Infamous (50 page)

“The gun guy’s computer was on. Someone had tried to wipe clean his purchase order file. But they failed. A.J.’s purchase order for that gun was in the trash file.”

“Did the computer experts who examined it make note of when the document was created or revised?” Alison asked.

“I don’t know,” Hugh admitted. “I assume so.”

“Yeah, well, call me back when you find out for sure,” she told him sharply. “Because I’ll bet you next week’s paycheck that A.J.’s alleged purchase order was either created or revised last night. And you know how certain I am that I’m right because you know how freaked out I get when it comes to money.”

“Alison,” Hugh said.

“He was with me,” Alison repeated. “All night.”

“So, what?” Hugh asked. “You didn’t sleep? At all? Not even a little?”

“I did sleep,” she told him. “But A.J. did, too.”

“So then you can’t be convinced—” he started.

“Actually,” she said. “I can. We were …” She cleared her throat. “Still connected when we woke up. We were both so tired, neither one of us must’ve moved at all. You know. After.”

And this was, as the kids say, TMI.

But Hugh didn’t let it go. “And you don’t think he could’ve sneaked out of bed, killed gun guy and come back with the intention of waking you up with a bang so that you’d think he’d been there the entire—”

Alison cut him. “But that’s just it. He didn’t have much of a … bang-maker. Not …” She cleared her throat again. “At first.”

“That’s dangerous, you know,” Hugh pointed out. “Using a condom twice.”

“We didn’t,” she said. “Use a condom. I’m on the pill and …”

“Holy crap, Alison!”

“No,” she said. “Listen. Because A.J. had a record of risky behavior ten years ago, he’s had himself tested, regularly. He’s clean—it’s been ten years. And we … kind of moved into a trust place where … It was my idea. I wanted to … give him something because …” She exhaled hard. “At the time, I didn’t think I could give him more than just that night. Which he spent with me, Hughie. All of it. It was around five fifteen when we woke up. Six thirty before we were dozing off again.”

“Hokay,” Hugh said. “I don’t suppose A.J. Gallagher has a non-crazy gay brother …?”

“No,” Alison said, “but he’s got a really adorable cousin.…” She cut herself off. “Hugh, whoever killed the gun collector wasn’t A.J.” She said it again, enunciating clearly. “He was with me. I think this man Brian, who Jamie saw outside the cabin after I was shot, I think he’s the killer. Because he also killed this man named Wayne—just outside of Jubilation. I think he’s also the man who ran you off the road.”

“No, that was Gene,” I said, but of course she couldn’t hear me.

Hugh wasn’t convinced. “The police have put out a BOLO for Gallagher,” he told her. “If you have a way to reach him, Al, you might want to let him know that. They have him down as armed and dangerous. And with his history of mental illness? They’re going to shoot first and ask questions later.”

“Oh, my God,” Alison breathed. “Hugh, you’ve got to tell Henry to tell them that he was with me.”

“You need to tell A.J. to turn himself in,” Hugh countered. “He should go, with his lawyer, to the police station and Jesus, I don’t know, lie down on the floor with his hands on his head.”

“Hugh—”

“I’ll be at the airport tonight, to pick you up when the plane lands,” he told her. “Your ETA is, like, three
A.M
., which is
proof that I love you. And if you really want to, I’ll go with you to the police, and you can tell them what you told me. And all about this Brian guy and Wayne and whoever else, too, okay?”

“Thank you,” Alison said, and she pushed the button that hung up the phone.

And then she surprised me by saying aloud, “Jamie, if you’re here, you need to go tell A.J. to turn himself in. He’s being set up—the fact that the gun collector was murdered when A.J. was with me is proof of that. I’m going to help him, but the first thing he needs to do is not get killed. Go tell him that. Now.”

And she picked up the phone and left the same message for A.J., who was, in fact, right down in the plane’s cargo hold.

Even Craig Lutz had called and left a message on A.J.’s cell phone, telling him to turn himself in.

Everyone was calling him, with the same message. Everyone but his mother, Tom, and Bev.

And as the jet landed in the heat of the Arizona night, as he heard—and Jamie verified—that Alison had disembarked, A.J. waited to find out whether or not his mother, with the best of intentions, had told the authorities where he was.

But a SWAT team didn’t rush into the plane’s luggage bay.

