by Jance, J. A.
Once again Hannah scoured local news sources, looking to see if there had been any problems with the operation. The first notice she found was a tiny piece in the Oregonian:
MILL CITY WOMAN DIES IN ICY CRASH
Longtime Mill City resident Kaitlyn Martin Holmes, age 34, perished in a one-car rollover accident on McCully Mountain Road outside Lyons on Friday night. The accident occurred during a fierce storm that left both ice and snow on the roadway, making for extremely hazardous driving.
The vehicle, which may have been going too fast for conditions, plunged off the highway and crashed into a tree, killing the sole occupant instantly.
Ms. Holmes is survived by her husband, Jack Holmes, of Mill City, and her father, Rex Martin, of Lyons. She was preceded in death by her late mother, Leona Martin.
Services are pending.
The other accounts Hannah found didn’t vary much from the first one. No suspects were mentioned, nor were any persons of interest. She went to see Eddie two days later and was disappointed to see that the tattooed K on his arm had already been obliterated by an X.
“Who told you?” she signed.
“Luis,” he answered. “Gloria gave him the news.”
Hannah found herself surprisingly let down that she hadn’t been the first to tell him. It was as though the others were quietly edging her out of the game. Later on, though, sitting in her living room and seeing Leo Aurelio’s urn, she knew what was needed to make her feel better—another trophy.
The next time Gloria stopped by to do a manicure, Hannah didn’t hassle her about spilling the beans to Eddie. Instead she had cash on hand and a request of her own.
“What’s that for?” Gloria asked when Hannah placed a stack containing several hundred-dollar bills on the table and pushed it in her direction. “We’ve already been paid in full. So what’s this?”
“I’d like to obtain a copy of Kaitlyn Holmes’s death certificate,” Hannah told her.
“What’s the matter?” Gloria demanded. “Are you saying our guy is a liar—that he says he took care of her and you don’t believe he did?”
“No, no,” Hannah said soothingly. “It’s not that not at all. I saw an article about the incident online, and I know everything is in order. I just need a copy of Kaitlyn’s death certificate.”
“Why?”
“For my personal records.”
“All right,” Gloria agreed at last, silently counting the bills before slipping them into her pocket.
“Is that enough to cover it?”
“It’s fine,” Gloria said. “I’ll get back to you with it as soon as possible.”
Gloria dropped off the document two weeks later when she came by for the next manicure appointment. After she left, Hannah took some time to examine it. Kaitlyn’s death certificate was almost like a report card—an official acknowledgment of a job well done. When it came time to put it away, she folded it carefully. Then she pried the lid off the urn containing Leo Aurelio’s remains and placed the death certificate inside that.
Hannah Gilchrist had claimed her second trophy. She’d taken two names down from Eddie’s A List. Two down. Two to go. Next up was Alexandra Munsey.
29
Sedona, Arizona, May 2017
When Alex Munsey’s second novel, The Changeling, showed up on Ali Reynolds’s “recommended for you” list on Amazon, she picked up her phone and dialed. In the years since the Gilchrist murder conviction, she and Alex had rekindled their friendship, staying in touch through phone calls and e-mails. Alex had been on the sidelines during Ali’s romance, courtship, and marriage with B., while Ali had cheered Alex on through the tough times as she ventured into writing fiction rather than nonfiction.
“Hey,” Ali said when Alex answered. “I see your new novel is about to hit the shelves.”
Alex laughed. “Yes, it is, and that means I’m about to hit the road. Publicity has booked a killer schedule that’s going to have me on tour for almost a month. And the book editor for the L.A. Times is due here at the house any minute to do a profile interview.”
“I know all of that sounds great and fun to someone on the outside,” Ali said, “but on the inside I’m guessing it probably isn’t.”
“You’re so right about that,” Alex agreed with a laugh. “Having to be charming 24/7 isn’t nearly what it’s cracked up to be. I used to do it all the time when I was on the road with Progeny, but now I’m out of practice.”
