Cruel Intent

by J. A. Jance

  “Don’t tell me,” Dave said. “I already know where Ali Reynolds came down on that one.”

  “Yes,” B. agreed, “you do. So we sent the guy a worm of our own and picked up all the files from his PC in the process.”

  “In other words, you used an illegal wiretap. Evidence from that wouldn’t be admissible in a court of law.”

  “Maybe not,” B. agreed. “But it’s good enough for an anonymous tip. Most of Winter’s files are encrypted. I’m working on breaking the code. So far I haven’t had much luck, but I did come across one unencrypted file—one he somehow missed: his initial licensing agreement with Microsoft from back when he first purchased the computer. That’s where I got his name. He’s apparently connected to an Internet dating site called Singleatheart. Ali’s computer was infected after she registered at that site. I believe Singleatheart may also have some connection to the Forester murder.”

  Listening intently to every word, Dave fought to avoid betraying his eagerness. Maybe the files Ali had offered him were the Foresters’ real files after all. If someone besides Bryan had tried to destroy them, maybe Dave had missed something. It was possible that this Winter guy was in on everything with Bryan Forester. It was also possible Dave was wrong.

  As the Cordes Junction exit came up, Dave switched on his turn signal. “All right,” he said. “I’ll see about looking into this all this, Mr.—” He paused. “What did you say your name was again?”

  “Simpson. B. Simpson.”

  Once he was off the exit ramp, Dave pulled over. “And how do I get back to you?”

  B. gave him a phone number. After ending the call, Dave wasted no time putting in another one—to Phoenix General Hospital. His first call, to the ER, came up empty. Dr. Winter was not due in today, and the person who took the call said he was expected to be away for an indefinite period. Dave’s next call was to the hospital’s administration office. It took a while before he managed to work his way up the chain of command and found someone who seemed to know what was going on.

  “Yes, Dr. Winter is on staff here,” a woman named Louise Granger told him. “But he’s currently on leave. His mother was taken ill overnight and was transported to an ICU. Dr. Winter flew out to be with her first thing this morning.”

  “Did he say where?” Dave asked.

  “I don’t remember the exact location. He may not have even mentioned it to me, but I believe it was somewhere in upstate New York. Buffalo, maybe.”

  Dave ended the call and then looked at his watch. He wanted to go back to Phoenix and start following up on this lead, but he had told the people at the office to wait for him—that he wanted to be on the scene when it came time to execute the search warrant. Since it wasn’t possible to be in two places at once, he picked up the phone and punched in the number for Detective Sean O’Brien of the Scottsdale PD.

  “Hey,” O’Brien said once Dave had identified himself. “Have I got some hot news for you. Mr. Morrison’s got nothing to do with that homicide case of yours.”

  “What makes you say that?” Dave asked.

  “After you left, I went back to Jenny Morrison. I convinced her that with Mr. Morrison’s computer broken, and in order to ascertain that her husband hadn’t committed suicide, we needed access to his e-mail accounts, which she was happy to give me. It turns out that the day before he died, Mr. Morrison went through his mail account and deleted a large number of messages. Unfortunately for him, the deleted messages were still stored on his ISP. He wasn’t in Sedona on Monday morning. He was actually down in a new development called Red Rock, where he was hoping to meet up with a sweet little real estate babe he met over the Internet. He was all hot to trot and hoping to get lucky, but she stood him up.”

  “What real estate agent?” Dave asked.

  “A woman named Susan,” O’Brien answered. “From an Internet dating site.”

  “Was it a place called Singleatheart, by any chance?” Dave asked.

  “As a matter of fact, it was,” O’Brien replied. “How did you figure that out?”

  “Luck,” Dave said. “Combined with an anonymous tip. But now I’ve got someone else I need you to track down. An ER doc from Phoenix General. His name’s Peter Winter, and he supposedly flew out of Sky Harbor this morning on his way to visit his ailing mother in upstate New York.”

  “That’s all you know about him?”

  “So far. Except that I’ve been told he’s also involved in Singleatheart, and I need you to find him.”

