by Jance, J. A.
“I’m sorry,” his secretary told Ali. “It’s impossible to reach Judge Macey just now. He’s conducting a trial.”
“This is urgent,” Ali insisted. “Perhaps his bailiff could let him know I’m on the phone.”
“What’s your name again?”
“Ali,” she said. “Ali Reynolds from Sedona.”
The woman sighed. “One moment, then,” she said.
Ali waited. She knew that Leland and Judge Macey had been involved for quite some time. She remembered hearing that the judge’s wife, after years of being confined to a nursing home, had succumbed to the ravages of Alzheimer’s. Prior to the wife’s death, there had been some need to keep the relationship under wraps due to objections from the judge’s grown children, but with their mother gone, Ali had assumed that—
A man’s voice came on the phone. “Why are you calling me?” Judge Macey asked.
The brusque response caught Ali off guard. “I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said. “It’s about Leland Brooks. I thought you’d want to know that there’s been a problem, and he’s been taken to the hospital in—”
“You had no business interrupting a trial,” Macey interrupted. “Do not call me about this matter again!” With that, he hung up.
Staring at the words CALL ENDED on the phone, Ali couldn’t help feeling sorry for Leland Brooks. From the way it sounded, far more than a phone call had been disconnected.
By then Chris had pulled up at the entrance to the medical center, where an empty Sedona patrol car was parked right outside the front entrance. With a start, Ali realized that Leland Brooks was being treated here, and so was the man who had attacked them. No doubt Peter Winter had been brought here to have the darts removed from his back.
“Go on in, Mom,” Chris suggested. “Athena and I will park and be there in a few minutes.”
When Ali stepped into the lobby, she was relieved to see that Dr. Peter Winter was nowhere in sight. She approached the reception desk, fully expecting to be rebuffed. After all, Ali was no relation to Leland Brooks; she was sure HIPAA rules would prevent hospital personnel from giving her any information concerning his condition. They might not even acknowledge that he had been admitted as a patient.
When Ali gave her name to the receptionist, however, the woman nodded knowingly. “Of course, Ms. Reynolds. Dr. Langston, one of our in-house doctors, is with Mr. Brooks right now and assessing his situation. If you’ll have a seat, I’m sure he’ll be with you shortly.”
Stifling her surprise, Ali did as she was told—she took a seat and waited. Because she still had Athena’s phone in her hand, she used those few moments to attempt to contact B. Simpson. There was a problem, however: This wasn’t her phone. She was used to dialing B. by simply using her directory. Without access to her cheat sheet of numbers, she was unable to recall B.’s. She had already dialed two wrong numbers by the time Athena and Chris came into the waiting room.
“Any word?” Chris asked.
“Not yet.” Ali started to hand the phone back.
“You keep it until we find yours,” Athena said.
“Thanks.” Ali stuffed the phone in her pocket.
“I just talked to Dave again,” Chris said to his mother. “He told me that both our house and Grandma’s are currently considered crime scenes. That means until they can get them processed, we’ll need to stay somewhere else. I can stay with Athena, but do you want her to find rooms for you and Grandpa and Grandma?”
Nodding, Ali leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. “We’ll need a place for Sam, too,” she said. “Assuming anyone can catch her, that is. She’s probably petrified.”
Athena collected Chris’s phone and went to the desk to find a phone book while Chris turned to his mother. “Why?” he asked. “What happened there?”
Just thinking about it was enough to make Ali feel sick again. “He filled the tub with water, shoved my head under, and held it there. Repeatedly,” Ali said. “He did the same thing to Mr. Brooks.”
Chris knew all about Ali’s fear of water, and he was obviously appalled. He reached over and took his mother’s hand. “But who is this guy?” he asked. “And why would he do such a thing? Is he really a killer, like Dave said, and how did you and Grandma and Leland Brooks get mixed up with him?”
“Do you remember that identity thief B. and I were tracking?”
Chris nodded. “What about him?”
