Edge of Evil ar-1

by J. A. Jance

  Ali immediately posted that one along with a response.

  cutlooseblog.com

  Monday, March 21, 2005

  Sorry I forgot to mention it, but Samantha is fine. It turns out she’s smarter than I am. As soon as the guy broke into my house, she evidently went looking for cover and didn’t come out until after he was gone. While I was in the hospital, my mother came over to look after her. Thanks for your concern.

  Posted 2:10 P.M. by Babe

  Shortly after that the security system installer knocked on the front door to tell her he was finished. He came inside and spent the next half hour taking Ali through all the intricacies of her new wireless setup, including instructing her on setting the codes and tuning her television set to the proper channel so she could see who was outside knocking without having to open the door.

  When he left, Ali wasn’t at all surprised that she fell asleep on the couch. The doctor had told her the pain meds would make her sleepy, and it was absolutely true. During the day. At night, it seemed she couldn’t sleep at all or, when she finally did, she was plagued by nightmares. In each of those, Ben Witherspoon was always back in her house, stalking her and menacing her, with a knife in one hand and a gun in the other.

  A sharp knock on the front door startled Ali out of her afternoon nap. The security system installer had left her TV set tuned to channel 95. As Samantha scrambled to disappear, Ali checked out the television screen. On it, she saw Bob Larson’s battered Bronco parked in the background. In the foreground stood Kip Hogan, Bob Larson’s new right-hand man. An Arizona Diamondbacks baseball cap was pulled low over his eyes.

  Seeing a man there, a relative stranger, caused an unreasoning fear to rise in Ali’s throat. What she wanted more than anything right then was to have her Glock back and in her hand, but the weapon had been confiscated as possible evidence and was still under lock and key where it would remain until all legal wrangling had run its course.

  Kip knocked again.

  Straighten up, Ali told herself. She stood up, staggered over to the door, and opened it.

  Kip took off the cap, bent down, picked up an ice chest, and then followed Ali into the house. “Afternoon, ma’am,” he said politely. “Your mother sent over some food. Want me to put it in the fridge?”

  Back on the couch, Ali laughed aloud at that and then stopped abruptly. The words ‘it only hurts when you laugh’ were no longer funny.

  “If you can find a spot,” she said. “There’s already so much food in there, I don’t know what I’m going to do with it all. People must think I’m starving. And if I eat it all, I’ll turn into a blimp.”

  She had come home from the hospital to find her kitchen counter overflowing with platters of cookies, cupcakes, pies, and brownies along with plastic-wrapped loaves of banana bread. In all its carbohydrate glory, the place had looked more like a gigantic bake sale than a private kitchen. She found that the refrigerator and freezer both, too, had been stuffed to the gills with goodies. There were frozen casseroles stacked in the freezer while the fridge bulged with plates of fried chicken and covered bowls full of every kind of fruit salad imaginable along with two separate potato salads, one macaroni salad and a dish of very leathery red Jell-O.

  While Ali watched, Kip worked with single-minded determination to cram this new load of foodstuffs into the refrigerator. “What about your friends up the mountain?” Ali asked, thinking in sudden embarrassment that only a week ago, Kip had been bunking in a snowy homeless encampment up on the Mogollon Rim.

  “I’m sure they’d be most appreciative, ma’am,” Kip said. “If there was any of it you didn’t want,” he added, “any you thought you could spare.”

  “Ask my dad,” she said. “Tell him I have way more food here than I’ll ever be able to eat. Maybe the two of you could come collect it tomorrow or the next day and take it up the mountain.”

  “I’ll talk to him about it,” Kip said nodding. “See what he has to say. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  He exited then, scurrying away as if uncomfortable talking to her alone. Once he was gone, Ali limped out to the kitchen. The doctor had warned her that she’d feel worse in a day or two than she had in the hospital, and it was true. The many bruises on her body had gone from black to greenish purple. As they changed color they seemed to hurt more rather than less.

