Trial by Fire

by J. A. Jance

  Donna spilled out her story with no attempt to minimize her culpability and with zero regard to how her words might impact a legal defense in a court of law. Her defense attorney would have a mountain of self-incrimination to overcome if Donna’s case ever made it as far as a trial, but as long as Detective Salazar and Ali kept asking questions, Donna kept answering them, both in the car on the way to the precinct and later in an interview room at Phoenix PD.

  Listening to Donna’s tale of woe, Ali couldn’t help but compare what had happened to her to what had happened to Judith Becker. Both of them had been disowned and dispossessed—but Judith Becker had responded to the loss of both her parents as well as the loss of her country by turning her horrendous losses into a blessing for others.

  Donna had done the opposite. She had lost her mother, the man she had always believed to be her father, and her biological father as well. She had turned the injustice of what happened to her into an excuse to inflict incredible harm on others.

  Ali looked on as Donna was being booked. As the booking officer inventoried the items in her purse, Ali saw that there were two diamond rings tied inside in a small felt bag. The diamond on one was a rock, while the other was much more modest.

  Mimi’s missing rings, Ali thought, making a mental note to pass that information along to Detective Salazar.

  The purse also contained a whole series of documents—Donna’s passport, along with preprinted boarding passes for both her Phoenix-to-L.A. flight and the one from L.A. to Caracas. Tucked into her wallet was a FedEx receipt for a package Donna had shipped to herself in care of her hotel, the Caracas Hilton. For import duty purposes the document listed the contents of the package as a “framed art print” with an insured value of $50.

  “I’m guessing that’s an original and that it’s stolen goods,” Detective Salazar said.

  While she went off in search of a warrant that would allow the package to be intercepted and returned, Ali was left alone in the interview room with Donna. Sitting across the table from this dangerous woman, Ali was a little concerned that her weapons—her Glock and her Taser—had been placed in a locker before she entered the small, mirrored room.

  As the silence deepened around them Ali asked one final question.

  “What would have happened if you had come to Mimi and Serenity and Win and told them what you had learned?”

  “You mean would they have made some provision for me?” Donna asked bitterly. “Like that’s going to happen. For one thing, Winston Langley’s money is mostly gone. Win has a gambling problem. He ran through his inheritance like it was water. As for Serenity? She’s convinced that she has a great head for business, but she doesn’t, not like her father did. The galleries are all losing money. She’s been keeping them afloat with her inheritance. Once that’s gone, so are the galleries. Where would that leave me? A third of nothing is nothing.”

  “In other words, since whatever was left of Winston’s estate belonged to Mimi, you went after that.”

  “Why wouldn’t I? She wasn’t going to give me any of it. After all, she’s no relation to me—no blood relation.”

  “Not enough of a relation to talk to, but enough of a relation to murder,” Ali said.

  “I guess,” Donna said with a shrug.

  That was when Ali realized that Donna simply didn’t care. The fact that other people had been hurt or killed meant nothing to her. Less than nothing.

  For the remainder of the fifteen minutes Detective Salazar was gone, Ali and Donna sat in the room in absolute silence.

  Earlier, no one had been paying attention to what had happened to Sister Anselm and Mimi Cooper. Now everyone was.

  Ali spent most of the rest of the day being debriefed by a series of agencies about what had happened. The Fountain Hills marshals wanted access to the information that would allow them to sort out what had happened to Mimi Cooper. Phoenix PD wanted to know details about what had happened to Sister Anselm, an incident that had started in their jurisdiction and ended in someone else’s. But over all this, Agent in Charge Donnelley’s media embargo still held sway.

  Donna Carson’s name wasn’t being released to the media because she had yet to be charged. Tom McGregor’s name still wasn’t being released pending notification of next of kin, who most likely didn’t exist. And Sister Anselm’s name and medical information were being withheld as well.