“B.’s a very smart man,” Ali said. “The man’s name is Peter Winter. We were actually able to lift his files right off his computer. It turns out they’re encrypted, so we still don’t know what’s on them, but whatever it is must be really incriminating. He was worried enough that he came here looking for me in hopes of getting them back.”
As if speaking of the devil, a pair of swinging doors opened, and there was Peter Winter himself. He was sitting in a wheelchair being pushed by a nurse, while the same two uniformed officers flanked the wheelchair. Winter wore the cuffs, but his clothing was gone. Instead, he was clad only in a skimpy hospital gown, with a single sheet thrown over his bare legs. The moment he saw Ali, his eyes sparked a look of pure fury.
“Bitch!” he muttered under his breath as the chair rolled past her. “You incredible bitch!”
To her surprise, Ali burst out laughing. She couldn’t help herself, and she was still laughing when the automatic outside door whirred shut behind him. Before she managed to get back under control, the swinging doors opened once more. A man dressed in scrubs strode into the lobby.
“Ms. Reynolds?” he asked, glancing around.
Stifling her laughter, Ali got to her feet and hurried forward. “Yes,” she said, “that’s me. Is Mr. Brooks going to be all right?”
“I’m Dr. Langston,” he said, “Mr. Brooks’s attending physician. We believe he’ll be fine. He’s very heavily sedated at the moment. That means that his blood pressure and heart rate aren’t entirely normal. We found two separate puncture marks on Mr. Brooks’s arm, marks that might possibly indicate he had been dosed with some kind of medication. Do you have any idea what drugs might have been administered?”
Ali closed her eyes. She thought about lying helpless on the bathroom floor while her captor temporarily disappeared from view. She remembered that when she’d come back into the bedroom, Leland’s body had apparently been moved.
“The man who was just here,” Ali said. “The one they just took away in the cop car—”
“The one who was hit by a Taser?” the doctor asked. “What about him?”
“He was dressed when they brought him here. What happened to his clothes?”
“I believe the police officers who were with him took charge of all his personal property, clothing included. Why?”
“Have them check his pockets,” Ali suggested.
Dr. Langston looked at Ali for a moment, then nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’ll do that. And I should probably take a look at your face, Ms. Reynolds. Apparently you got hit pretty hard. In the meantime, if you’d like to go wait in Mr. Brooks’s room…”
The whole time they had been in the hospital lobby, Athena had been on the phone. “The Majestic Mountain Inn has two rooms,” she reported now. “And they take pets. Do you want me to book them?”
Ali nodded. Automatically, she reached for her purse and her credit card, but she didn’t have those, either.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” Chris said. “I’ll put the rooms on my card.”
Leaving Chris and Athena to make the room reservation, Ali followed Dr. Langston through the swinging doors and into the interior of the building. “He’s in there,” Dr. Langston said, motioning Ali toward a room two doors down the hall.
Entering Leland’s room, she was more than a little gratified to have been given such unlimited access. He lay on his back with his hands folded peacefully across his chest. He was sleeping soundly and snoring with window-rattling volume. The thought that such a small man could make so much noise would have b
een humorous under any other circumstances. Today it wasn’t funny.
Ali studied his sleeping face. His lips were cut and swollen. One eye was black, and the rest of his face was mottled with bruises and abrasions. One arm was in a sling, and both hands showed signs of having been in a serious physical altercation. Neither he nor Ali had won, but they had gone down swinging.
There was a single chair near the head of the bed. Ali slipped gratefully onto that and settled in to wait. The doctor reappeared within a matter of minutes. “You’re right,” he said. “They found two empty syringes of Versed in his pockets. Where the hell did he get those?”
“I think Winter is a doctor,” Ali said. “That’s what I was told.”
“A doctor!” Dr. Langston repeated, shaking his head. “In that case, it’ll take time for the medication to wear off. Fortunately for someone Mr. Brooks’s age, he doesn’t appear to be in any kind of distress at the moment. Other than bruising and battering, he has a dislocated shoulder and possibly a torn rotator cuff. We’re capable of monitoring his progress here, but if you’d prefer to have him moved to another facility…”
It was one thing to be allowed into Leland Brooks’s room, but Ali was surprised to be given so much information about his condition, and she certainly hadn’t expected to be consulted about the kind of care provided.
