Dead Certain - Mariah Stewart [41]
“Let’s talk about how to recognize if you’re being stalked. . . .”
Sean’s attention began to drift. He knew this part. He’d given a similar lecture himself to the women’s club in Normandy, West Virginia, where he’d last worked. There had been times since moving here to Broeder that he’d questioned the wisdom of leaving Normandy, but all in all, he suspected, it was for the best. Greer had been so insistent.
“Come on, Sean. This is fate. It just can’t be a coincidence that we’re in need of a new police chief at exactly the same time I finally found you again. Say yes, Sean, please?” When he hadn’t responded, she’d pleaded, “At least come and interview for the job. Maybe you won’t like it here. Maybe they won’t like you. But at least say you’ll apply?”
He’d applied. And he had liked the town, liked the feel of it, liked the pace, just as much as he’d liked Normandy. And the committee appointed by the president of the borough council to select the new police chief had liked him, Greer assured him after his first interview. What she hadn’t told him was that Steve, her husband, was the president of the council, and that she’d made sure that he understood how important it was to her to have her younger brother back in her life again after all these years of being separated.
Sean couldn’t help but smile to himself. Greer had always been a bossy thing. He remembered that much about her.
And it wasn’t as if he wasn’t happy here. He liked the job. He had a force of men and women he was proud of, good cops, each of them professional and caring. He was paid well and sensed that the townspeople both liked and respected him and the job he’d done so far. He had a little house—Greer had found it for him and was forever nagging him about its lack of furnishing and general warmth, but he suspected she’d been watching too many decorating shows on TV. Lately she’d been threatening to just take over and “create an environment” for him. Whatever that meant.
“. . . document every single incident,” Amanda was saying. “Take photographs if you can. Videos can be even better. Get statements from anyone who witnessed the incident and save every one of the answering machine tapes . . .”
He wondered how Amanda’s story might have been different had she done those things right from the start. From the file, it was obvious that she’d reacted too late to the situation. Things had escalated to a point of no return before she’d begun to build her case against Archer Lowell. Because she’d thrown away the early notes that Lowell had left for her and because she’d taken no photos and erased all the messages on her answering machine, she had nothing to show the police when she went to them.
He wondered what her detective brother had had to say about her lack of forethought. He wondered how long it had progressed before she even told him. Sean had read her statement several times. He understood why she had thought she could handle the young man herself, why she thought a simple, Sorry, Archer, I’m not interested in you that way, but I would like to be your friend, would be sufficient. Most women would think that way.
He guessed that might be why she’d taken it upon herself to volunteer to give these lectures.
She may have been naive as far as Archer’s intentions were, but she sure as hell projected self-confidence now. Ms. Crosby was, without question, large and in charge these days.
Not so large, though, he thought, watching her slender body pace as he leaned forward to hear a question someone had asked. Amanda’s response was crisp and to the point. Watching her, one would never suspect that anyone had intimidated her, broken her down, least of all some slimy little wienie like Archer Lowell.
Then again, the woman standing at the front of the room seemed harder, stronger, than the woman whose step had faltered when she’d found the rose that someone had left for her, or whose hands had begun to shake when she’d gotten