J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 1: Web of Evil, Hand of Evil, Cruel Intent

by Jance, J. A.

  A homicide victim who had been dragged behind a vehicle and whose body was found on a deserted roadside in South Mountain Park on Tuesday morning has been identified by the Maricopa Medical Examiner’s officer as California real estate developer William Cowan Ashcroft, III.

  The familiar name leaped out at Ali from the printed page. William Ashcroft? As in Arabella’s nephew, William Ashcroft, the one she had called Billy? Instinctively Ali reached for her phone, but then, mindful of both the cell-phone-use prohibition and the lateness of the hour, she left the phone where it was and returned to the article.

  Phoenix Police Department spokesman Shannon Willis said that Mr. Ashcroft had been visiting the area on business for a number of weeks prior to his death. So far detectives working on the homicide have acquired few leads.

  Mr. Ashcroft was reported missing by his business partner on Wednesday after he had failed to appear at a meeting scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. Anyone with knowledge of the victim’s activities in the days prior to his death is asked to contact the Phoenix Police Department.

  The words brought back Arabella’s mysterious phone call from earlier in the afternoon, the one where she had suggested things had changed and it was no longer necessary for Ali to read the diary she had entrusted to Ali two days earlier. Billy—the nephew who had tried to extort Arabella’s money—was dead. Was that what had changed Arabella’s mind?

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Ali reached into her bag and extracted the small, leather-bound volume.

  Since so much had happened between the time Ali had read the first entry, and now she reread it. She expected that other entries would deal with the incest situation in detail. They did not. Going on, Ali was surprised to discover that most of the month’s worth of entries that existed in an otherwise blank book dealt primarily with Arabella’s birthday present, her prized parakeet, Blueboy.

  Evidently Miss Ponder, the governess, had been enlisted to help in the process of teaching Blueboy to talk. She had also encouraged Arabella to do some research into the proper care and feeding of parakeets—covering their cages at night, making sure that their water and feed were fresh, cleaning the cages—something Arabella had clearly prided herself in doing on her own. The Ashcroft household Arabella had grown up in appeared to be long on servants and short on loving familial connections. In that world of old-fashioned educated-at-home wealth, the arrival of a blue-feathered parakeet had been a cause for celebration in the life of what must have been a very lonely little girl.

  Miss P says that in order to teach Blueboy to talk, we have to start with something simple, but it also has to be something that keeps his interest. She said a whistle might be easier than a word to begin with, so she suggested I whistle first—you know the kind of wolf whistle that boys give pretty girls—and follow that with one or two words, and always the same words. Pretty Baby is what I chose. A whistle and Pretty Baby.

  And I think she’s right. The first time I tried it, Blueboy was just sitting in his cage, but as soon as I whistled at him, he cocked his head to one side like he was really listening to me. Like he was interested. Miss P says that when I whistle first, it lets Blueboy know that I’m really talking to him. It’s like when Mother rings the bell, that means the butler is supposed to come or the maid.

  I’ve never had a pet before. Ever. Father has his horses but those are racehorses so they’re not pets at all, and the only people who get to be around them are the grooms and the jockeys and the trainers. Regular people never get to ride them or even touch them.

  The next two entries were full of harmless chatter about Miss Ponder and the parakeet. In the one after that, however, Arabella’s diary took a turn that hinted something was amiss.

  Mother told me this afternoon that Bill is coming home for Thanksgiving. This week. I loved it when he went away to school in September and everyone said he wouldn’t be back until Christmas. But Father wants him here, so he’s coming home anyway. He’ll be here in two days. I already know Christmas will be ruined. Now Thanksgiving will betoo. I hate him. HATE HIM. Why couldn’t he just stay where he was?

  Maybe it won’t happen again. Maybe I should tell Miss P. I can talk to her about things I can’t tell anybody else, but she probably wouldn’t believe me. She really likes Bill. She told me once that she thinks my brother is very handsome. She wouldn’t think that if she knew what he’s really like.