  The real reason behind all the interagency silence was Agent in Charge Donnelley. Tom McGregor’s handwritten notebooks counted as a major break in the ATF’s long battle with the Earth Liberation Front, and Donnelley wanted things kept quiet long enough to gather warrants and to bring some of the people named in those notebooks in for questioning.

  It was late afternoon before Ali finally headed back to the hotel. Since her phone had been turned off most of the day, her voice mailbox was brimming with messages. Several were from B. Simpson, but those all said he was in a series of meetings and would call again later.

  One message was from her mother. “Dad and I bought a stove,” Edie said. “Used, not new, but your father loves it. It’ll be delivered next week, in time for Father’s Day. See you at home.”

  Another message was from Bishop Gillespie. “I understand you were on hand today when Donna Carson was arrested. Good work. Sister Anselm seems to be recovering. She asked that you please stop by when you can, but you might want to use that wig again. It looks like the hospital lobby is full of reporters.”

  That one made Ali smile, not because of the wig suggestion but because Bishop Gillespie seemed to have excellent sources of information. The question was, were those sources inside Phoenix PD, or were they inside the ATF, maybe even Agent Donnelley himself? Was it possible the agent in charge and Bishop Gillespie were pals?

  Ali took the bishop’s suggestion seriously. After showering and putting on clean clothes, she donned the wig and drove back over to the hospital. Camera vans too tall to make it inside the garage were parked outside, and she appreciated the media alert warning.

  She also noted that even though Donna Carson’s arrest and Tom McGregor’s death should have lowered the threat toward Sister Anselm, Bishop Gillespie’s security detail was still very much in evidence—in the garage, in the lobby, and in the waiting room on the orthopedic floor.

  When Ali pushed open the door to Sister Anselm’s room, she discovered Bishop Gillespie himself seated next to Sister Anselm’s bed. He was reading to her from a notebook Ali recognized—Mimi Cooper’s guest log.

  When Ali appeared in the doorway, he pushed his reading glasses to the top of his head. “So here’s the woman of the hour,” he announced with a smile. “Ali Reynolds herself. It turns out we were just talking about you. Sister Anselm has been asleep most of the day, and I’ve only now been bringing her up to date. I told her that an arrest has been made, but I’m unable to tell her much more than that.”

  Standing at the bedside, Ali could see Sister Anselm’s face was sunburned to the point of peeling. “How are you?” Ali asked.

  “Better than I would have been without you,” Sister Anselm said. “How can I ever thank you?”

  “I believe you’ve been paying that one forward all your life,” Ali said with a smile.

  She pulled up another chair, and for the next half hour, Ali gave Sister Anselm and Bishop Gillespie the highlights of what she knew. When she saw Sister Anselm was fading, Ali excused herself. Rather than pushing the Down elevator button she pushed Up and went to the eighth floor. A new patient or two had been admitted. The burn-unit waiting room was crowded with a whole new collection of worried family members, but in the far corner, Ali spotted a single familiar face—Mark Levy. He looked bone weary, but his face brightened when he saw her.

  “Hey,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

  “I came back to thank you for the help you gave me earlier.”

  “You’re welcome,” Mark said with a shrug, “but it wasn’t that much.”

  “It was,”
Ali said. “How’s James?”

  “Better,” Mark said. “They’re starting the skin grafts. That’s good news. His parents even let me go in to see him once today. He was sleeping, but still. Visitors are limited to family members only. I think his mother said I was his brother.”

  “Good,” Ali said. “You act like a brother.”

  Mark was silent for a moment before adding, “I guess you heard that the woman in eight fourteen didn’t make it.”

  Ali nodded. “I heard,” she said.

  “Neither did the woman in eight twelve. Her name was Alva. She was smoking in a chair and fell asleep, and now she’s dead, too. I don’t think I could work in a place like this,” Mark added. “It would be too hard.”

  “You’re right,” Ali agreed. “It is that.”

  Her phone rang while she was riding down in the elevator.

