J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 2: Trial by Fire, Fatal Error, Left for Dead (8 page)

Behind her, the engine of one of the fire trucks rumbled down the road. As it went past, she saw that it was one of the crews from Sedona. If the crew was returning to base, that probably meant that the fire situation here was considered fairly well under control.

Once again Ali addressed the reporters. “As you can see, some of the crews here are being released. When we have word on the progress of the investigation, I’m sure Sheriff Maxwell will let you know, or you can contact me. My contact information is on the Web site for the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department, listed under Media Relations. When any additional
media briefings are scheduled, I’ll send out announcements to the contact list I have. I’ll also post that information on the Web site. If I don’t have your contact information and you want to be on the list, please let me know before you leave. Now, is there anything else?”

“Hey, Ali,” someone called. “This is a new gig for you. How does it feel to be on the wrong side of the cameras?”

She knew the assembled reporters were taking her measure, just as fellow employees in the department were doing. To do her media relations job effectively, Ali had to walk a fine line between serious and not so serious. She couldn’t afford to be seen as a lightweight, but if she tried too hard, everyone would know it, and so would she.

“First off,” Ali said, “cameras don’t have wrong sides. People on both sides of them—the ones pointing them and the ones being photographed—have work to do. When people turn on their radios and television sets or pick up a newspaper in the morning, they’re going to want to know what went on here tonight. It’s our job to tell them.

“Yes, this is a new gig, as you call it. I can tell you right now that in a news studio, the lighting is a lot better. Makeup and wardrobe are better, too. I always got to choose which side of the news desk to sit on, and guess what? I always chose to have my good side face the camera. Out here you’re going to have to take me lumps and all. Anything else?”

“Are you glad to be back home in Arizona?”

“Yes,” Ali said. “I am glad to be back in Arizona, but this isn’t about me. Sheriff Maxwell has asked me to help out in media relations on a temporary basis, and that’s what I’m doing. So if there are no other questions about tonight’s incident—”

“How long is temporary?”

“I would imagine that depends on how well I do.”

“To say nothing about how long it takes for Internal Affairs to finish looking through the situation with Deputy Devon Ryan. Isn’t he still on paid administrative leave?”

“Look,” Ali said firmly. “I’m here tonight to discuss this specific incident. How about if we stick to that? Now, are there more questions about the fire?”

Eventually the lights went off and the cameras disappeared. Several people stopped long enough to give Ali their contact information before disappearing into their separate vehicles, where they’d be able to write and file their stories using wireless uploads.

As Ali turned back to the scene of the fire, Sheriff Maxwell appeared out of the darkness. She had no idea when he had arrived or how long he had been standing there listening.

“Good job,” he said.

“You were watching?” Ali asked. “Why didn’t you come talk to them?”

“Because I wanted to see how you’d handle yourself,” he replied. “You did fine.”

“About that ELF stuff,” she continued. “I didn’t know anything about that previous fire. The one up near Prescott.”

Maxwell nodded. “Right,” he said. “That happened several years ago. They burned down a Street of Dreams project. Four nearly completed houses, each of them worth more than a million bucks. They were supposedly being built with all kinds of green technology inside. Why ELF went after them is more than I can understand. I mean, green is green, right?”

“What about these houses?” Ali asked.

“With the current housing crisis, they’re not worth nearly
that much. Probably three fifty to four hundred thou. Maybe ELF has decided to go downscale rather than up.”

“What about the wall?” Ali asked. “The one with the ELF tagline.”

“That’s still standing,” he said. “Once the sun comes up tomorrow morning, anybody with a pair of binoculars will know this was arson. We know it, too, thanks to Camp Verde’s accelerant-sniffing dog.”

“I saw Sparks,” Ali told him, but the sheriff’s comment left Ali second-guessing her actions. “Should I have announced it was arson tonight?”

“Hell, no. You did exactly what I wanted you to do. I’ll make the arson announcement myself first thing tomorrow. Let’s say nine a.m. on the courthouse steps in Prescott. If you could send out a notice about that between now and then, I’d appreciate it.”

“I’m still not sure why we didn’t make the announcement tonight.”

