Web of Evil

by J. A. Jance

  Ali heard a slight rustling on the phone and could picture Helga standing behind her desk and squaring her shoulders, bristling to her diminutive but tough-as-nails five foot two. “What exactly did this detective say? And what’s her name again?”

  “Detective Carolyn Little, LAPD Missing Persons. She asked when I had arrived, why I was here, where I was staying, when did I last see Paul. All the usual stuff, I guess.”

  “Did she mention the possibility that you might be under any kind of suspicion?”

  The severity of Helga’s tone put Ali on edge and made her wonder if perhaps Detective Little’s questions weren’t quite so “usual” after all.

  “Me?” Ali demanded, dumbfounded. “Why on earth would I be a suspect?”

  “Has Paul changed his will?” Helga asked.

  “I have no idea about that,” Ali said. “We’re getting a divorce, remember? I’ve rewritten my will so Chris is my primary beneficiary in case anything happens to me. I would assume Paul has done the same thing in favor of April and her baby.”

  “Not necessarily,” Helga mused. “In my experience, men often put off handling those pesky little details.”

  “What are you saying?” Ali asked.

  “Let’s assume the worst,” Helga said. “Let’s say Paul Grayson turns up dead, a victim of some kind of foul play. If you and he aren’t divorced—and you’re not—and if, by some chance, his will hasn’t been rewritten, it’s likely you’ll make out far better as a widow than you would have as a divorcée. From an investigative point of view and considering the dollar amounts involved, that might well put you at the top of the suspect list in a murder-for-profit scheme.”

  “Me?” Ali asked. “How is that possible? I had nothing to do with any of this—nothing at all. Besides, at the time Paul disappeared from his so-called bachelor party, I was out in the middle of the desert, somewhere this side of Blythe.”

  “Let’s don’t push panic buttons then,” Helga reassured her. “We’ll just sit back and see what happens. But, in the meantime, don’t talk to any more detectives without having your attorney present.”

  “My attorney,” Ali repeated. “You mean you?”

  “No. Not me. I do divorces. I don’t do criminal law,” Helga continued. “That’s a whole other can of worms. Not to worry, though. Weldon, Davis, and Reed has several top-drawer criminal attorneys on staff. I’ll get a recommendation and have one of them be in touch with you.”

  Great, Ali thought. Just what I need. Another frigging attorney!

  Once she was off the phone, Ali paced for a while. Finally, she lay down on the floor and forced herself to do some relaxation exercises. After settling some of her agitation, she climbed up on the bed. She never expected to fall asleep, but she did, waking just in time to switch on the local news. Out of force of habit, she turned once again to her old station.

  Of course, the amazingly perky and spike-haired Annette Carrera was front and center, but so was the rest of the old news gang. The foppish Randall James, still wearing his appallingly awful wig, continued on as co-anchor. There, too, was Axel Rod-bury, who, false teeth and all, had to be older than God. If Ali was considered over the hill, why wasn’t he? And there was Bill Nickels, too, the leering and always overly enthusiastic sportscaster. Ali had wanted to smack the smug grin off his face for years, especially after hearing rumors that, when it came to student interns, Mr. Sports Guy had a tendency to try for a home run.

  Ali had steeled herself for the ordeal, expecting that seeing her old colleagues gathered in the familiar confines of the newsroom set would hit her with some sense of loss. But as the quartet yucked it up in the required and supposedly unscripted pre-newscast lead-in, Ali wasn’t at all surprised to see that Bill Nickels and Annette seemed to have an especially chummy relationship.

  Don’t you have brains enough to aim a little higher than that? Ali thought. Not that aiming higher did me any good.

  Beyond that, though, she felt nothing at all. Nothing. Her leaving may not have been of Ali Reynolds’s own volition, but as it turned out, she really had moved on. Whatever had happened, she was over it—except for her wrongful dismissal lawsuit. She wasn’t over that—not by a long shot.

