Fatal Error

by J. A. Jance

  It irked Ali that Sheriff Maxwell couldn’t scrape up enough money to pay her but had managed to find enough funds in the budget to pay Mike. It probably wasn’t a living wage, because Mike was living with his parents, but still . . .

  One of the customers at the counter held up his coffee mug and caught Ali’s attention. “Can I have a refill?”

  “Sure.”

  Ali poured coffee, dropped off a check, picked up some menus, and put them back in the holder over by the cash register.

  So what had Ali done since that day of her surprising “furlough”? She’d read books, dozens of them. She was just now working her way through The Count of Monte Cristo. It was a book Mr. Gabrielson, her English teacher at Mingus Mountain High, had recommended to her years ago. With nothing else pressing, Ali had decided this forced hiatus was a perfect opportunity to read all those books she had said she would get around to reading someday when she had time. At the moment finding time for reading was not a problem.

  Reading aside, Ali Reynolds was bored. She was beyond bored. When she’d been working for the department, she’d enjoyed everything about her job including the hour-and-a-half commute on those days when she’d drive from Sedona to the county seat in Prescott. Yes, she hadn’t been well accepted by some of the old-timers there, but she’d been working on getting along with them and she was surprised to discover that, once she was sent packing, she missed everything about her work for the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department, including some of the prickly clerks in the front office.

  Ali’s mother had suggested that Ali give the garden club a try, but Ali’s lack of anything resembling a green thumb precluded that. She had zero artistic skill, so taking up drawing or painting wasn’t an option. She didn’t play golf or tennis. She didn’t ride horses. She wasn’t into hot-air ballooning.

  When B. was in town, the two of them had fun hiking in Sedona’s red-rock wilderness, but these days B. was out of town as much or more than he was home. Most of the time her parents were bound up with the Sugarloaf Café and their own peculiar squabbles. Chris and Athena were building their own lives together and getting ready for the birth of their twins.

  Ali had Leland Brooks to fall back on, of course. He kept her house running in tip-top shape. Theirs was a pleasant, untroubled relationship with each respecting the other’s privacy, but Leland wasn’t someone she could talk to, not really talk.

  What Ali missed more than anything was having friends, close friends. Her best pal from high school, Reenie Bernard, had been dead for years. Dave Holman was still working for the sheriff’s department as their lead homicide investigator. Dave and Ali were friends, but when Dave wasn’t at work, he was preoccupied with raising his two teenaged daughters.

  Ali had one new friend, a seventysomething nun named Sister Anselm. They had met in the course of caring for a badly injured burn victim and had bonded after surviving a shootout with a suicidal ecoterrorist. Sister Anselm lived at Saint Bernadette’s, a Sisters of Providence convent in Jerome that specialized in treating troubled nuns. Unlike Ali, Sister Anselm was fully employed, either at the convent itself or traveling all over Arizona as a patient advocate for severely injured and mostly indigent patients.

  Had anyone asked Bob and Edie Larson about their religion, they would both have claimed to be Lutheran. Because Sunday mornings were big business at the Sugarloaf, other than attending occasional weddings and funerals, they’d barely stepped inside a church of any kind for years. Having grown up as a relatively unchurched child, Ali had remained so as an adult and had raised Chris without regular church attendance. In advance of the twins’ birth, Athena and Chris had joined the congregation of Red Rock Lutheran.

  All that background made the growing friendship between Ali and Sister Anselm seem unlikely, but the two women managed to get together once a week or so for a quick dinner or for one of Leland Brooks’s sumptuous English teas. Sister Anselm was a trained psychologist, and it sometimes occurred to Ali that their visits turned into informal counseling sessions in which Ali ended up grumbling about being let out to pasture.

  It was at Sister Anselm’s gentle urging that Ali had broached the idea of sending Bob and Edie away on a January cruise. January, of course, was the best time for them to go since it was still far too chilly in Sedona for a full snowbird onslaught. That would come later in the spring.

  The front door opened. Ali was pulled from her reverie by a group of eight people who piled into the room, bringing with them a gust of cold air and a buzz of conversation. Jan Howard, the Sugarloaf’s longtime waitress, had been outside on a break, puffing on one of her unfiltered Camels. She hurried inside as well. She grabbed up a handful of menus and helped the new arrivals sort themselves into three groups. A four-top and a two-top went to booths in Jan Howard’s station. The other two made for Ali’s counter. As they sat down to study the menus, Ali went to make a new pot of coffee.

  For the next two hours she worked nonstop. When they finally closed the Sugarloaf’s front door on the last lunchtime customer at two thirty in the afternoon, Ali was beyond tired, and that was before they finished doing the cleanup work necessary to have the place ready to open the next morning.

  When it was finally time to head home, she could hardly wait. She was ready to shower, take a nap, and sit with her feet up.

  She had earned it.

  11

  Sacramento, California

  In terms of getting sober, Brenda’s breaking and entering arrest the previous October had proved to be pivotal. That humiliation was the last straw, the one that had finally convinced her to crack open the door to her very first AA meeting. Since then, she’d been fighting for sobriety on a daily basis and was halfway through those first critical ninety meetings in ninety days.

