by Jance, J. A.
Both couch and chair were situated within easy viewing distance of an old-fashioned console TV, one that was far too big for the room. The television inside the shiny cherry cabinetry had been dead for years, but the piece of furniture served as a handy base for a newer, slimmer model as well as a collection of cable boxes, receivers, and recorders, everything from an old-fashioned VHS model up through the spanking-new DVR Chris had given his grandfather for his birthday.
Glancing at the TV screen in passing, Ali expected to see a frozen image of Judge Judy preparing to pass judgment on some hapless pair of feuding dimbulbs. Instead, she saw a Taser, one that was improbably decked out in a leopard pattern. Ali knew then that, rather than watching a television program, Edie had been reviewing her training DVD. As for Edie’s metallic pink Taser? That one lay on the hassock that served as her parents’ joint footstool, hidden in plain sight among a scattered collection of remote controls. It was tantalizingly close but out of Edie’s reach and certainly out of Ali’s.
Edie had backed away from the door in order to let them in, but Ali noticed that her eyes remained locked on the man—a man whose name she somehow seemed to know. How was that possible?
“The computer’s in the office,” Edie said to him. “Do you want to go get it, or should I?”
Calling the room that had once been Ali’s bedroom an “office” was vastly overstating the case. Every bit as cluttered as the living room, the second bedroom was actually a catchall storage room. It contained the entire collection of holiday decorations for every conceivable occasion that went up inside the Sugarloaf Café with absolute predictability. It was also a resting place for Bob and Edie Larson’s various short-lived hobbies.
A rickety table in one corner held Edie’s Singer sewing machine, while the flower-patterned spread on the twin bed had long since disappeared under stacks of material and patterns, as well as Edie’s many half-completed sewing projects. One wall of the room was stacked with boxes of books Bob had gathered up in preparation for retirement reading in case retirement ever became a viable option. Another jumble of boxes held the latest assortment of cast-off clothing and household goods that Bob Larson routinely collected and then passed along to anyone who happened to be in need. If a computer—even Edie’s laptop—had somehow been shoehorned into all that mess, Ali had no idea where it would have gone.
Winter, if that really was his name, pulled the .357 out of his pocket and waved it in Edie’s direction. “You go,” he said. “And remember, since your daughter’s here with me, you’d better not try anything.”
Shaking her head in apparent disgust, Edie disappeared into the bedroom/office. Ali was torn. She wanted to edge closer to the hassock, but she didn’t want to risk drawing the man’s attention to either the Taser image on the television screen or the real Taser resting just beyond her reach.
What if she somehow managed to retrieve it? Her mother had shown her how to push the switch cover out of the way, and which button to depress, but would it work? And if Ali did get off a shot, would the darts penetrate the man’s jacket?
A moment later, and much to Ali’s amazement, her mother emerged from the bedroom carrying what looked like part of a very old desktop computer. She lugged it over to the table and set it down. “There you are,” she said.
“What’s that?” Winter asked.
“My computer,” Edie said brusquely. “You said you wanted my computer. I’m bringing it to you.”
“But that thing is ancient,” Winter objected. “You’re telling me that’s what you used to steal my files? Does it even still run?”
“Of course it still runs,” Edie assured him archly. “A computer’s a computer, isn’t it? It takes a while to boot up, but once it does, it’s good to go. If you’ll wait just a minute, I’ll go get the rest of it—the keyboard, the CRT, and the power cords.”
While she returned to the bedroom, Winter moved closer to the table. Clearly expecting the latest and greatest, he seemed both fascinated and appalled by the appearance of this old machine. Taking advantage of his momentary lapse in focus, Ali moved closer to the hassock.
He reached down and touched the computer. “It’s dead cold,” he said when Edie returned with the oversize monitor. “This thing probably hasn’t run in years.”
“Of course it’s cold,” Edie told him. “I’m not the kind to leave something plugged in and wasting electricity when I’m not using it.”