In fact, no one did. For a good long time.

And now he was getting antsy, knowing that Alison was already walking into possible danger. He sent Jamie to follow her, as he played some of his messages on his phone.

Lutz’s was one of the ones A.J. actually listened to, mostly because the former SEAL had texted him, too, saying
Listen to your fucking voicemail, bitch
.

A.J. had always found his friend’s irreverence hard to resist.

“Hey, man,” Lutz said in his recording. “Your mother called and told me what’s going on, and I gotta agree. It’s time to surrender. Don’t let them kill you—and you know that they will. They are scared motherfuckers—undertrained, understaffed, and underpaid—and they will shoot you dead if you try to run. Lookit, I’m in San Diego. Me and Reilly and Bozo are already in my truck. We’re heading out there, to Jubilation. We’ll connect with Alison, and we
will
keep her safe. I promise
you. I’ll call you when we reach her—should be around eight
A.M.
At that time, you
will
turn yourself in. I’m going to tell you how to do it, too, okay? Don’t just go walking up to some cop and expect not to get damaged. But we’ll go through that when it’s time. I’m here for you, bro. We’re going to make this right—I’ll make sure Alison doesn’t get hurt. Count on it. And call me if you need me. For anything, all right?”

He was just about to call Lutz back, to ask him to connect with Alison in Tucson, and then to call Alison herself and tell her to find the nearest police station and not leave the lobby until Lutz and co. arrived.

But the door finally opened, and the labradoodle’s owner—the co-pilot named Julio—came in to get him.

“Hey, buddy,” Julio said to the dog as he opened the cage. “Hey, Dexter. What a good boy. I bet you need to pee, don’t you? Yes, you do.”

The dog wasn’t the only one, but A.J. leaned back into the shadows, hoping that the friendly animal wouldn’t take the opportunity to come over and say hello. But Dexter hurried for the open door, straining at his leash.

Julio didn’t close the door behind him, and A.J. waited only a few seconds before creeping closer. He could have used Jamie’s eyes and ears, but it didn’t take him long to realize that there was no one around at that hour of the night. He slipped out onto the well-lit runway, trying to look as if he belonged there, aware as hell that a stranger in a restricted area of an airport was going to generate attention.

But he made it into the terminal using a truckload of packages from a FedEx plane as a shield, keeping the exhausted personnel and technicians from seeing him.

Once inside, he moved quickly through the shadows toward the openings where luggage from flights could be loaded onto a conveyor belt and sent out to waiting passengers. He went down the row toward the one at the very end, and peeked through its opening, pushing aside the straps that hung down to provide privacy for the workers—or maybe they were there to discourage irate passengers from going in search of their missing bags.

No one was in that part of the baggage claim area, so A.J. said a quick prayer and hopped out, turning so that he was facing the belt, as if waiting for his nonexistent luggage.

There was no shouting, no screaming, no questions, no nothing.

So he turned, and just like Dexter had done after the long flight, he took care of his first order of business by hurrying into the nearest men’s room.

A.J. finally called Alison back.

Her cell phone rang while she and Hugh were talking to the police at a special security office right there in the airport.

There was no way she could answer his call, sitting there with a bored but heavily armed trooper named Richard Salazar, and she immediately silenced the ringer.

It was twice as frustrating, because it was clear that the Arizona state police, like their counterparts in Alaska, had already decided that A.J. was their one and only suspect.

She tried to explain about Wayne and Brian without mentioning Jamie, but all that did was convince Salazar that A.J. was involved in Wayne’s death, too.

Apparently the name of the man who’d been found dead in a burning car north of Jubilation
had
been Wayne, which freaked her out a little bit.

Salazar wouldn’t give her any additional information, even when she asked to see a picture of the deceased. She would have to contact the FBI, he told her. The case was theirs now.

“But it’s possible that I know him,” she told the trooper. “I may have seen him, right before his death, in the company of a man named Brian, who killed him.”

But he was not impressed. A.J. Gallagher was, without a doubt, the only suspect they were looking for. They weren’t interested in hearing about any other options or possibilities.

Her dear friend Hugh wasn’t particularly impressed either. Not even when they were walking to the parking lot, when Alison listened to and relayed to him the gist of the message that A.J. had left.