  Just past noon on a Friday in late January, Brenda Riley’s cell phone vibrated inside her pocket just as the AA meeting moderator was leading the Serenity Prayer. Her mother, Camilla Gastellum, hadn’t been feeling well that morning as Brenda left for the meeting. Concerned about her, Brenda hurried out of the church basement and answered the phone without bothering to check caller ID.

  “Hi, Mom,” Brenda said. “Are you okay?”

  “Someone just called here looking for you,” Camilla said. “At first I thought she might be another bill collector, and I wasn’t going to give her your number. It turns out, though, that she’s calling about your book. She says you’ve contacted her before and wanted to interview her.”

  Of the fifty-seven names listed in Richard Lowensdale’s Storyboards folder, Brenda had spoken or attempted to speak with all of them. Some of them had refused to speak to her outright or had accused Brenda of lying about their particular iteration of Richard. Others had been happy to have the mask ripped from the face of their present or former “cyber-lover” so they could begin to come to grips with the emotional damage he had done in their lives. Embarrassed by their own gullibility, some of those spoke to Brenda only on condition of anonymity.

  Brenda was a trained journalist. She knew how to follow stories, and she had done so. Using the storyboard data as a starting point, she had tracked down one woman after another. What she found most disturbing in all this was that the details she discovered about the women’s lives appeared to coincide with the information gleaned from Richard’s files. Each of them had willingly revealed her innermost life to a man who had given her nothing but empty lies in return. From what Brenda’s mother was saying, it appeared that one of the reluctant interviewees was now ready to come forward.

  “Did she leave her name?” Brenda asked.

  “No, but I did give her this number. I hope that’s okay. She said she was going to call.”

  “Sure, Mom,” Brenda said. “That’s fine. Are you okay?”

  “I’m still feeling a little puny. I think I’m going to go lie down for a while.”

  “Turn off the phone then so you can get some rest.” Brenda’s phone alerted a new incoming call from a number unavailable p
hone. “I’m sure that’s her calling now. I have to go.”

  “Is this Brenda Riley?”

  “Yes,” Brenda said. “Who is this?”

  “My name is Ermina Blaylock, but everyone calls me Mina,” the woman said. Her English was precise, but there was more than a hint of an eastern European accent. “Your mother gave me your number. I believe you attempted to contact me a few months ago about a book you’re writing about Richard Lowensdale. At the time I wasn’t interested.”

  Ermina Blaylock’s Storyboard file was the only one that had contained no information other than her name, date of birth, and social security number. There were none of the phone or e-mail exchanges that had been part of the other women’s files, so there had been no details for Brenda to check on either. The lack of information had intrigued her. If there had been no correspondence between them, why was Ermina’s name in Richard’s list in the first place? Was she someone Richard had targeted who had been smart enough to turn him down?

  Even Richard couldn’t have had a one hundred percent success rate, and Brenda suspected that the names of the women who didn’t make that initial cut never hit the Storyboard folder. Brenda had attempted to do some fact checking on her own, but as far as Ermina Blaylock was concerned, she could locate nothing about the woman prior to her marriage to widower Mark Blaylock in 2002.

  “Are you interested now?” Brenda asked.

  “Yes,” Ermina said. “If you still want to speak to me, that is.”

  “You’re aware that Richard was involved with any number of women?”

  “Yes,” Ermina said. “In your book, will you be naming names?”

  “Only with permission,” Brenda said. “Some of the women who spoke to me insisted on anonymity.”

  “Sounds good,” Ermina said. “I’d probably want that too.”

  “When do you want to get together?” Brenda asked.

  “It happens I’m in Sacramento today, and I believe you are too. I know it’s late, but what about lunch? We could meet somewhere, or I could stop by and pick you up.”

  After receiving yet another ticket for driving with a revoked license, Brenda had given up “borrowing” her mother’s car. These days when she went someplace, she took a cab or a bus or she walked.

  Brenda glanced at her watch. She had already missed most of the meeting. She was wearing a pair of sweats, which meant she wasn’t dressed to go anywhere decent for lunch. It would take her half an hour to walk home and change clothes. If her mother was taking a nap, maybe she could get in and out of the house without waking her.

  “If you wouldn’t mind, how about picking me up in about an hour?” Brenda gave Ermina the exact address and then set off at a brisk walk. One of the things she had done was use other sources to verify what the women in Richard’s life had told her about their lives. As far as Ermina was concerned, there was no information available. By the time Brenda reached the house on P Street she had come up with a plan.

  She entered the quiet house and hurried to her upstairs bedroom. Brenda changed into more appropriate clothing, wishing she had footwear that weren’t tennis shoes. She took another crack at fixing her hair and makeup and went downstairs. The dining room often doubled as Brenda’s home office. She kept a printer and an elderly laptop on top of the wooden hope chest she had moved from her bedroom to her make-do headquarters.

