The Perfect Suspect Read Free Page A

downward into an abyss—the nightmare was always the same. She had thought it was over. There had been almost six months of peaceful nights without the horror that had previously crashed over her for months and left her weak and disoriented in the mornings. But now the nightmare had started again. A dull wine-ache spread behind her eyes. She pulled her legs to her chest, leaned against her knees, and waited for the spasms in her stomach to stop. The warm, musty smells of early September drifted through the opened window. Rex was still asleep on his pillow in the corner, and for a moment, she thought it strange the golden retriever hadn’t heard the noise and gone into a barking fit, the noise had seemed so real. Finally, she slid out of bed and spent ten minutes in the steaming shower with hot water pounding her shoulders and back. She began to feel situated again, the tile solid beneath her feet, the glass shower door cloudy, and the familiarity of the small bungalow gathering her in.
    She wandered into the kitchen, dressed in a white cotton blouse, tan skirt and high-heeled sandals, her black hair still damp on her neck. Rex waited at the back door. She let him into the yard and watched him circle the lawn, stretching his muscles in the soft newness of the morning. The sky was pale blue with wisps of clouds rolling past and spears of sunlight falling through the leaves of the elm tree and scattering about the lawn. The pansies, daisies and petunias she had planted in the narrow garden near the back door seemed to be wilting with the end of summer. In the near distance, like a massive wall looming over Denver, were the silvery blue peaks of the Rocky Mountains.
    She closed the door, started the coffee brewing, and turned on the little TV at the end of the counter. Leaving the volume low, she stared at the movie-star-handsome couple seated on sofas in a studio in New York almost two thousand miles away. An anchor woman interviewing a young Broadway actor who kept tossing his head to clear the mane of dark hair from his eyes. Catherine thought about the way people opened up to complete strangers—someone sitting next to you on the plane, or standing in a line, or tossing interview questions across a table—and divulged the most important parts of their lives. They were divorced, had lost a child, had a debilitating disease. It was as if they were compelled to divulge the information. Otherwise no one would really know them, or even see them. She wondered what she might say in that studio in New York: “Hello, I’m Catherine McLeod. Investigative journalist with the Denver Journal , forty years old and divorced. Last summer, I killed a man.”
    She turned away from the TV and poured a mug of coffee. The almost empty bottle of Burgundy sat on the counter, a reminder of last night. What had she been thinking? Alcohol had only fueled the nightmares. Self-defense, the investigators had ruled. She had killed the man before he could kill her. There was no blame; and no charges had been brought. Yet she had relived the incident night after night, the horrible explosion and wailing, the spiraling downward, the feeling that she was disappearing, until she realized that, in the horrible instant when she thought she would die, she had experienced her own death. Except that, in the end, she wasn’t the one who died. She had spent months in counseling. She had quit drinking, except for an occasional glass of wine with dinner, and gradually the nightmares became less frequent. But last night, when she’d gotten home, the bungalow had seemed so vacant and quiet, even with Rex jumping about, welcoming her. She had felt limp with loneliness.
    She was accustomed to being alone, she had told herself. She had made her own way for two years since her divorce. For the last ten months, Nick Bustamante had been in her life. Hardly long enough to dent old habits of independence. So what if he had been in L.A. for ten