  “What do you want me to do with him once I find him?”

  “Just let me know where he is. I’ll take it from there.”

  “Anything else?” said Sean O’Brien.

  “If you can locate a photo of Dr. Winter, I need you to take a copy of it over to the Hertz facility at Sky Harbor. Show it to a guy who works the vehicle check-in line—a guy by the name of Bobby Salazar—and ask him if it looks familiar. Let me know what he says.”

  “Will do,” Sean said. “Glad to help out.”

  Ending the call, Dave steered his vehicle back onto the freeway, heading north. He knew he had just learned something important. One way or the other, Peter Winter was involved, and without Ali and B.’s efforts, that connection wouldn’t have come to light—at least not this soon.

  Wanting to say thank you, he tried calling Ali one more time. Once again, she didn’t answer.

  Why leave word for me to call if you’re not going to pick up? Dave wondered.

  He hung up without leaving a message.

  CHAPTER 15

  Ali was falling—falling through space and time. The ground was coming up at her fast. It was reddish, rocky dirt punctuated by a few scrubby bushes, a lot like the ground around Sedona. As she fell to earth, she realized she was supposed to pull the cord on her parachute, but she couldn’t find the cord, and she didn’t have a parachute. Someone had told her that she should pack it, that she should keep it with her at all times, but she didn’t have it now, and when she hit the ground, she was going to die.

  Suddenly, she came out of the water. He grabbed her by her hair and pulled her out of the tub. He flung her gasping and wheezing and choking onto the bathroom floor. The water and other things as well gushed out of her—out of her nose and her mouth—as she choked and heaved. Her whole body shook with terrible spasms as she tried desperately to clear her lungs and find a way to breathe again. To find a way to live.

  How many times had he shoved her under? She didn’t know and couldn’t remember. The only thing that mattered now was would he do it again? And when? And where was he? He seemed to have left her alone on the bathroom floor. Why? Not that being left alone offered any particular advantage. Ali was helpless. She couldn’t move. The racking spasms of choking and coughing left her weak and dizzy and almost paralyzed. She knew she couldn’t stand up. She couldn’t even crawl. All she could do was pray—for wisdom, for strength, for grace.

  Then her tormentor was back. She saw his bootie-clad feet next to her face and heard his voice speaking to her from very far away. “Had enough?” he asked.

  Ali tried to answer, but another set of body-racking coughs rocked her. She tried to say “Enough,” but she couldn’t speak. All she could do was nod.

  He dragged her up off the floor and pulled her sopping-wet body into the bedroom. Grasping her under her shoulders and knees, he lifted her and then dropped her on the bed. The movement dislodged more water from her lungs and set off another spasm of choking. Turning her head to cough, she noticed Leland’s body wasn’t exactly where it had been. He was still and unmoving again. Either Leland had moved himself or he had been moved.

  Maybe Leland’s alive, Ali thought. Why else would he be duct-taped? Maybe I’m not alone in this after all.

  “So tell me,” her tormentor urged. “I’m waiting.”

  She looked up at him. He was no longer training his gun on her. Instead, he was using a towel to dry it. Evidently, in the course of their epic struggle, she had managed to knock t
he weapon—a .357, from the looks of it—into the tub. Ali knew that didn’t count in her favor. Just because the gun had gotten wet didn’t mean it wouldn’t work. If he aimed it in her direction and pulled the trigger, it would fire, and she would be dead.

  “Well?” he pressed. “Who was it?”

  And that was when the answer came to her. It was an answer to her prayer, and it came to her out of the blue. He’s waiting for me to tell him something. But I don’t have to tell him the truth.

  The truth would mean divulging B. Simpson’s name and address, but Ali already knew that B., by his own admission, wasn’t armed. He was tall and imposing and could probably defend himself under most circumstances, but not against a determined killer armed with a .357.

  If she told the man that the cops had helped her, it would be over. He’d kill her and be done with it. What Ali really needed was a bargaining chip, something she could use to divert him long enough to get help. And where would she find that? She needed an ally who was armed to the teeth and who would be utterly fearless when it came to fighting back.

