Fatal Error

26

Los Angeles, California

Ali left the hotel to drive to Laguna Beach as mad at B. Simpson as she had ever been.

When she started reading the High Noon material, the item on top had been a copy of the e-mail Brenda had sent to her on Friday that she had in turn passed along to B. She read through that. There was nothing at all that indicated anything out of the ordinary. It was lucid. There were none of the self-justifying excuses that are often employed by someone intent on doing something stupid. In fact, the message was exactly the opposite of that-purposeful, organized, and with no senseless meanderings that would indicate a drunken rant. Yes, Camilla Gastellum believed her daughter had gone off on a bender. If so, the decision to do that had come after she sent the e-mail rather than before.

Next up was the Richard Lowensdale background check-the same material that had been sent to Brenda almost five months previously. A copy of that had been sent to Ali as well. It contained nothing new, nothing unforeseen.

Ermina’s background check came next, and it contained only the bare bones of the story. She had been born in Croatia. There was nothing that explained how she had been orphaned. The story picked up again once she was adopted by a family in Missouri as a teenager. The adoptive mother died of heart disease a couple of years later, and the father committed suicide. Ermina moved to California and was doing minimum wage catering jobs when she hooked up with a widower named Mark Blaylock.

So far so good, Ali thought. Sounds like it was time for her to have some good luck.

But clearly the luck had recently turned bad once more. Their business, Rutherford International, had gone bust. In the documents section of the report, Ali found information about the Blaylocks’ bankruptcy proceedings, foreclosure proceedings on their home in La Jolla, property tax information on a home in Salton City, California, as well as a puzzling document certifying Rutherford’s contractual dismantling of forty-six UAVs, which was evidently shorthand for unmanned aerial vehicles, otherwise known as drones, as the form helpfully explained for the uninitiated.

Since Richard Lowensdale had previously worked for Rutherford and, as a consequence, the Blaylocks, there was nothing at all in Ermina’s background report that gave any hint about why Brenda had been seeking the information or if her inquiry about Ermina Blaylock had in any way contributed to Brenda’s sudden disappearance. There was a puzzling notation at the end of the report that said Stuart Ramey was awaiting more information from Missouri and would be sending that along as soon as it was available. Did Ali want him to fax it to her, or would it be all right for him to forward it to her cell?

She sent him an e-mail saying to send the information to her iPhone.

But then she hit the bottom set of papers, and that’s when it all went bad. Those sheets were evidently additions to the original background check-they carried the same date stamp-but the material recounted there contained information Ali had never seen before. Apparently Richard had been “cyberdating” any number of women at the time he was involved with Brenda. Stuart Ramey was a skilled hacker who had managed to gain access to both Richard’s numerous e-mail accounts as well as his computer.

The Storyboard material Ali read there was nothing short of stunning. It included transcripts of supposedly private e-mails and instant messages that Richard had added to the files as they came in. In each case Richard was Richard, but the last names varied. All of the last names started with an L, and Ali was certain those were simply convenient aliases.

Ali remembered clearly how dismayed she had been when she learned Brenda Riley had been engaged to a man she had never met, but Brenda was certainly not alone. By Ali’s count there were over fifty women listed in the Storyboard file. A quick survey through the collected correspondence showed that most of the women involved were under the impression that Richard Whatever was their heaven-sent soul mate. More than once Ali saw discussions of possible ring purchases with Internet links leading to possible candidates.

Not surprisingly, Ali found Ermina Blaylock’s name listed in the Storyboard index, but when she checked the file, it contained little information other than Ermina’s name, her date of birth, and social security number, which Richard Lowensdale probably shouldn’t have had.

On the one hand it was infuriating that Richard Lowensdale had preyed on needy women by exploiting them through their various weaknesses. No wonder Brenda had wanted to expose him. No wonder she was writing a book on cyberstalking. Why wouldn’t she? But that still didn’t explain why she had gone missing. Maybe Richard had learned what she was doing. If he had threatened her somehow, maybe Brenda wasn’t out drinking. Maybe she was in hiding.

But what really got to Ali and what sent her temper boiling was the fact that this extra material had been available for months. Ali hadn’t seen it, and most likely Brenda hadn’t seen it either. Ali had requested that original background check, but what she and Brenda had been given was a severely edited version, a redacted version.

Seeing red, Ali picked up her phone and dialed B.’s cell phone. She was prepared to leave him an irate message. She wasn’t prepared for him to answer the phone.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m on a break. I was just getting ready to call you.”

“You’ll be sorry,” Ali said. “You’re in deep doo-doo at the moment.”

“Me? What have I done?”

“It’s not what you did; it’s what you didn’t do. I believe this is called a sin of omission.”

“What are we talking about?”

“Richard Lowensdale’s background check, both of them. There’s the part you gave me and passed along to Brenda, and there’s the part you left out. Why?”

There was a pause and a sigh. “It was a judgment call,” B. said at last. “My judgment call.”

“Why?”

“The material in the background check Brenda got was from readily available sources-sources that are open to most anyone with access to a computer. The other stuff Stuart dug up was a little dicier.”

“You mean the stuff Stuart hacked.”

“Yes,” B. said. “The stuff he hacked. As I remember, he found evidence of a number of girlfriends Brenda probably didn’t know about. From what you had told me about her mental state right then, I didn’t think she could handle it. I was afraid learning about all that would push her over the edge. I’m the one who told Stuart to send out the ordinary background check material and leave out the rest.”

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this at the time?” Ali asked.

“Because right then it looked as though you were on your way to becoming a sworn police officer-an officer of the court. If you were in possession of possibly ill-gotten material, that would have been bad for you, bad for Stuart, and most likely bad for me too.”

“In other words, CYA.”

“Pretty much,” B. said. He sounded genuinely contrite, but Ali wasn’t buying it.

There must have been something in her voice that told B. the conversation was headed in a bad direction. When the call waiting sound clicked, he sounded downright relieved.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve got another call. Do you mind if I take it?”

“Under the circumstances,” she said, “that’s probably an excellent idea.”

Ali was still mad as hell as she showered, dressed, checked out of the hotel, and headed for Laguna Beach. She had no idea where she would spend the night, but she could probably find a decent spot somewhere near Velma.

That, however, wasn’t what was on her mind as she drove south. It seemed to her that any decision about how to proceed with Richard Lowensdale’s background check should have been hers to make and not B. Simpson’s.