Fatal Error (11 page)

“Yes,” Brenda said. “Who is this?”

“My name is Ermina Blaylock, but everyone calls me Mina,” the woman said. Her English was precise, but there was more than a hint of an eastern European accent. “Your mother gave me your number. I believe you attempted to contact me a few months ago about a book you’re writing about Richard Lowensdale. At the time I wasn’t interested.”

Ermina Blaylock’s Storyboard file was the only one that had contained no information other than her name, date of birth, and social security number. There were none of the phone or e-mail exchanges that had been part of the other women’s files, so there had been no details for Brenda to check on either. The lack of information had intrigued her. If there had been no correspondence between them, why was Ermina’s name in Richard’s list in the first place? Was she someone Richard had targeted who had been smart enough to turn him down?

Even Richard couldn’t have had a one hundred percent success rate, and Brenda suspected that the names of the women who didn’t make that initial cut never hit the Storyboard folder. Brenda had attempted to do some fact checking on her own, but as far as Ermina Blaylock was concerned, she could locate nothing about the woman prior to her marriage to widower Mark Blaylock in 2002.

“Are you interested now?” Brenda asked.

“Yes,” Ermina said. “If you still want to speak to me, that is.”

“You’re aware that Richard was involved with any number of women?”

“Yes,” Ermina said. “In your book, will you be naming names?”

“Only with permission,” Brenda said. “Some of the women who spoke to me insisted on anonymity.”

“Sounds good,” Ermina said. “I’d probably want that too.”

“When do you want to get together?” Brenda asked.

“It happens I’m in Sacramento today, and I believe you are
too. I know it’s late, but what about lunch? We could meet somewhere, or I could stop by and pick you up.”

After receiving yet another ticket for driving with a revoked license, Brenda had given up “borrowing” her mother’s car. These days when she went someplace, she took a cab or a bus or she walked.

Brenda glanced at her watch. She had already missed most of the meeting. She was wearing a pair of sweats, which meant she wasn’t dressed to go anywhere decent for lunch. It would take her half an hour to walk home and change clothes. If her mother was taking a nap, maybe she could get in and out of the house without waking her.

“If you wouldn’t mind, how about picking me up in about an hour?” Brenda gave Ermina the exact address and then set off at a brisk walk. One of the things she had done was use other sources to verify what the women in Richard’s life had told her about their lives. As far as Ermina was concerned, there was no information available. By the time Brenda reached the house on P Street she had come up with a plan.

She entered the quiet house and hurried to her upstairs bedroom. Brenda changed into more appropriate clothing, wishing she had footwear that weren’t tennis shoes. She took another crack at fixing her hair and makeup and went downstairs. The dining room often doubled as Brenda’s home office. She kept a printer and an elderly laptop on top of the wooden hope chest she had moved from her bedroom to her make-do headquarters.

With the printer and the computer out of the way, Brenda used the key from her purse to unlock the chest. The booze bottles she had once concealed inside it when it had been what she called her “hopeless chest” were long gone. Some of the liquor had been drunk, but when she finally got serious about getting sober, she had emptied the others down the drain in her bathroom. Now the locked chest held hope once more. It was
where Brenda filed everything about her book project, including her copies of the contract she had signed. It was where she kept the passbook to her newly established bank account, printed accounts of her interviews with Richard’s various victims, as well as the printouts she had made from Richard’s Storyboard folder.

At very the bottom of the heap, she found the file that contained the original background check High Noon Enterprises had done on Richard, the one Ali Reynolds had ordered for her. There was a phone number at the top of the page. She dialed the number and then disconnected the call while the phone on the other end was ringing.

Instead, after returning all the paperwork to the chest, locking it, and then stowing the key in her purse, she opened her laptop, booted it up, and jotted off a quick e-mail.