  The lead story, introduced by Annette herself, had to do with Paul Grayson’s disappearance. This was, after all, the NBC affiliate, and Grayson was a high-profile NBC bigwig. A young female reporter—one Ali had never seen before—delivered a brief story filmed in front of the gated entrance to the house on Robert Lane. That, Ali knew, would send Paul utterly ballistic once he got wind of it. Having your front gate identified on television news for all the world to see was not good from a security standpoint.

  The second, related segment, done by a roving reporter, was filmed in the paved parking lot of a less than desirable apartment complex somewhere in Banning. Of course, by the time the filming occurred, Paul’s Arena Red 911 had already been towed away. Yellow crime scene tape was still visible but the vehicle wasn’t, as the reporter earnestly let viewers know that this was where Paul Grayson’s abandoned Porsche had been found early in the afternoon.

  By the time the two segments were over almost three minutes of news time had elapsed and Ali had learned almost nothing she hadn’t known before from simply surfing the Net.

  “Useless,” Ali muttered under her breath. She was close to changing the channel when part of a story Randall James was relating penetrated her consciousness. This one concerned an unidentified man found dead in the desert late Thursday night in the aftermath of a fatal train/vehicle collision that had occurred northwest of Palm Springs. Since Ali had been in such proximity to the incident when it happened, she stayed tuned to see the remainder of the piece.

  The smiling faces on the tube, reading blandly from their teleprompters, didn’t seem to make any connection between that case and the one they had reported on two stories before, and why should they? After all, they were paid to read what was given to them—stories that had already been written and edited by someone else. Connecting dots was never a required part of the news desk equation.

  But Ali’s life had undergone a fundamental change months earlier when she had started trying to piece together the details that would explain the sudden death of her friend Reenie Bernard. And now, this newly reconstituted Ali Reynolds was incapable of not connecting dots, especially when they were this obvious.

  The body of an unidentified man found outside Palm Springs? Paul’s abandoned vehicle located in a parking lot somewhere in Banning, ten or fifteen miles away? Without knowing how, Ali understood immediately that the two incidents were connected. She knew in her bones that the dead man found near Palm Springs had to be Paul. The only remaining question was, how long would it take for someone else to figure it out?

  The answer to that question wasn’t long in coming. Before Axel could launch into his weather report, there was a sharp rap on Ali’s door.

  “Who is it?” she asked, peering out through the security peephole. Two men wearing white shirts, ties, and sports jackets stood in the hall. One was white and older—mid-fifties—with a bad comb-over and the thick neck of an aging football player. The other was younger—mid-thirties, black, with a shaved head and the straight-shouldered bearing of an ex-Marine.

  “Police,” the older one said, holding up a wallet that contained a badge and photo ID. “Detectives Sims and Taylor, Riverside Sheriff’s Department. We need to speak to you about your husband.”

  Helga Myerhoff’s warning should have been uppermost in Ali’s head, but it wasn’t. Shaken by her sudden realization that Paul really was dead, she unfastened the security chain and opened the door.

  “Is he dead?” she asked.

  “He may be,” Detective Sims, the older one, said. “That’s why we need to speak with you. May we come in?”

  Ali opened the door and allowed the two men into her room. Their looming presence combined with the weight of the news they carried filled what had previously seemed to be a spacio
us room. Ali retreated to a nearby chair. The detectives remained standing.

  Ali’s mind raced. She remembered the desolate desert, the darkness, the flashing emergency lights. She had driven Highway 111 into Palm Springs numerous times. She remembered the tracks running alongside the roadway. On the other side of the tracks was nothing—only desert. There was no reason to cross the tracks there, unless…

  “This is about that car that got run over by the train last night, isn’t it?” she said. “What happened? Did Paul commit suicide?”

  The two detectives exchanged glances. “You’re aware of the incident then?” Detective Sims asked.

  “The incident with the train?” Ali asked. “Sure. It was on the news just now. So was the story about Paul. When I saw that his Porsche had been found stripped and abandoned in a parking lot in Banning, I put two and two together.”