“That’s easy,” Sheriff Maxwell said with a sardonic smile. “You can’t hand over every little detail all at once. Got to dribble it out a little at a time and give those yahoos reason to come back. That also gives them a reason to write two stories instead of just one. That’s good for them and good for us. How else am I going to keep my name out there in public?”

He started to walk away, then paused. “By the way,” he added, “the guy who asked about the ELF thing is named Kelly Green.”

“What kind of a name is Kelly Green?” Ali asked. “Is that some kind of joke?”

“His real name was the joke. His given name was Oswald. He changed it to Kelly a few years ago.”

“I guess I would have changed it, too,” Ali said.

“Mr. Green likes to think of himself as the
Arizona Reporter
’s star investigative reporter. He’s also a royal pain in the butt, but he was one of Devon’s favorites, so watch your back around him.”

“Favorites?” Ali asked.

“As in feeding him scoops before information went to any of the other media outlets.”

“Got it,” Ali said.

Gordon Maxwell walked away then. Watching him go, Ali understood a whole lot more about Sheriff Maxwell than she had before. He was a politician and a canny operator. Yes, the man was caught in a war between rival union factions at work, but he was also an elected official who, in order to win reelection, needed to show the workings of his department in the best possible light. Sheriff Maxwell was using Ali Reynolds as part of his own charm offensive in the same way Edie Larson used her sweet rolls.

Dave Holman drove up behind her, stopped, and came over to where Ali was standing. “How’d you do?” he asked.

“All right, I guess,” she said. “Sheriff Maxwell seemed pleased.”

“You aren’t?”

After a short-lived romance, Ali and Dave had fallen back into their longtime friendship. It was nonetheless disconcerting for Ali to realize that Dave sometimes knew her better than she would have liked.

“One of the reporters nailed me with a gotcha question about an ELF-related fire up near Prescott a few years ago. He acted like I should have known all about it.”

“I remember that one,” Dave said. “It happened right after I came back from deployment—a fire that turned a Street of
Dreams into a Street of Nightmares. The houses—expensive one-of-a-kind homes—were close to completion when they were burned to the ground. What the insurance settlement paid wasn’t enough to make the developer whole, and he ended up going bust. The poor guy walked away, and the project was abandoned.”

“What happened then?” Ali asked.

“They brought in an army of bulldozers and front-end loaders and carted away the debris. As far as I know, the property sits empty to this day. The trees were cut down to make way for construction. Now the trees aren’t there and neither are the houses. I believe ELF did claim responsibility for the fire, but no one was ever charged or arrested, to say nothing of tried and convicted.”

“In other words,” Ali said, “what ELF got for their trouble is one poor guy who’s been driven out of business and a beautiful piece of real estate that’s permanently wrecked.”

“That’s right,” Dave agreed. “It also means the terrorists won that round.”

“So far,” Ali said. “Maybe this time we’ll catch them.”

“We?” Dave repeated with a smile. “That sounds like you’re taking this investigation personally. I’m not so sure that’s just a consultant talking.”

Ali laughed. “I’m not so sure, either. Now, tell me about the victim. Do we know anything?”

Dave’s smile disappeared. “Before they hauled her away in the ambulance, I talked to Caleb Moore, the guy who brought the burn victim out. He’s really broken up about it. He says she’s badly hurt and isn’t likely to make it.”

“He has no idea who she is?”

“None, but I doubt she was the one setting the fire,” Dave
said. “For one thing, she was stark naked and trapped on a stack of drywall piled in the middle of a sea of flames. I’ve come up against arsonists from time to time, but never one who went around setting fires buck naked.”

“A vagrant then?” Ali asked.

“Could be, but not likely,” Dave answered. “Even though it’s May, it can still get plenty cold overnight. These houses were under construction. That means there was no heat inside, and it makes no sense that she’d be there without any clothes on.”

“Young or old?” Ali asked.

“Caleb said he couldn’t tell exactly, but an older woman—mid-sixties to seventies. It’s unlikely that a grandmotherly type like that would be going around setting fires.”

