J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 1: Web of Evil, Hand of Evil, Cruel Intent

by Jance, J. A.

  How come I didn’t know about any of this? What kind of a friend am I? Ali wondered.

  “How long has Crystal been gone?” Ali asked.

  Dave’s face was bleak. “Since early this morning,” he said. “Rich dropped her off at school, but she never showed up for any of her classes.”

  “A twelve-year-old truant on her own in Vegas?” Ali asked. Not good, she thought. Not good at all!

  “They’ve issued an Amber Alert,” Dave continued. “But only just now—an hour or so ago. Somehow the school didn’t notify Roxie that Crystal wasn’t at school, and nobody worried when she didn’t show up at home as soon as school was out. When it comes to parental supervision, Roxie runs a pretty loose ship. Until it was almost bedtime, everyone assumed Crystal was off at a friend’s house. And she’s thirteen, by the way,” Dave added. “Not twelve. Just turned. Her birthday was last week. I’m terrified thinking about what might happen to her, and with a twelve-hour head start, she could be anywhere by now.”

  Las Vegas was less than three hundred miles away—a drive of a little under five hours. The way Dave looked right then, he could probably make the trip in far less time than that. Ali stood up, brought the pizza box over from the counter, and offered him some. Absently he took a slice of the cooled pie and bit into it.

  “If all this is happening in Vegas, what are you still doing here?” Ali asked. “I would have thought you’d be on your way by now.”

  “Roxie asked me not to come,” Dave replied. “Told me not to, actually. She said she had enough on her plate right now without having to worry about me showing up and making things worse.”

  “But you’re a cop,” Ali objected. “How could you possibly make things worse?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Dave said grimly. “You don’t know Gary, her jerk of a husband.”

  Ali didn’t know Gary Whitman personally, but what little she knew about the man wasn’t good. He had been new to town—a hotshot time-share salesman—when he had taken up with Roxanne Holman, wining and dining her while Dave was off doing his second tour of duty with the reserves in Iraq. The affair had started then. The actual divorce hadn’t happened until months later, after Dave got back home from his deployment.

  Just being divorced had been hard enough on Dave, but the previous fall, when Roxanne and Gary had moved from Sedona to Lake Havasu and taken the kids with them, Dave had been devastated. Ali vaguely remembered Dave mentioning that there had been trouble of one kind or another with Gary’s employment situation in Lake Havasu, but that was all she could recall. She had no idea that another move had occurred, and right that minute, none of that seemed particularly important.

  “Forget about Gary Whitman,” Ali said now. “He doesn’t matter. What does matter is figuring out where Crystal could have disappeared to and why. And how do we go about bringing her back home?”

  “I suppose Roxie’s right in a way about wanting me to stay here,” Dave admitted. “I can make more inquiries—official inquiries, that is—by going through channels on this end than I could as boots on the ground in Nevada, where I’d be outside my jurisdiction.”

  Ali knew from personal experience that being outside his jurisdiction hadn’t kept Dave Holman from riding to Ali’s rescue when she had needed his help in California a few months earlier. Surely, with his own daughter at risk, there could be no question now about what he should do.

  “You have to go,” Ali declared urgently. “I don’t know what you’re waiting for.”

  Dave blew out his breath as though trying to relieve some pressure. “Rich said pretty much the same thing his mom did when I talked to him a little while ago—that I shouldn’t come. He says Gary and Roxie fight about me all the time as it is. He said if I come up, it’ll only make things worse.”

  “All the more reason for you to go,” Ali insisted. “True, you may not be able to do anything to help find Crystal, but at least you can be there as moral support for Cassie and Rich, and they’re the ones who need it. What did Rich tell you, by the way? Did he have any idea why Crystal might have taken off?”

  “Not really. According to him she’s been quite the handful since they got to Vegas. She’s already been suspended from her new school—twice.”

  “Suspended twice from middle school?” Ali asked. “What did she do?”

