Free Shooting in the Dark by John Baker

their inquiries would continue, but I didn’t get the impression they were going to put much effort into it.’
    Maybe we’re looking at a vendetta,’ Sam said to Marie when he got back to the office.
    ‘Why do you say that?’ asked Marie. ‘My money would be on the boyfriend, Russell Harvey. He was seriously weird.’
    ‘There was something strange about the husband, too,’ Sam said. ‘But we’re still left with sister number two, and we have to assume that the guy who was watching Isabel is the same one watching Angeles.’
    ‘You think Angeles is in danger?’
    ‘We can’t rule it out.’
    Marie shook her head. ‘No, we can’t rule it out. It’s just that there is a motive for Isabel’s husband. And the boyfriend seems like he could be seriously disturbed. They both might have had a reason to kill Isabel, but neither of them has any reason to kill Angeles.’
    ‘As far as we know,’ said Sam.
    ‘OK, I see what you’re saying. I’m getting stuck here; I should be looking at the bigger picture. But even if I do that, I don’t arrive at a vendetta. The closest I can get is a stalker who goes too far. Some guy who stops stalking and starts getting physical.’
    ‘No, I don’t think so. With stalking, the motive is random or peripheral. The stalker sees someone and makes an association. But this seems more systematic, as if the perpetrator is working to some programme. I’m assuming that Isabel was killed or somehow driven to take her own life. And now the same guy is left with sister number two. If that’s what happened, we’re looking at some deep-seated resentment on the part of the killer.’
    ‘Someone with a grudge against the Falco family?’ asked Marie.
    Sam nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘A grudge. A grievance. We could be looking for someone who cringes when he hears their names. Someone who has identified them with evil.’
    Angeles rang the next morning. ‘The police were here,’ she said. ‘They’ve changed their minds about Isabel.’
    ‘Tell me,’ said Sam. He put his aching hand on the table, balling it into a fist until the nerves screamed.
    The line was silent for a moment. ‘It wasn’t Temazepam,’ Angeles said. ‘It was some kind of veterinary drug, injected. Apparently it’s not available here. Someone must have imported it. They’re going to search her house as soon as Quintin gets back, but I told them they wouldn’t find anything. Isabel hated injections, she’d never do that to herself.’
    The clink of a glass came down the wire. He didn’t hear it, but he imagined the glugging sound as the liquor came out of the bottle. ‘They’re treating it as a murder case now?’
    ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘The drug wasn’t the only thing.’ Sam waited until she steadied her voice. When she found the words they came in a rush. ‘Her back was broken,’ she said.
     

10
     
    ‘It’s like being trapped inside the covers of a book,’ said the blind hero in the opening sentence of the opening chapter of JD’s novel. It was a good start. Now all he had to do was follow it with another hundred thousand relevant words.
    The hero was going to be half-blind, a man with failing sight, eyes that could not be trusted to tell the truth. But in working surveillance on Angeles Falco, JD had begun to think of his hero as totally blind. The book wouldn’t work that way, because the plot involved the hero witnessing a murder, but JD’s mind was already tinkering with the plot.
    Sight was a spatial dimension, whereas hearing worked in the realm of time. Most people feared losing their sight more than their hearing because they imagined that their spatial universe would recede and disappear, that they would lose contact with the world of things. But the physical universe exists in space and time, and to be condemned to experience it without full access to one or the other is perhaps an equal disability.
    Not a disability that was impossible to overcome, JD reminded himself.