  Maybe I should run away, but I don’t have any money and I don’t know where I’d go. And if I do run away, what will happen to Blueboy? I can’t carry a suitcase and a bird-cage at the same time. I guess I have to stay.

  The final entries were short and scribbled so hurriedly that it was hard to decipher them.

  Father fired Miss P. I don’t know why. She just left in a taxi.

  Followed by:

  Blueboy is dead. He killed him.

  And that was it. End of story. He who? Ali wondered. Arabella’s faulty pronoun reference left the parakeet’s killer’s identity a mystery, but Ali suspected that she knew who was responsible. Had there been something going on between the now ex-governess and the stepbrother she had previously referred to as “handsome?” That was unmentioned, but it was certainly a possibility.

  The diary had contained far less damning information than Ali had expected. And it had stopped almost in mid-entry, coming to an end without coming to a conclusion. Dissatisfied, Ali closed the book and returned it to her purse. Days earlier she hadn’t understood why Arabella wanted her to read it. Now that Ali had read it, she still didn’t know why, but she was reasonably sure why Arabella had changed her mind on that subject and why she wanted the diary back.

  It’s because Billy’s dead, Ali told herself. And I’m wondering if Arabella had something to do with it.

  { CHAPTER 13 }

  Emerging from being caught up in the diary, Ali glanced around the waiting room and realized that things had changed. The once-hourly ICU visitation schedule had evidently ended. Sandy Mitchell was again seated at the table. So was Kip’s mother. She sat with her wheelchair pulled up close to Sandy’s knees, and the two of them seemed lost in a low-toned conversation. Jane Braeton sat off to one side, absently thumbing through a dog-eared magazine. The other woman in the room, the mother of the injured motorcyclist, was back at her station, knitting away with single-minded concentration. Her husband—her ex-husband—continued his stolid vigil in front of the silenced television news. Crystal, with her earphones still attached, was curled up in a chair and appeared to be sound asleep.

  The atmosphere in the room was so quiet and subdued that when Ali’s cell phone rang it startled everybody, including the nurse who said nothing but gestured pointedly toward the overhead sign that prohibited the use of cell phones. Leaping to her feet, Ali hurried out of the room and down the corridor. She didn’t answer until she was standing in the elevator lobby and well out of earshot of the charge nurse.

  “I just wanted to set your mind at ease,” Dave Holman told her. “I think it’s over.”

  “What do you mean?” Ali asked.

  “One of the Tempe Fire Department guys just came out of the burned-out house. He’s located three separate sets of scorched human remains of gunshot victims along with one weapon. So we think we’re looking at a double homicide/suicide.”

  “You’re sure one of the dead guys is the one who was after Crystal?” Ali asked.

  “Reasonably sure,” Dave replied. “Right now it’s all tentative, pending positive ID of the remains, of course, but that’s where we are right now. I thought you’d be relieved to hear it.”

  Three people were dead, but if one of them was the guy who had attacked Kip and had tried to lure Crystal out of the hospital, Dave was right. Ali was glad to hear it. She didn’t let herself think about how close she herself had come to tangling with him, and she was glad Dave didn’t mention it.

  “Who are they?” she asked.

  “Students at ASU. A kid named Jason Gustavson and his two roommates. The
house actually belongs to Jason’s father. Daddy is on his way here tonight, flying by private jet from Minneapolis, so I’d say the family’s probably loaded. The thing is, you can have all the money in the world and your kid may still turn out to be a total screw-up.”

  “And a killer besides,” Ali added.

  “That, too,” Dave agreed.

  The elevator door opened. A man in a wheelchair with a canvas computer case perched on his lap rolled out of the elevator and into the corridor where Ali was pacing with the phone to her ear. The man paused to study the signage then turned toward the ICU. In that split second when his face was no longer averted, Ali recognized him. First she noticed his brush-cut blond hair and crooked nose. Then the eyes. For an electric moment their gazes met, and Ali felt herself being scrutinized by that peculiar dead-eyed stare she had found so chilling in Madeline Havens’s hand-drawn likeness. Finally he shrugged, looked away, and continued down the hallway.