  “I have no idea,” Dave said. “Roxie hadn’t mentioned it to me, and Rich didn’t say, either. But here’s what I don’t understand. It used to be that, of all the kids, Crystal was the one who actually liked going to school. At least, I thought she did. Up until this year, she was always a straight-A student. I can’t imagine what’s gotten into her.”

  “Divorces are difficult for kids,” Ali offered. “And middle school especially can be tough, especially if you’re the new kid on the block. In that case it can be downright brutal. I’m sure you’ve heard about ‘mean girls.’ But tell me about the Amber Alert. I know a little about them, but I don’t know how they work.”

  “It’s like an all-points bulletin for missing kids,” Dave replied, “except more so. The announcements don’t just go out to law enforcement agencies. They’re posted on radio and television and on road signs on the interstates. They also go to bus depots and airports so busline and airline personnel are also on the lookout. The problem is, for it to do any good, it should have gone out within hours of Crystal’s disappearance.”

  “So why are you still here?” Ali asked.

  Dave heaved himself off the sofa and walked over to the window, where he seemed to stare outside. With the now all-enveloping darkness, his brooding features were reflected back into the room by the windowpane.

  “I didn’t tell you the real reason Roxie doesn’t want me to come,” he said softly. “She’s scared.”

  “Of her husband?” Ali asked. “Because of what Gary might do if you show up?”

  “No,” Dave said softly. “Of me. She’s scared about what I might do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Because I told her I was going to get in my car, come to Vegas, and kill that son of a bitch of a husband of hers. It was bad enough that the slimeball destroyed my family the first time. Then he took them to Havasu. Now he’s dragged them all off to Vegas. You can’t just move kids around like that, hauling them from place to place like so much excess baggage. It’s too hard on them. Crystal used to be a really good kid. If she’s screwed up now, I’m blaming it on him. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all Gary Whitman’s fault.”

  “You may have said you were going to kill him, but I don’t think you meant it,” Ali said.

  “Didn’t I?” Dave returned gloomily. “I’m not so sure. Maybe I did mean it. But the point is, I did say it. Roxanne heard me and so did Gary. So that’s the deal. First thing tomorrow morning Roxie plans on going to court to swear out a restraining order against me. If I come anywhere near her and Gary, I’ll go to jail.”

  “Screw Roxie and Gary!” Ali said forcefully. “And screw going through ‘official channels on this end.’ You need to be there, Dave. Let the cops look for Crystal. That’s their job. The people who need you the most right now are Rich and Cassie. You’re their father. In order to help them, you don’t need to go anywhere near the house. You just said Rich took his sister to school. That means he has his driver’s license now, right?”

  Dave nodded.

  “So go to Vegas,” Ali told him. “Check into a hotel somewhere close but not too close to where they live. Call Rich and Cassie and let them come to you and be with you.”

  “But I’m used to doing things,” Dave objected. “I’m used to taking action. If I’m just sitting around in a hotel room somewhere, I’ll feel utterly useless, even more than I feel right now.”

  “Being there for your kids is doing something,” Ali insisted. “So is setting a good example about how to behave in the face of a crisis.”

  Dave seemed to consider what she had said before he responded. “I just thought that if Roxanne wouldn’
t let me come to the house, there wasn’t much point in my going.”

  Ali shook her head. “You mouthed off when you probably shouldn’t have, but so what? From what I can see, Roxanne isn’t very high in decision-making skills, either. So go. Be there for your kids—for all your kids.”

  Dave looked down at his watch. “If I left now, I could be there by midnight.”

  “Yes,” Ali agreed. “You could. And if you’re really worried about taking a potshot at Gary Whitman, you could always leave your gun at home. Take some more pizza and leave the gun.”

  Dave accepted another piece of cold pizza and gave her a halfhearted grin. “Maybe I’m not that worried,” he said. Pizza in hand, he started toward the door; then he stopped and turned back. “I guess I already knew what I should do,” he added. “I just needed someone to point me in the right direction. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” Ali said. “That’s what friends are for. But drive carefully. You won’t be of much use to your kids if you end up in a wreck somewhere between here and there. And call me. The moment you hear something about Crystal, call me. Day or night, it doesn’t matter.”

