Fatal Error

52

Palm Springs, California

They were halfway back to the airport when Ali’s phone rang. A glance at the caller ID window showed a number she recognized as Flossie Haywood’s, but the voice on the phone wasn’t Flossie’s.

“My name’s Jim Haywood. Are you the lady who was just here talking to my wife?” he demanded.

“Yes,” Ali said.

“Flossie wanted me to call you. After you left, she went ahead and let herself into the house just up the road. You won’t believe what she found!”

“Tell me.”

“Poor Mr. Blaylock, dead as a doornail and lying in his bed. Flossie was so upset, she about had a heart attack. They’re taking her into Indio to the hospital to be checked out, but she wanted me to let you know about it.”

“Could she tell what happened to him?” Ali asked.

“Looked like he was just sleeping, until she tried waking him up. She called nine-one-one. There’s a deputy there now. He went inside and said it may have been a suicide. There’s a homicide detective on his way to the house from El Centro. The whole thing upset Flossie so much that she started having chest pains.”

“Chest pains?” Ali asked. “Is she going to be all right?”

“I hope so. Like I said, they hauled her away in an ambulance. I’m on my way there right now too, but before they took her away, she gave me her phone and asked me to call you. I’m not sure what this is all about. She said something about digging up evidence from over across the road, which didn’t make any sense to me. She said the detective will probably want to talk to you.”

“I’m sure he will, Mr. Haywood,” Ali said. “Feel free to give him this number.”

“Blaylock?” Gil asked.

Ali nodded. “Dead in his bed, and thanks to my phone guy the body was found a whole lot sooner than Mina Blaylock wanted him to be found. According to Jim Haywood, there’s a homicide detective on his way to Salton City right now.”

“The local cops are going to want to talk to us.”

“I know,” Ali said, “and we will talk to them. We’ll tell them everything we know, but after we get to San Diego, not before.”

They drove for a while in silence while Gil considered how Chief Jackman was going to react to all this news once it got back to him. It wouldn’t be pretty.

“How did Blaylock die?” Gil asked as Ali turned onto the airport drive. “Don’t tell me she pulled another plastic bag stunt.”

“Mr. Haywood didn’t say-just that he was dead.”

“How long will it take to get to San Diego?”

“Once we take off, only about half an hour.”

“I’ll call El Centro once we land,” he said.

Ali nodded. “Good.”

It was dark by the time they pulled into the terminal driveway. When the pilot saw them unloading several cardboard boxes, he came out with a rolling luggage cart. “Should these be in front or in back?” he asked, sniffing with distaste when he caught a whiff of the odor.

“In front and belted in,” Ali said. “But in order to maintain the chain of evidence, Gil needs to sign them. Then we’ll need some transparent packing tape to put over his signature and seal the boxes shut. That should help some with the smell.”

After all, that was the whole point-maintaining the chain of evidence.

Once on the plane, they skipped the safety briefing because Ali’s phone was ringing. It was B. “You realize that what Stuart has been doing is right on the edge,” he said. “It’s actually over the edge. In tracking down the Blaylocks’ phone information, we’ve violated a whole bunch of privacy rules.”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. But we’ve just uncovered another of Ermina Blaylock’s victims. That makes three in all-her father in Missouri, Richard Lowensdale in Grass Valley, and now, if I’m not mistaken, Mark Blaylock too, in Salton City. Not to mention Brenda Riley. Ermina is a maniac, B. We need to catch her before she gets away or has a chance to kill anyone else.”

B. sighed. “Where are you now?”

“On the plane, getting ready to fly to San Diego. I know, it’s a long shot, but that’s the only other address we have for her-the business park at Clairemont Mesa. Even though Rutherford International went out of business months ago, the utilities on two of their three office park units are still current. As broke as they are, there must be a reason those bills are being paid. We’re hoping she’ll show up there. Otherwise, we’ve got nowhere else to look.”

B. was quiet long enough that Ali worried he might have hung up on her. She didn’t blame him for being angry. When she had enlisted Stuart’s help, she had been so preoccupied with her own concerns that she hadn’t thought about the long-term ramifications for High Noon Enterprises if any of this came to light.

“I’m sorry, B.,” she began, but he cut her off.

“I just had a thought,” he said. “I don’t know if it’ll work or not, but call me again once you land.”

“Who was that?” Gil asked, once she put her phone away.

“My boyfriend,” Ali said. “He’s also the technically savvy genius who’s behind the guy you call my phone meister. He seemed to think that he had come up with an idea that might help us find Ermina.”

