The A List

by Jance, J. A.

  “Wait,” Ali said as the call ended. “Do you want me to go along to the hospital?”

  “No,” Crystal answered. “Since you’re an eyewitness, you need to go talk to the uniforms who are investigating the scene.”

  With that, Crystal galloped off in the direction of the funeral home’s parking lot, intent on retrieving her car.

  “Did you hear all that?” Ali asked. With no idea that she was speaking into her earbud, Rory and Evan both gave her puzzled looks, as though she’d suddenly lost her marbles.

  “I heard, all right,” Shay Green said in Ali’s ear.

  Ali turned away from the others before she spoke again. “Come get me,” she said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Van Nuys Central Trauma.”

  “But I thought she said you should go talk to the cops.”

  “Later,” Ali replied. “Right now I want to be at the hospital. Lieutenant Manning may have a badge, but what she really needs is us. We’re the only people who actually know what Gloria Reece looks like. Crystal has no idea.”

  “Shouldn’t we at least discuss this?” Shay asked. “I’m supposed to be protecting you. From that point of view, it seems like a bad idea for you to be heading smack into the middle of a potential firefight.”

  “If you won’t give me a ride, I’ll call a cab,” Ali told her. “If you won’t help, I’ll go it alone. I want to stop these people, and catching up with Gloria Reece is step number one.”

  “Got it,” Shay replied after a pause. “I’ll be right there.”

  By the time Ali crossed the parking lot, Shay’s Acura was idling next to the curb. Ali hopped in, pulled the door shut, and fastened her belt. “Do you know how to get to Van Nuys Central Trauma?” she asked as the car shot forward.

  “I do,” Shay replied, then added, “We’ll be using backstreets, but we’ll get there in a hurry. The person I heard you talking to earlier, the one who said she was going to the hospital—is she a police officer?”

  “Yes, she is,” Ali answered. “Crystal Manning is a lieutenant with LAPD homicide. She’s also one of the Gilchrist half siblings.”

  Shay remained quiet for a moment as the car shot across Ventura and continued northward, speeding through intersections with barely a pause to check for oncoming traffic. “All right, then,” she said finally, “what’s the plan?”

  Ali looked down at her bloodied clothing. “You ever spend much time in ER waiting rooms?”

  “Some,” Shay conceded.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to walk into that ER just as big as life. You’re going to claim to be my neighbor, and you’re going to tell the admitting people that my husband beat me up. Since I won’t be actively bleeding or puking, they’ll have us take a number and wait. We’ll sit off to the side and see if Gloria shows up. This was a hit, Shay. When the dust settled, Hannah was supposed to be dead, and the fact that she isn’t is probably setting off alarm bells up and down Gloria’s chain of command. If she comes to the hospital intent on finishing the job, the only way she’ll be able to get to Hannah is to get by us first.”

  “But what happens then?” Shay wanted to know. “Are you planning on making a citizen’s arrest, or do you expect to stage some kind of shoot-out in the middle of an ER waiting room?”

  “Nothing of the kind,” Ali said. “If Gloria shows up in the ER, we ID her first and then run up the flag to Crystal. I’m sure she can take it from there.”

  54

  Sedona, Arizona, June 2017

  Stu Ramey had spent most of the day glued to his wall monitors in the man cave, studying the financial information Frigg had amassed on Luis Ochoa’s numerous and relatively well-heeled family members. Most of them appeared to be living far above their means, which indicated they all had substantial amounts of undocumented monies flowing into their household accounts. Needing to give his head a rest, Stu had gone into the kitchen to collect another bowl of surprisingly delicious beef stew when Frigg sent him a howler that brought him back to the man cave on the run.

  “What’s going on now?” he demanded.

  “There’s something you should see.”

  Two neighboring wall monitors lit up, both showing CCTV of two separate street scenes. “Where is this?” he wanted to know.

