J. Jance: Fatal Error

Brenda tried shouting then, one last time, in the vain hope that someone would hear her, but the down filling of the bedroll muffled her cries.

She heard the car’s motor start. She heard a racket of some kind, like a garage door opening. She felt the car start to move, and then she heard a crash as it stopped moving. Her head smashed hard against something she couldn’t see, and then another kind of blackness descended around her and carried her away.

Clairemont Mesa Business Park, San Diego, California

Gil heard the guy talking in the background on Ali’s phone. For a moment he was torn. Did he abandon his post and go give Ali backup, or did he stay where he was in case Ermina heard the racket out front and made a break for it? Then Gil heard another sound in the background-a garage door rolling open. He turned and sprinted back the way he had come, but he was the better part of a block away.

The grinding sound of a crash-of crunching metal and breaking glass-was immediately followed by a shout of surprise that could have been from someone being hit or hurt.

A car engine revved. More than revved, it roared. There was another horrendous grinding and scraping of metal on metal. Gil made it around the corner in time to see the back of a Cadillac DTS T-boned into the side of the Marquis. The security guard’s bicycle had been flung across the street. With its front wheel still spinning, it lay at an odd angle next to the gutter. In the middle of the street, next to the Marquis, lay the fallen security guard.

Gil took it all in as he ran. Then a woman in what looked like a tan tracksuit erupted out of the open garage door. She sped away from Gil with so much distance between them that he knew he’d never catch her. Just then, Ali sprang out of her car. She had to dodge around to keep from stepping on the fallen security guard, but then she caught her balance and ran too. She ran with her head down and her arms pumping; she ran like she meant it.

Gil paused briefly when he reached the security guard. He seemed to be coming around. Leaving the fallen man where he was, Gil pounded after the two fleeing women, who by then had disappeared around the far end of that same set of buildings.

As Gil rounded the corner, they were still far ahead of him, but he could see that Ali was closing the distance. She was a runner who worked at it chasing someone who didn’t. Ali didn’t shout out a warning that she was a police officer, because she wasn’t, so Gil did it for her.

“Stop,” he yelled. “Police.”

Sirens sounded in the background. Pulsing lights showed that slowing police cars were converging on the area. Gil couldn’t be sure if it was the shout or the sirens or neither one, but Ermina seemed to lose heart. She paused for a moment, and that moment was enough. Ali caught up with her.

“On the ground!” she shouted. “Now.”

For a few seconds, the two women stood facing one another panting, out of breath, glaring at one another in animal fury. Then, as Gil watched in amazement, Ali Reynolds grabbed Ermina Blaylock by the arm and executed a flawless hip toss.

He caught up with them just then, stumbling to a stop in time to see Ermina land hard on the sidewalk. Her face was bloodied. Ali was astraddle her with one knee in the small of her back.

“I tried to warn you,” Ali gasped breathlessly. “I told you to get on the ground!”

Moments later the business park was alive with men and women in windbreakers emblazoned with the letters FBI. Two agents stepped forward. One of them took charge of Ermina. The other one reached for Ali. Exhibiting his own badge, Gil waved him off.

“She’s okay,” he said. “She’s with me, but you’d better go check on your undercover guy. He’s down back there in the street. When I came by him, he seemed to be coming around. He’s probably wearing a vest, but those are better for stopping bullets than cars, so he might have internal injuries.”

One agent led Ermina away, while the other jogged off in the direction Gil had indicated. Once they were gone, Gil helped Ali to her feet.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Ali said. “The security guard was standing by the window hassling me when Ermina came screaming out of the garage without even glancing in her rearview mirror. I don’t know how fast she was going when she hit my car, but it was with enough force that it slammed the driver’s side of the Marquis into the guy on the bicycle. I saw him go down and the bicycle go flying, but I didn’t stop to check on him. She was getting away.”

“I think the guy on the ground is probably okay,” Gil said. “But what about you? Are you all right?”

“Still out of breath,” she managed. “But okay.”

“You’re fast,” he said admiringly. “It’s a good thing you were the one chasing her. She would have left me in the dust. Let’s go check on that guard. And I hope you’re right about your insurance, because that Mercury you rented is toast!”

The fallen FBI agent still lay on the ground with a group of fellow officers clustered around him. Somewhere in the distance came the shrill wail of an arriving ambulance. As Ali walked toward her car, one of the FBI agents broke away from the group around the injured officer.

“Okay,” he said. “Now I want to know who you are and what you’re doing here besides screwing up a major bust.”

As Gil reached again for his ID packet, Ali leaned inside the open window on the driver’s side of her wrecked car, looking for the rental agreement and her purse. Ali, Gil, and the agent all heard the noise at the same time-a muffled thump coming from the trunk of the wrecked Cadillac.

“What the hell is that?” the FBI agent demanded.

Ali was closest to the conjoined vehicles. She darted around the front of her car and arrived at the smashed rear end of the Cadillac just as another thump sounded from inside the crumpled trunk. The rear bumper had been smashed into the body of the vehicle, leaving the trunk lid jammed in place.

Wrenching open the driver’s door, Ali reached for the trunk release. She found it at last and pulled it, but nothing happened.

“Hey,” the agent called out, “somebody bring me a tire iron or a crowbar. We need to open this thing up.”

Thirty seconds of prying later, the trunk lid gave way and opened. While the agents worked to open the trunk, Gil stayed front and center. Once the trunk lid finally sprang open, Gil peered inside at what appeared to be a squirming mass of bedroll-a smelly squirming mass of bedroll. Gil lifted the slithering mass of bedroll out of the trunk and placed it gently on the weedy grass next to the driveway. One of the agents dropped his crowbar and unzipped the zipper, letting a terrible stench loose into the air.

“Thank you,” whispered a cracked voice that barely sounded human. “Water, please.”

Ali was the one who recognized her.

“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, falling on her knees beside the badly injured woman. “It’s Brenda Riley. I don’t believe it. She’s alive!”

“Hey,” the agent shouted. “Send those medics over here. Order another ambulance for Sinclair. Looks like this one is hurt a lot worse than he is.”

Sharp Mary Birch Hospital, San Diego, California

A squawking ambulance whisked Brenda Riley away from the scene and took her to the Sharp Mary Birch Hospital ER, which was only minutes away. Ali and Gil rode there in a black Suburban with San Diego FBI Agent in Charge Sam Hollingshead at the wheel. They had transferred the luggage to the Suburban-Gil’s single suitcase as well as the three cardboard boxes that still reeked of smoke and leaked trailing bits of sand.