hill, why wasn't he? And there was Bill Nickels, too, the leering and always overly enthusiastic sportscaster. Ali had wanted to smack the smug grin off his face for years, especially after hearing rumors that, when it came to student interns, Mr. Sports Guy had a tendency to try for a home run.
Ali had steeled herself for the ordeal, expecting that seeing her old colleagues gathered in the familiar confines of the newsroom set would hit her with some sense of loss. But as the quartet yucked it up in the required and supposedly unscripted pre-newscast lead-in, Ali wasn't at all surprised to see that Bill Nickels and Annette seemed to have an especially chummy relationship.
Beyond that, though, she felt nothing at all. Nothing. Her leaving may not have been of Ali Reynolds's own volition, but as it turned out, she really had moved on. Whatever had happened, she was over itexcept for her wrongful dismissal lawsuit. She wasn't over thatnot by a long shot.
The lead story, introduced by Annette herself, had to do with Paul Grayson's disappearance. This was, after all, the NBC affiliate, and Grayson was a high-profile NBC bigwig. A young female reporterone Ali had never seen beforedelivered a brief story filmed in front of the gated entrance to the house on Robert Lane. That, Ali knew, would send Paul utterly ballistic once he got wind of it. Having your front gate identified on television news for all the world to see was not good from a security standpoint.
The second, related segment, done by a roving reporter, was filmed in the paved parking lot of a less than desirable apartment complex somewhere in Banning. Of course, by the time the filming occurred, Paul's Arena Red 911 had already been towed away. Yellow crime scene tape was still visible but the vehicle wasn't, as the reporter earnestly let viewers know that this was where Paul Grayson's abandoned Porsche had been found early in the afternoon.
By the time the two segments were over almost three minutes of news time had elapsed and Ali had learned almost nothing she hadn't known before from simply surfing the Net.
'Useless,' Ali muttered under her breath. She was close to changing the channel when part of a story Randall James was relating penetrated her consciousness. This one concerned an unidentified man found dead in the desert late Thursday night in the aftermath of a fatal train/vehicle collision that had occurred northwest of Palm Springs. Since Ali had been in such proximity to the incident when it happened, she stayed tuned to see the remainder of the piece.
The smiling faces on the tube, reading blandly from their teleprompters, didn't seem to make any connection between that case and the one they had reported on two stories before, and why should they? After all, they were paid to read what was given to themstories that had already been written and edited by someone else. Connecting dots was never a required part of the news desk equation.
But Ali's life had undergone a fundamental change months earlier when she had started trying to piece together the details that would explain the sudden death of her friend Reenie Bernard. And now, this newly reconstituted Ali Reynolds was incapable of
The body of an unidentified man found outside Palm Springs? Paul's abandoned vehicle located in a parking lot somewhere in Banning, ten or fifteen miles away? Without knowing how, Ali understood immediately that the two incidents were connected. She knew in her bones that the dead man found near Palm Springs had to be Paul. The only remaining question was, how long would it take for someone else to figure it out?
The answer to that question wasn't long in coming. Before Axel could launch into his weather report, there was a sharp rap on Ali's door.
'Who is it?' she asked, peering out through the security peephole. Two men wearing white shirts, ties, and sports jackets stood in the hall. One was white and oldermid-fiftieswith a bad comb-over and the thick neck of an aging football player. The other was youngermid-thirties, black, with a shaved head and the straight-shouldered bearing of an ex-Marine.
'Police,' the older one said, holding up a wallet that contained a badge and photo ID. 'Detectives Sims and Taylor, Riverside Sheriff's Department. We need to speak to you about your husband.'
Helga Myerhoff's warning should have been uppermost in Ali's head, but it wasn't. Shaken by her sudden realization that Paul really was dead, she unfastened the security chain and opened the door.
'Is he dead?' she asked.
'He may be,' Detective Sims, the older one, said. 'That's why we need to speak with you. May we come in?'
Ali opened the door and allowed the two men into her room. Their looming presence combined with the weight of the news they carried filled what had previously seemed to be a spacious room. Ali retreated to a nearby chair. The detectives remained standing.
Ali's mind raced. She remembered the desolate desert, the darkness, the flashing emergency lights. She had driven Highway 111 into Palm Springs numerous times. She remembered the tracks running alongside the roadway. On the other side of the tracks was nothingonly desert. There was no reason to cross the tracks there, unless amp;
'This is about that car that got run over by the train last night, isn't it?' she said. 'What happened? Did Paul commit suicide?'
The two detectives exchanged glances. 'You're aware of the incident then?' Detective Sims asked.
'The incident with the train?' Ali asked. 'Sure. It was on the news just now. So was the story about Paul. When I saw that his Porsche had been found stripped and abandoned in a parking lot in Banning, I put two and two together.'
'That's what we're doing, too,' Detective Taylor said, 'putting two and two together. We have an unidentified victim we
'I'll get my purse,' Ali said, standing up. 'Where do you want me to go?'
'To the morgue,' Sims said quickly. 'In Indio.'
'But that's hours from here, on the far side of Palm Springs.'
'Riverside is a big county,' Taylor returned. 'That's where they've taken the body. But don't worry about how far it is. We'll be glad to take you over and bring you back. It's the least we can do.'
Ali's purse was on the desk. Her Glock 26 was locked away in her room safe. She had left it there that morning when she was on her way to court, and she was glad it was still there. Even though she had a properly issued license to carry, it was probably not a good idea to show up in a cop car with a loaded handgun in her possession. Ali collected her purse and her cell phone.
'Let's go then,' she said.
People glanced warily at the trio as they walked through the Westwood's well-appointed lobby. Ali was in the middle with the two cops flanking her on either side. Detectives Sims and Taylor may not have been in uniform, but they were still clearly cops. Outside, the real giveaway was the plain white, well-used Crown Victoria parked directly in front of the hotel entrance. Sporting a rack of two-way-radio antennas and black-wall tires, the Crown Victoria stuck out like a sore thumb next to its nearest neighborsa silver Maserati Quattroporte and a gleaming black Bentley GT.
Sims opened the back door of the sedan to let Ali inside. When she saw there was no door handle, she felt a moment of concern. She realized belatedly that she probably should have called Helga before agreeing to come along with Sims and Taylor. Presumably Helga would have warned her against getting into a vehicle with them.
Ali remembered times in the past when she'd been assigned to cover ongoing police investigations. She remembered instances where some of the people involved refused to cooperate, to give statements of any kind to investigating officers without having an attorney present. And even though at the time Ali had known full well that was everyone's legal right, she had still harbored a sneaking suspicion that people who hid behind their attorneys had something else to hide as well.