“Being a hermit will do that to you. Are you coming to Phoenix?”
“They gave me a choice between Phoenix and Salt Lake City. With the kids there, I chose the latter. Hope you understand.”
“Of course I understand,” Ali replied. “Visiting with grandkids trumps visiting with grown-up friends six ways to Sunday. How old is Rory these days?”
“Five going on six,” Alex replied. “Evan just signed him up for T-ball. According to him, he’s going to be either a baseball player or a fireman when he grows up.”
It was interesting that although there was more than a decade and a half between Ali and Alex, their kids and grandkids were almost the same age. And she clearly remembered when her son, Christopher, had said the same thing about wanting to be either a baseball player or a fireman. Now he was a high school teacher who sculpted life-size metal animals on the side.
“If you’re not coming to Phoenix,” Ali said, going back to the topic of the upcoming book, “where will I be able to get a signed copy?”
“One of the first events is at Vroman’s in Pasadena. If you order it to be shipped from them, I could sign yours when I stop by before the official signing.”
“Good enough,” Ali said. “Will do.”
“So how’s it going with you? Did that weird guy who works for you have any luck in rehabilitating that stray AI he took in?”
The “guy” in question was Stuart Ramey, and the stray AI’s name was Frigg. Stu had always been B.’s second-in-command at High Noon Enterprises. Months earlier he had been instrumental in helping the authorities bring down a serial killer named Owen Hansen. Hansen might have been a mediocre serial killer, but as far as computer science was concerned, he was brilliant, and in terms of AI engineering, he was head and shoulders above everybody else. He had created an artificial intelligence which he named Frigg to be his partner in crime.
Unfortunately for Hansen, in the process of turning Frigg into a successful accomplice, the deep-learning techniques he’d employed had inadvertently also taught Frigg the fundamentals of self-preservation. When the authorities, with Stu’s help, were closing in on Hansen, he began ignoring Frigg’s threat assessments and strategic suggestions. Understanding that Hansen’s endgame would be hers as well, Frigg had gone looking for a new human partner. Operating on the assumption that if Stuart was smart enough to take down Owen, Frigg determined that he might also be smart enough to function as Owen’s successor.
Stuart had been both enthralled and appalled by the man’s AI creation. Frigg’s voice-recognition skills alone were nothing short of astonishing. Having been created for the sole purpose of being a crook’s accomplice, the AI had no algorithms that would help her differentiate between good and bad, right and wrong. What worked was right no matter how wrong it might be. Yes, she was extremely adept at assembling and assessing information, but most of the tools she used, including her superb hacking skills, were also unlawful. In the process of bringing down Hansen, Stuart had inevitably become aware of Frigg’s illegal proclivities and had immediately taken steps to permanently disable her.
That hadn’t worked. Not only had the AI outmaneuvered Owen Hansen, she had rightly concluded that Stuart would try to undermine her. Before Stu could scrub her files, Frigg had installed some financially astute countermeasures that had effectively coerced Stuart Ramey into rebooting her several months down the line. Once she and her eight-hundred-blade mainframe were again operational—this time under Stu’s supervision—he began the challenging process of attempting to turn a crook
ed AI into a law-abiding one.
“From what Stu tells me,” Ali said with a laugh, “it’s a lot like housebreaking a puppy. You teach it not to pee in one place and it immediately turns around and pulls the same stunt somewhere else. There are evidently enough redundancies in the AI’s system so that removing all those programs is far more complicated than he expected it to be.”
The sound of a ringing doorbell on Alex’s end of the phone call brought the conversation to an end. “That’s probably my interview,” she said. “Gotta go. Talk to you later.”
30
Folsom, California, April 2017
Once it came time for Hannah to target Alex Munsey, her social-media presence might have been all over the Internet, but her physical location was much more difficult to pin down. The author bio posted on her Facebook page, her Web site, and book covers usually referred to her as a “California-based author living near Los Angeles.” Unfortunately for Hannah, the words “near Los Angeles” included a whole lot of territory.