  With the printer and the computer out of the way, Brenda used the key from her purse to unlock the chest. The booze bottles she had once concealed inside it when it had been what she called her “hopeless chest” were long gone. Some of the liquor had been drunk, but when she finally got serious about getting sober, she had emptied the others down the drain in her bathroom. Now the locked chest held hope once more. It was where Brenda filed everything about her book project, including her copies of the contract she had signed. It was where she kept the passbook to her newly established bank account, printed accounts of her interviews with Richard’s various victims, as well as the printouts she had made from Richard’s Storyboard folder.

  At very the bottom of the heap, she found the file that contained the original background check High Noon Enterprises had done on Richard, the one Ali Reynolds had ordered for her. There was a phone number at the top of the page. She dialed the number and then disconnected the call while the phone on the other end was ringing.

  Instead, after returning all the paperwork to the chest, locking it, and then stowing the key in her purse, she opened her laptop, booted it up, and jotted off a quick e-mail.

  Dear Ali,

  You’ll be glad to know that I’m finally getting my head screwed on straight, and yes, I am in treatment. Finally. I’m working on a book about Richard Lowensdale and all the women’s lives he has adversely impacted through his cyberstalking.

  I’m having trouble locating information on one of the women on his list, Ermina Vlasic Cunningham Blaylock, who is either Richard’s former employer or the wife of his former employer. I’m guessing the company was in her name in order to latch on to the women-owned business gravy train in government contracts.

  I started to call the company you had do the background check on Richard last summer. Then I decided that they might take the request more seriously if it came from you instead of from me. If there’s any charge, you’ll be relieved to know that I’m now in a position to pay for it myself even if I haven’t earned back the right to have my own credit card.

  I’m attaching everything I know about Ermina below. Thanks in advance for your help. I expect I’ll be talking to her today and tomorrow, so the sooner I can have the info the better.

  Brenda R.

  After pressing send, Brenda closed the laptop and put it away. Then she hurried downstairs. Her mother’s worsening vision problems made leaving Camilla a note impossible.

  I’ll call her later, Brenda thought.

  She stepped out on the front porch just as an older-model silver Lincoln Town Car pulled to a stop in front of the house. As Brenda hurried forward, the passenger window rolled down. A well-dressed woman was at the wheel.

  “Brenda?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Brenda answered.

  “I’m Ermina,” the woman said. “Get in.”

  Ermina Blaylock was lovely. Her auburn hair glowed in the cold winter sunlight that came in through the sunroof. She had a flawless complexion and fine features.

  “Thank you for picking me up, Ermina,” Brenda said. “I don’t have a car right now, and that makes getting around tough.”

  “No problem,” the woman said. “But call me Mina. Everybody does.”

  12

  Grass Valley, California

  Waiting to see if Mina would show that Friday, Richard had a tough time concentrating. He was distracted enough that he didn’t dare do any of his usual Internet correspondence. It was important to keep all his stories straight, and he didn’t want to end up saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.

  He had delivered his completed programming fix to Mina the week before. He knew the test flight had been scheduled for Wednesday. He and Mina were still operating under his eyeball-to-eyeball protocol, so she didn’t send him an e-mail. She didn’t call.

  She had told him that if the test flight was successful, she would bring him his bonus on Friday, so Richard waited on tenterhooks. Earlier in the morning he had briefly considered cleaning house in advance of her visit, but he had eventually decided against that. He was sitting at his desk watching for her through the living room window when she arrived, apparently on foot. She pushed open the lopsided gate and walked up the weed-littered sidewalk.

  When Richard had first returned to Grass Valley, his neighbors had been incredibly curious about him. He wasn’t a very personable guy, and he’d been firm in rejecting their overtures of friendship. Over time they had adjusted to the fact that he was reclusive. If they wondered about why he ordered anything and everything online, they didn’t discuss any of that with him.

  Because the neighbors
were used to a steady stream of delivery folks who left their vehicles on the street below and trooped up and down the sidewalk leading to Richard’s house, he and Mina had hit upon her masquerading as a delivery person whenever she came to see him.

  Today, as usual, Mina arrived on his doorstep using a faux UPS driver uniform with brown khaki trousers and a brown jacket. And as she had done on previous occasions, she carried a stack of boxes to lend credence to the disguise.

  Richard didn’t want to appear overeager. Nonetheless, he hurried to the door to meet her. “It’s about time you got here,” he said. “How did it go?”

  “How do you think it went?” Mina asked with a smile as she set down her boxes. “I’m here bearing gifts, aren’t I?”

  “Great.” Richard could barely contain his relief. “Come on in.”

  He led the way into the living room. He was halfway back to his desk when a powerful blow hit him squarely on the back of the head. Down he went.

  By the time Richard struggled back to woozy consciousness, she had secured him to one of the dining room chairs with packing tape—probably his own packing tape from the dining room—and there was tape over his mouth as well. He was in a sitting position, but the chair had tipped over onto its side.

  The room was surprisingly dark, as though night had fallen while he was unconscious. Mina was seated at the desk in front of his computer, her face eerily aglow in the lamplight. She was dressed in clothing that was different than he remembered. The brown uniform was gone. Her shoes were covered with something that looked like surgical booties; she wore gloves.

  Struggling to loosen the bonds, Richard tried to speak. He meant to say, “What are you doing?” but his words came out in an incomprehensible mumble.