With that, Dave hung up. Ali was left with a dead phone in her hand and a puncture wound in her heart as well as her pride. Her primary responsibility as a reserve deputy had been to help transport prisoners from one jurisdiction or facility to another. The use of reserve deputies helped keep patrol officers where they needed to be-on patrol.
Ali hadn’t intended to offend Dave, and so far she had done nothing to undermine his investigation. His reaction seemed over-the-top. She had seen the situation with Beatrice Hart and Paula Urban as a temporary arrangement. She hadn’t expected it to be something that would undo years of established relationships, but it sounded as though irreparable damage had already been done. If Sheriff Maxwell was expecting her resignation, she would give it to him.
Ali called home to let Leland and B. know that she was on her way to Prescott. Before she headed out, she stuck her head back in Stuart’s office and gave him the same information. “If you come up with anything,” she said, “call me. I’ll probably drop in on Paula Urban while I’m in Prescott and let her know what we have so far.”
It should have taken an hour and fifteen minutes to get from Cottonwood to Prescott. She did it in just over an hour and considered herself lucky not to have a speeding ticket to show for her trouble. She pulled up in front of the Sheriff’s Department and parked in a designated visitor’s spot. After all, if she was being given her walking papers, that’s what she was-a visitor.
During her brief stint as a media relations officer, her office had been temporarily shoehorned into a corner of the front lobby, which had done nothing to endear her to the front-office clerks who felt their territory had been invaded. That had all changed.
The revamped media relations department, with Ali’s onetime intern Mike Sawyer in charge, was no longer housed in the lobby. All evidence of the previous arrangement had been eradicated. The cubicle where Ali’s desk once sat was long gone. In its place was a long chest-high counter stocked with a supply of forms that could be filled out and passed to the clerks through a bank teller-like opening in their Plexiglas shield. Ali paused long enough to grab one of the forms. Using the back, she scrawled off a one-sentence note of resignation and then made her way to the service window.
Holly Mesina, the head clerk, greeted her with a knowing smirk. “The sheriff is expecting you,” she said. “Do you need someone to show you the way?”
“No,” Ali said. “I believe I can manage.”
With that, Holly pressed the button unlocking the door that accessed the department’s interior offices. There was no one seated at the secretary’s desk outside Sheriff Maxwell’s open door, so Ali walked up to the door and tapped on the doorjamb. Gordon Maxwell sat leaning back in his desk chair while a Mozart piano concerto played through the speakers on his computer. The moment Ali knocked, he sat up and stifled the music.
“Come in and sit down, Ali,” he said with a self-conscious grin. “I don’t like people to know that I sit around in my office listening to Mozart. It’s bad for my tough-guy image.”
Ali had always liked Sheriff Maxwell and she still did. She sat.
“Understand old Dave’s got his nose out of joint.”
That was the thing about Sheriff Maxwell. Over the years Ali had discovered that conversations with him never went quite the way she had anticipated.
“You could say that,” she agreed with a nod. “He said you wanted my letter of resignation today. Here it is.” She placed the form on the desk and slid it over to him. Sheriff Maxwell picked it up, scanned it, put it down, and then slid it back to Ali.
“I’d prefer it if you reworded that,” he said, “and turned it into a temporary leave of absence.”
“But Dave said-”
“I know what Detective Holman said,” Maxwell replied. “What really set him off was having Cap Horning jump into the middle of his homicide investigation with something Dave regards as a premature and half-cocked plea deal. The idea of your piling on was just the capper on the jug, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
“But. .” Ali began again.
Sheriff Maxwell unfolded his long frame from the chair, rose, closed the door, and then returned to his desk. “Look,” he said. “This is between you and me. I have some private concerns of my own about Cap Horning. Looks to me like he’s out running roughshod over folks. If Dave comes up with some solid evidence to show that the people we have in custody are actually the responsible parties, that’s one thing. If that happens, everybody comes out smelling like a rose, and good on ’em. But finding evidence takes time. It seems to me Horning is trying to streamline the process by making what Dave and I regard as premature plea deals. Paula Urban is good people-for a public defender-but we’re in the justice business here. With Cap Horning pushing folks around, I’m worried about Paula Urban seeing to it that justice is done in this case.”
Ali blinked. “You’re saying you want me to help her?”
“I don’t like seeing undue pressure applied. If the evidence is there, I trust that it’ll carry the day with a judge and jury. The person or persons responsible for Gemma Ralston’s murder will get what’s coming to them because they’re actually convicted of the crime rather than because Cap Horning’s busy playing Let’s Make a Deal. And if having you doing a research project for the suspect’s mother ends up giving Paula some much needed help, I can’t see that there’s any harm done.”
Which meant Sheriff Maxwell knew all about the writing-project cover. For all Ali knew, he might have suggested it.
Picking up Ali’s scribbled note, Sheriff Maxwell handed it back to her. “As far as your letter is concerned,” he added. “As I said before, if you’d be so kind as to rewrite it so it says ‘leave of absence’ rather than ‘resignation,’ I’ll be happy to sign off on it. And you might want to stop by the jail before you leave town. It’s my understanding that Paula Urban just went over there to have a meeting with her client. It might be a good idea if you turned up as well.”
While Ali retrieved the paper and made the required changes, Sheriff Maxwell picked up his phone and dialed.
“Hey, Holly,” he said. “Ali Reynolds is on her way over to the jail to meet with Paula Urban and her client. Could you write up a pass for her and let the jail commander know she’s coming? She’ll be out to pick it up in a couple of minutes.”
That’ll go over like a pregnant pole vaulter, Ali thought.
That was true. When Ali went out to the lobby minutes later, a sullen-faced Holly sailed the pass through the opening rather than handing it over.
“Thanks,” Ali responded, retrieving the piece of paper from the floor halfway across the room. “You have a nice day, now.”
With that, she headed for the jail, where she was shown to an interview room where Paula Urban and Lynn Martinson were already conferring. Pausing outside the window in the corridor, Ali gazed in at the two women seated at the scarred table. Though Ali had seen Paula before, she was still surprised. Paula’s mop of springy red hair had been pulled back into a loose ponytail, but a halo of escaped curls made her look more like a refugee from junior high than a thirtysomething legal beagle. As for Lynn Martinson? There was very little resemblance between the somewhat bedraggled woman in her orange jumpsuit and the agitated woman who had joined Ali in the television station greenroom months earlier. That woman had been nervous but excited. This woman looked completely devoid of hope.
Taking a deep breath, Ali let herself into the interview room and cast a questioning glance in the direction of the obvious video equipment in the corner.
“Don’t worry,” Paula said reassuringly. “It’s not on. I believe you and Ms. Martinson have met?”
Lynn jumped up, grabbed Ali’s hand, and pumped it with heart-breakingly sincere enthusiasm that was at odds with the noisy rattle of the shackles around her ankles. “Thank you for agreeing to help me,” she said.