The Sam Prichard Series - Books 9-12 (Sam Prichard Boxed Set 3)

by David Archer

  There was no doubt in his mind that Jackie was driving the Z06 up ahead, and he knew that she had an incredible machine. The Z06 boasted six hundred and fifty horsepower, and was capable of speeds of two hundred and eighty-five miles per hour. It had been designed for road racing, and Sam's old 72 Stingray didn't have a tenth of the technological innovations that had gone into its design and production.

  Sam didn't let that worry him. What his car did have was a high-compression 427 that had been a proven street dominator for decades. Sam had built the engine himself, spending more than twenty thousand dollars on the parts and accessories that made it as powerful as it could possibly be without being illegal. Since the road was leading through a massive residential area, there was very little chance that Jackie could get up to the monstrous speeds her car was capable of, so Sam knew he could keep up.

  He grabbed his phone out of his pocket and quickly punched up Karen's number on speed dial. “I've got her,” he yelled when she answered. “She's in a new black Corvette, doing about a hundred and forty miles an hour on Bowles Avenue, going west. I'm right behind her, keeping her in sight.”

  “Yeah, Indie told me. I hope you know we got phones going crazy down here about some idiots racing through that area. There's a half-dozen units already headed your way. You should be coming up on a roadblock shortly, Sam, so be careful.”

  Sam dropped his phone back into his pocket and concentrated on driving. Jackie was trying to shake him, weaving in and out of the traffic that was all over the road, but he was hanging on like a bulldog. They had gone about five miles when Jackie suddenly began to slow.

  Sam had to downshift and ride his brakes to keep from crawling up her tailpipe, but then she whipped the car left on to Coal Mine Road. Sam followed, fishtailing around the corner and shifting like mad in order to get moving again. This road, however, was no straightaway. The long curve should have been a breeze for the Z06, but Sam could tell that Jackie was having trouble controlling the car.

  His own Stingray, on the other hand, was a road-holding monster. He quickly found himself gaining on her again, and when she tried once more to get a burst of speed out of the car, he knew that she was going to lose control.

  Sure enough, the Z06 went into a spin and left the road just past the Easton Sports Complex. A large empty field on the right suddenly became a massive cloud of dust as the car spun round and round. Sam slammed on his brakes and managed to bring his own car almost to a stop, then turned onto the dirt to follow Jackie.

  The cloud of dust had kept him from seeing exactly what happened, and when he found the Z06 he was shocked. Somewhere in that cloud, the car had dug in and begun flipping. Pieces of it were scattered over a half-acre, and he suddenly realized that what looked like a pile of rags in front of him was Jackie, herself.

  Sam jumped out of the car and moved as quickly as he could to get to her, certain that there was no hope. Her body was mangled and broken, and blood was coming from various places, but when he dropped to his knees beside her she opened her eyes.

  “Guess I really messed it up, didn't I, Sam?” Jackie said.

  Sam yanked out his phone and dialed 911, but sirens were converging on him even as he told the dispatcher where to send an ambulance. A half-dozen squad cars skidded in around them, and several officers leaped out with their weapons drawn. Sam identified himself, and the officers hurried up to surround him and his suspect.

  “Jackie, what in the world got into you?” Sam asked. “I know you killed McAlester, and you tried to kill the Howdens, but why?”

  Jackie coughed, and a bit of blood spurted out of her mouth. “Got tired of him, I guess,” she said. “I wasn't always bad, Sam, but do you know how hard it is for a tall girl to get a date? Carlos—he made me feel good, at first. He treated me good, and I liked it.” She coughed again. “But then he started asking for favors, little things like making sure some small piece of evidence didn't make it to where it was supposed to be. At first I was scared, and just did it because I was afraid I'd lose him, but then it got to be kind of a game. I was outsmarting everyone, and that felt good.” She started coughing once more, and it took her a few seconds to get it under control. “It all just went downhill, after that. You know what they say, the bigger the thrill you get, the bigger the one you need. Things just got completely out of hand, and I figured the only hope I had was to get him out of my life. I had it all planned out, so no one would get hurt but him; I didn't even know his ex was there until I got there that morning, and I thought the kid was at his grandparents. I slipped in the back, while they were yelling at each other, and I decided to go through with it when I heard her storm out the front door. I grabbed the knife and started toward the front, but then he turned around. When he saw me coming at him, he started to tell me to leave, that she would be back, but I couldn't stop myself. I already had the knife, and I just went a little crazy on him. As soon as he was down, I turned around and got out of there.”

  She took a ragged breath and Sam thought she was done, but she held on. Her eyes darted around at the officers surrounding her, and Sam wondered how many of them she knew.

  “Jackie,” Sam said, “he wasn't your first victim, was he?”

