J. Jance - Fatal Error

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.

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 phone. “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.