J. Jance - Trial By Fire

“So when do you start?” Dave asked.

“Next week,” she said. “In the meantime I have those two commencement speeches to give. I’m still working on them.”

“What are you going to say?”

“To the graduates?” Ali asked.

Dave nodded.

“That regardless of what their high school experience may have been, unqualified success or miserable failure, the world beyond high school is entirely different. They should go out into that world and explore it-see what there is to be seen and get their education. But eventually I hope some of them will feel compelled to come back home with whatever they’ve learned.”

Dave took a thoughtful sip of his wine. “After all,” Ali added, “that’s what you did.”

“I suppose,” he said.

“That’s also the real reason I had to say yes when Sheriff Maxwell asked me to help out,” she said. “Either that or face the fact that I’m a complete hypocrite.”

“You wouldn’t be a hypocrite even if you’d turned Sheriff Maxwell down cold,” Dave said. “That’s not who you are.”

“Thanks,” Ali said, smiling and accepting the compliment. “But what’s it going to be like? He says he wants me to shadow him next week and get an idea of what’s going on-sort of like one of those new waiters who follow the old ones around, smiling a lot but never touching a plate. I’m not looking forward to that. I have a feeling the people who are there already won’t exactly welcome me with open arms.”

“They don’t have a leg to stand on,” Dave pointed out. “None of them was willing to step up and take on the job, even when it was offered. Besides, you’re a consultant, remember? That word alone conceals a multitude of sins. You’ll be fine.”

“I’m not so sure,” Ali said, but Leland appeared in the doorway just then to announce that dinner was served. Since there was no point in agonizing over what might or might not happen in the future, Ali stood up and led the way into the house.

“Let’s go eat,” she said. “No sense letting it get cold.”

That night, long after Dave left, Ali lay awake and thought about the twists and turns of her life. She had been devastated when her television broadcast career had been ended without warning. She had walked away from her marriage to an adulterous spouse expecting to leave with her dignity and a reasonable property settlement. Her financial situation had changed remarkably when Paul Grayson was murdered prior to finalizing their divorce. As Paul’s surviving spouse, Ali had been left with far more financial security than she had ever expected. It wasn’t really necessary for her to go looking for work, but it seemed that, in this case, work had come looking for her.

On Thursday of that week, she delivered the commencement address at Sedona Red Rock High School. After giving what Ali hoped was a motivational speech, she watched with pride as one of her scholarship winners, Marissa Dvorak, rolled her wheelchair across the stage to accept her diploma. The Askins Scholarship award would enable Marissa to attend the University of Arizona, where she hoped to earn a degree that would allow her to work in the field of medical research.

As the Sedona High graduating class filed across the stage in alphabetical order, Ali noticed that the school’s second runner-up for the Askins Scholarship, a boy named Ricky Farraday, wasn’t listed in the program. Ali had scratched him from the list when she had learned, through Leland’s efforts, that Ricky had scammed his way into a large financial settlement by staging a phony hate crime. The school district had paid up, but Ali wondered if Ricky had transferred to another school or simply dropped out. He was bright enough, but if other people in the community had caught on to his shenanigans, the kids at school, along with the teachers, might have made life miserable for him-and in Ali’s opinion, deservedly so.

After the ceremony, Ali posed for photos with Marissa and her adoptive and very proud parents. Then she went home and read through another hundred pages in a book called Street Legal, a textbook on criminal investigative procedures written by a guy named Ken Wallentine. In her previous existence as a television news anchor, she had always believed in being prepared before she did an interview.

Now, faced with the prospect of being on the other side of the news process-the one being interviewed as opposed to the one doing the interviewing-Ali thought it reasonable to prepare in the same way. That’s where the textbook came in, giving her a crash course in pretrial criminal procedure. Then, on Friday, after reading for most of the day, she gave the commencement address for Mingus Union High.

When Ali’s speech was over, she watched with undisguised pride as the other of her two scholarship winners received her high school diploma. Haley Marsh, looking confident and determined, strode across the stage in her cap and gown with her almost three-year-old son, Liam, perched on one hip.

When Ali first met her, months earlier, Haley had seemed defeated and close to giving up. She had enrolled at Mingus Union High as a sophomore-a very pregnant and unmarried sophomore. She and her grandmother had moved to Cottonwood from Oklahoma in the aftermath of the vicious rape that had resulted in Haley’s unintended pregnancy.

Predictably, Haley’s well-established schoolmates at Mingus Union had treated the new arrival as a social pariah. For the next three years, Haley had soldiered on, persisting in being a good student if not an outstanding one. With her grandmother’s help, she had managed to eke out a decent GPA while also caring for her baby. By Haley’s senior year, however, the strain had taken its toll, and Haley had all but given up on her ambition of becoming a nurse. Her family’s straitened financial situation and her less than top-drawer grades made going on to college seem impossible. Instead, she had expected to use her high school diploma to help her land full-time work at a local discount store.

Ali’s appearance on the scene and her offer of an Askins Scholarship had changed all that. Suddenly, the possibility of Haley’s attending college was back on the table. By graduation night, Haley’s transformation was a wonder to behold. When Haley reached the principal, who was holding her diploma, she set Liam down beside her long enough to accept it. Taking the leather-bound document in hand, she passed it along to her bow tie-wearing son for him to hold during the principal’s congratulating handshake. While her son opened the diploma and seemed to try to read it, Haley blew a kiss to her beaming grandmother. Haley exited the stage as Liam’s self-possessed performance elicited some good-natured laughter from the crowd, as well as sporadic applause.

Ali was again drafted into a postgraduation photo session. The process was barely under way, however, when Marissa Dvorak rolled into the middle of it. With a squeal of joy, Liam abandoned his mother and raced over to Marissa, then clambered up into her lap.

The previous November, shortly after the two scholarship winners had been announced, Ali had arranged for Haley and Marissa to meet. That meeting of the two girls, both of them considered social misfits in their own schools, had proved to be an unqualified success. In the ensuing months the two girls had formed an unlikely but close friendship. They had both been accepted for the fall term at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, where Leland Brooks had succeeded in locating a wheelchair-accessible apartment that would suit them both. And Liam, too, apparently.

“You have no idea what a blessing Marissa is in our lives,” Haley’s grandmother, Nelda, said, appearing suddenly at Ali’s elbow. “Haley’s never had a friend like that, not a really close friend, not even back home in Oklahoma.”