Edge of Evil ar-1

by J. A. Jance

  Edge of Evil

  ( Alison Reynolds - 1 )

  J. A. Jance

  J. A. Jance

  Edge of Evil

  Prologue

  A pair of headlights inched down Schnebly Hill Road, down from the Mogollon Rim toward red rock-rimmed Sedona, eleven treacherous miles below. Had anyone been able to see through the falling snow, they might have thought the vehicle was traversing the sheer cliff face itself. Less than half a mile from the top, at a spot where the road made a hairpin turn back into a canyon, an older model Chevy Yukon came to a stop. With the engine still running, a door opened. Someone stepped out into the falling snow. The door slammed shut quietly, very quietly, the sound muffled by the heavy, wet flakes.

  For a few seconds nothing at all happened. And for a while after, it seemed as though nothing would. Then slowly, very slowly, the SUV inched forward. Rather than following the narrow roadway that wound back into the safety of the mountain, the Yukon instead moved forward, straight out and over the edge. The burning headlights cut through the darkness and the falling snow as the Yukon arched downward.

  In clear weather the explosion of metal as the vehicle slammed into the first outcropping of rock would have echoed up and down the canyon walls, but on this snowy March night, it was muffled, too. As the Yukon continued its deadly end-over-end tumble, a body flew soundlessly out through one of the smashed windows and landed, limp and lifeless as a rag doll, its shattered arms flung around the base of a scrubby pine. Without its passenger, the Yukon continued on its destructive path, tumbling on and on, down and down. One by one, headlights and taillights were extinguished. When the vehicle finally came to rest, the interior dome light came on briefly. After a few minutes, that too went out. Then there was silence, utter silence.

  On the snow-covered track far above, a single person stood and watched, peering through the snow searching for any sign of life coming from the scattered wreckage. Finally, after several long minutes, satisfied that no one could have survived that terrible downward plunge, the coat-shrouded figure turned and trudged back the way the Yukon had come.

  Within minutes, the telltale impressions of hiking boots had been totally obliterated. Before long, the tire tracks leaving the roadway had disappeared as well. All that was left was silence and the falling snow.

  Chapter 1

  When Alison Reynolds left the studio after the eleven o’clock news, she was amazed to find Cliff Baker, the news director, waiting out in the hall. He was usually gone for the day by then, or else he was out in the parking lot toking up.

  “Talk to you a minute, Ali?” he said in that clipped almost rude tone of his, one that made his smallest requests come across as issued orders.

  Ali was whipped. She had started that morning as the featured speaker for a YWCA fund-raising breakfast. At noon she had MC-ed an American Cancer Society-sponsored charity event. In the process she had driven from one end of LA to the other. She had also co-anchored two evening live news broadcasts-one at six and the other at eleven. She was ready to go home, kick off her high heels, and put her feet up. Looking at Cliff’s uncompromising face, she knew he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  She summoned a tired but necessary smile. “Sure, Cliff. What’s up?”

  That’s when she noticed Eduardo Duarte, a uniformed security guard, standing off to one side and hovering awkwardly in the background. Ali knew Eddie and his wife Rosa. They had met in a hospital room on a juvenile cancer ward where she had gone to cheer them up while the Duarte’s three-year-old son, Alonso, had been undergoing treatment-successful treatment it turned out-for leukemia. Ali Reynolds was, after all, the station’s unofficial but very committed one-woman cancer research and treatment spokesperson.

  This status had been a natural aftermath of her first husband’s death from an inoperable brain tumor at age twenty-four, twenty-two years earlier. His death had left Ali a widow at age twenty-three-widowed and seven months pregnant. Christopher had been born two full months after his father’s death. Since then, Ali had been a tireless crusader for cancer research. She walked in Relays for Life, participated in Races for the Cure, and did countless cancer-related public appearances whenever possible. And private appearances as well.

  For most of the on-air folks at the station, Eduardo Duarte was just another nameless, faceless security guard who checked IDs as employees came and went through the front lobby. For Ali, Eddie was far more than that. She had been with the Duartes in the hospital waiting room and had held their hands during the dark time when no one had known for sure whether or not their child would survive.