  “That’s what we’re doing, too,” Detective Taylor said, “putting two and two together. We have an unidentified victim we believe to be your husband, but we’re not sure. Detective Little from LAPD told us where to find you. We need someone to do a positive ID.”

  “I’ll get my purse,” Ali said, standing up. “Where do you want me to go?”

  “To the morgue,” Sims said quickly. “In Indio.”

  “But that’s hours from here, on the far side of Palm Springs.”

  “Riverside is a big county,” Taylor returned. “That’s where they’ve taken the body. But don’t worry about how far it is. We’ll be glad to take you over and bring you back. It’s the least we can do.”

  Ali’s purse was on the desk. Her Glock 26 was locked away in her room safe. She had left it there that morning when she was on her way to court, and she was glad it was still there. Even though she had a properly issued license to carry, it was probably not a good idea to show up in a cop car with a loaded handgun in her possession. Ali collected her purse and her cell phone.

  “Let’s go then,” she said.

  People glanced warily at the trio as they walked through the Westwood’s well-appointed lobby. Ali was in the middle with the two cops flanking her on either side. Detectives Sims and Taylor may not have been in uniform, but they were still clearly cops. Outside, the real giveaway was the plain white, well-used Crown Victoria parked directly in front of the hotel entrance. Sporting a rack of two-way-radio antennas and black-wall tires, the Crown Victoria stuck out like a sore thumb next to its nearest neighbors—a silver Maserati Quattroporte and a gleaming black Bentley GT.

  Sims opened the back door of the sedan to let Ali inside. When she saw there was no door handle, she felt a moment of concern. She realized belatedly that she probably should have called Helga before agreeing to come along with Sims and Taylor. Presumably Helga would have warned her against getting into a vehicle with them.

  On the other hand, why not? Ali thought. All they need is for me to identify the body. What’s wrong with that?

  Ali remembered times in the past when she’d been assigned to cover ongoing police investigations. She remembered instances where some of the people involved refused to cooperate, to give statements of any kind to investigating officers without having an attorney present. And even though at the time Ali had known full well that was everyone’s legal right, she had still harbored a sneaking suspicion that people who hid behind their attorneys had something else to hide as well.

  Well, I don’t, Ali told herself firmly. Settling into the backseat, she fastened her seat belt. While Detective Taylor drove, Sims rode shotgun and chatted her up.

  “I understand from Detective Little that you and your husband are in the process of getting a divorce?”

  Are getting a divorce? Ali wondered. The use of the present tense was telling. Until the detectives had a positive identification of their victim, they were going to hold firm to the fiction that Paul Grayson was still alive.

  “Yes,” Ali answered. “It was supposed to be finalized today. That was probably the first time anyone besides April noticed Paul was missing—when he didn’t show up for the hearing.”

  “Friendly?” Sims asked.

  At first Ali wasn’t sure what Sims meant. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You know,” he responded. “Your divorce. Is it amicable and all that?”

  “As amicable as can be expected considering my husband’s girlfriend—his fiancée—is eight and a half months pregnant.”

  “With his baby?” Sims asked.

  “So I’ve been told,” Ali said. “They were supposed to get married tomorrow. Speaking of which, why am I doing the identification? Why not April?”

  “You’re still married to him,” Sims said. “From our point of view, you’re a surviving relative. She’s not.”

  Ali thought about that for a few moments. It was rush hour. Traffic was painfully slow. As they inched along, Ali realized that she and the two detectives were in the same situation. They wanted information from her; she wanted the same from them.

  “This man who’s dead,” she said, “this man who may be Paul. What was he doing on the railroad tracks? Did he go there on purpose? Was he trying to commit suicide or something? Maybe he and April had a fight and it pushed Paul over the edge.”

  “It wasn’t suicide,” Sims replied.

  “An accident then?”

  Sims said nothing.

  Ali thought about what Jake had reportedly said about Paul bailing on his own bachelor party without bothering to tell his host or anyone else that he was leaving. Unless…Paul Grayson had never had a good track record where women were concerned. Ali could well imagine him picking up one of the strippers or the pole dancers or whatever brand of feminine charm the Pink Swan had available and taking her somewhere for a little private tête-à-tête.

