by J. A. Jance
“Just a minute,” Dave said. Ali heard muttering in the background. “Sheriff Maxwell is wondering if you ended up firing your weapon.”
That figured. Sheriff Maxwell had to be relieved that the shoot-out had taken place in someone else’s jurisdiction. He wouldn’t have to put one of his own officers on administrative duty during the ensuing investigation of an officer-involved shooting. Since this had all taken place in Gila County, it would be up to Sheriff Tuttle and the ATF to sort out whatever needed sorting. It would be someone else’s media relations problem as well. For some reason, that last thought made her giggle.
“Tell him no,” Ali managed, still laughing. “I didn’t fire my weapon, not even once.”
The sound of what was deemed to be inappropriate laughter caused some concern among the assembled ATF agents. One of the two guys kneeling next to Sister Anselm looked up at Ali. Then, after analyzing her face for a moment, he handed her a bottle of water.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m not hysterical, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Ali assured him. “Someone just cracked a joke.”
He cocked his head as though he wasn’t sure whether he should believe her. “Okay,” he said finally, “if you say so. But how about if you let me hold the blanket while you go sit in the shade? You look like the heat is getting to you, too.”
Glad to oblige, Ali handed the blanket over to him, took the bottle of water, and then went to sit on a rock on the shady side of the gully.
“You really are all right?” Dave asked. “Your parents will have my ears for putting you in danger again.”
“You didn’t put me in danger. The shooter did. Do we have any idea who he is? Or, rather, was?”
Initially one of the ATF guys had checked the fallen suspect’s pulse. Finding none, they left him where he had landed. Now, that same agent had produced a digital camera and started diligently taking photos from every angle.
The Gila County Sheriff’s Department and medical examiner would require their own sets of crime-scene photos, but the ATF would have a set as well. And although Ali was fairly certain as to the cause of death, the Gila County ME would issue the final word on that—a gunshot wound or wounds, or maybe a broken neck.
“Motor Vehicles came up with the name Thomas McGregor. That’s the name listed on the registration for the Grand Torino he was driving. Records ran a check on him here and came up empty—not even so much as a speeding ticket. He evidently lived alone in a cabin outside Payson. The ATF is in the process of obtaining a search warrant and will be going to his place the moment they have the warrant in hand.”
“What’s his connection to all this?” Ali asked.
“No idea.”
Looking up, Ali saw Agent Robson appear at the top of the bank. He hesitated for only a minute before starting down. Halfway to the bottom, he fell and slid the rest of the way on his butt, to the detriment of what had once been a carefully pressed gray suit. He walked over to Ali, dusting himself off and shedding his Kevlar vest as he came. He looked thunderous.
“Gotta go,” Ali said to Dave.
To Ali’s amazement, Robson threw himself down in the sand beside her. “That bastard got the drop on you? Thank God you’re all right,” he said.
The way he said it, Ali knew he meant every word.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Your people got here just in time. Another few minutes, and things would have been pretty grim. I’m not sure what would have happened.”
“I am,” Robson declared. “He’d have had you in that patrol car and been screaming down the road. Krist managed to put a hole in the left rear tire of his Explorer as the guy drove off in it. He made it this far driving on the rim, but he knew he needed another vehicle in a hell of a hurry. That’s where you came in. You would have given him both another vehicle and a hostage.”
“Thank you,” Ali said, and she meant it, too.
Robson nodded. “We’ve got a name,” he continued. “McGregor. So far that’s all we’ve got. We’ll know more once we can execute a search warrant. We found a cell phone on the seat of his car. I’ve called in the number so someone can start checking his incoming and outgoing calls to see where they lead. He also had a whole arsenal of weapons on the floorboard of his vehicle. He came out shooting and wasn’t going to go down without a fight. We may not have a record of him, but all that means is that, whatever he’s been up to, he’s never been caught.”
Sister Anselm moaned and stirred. Ali went over to the two officers who had taken charge of her. One was holding the blanket to shade her while the other one held her hand. At Ali’s suggestion, the one officer let go of her hand long enough to offer the wounded nun another strip of water-soaked gauze.
“Did Sister Anselm say anything to you about McGregor’s connection to all this?” Robson asked.
“Not so far,” Ali said. It didn’t seem necessary to say that Sister Anselm was in no condition to say anything to anybody.
“An air ambulance is en route,” Robson continued. “When it gets here, why don’t you go back to the hospital with them if there’s room.”
“But . . .” Ali began.
