Free Shakespeare's Counselor by Charlaine Harris

irritant.
    â€œI’ll see you around,” he said, abandoning his hope that I would prolong our encounter. He took a step back, watched me get into my car and turn the key. When I looked out my window again, he was gone.

F OUR
    When Jack called that night, he sounded weary to the bone. He was following the trail of a sixteen-year-old runaway from Maumelle, a boy from the proverbial good home who’d become caught up in the subculture of drugs and then prostitution. His family hadn’t seen him in a year, Jack told me, yet they kept getting hang-up phone calls from different cities and towns around the South. Convinced their son was on the other end of the phone, sure the boy wanted to come home but was ashamed to ask, this family was getting into seriously shaky financial shape in their search for him.
    â€œHow can you keep it up?” I asked Jack, as gently as I could.
    â€œIf I don’t look, they’ll hire someone else,” he said. Jack sounded older than thirty-five. “People this driven always do. At least I’ll really try my best to find the boy. Ever since we found Summer Dawn Macklesby, I’m the guy to see for missing kids.”
    â€œHave you even had a glimpse of this kid?”
    â€œYes.” Jack didn’t sound happy about it. “I saw him last night, in the Mount Vernon area, on Read Street.” Jack was in Baltimore. “He looks awful. Sick.”
    â€œYou didn’t get to talk to him?”
    â€œHe went off with a man and didn’t come back. I’ll be out there again tonight. I might have to pay him for his time, but I’ll have that talk.”
    There was nothing to say.
    â€œHow is the surveillance going?” he asked, ready for some good news.
    â€œShe won’t bend over. She’s wearing a neck brace and walking with a cane, and any bending she does, she must be doing it where I can’t see her. Maybe Bonnie Crider’s really hurt. It would be nice to find an honest woman.”
    â€œNot a chance. All the warning signs are there. She’s a fraud. We gotta think of a way to catch this woman. Put your mind to it.”
    â€œOkay,” I said. I said it very neutrally, because I am used to taking orders, but I am not used to taking them from Jack. However, I reminded myself in a flattening way, he was my boss now.
    â€œPlease,” Jack said suddenly.
    â€œOkay,” I repeated, in a more agreeable tone. “Now I have a thing or two to tell you.”
    â€œOh?” Jack sounded apprehensive.
    â€œTherapy group was unexpectedly exciting tonight,” I told him.
    â€œOh, new woman?”
    â€œYes, in a way.”
    â€œShe’d gotten raped in some new way?”
    â€œI don’t know about the rape. She never got a chance to tell us. Someone killed her dead and left her in Tamsin’s office.”
    After Jack exclaimed for a minute or two, and made sure I hadn’t been in personal danger, he became practical. “That’s all your group needed, right—a dead woman, on top of dealing with a pack of traumas. Who was she, did anyone know?” Jack was interested in my story, even more so when I told him about the dead woman, Tamsin’s actions, and the new detective, Alicia Stokes.
    â€œI can see why Claude would snap up a woman that qualified, but why in hell would a woman that qualified want to come to Shakespeare?”
    â€œExactly.”
    â€œI don’t know anyone on the Cleveland force, but maybe I know someone who does. I might make a few phone calls when I get back.” Jack’s curiosity, which made him such a good detective, could also make him a little uncomfortable to be with from time to time. But in this case, I was just as curious about Stokes as he was.
    I tossed and turned that night, seeing the wound in the woman’s chest, the pale body and the red blood. I kept wondering why the body had been arranged in Tamsin’s office. That was