when Edie Larson appeared on the scene.
Bob seemed surprised to see his wife. “What are you doing here?” he wanted to know.
“I had to come,” Edie declared. “No one’s exactly burning up the phone lines between here and Sedona letting me know what’s going on.”
“That’s because we don’t know. They’re not telling us anything,” Bob returned. “If he’s out of surgery, they may have taken him to the ICU.”
“Why don’t we find out then?” Edie asked. “Which way is the ICU? Let me go rattle a few cages.”
“I’ll go with you,” Bob offered, and off they went.
Once they were gone, Ali walked over to the conference room door and pushed it open. To Detective Farris’s obvious annoyance, Ali let herself into the room and placed Crystal’s cell phone on the table between them.
“What’s this?” Farris demanded. “Can’t you see we’re busy here?”
“Let me guess,” Ali said. “Crystal has told you that she was with some guy the other night but that she has no idea who he was or how to get in touch with him, right?”
Farris studied Ali somberly for a moment then nodded. Ali, in turn, directed her remarks to Crystal. “A woman from Flagstaff reported her husband missing this morning,” Ali continued. “His name is Curtis Uttley. Sound familiar, Crystal? And it happens that somebody using the name CU has been sending you text messages all afternoon. He’s been trying to be in touch; wanting to meet up with you in person. In fact, he came here to the hospital a little while ago, looking for you. He was driving a white Ford Explorer. Does that ring any bells?”
Crystal’s cheeks paled. “He, like, actually came here?” she asked.
Ali nodded. “He actually did,” she returned. “You didn’t happen to have your phone in your possession, but I did. So I’ve been texting him back for you. And because you weren’t straight with me and didn’t tell me what I was really dealing with, I followed him all the way to Tempe before I lost him. What do you think would have happened to me if I’d caught up with him?”
Refusing to meet Ali’s gaze, Crystal studied her hands and said nothing. “So what’s the deal, Crystal?” Ali prodded. “Did you tell Detective Farris exactly what you and Curtis Uttley were doing there in Mund’s Park the other night?”
“Making out,” Detective Farris supplied.
“I thought that’s what she’d say,” Ali said. “Actually they were doing quite a bit more than that, Detective Farris. So maybe it’s time you started the interview over again from scratch. And maybe this time Crystal will be kind enough to tell you what was really going on up there at Mund’s Park-and I do mean all of it. Like how she got there from Vegas and how she hooked up with Mr. Uttley. And don’t bother telling Detective Farris that you didn’t get a look at Mr. Hogan’s attackers. I know from hearing you barf your guts out in the ladies’ room that you recognized at least one of them. I’m guessing Curtis Uttley did, too, and that’s why he’s gone missing. He’s hiding out.”
Ali waited to see if Crystal would say anything. She didn’t.
“You might want to move along with that interview,” Ali continued. “With any luck, you’ll be finished before your father gets here.”
“Dad’s coming?” Crystal asked faintly.
“Yes, he is,” Ali said. “And believe me, he’s going to get an earful.”
With that, Ali left the conference room. Out in the lobby, Bob and Edie were nowhere to be seen. Sandy sat alone, deeply immersed in reading what seemed to be a Bible. Rather than interrupting her, Ali found a chair in a relatively quiet corner and turned on her computer. She planned to check for cutloose correspondence. Instead, on a whim, she logged on to the Internet and Googled Curtis Uttley. It turned out there were any number of listings, most of them talking about Curtis’s reputation as a trophy-winning coach of girls’ softball and soccer teams. The most recent mentions came as a result of coaching teams in the Flagstaff area. Previous items came from towns in Texas, Kansas, and California.
Edie Larson emerged from the elevator and went straight over to Sandy. She placed one hand on her shoulder. After a whispered conversation, Sandy stowed her Bible, stood, and accompanied Edie back to the elevator. Ali rose and made as if to follow them. From the back of the elevator, Edie discouraged her doing so with a single shake of her head. Feeling a little rejected and still angry with Crystal, Ali returned to her computer screen.
She had scanned the first list and was halfway through the second when she found the Web site, AskCoachCurt.com. Coach Curtis Uttley answers your team sports questions. Ali immediately logged on to the site and scrolled through a series of essays. How to Be a Team Player; Get Off the Bench and Get on the Field; Winning Isn’t Everything; It’s Never Too Early to Look for a Scholarship. There at the bottom of the page was one final note. For individual questions or coaching advice, feel free to write to
Going back to the original list, Ali made a note of each town mentioned in the coaching articles. It would probably be worthwhile to contact school and recreation folks in each of those areas to see why a teacher who was also a winning coach had suddenly moved on. Ali had a feeling that Crystal Holman wasn’t Coach Uttley’s first teenage conquest and that, rather than confronting him, the authorities in the other towns had simply passed him along and turned him into someone else’s problem.
She wrote and posted the next blog entry while sitting in the hospital lobby.
CUTLOOSEBLOG.COM
It’s been a long day. I’m in a hospital lobby, waiting for a friend whose loved one is hovering between life and death. Sitting here is giving me some time to reflect on some of the things I’ve learned today, and they aren’t pretty.
What I want to do is speak to every parent with an adolescent or pre-adolescent child and say to those parents: WAKE UP!!! If your child has a computer, check it out. Find out what chat rooms he or she visits, and find out what’s going on there. Find out who’s on your child’s buddy list. Who sends e-mails to your child’s address and what do those e-mails say? And what does your child say back? Does this sound like an invasion of your precious offspring’s privacy? You bet it is. It’s also called parenting.
The same rules apply to your child’s cell phone. What comes and goes on your son or daughter’s text messages is private. It’s also possibly deadly. Today I’ve caught glimpses of some of the people out there, evil people-who are trolling the cyber-ether for innocent children to victimize-your children. And yes, you should be very afraid for your children.
And if looking over your son or daughter’s shoulder when they’re online annoys them? Fine. You can tell them from me that being a parent is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.
Dave Holman arrived at the hospital a few minutes later. “Where’s Crystal?” he wanted to know.
“In a conference room talking to Detective Farris,” Ali told him.
“Lee is interviewing her? How come? She’s involved in this?”
Wrestling with how much to tell and when to tell it, Ali nodded. “Before I picked her up the other night in Mund’s Park, she may have seen something.”
“What?”
“She was in the car with Curt Uttley,” Ali said. “They were there at the time of the attack.”
“What were they doing there?” Dave asked. “Car trouble? How is Kip, by the way?” he continued without waiting for Ali to answer. “And where’s Sandy?”
Ali knew it was only a matter of time before she’d have to tell Dave the whole story, but right that moment
