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be no more house calls.
    “That’s when Miss Deaver started following me. I’d leave the clinic and find her sitting
     in her car in the lot here. She’d leave gifts for me with Kathy, our receptionist.
     She baked cakes and muffins. Dozens of muffins. One day, after she took Bella to Chris
     for a checkup, she ambushed me in the hall here and gave me a Rolex watch. I told
     her to take it back. She said she couldn’t. She’d had it engraved with what she called
     ‘our anniversary date’—the day I’d spayed Bella.”
    “She thought that was your anniversary?” Officer Edelson asked.
    “Sad, isn’t it?” Ted said. “I did everything to help her see reality. I showed her
     photos of Josie. I talked about the afternoon I’d asked Josie to marry me. I told
     her how much I loved Josie. It didn’t do any good.
    “I kept thinking if I ignored her, she’d get discouraged and go away. But she didn’t.
     The more I refused to see Miss Deaver, the more she was convinced I wanted to marry
     her. She wouldn’t stop following me.”
    “She wasn’t following you, Doctor,” Edelson said. “She was stalking you. That’s a
     crime in all fifty states. You should have reported it to the police.”
    “I thought only women have stalkers,” Ted said.
    “Men who stalk women are more common,” the officer said. “Male stalkers tend to be
     more dangerous. But two percent of the men in this country have been stalked by women.”
    “You know a lot about stalkers,” Ted said.
    “It’s a serious problem,” Edelson said. “Our department got a grant to send me to
     a seminar. Stalking is often tied in with domestic abuse. Miss Deaver has assaulted
     you with a deadly weapon, so she’s already demonstrated she is dangerous.”
    “What can I do now?” Ted asked.
    “Press charges for assault,” the officer said.
    “I can’t,” Ted said. “She needs a psychiatrist.”
    “We can lock her up for seventy-two hours in a mental health facility,” Edelson said.
    “That will get her the help she needs,” Ted said. “But I feel sorry for her.”
    “That’s dangerous,” Edelson said. “What if she harms your fiancée? In her mind, she
     may believe getting rid of Miss Marcus will set you free to marry her.”
    “No!” Ted said. “That’s crazy. Josie has an eleven-year-old daughter. What can I do
     to protect them? Miss Deaver is already barred from the clinic.”
    “You saw how well that worked this morning,” Officer Edelson said. “You need to file
     charges for assault, Doctor. She needs a dose of reality. Does she have family here?”
    “I don’t know,” Ted said. “I know very little about her.”
    “Well, her family needs to take steps to get her the care she needs. Meanwhile, you
     should develop a paper trail documenting evidence of stalking so we can prosecute
     her. We’ll need your phone records, her dog’s charts and bills, and the logs of your
     phone calls.”
    “I’ll get you my cell phone records,” Ted said. “Our receptionist, Kathy, will get
     you the clinic records. Christine and Kathy will both testify that she’s been a nuisance.”
    “Do you have photos or security tapes of Miss Deaver waiting in your clinic lot?”
     Edelson asked.
    “No,” Ted said.
    “You definitely gave her back the watch?”
    “Yes,” Ted said. “But I remember the jeweler’s name on the box.”
    “That’s a start,” Edelson said. “You can also take out a restraining order, though
     in my experience that won’t make the stalker go away.”
    “What does?” Ted asked. Josie could hear the fear in his voice.
    “Most stalkers don’t respond to treatment,” he said. “They simply move their fixation
     from one love object to another. Many experts recommend that you move to another state.”
    Josie wondered if they could hear her gasp through the wall. She could practically
     see Ted running his fingers through his unruly brown hair. She heard him pacing the
     small room.
    “What!