Free Blameless by B A Shapiro Page A

lot of people who’ll be on your side.” Then he was silent for a moment, looking at his feet. “Would it help if I talked to the press?”
    Diana shrugged and lifted her purse to her shoulder.
    “What if I told them all the good things about you? About your commitment to helping. Your status in the field. How your cutting-edge research is sure to lead to new treatment options?” Excited by the idea, he grabbed her arms. “What if I told them I’m convinced that this Hutchins character was destined to kill himself no matter what his therapist did?” He shook her slightly. “How about it, Diana? Wouldn’t that help?”
    “Don’t make any offers you’re not willing to follow through on,” she warned.
    “Just tell me who to talk to.”
    “Let me think about it.”
    “Call me,” he said, giving her another quick hug. “I really want to help.”
    “I know you do.” She touched his cheek. “And I may need all the help I can get.”
    When Diana pulled in behind her house, she was so relieved to be home, and to find the alley empty of reporters, that she jumped too quickly from the jeep. She tripped over her scarf and fell to the asphalt. Swearing, she rubbed gravel from her ripped stockings and skinned knee. Then she flipped the scarf over her shoulder, grabbed her purse and briefcase, and rushed for the safety of her back door.
    But when she got to the door, she stopped in confusion. The door was swung inward, open and unlocked. The place where the deadbolt had been was a mess of splintered wood and twisted metal. Slowly the reality of what her eyes were seeing filtered through to her brain: They had been robbed.
    She stared at the damaged door, furious at the thief, and even more furious at the reporters, at the excited babble that would arrive on the heels of the police cars. Without considering the possibility that the thief might still be inside, she stalked into the house and stomped through the small waiting room and into her office. Then she froze. The room was in total disarray. It had been ransacked.
    File cabinets had been pushed over, shelves had been emptied. Files, books, and papers lay ankle-deep on the floor. Her desk looked as if a child had thrown a temper tantrum and waved angry arms across it. It had been swept clean, its contents strewn atop the papers and books. The desk drawers had been pulled from their housings and flung, by the same enraged and powerful child, to every corner of the room.
    Diana knelt down and picked up one of her onyx book-ends; it was broken. She turned the pieces around and around in her hand, letting the sharp edges press deeply into her palm. She and Craig had splurged on the book-ends while in Mexico on their honeymoon. Now they were broken. Broken in two.
    Heat pulsed through her body as the extent of the violation began to dawn on her. She dropped the bookend and grabbed a desk drawer. Then she grabbed another, and another, and another. She turned them over. She shook them. She flung one to the floor. “Shit!” she yelled into the devastated room. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” But no matter what she threw, or how loud she swore, the reality remained the same: The drawers had been emptied. All of them. Even the one she kept locked.
    She began combing through the debris. Frantically she pushed through the books and the files and the papers. It wasn’t there. She knew it wasn’t. It would be easy to spot with its deep aqua-and-purple cover. Her journal was gone.
    Her private journal. The place where she kept her innermost self. The place where she confided the things she suffered in the darkest furrows of her soul. The things she could never tell another human being. Not Gail. Not her mother. Not even Craig.
    She fell to the floor and wrapped her arms around herself. Her private journal. Filled with her secret thoughts. Filled with wild and erotic fantasies. Fantasies meant to be forever her own exclusive possession.
    Some were about Craig. Some were about faceless