J. Jance - Hand of Evil

If Ali’s mother was already being called Edie, if she was reserving some precious Saturday morning sweet rolls for them, and if Sam, who didn’t like anybody, had already surrendered unconditionally to Athena Carlson’s charms, then Ali was way behind the times. Not only had she missed dinner, she had missed a whole lot of other stuff, too.

The last of the hot water sizzled out of the reserve tank on the Krups coffeemaker, announcing that the brewing cycle was over.

“Coffee?” Ali asked.

“Please.”

“How do you take it?”

“Black.”

Good answers, Ali thought.

She brought the coffee and set one cup down on the end table next to Athena. “Call me Ali,” she said. “Everyone else does.”

“I’m glad to finally get a chance to meet you,” Athena said. “I was afraid Chris was going to keep me hidden under a rock forever.”

Ali would have preferred for Chris to be there running interference at this initial meeting, but he wasn’t, so they would have to make do on their own. “I’m glad to meet you, too,” she said. “I suppose after all this time you were expecting some kind of dragon lady?”

“No, not at all,” Athena said with a smile. “Chris kept telling me that you were a wonderful person and that he was sure we’d get along like gangbusters. And if you’re anything like your mother-who reminds me of my grandmother back in Bemidji, Minnesota, by the way-I’m sure that’s true. I had a great time with your parents last night.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Ali said. “I planned to be there.”

“Well,” Athena said, “there’s nothing like having somebody hold a gun on you to change your mind.”

So the word is out, Ali thought.

Chris’s Prius pulled up outside and he bounded into the living room carrying a plate of sweet rolls in one hand. He stopped short when he saw his mother and then looked anxiously back and forth between the two women. “You two have already met?”

“Yes, we have,” Athena said. “And nothing bad happened. Worlds did not collide. Everything’s fine.”

Chris put the rolls on the counter, then came back to the couch, where he sat down next to Athena. Ali thought he still looked anxious, more so than introducing his mother to his girlfriend should have warranted.

“Did you tell her?” he asked Athena.

Athena shook her head. “Not yet. I didn’t think it was my place.”

Ali’s motherly antennae were already up and operating. Now they went on high alert. Tell me what? she wondered. What’s going on here? Are they pregnant? Is that what this is all about? Am I about to be the mother of the groom at a shotgun wedding?

“It’s about your computer,” Chris said.

Ali was so relieved, she almost laughed aloud. “My computer,” she repeated. “What about it?”

“When you didn’t show up at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s for dinner last night, we came back here looking for you. Later on in the evening when you still weren’t back, I started thinking about that stalker who came after you last year. I wondered if maybe there was something on your computer that would let us know what had happened or where you had gone. So I logged on to your computer and read your files.”

“Chris,” Ali said. “That’s no big deal. I don’t know why you’re so upset. It’s not like what I do on my computer is top secret or anything.”

“We saw the video,” Athena said. “The video with Dave Holman’s daughter.”

“Oh,” Ali said. “Oh, that.” Maybe there are some secrets on my computer after all. “Did you tell Dave?”

“That’s the thing, Ms. Reynolds,” Athena said. “From what Mr. Holman had said at dinner, it was clear he had no idea about any of this. Unless you told him. Did you?”

“Please call me Ali,” she reminded Athena. “But no, I didn’t tell him either. I didn’t want to show it to him until I could figure out what to say.”

“We know who it is,” Chris said.

Ali was stunned. “You do?” she asked. “How’s that possible?”

“His name is on the video,” Athena answered. “We saw it.”

“I saw the video,” Ali said. “There wasn’t any name.”

“Show her,” Athena said.

“I’ll go get my computer,” Chris said. He brought it from the bedroom, set it up on the dining room table, and turned it on. Once it booted up, he logged on and then clicked on a link as Ali and Athena gathered around the table to watch. Moments later the disgusting video began playing on the screen. “Look behind them,” Chris said. “On the wall.”

It was difficult to ignore what was going on with Crystal and the man, but Ali did as she was told. “It looks like a piece of artwork,” Ali said. “Something in a frame.”

“Right,” Chris said. “Now look at this.” He clicked over to another file that showed a single frame from the video and then clicked on that image several times in rapid succession. With each click, what was happening in the foreground slipped further out of focus while the background became clearer and clearer. It reminded Ali of an optometrist doing a vision test.

“It’s a diploma of some kind,” Ali said at last.

“Exactly!” Athena said. “From a seminary in Weed, California, awarded to someone named Richard Masters.”

“When I first saw the video, I thought Crystal’s stepfather might be responsible for this awful stuff, but his name is Whitman, Gary Whitman. So, who is this guy, and how did you do this?”

“Sonja, my geeky best friend from college,” Athena explained. “She’s spent years working on an image-enhancement project. That program is now being used by law enforcement agencies all over the country to help decipher video-recorded images of license plates.”

“When we first turned this on, Athena noticed there was something on the wall in the background,” Chris continued. “We e-mailed this frame to Sonja. You’re seeing what she sent back.”

“Amazing,” Ali said.

“And through the magic of the Internet,” Athena added, “we can now tell you that Pastor Richard Masters is the youth minister for a small congregation of disaffected ex-Baptists called Back Door Apostles who operate out of a very modest strip mall in North Las Vegas. That’s where Crystal’s family lives, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Ali said. “In a trailer park somewhere in North Las Vegas.”

“And if Crystal was having difficulty adjusting to her new school situation,” Athena said, “what are the chances that her family sent her to this jerk for counseling? My family moved twice when I was in junior high,” she added. “It was hell. My mother sent me to a counselor, too. A good one though, not a creep like this.”

“So, what do we do?” Chris asked. “Call Dave? Have him come take a look at this?”

Ali turned away from the computer screen, walked over to the counter, and poured herself a cup of coffee while she searched for an answer to those questions.

Dave had already admitted to Ali that he didn’t necessarily have good sense when it came to dealing with Roxanne and her second husband. She seemed to remember his even making a threat of some kind toward Gary Whitman. That was one of the reasons Richey hadn’t wanted him to come to Vegas when Crystal first disappeared. Now Ali worried that if Dave saw what she had seen on the video it would send the man completely around the bend.

“I’m going to go shower,” she said. “That’s where I do some of my best thinking. When I come out, we’ll figure out what to do.”

With hot water cascading over her tired body, Ali tried to imagine the best way to proceed. She knew without question that if they showed the images to Dave, he’d be on his way to Vegas in a matter of minutes-pissed as hell and armed to the teeth. If he charged into the good pastor’s office and raised Cain about it, ordinary people would see him as a justifiably outraged father doing what fathers do. A defense attorney, on the other hand, would see him as an out-of-control police officer and would claim that any evidence resulting from Dave’s actions, damning though it might be, would nonetheless be ruled inadmissable.