  “The coffee shop is located across the street from the Longmont Funeral Home in Sherman Oaks, California. The other one shows side-by-side views of the funeral home’s parking lot, one from the entrance looking out across the parking lot and another view from the parking lot toward the entrance.”

  “You hacked into their surveillance systems?” Stuart asked. “Who told you to do that?”

  “It’s part of my standard security protocol,” Frigg replied. “If I know that one of my subjects will be in a certain location, I try to establish surveillance coverage if at all possible. I did the same thing at Ms. Reynolds’s hotel last night—just the public areas and the hallways, not her room.”

  “Of course not,” Stu replied sarcastically. “You’d never do anything that underhanded.”

  “Unfortunately, I had some challenges in establishing the connection here,” Frigg continued. “I didn’t manage to get either feed going until after the funeral was already in progress. I should be able to go back and capture earlier portions, but I thought you’d want to see this first.”

  Stu stared at the screen. A black limo was waiting underneath the shade of an awning. A woman walking with the aid of a cane emerged from the building. The limo driver leaped out and came around to the far side of the car to help her inside.

  “According to my facial-recognition software, the woman in the limo is Hannah Gilchrist.”

  Stu felt his heart drop to his toes. “What the hell is she doing there?”

  The limo moved out from under the portico and then stopped at a curb-cut driveway, signaling for a left-hand turn. Two more people emerged from inside the building and stood staring after the limo. “The individual on the right is Ms. Reynolds,” Frigg reported.

  And then, with no advance warning, as the limo moved into traffic a speeding vehicle appeared out of nowhere, smashing into the limo’s rear passenger panel from behind and sending both vehicles spinning across two lanes of oncoming traffic. Moving as one, the two vehicles hurtled up and over a sidewalk before the wreckage disappeared from view. Ali and her companion were still stationary outside the funeral home when another vehicle pulled up beside them. A moment later that vehicle, too, shot off into the street, turning right rather than left. At the same time, Ali and the other woman sprang into action, sprinting off across the street before they, too, vanished from the camera’s stationary view.

  “What the hell just happened?” Stu demanded.

  “It was a car wreck,” Frigg explained unnecessarily.

  The next person to appear in the frame was a man wearing a motorcycle helmet. He stepped onto the sidewalk and then looked off to his right—as though he were expecting someone or something. Moments later a motorbike pulled up beside him. Without exchanging a word, the guy with the helmet stepped off the sidewalk, hopped onto the back of the motorbike, and then it shot out of range. Because there was no sound, this all happened in a silent pantomime.

  “Where’s Ali?” Stuart demanded. “Did something happen to her, too?”

  He immediately started dialing her number, but there was no answer, not for the better part of five agonizing minutes. And when she finally did answer, she actually laughed at him. Offended, Stuart Ramey did something he’d never done before in his whole life. He hung up on her—hung up on his boss. Then he sat there staring at the screen in real time while people poured out of the funeral home. Some of them got into their cars and drove away. Others dashed across the street, hurrying in the same direction the damaged vehicles had traveled after the crash. Stu was still watching when Ali suddenly reappeared in view and stepped into what seemed to be a passing vehicle, which immediately drove out of frame.

 
; “What just happened?” he asked.

  “A number of things,” Frigg told him, “but you may want to take a closer look at the coffee-shop footage.”

  Preoccupied with the action surrounding the car wreck, Stuart had barely glanced at the other monitor. When he turned his attention in that direction, he saw a sidewalk-café arrangement with a five or six outdoor tables set along the front of a building. The tables were all occupied, mostly with two or more people.

  “Okay,” he said. “I see outdoor tables. I see people sitting there. Why is this important?”

  Frigg enlarged the image, bringing one woman’s face into a close-up view. “According to my facial-recognition software, this woman, the one sitting alone at the far end table, is Gloria Reece. If I synchronize all three sets of film, you’ll see that moments before the crash happens, she is speaking animatedly on her cell phone. The other people all turn in the direction of the crash. Not Gloria. Instead, she gets up, walks away, and disappears.”

  “No way to tell which way she went?”