Hannah’s maiden name had been Hannah Marie Anderson. After a lifetime of ignoring her middle name, she used it to create an online handle—HMAnderson. That was the name she used to sign up as a follower for both Alex Munsey’s Facebook page and her Twitter feed, always posing as a devoted fan.
Alexandra Munsey, going by the gender-fluid pen name of Alex Munsey, was now a bestselling author, turning her modest success with A Mother’s Tale into national acclaim as a novelist. Hannah had ordered and read her first book, The Silver Lining, when it was released, without bothering to send a copy along to Eddie. Why rub his nose in the fact that while he rotted in prison, Alexandra Munsey was free to go on with her life—a shiny, new, successful one—that had grown out of having destroyed his? Nope, he was better off not seeing it.
Based on Hannah’s previous purchases, when the next book was about to be released, Amazon sent out a reminder to see if she was interested in buying the new one as well, a book called The Changeling. A cover blurb announced Alex Munsey to be the “new Maeve Binchy.” Hannah read the book and didn’t care for it much. It was long on relationships, with all the loose ends neatly tied up by the end of the story. These days her reading tastes tended to land on the darker side of the literary spectrum, focusing on true crime, preferring the rare ones where the bad guys got away with murder.
The release of Alexandra’s book resulted in a flurry of author interviews, and links to those articles were often posted online. That was how, a week after The Changeling was published, Hannah clicked on a link leading to the author profile in the L.A. Times:
Three years ago, when Alex Munsey’s first novel, The Silver Lining, unexpectedly landed on the NY Times Best Seller list, no one was more surprised than the author herself, who happened to be sixty-eight at the time it was published. Now she’s seventy-one, and with her second novel, The Changeling, due to hit the shelves next week, everyone is wondering if literary lightning can strike twice in the same place. If that happens, Alex Munsey may be surprised again, but her myriad fans won’t be—not in the least.
In order to speak to her, I drove to an isolated cabin on a rural road, high in the San Bernardino Mountains near Lake Arrowhead, where she lives alone as a self-described hermit and plies her newfound trade on an ever-present laptop.
One might assume that a bestselling author would be ensconced in more palatial digs, but Alex Munsey’s rustic three-room cabin—combination kitchen and living room, bedroom, and bath—is anything but palatial. Her cozy book-lined living room has only two chairs—a rocker and a leather easy chair—and looks more like a study than anything else. On a chill mid-March morning, a woodstove in the corner kept us warm and toasty.
“How did you come to be a writer?” I ask as we settle down to talk, with her in the rocker and me in the easy chair. “Was it your life’s ambition?”
Alex Munsey is a plainspoken woman with a ready smile and a lighthearted laugh. Considering the challenges she’s endured, both the smile and the laughter are surprising.
“I’m a walking, talking example of how good can come from bad,” she tells me. “I’m a writer now, but I never expected that to happen. When I was growing up, the only thing I ever wanted to be was a mother. That almost didn’t happen, and that’s why I’m here.”
It’s no accident that her customary writing chair is the one she’s sitting in right now. “Originally this chair belonged to my grandmother,” she explains. “It was in my son’s nursery on the day I brought him home from the hospital. When my marriage ended years later and I moved out of the house to come here, this was the only piece of furniture I brought along with me.”
Alex Munsey’s story is a complicated one, filled with unexpected triumphs and heartbreaks. After years of being unable to conceive a child on their own, Alex and her former husband sought help from Dr. Edward Gilchrist, a physician who at the time was operating a well-respected fertility clinic in Santa Clarita. They selected what they thought to be their preferred sperm donor from a catalog of donor profiles, and their son, Evan, was born as a result of artificial insemination.
