Donna had done the opposite. She had lost her mother, the man she had always believed to be her father, and her biological father as well. She had turned the injustice of what happened to her into an excuse to inflict incredible harm on others.
Ali looked on as Donna was being booked. As the booking officer inventoried the items in her purse, Ali saw that there were two diamond rings tied inside in a small felt bag. The diamond on one was a rock, while the other was much more modest.
Mimi’s missing rings, Ali thought, making a mental note to pass that information along to Detective Salazar.
The purse also contained a whole series of documents-Donna’s passport, along with preprinted boarding passes for both her Phoenix-to-L.A. flight and the one from L.A. to Caracas. Tucked into her wallet was a FedEx receipt for a package Donna had shipped to herself in care of her hotel, the Caracas Hilton. For import duty purposes the document listed the contents of the package as a “framed art print” with an insured value of $50.
“I’m guessing that’s an original and that it’s stolen goods,” Detective Salazar said.
While she went off in search of a warrant that would allow the package to be intercepted and returned, Ali was left alone in the interview room with Donna. Sitting across the table from this dangerous woman, Ali was a little concerned that her weapons-her Glock and her Taser-had been placed in a locker before she entered the small, mirrored room.
As the silence deepened around them Ali asked one final question.
“What would have happened if you had come to Mimi and Serenity and Win and told them what you had learned?”
“You mean would they have made some provision for me?” Donna asked bitterly. “Like that’s going to happen. For one thing, Winston Langley’s money is mostly gone. Win has a gambling problem. He ran through his inheritance like it was water. As for Serenity? She’s convinced that she has a great head for business, but she doesn’t, not like her father did. The galleries are all losing money. She’s been keeping them afloat with her inheritance. Once that’s gone, so are the galleries. Where would that leave me? A third of nothing is nothing.”
“In other words, since whatever was left of Winston’s estate belonged to Mimi, you went after that.”
“Why wouldn’t I? She wasn’t going to give me any of it. After all, she’s no relation to me-no blood relation.”
“Not enough of a relation to talk to, but enough of a relation to murder,” Ali said.
“I guess,” Donna said with a shrug.
That was when Ali realized that Donna simply didn’t care. The fact that other people had been hurt or killed meant nothing to her. Less than nothing.
For the remainder of the fifteen minutes Detective Salazar was gone, Ali and Donna sat in the room in absolute silence.
Earlier, no one had been paying attention to what had happened to Sister Anselm and Mimi Cooper. Now everyone was.
Ali spent most of the rest of the day being debriefed by a series of agencies about what had happened. The Fountain Hills marshals wanted access to the information that would allow them to sort out what had happened to Mimi Cooper. Phoenix PD wanted to know details about what had happened to Sister Anselm, an incident that had started in their jurisdiction and ended in someone else’s. But over all this, Agent in Charge Donnelley’s media embargo still held sway.
Donna Carson’s name wasn’t being released to the media because she had yet to be charged. Tom McGregor’s name still wasn’t being released pending notification of next of kin, who most likely didn’t exist. And Sister Anselm’s name and medical information were being withheld as well.
The real reason behind all the interagency silence was Agent in Charge Donnelley. Tom McGregor’s handwritten notebooks counted as a major break in the ATF’s long battle with the Earth Liberation Front, and Donnelley wanted things kept quiet long enough to gather warrants and to bring some of the people named in those notebooks in for questioning.
It was late afternoon before Ali finally headed back to the hotel. Since her phone had been turned off most of the day, her voice mailbox was brimming with messages. Several were from B. Simpson, but those all said he was in a series of meetings and would call again later.
One message was from her mother. “Dad and I bought a stove,” Edie said. “Used, not new, but your father loves it. It’ll be delivered next week, in time for Father’s Day. See you at home.”
Another message was from Bishop Gillespie. “I understand you were on hand today when Donna Carson was arrested. Good work. Sister Anselm seems to be recovering. She asked that you please stop by when you can, but you might want to use that wig again. It looks like the hospital lobby is full of reporters.”
That one made Ali smile, not because of the wig suggestion but because Bishop Gillespie seemed to have excellent sources of information. The question was, were those sources inside Phoenix PD, or were they inside the ATF, maybe even Agent Donnelley himself? Was it possible the agent in charge and Bishop Gillespie were pals?
Ali took the bishop’s suggestion seriously. After showering and putting on clean clothes, she donned the wig and drove back over to the hospital. Camera vans too tall to make it inside the garage were parked outside, and she appreciated the media alert warning.
She also noted that even though Donna Carson’s arrest and Tom McGregor’s death should have lowered the threat toward Sister Anselm, Bishop Gillespie’s security detail was still very much in evidence-in the garage, in the lobby, and in the waiting room on the orthopedic floor.
When Ali pushed open the door to Sister Anselm’s room, she discovered Bishop Gillespie himself seated next to Sister Anselm’s bed. He was reading to her from a notebook Ali recognized-Mimi Cooper’s guest log.
When Ali appeared in the doorway, he pushed his reading glasses to the top of his head. “So here’s the woman of the hour,” he announced with a smile. “Ali Reynolds herself. It turns out we were just talking about you. Sister Anselm has been asleep most of the day, and I’ve only now been bringing her up to date. I told her that an arrest has been made, but I’m unable to tell her much more than that.”
Standing at the bedside, Ali could see Sister Anselm’s face was sunburned to the point of peeling. “How are you?” Ali asked.
“Better than I would have been without you,” Sister Anselm said. “How can I ever thank you?”
“I believe you’ve been paying that one forward all your life,” Ali said with a smile.
She pulled up another chair, and for the next half hour, Ali gave Sister Anselm and Bishop Gillespie the highlights of what she knew. When she saw Sister Anselm was fading, Ali excused herself. Rather than pushing the Down elevator button she pushed Up and went to the eighth floor. A new patient or two had been admitted. The burn-unit waiting room was crowded with a whole new collection of worried family members, but in the far corner, Ali spotted a single familiar face-Mark Levy. He looked bone weary, but his face brightened when he saw her.
“Hey,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”
“I came back to thank you for the help you gave me earlier.”
“You’re welcome,” Mark said with a shrug, “but it wasn’t that much.”
“It was,” Ali said. “How’s James?”
“Better,” Mark said. “They’re starting the skin grafts. That’s good news. His parents even let me go in to see him once today. He was sleeping, but still. Visitors are limited to family members only. I think his mother said I was his brother.”
“Good,” Ali said. “You act like a brother.”
Mark was silent for a moment before adding, “I guess you heard that the woman in eight fourteen didn’t make it.”
Ali nodded. “I heard,” she said.
“Neither did the woman in eight twelve. Her name was Alva. She was smoking in a chair and fell asleep, and now she’s dead, too. I don’t think I could work in a place like this,” Mark added. “It would be too hard.”