Cruel Intent

“He drugged you?”

“I believe so.”

“What’s the next thing you remember?”

“Waking up in Ms. Reynolds’s bathroom. There was duct tape around my legs and around my arms and chest. He was holding my head underwater. He kept asking me about some files, and I kept telling him I didn’t know anything about them. When I woke up again, I was here. That’s pretty much it. I don’t know anything else.”

Ali heard the note of weariness in his voice and came into the room. “Breakfast is here,” she a

“But-” began the detective.

“But nothing,” Ali told her. “What Mr. Brooks needs right now is to eat and rest.”

She set the food out on the rolling table next to Leland’s bed and hustled the detective out the door. Once she had escorted Marjorie Hill to the lobby, Ali went in search of a nurse. “He’s to have no more visitors,” Ali ordered. “Got that?”

“Got it,” the nurse said.

When Ali went back to Leland’s room, he was sound asleep again, with his food sitting untouched on the rolling cart. She sat with him for the next hour or so while he continued to sleep. Finally, at about nine, she drove to the drugstore and put together an emergency set of makeup. At ten, having done what she could to fix her bedraggled face, she presented herself at Thomas and Sons Mortuary. She could tell from the way cars spilled down the street that the chapel was jammed to capacity. Searching for a place to park, she was surprised to see Bryan Forester standing out behind the building, smoking a cigarette.

Leaving her Caye

“Inside,” he said, “with my folks and with all those damn hypocrites. What did they all come here hoping for? Are they thinking I’ll be beside myself with grief and throw myself on her coffin, or are they hoping I’ll stand up and tell them Morgan was a tramp and deserved what she got? What the hell do they expect of me?”

“They’re here to pay their respects,” Ali said. “And they’re here to say they’re sorry for your loss, even though they have no way of comprehending the real loss you’ve suffered.”

Bryan sought Ali’s eyes. “But you know, don’t you,” he said.

She nodded. The fact that Paul Grayson had betrayed her so thoroughly was still part of who she was, how she functioned in the world, and how she saw herself.

“But I also know that it doesn’t matter,” she said aloud. “What went wrong between you and Morgan doesn’t matter as much as what went right-which is to say your two girls. You have to be here for them, Bryan. You have to be strong for them.”

“But I don’t want to be around these people,” Bryan fumed. “The way they turned on me…When I finish your job, I’ll go somewhere else. Maybe I can find work down in Phoenix. Or maybe over in Albuquerque, somewhere people won’t know me and know all about what happened.”

“Don’t,” Ali said. “Geographic cures don’t work.”

“You tried one,” Bryan said. “You came home.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that my husband screwed around on me,” Ali said. “Coming home didn’t fix it for me, and leaving home won’t fix it for you, either. And uprooting your girls from everything that’s familiar is the last thing they need right now. It’ll make things that much worse for them. Stay here, Bryan. Look your demons in the eye.”

“Including Billy Barnes?” he asked.

“Especially Billy Barnes,” Ali told him. “Especially him.”

“I’ll think about it,” Bryan said. With that, he ground out his cigarette and strode inside.

Ali parked in a no-parking zone in front of a Dumpster. She went inside the mortuary and found a spot to sit on one of the extra folding chairs that had been set up around the perimeter of the chapel to accommodate the standing-room-only crowd. Ali could see why Bryan might have a problem with some of those folks. Cindy Martin, the manicurist who had been only to happy to blame him, was sitting there as big as life on the end of the fourth row. Ali suspected that many of the other people in attendance were ones who had been quick to think Bryan was responsible for his wife’s death and to dish out rumors and i

Others, however, were clearly there in a show of support. Ali wasn’t surprised to see that Mindy Farber, Lacy and Lindsey’s teacher, had taken time off to be there for them.

The service, conducted by the Reverend C. W. Stowell, was a low-key affair, dignified but distant, as though the minister had been asked to officiate without knowing too many details about either the deceased or her family. From Ali’s point of view, that was a good thing. It gave the two little girls sitting quietly in the front row something to remember about the loss of their mother. As Mindy Farber had told them, it was a way of saying goodbye.

Ali ducked out during the final benediction and went back to the hospital, where she found Leland, fully dressed except for shoes, waiting for her in the lobby.

“The doctor came around and told me I could go, but he said that with this arm, I’m in no condition to drive. He said I needed to have someone come pick me up. I’ve been trying to call you, but your cell phone isn’t working.”

And won’t ever work again, Ali thought.

The nurse came forward to wheel Leland’s chair out to the Caye

“No,” Ali said. “We can go by your place and pick up some clothing, but for right now Sam and I are staying at the Majestic Mountain I

“That’s ridiculous,” Leland said. “I’m perfectly capable of staying on my own.”

“You may be capable of it,” Ali said, “but you’re not doing it. End of discussion.”

After checking Leland in to a room three doors down from hers, Ali went up to the house and collected clothing for him from his fifth wheel. At her house there was clear evidence that a search had been conducted the day before. The locked front door had been battered open and was closed now with a piece of plywood that had been screwed into the casing with wallboard screws. The padlock on Bryan’s storage unit dangled unlocked on the hasp. A quick look inside told Ali all was in order, but she picked up her phone-Athena’s phone-and called Dave Holman.

“It’s bad enough that your guys had to break my door down,” she said, “but they also left Bryan’s toolshed unlocked. What if someone had come by during the funeral to steal his stuff?”

“I’ll go by the hardware store and pick up a new padlock,” Dave said. “Then I’ll be right there.”

True to his word, Dave arrived under ten minutes later.

“What were you hoping to find here?” Ali asked as Dave struggled to liberate the padlock from its childproof plastic container.

“Syringes,” he said. “But as you know, the ones we were looking for turned up somewhere else.”

“And in someone else’s possession,” Ali added.

Dave nodded. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “Most of the time the culprit turns out to be the husband.”

“Or the boyfriend,” Ali said.

“You’re not going to give me a break on this one, are you?”

“No,” she said. “Since I was right and you were wrong, I see no reason not to rub it in.”

He laughed at that. They both did.

Dave freed the padlock, threaded it through the hasp, locked it, and handed Ali the key. “We found photos,” he said, turning serious and changing the subject.

“What kind of photos?”

“Souvenirs,” he said. “Pictures of five dead women, one of whom happens to be Morgan Forester. We’re pretty sure one of them is Rita Winter. We don’t know who the others are yet, but as of now it’s pretty clear that Bryan Forester wasn’t involved in any of it.”

“What about Singleatheart?” Ali asked.

Dave shrugged. “I asked Winter about that,” he said. “He sneered at me and said, ‘Figure it out.’ So that’s what we’re doing-figuring it out. I think you and B. Simpson were on the right track. Identity theft probably played a big part in it. It made money for Winter, but I think he used Singleatheart as a way to mess around with people’s lives. People signed up with them looking for romance, but he ran it with cruel-rather than romantic-intent. I’ve already got one suicide I can lay at Winter’s door, and there may be more. I most likely can’t bring him up on criminal charges for that, but the widow might be able to file a civil suit against him-assuming Winter has any actual assets.”