And that was when Ali understood what was going on. Somehow—through B., in all likelihood—Edie had learned that the man’s name was Winter, but the rest of it was all bluff. Edie was making a huge production of dragging this computer equipment from the other room. But Ali knew for sure this wasn’t her mother’s computer and never had been. It was probably an ancient model someone had donated to Bob, one that was so out of date even he couldn’t give it away. And Winter was probably right when he said that if Edie ever did plug it in, it wouldn’t boot up.
A telephone rang. Edie pulled it out of her pocket, answered, and then listened. “I’m really very busy right now,” she said finally. “And I’m certainly not in the market for aluminum siding.”
Sticking the phone back in her pocket, she handed her daughter a tangled power cord. “Here,” she said. “Plug this in. If it’ll reach that far, we’ll have to use the outlet over by the TV set. The one next to the table burned out. And you’ll probably need to unplug the lamp or the TV to make it work.”
Without a word of objection, Ali took the cord and turned toward the television set. Dropping to her knees next to the hassock, she crawled close enough to the wall to reach the outlet. First she unplugged the TV; she was relieved to know that the Taser with the leopard pattern would now have disappeared. She plugged in the cord, then turned back to the table, where Edie was in the process of reassembling the computer equipment.
Winter, engrossed in watching Edie’s every move, was no longer concentrating on Ali. It took only a moment for Ali to pluck the brightly colored C2 out of the cluster of remote controls. As soon as she pulled back on the switch-plate cover, the infared dot appeared silently in the middle of the man’s back. Ali didn’t shout out a warning to him. Instead, she simply pressed down on the switch. Winter immediately crumpled to the floor, screaming as he fell. The gun fell, too. It landed on the hardwood floor and went spinning away from him. Edie pounced on the .357 before it ever came to rest. “Got it!” she crowed. “Now open the door. I called nine-one-one. They should be here any minute.”
Dropping the Taser, Ali raced to the door and flung it open. As soon as she did, she could hear an approaching siren somewhere in the background.
“I’ll go get them,” Edie said. “You take the gun. If he tries to get up, I’m sure you’ll know how to use it.”
Yes, Ali thought savagely. I sure as hell will!
CHAPTER 16
Arriving officers burst into the house while Peter Winter still lay twitching and helpless on the floor. Seeing Ali with the weapon in her hand, they immediately misread the situation.
“Drop the gun,” one of them shouted at her. “Get on the floor.”
After having her head held underwater, dropping to the floor was no problem. Ali was only too happy to comply.
“That’s my daughter,” Edie screeched from behind them. “Get him! The guy on the floor. He came in here with a gun. He was going to kill us.”
Just then Bob Larson appeared in the doorway behind his wife. Taking in the room, he paused when he saw the man on the floor. “Oh my God, Edie!” he exclaimed. “What have you done? Did you shoot him? Is he dead?”
But by then the thirty-second burst from the Taser had run its course, and Peter Winter lay whimpering on the floor in a puddle of his own making. Moments later, a pair of uniformed Sedona officers fitted him with a pair of Flex-Cuffs and then hauled him to his feet. The jolt of electricity seemed to have turned his legs to rubber.
While the one officer held him upright, the other turned to Edie. “Wha
t happened here?” he asked.
“He came to the door holding my daughter at gunpoint,” she said. “He thought we’d stolen some of his computer files.”
Dave Holman was the next man who darted through the front door and into the crowded room. “What’s going on?” he wanted to know. “What’s happened? Is anyone hurt?”
By then Bob was helping his daughter to her feet. “Leland Brooks may be,” Ali said. “He’s outside, unconscious, in the back of his truck.”
Nodding, Dave turned. “I’ll call the EMTs,” he said on his way out.
Meanwhile, two more Sedona officers edged their way into the room. “Whose Taser?” one of them asked.
“Mine,” Edie said. “My daughter fired it, but it belongs to me.”
Leaving the crowd inside to sort things out, Ali followed Dave. She found him on his hands and knees in the back of the camper shell. By the time she got there, he had pulled Leland to the end of the pickup and was loosening his restraints.