Robson waved aside her objection. “I’m going to be here at the scene for quite some time. Once my guys get their warrant, I’ll fly up to Payson and be there when they execute it. If you stick with me, you’ll be in for twelve hours or so of crime-scene investigation before I’ll have a chance to take you back to the hospital.”
An hour earlier, Ali would have thought Robson was trying to ditch her. Maybe he still was, but it seemed like he was letting her opt in or out of the crime-scene situation at her discretion. She made her choice. If the ATF media people were still in charge, she had no reason to be there and would just be underfoot.
“Good,” she said. “If the ambulance folks will take me, I’ll stick with Sister Anselm.”
“They’ll take you all right,” Robson declared, standing up and once again attempting to dust off his now grimy suit. “Believe me, I can make that happen.”
In the absence of any local authorities, Agent Robson took charge. Both Sister Anselm and Deputy Krist were in bad shape, but Robson declared the nun’s condition to be more precarious than the wounded deputy’s. When the first air ambulance arrived a few minutes later, he called for that one to take Sister Anselm first.
As Ali had predicted, getting the injured woman onto a stretcher and lifted up out of the gully and into the helicopter was a difficult process. Fortunately, the trauma nurse from on board was able to start administering IV liquids as well as pain medication before they ever attempted to move her. Once they managed to get her onto a stretcher, they used a winch and a basket from the helicopter to lift her up out of the ravine. She rose into the air in a swirling storm cloud of sand. The stretcher was then transported back to the roadway, where the helicopter landed long enough for Sister Anselm to be moved from the basket and into the helicopter itself.
Following the complicated process from a distance, Ali wondered what Nadine Hazelett would have thought had she seen that. It would no doubt turn into something like “Angel of Death Ascends to Heaven.”
Agent Robson gave her a ride back down to the intersection, where a stretch of state highway had been transformed into an emergency landing pad with a full contingent of cop cars and cops on hand to direct traffic around the parked aircraft.
Ali retrieved her briefcase and purse from the borrowed patrol car and remembered to hand the keys over to Agent Robson for safekeeping. Once Sister Anselm’s stretcher was secure inside the aircraft, the nurse came looking for Ali.
“I understand you’re accompanying the patient?” she asked.
Ali nodded.
The nurse gave Ali a cursory examination. “Come along, then,” she said. “We need to go. From the looks of it, you’ve got some scrapes and bruises that could use some attention.”
“I’m okay,” Ali objected. “It’s nothing serious.”
“Doesn’t matter,” the nurse said. “We’ll deliver you to the ER, too. Believe me, the paperwork will be a whole lot easier on our end if we deliver two patients to the ER instead of only one.”
“Better insurance payout?” Ali asked.
The nurse nodded. “Yup,” she said.
“Should I feel guilty?”
“Let the docs x-ray you and plaster you with a few bandages. You’ll get a ride there, and it’ll be a whole lot easier on you than waiting for one of these guys to get around to giving you a ride.”
The helicopter took off the moment Ali was belted into her seat. For some reason, the ride back to Phoenix didn’t take nearly as long as the ride out, and not because they were traveling any faster, either. Coming, Ali had been desperately concerned about what was happening to Sister Anselm and petrified that they would arrive too late. Now, with Sister Anselm receiving much-needed medical attention, Ali was able to relax. She closed her eyes and was astonished to find that she dozed off and didn’t awaken until the drop in altitude indicated they were heading in for a landing on the hospital roof.
This time a crew of uniformed ER folks waited on the roof to take charge of the patients. Sister Anselm was wheeled off immediately. To Ali’s chagrin, she was ordered onto a gurney so she could be wheeled down the wide corridor, into the elevator, and down to the ER.
Naturally, that turned into a case of hurry up and wait. She lay in a curtained cubby for the better part of an hour and a half before a young ER doc finally got around to looking in on her.
“It looks like you’ve taken some hard falls,” he said. “We’d better do some X-rays for starters. And I’m going to order an IV. When you’re going to be out in the sun in this kind of heat, you need to be sure to stay hydrated.”
Yes, Ali thought. The next time I’m being held hostage by a crazed gunman, I’ll remind him that it’s his responsibility to provide the bottled water.
She did not expect the kids to be there. She did not want them—Serenity bawling as though her heart was broken even though it wasn’t and Win looking shocked. Devastated. He probably was. He had never been good at making his way in the world. He had always need Mimi to help sort things out for him, and he must be realizing that now he would be alone. On his own. In a way he had never been.
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.