“I hope so,” Gil said. “I’ve only been to San Diego a couple of times, one of which was to take the kids to the zoo. It’s a pretty big haystack, and Ermina Blaylock is a mighty small needle.”

The CJ rose precipitously through the cold night air. Soon Palm Springs and the surrounding cities were narrow strings of lights crisscrossing the darkened desert. Leaning back in her seat, Ali was thinking about B. and regretting the untenable position her actions had created for him and for his company.

“I don’t think they’re broke,” Gil said from across the aisle, interrupting her chain of self-recrimination.

“What?”

“I don’t think the Blaylocks were broke,” Gil said again. “At least not as broke as they led everyone to believe. First Ermina killed Richard Lowensdale. Then she went searching for something but didn’t find it.”

“How do you know she didn’t find it?”

“Because I did. There was a stash of empty motor oil bottles out in Richard’s garage. Hidden inside I found fifty thousand dollars in cash and these.”

Gil reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out the two thumb drives and handed them over to her. “I don’t have a computer at home, so I didn’t try to look at them, but between these and the cash, I figure we’re dealing with one of two things. Either Lowensdale had found out about Ermina’s background and was trying to blackmail her, or else he was still working for her. My guess, it’s the latter rather than the former. Once the guy outlived his usefulness, Ermina got rid of him. She got rid of your friend Brenda too, after planting evidence that would make us believe Brenda was responsible for Richard Lowensdale’s death.”

“What evidence?” Ali asked.

“Three of Richard Lowensdale’s fingers were hacked off with kitchen shears before he died,” Gil said quietly. “We found his thumb in Brenda’s purse, which was left at the Scotts Flat Reservoir. I have no doubt that Brenda’s body is there too. It’s just going to take time for it to float to the surface. I know they have underwater equipment that could expedite a search, but I doubt the county can afford it.”

“Brenda was a friend of mine,” Ali said. “I kept hoping we’d find her alive.”

“I know,” Gil said. “I’m sorry. What do you think about the thumb drives?”

“I left my computer in Laguna Beach,” she said. “When we get to the terminal in San Diego, I’ll handle the car rental. Then while you load the car, I’ll see if I can log on to one of the computers and send B. whatever’s on the thumb drives. Then you can have them back.”

“What’s his name?” Gil asked.

“B.,” Ali said. “B. Simpson. He was born Bartholomew Simpson; people used to call him Bart. He got tired of being teased about that. He changed his name to B. Period.”

“I don’t blame him,” Gil said. “I think I would have done the same thing.”

When the plane parked next to the terminal at Montgomery Field, Phil Canby came to open the door. “Clairemont Mesa’s just to the right of us,” he said, motioning. “Your car is here on the tarmac.”

“Do you think I could use a computer in the FBO?” Ali asked.

“I don’t see why not,” Phil said. “It doesn’t hurt to ask.”

Ali hurried into the terminal, where the receptionist took her back into a computer-stocked room that was usually reserved for pilot use only. As she plugged the first of the thumb drives into the computer’s USB port, she worried that Richard Lowensdale might have booby-trapped the drive so it would self-destruct if anyone else tried to open it. Rather than opening it, she simply copied the data as an attachment into an e-mail and sent it both to B. and to Stuart. She was in the process of uploading the second drive when her phone rang.

“Since you just sent me an e-mail, I’m assuming you’re on the ground,” B. said.

“Sorry,” Ali told him. “I wanted to send these first.”

“I know. Stuart and I will both take a look at them in a minute, but right now, I have some good news. That phone call Ermina made went to the local Hertz rental line. I went into their computer system. Two minutes after that call, a San Diego car rental reservation record shows up in the Hertz database in the name of Sophia Stanhope. She picked it up an hour later. A silver Cadillac DTS. She’s supposed to drop it off at the rental return at LAX tomorrow.”

“Who’s Sophia Stanhope?”

“She’s supposedly a divorcee from Sarajevo,” B. said. “I’d be willing to bet she’s really Ermina Blaylock, traveling with some kind of forged documents.”

“Do you happen to have the tab number on that rented Caddy?” Ali asked.

B. laughed. “What do you think? Am I a full-service hacker or not?”

“Definitely full-service,” Ali replied.

By the time she finished writing down the license information, Gil was standing looking over her shoulder.

“What’s that?”