“Look,” Ali said. “I need to tell you, that I’m not a blood relation and probably shouldn’t have any say.”
“Mr. Brooks has an unusual blood type—O-negative—and wears a MedicAlert tag that gives emergency personnel access to his information. You’re listed as the person to be notified in case of an emergency. You’ve also been designated the decision maker regarding his treatment options.”
“He’s given me his medical power of attorney?” Ali asked.
“Do you mean to say that you didn’t know?” Dr. Langston asked.
“I do now,” Ali said. “And we’ll wait here until he wakes up,” she added, making the decision as she spoke.
“Let’s go take a look at you in the meantime,” the doctor said.
An X-ray revealed that her aching jaw wasn’t broken, but the cut next to her eye required two stitches. In another time and place, she would have been concerned about scarring. Now she was just glad to be alive.
After leaving the examination room, Ali returned to the chair next to Leland Brooks’s hospital bed, where she remained for the next several hours. She couldn’t help being sorry about keeping that solitary vigil. He was a wonderful human being, she had worked with him for months, but she didn’t know him that well. She had known nothing about his snoring, for instance, or the breakup of his romance, but she was the only person he had trusted to make life-and-death decisions about his medical care. How could that be?
Somewhere along the way, she fell asleep. When she awakened, it was dark outside, and someone had turned on a night-light on the far side of Leland’s bed. When she opened her eyes, she was surprised to see he was awake, too, and staring at her intently.
“I’m sorry,” Leland murmured. “So very sorry.”
“Sorry?” Ali repeated, straightening up and rubbing her eyes. “What do you have to be sorry about?”
“I let you down,” he said. “He was there in the driveway waiting for me, and I simply didn’t see it coming. He had brute force and surprise working in his favor. I never had a chance. I’m so sorry if he hurt you.”
It was entirely predictable that Leland’s first thought would be for someone else rather than for himself.
“He didn’t hurt me,” she said reassuringly. “Not really.”
“There’s a cut on your face—with stitches,” Leland objected.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“Who was he?” Leland asked. “Do you know his name?”
“Winter—Dr. Peter Winter.”
“And did he get away?”
“No,” Ali said. “We got lucky. He’s in custody.”
“He was a big man,” Leland said. “Who caught him and how?”
“My mother has a Taser,” Ali said simply. “We used that.”
“I see,” Leland said with a nod, as though the idea of Edie Larson having a Taser were the most natural thing in the world. “What about Mr. Simpson?” he added. “Winter didn’t find him, did he? I hope he’s all right.”
That stopped Ali for a moment. Winter had claimed Leland had said nothing because he’d had nothing to tell. Evidently, that wasn’t the case. “Are you saying you knew about my involvement with Mr. Simpson?”
“Of course I knew about it,” Leland answered. “I’m your butler. I didn’t know the details, but I knew it had something to do with computers. So when this man, this Winter person, kept raving about someone who had wrecked his computer files, I assumed it had to be Mr. Simpson.”
“But you didn’t give him Mr. Simpson’s name,” Ali said.
“No,” Leland replied. “Of course not. That’s not something I would do.”
“Thank you,” Ali said quietly. She meant it.
She wanted to say more, but just then a nurse stuck her head into the room. “We don’t have a kitchen here,” she said. “If you’d like something to eat, I can order in.”
They settled on Subway sandwiches. Once the nurse was gone, Ali turned to what had been bothering her while she’d been sitting awake and watching Leland sleep.
“I called your friend,” she said. “Your friend from Prescott. I’m sorry if that was the wrong thing to do, but I thought he’d want to know what had happened.”
“I assume he didn’t,” Leland said sadly.
“That’s correct,” Ali agreed. “He didn’t.”