  “I don’t believe it,” B. Simpson said. “You finally answered the phone. Where are you?”

  “Leaving the hospital,” she said. “I’m on my way back to the hotel.”

  “Great,” B. said. “I’m here, too.”

  “Where?”

  “At the hotel.”

  “My hotel?” Ali asked.

  He laughed. “Yes, your hotel. I had meetings in Phoenix today. I thought I’d stop by and see if I can take you to dinner. Morton’s is right out front. We don’t have a reservation, but I’m betting they can fit us in.”

  “Did I tell you I was staying at the Ritz?” she asked.

  B. laughed. “When I couldn’t reach you, I weaseled the information out of your parents. What about dinner?”

  That was typical. Now that Ali’s romance with Dave Holman was pretty much off the table, Edie was promoting another possible candidate, but however B. had found his way to the Ritz, his invitation to go to dinner was a welcome one. Ali was hungry. It had been a long time since breakfast.

  “Good,” she said. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  B. was waiting in the lobby when she arrived. “Congrats,” he said, standing up to give her a hug. “I hear you and Detective Salazar saved the day.”

  “How do you know that?” Ali asked. “The news hasn’t exactly been disseminated to the media.”

  “I heard it from a friend of yours,” B. said. “I expect he’ll be a friend of mine as well—or at least a client. Bishop Gillespie plans to hire High Noon Enterprises to keep track of diocese-owned computers. If any of the people who work for him are messing around with online porn, Gillespie wants to know about it. That man is something,” B. added admiringly. “If he weren’t a bishop, I think he’d make a wonderful hacker.”

  That made Ali laugh.

  “Are you ready to go to dinner?”

  “I’ll go upstairs and drop off my briefcase,” she said. Up in her suite, she combed her hair and freshened her makeup. When she rejoined him downstairs, they walked across the driveway to the restaurant.

  Even though Morton’s was crowded at that hour, the maître d’ showed them to a corner booth. Once seated, they ordered drinks and exchanged stories about all that had happened in the previous several days.

  “It sounds like you’ve really made a name for yourself,” he said finally. “I know this thing with the sheriff’s department was supposed to be temporary, but will you stay on?”

  “I don’t know,” Ali said seriously. “There’s a lot more going on in Gordon Maxwell’s department than meets the eye. If I end up being the one who delivers the bad news to him, he may not want me hanging around any longer. You know what happens to bearers of bad news.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No,” Ali said. “Not yet. I haven’t decided what to do.”

  “I see,” B. said.

  Ali was gratified that he let it go at that. He understood she wasn’t ready to discuss it, and she liked the fact that he didn’t quiz her about it anymore, that he was at ease with her not telling him what she wasn’t prepared to tell.

  They had a great time at dinner. The food was wonderful; so was the service. They laughed. They talked. Only when their waiter dropped off the bill did B.’s smile disappear.

  “This has really been fun,” he said. “Thank you for coming. I finally figured out that the only way I’d ever be able to take you to dinner was if we were both out of town. You’re worried about the age thing, aren’t you?”

  He had her cold on that one. He was attractive. He was interesting. He had money and a marital history of his own. The problem was that for Ali the age difference had always been the one major drawback to their having anything other than a professional relationship.

  Tonight, at dinner, sitting there chatting and eating and enjoying themselves, Ali had noticed that no one noticed them or paid them the least bit of attention. They were simply two people out on the town, having fun. If some of their fellow diners or the waitstaff were busy calculating the difference in their ages, it didn’t show.

  The last time B. had asked her out, Ali had said no. This time she had said yes. Why? Was it because she was hungry? Partly, but to be honest, she had to admit that after meeting Hal Cooper and seeing his devotion to his beloved wife, the fifteen-year age difference between Ali Reynolds and B. Simpson no longer seemed to be such an insurmountable barrier.

  “Yes,” she said finally, in answer to his question. “I have been worried about that in the past, but maybe I’m not so worried about it anymore. Would you like to walk me home?”