She gave him the note. “It’s the plate number for a silver Cadillac DTS someone named Sophia Stanhope rented from a local Hertz agency earlier this evening,” Ali told him. “Sophia and Ermina are most likely one and the same, and you may want to revise that BOLO to have information on both this vehicle and the other one. And you should probably expand it to include both the L.A. and San Diego metropolitan areas.”

After sending the second e-mail, she removed the second thumb drive and handed both drives over to Gil. “Copied only,” she assured him. “Did nothing with the data.”

Nodding, he returned the two drives to his pocket. “Okay,” he said. “You finish signing for the car. I’m going to call El Centro and see if they’ll put me through to the detective.”

Gil had pulled the rental car-a Mercury Marquis-through the airport gate and parked it in front of the terminal. When Ali opened the door, she was grateful that the cardboard boxes had been banished to the trunk. She found a Kevlar vest, size L, hanging on the steering wheel. She put it on.

There was no way to tell if Ermina Blaylock would be armed. If she was planning on traveling by air, she most likely wouldn’t try to carry a weapon on board an international flight, but between then and now, all bets were off.

While Ali waited for Gil to emerge from the terminal, she called Stuart back.

“You’re certainly keeping the phone lines humming today,” he said. “I thought B. was going to hand me my walking papers when he found out what we’d been up to.”

“He didn’t, did he?” Ali asked guiltily.

“No. In fact, I think he’ll be getting back to Hertz very soon to let them know that their secure rental database isn’t especially secure. So what can I do for you now?”

“I need the addresses of those two locations in San Diego where Mark and Mina Blaylock are still paying the utilities.”

“Easy,” Stuart said. “Here you go.”

By the time Gil got into the car, Ali had already loaded the address on Engineer Road into the rental’s NeverLost GPS system. It turned out the two addresses in question were less than two miles from where they were currently parked.

“I thought it was something when I got on the plane in Grass Valley, but this is amazing,” he said, as he picked up his own Kevlar vest and pulled it on over his golf shirt. “You fly up in your sweet little corporate jet and the car is parked right there on the tarmac waiting for you. No security lines. No baggage check. No car rental lines.”

“It’s fast,” she said. “It’s convenient.”

“And expensive,” he put in.

“That too.”

“So what’s your connection to all of this?” he asked.

“To Lowensdale’s case?”

Gil nodded.

“Guilt,” she said. “I’m the one who blew the whistle on Richard Lowensdale in the first place. Until I came up with that first background check, Brenda didn’t even know what the man’s name was, much less anything about the other women. .”

Gil looked at his watch. “Crap,” he said.

“What’s wrong?”

“Janet Silvie, one of Richard’s many girlfriends, is probably on her way into Grass Valley right this minute. She was flying into Sacramento today, and I’m not there to talk to her.”

“What are you going to do?” Ali asked.

“Call the desk sergeant, Frieda Lawson,” he said. “If anyone can pull my fat out of the fire, she’s the one.”

While Gil dialed a number on his cell phone, Ali added a new waypoint to the GPS and drove to the nearest Carl’s Jr. It had been a very long time since breakfast. If she and Gilbert Morris were going to be stuck in a car on a long stakeout, Ali was determined not to starve in the process.

San Diego, California

While Ali pulled the Mercury into the drive-up line at Carl’s Jr., Gil was busy having his ass chewed. Over strongly voiced protests, his call to the desk sergeant had been put through to the chief’s office. Unfortunately Chief Jackman was in.

“Do you realize I have not just one but two hysterical women here in the department, both of them raising hell?” Jackman demanded.

“Two,” Gil echoed.

“Yes, two. Someone named Dawn Carras showed up an hour or so ago with a worthless little dog that seems to want to take a piss on every chair leg in the waiting room. When Sergeant Lawson couldn’t reach you, she called me instead. Thanks a lot. So I was here handling that crisis when Janet Silvie shows up. Now they’re out in the lobby having a screaming match. You need to get your butt in here right now and take care of it.”

“I can’t,” Gil said.

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I’m in San Diego.”

“San Diego?” Jackman roared. “I told you to take the day off. I didn’t say you could go to San Diego.”

“You didn’t say I couldn’t,” Gil said. “And if you’ll look on the roster, you’ll see I won’t be in tomorrow either. It’s a comp day. I worked eight days straight.”

“Detective Morris, that sounds a lot like insubordination.”

“It’s sounds like time to file a grievance to me,” Gil returned, and ended the call.

