J. Jance - Trial By Fire

She was forced to sit through the remainder of the interminable meeting, in which a woman from the county human resources department offered a long, tedious discussion about the open-enrollment period for the county’s redesigned health insurance program, as well as a detailed explanation of new benefits. None of that had anything at all to do with Ali; since she was a consultant rather than a permanent employee, she wasn’t a qualified participant.

When the meeting finally ended, the room emptied quickly. Before leaving, Sheriff Maxwell stopped long enough to introduce Ali to his three sector commanders as well as the sergeant in charge of Technical Services. Ali did her best to catalog the names and faces, but she knew that would take time. A few other people stopped off to introduce themselves before they, too, drifted out of the room. Once they were gone, the last man standing was Dave Holman.

She looked at him and shook her head. “That was fun,” she said. “Thanks for tossing me into the lions’ den. What’s really going on here?”

“A bit of a range war, actually,” he said. “Some of the younger guys are trying to decertify the old union, Arizona Peace Officer and Employee Local 76, and put in a new one, International Union of Deputy Sheriffs, which would represent sworn officers only and leave the other employees out in the cold. Devon Ryan, the former public information officer, and Sally Harrison, his gal pal, were both officers in the old union, which claims they were put on leave in order to make it easier to decertification easier.”

“Which is why no one is willing to take the job,” Ali concluded. “Because anyone who takes it will be considered a union-busting scab by one side or the other. What does that make me, and which side are you on?”

“ Arizona is a right-to-work state,” Dave explained. “I don’t belong to either of the unions because I don’t have to. But Gordy’s a good guy and I could see that the two sides are in the process of tearing him apart, like a pair of dogs worrying a bone.”

As small business owners, Ali’s parents had never belonged to unions of any kind. Neither had their long-term employees. In her previous career Ali had joined unions because membership had been a prerequisite to taking a job in some places, but she understood Dave’s take on the situation. It was pretty much her own.

“You could have told me about all this up front,” Ali said.

“I suppose so,” Dave said, “but if I had, would you have done signed on?”

“Probably not,” Ali said.

Dave grinned at her. “See there? It’s a lot harder to back out now that you’ve been introduced to a roomful of people. So how about it? Can I drag you down to Kate’s and buy Yavapai County ’s new public information officer a cup of coffee?”

Ali relented. “I guess so,” she agreed with a laugh. “But the operant word here is ‘temporary,’ not ‘new.’ ”

“Right,” Dave agreed. “I stand corrected.”

“Don’t you have something better to do?”

“Actually, I don’t,” Dave said. “Since I’m not a member of either camp, Sheriff Maxwell asked me to take charge of you. You need to be decked out in your own Kevlar vest, one that you can wear under civilian clothes. You also need working ID badges that’ll let you in and out of the department as well as in and out of this end of the building. That way you won’t have to call down and ask for an escort.”

“Which reminds me,” Ali said. “Who is the sourpuss behind the partition out in the public lobby? She acted like she was ready to bite my head off.”

“A younger woman, but not all that good-looking?” Dave asked. “She wears glasses and sort of resembles a horned toad?”

Ali couldn’t quite suppress a giggle. Dave’s incredibly uncomplimentary description was also on the money.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s the one.”

“That’s Holly Mesina, Sally Harrison’s best friend. The two of them go way back.”

“I take it she’s not too happy about any of what’s going on,” Ali said, “and most especially my showing up on the scene?”

“That’s right,” Dave said. “She thinks it’s all a witch hunt on Gordy’s part.”

“As in, any friend of my enemy is my enemy,” Ali added.

“You’ve got it,” Dave agreed. “Now, how about that cup of coffee? Then we’ll take care of the Kevlar vest, not that you’re ever going to need it.”

It was a grueling week. On the days Ali had to go all the way to Prescott, the three-hour round-trip made her think she was back to doing a southern California commute, except for the fact that there was a lot less traffic. And far more varied terrain.

On Friday, to reach the sheriff’s Seligman substation, she’d had to pass through Flagstaff and a vast ponderosa forest. Today, on her way to visit the substation in Congress, she had to drive through Prescott and then down Yarnell Hill, passing from pine to piñon to prickly pear and yucca and finally to saguaro.

When Ali had worked on the East Coast, she had discovered there were plenty of people there who assumed that Arizona was all saguaros all the time, but that wasn’t true. Saguaros are picky about where they grow, and they like to grow together. No matter how many times Ali drove down to the desert valleys that surrounded Sedona, she always watched for the first sentinel saguaro. In this case, the first one was at the top of a cliff near milepost 274. Soon there were dozens more.

Shortly after passing that outpost saguaro, she ran into a road-widening project. When a flagger stopped her to wait for the return of a pilot car, Ali leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes, and thought about what she was doing.

Right, she thought. Something for the home team.

It was ironic to think that the inspiring words Ali had delivered so cheerfully to the graduating seniors a week earlier were now coming back to haunt her. Other than Dave Holman and Sheriff Maxwell himself, no one else on the sheriff’s office “home team” had been what you could call welcoming of the new arrival.

The previous Monday, when Gordon Maxwell had introduced her at the staff meeting, Ali had assumed that the surly greeting she had received from Holly Mesina, the clerk in the outer office, had been an aberration. A week and a day later, Ali understood that Dave’s reaction was the exception, while Holly Mesina’s was the rule.

During the remainder of the week Ali had followed Sheriff Maxwell on his round of duties around the office as well as out in the community. She had also visited the various substations scattered around the huge county. At each stop along the way, Ali had grown accustomed to the idea that departmental employees would put on their happy faces with her as long as the sheriff was present, but the moment Maxwell’s back was turned and the boss was out of earshot, their skin-deep civility toward Ali vanished.

Their reactions made her position in the culture of the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department blatantly clear-Ali Reynolds was the ultimate outsider.

Sort of like what happened to Haley Marsh when she first showed up at Mingus Union High School, Ali thought ruefully. Of course, there’s a difference. I could quit. Haley couldn’t.

Ali had told her father that very thing the previous afternoon toward the end of a Memorial Day cookout at Chris and Athena’s house, where the newlyweds had marked the six-month anniversary of their wedding by hosting a shakedown test hamburger fry on Chris’s new gas barbecue.

“So how are things?” Bob Larson had asked his daughter as the two of them sat on the small patio next to the driveway, enjoying the afternoon sun. “You look glum-not at all your usual self. Is it work?”