  Too shocked to speak or move, Ali struggled to suppress an involuntary gasp. Dave had just finished telling her that three people were dead in Jason Gustavson’s home in Tempe, but if this was Jason, he was definitely back among the living and looking far too hale and hearty to have survived a horrendous house fire.

  “Ali?” Dave asked into the suddenly silent phone. “Are you there? Did I lose you?”

  The man was still well within earshot, and Ali barely trusted herself to speak. “I think he’s here,” she managed to croak.

  “What?” Dave asked.

  “Which one’s Jason?” she asked. “Which one of the drawings?”

  “The one with the crooked nose and the funny eyes…”

  “He’s not dead,” Ali whispered. “He’s here.”

  “Where?” Dave demanded. “At the hospital?”

  “Here on the floor. On the ICU.”

  “What?”

  “Call the cops,” Ali urged. “I’ve gotta go.”

  By then Gustavson was rolling purposefully down the hall, and Ali understood his intentions. If there were weapons in the computer bag, Crystal, Sandy, and Kip himself were all in mortal danger. And no officers Dave could summon now would arrive in time to help—unless Ali could somehow manage to stall him. The only good thing about that was that although she knew who he was, the reverse was not true. At least she hoped so.

  Ali shoved the phone in her pocket and started down the hallway. She needed a way to slow him down without sparking a confrontation. “Hey,” she called after him. “Hey, you. Did anyone ever tell you that you look like John Denver?”

  It was the lamest of ploys because, of course, Jason Gustavson looked nothing at all like John Denver, but it was enough to cause him to hesitate.

  The chair stopped moving, and he turned to face her. “Are you talking to me?” he asked. He was wearing a clean, freshly pressed blue denim shirt with the words ROTO-ROOTER embroidered across the pocket, a spare he’d found in the Roto-Rooter van.

  As Ali hurried to catch up, her phone rang. She ignored it.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes. Has anyone told you that?”

  But by the time she reached the wheelchair Gustavson had shifted the computer bag on his lap. He picked up the .38 semiautomatic that had been concealed beneath it and pointed it at her. Compared to Ali’s little Glock, the gun looked enormous, and it put her at a distinct disadvantage. Her Glock was still holstered. The .38 was in Jason Gustavson’s hand and pointed directly at her.

  At sight of the weapon, Ali stopped short and took two quick steps backward, instinctively placing her own body between the wheelchair and the entrance into the ICU waiting room.

  “No, lady,” he said with a sneer. “I don’t believe anybody ever told me that before. If they had, I wouldn’t have believed it for a minute. And I don’t think you believe it, either. Now, get out of my way.”

  “What do you want?” Ali demanded loudly. This was a man who had already killed at least three people—probably four—and Ali was all that was standing between him and several more innocent victims. She needed to raise an alarm that would alert the unsuspecting people in the waiting room and at least warn them that trouble was coming.

  The sound of her own voice surprised her. She was scared to death—petrified—yet her voice was steady and, considering the circumstances, amazingly calm.

  “Move it,” he said.

  Ali didn’t budge. Mere seconds ticked by, but Ali’s mind was racing. What will it feel like when the bullet smashes into me? How much of a mess will I leave on the wall? How much on the floor? Will it hurt when I fall down? At least I’ll already be in the hospital.

  “I know who you are,” Gustavson was saying. “You’re the dumb broad who followed me home this afternoon in that blue Cayenne. You’re also the one who kept poor little Crystal on such a tight leash all day long. That doesn’t matter, though. I wanted her, and I’m still going to get her. As for that other woman, that busybody old hag from the grocery store? I didn’t see her name on the sign-in list, but since her boyfriend’s still here, I’ll bet she is, too.”

  So much for thinking Jason didn’t know who Ali was. He must have followed her and the others in through the lobby.

