J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 2: Trial by Fire, Fatal Error, Left for Dead (34 page)

It always surprised her that it was possible to love one child so much more than the other, but she did. Win had needed her in a way Serenity had not. She had been her daddy’s girl, the apple of his eye. Serenity had
always
had her father. Winston had been his daughter’s be-all and end-all. Serenity probably thought her father had never lied to her. That, of course, was wrong. Winston had lied to everyone. Lying suited him.

And that was when Mimi Cooper finally remembered the terrible words that had been flung at her in anger, in outrage. And that was when she finally understood, too, about the lie. The essential lie. The one that explained everything. Not only the lie Winston had told his wife—one of many—but the lie he had told Serenity as well.

As soon as Mimi remembered, it seemed as though she should have always known. How could she not? The truth had been right there in front of her all this time. And if Mimi hadn’t known, what about Serenity? Most likely she didn’t know, either. If she had glimpsed the truth, it would have been impossible for Mimi’s daughter to go on pretending that Winston Langley was the perfect father. More monster than father.

But if Serenity didn’t know—if she had no idea—it was probably due to the fact that that kind of stupidity was most likely programmed into her DNA.

Like mother, like daughter,
Mimi thought.

She needed Hal then, needed him desperately, right that second. Not to push the button. She understood she was beyond needing the button pushed. She needed to tell him what she knew. What she understood. What she remembered.

If only she didn’t have that damned contraption in her
throat. If only she could speak. If only she could say the words. Or even one word.

But then Win and Serenity moved from foreground to background, and Hal was with her again, beside her again.

“Do you need me to push the button?” he asked.

Two blinks. No.
No button.

“Do you need something else? Is there something I can get you, something I can do?”

Hal’s voice was desperate. He so wanted to do whatever it was she needed; to get her whatever it was she wanted. She could have told him to march off into hell itself, and she knew he would have gone willingly. She loved him for that. And because he had never lied to her. Not once. Not about little things and not about big things, either.

“Mimi?”

He was looking down at her, trying to suss out what was bothering her. Finally she realized that he had asked a yes or no question and she had been so busy thinking her own private, wandering thoughts that she had forgotten to answer.

One blink for yes.
Yes, I do need something.

Please!

It took a supreme effort. For a time, Mimi wasn’t even sure it was happening, but then she realized it was. Her arm, her heavily bandaged right arm, was moving. Moving from the surface of the bed where it had lain for hours, useless and unbending. It moved inexorably toward her throat. To the place where the hated ventilator invaded her body and dammed all speech.

Hal was quick to grasp the meaning. “Is it the ventilator?” he asked.

One blink. Yes.

“Is it bothering you?”

Yes.

“Do you want me to have them take it out? If I do, I don’t know what will happen. Sister Anselm isn’t here. If we take it out, you might die.”

But of course she was going to die. Mimi knew that. It didn’t matter if the ventilator stayed where it was or went away, she was going. The ventilator might make a few minutes’ difference, but that was all.

“Do you want me to take it out?”

One blink. Yes.

Somewhere in the background Serenity was yelling at him. “You can’t do that. If you take it out, it’ll kill her.”

Hal turned away from Mimi. “Get her out of here, Win,” he ordered. “Get her out of here now.”

For once in his life, Win Langley did the right thing. He led his hysterical sister out of the room.

Thank you, Win.

Then, just as suddenly, a nurse appeared and the ventilator was gone. It was almost like having the button pushed, only better. Breathing hurt. It hurt worse than Mimi could imagine. It felt as though her lungs were still on fire, but at least Mimi was able to move her lips.

“I love you,” she told Hal wordlessly. She wanted him to know, to remember that he was the love of her life. The only real love of her life.

“I love you, too,” Hal said.

He was crying now. Crying again. Crying still.

She moved her lips again, but she wasn’t sure if what she was trying to say emerged as a spoken word.

But that was all she could do. Mimi had made the effort—the supreme effort. She had tried her best to tell Hal what he
needed to know. But now she was gone—gone for good. She heard the steady beep of the machine morph into a squeal.

In an instant Mimi traveled far, far away from him, far from the bed and far from the button, to a distant place where she would never need the button again.

For the next two hours, Ali lay on the gurney in the ER with an IV tube feeding liquid into her arm. In the meantime she took a series of cell phone calls from concerned family members, including Leland Brooks, all of whom had been alerted to Ali’s situation by the ever-helpful Dave Holman. By the time Ali had finished telling the story over and over—to her parents, to Chris, to Athena, to Sheriff Maxwell, and finally to Leland Brooks—she was sick and tired of the whole thing, of telling the story and of hearing what all of them had to say in return.

Edie Larson went on a verbal rampage and wanted her daughter to get into some other, less dangerous kind of work. Bob Larson listened to the whole thing and then wanted to know what models of helicopters Ali had ridden in. Ali had no idea. They had gone up safely; they had come down safely. When they landed, the shiny side was up and the greasy side was down. That’s all she needed to know. Chris wanted to know what a nun was doing running around with the latest wireless networking gizmo and said that he hoped to meet her someday. Athena simply said, “Way to go.” Sheriff Maxwell was relieved to know that Ali hadn’t been seriously injured in the incident, but Ali suspected he was even more relieved to know that she hadn’t discharged her weapon. Last but not least, after hearing her out, Leland Brooks wanted to know if she needed him to bring her any additional clothing or supplies.

“I’ve trashed this tracksuit,” she said. “It’s too worn out to appear in public.”

“Not to worry, madam,” Leland said. “I’ll see what I can do about that either tonight or first thing in the morning.”