Pulling out of the drive-up, Ali handed him a bag with a burger, fries, and a soda. “I guess it’s safe to assume that didn’t go too well.”

“Actually, I think it’s fine,” Gil said. “Leaving Randy Jackman to deal with two hysterical women and a pissy little dog is exactly what the man deserves. Now where are we?”

“That’s Engineer Road right up ahead,” she said, driving into a maze of streets lined with similarly constructed office buildings and warehouses. “We’re going to drive around and see if we can see any sign of either the Cadillac or the Lincoln. If she traded that Lincoln of hers for a rented Cadillac, she might have left the Lincoln parked somewhere nearby.”

When Gil’s phone rang again a few minutes later, he expected it would be Jackman again. It wasn’t.

“Detective Manuel Moreno with the Imperial County Sheriff’s Department. I understand you called my department to say you might have some information in regard to my Salton City homicide. So I have two questions. Who are you and what kind of information?”

“I’m Gilbert Morris, a homicide dick with the Grass Valley Police Department. I’m investigating a homicide too, one that happened on Friday of last week. I have reason to believe you and I share a suspect. So let me ask you about Mark Blaylock. You know his death is a homicide rather than a suicide?”

There was a pause. Gil could imagine Detective Moreno staring at the cubicle wall in front of his desk, wondering if he should answer the question or tell Gil to go to hell.

“It could be suicide,” Moreno said. “We found an empty bottle of Ambien in the trash and took it into evidence. What we didn’t find was any kind of suicide note. At all. The coroner says the victim died sometime overnight last night, probably right around midnight. This morning his wife gets up bright and early, locks up the house, and then takes off for parts unknown without bothering to dial nine-one-one and without mentioning that her beloved husband is dead in their bed. And if it hadn’t been for someone encouraging a nosy neighbor to go check on Mr. Blaylock’s welfare, it could have been days or weeks before anyone found him. So what do you think, homicide or suicide?”

“I think the same thing you do,” Gil said. “Only for a lot more reasons.”

While Gil laid out to the Imperial County detective what they knew, what they thought they knew, and when they knew it, Ali did her best to ignore the telephone conversation and concentrate on driving.

The streets of the once-thriving business park wound around and around in seemingly never-ending circles. A lot of the buildings were tagged with graffiti. Many of the lights that should have illuminated the street addresses printed on the buildings were broken or had burned out. There were weeds in the grassy medians and trash blowing around in the gutters and up beside the buildings. The parking lots beside the buildings were mostly empty. That could have been because it was night, or it could have been because the business park was close to being a ghost town. There was no way to tell.

Driving past the two Rutherford units, Ali saw that one of them had a loading bay as well as a regular walk-in entrance. The other unit had only a single door. She drove to the end of the street, counting doors and units as she went, then she traveled up an alley on the far side of the building, counting in reverse. Both Rutherford units had back doors, which meant that both front and back entrances needed to be watched.

Before Gil finished talking to Moreno, however, Ali’s phone rang. “UAVs,” B. said. “I’ve had one of my friends take a look at the schematics. Stuart tells me that according to the background check, Rutherford International was hired to dismantle a bunch of UAVs.”

“Yes,” Ali said. “I remember seeing something like that. A statement, signed and sworn by some government inspector, saying that the UAVs had been properly disposed of.”

“Then it’s likely the inspector lied,” B. returned. “According to the files on the thumb drives, someone-Richard Lowensdale, most likely-was tinkering with the guidance system files and making changes in their code as recently as two weeks ago.”

“Who would want to buy UAVs?” Ali asked.

“Who wouldn’t want to buy UAVs?” B. responded. “Anyone with a beef against the United States could be in the market for UAVs.”

Ali had pulled over and stopped in a parking place that allowed her to see both Rutherford doors. Suddenly there was a sharp rap on the window near her head. Outside stood a uniformed rent-a-cop who had arrived silently on a bicycle.

“This is private property,” he said. “You need to move along.”

Gil started to respond, but Ali stopped him. “We’re waiting to meet with a leasing agent,” she said, glancing at her watch. “She’s running late, but she’s supposed to be here any minute.”

“What was that all about?” B. asked into her ear.

“A security guard just paid us a visit,” she said. “Trying to give us the bum’s rush.”

“Where are you?”

“Outside the front door of the two remaining Rutherford facilities in San Diego.”

“Who’s there with you?”

“The security guard is here, but he’s not really with me. The other guy is Gil Morris, a homicide cop from Grass Valley,” Ali answered.

