Hand of Evil

by J. A. Jance

  “We’ve already been over this once today, and I think you know the answer,” Ali told her. “Yes, you’re upset, but you’ve proved to be untrustworthy. Come on.”

  Caught up in the conversation with Crystal, Ali had given no thought to what she would say to Kip Hogan’s long-lost daughter. Ali was still scrambling for ideas when she pressed the doorbell. In the far reaches of the house the drone of a television set was abruptly silenced. A few minutes later, the porch light flipped on, the door opened a crack, and a tall black man peered out at them.

  “Yes?” he asked cautiously.

  “Is this the Braeton residence?” Ali asked.

  “It is,” he said. “And I’m Jonathan Braeton. Who are you and what can I do for you?”

  His voice was wary, but it was also cultured and smooth. His response to unexpected late evening visitors wasn’t rude, but it wasn’t especially cordial, either.

  And why would he be? Ali wondered. After all, it was eight-thirty at night, and the man was faced with a pair of complete strangers who had appeared unannounced on his doorstep. Police officers doing this kind of thing at least had official ID to offer. Ali had nothing.

  “I’m sorry to intrude,” she stammered. “My name is Alison Reynolds from Sedona, and this is Crystal Holman. We’re looking for a Jane Hogan Braeton. I’m a friend of her father’s.”

  “Really,” the man said. “You don’t say.”

  He stepped back from the door then, but he didn’t open it. Instead, he engaged the security chain. “Janie,” he called. “You may want to come hear this.”

  A woman’s voice called from somewhere in the background. “What?”

  “There’s someone here who claims she’s a friend of your father’s.”

  “A friend of my father’s?” the woman repeated. “I don’t have a father. Is she nuts?”

  “You’d better come see for yourself,” he told her.

  Ali hadn’t been particularly surprised when a black man had answered the door. After all, interracial marriages had been on the scene for a long time. What she hadn’t expected at all, however, was that Kip Hogan’s daughter would also turn out to be an African American. Because she was. Her skin was several shades lighter than her husband’s, but she was still clearly black.

  If Kip Hogan is her father, her mother was or is black, Ali decided. Or else she’s adopted.

  Not the least intimidated, Jane Braeton refused to hide behind the half-open door. Instead, she disengaged the security chain and flung the inside door wide open. For a moment she stood framed in the doorway with her husband directly behind her.

  Jonathan Braeton was tall and rangy and in his early to mid-forties. Jane was short and stout and looked to be ten years younger than her husband. The top of her head barely reached the height of her husband’s broad shoulders. He was wearing a sweatsuit with a towel casually draped around his neck and looked as though he had just finished a workout. She was still dressed for work in a skirt, blouse, blazer, and stockings. But no shoes.

  “Who are you?” she demanded. “What do you want, and what kind of a scam are you trying to pull?”

  “It’s about Kip Hogan,” Ali offered. “That’s how we know him. Or, as he’s listed on your birth certificate, Rudyard Kipling Hogan.”

  “Words on a birth certificate do not a father make,” Jane returned. “Mr. Hogan has been out of my life for a very long time, and I want him to stay that way.”

  “He’s been hurt,” Ali said. “Gravely injured in fact. A gang of thugs beat him up with a baseball bat. He’s in the ICU at St. Francis Hospital. That’s why we came to let you know, so you could go visit him.”

  Jane Braeton crossed her arms. “What makes you think I’d want to? You claim you know Kip Hogan?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Ali said.

  “And does it look to you like he could possibly be my father?”

  “Well, no,” Ali admitted. “It doesn’t, but…”

  “You’re right. He isn’t. And how badly hurt is he?”

  “Very,” Ali said. “He had brain surgery this morning. He’s on a ventilator. According to what my mother was able to learn, he may not make it.”

  “What was this, some kind of barroom brawl?”

  “It didn’t happen in a bar. It happened along I-17 south of Flagstaff. A couple of days ago three young punks came to the grocery store in Sedona where Kip’s girlfriend, Sandy Mitchell, works as a check-out clerk. They were underage and tried to buy booze. When she carded them, they started hassling her. Kip showed up in the middle of it, stuck up for Sandy, and put a stop to it. Afterward, the kids evidently lay in wait for Kip and took a baseball bat to him.”

