J. Jance - Hand of Evil

“Which will make her damned hard to convict.”

“In my book she’s a person of interest in four different homicides-Billy and Bill Junior as well as the firebug and the nurse at the Mosberg. What’s kept her from knifing poor old Brooks in his sleep all this time?”

“Enlightened self-interest,” Larry said with a mirthless chuckle. “If she did that, who would bring her her morning coffee?”

As Larry drove south on I-17, Hank called Dave Holman to check on the APB. “Still no word?”

“None,” Dave said. “As long ago as they left, they could be anywhere by now-through Phoenix or Flagstaff and halfway to California or New Mexico. If they’re still on the move, we should have found them.”

“How’s Ali’s family holding up?” Hank asked.

“About how you’d expect. I’m here at the house with her son and his girlfriend. Her parents went home to go to bed. After what went on at the hospital last night, everybody’s pretty much strung out,” Dave said. “But she saved my daughter’s life, and now we’ve got to save hers.”

Ali and Arabella sat in the Rolls with the engine running for the better part of the next half hour. Several times, when Ali tried to say something, Arabella insisted on silence. “I told you,” she said. “I need to think.”

Ali was thinking, too. With the sweat trickling down her sides and with her stomach in a knot, she was appalled by their complete isolation. They had seen no lights on the way down the narrow road, no other signs of habitation.

We’re completely alone, Ali thought. No one on earth knows we’re here. Arabella will shoot me and then herself and it’ll be weeks before anyone finds us.

Last night, in the hospital, she hadn’t had time to be scared. Jason had been there-a mortal threat to everyone he met-and Ali had simply reacted. This was different. As the minutes crept by, one by one, Ali thought she understood how condemned prisoners must feel on the night they’re due to be executed.

I don’t want to be dead, Ali told herself. I’m not ready.

“All right then,” Arabella said finally, emerging from her trancelike silence. “Here.”

Ali turned to look as Arabella held up the jar. “I told you I came to say good-bye. Now get out of the car and take this over there to where the porch used to be.”

Ali was shocked to see Arabella was handing her the jar.

“No,” Ali said. “I won’t touch it.”

“Yes, you will,” Arabella insisted. “Have you forgotten I have a gun?”

Ali hadn’t forgotten about the gun, not for a single moment.

“All right.”

Leaving the headlights on and the engine still running, Ali took the jar and got out of the car. Her legs seemed ready to collapse under her and the jar was surprisingly heavy, but she held it to her breast. She didn’t want to drop it; didn’t want to be splattered by the awfulness inside.

Picking her way across uneven ground, she made her way toward the nonexistent cabin. On either side of the clearing she could make out patches of snow. Ahead of her the denuded concrete pad of the house glowed against the surrounding blackness. Shivering with cold and revulsion both, Ali walked as far as what looked like the footprint of a porch.

“Set it down,” Arabella ordered. “Set it down right there and step away.”

Ali did as she was told. As she moved toward the Rolls, she saw Arabella assume a military stance, holding the tiny pistol in a two-handed grip. Petrified, Ali plunged to the ground. She was already facedown in the dirt when the sound of the gunfire pierced the silence of the bitterly cold night.

Behind her, the glass jar exploded into a million pieces. For a long moment, Ali huddled on the ground while the sound of that single gunshot reverberated in her ears. She lay there holding her breath, wondering if she’d been hurt by any of the flying glass and waiting for the next shot-which didn’t come. Finally she looked up to find Arabella still standing calmly beside the Rolls and holding the gun at her side as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

“There,” she said, casually waving the gun in Ali’s direction. “I’ve said my good-byes. Come on now,” she added. “I’m done here. Get in and let’s go home.”

Ali’s knees were quaking and her hands shook as she resumed her place behind the wheel. She knew something about firearms. It was clear to her that Arabella Ashcroft was one hell of a shot. Ali knew, too, that if Arabella had really intended to kill her there was no question that she would be dead.

Thank God I didn’t try to run earlier, Ali thought. She would have plugged me full of holes.

“What kind of gun is that?” Ali asked, trying to normalize the tension in the car with conversation.

“A Smith and Wesson Ladysmith,” Arabella said. “It’s a genuine antique. Belonged to my mother. Fires seven rounds.”

Which means there are probably six shots left.

“Where did you learn to shoot?” Ali asked.

“I was trained by a former Royal Marine commando,” Arabella answered.

In the darkness, Ali rolled her eyes. Sure you were, she thought. And I’m a monkey’s uncle.

“He tells me I’m a very good shot,” Arabella added.

Arabella Ashcroft may have been a liar, but that last statement was indisputably true. She was an excellent shot. She was also a cold-blooded killer.

As they headed away from the burned-out cabin, Ali tried to come to grips with how to deal with someone who was clearly a pathological liar. The same had been true for Arabella’s mother, Anna Lee. Their checks had been good when they had offered Ali her scholarship, but was anything else she knew about them true?

Arabella claimed to be broke, and the mending on that old cardigan-Brooks’s workmanship most likely-was real enough, but the coat Arabella was wearing right that minute was probably worth several thousand dollars. Arabella had implied that she’d had something to do with several murders. She had coyly refrained from coming right out and admitting to any of them, but the jar had been real enough.

“Where did you keep it?” Ali asked.

“Keep what?”

“The jar. With your brother’s hand. You said you got it from Bill Junior. If you were locked up at the time, surely you weren’t allowed to keep it in your room.”

“You’d be surprised,” Arabella said. “You’ve never been locked up anywhere, have you?”

“No.”

“I had both the jar and the briefcase,” Arabella said. “The briefcase with the jar inside it. Someone I was nice to there took it home and kept it for me, kept it until I was ready to have it again.”

“How long?”

“Eight years. From 1956 until 1964, when they shut down Bancroft House.”

“What’s Bancroft House?” Ali asked. “I thought you were at the Mosberg Institute.”

“Bancroft came later,” Arabella said. “After the Mosberg.”

“And somebody was willing to keep it for you for that long, with no questions asked?”

“That all depends,” Arabella answered coyly.

“On what?”

“On what you have to trade.”

On the drive back to Sedona, Ali kept hoping eventually Arabella would fall asleep, but she didn’t. Ali prayed that somewhere along the way they’d see a patrol car of some kind. That didn’t happen, either. By midnight, as they made their way up the hill to Arabella’s house, there was almost no traffic of any kind. But when they pulled into the yard at Arabella’s house, the garage door was wide open and a stack of suitcases stood barring the spot where Arabella expected Ali to park the Rolls.

“What is all that stuff?” Arabella demanded. “Honk the horn. Get Mr. Brooks out here to move it.”