Web of Evil

'No matter what, I'm not going back to the slammer,' he declared. 'So come out from wherever it is you're hiding. Show me your hands.'

Attempting to estimate the distance Dave would have to cover to circumnavigate the dining room and how much time it would take for him to be within striking distance of the armed man, Ali tried to stall a little longer.

'Why should I?' she asked. 'So you can shoot me, too?'

'Because if you don't come out where I can see you, I'm going to shoot her,' Tracy returned ominously. 'If that happens, this woman's blood will be on your hands as much as it is on mine.'

Carrie moaned in protest. Somewhere in the restaurant, Roseanne Maxwell began to sob as well.

Hoping Detective Taylor saw her do it, Ali tucked the Glock into the back of the waistband of her jeans. Then, aware Tracy would have to peer through the gloom in order to observe her every move, Ali raised her hands and slowly rose to her feet. Once upright, Ali stepped forward until she was standing a foot or so in front of Montgomery Taylor and slightly to one side. The move left her Glock's exposed handle well within the detective's reach.

'What do you want?' Ali asked, willing Tracy to keep his attention focused on her. 'What are you hoping to accomplish?'

At that instant, Dave materialized to the right of the front door. Without being observed, he had managed to work his way all around the restaurant. Now, coming from just outside Tracy's line of vision, Dave smashed into the two people locked in their life-and-death embrace. The unexpected blow propelled the couple apart, sending Carrie in one direction and Tracy and his weapon in the other.

Carrie screamed. A burst of gunfire pierced the air, but only for a moment, then it was over. In the sudden silence that followed, Detective Taylor grabbed Ali's Glock and charged forward to help Dave subdue Tracy. Seconds later the room was filled to capacity as more officers raced in from outside.

'Is he dead?' Roseanne Maxwell's plaintive question came from two tables away. 'Please tell me the son of a bitch is dead.'

Ali walked over and helped Roseanne emerge from her hiding place beneath the table.

'I'm afraid not,' Ali returned. 'It looks to me as though he came through just fine.'

'Damn,' Roseanne muttered.

Easy Washington appeared. He seemed shaken. His dark skin had taken on a peculiarly ashen hue. 'Is everyone all right?' he asked.

'I think so,' Ali said. 'I believe everyone's fine.'

'Too bad,' Roseanne added. 'I was really hoping.'

Dave showed up just then with concern written all over his face. He grasped Ali by the shoulders. 'What in the world were you thinking, standing up like that?'

'I was trying to get him to look at me instead of you.'

'Are you nuts? You don't even have on a Kevlar vest.'

'Do you?' Ali returned.

Dave ignored her question. 'Are you all right?' he asked.

'I'm fine,' she said. 'Perfectly fine.'

And for some strange reason, right that minute, she wasn't even mad at him anymore. In fact, she felt lighter than air.

CHAPTER 19

In the aftermath of the Claim Jumper incident, Ali found herself once again on the wrong side of the thin blue line. While Dave went off to confer with the other officers, Ali was interviewed in a cursory fashion by a pair of young uniformed cops who took her statement and then left. They made it clear that most of the team was focused on what had happened to Carrie and on the pivotal roles Dave Holman and Detective Taylor had played in effecting Carrie's rescue.

Ali was tempted to point out to one of the young cops, 'Hey, I helped, too.' Instead, she let it go. In the grand scheme of things the fact that Carrie was safe was all that mattered.

Because shots had been fired in the course of the incident, all weapons on the sceneincluding Ali's Glockwere collected by crime scene investigators, bagged, cataloged, and taken away for forensic examination. Ali's objections about losing possession of her Glock were duly noted and duly ignored. Nobody but Ali seemed to care much that her weapon was going away nor were they willing to say when, if ever, she'd be able to have it back.

The better part of an hour passed before Tracy McLaughlin and Roseanne Maxwell were loaded into separate patrol cars and carted off. For a long time after that, Ali sat drinking free Claim Jumper coffee and being pretty much ignored by all concerned while a small army of people hustled around the restaurant processing the scene. It was frustrating to be right there in what was supposedly the middle of the action and still have so little information about what was going on.

Finally, Ali reached for her computer case and her computer. Minutes later she was logged on to a wire- service news site. What she found wasn't much but it was a lot more than anyone had bothered telling her.

A joint task force made up of local and federal officers staged a series of coordinated raids at several locations late today targeting what is thought to be a major drug-distribution operation centered in the Los Angeles area. Several arrests were made, including a number of peopleboth customers and employeesat an exclusive area topless bar called the Pink Swan.

Mason Louder, the Drug Enforcement Agency's local public affairs officer, has announced that a press conference dealing with today's operations is scheduled for 10 A.M. tomorrow morning at the Federal Building.

Two of those arrested at the Pink Swan location are thought to be Mario and Reynaldo Joaquin, sons of local real estate magnate Lucia Joaquin. According to sources close to the investigation, Ms. Joaquin, now in ill health and living in semi-retirement in Palm Springs, has long been suspected of maintaining close ties with Colombian drug cartels, in which her deceased husband, Anselmo, was once considered to be a major player.

For years, Ms. Joaquin maintained a high-profile lifestyle and counted among her circle of acquaintances many of Southern California's media elite, including television network executive Paul Grayson, whose grisly murder late last week as well as the subsequent deaths of both his fiancee and her mother are all thought to be connected to the case and may well be what sparked tonight's coordinated law enforcement action.

Mr. Grayson's widow, former L.A. news anchor Alison Reynolds, was originally suspected of having some involvement with his death. Ms. Reynolds's mother, Edie Larson, who is visiting from Arizona and was interviewed at her hotel late this evening, told reporters that she hoped that the cloud of suspicion lingering over her daughter's head would soon be lifted.

Ali reread that sentence. 'Interviewed at her hotel amp;'

What hotel? Ali wondered. It sounded as though at least one reporter and probably more had managed to track Edie to her new location at the Motel 6. And yes, Paul's death was definitely related to the Joaquin organization, but Monique Ragsdale's death and April Gaddis's had nothing at all to do with itat least not as far as Ali knew. That meant the so-called sources close to the investigation didn't have all their facts straight.

Unable to find any more information elsewhere, Ali turned to her cutlooseblog.com mailbox, where the 'new mail' symbol told her she had forty-seven new messages. Daunted by the very thought of starting to mow through all of those, Ali turned instead to her personal mailbox, one she had set up in order to keep her blog life separate from everything else. There she had only three new messages.

The first one was from her father:

Dear Ali,

Back home but from what I hearand don't hearfrom your mother, obviously I shouldn't be. I should have stayed there instead. What in the world is going on? Call me.

DAD

Ali didn't answer the message right then, and she didn't call, either. Her father was her mother's problem more than he was Ali's, and Edie was going to have to handle him on her own.

The second message was from her wrongful dismissal attorney, Marcella Johnson. Like Victor Angeleri and