J. Jance - Edge of Evil

You’ll be a refugee-a displaced person. In order to start over, you’ll need documents. Stuff your important papers (children’s birth certificates and shot records, marriage license, driver’s license, social security cards, and divorce decrees) into your purse and then get the hell out. Trust me. Nothing you leave behind will be worth coming back for-NOTHING!! Go and don’t look back. It’ll be better for you and far better for your children.

Posted 7:52 P.M. AliR

Ali Reynolds had been reporting murder and mayhem for years, but always from a distance. Always from behind the camera with no personal involvement. Now, in a matter of days, that distance had dissolved. Suddenly she was drowning in other people’s lives, and not just Reenie’s suicide, either. The malevolence in Watching’s message left her almost paralyzed with fear-and not just for herself, for the man’s unsuspecting wife and child as well.

Within minutes, she heard the familiar announcement, “You’ve got mail.” There were two new messages. The first one was harmless enough:

Dear Ali,

I’m sorry for your loss. You were lucky to have Reenie for a friend, and she was lucky to have you. Please take care.

barbaram

The second one was almost as chilling as Watching’s had been:

Dear Ali,

Your post made me so sad. It reminded me of my lost friend, only her husband killed her. She was trying to get a divorce and had a protection order and everything, but he busted down the front door and shot her in front of her two little kids before she could get away. He’s in prison now, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.

Louise in Omaha

In Omaha, Ali thought. She had somehow envisioned that all the responses were coming from southern California and were a direct result of her having left TV news. That fact that someone from Omaha was reading her blog was surprising. And the message, such a striking counterpart to Watching’s threat, left Ali feeling cold, alone, and very much afraid.

Some time much later, a car pulled up beside the house. Ali, having dozed off with the computer on her lap, was startled awake when a car door slammed. When she hurried over to the window and peered out through the blinds, she was relieved to see her father’s familiar red-and-white Bronco parked just behind her Cayenne. Chris was already jiggling the locked front door by the time she got there to open it.

“Since Grandma’s there at the hospital visiting Gramps, I decided to come home long enough to shower and change clothes,” Chris said. As soon as he stepped into the living room, Samantha leaped off the couch and disappeared behind it. “And who’s that?” he added.

“Sam,” Ali answered. “Matt and Julie Bernard’s cat. She’ll be staying for a while.”

“She?” Chris asked.

“As in Samantha.”

At first Ali had planned on telling Chris about Watching’s threatening e-mail, but now she decided against it.

When he goes back to California, he’ll be studying for finals. Then in his last quarter of school, he’ll need to concentrate on his studies rather than worry about me.

“What’s the word on Grandpa?” she asked, as he prowled through the refrigerator, settling at last on Edie’s leftover pot roast.

“They’ll probably let him out tomorrow,” Chris answered. “Grandma’s not too happy about that. She thinks it’s way too soon. He’s going to be in a wheelchair-at least initially-and she has no idea how they’ll manage. I don’t either. Their house is tiny. The restaurant may be wheelchair accessible, but their house isn’t. I can help for tomorrow, but the day after that I’m going to need to head home and start studying for finals. I ran into a guy up in Flag who’s driving to LA on Friday. He offered me a ride, but that’s the day of Reenie’s funeral, so maybe I should stay on-”

“No,” Ali said briskly. “You don’t need to stay for the funeral, and you’ve already been a huge help. Take the ride and go. Your finals come first. Grandma and I will manage.”

“But how?” Chris asked. “It’s hard enough getting him in and out of the bathroom at the hospital. The one at their house is way smaller than that. There’s no room to maneuver a wheelchair, and it doesn’t have rails.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Ali said.

The idea of her hale and hearty father suddenly stuck in a wheelchair and needing a handicap rail in order to use the bathroom took her aback. Bob and Edie Larson were the ones who were always delivering help to others. Now, through force of circumstance, they’d have to be on the receiving end. As disconcerting as it was to Ali, she knew it would be far worse for them.

Chris nuked a plate of food in the microwave and then disappeared into his room. A few minutes later he was back for seconds. While the second plate was heating in the microwave, he came over to the couch and sat down beside her.

“I looked at the site, Mom,” he said seriously. “What are you going to do about Watching?”

“Nothing,” Ali said. “I’m sure he’s harmless.”

“What if he isn’t?” Chris asked. “With all your talk about Reenie and the Sugarloaf, it would be easy for him to track you down if that’s what he decided to do.”

“He won’t,” Ali said with more assurance than she felt.

“You probably should have used pseudonyms for the people in your blog,” he said quietly. “That way, if someone goes off about something, it wouldn’t be quite so easy to find you. Not only that,” Chris added, looking around the room. “This place doesn’t even have an alarm system.”

“Aunt Evie never needed an alarm system,” Ali told him.

“Aunt Evie wasn’t writing a blog attracting nutcase readers,” Chris countered.

“I’ll look into it,” Ali said. “I’ll talk to someone and see how much an alarm system will cost.”

It was no coincidence that she didn’t mention the Glock in her purse. After all, Chris was her son, her baby. There was no reason to worry him.

After he left to return to Flagstaff and his hospital vigil, Sam emerged from her hiding place behind the couch and cuddled up next to Ali while she finished providing answers to Helga Myerhoff’s e-mailed interrogatory. After that, she sat for a long time, thinking about Chris’s concerns and some of her own as well. Finally she turned once again to her computer.

cutlooseblog.com

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Welcome to a brand-new day at cutlooseblog.com.

Cutloose is one of those tricky English language terms that has more than one meaning. On one side of the coin, cutting loose can mean going out and having fun-acting wild and crazy. On the other side, being cut loose means you’ve been shoved out of or away from something (a job or a marriage, maybe) when you didn’t really want to go-like being shoved kicking and screaming out of an airplane, for example, with no real belief that the parachute somebody strapped on your body will actually work.

I worked in the news industry for a number of years. Now after passing the magic forty-year mark, I’m being “cut loose” for being too old. Simultaneously, I’m being “cut loose” from a decade-old marriage, it turns out, for exactly the same reason-I’m seventeen years older than the new light in my husband’s life.

“Cut loose” from my previous life, in what’s often called the “mainstream media,” I have decided to try my hand at the “new media.” I’ve been told that bloggers usually put on their pajamas and take up their keyboards because they feel passionately about something. That’s certainly true for me. I’ve started cutlooseblog.com at a time when I’m still mad as hell about what happened to me.