  “Hey, Eddie,” she said. “How’s my man, ’Lonso?”

  “He’s okay, I guess, Ms. Reynolds,” Eddie answered, but he kept his eyes averted. That’s when Ali tumbled to the fact that Cliff Baker’s hallway ambush meant trouble.

  “What’s going on, Cliff?” she asked.

  Six months earlier Clifford Baker had been brought on board to “fix” things. At least that was the way the story was told to the news team at the staff meeting when Cliff was introduced. But what had been bad then was still bad now. It was hard to win the ratings game when there were too many people out in the parking lot smoking joints before and after their shifts; when there were too many people hiding out in their offices with too many lines of coke going up their noses. And Ali Reynolds long suspected that one of those problem noses belonged to Cliff Baker.

  “The ratings still suck,” he said.

  Ali didn’t say anything. She was over forty in a world in which thirty-five meant on-air womenfolk were nearing the end of their sell-by date. Standing there in the hallway, breathing the sweet perfume of marijuana smoke wafting off Cliff’s rumpled sports jacket, Ali knew exactly what was coming. There was a certain inevitability to the whole process, and Ali wasn’t about to say something that would make Cliff’s job any easier. If he was there to fire her, he would have to come right out and say so.

  “We’ve decided to take the news team in a different direction,” he said at last.

  Presumably without me, Ali thought, but she kept her mouth shut.

  “I know this is going to be difficult for you,” Cliff continued.

  Ali had known from the moment she met the man that he was a cold-blooded bastard. The supposed reluctance he was exhibiting now was all an act-a classic study in self-serving, cover-your-ass camouflage.

  “And I’m sure this is going to seem hardhearted,” he went on, shaking his head reluctantly, “but we have to let you go. We’ll pay you until the end of your contract, of course, and then I’m sure there’ll be some severance pay, but after that…” He shrugged.

  With the news broadcast ended, there were other people coming and going in the hallway. Ali noticed that they all gave the three people standing outside the newsroom door a wide berth. Ali wondered, How many of you knew this was coming?

  She had noticed a few sidelong glances of late-quiet conversations that would die away as soon as she came into the room and resume once she left-but in the cutthroat world of television, she hadn’t thought them anything out of the ordinary. Now she knew better, but she couldn’t afford to think about her spineless co-workers just then. Instead, she remained focused on Cliff.

  “Why?” Ali asked. “Why do you have to let me go?”

  This was a good journalistic gambit. Go for the Ws-who, what, why, where, when, and sometimes how. She was never quite sure how the word how had been added to the mix of Ws, or why it was considered to be one, but when taking journalism classes from stodgy professors whose grading meant everything, it’s a good idea to avoid questioning the conventional wisdom.

  “For the good of the team,” Cliff answered at once.

  Ali Reynolds came from good Sc
andinavian stock. She was a natural blonde who could, on occasion, summon a suitably dumb-blonde persona. It was a gambit that had suckered more than one unsuspecting male interviewee into saying more than he intended. Cliff, dyed-in-the-wool male chauvinist that he was, took the bait.

  “You know the demographics,” he added. “We need to appeal to a younger audience, a more hip audience.”

  “You’re saying I’m too old?” Ali asked.

  “Well, not in so many words,” Cliff answered quickly.

  But, of course, he had said so in so many words. Not only had he said the revealing “hip audience” words to Ali, he had made the astonishing blunder of doing so in front of a witness, Eddie Duarte. Ali suspected that the grass Cliff had smoked while waiting for the end of the broadcast had impaired his judgment. Ali glanced toward Eddie, who seemed to be fixated on examining the shine on his highly polished shoes.

  “When’s my last broadcast?” she asked.

  “You just did it,” Cliff said.

