When Ali and Dave turned back toward the conference room, they were both surprised to see that Crystal, looking isolated and resentful, was standing silently in the doorway. There was no telling how long she had been there or how much she had heard.
While Ali watched, Dave hurried over to her. Crystal greeted everything he had to say with a temper tantrum of stormy objections. Eventually he wore her down.
“Please, Crystal,” Dave begged. “I need to help catch these guys.”
“All right,” Crystal said, relenting. “But it’s just for tonight. She treats me like I’m a baby or something. I’m glad she’s not my mother.”
Jason Gustavson could hardly believe that the crazy bitch had followed him all the way home from Phoenix, but now, watching the evening news, he was putting it all together. It was terrible luck that the girl was somehow connected to the guy from the store, but that was the problem with small towns. Everybody knew everybody. Everyone was connected to everyone else.
Thanks to the eager news reporter standing in front of St. Francis Hospital, he knew the man they hadn’t quite managed to kill was being treated there. Jason fully intended to go there and finish the job. He’d take care of him and of the others, too-the girl who had somehow gotten away and the crazy broad in the blue Cayenne, who had driven like a maniac to keep up with him.
After a lifetime of keeping his urges bottled up, Jason had finally given himself permission to be real. He wasn’t appalled by what he’d done. He was proud of it. He’d finally stood up for himself. All his life he had talked about doing something spectacular. Time after time, he’d laid out plans and then given them up. This time, he was moving forward. This time he was really doing it. The other guys were petrified, of course. They were scared shitless of the cops and of Jason, too, and they weren’t wrong.
On his way to the bathroom, Jason felt the slightest twinge of guilt for the Roto-Rooter guy. After all, he was just a poor jerk out doing a dirty job to support his family, but he was also in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because of that, he would be the first to die.
Jason found Tom Melman on his knees in the bathroom, replacing the broken toilet. When the door opened behind him, he didn’t look up. “I’ll be done in a few minutes,” he said, “then I’ll get your water turned back on.”
He may have heard a click because he started to turn around, but the bullet from the silenced.38 plowed into the back of his head and exploded out the front. He fell face-first into the uninstalled Toto. If it hadn’t been for the blood splatter all over the room, he might have been a frat boy who’d had way too much to drink.
Clint Homewood was next. He was sprawled on the beanbag chair in his room, totally engrossed in his PlayStation game and listening to his tunes. “How’s it going, Jas,” he asked as the door opened. “Want to play?”
But Jason Gustavson no longer had any interest in virtual bullets. He’d become enamored with the real thing. “Not right now,” he said, and he pulled the trigger. Again, shooting from mere inches away, there was no question of missing, and he didn’t. The PlayStation fell to the filthy, pizza-box-and beer-can-littered floor and so did Clint. Something about seeing him lying there with his shattered head next to a half-eaten pepperoni made Jason smile.
“Hey,” Mitch Warren called from out in the hall. “What’s going on? Did you hear a funny noise?”
Jason had planned to take Mitch in his room, lying on his bed. Instead, Jason confronted his second roommate in the hallway. When he pulled the trigger, Mitch clutched his gut and crumpled to the floor, moaning. Jason was tempted to leave him there, but he was tired of loose ends, so he pulled the trigger again and put Mitch out of his misery. Then, stepping over the body, he left his roommates’ wing and headed for his own room in the master suite on the far side of the house.
Jason Gustavson had a few last-minute items to pull together before he could finish this. It might very well be his last evening on earth, and he planned to make it memorable.
“Come on,” Ali said, once Dave had disappeared through the lobby door.
“Where?” Crystal asked.
“Your father has work to do, and so do we.”
“Like what?” Crystal wanted to know. “What do we have to do?”
“First we have to go upstairs and talk to my parents and tell them where we’re going. Then we need to track down Mr. Hogan’s daughter and let her know what’s happened to him.”
“Why?” Crystal asked.
“Because your father asked us to for starters, and we’re going to tell my parents because that’s what responsible people do-they let other people-people who love them-know where they’re going and when they’ll be back.”
“But I’m hungry. Can’t we have something to eat first?”
Ali reminded herself that this was a child who could mow her way through two Sugarloaf sweet rolls at one sitting. “Sure,” Ali said. “We’ll find something on the way.”
They took the elevator up to the ICU floor, where they found Bob and Edie Larson seated side by side in a small waiting room. Sandy wasn’t visible.
“They let her in to see him?” Ali asked.
“Thanks to your mother,” Bob said.
“How’s Kip doing?”
Bob shook his head wordlessly and swiped at his eyes with a pair of balled fists. Edie reached over and patted his knee. “Not very well,” she said. “He’s on a ventilator. I don’t think he’s going to make it.”
Ali never remembered seeing her father quite so broken up. Kip had worked for the Larsons, but he and Bob had become good friends as well-and Kip was a friend Bob didn’t want to lose.
“Dave found out that Kip has a daughter,” Ali said.
“A daughter?” Bob asked incredulously. “Are you serious? He never once mentioned having kids.”
“I have her address,” Ali continued. “She lives down in Chandler. Dave asked me…us actually,” she revised, motioning toward Crystal, “to contact her and let her know what’s going on.”
Bob nodded. “If she’s going to get here before it’s too late, you should probably just call her.”
Ali shook her head. “Dave wanted her to be notified in person, and I think he’s right.” She motioned to Crystal. “Let’s go.”
Edie got up and followed them as far as the elevator. “We won’t be able to stay much longer,” she told her daughter. “Sandy’s brother is supposed to be coming a little later, but if we have to go back home…”
“It’s all right,” Ali said. “I’ll make sure Sandy isn’t left here by herself.”
“Good,” Edie said.
Moments later, Ali and Crystal descended to the lobby and walked out into the unexpected chill of a cold desert night. They stopped at a Jack in the Box just shy of the freeway.
“Did your father tell you why he was going to Tempe?” Ali asked while they waited for their to-go order.
Crystal shrugged. “He just said he was going. He didn’t say why. When he’s working on a case, he never does.”
“Curt Uttley is dead,” Ali said quietly.
Crystal gave a small involuntary gasp. “He’s what?”
“He’s dead, Crystal. Someone trussed him up with rope or duct tape. Then they beat him to death and dropped him off the Burro Creek Bridge between Wickenburg and Kingman. That’s who your father is looking for in Tempe. The people who did that. He’s afraid they’re looking for you, too.”
Crystal was uncharacteristically silent, and in that bit of quiet, Ali had a sudden stroke of inspiration. Crystal Holman had been lying to everyone all along, and she probably still was. “Did you see them?” Ali asked quietly.
“See who?”
“Did you see those men, the ones with the bats, meet up with Curt Uttley at the gas station?” Ali asked. “Did you actually see what happened?”
Once again Crystal didn’t answer, but a brief grimace passed across the girl’s features and a vehement denial
