“Right,” Chris said. “Now look at this.” He clicked over to another file that showed a single frame from the video and then clicked on that image several times in rapid succession. With each click, what was happening in the foreground slipped further out of focus while the background became clearer and clearer. It reminded Ali of an optometrist doing a vision test.
“It’s a diploma of some kind,” Ali said at last.
“Exactly!” Athena said. “From a seminary in Weed, California, awarded to someone named Richard Masters.”
“When I first saw the video, I thought Crystal’s stepfather might be responsible for this awful stuff, but his name is Whitman, Gary Whitman. So, who is this guy, and how did you do this?”
“Sonja, my geeky best friend from college,” Athena explained. “She’s spent years working on an image- enhancement project. That program is now being used by law enforcement agencies all over the country to help decipher video-recorded images of license plates.”
“When we first turned this on, Athena noticed there was something on the wall in the background,” Chris continued. “We e-mailed this frame to Sonja. You’re seeing what she sent back.”
“Amazing,” Ali said.
“And through the magic of the Internet,” Athena added, “we can now tell you that Pastor Richard Masters is the youth minister for a small congregation of disaffected ex-Baptists called Back Door Apostles who operate out of a very modest strip mall in North Las Vegas. That’s where Crystal’s family lives, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Ali said. “In a trailer park somewhere in North Las Vegas.”
“And if Crystal was having difficulty adjusting to her new school situation,” Athena said, “what are the chances that her family sent her to this jerk for counseling? My family moved twice when I was in junior high,” she added. “It was hell. My mother sent me to a counselor, too. A good one though, not a creep like this.”
“So, what do we do?” Chris asked. “Call Dave? Have him come take a look at this?”
Ali turned away from the computer screen, walked over to the counter, and poured herself a cup of coffee while she searched for an answer to those questions.
Dave had already admitted to Ali that he didn’t necessarily have good sense when it came to dealing with Roxanne and her second husband. She seemed to remember his even making a threat of some kind toward Gary Whitman. That was one of the reasons Richey hadn’t wanted him to come to Vegas when Crystal first disappeared. Now Ali worried that if Dave saw what she had seen on the video it would send the man completely around the bend.
“I’m going to go shower,” she said. “That’s where I do some of my best thinking. When I come out, we’ll figure out what to do.”
With hot water cascading over her tired body, Ali tried to imagine the best way to proceed. She knew without question that if they showed the images to Dave, he’d be on his way to Vegas in a matter of minutes-pissed as hell and armed to the teeth. If he charged into the good pastor’s office and raised Cain about it, ordinary people would see him as a justifiably outraged father doing what fathers do. A defense attorney, on the other hand, would see him as an out-of-control police officer and would claim that any evidence resulting from Dave’s actions, damning though it might be, would nonetheless be ruled inadmissable.
Ali knew someone needed to beard Richard Masters in his den, but Dave Holman was exactly the wrong person for the job.
Ali emerged from the shower and dressed. She returned to the kitchen, where Chris was just finishing frying bacon and eggs and Athena was setting the table. “You said you wanted to do some thinking, so we’re having protein with our sweet rolls.”
“Well?” Athena asked.
“How would the two of you like to take a day trip up to Vegas?”
“Cool,” Athena said. “Sounds like fun.”
“Great,” Chris said. “Athena’s never ridden in a Porsche.”
“There’s one problem,” Ali said. “Since I don’t have my driver’s license back, one of you will have to drive.”
Chris burst out laughing. “We’ll manage,” he said.
As they prepared to leave for Vegas, Ali was waylaid for twenty minutes while she searched for the scrap of paper-the back of a gas station receipt actually-on which she had jotted Crystal’s cell phone number all those nights earlier. If she’d had her cell phone, it would have been simple to look up the information in her call history. And she could, she supposed, call Detective Marsh and have him look it up for her, but doing that would put her at risk of having to endure another “insert” lecture. Since she was obviously doing it again-not minding her own business-she didn’t want to hear it. She was thrilled when she finally found the missing note in the bottom of her bathroom trash can.
But even though she had the number, she didn’t want to call it. She didn’t want to talk to Crystal until she was good and ready-until she and Chris and Athena had all their ducks in a row.
While Ali searched for the missing phone number, Chris downloaded the video and the file of photo enhancements onto a CD. Well after noon when they finally set out, Chris was at the wheel of the Cayenne and Athena rode shotgun. Ali, sitting in the backseat, mostly wanted to close her eyes and doze, but Chris had other ideas.
“Okay, Mom,” he said. “It’s a long drive from here to there. I want you to tell us about last night. All of it.”
“It’s not just last night,” Ali said. Over the course of the next hour or so, Ali told Chris and Athena about her dealings with Arabella Ashcroft and how what had happened to her as a child led inevitably to what was going on with Crystal Holman. Athena got it with no problem.
“After Arabella’s brother molested Arabella and when nobody believed her, she ended up taking the law into her own hands, and that screwed up her entire life.”
“That’s it in a nutshell,” Ali agreed. “And that’s why we’re going to Vegas.”
“To take the law into our own hands?” Chris asked.
“No, silly,” Athena said. “To make sure Crystal doesn’t take it into hers and wreck her life, and to make sure Dave Holman doesn’t, either.”
“Oh,” Chris said.
“So what’s the plan?” Athena asked.
“I’ve been thinking about that. Once we’re there, I’ll talk to Crystal. I’m hoping I’ll be able to make her see that she needs to go to the cops and turn this dirtbag in. I’m worried about calling her in advance because I don’t want to give her a lot of time to think it over. She took off more than once already this week, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she did it again.”
“What about this?” Chris said. “Don’t give Crystal any advance warning at all. Why don’t we bring the cops to her instead of having her go to them?”
“That might work,” Ali said. “But the cops are another problem. What if they give us the runaround? The diploma on the wall is the one piece of solid evidence we have that ties Richard Masters to all this. But what if he tumbles to what’s happening and while we’re trying to convince the cops to get a search warrant and move on him, he takes off or has brains enough to ditch the diploma? I wish there was some way of verifying that the diploma is still there.”
“How about trying for a photo op?” Athena asked brightly.
“What kind of a photo op?” Ali asked.
“We have the address of the church,” Athena said. “What say we program it into the GPS. We can stop by there and see if the good pastor happens to be in. Maybe I can talk my way into his office. If the diploma’s there, I’ll take a photo of it with my cell phone. That way we can document that it was there at some other time besides just when the video was being filmed. With any luck I might even be able to get pictures of his computer equipment.”
“That’s taking a bit of a risk, isn’t it?” Ali asked.
Athena laughed outright at that. “Riding in a Humvee in Iraq is taking a risk,” she said. “Besides, I know the type. I may be a little too old to qualify for a youth ministry, but I’m betting Pastor Masters will turn out to be one of