  Ali picked through the goodies. Her mother had sent over a covered dish filled with potato soup. She dished up some of that and put it in the microwave to heat. She reached for a piece of chicken, to go along with the soup. But the chicken reminded her of Howie Bernard and the kids. She pulled the tin foil back over the chicken and settled for soup only.

  Chris called while she was eating. “How are you?” he asked.

  “Better,” Ali said, making the effort to sound more chipper than she felt. “I’m doing fine. Really.”

  She’d had to talk like crazy to keep him from abandoning his finals and coming straight back to Sedona. Her mother had helped with that one, or it might not have worked.

  “You have enough to eat?”

  She surveyed the mounds of food covering her counter. “Plenty,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe how much food there is.”

  Chris didn’t sound like himself, though. “What about you?” Ali asked. “Are your finals going all right?”

  “They’re fine,” he said without conviction.

  “What’s wrong, Chris?” she said at last. “I can tell by your voice that something’s up.”

  “It’s all my fault,” he said. “I’m the one who talked you into doing the blog thing. If I had just left you alone, none of this would have happened.”

  “Yes,” she said, “and then I wouldn’t be sitting here gorging myself on your grandmother’s delicious potato soup. Things happen for a reason, Chris. I was looking for a new direction, and you gave me one. Of course, neither one of us expected me to get the crap beaten out of me along the way. But what is it they say at the gym, ‘No pain; no gain.’ ”

  “Mom,” Chris groaned. “Don’t even joke about it.”

  “I’m not joking. Besides, what if Witherspoon had attacked someone who hadn’t had a gun. What then?”

  “But…”

  “But what?”

  “You killed someone, Mom,” Chris objected. “My mother actually took another person’s life. It’s not a video game; not a movie. A real live person’s life.”

  “Is that what’s bothering you?”

  “I guess,” he said miserably. “I mean, the whole time I was growing up, I never thought you were that kind of person.”

  “You know what, Chris? Neither did I. All those years I lived with Paul Grayson, I was a mealy-mouthed namby-pamby. I put up with his bullshit and got along no matter what. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that the last couple of days and wondering why I did it, and I think I’ve finally figured it out.

  “I did it because I was afraid something might change. Afraid something might happen. Afraid that if Paul dumped me I wouldn’t be able to make it on my own. But I’m not afraid anymore, Chris, I’m not afraid of anything. And that includes Paul Grayson and cutlooseblog.com. Yes, you’re right. The blog brought me Ben Witherspoon. So what? Facing him down brought me something I needed, something that had been missing from my life for a very long time-self respect. When push came to shove, when it was a choice of him or me, I had guts enough to choose me. Finally. And that counts for something.”

  Even as she said this, she realized it wasn’t completely true. Because she had installed a security system. And she had felt that sudden sense of dread when Kip showed up on the doorstep. But it was mostly true, when it came to the big things, anyway.

  “You’re going to be all right, then?” Chris asked after a pause.

  “Absolutely,” she said. “I’m going to be more than all right. You can count on it.”

  She sat at the table for a long time after she got off the phone with Chris, wondering if she had said too much or too
little and whether or not her outburst had made any sense-to him or to her. He had asked her what time it was, and she had ended up telling him how the clock was made. Too much information, she thought.

  Bored with watching a screen full of her empty front and back doors, Ali had switched over to a Phoenix channel where the evening news featured the story of a young fresh-faced man, Hunter Jackson, a 2003 graduate of Chandler High School who had died two days earlier in a mortar attack on his convoy in Baghdad.

  Hunter hadn’t seen the mortar that was destined to kill him, but suddenly Ali Reynolds had a whole new understanding of all those other young-faced kids who had gone off to do their duty and who had made the hard choices to kill or be killed; to kill or let their buddies or their allies or civilians be killed. She knew just as certainly that those young people came away from those decisions-those momentary life and death decisions-changed in the same way she was now changed as well.