  Ali willed herself to exhibit no emotion whatsoever. She summoned the same strength she had used to get through the noon newscast the day of the Oklahoma City bombing. Her performance that day had been done with enough professional aplomb that it had been instrumental in getting her a job as a “pre”-Laurie Dhue Fox News Channel babe a year later. (Of course, her natural-blond good looks and flawless complexion hadn’t hurt, either.) Years later, after Ali had come to LA to assume co-anchor duties there, she had managed to remain dry-eyed and professional during the unrelenting hours of live on-air coverage in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. She was dry-eyed now, too.

  “You’re not going to give me a chance to tell my viewers good-bye?” she asked.

  “There’s no point, really,” Cliff said with a shrug. “Come on, Ali. When it’s over, it’s over. Schmaltzy good-byes don’t do a thing for ratings. But that’s why Eddie’s here. He’ll go with you while you clean out your locker and your desk. You’re not to touch your computer. Whatever’s on your office computer belongs to the station. And be sure to give him your ID card, your elevator pass, and your keys on the way out. Good luck.” With that, Cliff Baker turned away and sauntered, down the hall.”

  “Sorry, Ms. Reynolds,” Eddie murmured.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Will you be all right?”

  “I’ll be fine. Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

  She went into the newsroom, where she saw that someone had taken the liberty of placing an empty banker’s box on the chair in front of her desk. As she approached it, she noticed that the other people in the room seemed totally involved in other things-studying their computers, talking on the phone. Only one of them, Kimberly Weston-the up-and-coming “weather girl”-came over to chat.

  “I’m so sorry to hear about all this,” she said.

  So the word had been out, Ali realized. And this little twit-the arrogant tiny-waisted twenty-something with her enhanced boobs, the bitch who had masterminded giving Ali a gift-wrapped gag package of Grecian Formula 44 on the occasion of her most recent birthday-had known all about it for God knows how long. Since long before Ali did.

  With a swipe of her fist, Ali cleared her son’s high school graduation portrait off her desk and slammed it into the box with enough force that only a miracle kept the glass from shattering.

  “That’s funny,” she said, “I only just found out.”

  “I mean I guess I’d just heard rumors,” Kimberly fumbled, clearly uncomfortable.

  “Since you seem to be in the know,” Ali said, “who’s taking my place? Are they promoting from within or importing new talent?”

  “Importing,” Kimberly said in a small voice.

  That figures, Ali thought. What goes around comes around.

  It was the same thing the station had done to Katherine Amado, the station’s previous female anchor, when they brought in Alison. Katy Amado was let go in one day-she was forty-eight years old at the time. The very next day, Ali was down at the station filming promos for the “new” news team.

  In far less time than Ali would have thought possible, all of her personal items were summarily dumped into the box. When it came time to leave the newsroom for the last time, no one came near her to tell her good-bye or wish her luck. Maybe they think I’m contagious, she thought.

  With Eddie shadowing her and carrying the box, Ali ventured back into the darkened studio and retrieved her brush, hair spray, makeup, and mirror from their place in the cubbyhole beneath the shiny wood-grained surface of the news desk. In the women’s rest room, she emptied her locker of the two extra blazers she kept there. She also removed the hair dryer and curling iron that she had brought in and allowed other people to use. If someone was in need of a curling iron tomorrow morning, it was too bad. They could get their butts over to Walgreens and buy a new one.

  Eddie lugged the box all the way out to the parking lot. He waited while Ali unlocked her Porsche Cayenne, then he loaded the box into the back and closed the tail gate. By the time he finished, Ali had fished out her elevator key and building pass. She handed those to him and then plucked her ID off the strap she wore around her neck.

  “Here you go,” she said, handing it over. “Thanks for all the help, Eddie. I really appreciate it.”

  “I heard what Mr. Baker said,” Eddie muttered. “About you being too old. He can’t do that, can he? I mean, aren’t there laws about that kind of thing?”

  “He’s not supposed to be able to do it,” Ali replied with a sharp laugh. “But Clifford Baker doesn’t seem to think any of those rules apply to him.”

  “Will you fight him, then?” Eddie asked. “Will you take him to court?”

  “I might,” Ali said.

  “If you need me to testify,” Eddie said, “I’ll be glad to tell them what he said-that it was because you’re too old.”