“He wants us to stay here,” she told Hugh, who was still
peeling and itching from his bad sunburn. “His friend, Craig Lutz, is driving out from San Diego. He’s going to meet us here, at which point A.J.’s going to turn himself in.”

Alison really wanted A.J. to turn himself in. The fact that he was still out there, with both the police and now the FBI looking for him, scared the hell out of her.

“Alison, I love you,” Hugh told her as he unlocked his Jeep, “you know that. But I am not going to deliver you into the hands of one of Gallagher’s potentially equally crazy friends. We’re going to Jubilation, where Henry is expecting us. This Lutz guy can connect with us there—when we’re surrounded by security guards.” And then he played his most convincing card. “Jubilation’s closer to San Diego. If we meet Lutz there, A.J. will turn himself in that much sooner.”

Alison dialed A.J.’s cell, and—of course—went right to his voicemail.

“Hi,” she said, as she got into Hugh’s Jeep, “I know you’re not going to want to hear this, but … We’re going to meet Craig Lutz in Jubilation. Tell him to go to the main production trailer. I’ll be in there, with Henry and Hugh.”

And about a dozen armed guards, but she didn’t want to tell him that. Of course, he probably knew.

As redheaded Hugh’s Jeep pulled out of the airport parking lot, a dark sedan with heavily tinted windows followed.

And okay, yeah. Maybe I was paranoid. Maybe I was seeing trouble where none existed.

Maybe Dolly Parton had just arrived in town and was being driven to her hotel.

I hovered close, closer, keeping up with the car as it followed the Jeep onto the road, heading for the same airport exit. There were only a few ways in or out, so it wasn’t that alarming that both vehicles would be traveling in the same direction.

Still, there was something about the way that the sedan stayed slightly back from the Jeep that made me nervous.

So I stuck my head into the car and took a look-see.

There was no one in the back—not Dolly or anyone else.
The car was empty save for the driver, whose back-of-the-head wasn’t immediately familiar to me. He had short dark hair. No silver-dollar bald spot like Gene. And unlike Wayne, he still
had
a head. I maneuvered around to see the man’s face, and would’ve crapped my pants in surprise, had I either the ability to crap or real pants.

It was Brian. He’d gotten his long hair cut, no doubt after A.J. had gone Rambo on his ass, up in Alaska. He had a few big scratches on his cheek, too, like he’d run face-first into a fir tree.

He must’ve gotten on a boat to Juneau directly after returning the Robinsons’ SUV to their garage, then boarded a plane to Seattle and points south immediately after that.

I rode with him in his sedan while I tried to figure out my best move. Should I scramble over into Hugh’s Jeep and try to warn Alison directly, or jump to A.J. and get him to call her and warn her?

I’d do both, I decided. I’d jump to A.J. first, though, and I went, closing my eyes and projecting myself …

Directly into Silas Quinn’s old house in Jubilation.

I didn’t recognize it at first, because it had changed a lot over the years. But then I saw the man I’d originally thought was Gene when he’d first arrived on set. His name was Neil Sylvester and he was Quinn’s great-great-grandson. He was also as tightly wound and tense now as he’d been when I’d first seen him.

He was sitting at a table in what had long ago been Melody’s kitchen, wearing a silk bathrobe with a green-and-brown paisley print that hung open to reveal his beer belly and a sagging tattoo of a tired-looking dragon on his man-boob.

It was not a pretty sight.

He had a can of beer open on the table in front of him, and he spun it around and around, making patterns with the condensation.

It wasn’t until he spoke that I realized there was another man in the kitchen with him.

“Look, Skip,” he said. “I think it’s time to quit.”

“You really want to spend the rest of your life in jail?” the other man asked, and I realized he was that actor Trace Marcus’s assistant.

Neil shook his head. “I won’t,” he said. “I borrowed some money—that’s my only crime. I’m not involved—”

“Oh, you are,” Skip said, and his phone rang, interrupting him. He answered it with words that chilled me. “Yeah, this is Loco.”

Skip Smith was
Loco
—the man that tall Brian of the former ponytail had been talking to after Wayne’s murder.

“Good,” he said into his phone, telling Neil, “Brian is following them. They’re heading back to Jubilation. He hasn’t got them yet, but he will. Soon. He’s calling us now because he’s going to turn on the machine, which means he’ll be out of touch, too.”