  With a start, Ali realized she knew just such a person.

  “My mother,” she whispered aloud.

  “Your what?”

  “My mother,” she repeated.

  “You’re saying your mother did this? No way!” he blurted. “I read all about your parents in some of those articles on you. Don’t they run some stupid restaurant or something?”

  That he could so easily dismiss her parents and their life’s work made Ali that much more determined. She had paid a huge price to be able to lie to this man. Now her very life depended on making sure that lie was believable.

  “It’s true,” she insisted between coughs. “All of it. Mom helped me grab your files. It’s her hobby. She does it for fun.”

  The disbelief on his face was clear. He simply couldn’t get his mind around the fact that he might have been bested by a woman or, rather, by two women—Ali and her mother. That was absolutely unacceptable.

  “For fun? No!” he exclaimed. “You can’t tell me that an old woman who makes her living cooking in some dinky restaurant is some kind of computer genius. That’s not possible. It makes no sense.”

  “It’s true,” Ali said again.

  “Where did she go to school, then?”

  Ali knew that in order to convince him, she would need to come up with a whole series of telling details.

  “Mother’s family was poor. When it was time for her to go off to college, there wasn’t any money, especially since she wanted to become an engineer. Back then engineering schools weren’t interested in enrolling women, so she taught herself.”

  That bit was taken from B. Simpson’s nonstandard education. He didn’t have an engineering degree, either.

  “But she was always curious about how things work,” Ali went on. “She was forever taking stuff apart and putting it back together and improving whatever it was in the process.”

  That, of course, was more like Ali’s father. It was how Bob Larson had kept his beloved Bronco in working order all these years.

  “She taught herself programming, too,” Ali said, warming to her story. “A couple of years ago, when a friend’s computer got taken down by a virus, Mother made it her business to become a self-taught expert in worms and viruses.”

  That last whopper may have been a step too far.

  “I suppose next you’re going to tell me she’s also an expert at encryption?” the man asked sarcastically. “Is that another of your remarkable mother’s spare-time specialties?”

  “You’re right,” Ali said. “Mom doesn’t know anything about encryption, but she has a friend who does, an elderly friend who specialized in code-breaking during the Cold War. He and his new wife have a winter home in Yuma. Mother asked him to come help out. They’ll be driving up later on this afternoon.”

  The man’s momentary expression of dismay was immediately replaced by something cold and calculating. Once again the gun was aimed squarely in Ali’s direction.

  “Where are my files, then?” he asked. “Who has them right now, and who has access to them?”

  “They’re on my mother’s computer,” she said. “At her house.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Here in Sedona. Down by the highway.”

  “And where’s your mother?”

  Ali glanced at her watch. It wasn’t waterproof, so the glass was covered with a layer of steam from being dunked in the tub, but the watch was still running. It was two o’clock. Soon the restaurant would be closing for the afternoon. Her father and Jan would be cleaning up and putting things away. Her mother, having arrived early to do the Sugarloaf’s morning baking, would have gone home to rest, to put her feet up and have an hour or so of peace and quiet before her husband came in for the evening.

  “She’s home now, too,” Ali said.

  “Call her, then,” the man ordered. “Have her come here and bring her damn computer with her.”

  Ali knew that wasn’t going to work. Asking Edie to bring over her computer with its nonexistent files would provoke an immediate storm of difficult and impossible-to-answer questions. Fortunately, when Ali reached for her phone, it wasn’t there. It had disappeared from under her bra strap during the struggle in the bathroom. It was probably sitting on the bottom of the tub.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I lost my phone.”

  The man checked his own watch and abruptly changed his mind. Turning away from Ali, he rummaged in her closet, found a jogging suit, and tossed it in her direction.

  “Get out of those wet clothes and put these on,” he ordered. “We won’t have your mother come here. We’ll go see her instead.”

  Dave had put himself out on a real limb by letting Ali know in advance that the search was coming. Having run that risk, Dave was annoyed when he arrived at the Manzanita Hills house and found that his officers were on the scene and armed with their search warrant but Ali hadn’t bothered to show up. She hadn’t sent Leland Brooks, either. With no keys available, Dave had no choice.