“Is he all right?” Ali asked.
Dave shook his head. “I can’t tell,” he said. “Looks like he’s out cold, but he’s got a pulse, and he’s breathing on his own.” He glanced up at Ali. “And what about you?” he asked. “That looks like a pretty bad cut.”
“It’s nothing,” Ali said. Compared to what it might have been, the injury to her face really was nothing.
A fire truck with a blaring siren arrived in a cloud of dust, followed by an ambulance. As a pair of EMTs raced forward, Ali motioned them toward the pickup. “He’s in there,” she said. She meant to be there with them, but suddenly, her legs were no longer cooperating.
Dave turned to Ali with a look of concern. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said, but not too convincingly. Taking her arm, Dave led her over to the back of the Sugarloaf and eased her down on the set of cement steps that led up to the back door.
“I should be there with Leland,” she objected.
“Sit,” Dave said.
When Ali looked down at her feet, she was surprised to see that she was barefoot. It was November and cold, but until she saw her feet, she hadn’t been aware of being without shoes.
“How did the cops get here?” Ali asked. “Who called them?”
“Your mother,” Dave replied. “She evidently placed a nine-one-one call and then hung up. When they tried calling back, she yelled at whoever was on the line and accused him of being an aluminum-siding salesman. Luckily, the operator was smart enough to realize something was amiss. He went ahead and dispatched units.”
“What about you?” Ali asked.
“B. Simpson had already told me that he’d plucked Peter Winter’s name out of the computer files he had lifted. When I tried to check on Winter myself, I was told he was off duty for the foreseeable future. That worried me. It worried me even more when Simpson told me he had been trying to reach you and couldn’t get through. I left my guys to execute the warrant at Manzanita Hills and was on my way to your other place when I heard the radio transmissions. I came here instead.”
“B. may not have been able to reach me, but he talked to my mother,” Ali said. “You should have seen her, Dave. She was amazing. I show up with my face dripping blood and with a guy who’s holding me at gunpoint, but she’s cool as a cucumber. ‘You must be Peter Winter,’ she says, as calm as can be. The next thing I know, she’s dragging some old discarded heap of a computer out of Dad’s trash pile and convincing the guy that was what she had used to hack in to his files. And he believed her. While he was busy watching her hook it up, I managed to grab the Taser and nail the guy.”
“Taser?” Dave asked. “What Taser? Where did you get one of those?”
“It’s Mom’s,” Ali answered. “She bought it at one of Frieda Rains’s parties.”
Dave shook his head and rubbed his forehead. “Remind me not to make your mother mad,” he said.
By then the EMTs had loaded Leland Brooks onto a gurney and were headed for the ambulance. “Where are you taking him?” Dave called after them.
“Yavapai Medical Center,” the driver returned. “Do you want us to come back for the guy with the darts once we get this one transported?”
“Don’t bother,” Dave told them. “We’ll be able to handle him.”
In the meantime, someone—Jan Howard, maybe—had brought a chair from the restaurant and set it down near the steps where Ali was already sitting. While Ali watched, Bob led a pale and shaken Edie out of their house. Holding his wife’s arm as though afraid she might break, he led her over to the chair and helped her sit down.
“I’m fine, Bobby,” Edie was saying. “Really, I am.”
But she didn’t look any finer than her daughter did. Like Dave, Bob Larson didn’t believe a word of it.
Just then Chris’s Prius raced into the parking lot. Jumping out and slamming the door behind him, he ran over to where Ali was sitting. Athena was hot on his heels.
“Mom, are you all right?” he gasped. “What’s going on?”
“I’m okay,” Ali assured him. “So’s Grandma.” But Ali was surprised to notice that at the same time she was uttering those supposedly reassuring words, she was also shivering uncontrollably. She didn’t know if the shakes were coming from being outside barefoot in the November cold or from realizing that the worst of the crisis was past.
Chris responded by whipping off his sport jacket and throwing it over his mother’s quivering shoulders. “Someone called the principal at school and said there was a problem at the Sugarloaf. He took charge of my class so I could get over here. What the hell happened?”