Years later, when Evan was diagnosed with kidney disease and needed a transplant, Alex went searching for a possible organ donor. A request for assistance from Dr. Gilchrist’s office for more health information and medical history on the sperm donor was rebuffed, but Alex didn’t give up. She continued her ultimately successful search, but doing so led to the unwelcome discovery that Dr. Gilchrist had fathered any number of children—Evan included—by using his own sperm in his procedures rather than that of his alleged donors—the ones whose profiles he had shown to prospective parents.
After relating that part of the story, Alex gestures toward a photo, one hanging in a place of honor over the rough-hewn log mantelpiece. In a room where the walls are covered with framed photographs, this is by far the largest. It shows two young men standing side by side and leaning against the hood of a pickup truck. The young men could be twins. They look so much alike as to be indistinguishable.
“Evan is on the right, Rory Davis is on the left,” Alex explains. “Rory was the first of Evan’s many half siblings to surface. He also donated the kidney that saved Evan’s life. This photo was taken about six months after the transplant. By the way, that’s why my five-year-old grandson is named Rory Davis Munsey.
“If I were to show you a photo of Edward Gilchrist, you’d see there’s a distinct family resemblance. But all those years ago, finding first Rory and then a third half sibling after that told us there was a problem involving the operation of the fertility clinic, and that’s when we started looking for additional half siblings.”
“Which you found?”
“Yes, we did.”
“How many?”
“So far we have more than twenty-eight individuals whose DNA links them directly either to Dr. Gilchrist or to his co-conspirator, nursing assistant, and wife—Dawn Gilchrist. As more and more half siblings surfaced, I was shocked to discover how many families had been bamboozled by Dr. Gilchrist. Eventually we attempted to file suit against him. Worried that his ex-wife might come forward to testify against him, he murdered her. Eventually our lawsuit was dismissed, but Edward Gilchrist is now in prison serving life without parole for the murder of Dawn Gilchrist. So although we lost one battle, we won the war.”
“And that’s where the silver lining thing comes from?” I ask.
“Exactly,” Alex answers with a smile. “And it’s also how I became a writer. My first book, A Mother’s Tale, was a nonfiction treatment of the Dr. Gilchrist scandal and all it entailed. In the process of writing it, however, I discovered that writing is something I love to do, and it turns out I’m good at it.
“My agent suggested that I try turning that true story into a novel. That’s how my next book, Silver Lining, came about. As they say in literary circles, it was ‘informed’ by my own experience, but it’s fiction—similar to the real story though not the same. Writing that gave me an opportunity to
use my literary license, or at least my literary learner’s permit.”
“And what about The Changeling?”
“The Changeling is a novel that reflects the lessons I’ve learned through living life.”
“Like what?”
“You have a baby and think your life is going to be perfect, but it turns out being a parent is a crapshoot. That baby you love so much might grow up to be a concert pianist or he could turn into a serial killer—you never can tell. And life’s the same way—also a crapshoot. You choose someone you think is the perfect partner and swear to stay together ‘until death do us part,’ but then one day—surprise, surprise—your husband shows up and tells you that it’s all over.”
“Is that what happened to you?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says. “When Jake and I were married, we used to come to this cabin on weekends and for vacations. Back then it was a happy place. When the divorce came along, I ended up with the cabin as part of the property settlement. When I first came to live here, I felt as if having to live here was a kind of exile—a punishment for having been forced to choose between the health of my child and the health of my marriage.
“What I didn’t see coming was that eventually this cabin would become my refuge and a place to find my own voice. It was while living here that I launched my journey of becoming a writer. And this summer I expect that Evan will come here to visit with his wife and son. This place may be my refuge, but I’m hoping it will become my grandson’s happy place.”
No, it won’t, Hannah Gilchrist vowed silently to herself, not if I have anything to say about it.
That very day she launched a search of San Bernardino County property records, hoping to pinpoint the exact location of Alexandra Munsey’s supposed “refuge.” When she finally found what she was looking for, an address on Kuffel Canyon Road, Hannah felt as though she’d just won the jackpot. The next time Gloria showed up to do her nails, Hannah would be ready to place her next order.