  “You’d do that?” Ali asked.

  Eddie nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I would.”

  “But you’d probably lose your job.”

  Eddie Duarte shrugged. “I’m just a security guard,” he said. “There are lots of jobs for people like me.”

  “Thank you, Eddie,” she said. “I’ll think about it.” Then she got in the car and drove from Burbank to her house on Robert Lane in Beverly Hills. On the way, she didn’t try calling home to tell her husband what had happened. There wasn’t anything Paul Grayson could have done about it. Besides, he usually came home later than Ali did.

  When she turned off the 405 onto Sunset, she opened the moon roof and let the wind ruffle her hair. Turning into the driveway, she was surprised to see lights on downstairs. Her son Chris, now a senior at UCLA, lived out back in the guest house, but he often prowled the kitchen in the “big house” late in the evenings in search of food. Ali was surprised to find Chris’s Prius missing from its assigned spot in the sixcar garage. Instead, Paul’s arena red Porsche Carerra was parked at the far end. As Ali walked past it, the ticking of the cooling engine told her that he hadn’t been home long.

  She found Paul at the bar off the family room mixing himself a drink. “I’m having a Manhattan. Want one?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she said, kicking off her shoes and dropping into a nearby easy chair. “Make mine a double.”

  “So how did it go?” he asked as he delivered her drink.

  That’s when Alison realized that Paul already knew she’d been let go-that he had known what was coming down before she did! He was a network bigwig, and LA was a major market. Naturally they would have told Paul about her firing in advance of their actually doing it. After all, he had been responsible for bringing Alison to town in the first place. Nepotism be damned, he was the one who had finagled his new bride her cushy co-anchor position-a maneuver that had left her open to years’ worth of sniping coworkers who claimed she wasn’t really qualified. Now, though, Paul would have had to sign off on her being booted out as well.

  Somehow she managed to hold the stemmed cock
tail glass steady enough that when she took that first sip she didn’t spill any of it.

  “Cliff Baker fired me,” she said quietly. “Tonight. After the news.”

  “Oh, Ali Bunny,” he said. “I’m so sorry. What a hell of a thing!”

  She hated it when he called her Ali Bunny.

  “I may take them to court,” she said calmly.

  That shocked Paul, all right-shocked him good.

  “You’re going to what?” he demanded, slopping his own drink down the unknotted three-hundred-dollar tie dangling around his neck.

  “It’s age and sex discrimination,” she said. “The three guys that are left are all older than I am. Randall’s got to be sixty if he’s a day. Nobody’s sacking any of them.”

  “You can’t take the station to court,” Paul said. “I mean, how would it look? We’re married. I work for the network. What would people say?”

  “People would say it’s about time somebody stood up for women,” Ali replied. “Over forty isn’t exactly over the hill.”

  “If you take the station to court, you’ll be black-balled for sure. You’ll never work in the mainstream media again.”

  “All the more reason to sue them, then,” she said.

  “But think what it’ll do to my career!”

  Ali took another sip of her drink. “Frankly, my dear,” she told him. “I don’t give a damn.”

  Paul stood up abruptly and stalked off to his study, closing the door firmly behind him. Other people might have given the door a good hard slam, but not Paul Grayson. He disdained what he called “cheap theatrics.” He considered himself above all that.

  But when the heavy door clicked shut, Alison Reynolds heard something else entirely. The sound that echoed down the marble-floored hallway had nothing to do with the locking mechanism on the door and everything to do with the end of their marriage.

  Ali sat for a few moments longer. When she and Paul had moved into this house years earlier, she thought herself extremely lucky. After years of being a single parent, she had been glad to have a father figure for her hormone-charged fourteen-year-old son. But things hadn’t turned out the way she expected. Paul and Chris weren’t close. Not at all. And her happily-ever-after fairy tale romance wasn’t what it had been cracked up to be, either. An exciting, whirlwind romance had morphed into a marriage where divergent jobs and interests kept them busy and apart. At times it seemed to Ali that she and Paul were roommates and housemates more than they were man and wife.