  “God bless them,” Ali whispered aloud. “And bring them safely home.”

  Chapter 18

  After dinner she fell asleep for a while again. By nine o’clock, she was wide awake and back reading mail at cutlooseblog.com.

  Ms. Reynolds,

  An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Shame on you.

  David

  Not very original, Ali thought. He took that one straight off a bumper sticker. And she didn’t post it, either.

  Dear Ali,

  I don’t know your regular e-mail address, so I’m writing to you through this. I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch with you through all your troubles with your job and everything. And when I heard about you and Paul splitting up, I just couldn’t believe it. You always seemed so happy.

  Seemed, Ali thought. That’s the operant word.

  And then there was that picture of you that showed up in the Times last week. Please tell me that you haven’t really been forced into waiting tables and that you’re having to live in a trailer. If Paul won’t give you enough money to live on, I could probably send you some.

  So clearly whoever was writing this hadn’t bothered to read any of the rest of the blog. Ali looked to the bottom. Roseanne Maxwell. Roseanne’s husband, Jake, was one of Paul’s so-called buddies and co-workers. So that’s what this was-a thinly veiled political effort on Jake’s part to get the goods on Paul and gain some corporate advantage.

  And now I’m hearing that there was some kind of break-in last week at the place where you’re staying and that you were hurt and somebody actually died. How awful! You must be falling apart. If you need a place to stay, our door is always open, and our lovely little casita has just been redone and it’s totally available. Not only that, I’m sure Jake can do something to help you with the job situation. It can’t be as hopeless as it seems. Chin up.

  Love and Kisses,

  Roseanne Maxwell

  It didn’t take Ali long to decide how to respond:

  Dear Roseanne,

  Thanks to both you and Jake for your kind offer. You’re right. I’m living in the trailer…

  She didn’t say manufactured home with what was essentially two master suites. She didn’t say that there was a Jacuzzi soaking tub in her spacious bath or an office alcove off her bedroom. Nor did she mention that the home had been placed on footings that allowed for a basement with wine cellar underneath.

  …my Aunt Evie left me when she died. It has running water now, and air-conditioning won’t be an issue until summer.

  Don’t worry about me. I’m in Sedona. If I just stay focused on my crystals, I’m sure everything will be fine.

  Ali

  It was a goofy enough response that Ali giggled aloud, but she didn’t post either one. It wasn’t necessary. Saying something like that to Roseanne Maxwell was as good as an Internet posting any day.

  Then she went back to reading the mail. It was interesting to see that comments from gun-control advocates and gun-control opponents were fairly evenly divided and almost uniformly shrill. She posted some of them but not all, because many of them said the same things.

  Dear Babe,

  You sound like you’re proud of yourself for taking another person’s life. You shouldn’t be. Because you had that gun, you didn’t even look for other ways to end the conflict between you and the man who broke into your house. You just hit the trigger and went blam, blam, blam!!! The other guy’s dead. End of story.

  If there were fewer guns in the world, maybe we’d find other ways to solve the world’s problems. Stories like yours make things worse instead of better.

  Tommy F.

  Ben Witherspoon wasn’t interested in talking, Ali thought, and maybe we should outlaw kitchen knives, too, while we’re at it. But she posted Tommy’s remarks without any further comment from her.

  Dear Babe,

  The Bible says “The meek shall inherit the earth.” Guess you won’t be on the receiving end.

  Georgie

  Guess not, Ali thought and posted that one, too. The next one gave her pause.

  Dear Babe,

  Twenty years ago, when my husband beat me up, I filed charges against him. He was tried, convicted, and sent to jail. As they were taking him out of the courtroom, he screamed that he’d get me when he got out. My friends told me to get a restraining order. I got a.45 instead.