  “Not so far.”

  Stuart was sitting there trying to figure out what the hell he should do next when a text message from Ali came in on his cell phone. He read the message aloud:

  “ ‘Hannah badly injured in a car wreck. She’s on her way to the ER at Van Nuys Central Trauma via ambulance. I’m going there, too. I hope you’ll keep your eyes on the prize.’

  “Eyes on the prize,” Stuart repeated. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Ms. Reynolds has just identified her next destination,” Frigg informed him. “I’ll see what I can do to penetrate the hospital’s video-surveillance system.”

  55

  Van Nuys, California, June 2017

  It took close to fifteen minutes to get from the parking lot to the hospital in Van Nuys. Since Shay knew the way, Ali was free to work her phone. After sending that one text to Stuart and hoping he got the underlying message, her next call was to Evan.

  “Where the hell did you go?” he asked. “One minute you and Crystal were here, and the next you were both gone.”

  “Crystal was called away,” Ali told him. “I was on my way to talk to the cops on the scene when something came up. Now I need your help.”

  “What?”

  “Crystal Manning’s cell-phone number. If you could text it to me, I’ll have it handy in case I need it.”

  “I’ll send it,” Evan agreed, “but is there anything else I can do? Would you like me to call her and give her a message?”

  A call to Crystal was the last thing Ali wanted. If she was going to be on hand to identify their suspect at the hospital, Ali couldn’t afford to have a lieutenant from the LAPD telling her to sit down and shut up.

  “No message,” Ali said aloud. “This way I’ll be able to contact her myself as needed.”

  56

  Van Nuys, California, June 2017

  It was disconcerting for Hannah to be wheeled into the emergency room lying flat on her back, faceup, and staring at the ceiling and the glowing light fixtures overhead. The first EMT had dosed the cut on her scalp with some kind of powder—a clotting agent, he told her. She couldn’t see it, of course, but there seemed to be less blood dribbling into her ear and running down the back of her neck.

  The pain from the cut was negligible compared to her hip. That was so intense that she wanted to scream in agony, but she’d been taught from an early age that Anderson women didn’t scream. Her father had drilled that lesson into her head from the time she was little and came into the house sobbing because of a badly scraped knee.

  “You need to be strong,” he’d told her. “Don’t go around screaming and crying and begging for sympathy. You’re better than that.”

  But not right then in Van Nuys Central Trauma, because when the nurses and attendants picked Hannah up and transferred her from the gurney onto a bed, she screamed like crazy. She couldn’t help it. A doctor showed up seconds later. The badge on his chest identified him as Dr. Pennington.

  “Where does it hurt?” he asked once she quieted back down.

  “It’s my hip,” Hannah gasped when she could speak again, “my left hip.”

  A woman’s face—her mother’s face, Isobel’s face—appeared in Hannah’s line of vision, standing behind the doctor. For a moment Hannah thought that she was hallucinating, or maybe she was already dead. Isobel couldn’t be here. That wasn’t possible. When the doctor turned to speak to the new arrival, Hannah caught sight of the uniform. That’s when she remembered where she had seen the woman before—earlier, at the funeral.

  “Unless you’re a relative, you’ll have to leave,” Dr. Pennington was saying to the cop. “This patient isn’t allowed to have any visitors.”

  “I’m not a relative. My name’s Lieutenant Crystal Manning,” the woman said, flashing a badge. “I’m with LAPD. Your patient is the victim of an attempted homicide, and she needs to be moved to a secure location.”

  “ER is a secure location,” Dr. Pennington replied.

  “Really?” Lieutenant Manning countered. “I got in, didn’t I? I walked right in through those swinging doors without anyone making the slightest effort to stop me.”

  “Your uniform may have helped you get inside, but it doesn’t give you a right to make demands,” Dr. Pennington told her. “This woman is my patient, and she has HIPAA protections that guarantee her privacy, even from people in law enforcement. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “Hannah Gilchrist needs protection far more than she needs privacy,” Lieutenant Manning insisted. “That’s why I’m here.”