“We broke up,” Leland said. “His children don’t approve of me, you see. I guess that means they don’t approve of him, either, but he’s their father. He doesn’t want to lose them. They gave him a choice of them or me. He chose them, and who can blame him?”
It struck Ali that this was almost the same thing Bryan Forester had said about not wanting to lose his girls. Although the situations were very different, they were also surprisingly similar—a father choosing to live a lie rather than risk losing his kids.
“I’m sorry,” Ali said.
“I am, too,” Leland admitted. “I thought that once Patrick’s wife was gone he’d find the courage to live his own life and be who he really is, but it turns out he can’t. I suppose I should have mentioned it to you.”
“No,” Ali said. “There was no need to tell me. Your personal affairs are none of my business.”
“Not telling you was rather cowardly on my part,” Leland Brooks said thoughtfully. “I just didn’t want to get into it.”
Ali reached over and took one of his hands in hers. “No, Mr. Brooks,” she said quietly. “That’s not it at all. I don’t think you could ever be a coward. That’s not who you are.”
A while later, once Leland had drifted back to sleep, Ali ventured out of the room long enough to use the restroom. Studying her face in the mirror, she was shocked by what she saw. The stitches were the least of it. An ugly bruise stretched from the corner of her left eye and down across her jawline. It ended halfway down her neck.
Not a pretty face, Ali thought ruefully. If Jacky Jackson sees me now, it’ll all be over between us.
A nurse came through the doors at the end of the hallway. Before the doors swung shut again, Ali heard the sound of familiar voices and caught a glimpse of her mother’s steel-gray page-boy. Hurrying into the lobby, she found it packed with people she knew—both her parents and Athena and Chris were there, along with several concerned neighbors from Andante Drive. All of them were worried about her.
“Oh my,” Edie Larson said tearfully, rushing over to her daughter. “Look at you. If you aren’t a sight for sore eyes, or should I say, a sight of sore eyes! They said you were in with Mr. Brooks and that he couldn’t have any more visitors, but I was so afraid that animal had hurt you.”
Bob Larson
stepped between Edie and Ali and engulfed his daughter in a crushing bear hug. “You and your mom are quite the tag team,” he said. “But what about Mr. Brooks? Is he going to be all right?”
“He’s a little worse for wear,” Ali said. “But he’s sleeping now. The doctor says he’ll be fine.”
“Too bad he didn’t have a Taser,” Edie said. “Maybe you should give him one for Christmas.”
That broke the tension in the room, and everyone laughed. For the next few minutes, Ali told her collection of well-wishers as much of the story as she and Leland had managed to put together. Peter Winter had expected Ali to show up in response to his tile-delivery ruse rather than Leland Brooks. Once again, as she had with Chris and Athena, Ali recounted for everyone what Peter Winter had done to her and to Leland Brooks, shoving them under the water in hopes of their telling him who had taken his files.
“Those files were the tip of the iceberg,” Edie said. “Dave thinks Winter is the one who killed Morgan Forester.”
“He did,” Ali confirmed. “He told me so himself.”
“That means Bryan is off the hook, then?” Bob Larson asked.
“I hope so,” Ali said.
An hour or so later, a nurse shooed everyone out of the lobby, and Ali returned to her spot next to Leland’s bed. She had dozed off briefly when someone touched her shoulder. She awakened to find Dave Holman standing next to her chair and beckoning for her to follow him.
“I know you’re tired,” he said once they reached the lobby. “And this probably isn’t the best time to do this, but we need to take your statement as soon as possible.”
“We?” Ali asked.
“This is Detective Marjorie Hill from the city of Sedona,” Dave said, as a woman who had been seated near the windows rose to greet them. “She’s here because the attacks on you and Mr. Brooks occurred inside the city limits. I’m here because of Morgan Forester.”
“So you believe me, then?” Ali asked, glad of the confirmation.
Dave nodded grimly. “We found Morgan’s missing wedding and engagement rings on a key ring in Peter Winter’s pocket. But there’s a problem with that.”