  When he got out, he broke into our apartment while I was asleep. He woke me up and said he was going to take our baby, my son, and throw him out the window. I got the gun out of my nightstand, followed him into the hallway, and shot him. He died and I went to prison. The cops said that yes, he broke into the house, but he didn’t hurt me, and he wasn’t armed at the time. They said it was my fault, that I should have called the cops instead of following him into the hallway and shooting him in the back. They weren’t there, but they all said that showed premeditation.

  And my public defender told me I’d better cop a plea to second degree or I’d go to prison for first, so I spent the next seventeen years in prison. DSHS took my son and the courts terminated my parental rights. I don’t know where he is. He’d be twenty-two by now.

  I hope this doesn’t happen to you, and I don’t think it will. You’re white. I’m not.

  Lucille

  Ali didn’t post Lucille’s comment. Instead she wrote back.

  Dear Lucille,

  Thank you for your good wishes. Your letter is all too true. There’s more than one level of justice in this country, one for those who can pay for quality representation and one for those who can’t. I’m appalled by what happened to you. With your permission, I’d like to post your comment on cutlooseblog.com to see what kind of discussion it engenders.

  Also, have you made any effort to locate your son? If I can be of any help in that regard, let me know.

  Ali Reynolds, aka Babe

  The phone rang. “Ali,” Paul said. I’m glad you’re there. I need to talk to you.”

  It would have been nice if he’d asked how she was feeling or if she was okay, but he didn’t.

  “If this is about the station sending over that film crew tomorrow,” Ali began, “I’ve already decided I’m not-”

  “No, no,” Paul interrupted impatiently. “It’s nothing like that. It’s April. I just found out she’s pregnant.”

  So? Ali wondered. What does this joyous news have to do with me?

  “The baby’s yours I assume,” she said.

  “Of course it’s mine,” Paul snapped back at her. “Whose do you think it is?”

  No point in going into that, Ali thought. “Why are you calling me, then?”

  “She wants us to be married,” Paul said. “Right away. Before the baby gets here. That’s what I want, too. This child is my future, Ali. This is the baby who will carry my genetic material forward. So what can I do to get this process started?”

  Ali’s first instinct was to simply burst out laughing. Wasn’t this the same man, who, in the course of their last conversation, had declared that he wouldn’t be manipulated? The
ever-dependable pregnancy gambit had to be the oldest ploy in the book.

  She also understood exactly why he was calling her directly. By going around Helga, he was sure he could negotiate himself a better deal. And he had reason to think so. After all, Ali Reynolds had gone along with his wishes for years. But with the death of Ben Witherspoon, the playing field had changed. Paul Grayson still hadn’t figured that out.

  “Well…?” he pressed, pushing her to give him an answer in the same bullying voice he always used to get his way.

  “When it comes to divorces,” she said finally, “you have three choices-quick, cheap, and good. Pick any two. When you figure out which two you want, give Helga a call and we’ll talk.”

  She hung up. The phone rang again almost immediately, but when caller ID showed it was Paul calling back, Ali didn’t pick up. She’d already said her piece and had nothing more to add. Instead, she jotted off an e-mail to Helga.

  Dear Helga,

  Paul’s girlfriend is pregnant and wants to get married-fast. I think he’s ready to wheel and deal. Call him up tomorrow morning and see what you can do. I trust your judgment on this. The more we can stick it to him, the better.

  Ali

  She returned to cutloose.

  Dear Babe,

  As you suggested, I’ve been in touch with Mr. Tompkins. Based on what happened with his mother, I’ve made a determination not to pursue treatment with the Rodriguez Medical Center folks in Mazatlan.

  According to Tompkins, the treatments consist mostly of stuffing the people full of overpriced but essentially over-the-counter supplements and then filling them full of a pain med cocktail that keeps them in enough of a pink haze that they don’t know what’s hit them. They keep them feeling better-right up until their money is gone. Then the patient is shipped back home to die, unless they conk out while they’re still in Mexico. Bad idea.

  The money we’re not spending on them is almost enough to pay off our mortgage. I think I’ll do that-stay home, take my lumps, and spend whatever time I have with my family.