J. Jance - Hand of Evil

A rolling stone gathering no moss, Ali concluded. And with an endless supply of adolescent girls. What more could a pedophile want?

Edie Larson emerged from the elevator and went straight over to Sandy. She placed one hand on her shoulder. After a whispered conversation, Sandy stowed her Bible, stood, and accompanied Edie back to the elevator. Ali rose and made as if to follow them. From the back of the elevator, Edie discouraged her doing so with a single shake of her head. Feeling a little rejected and still angry with Crystal, Ali returned to her computer screen.

She had scanned the first list and was halfway through the second when she found the Web site, AskCoachCurt.com. Coach Curtis Uttley answers your team sports questions. Ali immediately logged on to the site and scrolled through a series of essays. How to Be a Team Player; Get Off the Bench and Get on the Field; Winning Isn’t Everything; It’s Never Too Early to Look for a Scholarship. There at the bottom of the page was one final note. For individual questions or coaching advice, feel free to write to CoachCurt@askcoachcurt.com.

So this is how he meets girls, Ali thought. Then he reels themin with text messages that never show up on computer screens that parents might actually see.

Going back to the original list, Ali made a note of each town mentioned in the coaching articles. It would probably be worthwhile to contact school and recreation folks in each of those areas to see why a teacher who was also a winning coach had suddenly moved on. Ali had a feeling that Crystal Holman wasn’t Coach Uttley’s first teenage conquest and that, rather than confronting him, the authorities in the other towns had simply passed him along and turned him into someone else’s problem.

And now he’s mine, Ali thought.

She wrote and posted the next blog entry while sitting in the hospital lobby.

CUTLOOSEBLOG.COM

Thursday, January 12, 2006

It’s been a long day. I’m in a hospital lobby, waiting for a friend whose loved one is hovering between life and death. Sitting here is giving me some time to reflect on some of the things I’ve learned today, and they aren’t pretty.

What I want to do is speak to every parent with an adolescent or pre-adolescent child and say to those parents: WAKE UP!!! If your child has a computer, check it out. Find out what chat rooms he or she visits, and find out what’s going on there. Find out who’s on your child’s buddy list. Who sends e-mails to your child’s address and what do those e-mails say? And what does your child say back? Does this sound like an invasion of your precious offspring’s privacy? You bet it is. It’s also called parenting.

The same rules apply to your child’s cell phone. What comes and goes on your son or daughter’s text messages is private. It’s also possibly deadly. Today I’ve caught glimpses of some of the people out there, evil people-who are trolling the cyber-ether for innocent children to victimize-your children. And yes, you should be very afraid for your children.

And if looking over your son or daughter’s shoulder when they’re online annoys them? Fine. You can tell them from me that being a parent is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.

Babe,

posted 6:07

P.M

. January 12, 2006

Dave Holman arrived at the hospital a few minutes later. “Where’s Crystal?” he wanted to know.

“In a conference room talking to Detective Farris,” Ali told him.

“Lee is interviewing her? How come? She’s involved in this?”

Wrestling with how much to tell and when to tell it, Ali nodded. “Before I picked her up the other night in Mund’s Park, she may have seen something.”

“What?”

“She was in the car with Curt Uttley,” Ali said. “They were there at the time of the attack.”

“What were they doing there?” Dave asked. “Car trouble? How is Kip, by the way?” he continued without waiting for Ali to answer. “And where’s Sandy?”

Ali knew it was only a matter of time before she’d have to tell Dave the whole story, but right that moment she was grateful for any delay that spared her from doing so.

“Kip’s out of surgery and back in the ICU,” Ali said. “That’s where Sandy is, too, along with my folks. They’re all up in ICU.”

“I need to let Sandy know that we’ve finally got a lead on Kip’s family. He has a daughter named Jane Eyre Hogan. Her married name is Braeton. She was born April 1, 1974. Her mother’s name was Amy Sue Laughton Hogan. Jane was raised by her grandmother, Elizabeth Hogan, a retired Kingman High School English teacher.”

“Raised by her and most likely named by her, too, I’ll bet,” Ali offered. “Anyone who would stick a poor little boy with a name like Rudyard Kipling wouldn’t hesitate at naming a baby girl Jane Eyre. Elizabeth Hogan must be quite unusual, though. Mostly it’s maternal grandmothers who pick up the child-raising responsibilities when the parents take a hike.”

“But I ran into a brick wall trying to find her,” Dave continued. “Elizabeth Hogan left Kingman long enough ago that there’s no longer a valid forwarding address. She may actually be dead by now, although there’s no sign of a death certificate anywhere I could find. The records clerk over in Coconino County had better luck with the daughter-Jane Hogan Braeton. I have an address for her here in Phoenix-down in Chandler, actually. The clerk tried to call the information in to Detective Farris, but his phone is turned off, probably because he’s doing the interview. I told her I’d pass it along as soon as I saw him.”

Dave looked expectantly toward the conference room door. Ali’s first instinct had always been to leave the tale telling to Crystal, but she seemed incapable of telling the truth to anyone about anything. Now, with a few minutes of relative privacy, Ali knew it was time to come clean.

She took his hand and led him toward the room’s most distant seating. “Listen, Dave,” she said, changing the subject. “We need to talk about your daughter, and you’re not going to like what I have to say.”

“What has she done now?” Dave asked.

“It turns out she’s been doing lots of things.”

By the time Ali finished giving him her account of what had been going on, Dave was crushed-crushed, livid, and irate all at the same time.

“You mean to tell me she’s been screwing around like this right under Roxie’s nose?” he demanded. “How’s that possible? And she calls herself a blow-job virgin? I can’t believe it. She’s only thirteen, for God’s sake!”

“I know,” Ali agreed.

“And where do I find this worthless son of a bitch Curt Uttley so I can put him out of his misery?” Dave demanded. “He’s probably hiding out in Tempe somewhere near the same place where you lost whoever was driving that Explorer. Take me there. I’ll find him if I have to take the neighborhood apart brick by brick. What’s the address?”

“I never saw exactly where he went, so I can’t give you an address,” Ali said. “The Explorer turned onto a residential street and disappeared-probably into an attached garage. Once the door was shut, there was no way to tell which one it was.”

“I’ll figure it out,” Dave said determinedly.

Just then Lee Farris left the conference room and came over to where Ali and Dave were sitting. “Did you tell him?” Lee asked. “About what she was doing in Mund’s Park?”

Ali nodded.

“Sorry about that, Dave,” Farris said. “She claims she met the guy over the Internet.”

“At askcoachcurt.com?” Ali asked.

Frowning, Farris gave Ali an appraising look. “How did you know that?” he asked.