When Ali was finally released from the ER, it was with the knowledge that the X-rays had revealed no broken bones. She had bandaged cuts on both arms and her right knee, none of which had been deemed serious enough to merit stitches. She had been given a tetanus shot, a prescription for painkillers, and a verbal warning to be sure to take it easy the next few days.

It was almost ten when she finally limped out of the ER. She wanted to check on Sister Anselm, but it seemed best to go back to the hotel to clean up before presenting herself as one of Sister Anselm’s visitors. As she handed her ticket stub to the parking valet at the hospital, he gave her tattered jogging suit a dubious look, but he retrieved her car without comment.

When Ali walked into the hotel lobby, the concierge hurried to greet her. “I understand you’ve had a difficult day, Ms. Reynolds,” he said. “You have some visitors. We’ve upgraded them to the club level. They’re upstairs in the lounge.”

Going up in the elevator, Ali had no doubt who the guests in question would be—her parents, of course. They had asked her about coming to the hospital, and she had told them no. Evidently they hadn’t listened. What astonished her was the idea that her parents had come to the hotel, checked in, and were prepared to spend the night.

She fully intended to go see Sister Anselm, but her parents came first. Back in her third-floor suite Ali showered and changed into her somewhat wrinkled long-sleeved pantsuit, which covered the bandages on her arms and knees as well as the darkening bruises on her legs. Then she fixed her face. It turned
out she had gotten sunburned while she’d been outside scrabbling around in the wash with Sister Anselm. The jagged scar Peter Winters’s fist had left on her face months earlier showed bright white against her reddened skin, and it took several layers of powder to tone it down and make it less noticeable.

With the damage concealed as well as possible, she went in search of her parents and found them seated in the spacious club lounge, where her father was nursing a beer and her mother was sipping a cup of tea. Ten o’clock was a good three hours past Edie Larson’s usual bedtime.

“What are you doing here?” Ali asked as soon as she saw them.

“Let me see,” Edie said. “Would it happen to be because our daughter was almost rubbed out in a shoot-out this afternoon but she gave us strict orders not to come to the hospital? How are you? Are you okay? Is anything broken?”

“I’m fine,” Ali said. “Really.”

Bob Larson grinned at his daughter. “As for what are we doing here, Edie and I talked it over. We decided that since you had declared the hospital off-limits, coming to the hotel was okay.”

“But what about the restaurant?” Ali said.

“We went by the Sugarloaf and put up a sign. I printed it out myself on the computer. Closed for a family emergency,” Edie said. “If this doesn’t count as a family emergency, I don’t know what does.”

The lounge attendant came over to the table where they were sitting. “May I get you something?” she asked Ali.

“A glass of merlot, please.”

“And for you, sir,” she said to Ali’s dad. “Would you care for another beer?”

“One’s my limit,” Bob told her. “Otherwise the wife gets cranky.”

Edie gave him a withering look. “I do no such thing,” she declared. “You’re welcome to drink as many of those fool things as you want.”

Bob winked at the attendant. “I’ll stick with one,” he said. “It pays to keep her happy.”

Ali’s cell phone rang. There was a notice on the table asking that people refrain from using their cell phones in the lounge, but since she and her parents were the only people there and since the caller was Dave Holman, she answered anyway.

“Do you hear it?” he asked.

“Hear what?”

“ATF agents Donnelley and Robson doing their happy dance,” Dave said. “It turns out Thomas McGregor was evidently the real ELF deal.”

“You’re kidding,” Ali breathed.

“Nope,” Dave continued. “McGregor has lived outside of Payson for a long time, staying under everyone’s radar. When he hasn’t been out on what he calls ‘missions,’ he’s been holed up in a cabin busily documenting everything his particular fire-setting cell has been doing for the last twenty years or so—sort of an unabridged ecoterrorism history, written in longhand.”

“Longhand?” Ali asked.

“Yup. McGregor’s no fan of computers or electronics of any kind. He’s done all his writing the old-fashioned way, with pen and ink in a pile of spiral notebooks. There are pages and pages of material, naming names and citing specific operatives involved and so forth. It’s incredibly amazing stuff—invaluable stuff. Your basic ATF gold mine.”

“How did he stay under the radar all this time?” Ali asked.

“By not causing trouble or calling attention to himself. He never got picked up for anything. No arrests of any kind, anywhere. He lived off the grid. He used a kerosene lamp for light and a wood stove for heat, and hand-pumped his own water from a well. The only thing that doesn’t fit is the cell phone found in his possession today. It’s a dead end, however. It’s one of those throwaway phones that only made calls to another throwaway phone.”

Ali was aware that her parents were hanging on her every word, but she had to ask. “What’s McGregor’s connection to Sister Anselm?”

“Good question,” Dave said. “We have no idea, but on a slightly different topic, I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

“What?” Ali asked.

“Sheriff Maxwell got word tonight that Mrs. Cooper didn’t make it. She died a little after six this evening.”

While I was downstairs in the ER,
Ali thought,
and while Sister Anselm was similarly occupied in some other part of the hospital
.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ali said, “but as bad as she was burned, she never would have recovered.”

“I know,” Dave agreed. “It’s probably a blessing for her, and for her family. I’m sure they’re relieved to know that she’s not suffering anymore. And I’m sure it’ll mean a lot to her husband and kids when we can tell them that we’ve nailed Mimi’s killer.

“As for that missing painting?” Dave continued. “The arson investigators found something that looks like a piece of charred picture-frame stock and some glass with a few scraps of paper stuck to it in the other burned house up in Camp Verde. The manufacturer’s number is still visible on back of the frame. The investigators are trying to trace that, but the initial reading is
that it’s good-quality and expensive stuff. Not from your local frame-it-yourself outlet.”

“They burned up Mimi’s Klee?” Ali asked. “Why would they? It’s worth a fortune.”