  “I’ve wanted to take a bat to him myself,” Jane Braeton said. “Let’s let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “Janie,” Jonathan Braeton admonished. “Remember, what goes around comes around. We owe Elizabeth more than that. You can’t just turn your back on the man.”

  “Why not?” Janie returned. “That’s what he did to us, didn’t he? He walked away from his own mother, for heaven’s sake! He never looked back and never lifted a finger to help her. As far as I can see, he never gave a damn about anyone but himself, and I don’t see why we should care about him, either.”

  “Janie…”

  “Don’t you start with me about it,” Jane said fiercely. “You weren’t there. You don’t know what it was like. You don’t have any idea.”

  “Still,” Jonathan said calmly after a short pause, “let’s remember our manners. We don’t need to broadcast this discussion to the whole neighborhood. How about if we invite these nice ladies in out of the cold, offer them something warm to drink, and have this discussion in a civilized fashion?”

  Jane Braeton looked as though inviting Ali and Crystal into her home was the last thing she wanted to do, but eventually she acquiesced. Stepping back, she motioned them inside. “Won’t you come in,” she rasped. She might just as well have been eating glass.

  Jonathan, on the other hand, was far more welcoming. “Have a seat,” he said, leading Ali and Crystal into a spacious, comfortably furnished living room. “Now, what can I get you?” he asked. “Hot tea? Cocoa?”

  Ali and Crystal settled on matching chintz-covered easy chairs. “Cocoa,” Crystal said at once. After a pointed look from Ali, she added a tardy, “Please.”

  “Thank you,” Ali said. “Cocoa sounds nice. I’ll have some of that, too.”

  Jane took a seat on a nearby sofa and leveled her questioning gaze on Crystal. “I suppose you’re a friend of Mr. Hogan’s as well?” she asked.

  Crystal shook her head. “Not really,” she said.

  “She’s with me,” Ali said. “I apologize for bringing her along, but I didn’t have anywhere to leave her.”

  “Oh,” Jane said.

  After that an uneasy silence enveloped the room. It took only a few minutes for Jonathan to return, bringing with him a tray laden with two cups and saucers. He handed one to Crystal. She held it nervously, with the bottom of the delicate china cup clattering on the saucer. For a moment Ali was reminded of herself, all those years ago, nervously sipping her first cup of Anna Lee Ashcroft’s tea.

  Jonathan sat down next to his wife. “Call her,” he said.

  Jane looked at her watch. “It’s too late,” she said. “She’s probably already asleep.”

  “Call her,” he urged again. “Wake her up. He’s her son after all. What if this turns out to be Elizabeth’s last chance to see him? You wouldn’t want to be responsible for her missing that opportunity.”

  With an angry shrug, Jane Braeton rose abruptly and stalked off to another room, slamming the door shut behind her.

  “I had no idea Kip’s mother was still alive,” Ali said. “No one was able to sort out where she went after she left Kingman.”

  “She’s in her nineties,” Jonathan explained. “She lives in an assisted living facility down in Queen Creek. She has macular degeneration, Parkinson’s, you name it. Hav
ing to put Elizabeth there almost broke Janie’s heart, but eventually it reached a point where it was too much. We could no longer have her here at home, not even with live-in help.”

  He stopped and steepled his fingers in front of his chin before adding thoughtfully, “I suppose you can see that Janie’s family situation is a bit…shall we say…problematic. I won’t presume to go into all that. It’s Janie’s story and it’s entirely up to her whether or not she decides to share it. But tell me more about Mr. Hogan. How did you come to know him?”

  For the next several minutes Ali explained about how Kip Hogan had come into her parents’ lives straight from the homeless camp on the Mogollon Rim; how Kip had helped care for Bob Larson in the aftermath of his snowboarding accident; and how he had stayed on and continued to work around the place long after Bob was back on his feet. She ended by telling him about the refinished bird’s-eye maple credenza—the last job Kip had completed before he had been assaulted.

  “So he was trying to straighten himself out then,” Jonathan said.