  Frowning, Dr. Pennington glanced down at the chart he was holding. “Look,” he said, “we’ve admitted her as Jane Doe. What more do you want?”

  “I want her safe.”

  Hannah listened to the exchange. She was a little foggy. In addition to the clotting powder, the EMT had given her something that was finally starting to dull the pain. But even with her faculties somewhat clouded, she knew that the cop was right. Gloria had tried to kill her. So far she hadn’t succeeded, but she would try again. She was bound to try again.

  “It’s all right,” Hannah murmured aloud to the doctor. “Let her stay.”

  “Very well,” the physician conceded, but Hannah could see he wasn’t at all happy about it. He lifted the sheet long enough to glance at Hannah’s injured hip and shook his head at what he saw there.

  “Somebody needs to find out if we have an orthopedic surgeon on call. We won’t know for sure until after the X-rays, but I’m pretty sure she’s going to need a new hip ASAP.” He checked her pupils, looking for signs of a concussion and was surprised to find none.

  “Once we get that head wound stitched back together, we’ll get you to X-ray,” Dr. Pennington told her. “You’ll also need an MRI, but from what I’m seeing here, you are one hardheaded lady.”

  “That’s what my mother always said.”

  Hannah glanced around the room, searching the faces of the scrum of nurses until she could focus on the detective. “You’re one of Edward’s children, aren’t you,” Hannah said. It was a statement not a question.

  “How did you know that?” Lieutenant Manning asked. “Because I was at the funeral?”

  “No,” Hannah murmured, “because you have my mother’s face. I’d recognize you anywhere.”

  “Wait,” Dr. Pennington said, sending a puzzled look back and forth between the two women. “Didn’t you just tell me that you weren’t related?” he said finally, addressing the detective.

  “It seems I was wrong about that,” she replied.

  “All right, then,” the doctor ordered. “Let’s get those stitches in place. Fortunately, we won’t need to shave her head.”

  57

  Sedona, Arizona, June 2017

  Stu paced the floor while Frigg worked at accessing the surveillance system for Van Nuys Central Trauma. He wanted the hacking attempt to work while at the same time being afraid it would wor
k. He hadn’t mentioned that to anyone else—not even B.—because he didn’t want anyone else to know what Frigg and Fido were up to.

  And if Ali was right and Gloria Reece was there at the hospital, what was Stu supposed to do in that case? He sure as hell couldn’t send her a text. Unable to decide, he kept right on pacing.

  When Frigg said, “I’m in,” Stu raced for the bank of wall monitors with his heart in his throat.

  “Show me,” he said.

  “On the far left is an interior shot of the ER waiting room. Facial recognition identifies the woman at the counter as being Ms. Reece. The shot on the right is the portico outside the entrance to the ER. I believe that is Ms. Reynolds exiting a vehicle.”

  “Happening right now?” Stu asked, reaching for his phone.

  “Live streaming,” Frigg replied.

  Stu watched as Ali paused outside the vehicle long enough to exchange a few words with the driver. By the time she closed the door, her phone must have been ringing. She reached for that before starting toward the hospital entrance.

  “Hello.”

  “Stop right there,” Stuart ordered as the automatic door slid open in front of her. “Do not go inside.”

  Ali complied, halting in her tracks. “Why?” she asked. “Is Gloria here? Is she already inside?”

  “She’s at the counter talking to a clerk. Where’s your bodyguard?”

  “She went to park the car.”

  “Damn!” Stu muttered. “Whatever you do, don’t go in there on your own. If anything happens to you, B. will kill me.”

  “I’m hanging up now, Stu,” Ali told him, cutting him off. “There’s someone I need to call.”

  58

  Van Nuys, California, June 2017

  Ali quickly located Crystal’s phone number in Evan’s text and dialed it. “It’s Ali,” she said. “Gloria Reece is here at the hospital. It looks like she’s arguing with the ER admitting clerk.”