Stone Shadow by Rex Miller Page A

was screaming coming from the plush conference room on the richly appointed second floor of the building that Fidelity Mutual shared with Jones, Seleska, Foy, Biegelman, and Guthrie, known in the Texas legal profession as Jones-Seleska. The screaming was coming from a breathtakingly beautiful woman who was bent over a very expensive conference table. She was finally able to stop screaming with laughter and when she came up for air the somber-looking man sitting across the table from her, the one who had been responsible for her current agonies, said, “You gotta learn to lighten up a little, you take things too seriously,” at which she doubled over again.
    “Not again with screaming. They'll think you're raping me in here,” he told her and she pounded on the table.
    “Please ... no...” She gasped. “Please ... stop."
    “You knucklehead. Get outta here,” he said, which sent her off again. Finally when she composed herself enough—the laughter diminished to the point where she could hear him—he said, “Do you know the official Jewish stand on abortion?"
    “Ohhhh,” she groaned as she held herself in mock pain.
    “It's still a fetus until it graduates from Harvard Law.” She giggled, grateful that it hadn't been another killer.
    Her secretary opened the door. “It's that policeman again, Miss Collier. Second time he's called. Mister"—she glanced at the pink slip—"Icort, about the Hackabee case, I believe."
    Still chuckling, the beautiful woman gestured no with her hand. “I'm not in.” And let herself slide back in the chair with a groan.

Dallas
    “—and I'd gone in to buy some things, like I said, South Oak Cliff Shopping Center,” she said with a sigh, for maybe the hundredth time, “and no I don't believe I'd been followed, and I was on my way in to go shopping, Sanger Harris, various stops I wanted to make, and I pulled in to the mall and just barely tapped the car in back of me on the bumper, but, you know, you always feel scared if that happens, and I was relieved when I looked up in the rearview mirror and didn't see anybody in the car because, you know, you're embarrassed when that happens. And I guess that's why it scared me so much when this man sticks his head in the window and pokes a gun at me—"
    Eichord was listening and watching carefully, “Excuse me. Don't lose your train of thought but you said, ‘sticks his head in the window.’ Was your window rolled down?"
    “Huh?"
    “How did he stick his head in the window of the car if the window was up?"
    “Sure, the window was up. I meant he came over and suddenly there's this face in my window and I go, OH, and about jumped out of my skin. I was so surprised. And he was talking and I thought it was the guy's car that I'd tapped on the bumper and like I rolled the window down. Oh, I remember. I had to turn the motor off or on, I mean to roll it down—power window deals, and—"
    “Tell me everything you remember about that moment. How did you feel when you saw him? What was the weather like that day? What did you have on? What—"
    “Did you know the intelligence people had me act all that out? Don Duncan went out there and had me dress in the exact clothing I had on that day and he followed me all the way from the house. I mean, it isn't that far, six-seven minutes or whatever, but he had me go through all the motions when they were trying to find where he took me."
    She had never been able to give them the house where she'd been held prisoner. It had just been blocked out completely. She couldn't remember anything about how she got from the room in the house to the police station. Not even the part where the wino found her in the refrigerator box, hiding behind a discarded stove in back of a store downtown. Nude. Bloody. Out of it.
    “Donna. What I'm wanting to hear is your description as much as the facts themselves. You may give me something that will help without meaning to, just in the way you tell about it all.