  Ali knew she needed to keep him talking. She tried to imagine how the authorities would respond to Dave Holman’s request for help. She couldn’t hear any sirens, but surely cops were on their way. There were ceiling-mounted video surveillance cameras throughout the hospital. Once help arrived, Ali knew the responding officers would be able to see what was going on. They’d probably try to treat this as a standard hostage situation by shutting down the hospital elevator system and trying to localize the problem on a single floor before attempting any kind of negotiation, SWAT team action, or rescue maneuver. But Ali already knew this was no ordinary hostage event. Jason Gustavson wasn’t interested in hostages. He was a spree killer out shopping for victims—the more the better.

  “Why?” Ali asked. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I’m sick and tired of having human scum tell me what to do,” he explained. “Gustavsons aren’t raised to take orders or to have lowlifes like that jerk in the store bossing me around. Do you know who I am? Do you have any idea who my father is?”

  Somewhere in the background the hospital PA system crackled to life with a series of incomprehensibly coded announcements. Ali’s phone continued to ring intermittently—stopping now and then only to resume seconds later. And there were other phones ringing as well, landline phones in the waiting room and at the nurses’ station. But those sounds might just as well have been coming from a distant planet. Shutting them all out, Ali remained focused on Jason Gustavson—and on his gun.

  “I have no idea who your father is,” she returned coldly. “And I don’t care. What I do know is that there are innocent people on this floor—doctors, nurses, patients, and visitors. They’ve done nothing to you, Jason. They don’t deserve to die.”

  The fact that she knew his name seemed to startle him. “And who’s going to stop me?” he asked after a short pause. “You?”

  “If she doesn’t, then I will,” a male voice said from behind Ali.

  Without turning to look Ali knew at once that the man who had been watching the muted TV news—the man whose son was about to be taken off life support—had heard the uproar out in the hallway and had come to Ali’s aid.

  “This man’s a killer,” she announced matter-of-factly to her newly arrived ally. “Two of the people in the waiting room and one of the patients in the ICU witnessed what he did. That’s why he’s here—he came after them.” Then to Jason she added, “I’ve called the police. They’re already on their way. You won’t get away with this.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” he returned. “I don’t care if I don’t get away with it. That’s not the point. In fact, I’d rather be dead than have to live in a place where inmates like you are put in charge of the asylum. Let’s go.”

  “My son’s in there,” the older man said quietly but firml
y. “The only way you’re getting inside the ICU is through me.”

  Jason laughed, stood up, and shoved the wheelchair out of the way. He had used it as a prop to give him credibility inside the hospital hallways. Now it was no longer needed. The visitor badge clipped to his shirt said he was visiting Kip Hogan, 3rd floor, ICU.

  “Oh, really?” Jason returned, waving the gun menacingly. “Hey, old man. I don’t give a rat’s ass about you or your son, but if you want to die a hero, that’s up to you.”

  Jason was no longer paying any attention to Ali. Dismissing her as a possible threat, he was focused instead on the man behind her, trying to assess what he might or might not do. In typical male fashion, it didn’t occur to him that Ali, too, might be armed and dangerous. All she needed was a chance to unholster her weapon.

  Ali stepped aside and turned to face her would-be rescuer. He wasn’t a particularly impressive specimen. About her father’s age or maybe a little older, he was sallow-faced, paunchy, and visibly out of shape. His thin, sandy, comb-over hair was standing straight up. But out of shape or not, he stood there in the hallway, calm and determined, helping Ali face down an armed assailant. It took only a second or two for Ali to realize that his presence offered the momentary diversion she needed.

  “I said get going,” Jason growled.

  Keeping her left hand out of sight, Ali made a slight movement with her fingers, hoping to let her ad hoc partner know that she needed to pass in front of him. She couldn’t be sure if he understood or not, but he nodded slightly.

  “All right,” Ali said. “I’m going.”

  She ducked into the waiting room. As soon as she was inside, she stationed herself behind the wall just inside the doorway and managed to extract her Glock from its holster.

  Ali had expected to find the waiting room full of people, but to her astonishment and immense relief the place was empty. Completely empty. The glass partition into the nurses’ station was blacked out, blocked by something Ali would later learn was a mattress. Windows in the swinging doors that led into the ICU itself were also darkened, as though someone had lowered a set of shutters. With any luck they were barricaded as well.