J. Jance - Hand of Evil

“Lucky guess,” she said.

Farris turned back to Dave. “According to what Crystal told me just now, while she and Uttley were parked there, they witnessed part of the attack on Kip Hogan. Uttley drove across the freeway to report the incident. Crystal thinks Mr. Hogan’s assailants came there looking for Uttley and Crystal both. When Crystal came out of the restroom, she broke into a house, looking for a place to hide. She was afraid the assailants might come after her, too. And it turns out one of them did-earlier today. She saw him.”

“Today?” Ali asked.

“Crystal said she heard from Uttley late this morning-at least she thought it was him. He offered to give her a ride back to Sedona. She went to a park down the street to meet him, but he didn’t show. Crystal was being cautious and was keeping out of sight because she was afraid you might come there looking for her as well. The Explorer parked, but the guy who got out of it wasn’t Uttley. The driver turned out to be one of Mr. Hogan’s attackers.”

“She recognized the guy?”

Farris nodded. “And it scared her to death.” He held out one of Madeline Haven’s composite sketches. “This one,” he added. “She says this is the guy.”

Ali recognized the sketch, too. It was the same one Crystal had dropped earlier. Looking at it and seeing the man’s dead-eyed stare, a cold chill ran down Ali’s spine. If this was the man who had come looking for Crystal, he was most likely also the man Ali had followed. For miles. Only being caught at that stop-light had kept her from catching him-or him from catching her. When Ali glanced in Dave’s direction, he was staring at her.

“If Crystal hadn’t been hiding from you at the park, the guy probably would have caught up with her. And if you hadn’t confiscated her phone, he definitely would have caught her the second time. Thank you, Ali,” he said, crushing her in a bear hug. “Thank you so much.”

“Taking the phone was pure luck,” Ali said with a laugh. “I wanted to get her attention. Since spanking her wasn’t an option, I did the next best thing-I took away her lifeline.”

“Thank you,” he said again.

“I saw you come in, Dave,” Lee Farris said. “I told Crystal you were here, but she wouldn’t come out to talk to you. You should probably go talk to her.”

“What the hell am I going to say?” Dave asked despairingly as he stood up. “Any suggestions about what a father should say to a sexually active thirteen-year-old?”

“That’s easy,” Lee said with a sympathetic chuckle. “You could always threaten to lock her up for the next four years. That’s what I told my daughter when she went off the rails in middle school. It’s not fatal. And eventually Gina figured out I was right.”

Dave started toward the conference room moving like a death-row inmate taking his last walk.

“Crystal sees herself as a drama queen,” Ali called after him. “Don’t fall for it. You don’t have to be mad, but you do need to give her a dose of reality. Tell her the first order of business will be taking her to a doctor to be checked for STDs. Maybe that will get her attention. She’s operating under the idiotic notion that oral sex isn’t really sex. Somebody has to get the truth through to her.”

Dave stopped and looked back at Ali, his haggard face full of regret. “You always wonder how you’ll do the birds-and-bees talk with your kids,” he said. “I never imagined it would turn out like this.”

Crystal’s a long way beyond birds and bees talking, Ali thought. She’s into birds and bees doing.

“I know you didn’t,” Ali told him kindly. “All you can do now is play the hand you’ve been dealt and hope for the best.”

Nodding, Dave started away and then stopped once more. “I almost forgot, Lee. You need to turn your phone on and check with your records clerk. They believe they’ve got a line on Kip’s family.”

While Dave headed into the conference room to talk with his daughter, Farris plucked his phone out of his pocket and dialed. “But first we need to get a line on whoever’s driving Curtis Uttley’s Explorer. So tell me again, Ms. Reynolds. Where were you exactly when you lost him?”

Ali started to tell him, but by then someone had answered his call. “Okay,” Farris said. “I’m still down in Phoenix, but I’m going to need you to put out a BOLO on a white Explorer registered to one Curtis Uttley of…”

“He was?” Farris resumed. “Really? When did this happen?” He listened for a moment more and then added, “And they’ve got detectives headed here? All right. Give them my number so we can coordinate. Yeah, I’ll keep my phone on. I was doing interviews and didn’t want to be interrupted. And Mojave County will be following up on tracking down his cell phone? That’s probably the best way to pinpoint the location of whoever has it. The problem is, that could take some time.”

There was another pause before Farris continued. “Yes, Detective Holman’s still here in Phoenix, and yes, he did mention something about that, but he didn’t have a chance to go into any details. Okay, shoot.” For the next several minutes, Farris jotted lines into a notebook. Finally he closed it and put it away. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got all that. Tell the sheriff that with everything happening down here right now, I’ll probably have to stay over tonight.”

Farris closed his phone and turned to Ali. “So much for Curtis Uttley,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Ali asked.

“I mean he’s over,” Farris said. “Dead as a doornail. One of the construction workers on the new Burro Creek Bridge found what everybody thought was an unidentified jumper down in the bottom of the canyon yesterday morning. Except when they got around to doing the autopsy this afternoon, it turns out he wasn’t a jumper at all. Signs of restraints on his ankles and wrists, and the guy was dead before he ever hit the ground. The ME says his injuries are mostly blunt force trauma. So somebody beat the crap out of him the same way they did Kip Hogan. And tonight when the Mojave County ME finally got around to running the dead guy’s fingerprints through AFIS, guess what? Curtis Uttley’s name came up because of the thumbprint on his California driver’s license, which he hadn’t bothered to change.”

“They killed him?” Ali asked.

Farris nodded.

“And they took his vehicle,” Ali added. “Just like they took my dad’s truck after they attacked Kip.”

“Looks like,” Lee Farris agreed. “Luckily for your dad, they blew a tire on that Bronco of his or it would still be gone. It also looks like you’re real lucky you didn’t catch up with this creepo today. His losing you was the best thing that could have happened. Otherwise we’d probably be looking for you now, too.”

Half sick to her stomach, Ali knew it was true. She hadn’t been following Curt Uttley-she had been following Curt Uttley’s killer, and if she had managed to catch him, no doubt she’d be dead as well. So far both she and Crystal had been incredibly lucky.

There’s only one question, Ali thought. Will the killers give up or will they come back and try again?

The door to the conference room opened. Dave Holman emerged from the room. His daughter did not.

“We’ve had our little father/daughter chat,” he said. “Crystal says she’s too embarrassed to come out, and maybe that’s a good thing.”

Folding a piece of paper and stuffing it in his jacket pocket, Dave looked from Lee’s face to Ali’s. “What’s up?” he asked.

“Uttley’s dead,” Farris said without preamble. “Somebody killed him and threw him over the guardrail where they’re building that new bridge at Burro Creek.”