J. Jance - Cruel Intent

“Mine,” Edie said. “My daughter fired it, but it belongs to me.”

Leaving the crowd inside to sort things out, Ali followed Dave. She found him on his hands and knees in the back of the camper shell. By the time she got there, he had pulled Leland to the end of the pickup and was loosening his restraints.

“Is he all right?” Ali asked.

Dave shook his head. “I can’t tell,” he said. “Looks like he’s out cold, but he’s got a pulse, and he’s breathing on his own.” He glanced up at Ali. “And what about you?” he asked. “That looks like a pretty bad cut.”

“It’s nothing,” Ali said. Compared to what it might have been, the injury to her face really was nothing.

A fire truck with a blaring siren arrived in a cloud of dust, followed by an ambulance. As a pair of EMTs raced forward, Ali motioned them toward the pickup. “He’s in there,” she said. She meant to be there with them, but suddenly, her legs were no longer cooperating.

Dave turned to Ali with a look of concern. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said, but not too convincingly. Taking her arm, Dave led her over to the back of the Sugarloaf and eased her down on the set of cement steps that led up to the back door.

“I should be there with Leland,” she objected.

“Sit,” Dave said.

When Ali looked down at her feet, she was surprised to see that she was barefoot. It was November and cold, but until she saw her feet, she hadn’t been aware of being without shoes.

“How did the cops get here?” Ali asked. “Who called them?”

“Your mother,” Dave replied. “She evidently placed a nine-one-one call and then hung up. When they tried calling back, she yelled at whoever was on the line and accused him of being an aluminum-siding salesman. Luckily, the operator was smart enough to realize something was amiss. He went ahead and dispatched units.”

“What about you?” Ali asked.

“B. Simpson had already told me that he’d plucked Peter Winter’s name out of the computer files he had lifted. When I tried to check on Winter myself, I was told he was off duty for the foreseeable future. That worried me. It worried me even more when Simpson told me he had been trying to reach you and couldn’t get through. I left my guys to execute the warrant at Manzanita Hills and was on my way to your other place when I heard the radio transmissions. I came here instead.”

“B. may not have been able to reach me, but he talked to my mother,” Ali said. “You should have seen her, Dave. She was amazing. I show up with my face dripping blood and with a guy who’s holding me at gunpoint, but she’s cool as a cucumber. ‘You must be Peter Winter,’ she says, as calm as can be. The next thing I know, she’s dragging some old discarded heap of a computer out of Dad’s trash pile and convincing the guy that was what she had used to hack in to his files. And he believed her. While he was busy watching her hook it up, I managed to grab the Taser and nail the guy.”

“Taser?” Dave asked. “What Taser? Where did you get one of those?”

“It’s Mom’s,” Ali answered. “She bought it at one of Frieda Rains’s parties.”

Dave shook his head and rubbed his forehead. “Remind me not to make your mother mad,” he said.

By then the EMTs had loaded Leland Brooks onto a gurney and were headed for the ambulance. “Where are you taking him?” Dave called after them.

“Yavapai Medical Center,” the driver returned. “Do you want us to come back for the guy with the darts once we get this one transported?”

“Don’t bother,” Dave told them. “We’ll be able to handle him.”

In the meantime, someone-Jan Howard, maybe-had brought a chair from the restaurant and set it down near the steps where Ali was already sitting. While Ali watched, Bob led a pale and shaken Edie out of their house. Holding his wife’s arm as though afraid she might break, he led her over to the chair and helped her sit down.

“I’m fine, Bobby,” Edie was saying. “Really, I am.”

But she didn’t look any finer than her daughter did. Like Dave, Bob Larson didn’t believe a word of it.

Just then Chris’s Prius raced into the parking lot. Jumping out and slamming the door behind him, he ran over to where Ali was sitting. Athena was hot on his heels.

“Mom, are you all right?” he gasped. “What’s going on?”

“I’m okay,” Ali assured him. “So’s Grandma.” But Ali was surprised to notice that at the same time she was uttering those supposedly reassuring words, she was also shivering uncontrollably. She didn’t know if the shakes were coming from being outside barefoot in the November cold or from realizing that the worst of the crisis was past.

Chris responded by whipping off his sport jacket and throwing it over his mother’s quivering shoulders. “Someone called the principal at school and said there was a problem at the Sugarloaf. He took charge of my class so I could get over here. What the hell happened?”

“It would appear that your mother and grandmother have succeeded in apprehending a possible homicide suspect,” Dave said, getting to his feet. “Now, if you and Athena will look after your mother, I’ll check out what’s going on inside the house and make sure the guy they tased is okay.”

“They tased somebody?” a baffled Chris asked. “As in a Taser? Who did that?”

“Your mother was the one shooting it,” Dave observed with a tight smile. “But it isn’t hers. I believe she used your grandmother’s Taser.”

Chris looked questioningly at his grandmother. She nodded in return. “That’s right,” she said. “It’s mine.”

“But you’re all right?” Chris asked.

Edie was getting a grip. “Couldn’t be better,” she replied stoutly, as if daring her husband to say otherwise.

Chris turned back to his mother and paused when he saw her bloodied face. “Then who was in the ambulance?” he asked. “They almost took us out back at the stoplight.”

“Leland Brooks,” Ali replied, struggling to her feet. “He’s hurt. They’re taking him to the hospital, and I’d like to go, too. If you and Athena would be kind enough to give me a ride…”

But before she could finish the sentence, a strange procession emerged from Bob and Edie Larson’s house, and everyone who had gathered in the Sugarloaf’s parking lot stopped to watch. Two cops, each of them holding a handcuffed Peter Winter by an arm, led the way. The three of them were followed by a third cop who trailed behind, carrying Edie’s Taser. With the darts still stuck in the middle of Winter’s back and the strings attached to the Taser trailing along behind him, the whole thing resembled a bizarre bridal procession.

Ali was relieved to see that Peter Winter appeared to be much the worse for wear. Even though electricity was no longer flowing through his body, he still seemed to need help remaining upright. The shaming telltale marks of urination stained his clothing. In order to reach the waiting patrol car, the cops had to lead their prisoner past both Ali and Edie. When he saw them, he ducked his head and turned away.

“See there?” Edie said to her husband. “I told you he’s fine.”

Bob Larson shook his head. “The poor guy doesn’t look fine to me,” he said. “And like I said earlier, don’t you go shooting that thing off at me. If it made him piss his pants, it would probably kill me.”

“Would you stop harping about it?” Edie returned. “Please. If we hadn’t had that Taser, Ali and I would probably both be dead by now. Would you like that any better?”

Chris left Ali’s side long enough to give his grandmother a brief hug. “I wouldn’t,” he said. “Tase away, Grandma. Way to go! But will you be all right if I take Mom to the hospital? She wants to check on Mr. Brooks.”