  Dave sobered, his grin disappearing as suddenly as it had come. “I will,” he declared. “I’ll call day or night and let you know what’s happening.”

  For a while after Dave left, Ali sat on the couch absently stroking Sam’s soft fur and wondering if she had given her friend the right advice. She had no doubt that Dave Holman was capable of using deadly force when necessary, but she also wasn’t at all convinced that his threat toward his ex-wife’s new husband was real. It seemed more likely that what he had said was nothing more than bluster, an empty emotional outburst provoked by his daughter’s unexplained disappearance.

  Faced with a choice between blogging about this current crisis or perusing Arabella’s diary written sixty or so years earlier, Ali voted for immediacy by reaching for her laptop. Once it booted up, she began working on her post for the next day’s installment.

  CUTLOOSEBLOG.COM

  Wednesday, January 11, 2006

  We’ve all seen the headlines and watched stories like this unfold on the airways. A young girl, a teenager, inexplicably disappears on her way home from school or from a friend’s house. Eventually, concerned parents go to the police and report her missing. If they’re really lucky, an Amber Alert is issued, and their child is found.

  Sometimes the missing child turns out to be nothing but a common runaway. Once she is reunited with her anxious parents, the family is left to cope with whatever it was that caused her to leave home in the first place. Sometimes the difficulties seem relatively minor—problems with a friend at school, a bad report card, or maybe a case of puppy love gone awry. Sometimes the reasons are much more troublesome and the finger of blame points directly back to unsavory conditions existing in the home itself. In families plagued by drug or alcohol abuse or where domestic violence and/or sexual molestation are the order of the day, leaving home can seem like—and sometimes is—the child’s only viable avenue for survival. And when runaway children are returned to homes like that, it’s often only a matter of time before they bolt once more.

  We’re also all too familiar with other endings to this story—horrific instances where missing children disappear and never return home. They simply melt into the ether. Days or weeks or months later their remains are found and identified—close to home or far away. At that point what was once a missing persons case is suddenly transformed into a homicide.

  Today a friend’s thirteen-year-old child has gone missing. She never made it to school this morning even though she was dropped off right outside the campus. She wasn’t reported missing until late this evening, a good twelve hours after she was seen walking in the direction of her first morning class. An Amber Alert has been issued, but her father fears too much time may have passed before that happened.

  Yes, the clichés are all there. The girl is from a broken family—a divorced family—with the distraught father living in one state and with the mother, children, and new stepfather living in another. Some people are probably thinking this is nothing more than a custody dispute gone bad. But it isn’t that, not at all.

  It’s bad enough for families to have to face this kind of crisis when a marriage is solid and intact. It’s even tougher to contemplate doing so when the marriage bond has been severed and the crisis must be faced alone.

  And that’s where my friend is tonight—facing the loss of his daughter on his own. His former wife has a new husband, and the two of them are together in this difficult time. My friend is alone—alone and angry; alone and grieving. He came to talk to me earlier this evening. I did what I could to bolster him, but there’s only so much anyone else can do.

  I have no idea how these events will sort themselves out in the course of the next few days. If it is a family dispute of some kind and if his daughter has simply run away, she may turn back up on her own when she gets cold enough or hungry enough or even tired enough. But it may turn out that something else is going on here—something more ominous than that. If foul play is involved, it’s likely the story will go public. For right now, and out of deference to my friend’s privacy and that of the other family members, I’m not identifying any of the players. There may come a time when that will change, when posting the missing girl’s information on this Web site may be used as a possible means for bringing her home.

  In the meantime, though, I’m going to hope and pray that doesn’t happen.

  While the post took its sweet time about uploading, Ali turned to her new mail list. There, along with a mountain of spam, was an e-mail from one of her regulars, Velma Trimble in Laguna Beach, California. Under the name of “Velma T in Laguna” she usually sent correspondence to the comment section of cutlooseblog.com. It was odd for her to write to Ali directly.

