“Mathematically, the saying cannot be right more often than that. It is just a saying, not a mathematical formula, and only formulae get it right in mathematics. In real life, it will depend on your choice of incidents to connect.” I try to think how to explain. “Suppose on the way to work on the train, I put my hand on something that has just been painted. I did not see the WET PAINT sign, or it got knocked off by accident. If I connect the accident of paint on my hand to the accident of dropping an egg on the floor and then to tripping on a crack in the sidewalk and call that enemy action—”
“When it’s your own carelessness. I see. Tell me, does the percentage of error go down as the number of related incidents goes up?”
“Of course, if you pick the right incidents.”
He shakes his head again. “Let’s get back to you and make sure we pick the right incidents. Someone slashed the tires on your car sometime Wednesday night two weeks ago. Now on Wednesdays, you go over to a friend’s house for… fencing practice? Is that sword fighting or something?”
“They’re not real swords,” I say. “Just sport blades.”
“Okay. Do you keep them in your car?”
“No,” I say. “I store my things at Tom’s house. Several people do.”
“So the motive couldn’t have been theft, in the first place. And the following week, your windshield was broken while you were at fencing, a drive-by. Again, the attack’s on your car, and this time the location of your car makes it clear the attacker knew where you went on Wednesdays. And this third attack was accomplished on Wednesday night, between the time you got home from your fencing group and when you got up in the morning. The timing suggests to me that this is connected to your fencing group.”
“Unless it is someone who has only Wednesday night to do things,” I say.
He looks at me a long moment. “It sounds like you don’t want to face the possibility that someone in your fencing group — or someone who was in your fencing group — has a grudge against you.”
He is right. I do not want to think that people I have been meeting every week for years do not like me. That even one of them does not like me. I felt safe there. They are my friends. I can see the pattern Mr. Stacy wants me to see — it is obvious, a simple temporal association, and I have already seen it — but it is impossible. Friends are people who want good things for you and not bad ones.
“I do not…” My throat closes. I feel the pressure in my head that means I will not be able to talk easily for a while. “It is not… right… to… to… say… what… you are… not sure… is true.” I wish I had not said anything about Don before. I feel wrong about it.
“You don’t want to make a false accusation,” he says.
I nod, mute.
He sighs. “Mr. Arrendale, everyone has people that don’t like them. You don’t have to be a bad person to have people not like you. And it doesn’t make you a bad person to take reasonable precautions not to let other people hurt you. If there’s someone in that group who has a grudge against you, fair or unfair, that person still may not be the one who did this. I know that. I’m not going to throw someone into criminal rehab just because they don’t like you. But I don’t want you to get killed because we didn’t take this seriously.”
I still cannot imagine someone — Don — trying to kill me. I have not done anyone harm that I know of. People do not kill for trivial reasons.
“My point is,” Mr. Stacy says, “that people kill for all sorts of stupid reasons. Trivial reasons.”
“No,” I mutter. Normal people have reasons for what they do, big reasons for big things and little reasons for little things.
“Yes,” he says. His voice is firm; he believes what he is saying. “Not everyone, of course. But someone who would put that stupid toy in your car, with the explosive — that is not a normally sane person, Mr. Arrendale, in my opinion. And I am professionally familiar with the kind of people who kill. Fathers who knock a child into the wall for taking a piece of bread without permission. Wives and husbands who grab for a weapon in the midst of an argument about who forgot what at the grocery store. I do not think you are the sort of man who makes idle accusations. Trust us to investigate carefully whatever you tell us and give us something to work on. This person who is stalking you might stalk someone else another time.”
I do not want to talk; my throat is so tight it hurts. But if it could happen to someone else…
As I am thinking what to say and how, he says, “Tell me more about this fencing group. When did you start going there?”
This is something I can answer, and I do. He asks me to tell him how the practice works, when people come, what they do, what time they leave.
I describe the house, the yard, the equipment storage. “My things are always in the same place,” I say.
“How many people store their gear at Tom’s, instead of taking it back and forth?” he asks.
“Besides me? Two,” I say. “Some of the others do, if they’re going to a tournament. But three of us regularly. Don and Sheraton are the others.” There. I have mentioned Don without choking.
“Why?” he asks quietly.
“Sheraton travels a lot for work,” I say. “He doesn’t make it every week, and he once lost a complete set of blades when his apartment was broken into while he was overseas on business. Don—” My throat threatens to close again, but I push on. “Don was always forgetting his stuff and borrowing from people, and finally Tom told him to leave it there, where he couldn’t forget it.”
“Don. This is the same Don you told me about over the phone?”
“Yes,” I say. All my muscles are tight. It is so much harder when he is here in my office, looking at me.
“Was he in the group when you joined it?”
Yes.
“Who are some of your friends in the group?”
I thought they were all my friends. Emmy said it was impossible for them to be my friends; they are normal and I am not. But I thought they were. “Tom,” I say. “Lucia. Brian. M-Marjory…”
“Lucia is Tom’s wife, right? Who is this Marjory?”
I can feel my face getting hot. “She… she is a person who… who is my friend.”
“A girlfriend? Lover?”
Words fly out of my head faster than light. I can only shake my head, mute again.
“Someone you wish was a girlfriend?”
I am seized into rigidity. Do I wish? Of course I wish. Dare I hope? No. I cannot shake my head or nod it; I cannot speak. I do not want to see the look on Mr. Stacy’s face; I do not want to know what he thinks. I want to escape to some quiet place where no one knows me and no one will ask questions.
“Let me suggest something here, Mr. Arrendale,” Mr. Stacy says. His voice sounds staccato, chopped into sharp little bits of sound that cut at my ears, at my understanding. “Suppose you really like this woman, this Marjory—”
This Marjory as if she were a specimen, not a person. The very thought of her face, her hair, her voice, floods me with warmth.
“And you’re kinda shy — okay, that’s normal in a guy who hasn’t had that many relationships, which I’m guessing you haven’t. And maybe she likes you, and maybe she just enjoys being admired from afar. And this other person — maybe Don, maybe not — is pissed that she seems to like you. Maybe he likes her. Maybe he just doesn’t like you. Whatever, he sees something he doesn’t like between the two of you. Jealousy is a pretty common cause of violent behavior.”
“I… do not… want… him… to be the one…” I say, gasping it out.
“You like him?”
“I… know… think… thought… I know… knew… him…” A sick blackness inside swirls around and through the warm feeling about Marjory. I remember the times he joked, laughed, smiled.
“Betrayal is never fun,” Mr. Stacy says, like a priest reciting the Ten Commandments. He has his pocket set out and is entering commands.