by Jance, J. A.
Don’t, she wanted to scream aloud. Please don’t. I’m here. I’m alive and awake. Please don’t.
But she couldn’t say any of those things. She could hear herself screaming the desperate words in her head, but her lips still wouldn’t move. Her voice was lodged somewhere deep in her chest.
Gradually, the appalling pain seemed to lessen. The brightly lit room dissolved around her, and so did the voices. As she drifted away into nothingness, she hoped the dream wouldn’t come again, but she knew it would.
She understood that the moment she closed her eyes, the flames would be there again, waiting to consume her.
By the time Ali made it to Prescott the next morning, Gurley Street, from the sheriff’s department to Whiskey Row, was full of news-media vehicles. The arson story, confirmed or not, complete with suspected ELF-involvement (officially unconfirmed ELF-involvement), was evidently out in the world in a big way. News outlets from all over the state, and some national outlets as well, were apparently paying attention and in attendance.
Welcome to the three-ring circus, Ali thought as she searched for a parking place. And I’m the newbie ringmaster with no assigned parking.
She finally found a spot on the street three blocks away. When she stepped out of her Cayenne, someone was waiting for her. “Nice ride,” he said admiringly.
Ali recognized the voice at once—the ELF-centric reporter from the previous evening. “Thank you,” she said and then added, “good morning, Mr. Green.”
He seemed a little surprised that she knew his name—surprised and pleased. He wouldn’t be nearly as pleased if he knew she knew the Oswald part, but then again, for someone with properly moussed hair, perfect clothes, a perfect tan, and perfect teeth, that was only to be expected. It came with the territory; it was only his just due.
The man gave her what was supposed to be a disarming smile. Ali wasn’t disarmed. She wanted to ask him straight out what he needed, but she didn’t bother. She already knew the answer. Mr. Green was accustomed to receiving special treatment from Devon Ryan. No doubt he hoped to establish the same kind of cozy relationship with her.
Don’t hold your breath, she thought.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“I was wondering if I could have a word.”
“Sure,” she said agreeably. “For one word there’s no extra charge.”
Pausing slightly, he blinked at that comment, then he went on. “So you get to do the whole nine yards, the lighthearted stuff and the tough stuff, the cactus rustlers and the fires?”
If this is his way of winning me over, it isn’t working.
“That’s right,” she said. “I get to do it all. I’m a one-woman media relations phenomenon.”
He smiled again, letting her know he got the joke. “I want to apologize for putting you on the spot last night about that ELF fire up in Prescott,” he continued more seriously. “Someone told me later that you weren’t even living here at the time, so it’s completely understandable that you wouldn’t know about it.”
“I know about it now,” Ali told him. “I understand they call it Street of Dreams gone bad.”
“Now the same folks are back and doing it again,” he said.
Ali saw the trap and dodged it. Kelly Green had come to her looking for more than a private word. What he really wanted was a premature arson confirmation.
“You should probably see what Sheriff Maxwell has to say on that subject.” She glanced pointedly at her watch. “If I’m not mistaken, he’s about to start.”
“You couldn’t give me a little preview?”
Ali needed to put Kelly Green on notice that things had changed. “No,” she said firmly. “I don’t think so. Better you should get that information from the horse’s mouth.”
“You’re nicer looking.”
“I’m also late.”
While they had been talking, they had been walking toward the courthouse. Speeding up, Ali moved away from him and then shouldered her way through the throng of reporters waiting on the steps, sidewalk, and grass outside the courthouse. The building’s portico with its soaring columns provided a suitable background. A lectern, positioned front and center, was surrounded by a sea of microphones. Using her badge, Ali made her way to the top step and stood off to one side. She set her briefcase down at her feet just as Sheriff Maxwell and another man emerged through the glass door. The man stopped and stood beside Ali while the sheriff stepped up to the microphones, where he tapped noisily on one in particular, making sure that the loudspeakers parked on the courthouse steps were turned on and in good working order.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Thank you for coming. As I’m sure you’re all aware, we’re here this morning due to the incident that occurred outside the Camp Verde city limits last night,” he began. “Before I give you the particulars, I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome Agent Richard Donnelley and his team from the ATF field office in Phoenix, who will be assisting local authorities in this investigation.”
A murmur ran through the crowd. The presence of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives meant that arson was definitely on the table. Once the talk subsided, the reporters, with cameras and recorders running, settled in to listen while Sheriff Maxwell read from a prepared statement. Listening in the background, Ali found that the sheriff’s prepared text added little to what she had already said to a much smaller group of reporters the night before.
Sheriff Maxwell’s down-home delivery was peppered with bits of humor, including a bit about the accelerant-sniffing dog, Sparks, who was credited with making the first definitive arson confirmation. The gathered reporters responded to that bit of news with titters of laughter, and the sheriff waited in his genial delivery long enough for the laughter to filter through his audience before continuing. Ali could see that Maxwell was a commanding presence and totally at ease in front of the cameras. She also suspected that his easygoing affability and good-old-boy style of delivery would play well for television viewers watching the evening news.
Why does he need me? Ali wondered.
