Free Cited to Death by Meg Perry Page A

filled her in. She told Kevin what I was saying, and I heard him swearing in the background.

    "We're on our way. Probably only five minutes." I heard more swearing. "Make that three minutes."
     
    It was more like two and a half. Kevin, Abby and the forensics team all came through the front door at the same time. A small crowd had gathered now at the foot of the building, looking up at our balcony. The officers who were searching for the burglar weren't having any success. Kevin talked to the officer in the living room while I filled Abby in on all the details.

    I was still hanging on to the baseball bat.
     
    It took about another hour. Forensics finished up. The officers who were searching found nothing. Everyone said goodbye and cleared out. Kevin went around locking all the doors again and double checking everything. Then he turned to me.

    I was still holding the baseball bat. He reached out for it. "I think you can let go of that now."
     
    I handed it to him and flexed my fingers. My grip would probably be sore in the morning.

    "That scared you some, huh?" Kevin got a beer out of the fridge and handed it to me.
     
    "Yeah. It did."

    He nodded. "Would have scared me too."
     
    "No, it wouldn't. You'd have just shot the guy."

    He laughed. "Well, not without getting some information out of him first." He got serious. "After tonight, I’m convinced that all of your incidents are related somehow. Someone must be after you, if not to harm you personally then at least to discourage you from doing whatever it is you're doing." He went into his bedroom with the baseball bat and returned with his current service weapon, a Glock 9mm, and an older model of the same gun that he'd started his career with. He handed me the older one and its clip. "Until this all gets straightened out, we keep these handy when we're home. Okay?"
     
    "Yep." I'd learned to shoot as a kid; Master Gunnery Sgt. David Brodie, USMC, had made sure all his offspring could handle weapons. I didn't own one personally. I was starting to think that might need to change.

 

    Sunday June 3

    On Sunday, Kevin and Abby went for a drive up the coast with some friends. I spent the morning doing laundry, cleaning my bathroom, and doing all the little stuff that has to get done on the weekends. Around 10:30, I called Pete. He said he'd come over to look at the statistics section of the Oliver/Wray/Goldstein article, and bring lunch.

    At noon, there was a knock on the door. I made sure it was Pete through the peephole, then opened the door. He handed me a big bag from In-N-Out. “What’s with that sign in your elevator?”

    “What sign?”

    “The one that says, ‘If the elevator stops, do not be alarmed, just push the alarm.’ Somebody’s being funny?”

    “A little elevator humor, I guess.”

    “Yeah, very little.”

    “Oh, come on. That’s a little funny.”

    “Okay, okay…”

    We ate, then went to the living room. Pete had a book that he'd used as his stats bible when he was writing his dissertation. He set it to one side, got a notepad and pen, and started making notes while reading the statistics section of the article. I just watched him. He was such a gorgeous guy. He glanced over at me once, saw me looking at him, and kind of gave me a sideways grin. I grinned back.

    It took him about 20 minutes, then he set down his pen and stretched. "It will be interesting to get the Welsh article, with the original procedure, to see if those authors used these same parameters to test for statistical significance. Because they've used some incredibly generous parameters."

    "Okay, explain that to me."

    "Look here." He showed me a chart. "Here's where they're measuring the number of cells that reacted the way they hoped, and this column is for the number of cells total. When you're running an experiment, it's not enough just to add up the results. You have to test for statistical significance.”

    “Statistical significance?”

    “Yeah.” He