  “Yes,” Ali said. “Very much so. He’s been attending AA regularly and he has a steady girlfriend, Sandra Mitchell. She’s been at the hospital all day. She’ll be devastated if she loses him. My parents will be as well.”

  Ali had known for sure how much Bob was affected. Her mother might not admit it, but the very fact that Edie had jumped into her Alero and driven down to the hospital was a strong indication that she, too, cared about Kip Hogan and what happened to him.

  Just then the door came open down the hall and Jane Braeton marched back into the living room. She was wearing shoes now—a pair of stylish black pumps. She had a purse in one hand and a coat slung over the other arm.

  “You’re right,” she said grudgingly to her husband. “She wants to go. The night supervisor said it’ll take forty-five minutes or so for an attendant to get Elizabeth out of bed and dressed. They’ll bring her down to the front entrance.”

  Jane paused and gave Jonathan a searching look. Then she turned to Ali. “I suppose my husband has been running off at the mouth and giving you my whole life history?”

  “I did no such thing,” Jonathan protested. “I told them that was up to you.”

  Jane sighed. She tossed her purse onto the coffee table and then sat down on the couch. “I could just as well, I suppose,” she said. “My version will be mercifully shorter than Elizabeth’s will be. Do you mind getting me a cup of tea, Jon? I think I’m going to need it. And maybe our guests would like some more cocoa.”

  “Would you care to help me?” Jonathan asked Crystal.

  To Ali’s surprise, Crystal leaped willingly to her feet and followed Jonathan into the kitchen.

  { CHAPTER 12 }

  Jane waited until the door swung shut behind them. She sighed again. “I suppose you can tell I don’t much like talking about this,” she said. “It’s painful to have to acknowledge that you were unwanted. Not entirely unwanted. Elizabeth Hogan wanted me, and I bless her for it, but she was the only one who did.”

  Puzzled, Ali nodded but said nothing.

  “The man you know as my father, Kip Hogan, was a native of Kingman. Both his father’s people and his mother’s, the Brownings, came from there as well. Kip’s father and grandfather both worked for the railroad. His dad was a brakeman who died in a train accident when Kip was only three. As for his mother? Since the family name was Browning, when their first child turned out to be a girl, they decided to name her Elizabeth Barrett. It was supposed to be a joke, but Elizabeth ended up having the last laugh. She was the first girl in her family ever to go to college. She went to Flagstaff back when Northern Arizona University was still the Northern Arizona State Teacher’s College. She graduated from there with a teaching certificate and eventually a full-fledged degree in English. She went back home and taught English at Kingman High School for her entire career.”

  “Hence Rudyard Kipling Hogan,” Ali offered.

  Jane nodded and smiled apologetically. “Exactly. So Kip grew up there. He was a typical teacher’s kid, which is to say he was a born hell-raiser. He never even finished high school. Instead, he dropped out and volunteered for the army, then got shipped to Vietnam. Elizabeth always told me he was different when he came back—different—but at first he seemed to be okay. He came back home and hired on with the fire department. That’s where he was working when he met my mother.”

  “Amy Sue,” Ali said.

  Jane gave her a shrewd look. “Yes,” she said. “Amy Sue Laughton Hogan. She said she was from Virginia, but that was probably a lie. Everything else she said was a lie, so why would that be any different? She showed up in town on a Greyhound bus with nothing but a couple of suitcases. She rented herself a room, went to work in one of the local dives, and set her cap for Kip Hogan. And voilà, next thing you know, she tells him she’s pregnant. By then, he’s trying to be the man, so he trades shifts, takes two days off from work, and off they go to Vegas to get married. That was July fourth, 1973.”

  The kitchen door swung open. Jonathan came in with his tray, two cups and saucers—a new one for Ali and one for his wife, and no Crystal.

  “That poor little girl is starving,” he said to Ali. “I’m making her some toast and cheese. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Having fed her one meal on the way here, Ali wondered if Crystal had a hollow leg. Jane Braeton, on the other hand, sent a grateful smile in her husband’s direction. Seeing it, Ali realized that keeping Crystal in the kitchen was a ploy on Jonathan’s part, a way of giving his wife some privacy in order to tell a story she most likely wouldn’t want to relate in front of a thirteen-year-old girl.