  “Sure,” he said with a grin. “Door-to-door service.”

  Once in the hotel elevator, he pressed the button for the third floor without having to ask. “How did you do that?” Ali asked. “How do you know I’m on the third floor? What did you do, bribe the desk clerk? Hack into the hotel’s registration system?”

  “Nothing as underhanded as that,” B. said. “I asked your mother.”

  “That figures,” Ali said with a laugh. At the door to her suite, Ali pulled out her room key and plugged it into the slot. B. opened the door and held it for her.

  “Don’t you want to come in?” she asked. “For a nightcap, maybe?”

  They both knew she wasn’t talking about a drink.

  “You don’t have to do that,” B. said. “I have my own room.”

  “So?” Ali asked. “Nobody says you have to use it.”

  With that, she led him inside.

  When Ali awakened in bed the next morning, lying next to B. Simpson, she was surprised to realize that she felt happier than she had in a very long time. She slipped out of bed and was showered, dressed, and packed before she ever woke him up.

  “Okay, sleepyhead,” she said. “Time to wake up. I need to check out and go to work. And you need to check out, too, or else you need to go to your own room.”

  It turned out that it took longer for her to boot him out of her bed than she had expected. Ali also had to dress again and redo her makeup, but by the time she drove away from the Ritz, she was incredibly lighthearted. She didn’t know what would happen in the future. Was this relationship with B. Simpson merely a passing fancy—a bit of mutual attraction by two lonely people—or would it turn into something more serious?

  What she did know was that the two of them had been good together. They’d had fun—uncomplicated, glorious fun, more fun than she’d had in years, which explained why Ali felt so alive. Once Dave Holman had retreated into his fatherhood duties, Ali had pretty much put the possibility of romance out of her head.

  B. Simpson’s appearance on the scene was forcing her to rethink that position.

  That morning, though, instead of heading home for Sedona, Ali drove straight to Prescott to handle some unfinished business. Arriving at the office on Gurley Street, she asked to speak to Sheriff Maxwell, only to discover he was out for the day—down in Phoenix for a major ATF press conference announcing a breakthrough and several arrests in Arizona- and California-based cells of the ELF network.

  It took a while for Ali to track down the information she
needed. Once she had it in hand, she left the department and drove to Devon Ryan’s place, several blocks away. She found him in the front yard of a modest bungalow, standing on a ladder, painting the wood trim on the front soffit.

  “How’s it going?” she asked, walking up the sidewalk.

  Devon turned and looked down at her. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you. Did you stop by hoping to pick up some media relations pointers?”

  Arrogant jerk, Ali thought.

  “Not exactly,” she said. “I came by to see how things were going with you and Holly.”

  He put down his paintbrush and then stepped down from the ladder. “Holly?” he said “Holly who?”

  “That would be Holly Mesina,” Ali said. “Sally’s good friend Holly. When she started giving me such a ration, I thought she hated my guts because she and Sally were such pals, but that isn’t it at all, is it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Devon said. “If Holly’s said something about me, she’s probably just making up stories.”

  “I doubt that,” Ali said. “Does Sally know that you’ve been screwing around with Holly behind her back, and does your wife know about either of them? If not, I’ll be happy to tell them both.”

  The stricken look on Devon’s face was priceless.

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Actually,” Ali said, “I would. I have some experience with cheating spouses. I was married to a man just like you—a cheat and a bully and a coward. If I tell your wife, I know exactly how she’ll feel, because I’ve been there.”

  “If you tell her—” he began.

  “What?” Ali asked before he could put the threat into words. “What exactly will you do? I already know way too much about you. I also have a theory about who lifted that missing evidence from the evidence room and blamed it on Sally. It was too complicated having two of your girlfriends working in the same office. They might have started comparing notes and figured out what a worthless creep you are.”

  “You can’t prove that,” Devon objected. “You can’t prove any of it.”

  “I can if I have to.”