“Shouldn’t you have some local backup?”

“So far we don’t have any grounds for backup,” Ali said. “Nothing that would stand up in court.”

“You can tell your friend that we don’t have an arrest warrant at this point,” Gil said, “but Detective Moreno from El Centro is currently en route. He says that if we can locate Ermina, he’ll be able to question her as a person of interest in her husband’s death. That’s not an arrest as such, but if she’s planning on leaving the country, that should at least slow her down, maybe long enough for arrest warrants to be forthcoming.”

“All right,” B. said. “I suppose that, as usual, you’re armed?”

“And dangerous,” Ali said with a smile. “So is Gil for that matter-armed and dangerous-and we’re both wearing vests.”

“Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better,” B. said, “especially since you’re on one side of the country and I’m on the other.”

Ali could hear a lecture coming about her putting herself in harm’s way. Even if it was true, Ali didn’t want to hear it.

“I’m going to have to hang up now,” she said. “My Carl’s Junior burger is getting cold.”

She ended the call and rustled open the bag, but for some reason, she discovered, she was no longer hungry. Even without the lecture, B.’s question had gotten to her. She and Gil were armed, but there was no telling if their opponent, who might or might not show up, would be armed as well.

“Do you think Ermina’s carrying?” Ali asked.

Gil thought about it for a moment before he answered. “Present company excluded,” he said, “most women I know don’t carry weapons. Yes, Ermina was willing to get up close and personal with Richard, but only when he was hogtied, hand and foot. Someone who would stoop to using plastic bags or poison isn’t going to have guts enough to use a gun.” There was a pause and then he added a somewhat plaintive, “At least I hope she doesn’t.”

They both laughed aloud at that, and the laughter noticeably reduced the tension. It seemed odd for Ali to realize that although they had known each another for less than twelve hours, they were both operating on the same page. How was that possible?

She worried that the bike-riding security guard would come around again, but he didn’t. Then, just when Ali was beginning to think she might need to go find a bush somewhere, the headlights of a vehicle came sliding slowly down the street. First the turn lights came on. Then, activated by a remote control, the rolling door in the loading bay part of the building went up. A silver Cadillac drove inside and stopped, then the door came back down behind it, closing it from sight.

“Okay,” Gil said. “Here’s the way I see it. There are two of us and, from what I can see, only one of her; two vehicles; and five doors altogether. I’ll take the back two, you take these. If she tries to come out. .”

Without a word, Ali restarted the Mercury’s engine and put it in gear. “You need to get out,” she said.

“Why?” Gil asked. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to block the driveway,” Ali said, jarring the Marquis’s wheels up over the sidewalk. She waited long enough for Gil to scramble out the passenger door, then she parked so his side of the vehicle was within inches of the rolling door.

She rolled down her window as he came around to the driver’s side.

“Looks like that’ll work,” he said.

Ali nodded. “I call it athwart parking rather than parallel parking. My Hertz profile says I take every insurance they offer. If Ermina tries to drive out of the garage, she’ll have to go through this thing or over it.”

“Good thinking,” Gil said. “By my count that leaves only four doors to cover, and we outnumber her two to one.”

“Do we wait for her to come out on her own?” Ali asked. “Or do we try to bring her out?”

“Let’s try to maintain the element of surprise,” Gil said. “I’ll call you once I’m in position in the alley. Then as far as I’m concerned, I think we should sit tight. Ermina came here for one of two reasons-to pick something up or to drop something off. I doubt she’s planning on staying here all night.”

Gil had just disappeared from sight behind the end of the building when the security guard reappeared. Knowing he would most likely demand that she leave, Ali grabbed the car keys and shoved them out of sight into the crack between the two front seats. Then she punched her cell phone so it would dial Gil’s number.

“Where’s your friend?” the rent-a-cop asked.

“A call of nature,” Ali said, nodding in the opposite direction from the one where Gil had disappeared.

“He can’t do that. This is private property. You need to move your vehicle now. It’s blocking the driveway.”

“I’m sorry,” Ali said. “He took the keys. He’ll be back in a minute.”

“You don’t have a minute,” the guard said. “Your presence here is impeding a federal investigation.” He leaned toward the window holding an ID wallet. The badge inside said, very clearly, FBI. “Either you leave right now, or I’m placing you under arrest.”

“I guess you’ll have to arrest me then,” Ali told him. “Because I’m not leaving.”

“Step out of the vehicle,” he said. “Place your hands on your head.”