J. Jance - Fatal Error

Ali stopped behind her. “Donnatelle, is something wrong?”

“I flunked the evidence handling test,” she said. “Sergeant Pettit just told me if I screw up again, I’m out. I can’t lose this chance,” she sobbed. “I can’t.”

When she finally managed to push open the door to her room, Ali followed her inside uninvited. Donnatelle heaved herself down on the bed, still weeping. Looking around, Ali noticed that, unlike the comfortable messiness of her own room, this one was eerily neat. Nothing was out of place. The only personalization consisted of a framed photo on the small study desk-a picture of Donnatelle flanked by three smiling youngsters, two boys and a girl. The girl, clearly the youngest, was missing her two front teeth.

“Are these your kids?” Ali asked.

Donnatelle nodded but didn’t answer.

“Who takes care of them while you’re here?”

“My mom,” Donnatelle said.

Ali didn’t ask about the children’s father. He wasn’t in the photo, and he probably wasn’t in the picture anywhere else either.

“What did you do before you came to the academy?” Ali asked.

Sniffling, Donnatelle sat up. “I was a maid, in a hotel,” she said. “But I wanted to do more. I wanted to do something that would make my kids proud of me-something besides making other people’s beds. So I went back to school and got my GED. The sheriff said he’d give me a chance, but I’m not good at taking tests, I’m scared of guns, and Sergeant Pettit has it in for me.”

School had always been easy for Ali. She aced written exams at the academy in the same way she had aced exams in high school and college. And she had come here with a more than nodding acquaintance with her own handgun and how to use it. Her notable failure with Jose Reyes was the first real black mark on her academy record.

Donnatelle, on the other hand, had come to the academy with a school record that was less than exemplary, but Ali found her determination to improve herself for the sake of her children nothing short of inspiring.

“That may be true,” Ali said ruefully, “but I seem to remember you were fine in the hip toss. You threw your guy down and you don’t have a black eye either. Besides I think Sergeant Pettit has a problem with women-any women.”

Donnatelle sat up and gave Ali a halfhearted smile. “But my guy wasn’t as big or as tough as yours was.”

“Are you going home this weekend?” Ali asked.

Donnatelle shook her head. “It’s too far. I’m going to stay here and work on the evidence handling material. They’re going to let me retake the exam next week. As for the gun thing?” She shrugged hopelessly. “I don’t know what to do about that.”

“Had you ever handled a gun before you got here?”

Donnatelle shook her head. “No,” she said. “Not ever.”

“You need to practice,” Ali said. “Spend as much time on the range this weekend as you can.”

“I was going to, but now I can’t,” Donnatelle said. “They told me the range here is going to be closed because it’s a holiday.”

“Use a private one then,” Ali said. “Go practice somewhere else.”

“But where?”

“Just a minute,” Ali said. She returned to her room and woke up her iPhone. She returned to Donnatelle’s room a few minutes later with a list of five shooting ranges in the nearby area.

“Try one of these,” she said. “And next week, when I get back, maybe I can help you with some of the written material.”

“You’d do that?” Donnatelle asked.

“Absolutely,” Ali told her with a smile. “After all, the girls on the thin blue line have to stick together, don’t we?”

Rising from the bed, Donnatelle went into the bathroom and washed her face. Then rushing to keep from being late, they hurried to their next class. When the recruits were finally dismissed at four o’clock on that scorching Friday afternoon, Ali joined what seemed like most of Peoria in migrating north on I-17 in hopes of escaping the valley’s crushing heat. On the way Ali speed-dialed High Noon Enterprises and spoke to Stuart Ramey, B.’s second in command about doing a background check on Richard Lattimer, originally from Grass Valley, California. Ali could have gone directly to B. with her request for information, but she had grown accustomed to dealing with Stuart during B.’s many absences. Besides, Ali assumed B. was probably dealing with a killer case of jet lag and there was a very good chance he was napping. She gave Stuart all the information she could remember from what Brenda had told her. She even dragged out the scrap of paper with the addresses on it and gave that information to Stuart as well.

“You want me to mail this to that address in Sacramento?” Stuart confirmed. “Do you want a copy too?”

“Why not?” Ali said. “I’m a little curious about this guy. The idea that he could get a fairly intelligent, accomplished woman to fall for him sight unseen is a little over the top.” Of course, Ali realized that Brenda had severe “issues,” but she was nonetheless baffled. Brenda had, after all, worked as a journalist, albeit the eye candy variety.

Stuart laughed aloud. “You’d be surprised,” he said. “And you’d also be surprised at the number of requests we get these days that are just like this-somebody checking out the real deal of the new person who’s supposed to be the love of his or her life.”

“How long does it take?” Ali asked.

“The background check? Not long,” Stuart said. “A couple of days at most, but this is a three-day weekend, so some of my sources may not be back online until Tuesday.”

“That’s all right,” Ali said. “No rush.”

As far as she was concerned, there was no big hurry. Yes, she had agreed to order the background check on Brenda’s behalf, and she was doing so because Ali Reynolds was a woman of her word. But Ali could see that Brenda’s problems went far beyond her simply being dumped by a boyfriend. Somehow, in the last few years of troubles, Brenda Riley had lost herself.

That could have been me, Ali thought. If it hadn’t been for the people around me, I might have gone down the tubes the same way.

Sedona, Arizona

One of the people who had helped keep Ali on track was B. Simpson and his considerable charms. Ali and Bartholomew Quentin Simpson had both been born and raised in Sedona, but Ali was enough older than he was that they hadn’t been friends or even acquaintances during grade school and high school. They weren’t formally introduced until years later, when as adults and in the aftermath of failed marriages, they had both returned to their mutual hometown to recover their equilibrium.

Due to unmerciful teasing from his classmates, B. had shed his first name in junior high. The other kids had ragged on him constantly about that “other” Bart Simpson until he had abandoned his given name entirely. B.’s nerdy interest in computer science may have made him the butt of jokes in small-town Arizona, but it had translated into two successful careers-the first one in the computer gaming industry and his current gig as an internationally recognized computer security guru.

After a rancorous divorce, B. had returned to Sedona as a reluctant bachelor with no particular interest in cooking. For months he had survived by eating two meals a day at the Sugarloaf Cafe. Over time he had struck up a friendship with Ali’s father. It was Bob Larson who had suggested to Ali that she might want to turn to B.’s start-up computer security company, High Noon Enterprises, to safeguard her computers.

From shortly after they met, B. had made it clear that he was interested in more than a client-only relationship, and the man should have qualified as a good catch. He was an eligible bachelor with plenty of money and a beautiful custom-built home. He was tall, good-looking, and had a pair of gray-green eyes that seemed to send female hearts into spasms. He functioned well under difficult circumstances. He wasn’t needy. He didn’t whine.