  Jane waited until Jonathan returned to the kitchen before she continued. “They were in Vegas on their honeymoon when a train derailed coming through Kingman. A tanker loaded with liquid propane was involved, and the resulting BLEVE was huge.”

  “The what?” Ali asked.

  “A boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion,” Jane explained. “On July fifth a rail car loaded with liquid propane caught fire and blew up. It was Kingman, Arizona’s darkest day. Eleven firemen and one civilian were killed. Several others—firemen and police officers—were seriously injured, and ninety-some-odd civilian bystanders also suffered burns.”

  Ali remembered the story now but only vaguely. She had been in junior high when it happened. For days the fire had been headline news all over Arizona. Geographically Sedona was a long way away from Kingman. Eventually the story had faded, but Ali understood that for a small town like Kingman, one which had suddenly lost a whole troop of its finest young men, the fire had to be a tragedy whose tentacles still held.

  “So, when all hell broke loose, Rudyard Kipling Hogan was off in Vegas honeymooning with his brand-new wife,” Jane went on. “They headed back as soon as they heard the news and arrived while the fire was still burning. Kip went to the site and looked at the damage, but he never even suited up. Instead, he left again without a word and without even bothering to unpack his suitcase. He didn’t give a damn if Amy Sue was pregnant or not. He left her that very day and never came back. Elizabeth always said it was because of the guilt—that he couldn’t stand the idea that he was alive when his friends were dead.”

  “So your parents were married for two days?” Ali asked.

  “Let’s just say that Kip and Amy Sue were married for two days,” Jane allowed. “Elizabeth told me that she was shocked and disappointed when her son took off like that. He left Amy Sue with nothing—no money for rent, no place to stay, no car, nothing. Even though Kip wasn’t prepared to do the right thing, Elizabeth was. She let Amy Sue move in with her, and everything was peachy keen until I was born a good month or so earlier than anyone except Amy Sue expected. Once I was there in the hospital nursery for all to see, it was pretty clear that Rudyard Kipling Hogan wasn’t my father.”

  “So your mother was white then?” Ali asked.

  Jane paused, sipped her tea, and then nodded. “Apparently,” s
he said. “I did some checking after the fact. I’m pretty sure Amy Sue was already pregnant on the day she arrived in Kingman. She targeted Kip to be her fall guy, her baby’s daddy. The problem was, he was the wrong color, and by the time she figured that out, it was too late. She stayed in the hospital for three days after I was born and didn’t even bother giving me a name. She came home to Elizabeth’s house long enough to drop me off. She left the house in the middle of the night that first night without saying good-bye to anyone. I’ve never heard from her since. I have no idea if she’s dead or alive.”

  Tears welled in the corners of Jane Braeton’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” Ali murmured.

  Jane shook her head as if shaking off the momentary sadness that had overtaken her. Then she continued. “For the longest time, Elizabeth didn’t even let on to anyone that Amy Sue had bailed. She was afraid if people found out, some busybody from social services would decide she was too old to be raising a baby and take me away.”

  “And she’s the one who named you?” Ali asked.

  Jane allowed herself a bleak smile. “Right. Jane Eyre Hogan. Who else but an Elizabeth Barrett Browning would name me that? Elizabeth hired a former student of hers, a Mexican lady named Roseann Duarte, to look after me. And those are the people who raised me, Elizabeth Hogan and Roseann. Elizabeth was never my mother, but she’s the only mother I’ve ever known. She took care of me, loved me, and saw to it that I got a good education. My husband is right. I do owe her, and that’s why we’re doing this. That’s why we’re going to the hospital tonight, and that’s the only reason—not because some stranger’s name is on my birth certificate.”

  Jane looked at her watch and stood up. “We should probably get going.”

  Crystal emerged from the kitchen with Jonathan right behind her. “Do you want me to come with you?” he asked. “I can help with the wheelchair, whatever.”

  Jane shook her head. “No,” she said. “We’ll be fine.”

  “All right,” Jonathan agreed. “You and Elizabeth do what you have to do, but drive carefully.”