  Dear Babe,

  You’re the only person I can think of to write to tonight. You see, today I went to the doctor to get the results back from the biopsy for the lump on my left breast. It took almost two weeks to get the results back. I don’t know why it takes so long, but today was the day.

  I had pretty well prepared myself for the fact that it was going to be bad news, and it was. Since I have a computer, I had gone to the various Web sites and looked up what I could expect in terms of treatment options—surgery, radiation, chemo. What I wasn’t prepared for was to be told not to bother.

  “At your age,” this little whippersnapper doctortold me, “there’s really not much point.” He’s probably all of forty-five and he should count himself lucky I didn’t whack him over his head with my walker. The problem is, I can’t get in to see an oncologist without a referral from my primary physician. And if he does give me a referral, what’s he going to say? “Here’s Velma, but don’t bother doing anything to fix her because she’s a useless eighty-something and curing her cancer isn’t going to be cost effective.”

  What I want to know is this: Did this happen because Medicare reimbursements are so low that the doctor can’t be bothered? Maybe he’d rather treat full-fare patients. Or does he just hate old people in general? (Surprise, he’s going to be one someday himself. I wonder how he’ll like it?) Or does he just hate me? Personally.

  Should I go to the trouble of trying to see another doctor—not easy when you have to go by cab or bus because you can’t drive anymore (another bad thing about getting old) or should I just take him at his word, decide he’s right, I’m a hopeless case, and that the sooner I turn toes up the better off we’ll all be?

  You’re probably wondering why I’m asking you these questions. I can’t very well ask my son, because he would definitely be in the toes-up corner. Unfortunately my doctor and my son are friends. They belong to the same club and play golf together. That’s how I ended up with him for a doctor—my son recommended him. I even signed a form saying it was okay for him to let my son have access to my medical information. That was before all this happened, of course.

&nb
sp; Please write back and let me know what you think. I really value your opinion.

  Sincerely,

  VELMA T IN LAGUNA

  Ali was absolutely outraged. When she had been in California dealing with the avalanche of crises that had accompanied Paul Grayson’s death, she had been overwhelmed by everything that had been coming at her. On the night when she had been at her very lowest ebb, a single bright spot had appeared. Velma T had managed to track Ali down at her hotel. Sporting a walker decorated with patriotic items—including red, white, and blue tennis balls—the woman had caught a cab and come all the way across L.A. to offer her support and to let Ali Reynolds know there was someone in her corner.

  This was a sprightly, outgoing woman. And this obnoxious doctor was writing her off because she was eighty-eight?

  Ali’s first husband, Dean, had died of glioblastoma when he was in his twenties and while Ali was pregnant with Christopher. During her high-profile years as an L.A. area newscaster, Ali had done lots of work with the cancer community—helping with fund-raising and doing guest appearances. One of the side benefits of that had left Ali with a good deal of knowledge and with a whole list of cancer treatment contacts she could call on for help and information.

  The idea of Velma, a most likely impoverished old woman trying to fight her way through the cancer treatment morass on her own, left Ali feeling physically ill. And suspecting that Velma was spending this worrisome, sleepless night in front of her computer screen, Ali wrote back at once.

  Dear Velma

  I’m so sorry. Receiving a cancer diagnosis is always devastating no matter how old you are or how young or how young at heart.

  Although I’ve dealt with my share of medical professionals, I have no idea why your primary care physician thinks treatment options are off the table at this time. It may be that you were in such a state of distress that you simply didn’t understand exactly what he was saying. On the other hand, there may be other physical and medical conditions involved that make it risky for you to undergo treatment of any kind. There’s always a chance that, as you suggested, your doctor is simply an uncaring jerk. Another possibility that tends more to aluminum-foil-hat conspiracy theories would have to do with your doctor having a conflict of interest in treating you due to his chummy relationship with your son.