“As of this morning, some hot spots remain,” he continued. “What we’re hoping for now is assistance from the public. Whoever started these fires had to get to the site, and they had to leave it. Believe me, they weren’t dropped off by a helicopter, and Scotty didn’t beam them up, either.”
That line was good for another bit of general laughter.
“Our hope is that while they were driving to or from the incident, someone may have seen them. If you noticed any unusual activity or unusual vehicles in or around the Camp Verde area yesterday evening, please let us know. Call the information in to our Crime Stoppers hotline.” He read off the Crime Stoppers number twice before continuing. “We need to catch whoever did this. We need to put them out of business. With your help, we’ll do exactly that.
“Now please allow me introduce my counterpart from the ATF, Phoenix Agent in Charge Richard Donnelley. Dick.”
Donnelley took Sheriff Maxwell’s place at the lectern. The differences between them were immediate and striking. Sheriff Maxwell, in his starched khaki uniform as well as his signature boots, stood in stark contrast to Agent Donnelley’s full-court-press business attire—suit, tie, white shirt.
Not just any suit and tie, Ali told herself, and they didn’t come off the rack at Men’s Wearhouse, either.
Ali immediately identified Donnelley’s impeccably tailored gray suit as an Ermenegildo Zegna that probably came from Saks for two thousand bucks plus some change, rather than a Zegna Bespoke that would have gone for twice that. Donnelley’s silk repp tie was red-and-blue striped. It was harder to tell about the highly polished shoes, but Ali suspected they were most likely Johnston & Murphy.
In other words, Ali thought, Donnelley’s not just dressed for success. He’s really out to impress the unwashed masses as well as those who know their high-end designer clothing.
Sheriff Maxwell had maintained
a low-key approach with a few touches of homespun humor that had made him seem like one of the folks. Donnelley had apparently ridden into town on a high horse. His remarks were all business all the time, dry as a bone, and totally devoid of humor.
“Thank you, Max,” Donnelley said, moving forward and taking the sheriff’s place at the microphones.
That in itself was a faux pas. Sheriff Gordon Maxwell was Gordy to his friends but most definitely Sheriff Maxwell when it came to doing his job. As far as Ali knew, no one at all referred to him as Max. Ever. In other words, Donnelley’s one attempt at making nice had turned into a belly flop. His version of events added little to what Ali and most of the listening reporters already knew, but with two agencies jockeying for position it was only natural that both head guys needed to have their say.
Once Donnelley ended his official presentation, the two men fielded questions together. During the Q&A, Ali took mental notes of the reporters who were gathered there, cataloging their names and faces and trying to keep track of which outlets they represented. This briefing was better attended than hers had been. She understood that these were people she would be working with on a regular basis. To be effective, she needed to know who they were.
There were plenty of local print, radio, and TV reporters from Phoenix, Flagstaff, Sedona, and Prescott, as well as a couple of out-of-towners. Ali recognized Raymond Martin, a West Coast stringer for Fox News. Another, Alicia Hughes, hailed from truTV. The presence of the last two in particular implied that the possibility of ELF involvement had put the incident at Camp Verde on the national media map.
Of all the people there, Kelly Green was the one who kept pressing the ELF button over and over. The tone of his questions implied that he was under the impression that he knew far more on the topic than anyone else in the audience—Sheriff Maxwell and Agent Donnelley included. Green wanted everyone else to defer to his supposed brilliance.
In Ali’s previous life, guys like that had been a dime a dozen, and she hadn’t much liked them, especially when they regarded themselves as God’s gift to the opposite sex, as Mr. Green seemed to do.
After the briefing ended, Ali made a point of introducing herself to the two correspondents with national connections. After collecting contact information for both Raymond Martin and Alicia Hughes, Ali took her laptop-loaded briefcase and hiked the two blocks back to the sheriff’s office on Gurley. Once there, she made her way to the broom closet–sized office Sheriff Maxwell had designated as her Prescott headquarters.
Logging on to her computer, she found a mountain of e-mail. The subject line of most of them showed they were requesting information on the Camp Verde fires. One of them, with the subject line “Hassayampa,” came from the editor of the Wickenburg Weekly. He wanted more details about the cactus-rustling situation. The rest of the world might be focused on ecoterrorism with a capital E, but small-town newspapers still thrived on small-town events and people, with an emphasis on names.
Ali replied by suggesting the editor contact the rancher in question, Richard Mitchell. Smiling to herself, Ali also typed in the contact information for the Congress substation. Deputies Camacho and Fairwood wouldn’t be able to give out any more information about an ongoing investigation than she could. She wondered if they’d actually report the request to her.
Ali had just punched Send and was starting to deal with the other messages when Sheriff Maxwell popped his head inside her office. “Busy?” he asked.
“I am,” Ali said, “but what do you need?”
“I just had a call from Jake Whitman, the administrator of Saint Gregory’s Hospital down in Phoenix. They’re dealing with the same kind of media frenzy we are. They’ve got a clot of reporters parked in their lobby wanting information on our unidentified victim, who might or might not turn out to be an unidentified suspect. Mr. Whitman wanted to know what I’m going to do about it. I told him I’d ask you if you’d be willing to go down to the hospital and hold the fort for a while. Would you mind?”