“It would appear that your mother and grandmother have succeeded in apprehending a possible homicide suspect,” Dave said, getting to his feet. “Now, if you and Athena will look after your mother, I’ll check out what’s going on inside the house and make sure the guy they tased is okay.”
“They tased somebody?” a baffled Chris asked. “As in a Taser? Who did that?”
“Your mother was the one shooting it,” Dave observed with a tight smile. “But it isn’t hers. I believe she used your grandmother’s Taser.”
Chris looked questioningly at his grandmother. She nodded in return. “That’s right,” she said. “It’s mine.”
“But you’re all right?” Chris asked.
Edie was getting a grip. “Couldn’t be better,” she replied stoutly, as if daring her husband to say otherwise.
Chris turned back to his mother and paused when he saw her bloodied face. “Then who was in the ambulance?” he asked. “They almost took us out back at the stoplight.”
“Leland Brooks,” Ali replied, struggling to her feet. “He’s hurt. They’re taking him to the hospital, and I’d like to go, too. If you and Athena would be kind enough to give me a ride…”
But before she could finish the sentence, a strange procession emerged from Bob and Edie Larson’s house, and everyone who had gathered in the Sugarloaf’s parking lot stopped to watch. Two cops, each of them holding a handcuffed Peter Winter by an arm, led the way. The three of them were followed by a third cop who trailed behind, carrying Edie’s Taser. With the darts still stuck in the middle of Winter’s back and the strings attached to the Taser trailing along behind him, the whole thing resembled a bizarre bridal procession.
Ali was relieved to see that Peter Winter appeared to be much the worse for wear. Even though electricity was no longer flowing through his body, he still seemed to need help remaining upright. The shaming telltale marks of urination stained his clothing. In order to reach the waiting patrol car, the cops had to lead their prisoner past both Ali and Edie. When he saw them, he ducked his head and turned away.
“See there?” Edie said to her husband. “I told you he’s fine.”
Bob Larson shook his head. “The poor guy doesn’t look fine to me,” he said. “And like I said earlier, don’t you go shooting that thing off at me. If it made him piss his pants, it would probably kill me.”
“Would you stop harping about it?” Edie returned. “Please. If we hadn’t had that Taser, Ali and I would probably both be dead by now. Would you like that any better?”
Chris left Ali’s side long enough to give his grandmother a brief hug. “I wouldn’t,” he said. “Tase away, Grandma. Way to go! But will you be all right if I take Mom to the hospital? She wants to check on Mr. Brooks.”
“I just wish everyone would quit worrying about me,” Edie said. “You take care of your mother. If Grandpa ever finishes complaining, he can look after me.”
Athena piled into the front passenger seat of the Prius while Ali sat crammed in the back. With Chris at the wheel, they headed for the hospital.
Yavapai Medical Center operated more as a stand-alone emergency room than it did a full-service hospital. Although it had rooms that could accommodate the occasional overnight stay, the medical center’s physicians specialized primarily in stitching together minor cuts, setting broken bones, and delivering the occasional fast-arriving baby. Patients requiring more comprehensive care or longer stays were routinely transported to hospitals in Cottonwood, Flagstaff, or Phoenix. The fact that the EMTs had opted for local treatment gave Ali cause to hope they didn’t regard Leland’s situation as life-threatening.
“Do you know anything about Leland’s family?” Athena asked. “Is there someone we should call?”
If he had relatives living anywhere in the States, Ali was unaware of them. Even so, there was someone Ali was quite sure would want to be notified about Leland’s condition. Without thinking, she reached for her phone, only it wasn’t there—or rather, it still wasn’t there because it was still at her house, still sunk at the bottom of that tubful of water.
“Can I please borrow a cell phone?” Ali asked.
Without a word, Athena passed one back. With the help of directory assistance, Ali was connected to the Yavapai County courthouse in Prescott, where she asked to speak to Judge Patrick Macey.