Fatal Error Read Free

Brenda’s moved away, clearing aplace for Ali to sit. The bartender came forward. “What can I get you?” he asked.
    “Do you have any coffee?” Ali asked.
    Making a face, Brenda salted the side of her fist, licked off the salt, downed one of the shots of tequila, and then sucked on a lime wedge as she pushed the shot glass back across the bar. There wasn’t anything about this that was genteel cocktail-hour-type sipping, and Ali recognized it for what it was—serious drinking.
    The bartender nodded in Ali’s direction. “Give me a few minutes,” he said. “I’ll make a new pot.”
    “And maybe a menu,” Ali said. “We should probably have something to eat.”
    The bartender picked up the empty shot glass. “Got it,” he said. “Coming right up.”
    Brenda gave Ali a sly, squint-eyed look. “Are you really a cop?” she asked.
    “Not yet,” Ali said. “But I’m going to be. What about you? My dad said something about your needing my help.”
    Brenda nodded. “I do need your help,” she said, slurring her words ever so slightly. “It’s a long story, a very, very long story. I was engaged to a guy named Richard, Richard Lattimer. He dumped me.”
    Which meant it was also an old story. As Brenda began to recount her tale of woe, some of Ali’s classmates from the academy, including Jose Reyes, wandered into the bar. Wanting to avoid them if at all possible, Ali steered Brenda and her latest shot glass into a sheltering booth in the back corner of the room, beyond the bank of pool tables. Once in that airless section of the room, Ali realized how much Brenda reeked of booze—not just what she was drinking now but what she had most likely been imbibing for the past weeks and months. This was way more than recreational drinking.
    “What happened?” Ali asked, trying to seem interested but not intrusive.
    “Richard was working down in San Diego. Things just seemed funny, out of sorts. I thought we needed to see each other face-to-face to get things sorted out. So I drove all the way down there to see him, and he was gone. I went by the place where he supposedly lived, but they had never heard of him. The same thing happened when I went by the place where he told me he worked. They said they had another man named Richard who worked for them once, but his last name wasn’t Lattimer. I was just frantic. I didn’t know what to think.”
    Unlike Brenda, Ali had a pretty definite idea of what to think. In her current guise, Brenda Riley was clearly a very troubled person. Under those circumstances it made perfect sense that most right-thinking men would have done the same thing Richard Lattimer had done—run like hell in the opposite direction.
    Their food came, along with another cup of coffee for Ali. She was starved and lit into her burger. Brenda picked at her fries and ordered another shot of tequila. Keeping count, Ali was astonished at her capacity.
    “So anyway,” Brenda continued. “Like I said, he’d been acting all weird for weeks—sort of distant, like something was bothering him. That’s why I went down to see him—to surprise him. When I got back from San Diego, I called Richard and told him I knew he had left San Diego and that I knew he had lied to me.”
    “What happened then?”
    “He hung up on me. I tried sending him text messages and e-mails, but he blocked them. I haven’t heard from him since. That’s why I’m here. I need you to help me find him,” Brenda said miserably. “Even if he doesn’t love me anymore, even if he lied to me, I still love him. I need to be sure he’s okay. Finding him should be easy, right? I mean, especially now that you’re a cop.”
    That was when Ali finally understood what Brenda wanted and why she was here. Ali also knew the ramifications. Using law enforcement tools and sources to track down personal information on someone who was not a suspect in a specific crime is illegal. Yes, cops did that kind of thing occasionally, but it was