A radio transmission came through summoning Dave back to the scene of the fire. Shaking her head, Ali climbed into the Cayenne and headed home.

Once the remodeling process on her own home had been completed and there were no longer workers coming and going at all hours, Ali had installed an electronically operated gate as well as an intercom at the bottom of the driveway. The gate closed automatically at 6 p.m. She and Leland both had gate openers in their vehicles. Overnight, anyone else had to call and ask for permission to enter.

When Ali came up the driveway, she noted that the lights were off in Leland’s fifth-wheel trailer, parked on the far side of the house.

“I don’t see why you don’t move back inside now that the house is finished,” Ali had said to Leland Brooks. “You’re more than welcome to stay in your old room.”

Leland had lived in the house for years, looking after both
the troubled Arabella Ashcroft and her mother. He had moved into a fifth-wheel during the long months of remodeling.

“I’m quite accustomed to having my own place now,” he had responded cheerfully. “It’s tidy and small, and it gives us both some privacy.”

In case either of us ever needs any,
Ali had thought.

Her brief romance with Dave Holman had ended even if their friendship hadn’t, and Leland’s long-term relationship with Yavapai County Superior Court judge Patrick Macey had also run its course.

Ali had let Leland’s housing decision stand without any further discussion, and in truth she was enjoying having the house all to herself. She had loved having Chris around in the house on Andante Drive, but it was also nice to be completely on her own and in her own place. There had been no question that the Beverly Hills mansion where she had lived with her second husband, Paul Grayson, had been his before she arrived, while she lived there, and after she left. And in many ways, the house on Andante Drive still bore the stamp of Ali’s aunt Evie, who had bequeathed it to her niece.

This home was Ali’s. It was far smaller than Paul’s but larger than Aunt Evie’s. That went for everything from furniture to appliances to the radiant heat in the floors.

Ali parked in the garage and then let herself into the house through the kitchen door. She wasn’t completely on her own, however; Sam showed up immediately, wrapping her body around Ali’s leg and complaining vociferously, as only cats can, for having been abandoned. This was all a lie, since Ali knew without a doubt that Leland would have fed Sam much earlier in the evening.

“You’re a terrible liar,” Ali told the cat aloud. “I know good
and well that you’ve already been fed, and I’m not falling for your phony claims to the contrary.”

Ali was tired, but she was also wound up from her long night’s work. Knowing she wouldn’t be able to sleep right away, she stopped in the kitchen long enough to make herself a cup of hot cocoa. While there, she wrote a note for Leland.

“Have to be in Prescott between eight-thirty and nine,” she told him. “Don’t worry about breakfast.”

Once in her bedroom, she pulled off the clothing she had worn and wasn’t the least surprised that it smelled of smoke. A closer examination showed several places where falling embers had charred the material. The pantsuit had been expensive when she bought it and now it was ruined. She dropped it on the floor in front of her closet.

Maybe I should ask Sheriff Maxwell for a uniform allowance,
she thought.

On that note she headed into her spacious marble-tiled bath for a luxurious shower. Afterward, dressed in a nightgown and robe, she took her cocoa and her computer into the small study next to her bedroom.

Time to do some homework,
she told herself.

Opening her computer, she added the new names and addresses to her media contact list and then sent out an announcement about the press briefing scheduled for the courthouse steps the next morning. She intended to do some background studying on the Earth Liberation Front, but soon found herself nodding off over her computer keyboard.

Finally, without even finishing her cup of cocoa, Ali gave up. She closed her computer and crawled into bed. It took no time for her to fall asleep. Not surprisingly, while sleeping, she had
one recurring nightmare after another. They weren’t all exactly alike, but they were similar.

In each one, Ali was trapped in a locked room—a room with no windows or doors. Sometimes the room was familiar, sometimes not; but in each dream, one thing was the same: someone—some unseen person—was coming after her, intent on doing her harm. In each instance she knew her attacker was armed and dangerous. She also knew there was no escape.

The ICU nurse picked up the phone and called out to the nurses’ station. “The patient seems to be stirring,” she said in a voice inaudible to the woman lying in the bed on the far side of the room. “Let Sister Anselm know.”