Dear Ali,

You’ll be glad to know that I’m finally getting my head screwed on straight, and yes, I am in treatment. Finally. I’m working on a book about Richard Lowensdale and all the women’s lives he has adversely impacted through his cyberstalking.

I’m having trouble locating information on one of the women on his list, Ermina Vlasic Cunningham Blaylock, who is either Richard’s former employer or the wife of his former employer. I’m guessing the company was in her name in order to latch on to the women-owned business gravy train in government contracts.

I started to call the company you had do the background check on Richard last summer. Then I decided that they might take the request more seriously if it came from you instead of from me. If there’s any charge, you’ll be relieved to know that I’m now in a position to pay for it myself even if I haven’t earned back the right to have my own credit card.

I’m attaching everything I know about Ermina below. Thanks in advance for your help. I expect I’ll be talking to her today and tomorrow, so the sooner I can have the info the better.

Brenda R.

After pressing send, Brenda closed the laptop and put it away. Then she hurried downstairs. Her mother’s worsening vision problems made leaving Camilla a note impossible.

I’ll call her later
, Brenda thought.

She stepped out on the front porch just as an older-model silver Lincoln Town Car pulled to a stop in front of the house. As Brenda hurried forward, the passenger window rolled down. A well-dressed woman was at the wheel.

“Brenda?” she asked.

“Yes,” Brenda answered.

“I’m Ermina,” the woman said. “Get in.”

Ermina Blaylock was lovely. Her auburn hair glowed in the cold winter sunlight that came in through the sunroof. She had a flawless complexion and fine features.

“Thank you for picking me up, Ermina,” Brenda said. “I don’t have a car right now, and that makes getting around tough.”

“No problem,” the woman said. “But call me Mina. Everybody does.”

W
aiting to see if Mina would show that Friday, Richard had a tough time concentrating. He was distracted enough that he didn’t dare do any of his usual Internet correspondence. It was important to keep all his stories straight, and he didn’t want to end up saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.

He had delivered his completed programming fix to Mina the week before. He knew the test flight had been scheduled for Wednesday. He and Mina were still operating under his eyeball-to-eyeball protocol, so she didn’t send him an e-mail. She didn’t call.

She had told him that if the test flight was successful, she would bring him his bonus on Friday, so Richard waited on tenterhooks. Earlier in the morning he had briefly considered cleaning house in advance of her visit, but he had eventually decided against that. He was sitting at his desk watching for her through the living room window when she arrived, apparently on foot. She pushed open the lopsided gate and walked up the weed-littered sidewalk.

When Richard had first returned to Grass Valley, his neighbors had been incredibly curious about him. He wasn’t a very personable guy, and he’d been firm in rejecting their overtures of friendship. Over time they had adjusted to the fact that he was reclusive. If they wondered about why he ordered anything and everything online, they didn’t discuss any of that with him.

Because the neighbors were used to a steady stream of delivery folks who left their vehicles on the street below and trooped up and down the sidewalk leading to Richard’s house, he and Mina had hit upon her masquerading as a delivery person whenever she came to see him.

Today, as usual, Mina arrived on his doorstep using a faux UPS driver uniform with brown khaki trousers and a brown jacket. And as she had done on previous occasions, she carried a stack of boxes to lend credence to the disguise.

Richard didn’t want to appear overeager. Nonetheless, he hurried to the door to meet her. “It’s about time you got here,” he said. “How did it go?”

“How do you think it went?” Mina asked with a smile as she set down her boxes. “I’m here bearing gifts, aren’t I?”

“Great.” Richard could barely contain his relief. “Come on in.”

He led the way into the living room. He was halfway back to his desk when a powerful blow hit him squarely on the back of the head. Down he went.

By the time Richard struggled back to woozy consciousness, she had secured him to one of the dining room chairs with packing tape—probably his own packing tape from the dining room—and there was tape over his mouth as well. He was in a sitting position, but the chair had tipped over onto its side.

