books along with the rest.

I found a biography sheet, I guess one that his publicist was preparing; Gerry had made little corrections here and there. He'd won prizes and awards, and his books had been translated into twenty different languages. I'd had other things on my mind when I'd scanned the People story. Reading the biography sheet, I understood for the first time what a furor there would be when it was discovered that Patrolman Gerry McClanahan was also Gibson Banks. I wondered how much time we had before that connection was made; not much, I was sure. There was an accordion file, full of notes for other projects. Gerry was tentatively planning a book on a serial killer in Minnesota. That would have been a change of climate, for sure.

The house had been gone over by the police, and I knew I wouldn't find anything remarkable they hadn't already seen. Plus, they would've taken anything interesting with them. But as I picked up a pen that had rolled onto the floor, I saw the edge of a sheet of yellow paper torn from a legal pad, protruding very slightly from under the desk. I remembered that Gerry had had a legal pad in front of him while we talked. A legal pad and a computer; that had seemed like overkill to me at the time. Why both?

Now, I pinned the paper to the floor with the point of the pen, and raked it out. It was a sheet covered with tiny black handwriting.

I peered at it and switched on the desk lamp to see it better. It was a log of the comings and goings at Tamsin's house. Nothing much, it seemed, had happened at Tamsin's that particular day. The Lynd-Egger couple had gone to work, come back home. Various lights had gone off and on. Tamsin had swept the back porch, and Cliff had spent five minutes in the little tool closet by the back porch some time after that. The date was the night before Jack and I had heard Tamsin yell on her front porch.

I was sure the rest of this log, which was a terrible document in and of itself, had been taken by the police. Perhaps Gerry had ripped this day's observations out to discard because nothing much had happened, and I hoped that the other notes he'd made proved of more value. The person stalking the counselor - it was hard not to think of this person as some kind of evil entity, since he was so invisible - hadn't liked anyone else stalking them, I was willing to bet. Gerry's obsession with the stalker's obsession had led to his own death.

As I locked the door behind me, my job completed, I