  “Cut the padlock on the Mini-Mobile,” he ordered. “If you can jimmy the lock on the front door, do it. Otherwise, knock it down.”

  The uniformed officer had just swung open the door on the metal storage unit when Bryan Forester’s Dodge Ram pulled into the driveway. He jumped out of the cab and came running over to the officers, who were about to step inside.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

  So Ali did tell him, Dave thought grimly. Too bad for him, he got the news too late. “Back off, Bryan,” he ordered. “My officers have a warrant to search this site.”

  “There are valuable tools and equipment in there,” Bryan objected. “I don’t want people messing with them.”

  “I said back off,” Dave repeated. “We’re doing a search. We’re not going to bother your equipment. I don’t see any of your guys working today. What brings you here?”

  “The tile company in Phoenix called me about some kind of delivery mix-up. Supposedly, someone was on his way here to drop off a load of tile that isn’t mine. I came by to check it out.”

  Dave glanced around the driveway and saw nothing. Likely story, he thought. “What tile?” he asked. “I don’t see any tile.”

  “I don’t see any, either,” Bryan said. “Like I said, it was a mix-up of some kind—probably someone else’s order. I just didn’t want it to be delivered here by mistake and then have to make arrangements to ship it back.”

  “This is going to take some time,” Dave said. “If you want to hang around, how about if you and I go have a seat over at the picnic table and give these officers a chance to do their jobs.”

  Nodding, Bryan headed for the table, shaking a cigarette out of a pack as he went. “You let me out this morning,” he said once he was seated and had lit up. “So how come you’re searching my stuff this afternoon? What changed?”

  Nothing, except the prosecutor lost his balls,
Dave thought. He said, “Letting you out was someone else’s call, not mine.”

  “So you still think I did it?” Bryan asked. For a moment the two men glared at each other in charged silence. “Go to hell, then,” Bryan added when Dave didn’t respond. “I shouldn’t be talking to you, not without my lawyer.” He stood up as if to go.

  “Sit,” Dave said.

  Bryan sat.

  “Who’s Peter Winter?”

  “Peter who?”

  “Winter. Dr. Peter Winter.”

  Bryan shrugged. “I have no idea. Never heard of the man.”

  “We believe he had some connection with Singleatheart,” Dave said.

  “So?” Bryan asked, blowing a cloud of smoke skyward. “What does that have to do with me? Morgan was involved in all that garbage, not me.”

  “Maybe you both were,” Dave suggested.

  “Like I said before, go to hell,” Bryan told him. “Everyone in town knows your ex screwed around on you while you were off in Iraq. You didn’t kill her.”

  “How kind of you to mention that,” Dave returned. “But it turns out my ex isn’t dead. Yours is.”

  “Yes, Morgan was screwing around on me, but that doesn’t mean I killed her.”

  “If you knew what was going on, why didn’t you divorce her?” Dave asked.

  “Why do you think? The first time it happened, it broke my heart. But I got over it. After a while I just didn’t care anymore. I hung in because of the kids, because I didn’t want to lose my girls.”

  This was far more than Bryan had said during all the hours Dave had spent with him in the interrogation room. “You knew about Singleatheart, then?” Dave asked.

  “Not until Monday night, when I went through Morgan’s computer files.”

  “How could you do that?” Dave asked. “Her computer was at the house. It was under lock and key as part of the crime scene.”

  “There’s a backup system,” Bryan said. “It was all there—her own little black book. Morgan kept a detailed account of all her conquests: where they went, what they did, when she dumped the poor guy, and how. And if you want to find someone who was pissed about being dumped, maybe you should talk to my old pal Billy Barnes. That two-faced SOB, my good buddy, a guy whose ass I saved by giving him a job, was more than happy to screw around with my wife behind my back. And when she dropped him for that new guy, somebody named Jimmy, Billy went all to pieces. Sent her whiny, pleading messages, begging her to take him back. But by now you’ve been through her files, and you already know all this stuff. You’ve seen it.”