  “Was he alone or was he with someone?” Ali asked.

  “We’re not sure,” Sims said. “We have people doing a grid search, but so far no other victims have been found.”

  There was a short pause before Detective Taylor piped up. “When exactly did you get to town, Ms. Reynolds? And did you drive over or fly?”

  Taylor’s questions activated a blinking caution light in Ali’s head. She considered her words carefully before she answered. The very fact that she’d been close enough to see the flashing lights on the emergency vehicles might give the cops reason to think she was somehow involved. If she told them about driving past Palm Springs at midnight and seeing the lights, Sims and Taylor could well turn Ali’s coincidental proximity into criminal opportunity. Still, she’d already given the same information to Detective Little. It seemed foolhardy to withhold it a second time, and there was even less point to not being truthful.

  “I drove over yesterday,” Ali said. “Last night. I left Phoenix late in the afternoon. Got to the hotel around two in the morning.”

  “Which means you were driving through the Palm Springs area around…?”

  “Midnight,” Ali answered without waiting for Detective Taylor to finish posing his question. “And you’re right. I did see the cop cars and ambulances and other emergency vehicles showing up at the scene of the wreck. It’s dark in the desert. You could see those lights for miles. Later on, I heard on the radio that a train had crashed into a car.”

  Ali’s cell phone rang just then. The phone number wasn’t one she recognized. “Hello?”

  “Ali Reynolds?”

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Victor, Victor Angeleri. My colleague Helga Myerhoff asked me to call you. Sorry I couldn’t get back to you earlier. I’ve been tied up in a meeting. I thought maybe it would be a good idea for us to get together so I have a little better feel for what’s happening. Helga gave me a brief overview, but I’d like a few more details from you. Since the office is just down the street from your hotel, I thought maybe I could drop by in a little while before I head home.”

  “Sorry,” Ali said. “That won’t be possible.” She was aware that the cops in the front seat were listening avidly to everything she said and to e
very nuance of her side of the conversation. Their interest gave Ali a hint about how badly she had screwed up by not heeding Helga’s advice.

  “Why not?” Angeleri wanted to know. “What’s more important than meeting with me?”

  “It’s just that I’m not at the hotel right now,” she said. “I’m actually on my way to Indio. Two detectives from the Riverside Sheriff’s Department picked me up and asked me to come with them. They need someone to identify a dead man—the man they think is my husband.”

  Angeleri uttered a string of very unlawyerlike words, ones Edie Larson would have deemed unprintable. “Are you nuts or what? You mean you just got in the car with them?” he demanded. “And now they’re taking you all the way to Indio?”

  Ali didn’t know Victor Angeleri, but he sounded upset—furious, even—as though he couldn’t quite believe he’d been stuck with such a numbskull for a client. Ali couldn’t believe it, either.

  “That’s where the body is,” Ali said.

  “You’re going to the coroner’s office there?” Victor wanted to know.

  “Evidently,” Ali answered meekly.

  “All right,” Victor shouted into her ear. “Where are you now?”

  “Merging onto the ten.”

  “I’m leaving the office right now. I’ll meet you there. In the meantime, keep your mouth shut.”

  “Where did you say we’re going?” Ali asked, directing her question at Sims.

  “The Riverside County Morgue,” he answered. “The address is—”

  “I know the address,” Angeleri interrupted, bellowing the words loud enough to break Ali’s eardrum. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Until you and I have a chance to talk in private, you’re to say nothing more. Nothing! You can talk about the weather. You can talk about the World Series, but that’s it. Understand?”

  “Got it,” Ali answered. “I hear you loud and clear.”

  That was actually something of an understatement since Sims and Taylor must have heard him, too. The two detectives exchanged a raised-eyebrow look, and Sims heaved a resigned sigh. Clearly they had been having their way with her. Now the game was up. Ali’s only hope was that Victor Angeleri would be smart enough to dig her out of the hole she had dug herself into before she made it any deeper.