The room was surprisingly dark, as though night had fallen while he was unconscious. Mina was seated at the desk in front of his computer, her face eerily aglow in the lamplight. She was
dressed in clothing that was different than he remembered. The brown uniform was gone. Her shoes were covered with something that looked like surgical booties; she wore gloves.

Struggling to loosen the bonds, Richard tried to speak. He meant to say, “What are you doing?” but his words came out in an incomprehensible mumble.

“Quiet,” she ordered. “Be still!”

She left the computer and came back over to where he lay on his side on the floor. Picking up the hammer, she waved it in front of his face. “Do not make a sound,” she said.

Richard understood that the hammer was a very real threat. He fell silent.

“Where’s the money I gave you?” Mina said. “I want it. I also want my thumb drive.”

Richard tried to make sense of this. She was robbing him of the money she had paid him? Worried about the possibility of some drug-crazed addict breaking into his house, Richard had hidden the money, and he had hidden it well, but it had never occurred to him that Mina might be the one trying to take it away.

But it was
his
money. He had worked for it. She owed him for getting her damned UAVs back in the air, and he
would not
give her back that money, not in a thousand years. The same thing with the thumb drive. He looked at her and shook his head.

That seemed to throw Mina into a fit of rage. She ran back to the dining room and cleared his mother’s curio shelves of Richard’s entire model airplane collection, knocking them to the floor, where she stepped on them and ground them to pieces.

“Tell me,” she said.

With his mouth taped shut, he couldn’t have told her if he had wanted. But it was a grudge match now. He wouldn’t tell her no matter what. He shook his head. Emphatically.

She disappeared from view for a time. When she returned,
she was carrying his mother’s old kitchen shears. At first he thought she was going to cut through the tape and free him. Instead, she walked behind him. The pain when it came was astonishing. Even with the tape over his mouth, he howled in agony.

When he could breathe again, tears were streaming down his face. She came around and dangled the remains of one of his fingers in his face.

“Tell me,” she said.

He knew then that he was going to die, and the only satisfaction he could have was to deny this woman what she wanted. Twice more she went behind him. Twice more Richard’s world exploded in absolute agony. He passed out then. When he came to sometime later, he was aware of a peculiar racket, and the air around him was filled with the stale odor he always connected with his mother’s old vacuum cleaner.

Why is that running now?

Then she appeared again, bringing with her another of the dining room chairs. She set the chair close to his head and then sat on it.

“Tell me,” she said again.

“No,” he managed. Even with the tape over his mouth, it sounded like what he meant to say,
“N-O!”

Suddenly, out of nowhere a plastic bag appeared. With a single deft movement, she pulled the cloudy plastic down over his head.

“Tell me and I’ll let you live.”

Richard was an experienced liar. So was Mina Blaylock. He knew that, no matter what, she going to kill him anyway. So since it would make no difference, Richard would not give her his money. No matter what.

He heard her tear loose a swath of transparent packing tape. He felt it tighten around his neck. For a few moments—a minute
or so—there was enough air to breathe inside the bag. As the plastic went in and out with each breath, he could see her sitting there, watching and waiting, hoping he would give in.

He didn’t. Instead, he closed his eyes so he didn’t have to see her. Soon he felt himself struggling for breath as the oxygen inside the bag became depleted.

“Tell me,” he heard her say from very far away.

He shook his head once more, and had a fleeting moment of victory. He knew he was dying, but he also knew he had won and Mina Blaylock had lost.

A
li’s phone rang as she pulled out of the Sugarloaf parking lot. “Hey, Ali,” her very pregnant daughter-in-law said. “Are you busy?”

Knowing a little of Athena’s background, Ali did her best to tread lightly in the mother-in-law department. There was enough bad blood between Athena and her own parents that Athena’s folks hadn’t been invited to Chris and Athena’s wedding. The only family member who had broken ranks with everyone else and attended the wedding was Athena’s paternal grandmother, Betsy Peterson.