“Not at all,” she responded. “If that’s what you need me to do, of course I will. How long do you think you’ll need me to be there?”
“Today for sure,” Sheriff Maxwell said. “Maybe tomorrow, too. If you need to stay overnight, book yourself a hotel room and expense it.”
“What if it turns out to be longer than overnight?” Ali asked.
Looking uncomfortable, Sheriff Maxwell hesitated momentarily before he answered. “According to the EMTs, the woman has second- and third-degree burns on her legs, hands, and arms—close to fifty percent of her body. With burns like that as well as smoke-inhalation injuries, chances are she won’t last much longer than that.”
“You really want me to be down there that long, just to take charge of the media during a death vigil?” Ali asked. “With everything else that’s going on, wouldn’t you be better off with me here?”
“Actually,” he said, “there’s one more thing you might do.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve hammered out an agreement with Donnelley that his folks will be the ones tracking the victim’s identity. Truth be known, in dealing with a major incident like this I don’t have enough detectives to cover all the bases. So I’m hoping you’ll keep your ear to the ground while you’re down there. If you hear anything about an ID on the victim, or anything else at all, I want you to let me know—ASAP.”
“Wait a minute,” Ali said. “You just told me that the ATF would be working on identifying the victim. Shouldn’t they be the ones keeping you apprised of everything they’ve learned?”
Sheriff Maxwell gave a mirthless chuckle. “My poor little honey lamb,” he said, shaking his head. “You really are new at all this, and you don’t know how things work.”
“What do you mean?” Ali asked.
“It’s like this,” Maxwell said. “Of course Agent Donnelley and I stood up together in front of all those cameras and microphones and acted like we were the very best of pals, long-lost friends, or maybe even blood brothers. Don’t believe it for a minute. That was strictly a public relations performance, and it’s also a big wad of B.S. His people aren’t gonna tell me or my people a damned thing they don’t have to. The reverse is also true. You tell them nothing without checking with me first. Got it?”
“Understood,” Ali said. “As plain as my woolly little butt.”
Half an hour later, Ali turned off her computer and repacked her briefcase. On the way out, she stopped by the front office to let them know that she would be gone from the office for an unspecified time. Holly Mesina seemed downright thrilled to hear the news.
The only thing she’d like better, Ali thought, was if she’d heard I’d been run over by a bus.
The media folks had disappeared. Now there was plenty of parking on the street, but when Ali made her way back to the Cayenne she was surprised to see a rectangular piece of paper stuck under the windshield wiper.
That’s just what I need, Ali thought, a parking ticket.
Except when she plucked the paper off the windshield, it wasn’t a parking ticket at all. It was an unsigned note with a Prescott area phone number. “Please call me,” it read.
Ali got into the driver’s seat, put her briefcase on the floor next to her, and dialed the number in question. “This is Ali Reynolds calling. Who’s ‘me’?” she asked when a woman answered.
The person on the other end of the line hesitated for a moment, then said, “I’m surprised. I didn’t think you’d call me back.”
If you’d said who you were, I might not have, Ali thought.
“You asked me to call,” she said aloud. “Who is this?”
“It’s Sally,” the woman said. “Sally Harrison. I used to be Sally Laird. I was afraid that with everything that’s happened, if I left my name, you wouldn’t return the call.”
“But I am returning it,” Ali pointed out a trifle impatiently. “I’m calling, as you asked. What can I do for you?”
“I wanted to talk t
o you. I wanted to tell you my side.”
If this was going to be a rehash of the union situation, Ali didn’t want to be involved.
“Look,” she said, “I’m working media relations for Sheriff Maxwell. I’m not at all concerned with events that occurred around here before I arrived on the scene. Those things don’t really matter to me, especially not right now. After what happened at Camp Verde last night, I have my hands full.”
“I didn’t do it,” Sally said.
“Didn’t do what?”
“I didn’t take drugs from the evidence room. Ever.”
The fervor in her voice made Ali pause. “Why are you telling me this?” she asked. “I’m a temporary consultant. Shouldn’t you be saying that to someone inside the department?”
Like Internal Affairs, Ali thought. Or maybe a defense attorney?
“Don’t make me laugh,” Sally replied. “I’m off on administrative leave, but that’s only temporary. Once they have a chance, I’m gone. The problem is, I can’t afford to lose this job.”
“As I said,” Ali told her, “this has nothing to do with me.”
“Yes, it does,” Sally insisted. “You’re in the middle.”
Exactly, Ali thought, and I need to stay that way.
“Have you met Devon Ryan yet?” Sally asked.
“I haven’t had the pleasure.”
“He’s good-looking,” Sally said. “He’s smart and funny, and he’s messed up my life. I’m about to lose my job. My marriage is on the rocks. Carston and I are in counseling to see if we can pull things back together. They’re saying it’s all about ‘conduct unbecoming,’ but that’s bogus. Devon’s slept around before, and so have other people in the department. What they’re after me for is evidence-room theft—that I didn’t do.”
“You’re saying someone’s framing you?” Ali asked.
“Yes, and it’s working.”
“Who would be doing that?” Ali wanted to know. “Why?”