Cruel Intent

by J. A. Jance

  “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. “What 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 Winte
r 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.

  “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 t
hrown 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?”