  She turned her eyes back toward his face. “No. Like I said, the bigger the thrill…It grew, it grew like a monster that was out of control. First I was just losing little bits of evidence, then it was a matter of altering it. Before long, I was figuring out how to create evidence that would point the way Carlos wanted an investigation to go.” She coughed again. “Then, one day, there was a witness, some guy who had seen something he wasn't supposed to see, but then he was in a wreck, and he got hurt. He was in the hospital, and Carlos was freaking out because if he talked, it would screw up whatever he was working on. He wanted me to fix it so no matter what the guy said, there wouldn't be any way to back it up, but I couldn't find a way to do that. Then it hit me it would just be better if the guy never said anything, and that seemed like the biggest thrill of all. I went to see him, and just added a bit more morphine to his IV.”

  Sam shook his head. “How many cases did you tamper with, Jackie?”

  She rolled her eyes up to look into his own, and tried to shrug her shoulders. She suddenly grimaced in pain, and her breath started becoming more ragged.

  “Too many…” Jackie gasped again, and then her eyes rolled up in her head. She was still breathing, but Sam didn't know if there was any hope or not.

  He stayed there beside her until they heard the siren of the ambulance approaching, and when it slid in beside them, he got up and moved over to his car. Karen drove up just behind the ambulance, and walked over to where Sam was sitting on the fender of his Corvette.

  “I don't know whether to pat you on the back or arrest you,” Karen said. “In case you didn't notice, Sam, your car is not an authorized pursuit vehicle.”

  “Yeah, I know it,” he said. “I couldn't let her get away, Karen. Chalk it up to me doing what I felt I had to do, and you can arrest me when you feel like it.”

  She snorted. “I'm not going to arrest you, and you know it.” She looked over to where the paramedics were trying to stabilize Jackie enough to get her onto the stretcher. “You talk to her?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said, nodding. “After that kind of a wreck, I'm surprised she was alive, let alone conscious, but I talked to her. Apparently Carlos had gotten to her romantically, then when she was hooked, he started asking her for favors. Little things at first, I guess, tampering with evidence, but she said that it started to become a thrill for her to outsmart all of us, and she needed the thrills to be bigger. That eventually led her to murder, confirming the things I was told about her having killed before, but I'm not sure. She killed Carlos because she wanted out, wanted to quit.”

  Karen shook her head. “Just goes to show, doesn't matter how good we think we are, there's always some kind of temptation that can take us down the wrong path. Think she'll make it?”

  “Hell, I ain't
no doctor. If you asked me, I'd say she should have been dead ten minutes ago. If she makes it, maybe we can find out more about the things she did. If not, then I guess somebody's going to be going over all her crime scene and evidence reports for the last five years or more. Maybe when we know what cases she rigged, we'll start to get an idea of just how dark she went.”

  Karen stood there silently, watching with Sam as the paramedics finally got Jackie onto a backboard and into the ambulance. It rolled away quickly, its siren wailing once again.

  “Well, I guess that's my cue,” Karen said. “I'd better go down to the hospital and wait to see if she's got a chance. For her sake, it might be better if she didn't make it.” She sighed dramatically. “At least she was single, that's one good thing.”

  Sam shrugged. “Was it? That's how Carlos got to her, that's how men like him always get to a woman, playing on her loneliness.”

  Karen looked at him for a moment. “Everyone is lonely, Sam, at least to some degree. All I really meant was that at least she wasn’t leaving any kids behind. I worry every day about what would happen to mine if I got myself killed on the job.” She shrugged her shoulders, then turned and walked away without another word.

  20

  Sam watched her go, then got into his car and fired it up to follow her to the hospital. It was certain that Jackie would be in surgery for some time, if she managed to pull through at all, but there were still questions that needed answers. Some of those he could get by hanging around Karen, but some would become unsolved mysteries if Jackie were to die.

  “We might as well both go do something else,” Karen said when he found her in the ER. “Doctor Klockenbrink told me to get the hell out of his way. He thinks she'll make it, but it will probably take several hours of surgery, and she won't be able to answer questions for at least a day.”

  Sam nodded. “I know she's in pretty bad shape,” he said. “What about her CSI partner, Ned? Anybody figure out whether he was involved?”

  “Couple of uniforms found him just a little bit ago, back at work. He claims Jackie called him asking for a ride, said her car broke down. The way he tells it, he picked her up about three blocks from the Howdens’ place, and she had him take her to the Chevy dealership where she stole the car she crashed. He claims he didn't even know there was a problem until they snatched him up and brought him downtown for questioning.”

  Sam grimaced and rolled his eyes. “He could be telling the truth,” he said. “If Jackie was doing it for the thrills, it's doubtful she would've wanted to share them with anyone else. Besides, if she brought him in on it all, it would create the risk of a witness against her. I think if he knew what she was up to, he'd probably be dead already.”

  “Good point,” Karen replied. “We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for now, unless we find evidence to the contrary. By the way, they're calling out Jack McGinty to run the crime lab for a while, and I guess he'll be handling all the case reviews. Unless we can find a particular point where her cases began getting skewed, he's going to have to go through every case she ever worked. Do you have any idea how many people could end up being released from prison because of this? How many cases that we thought were solved might be overturned?”

  “Yeah, but there's an upside, too. Think of how many cases she tampered with so that we couldn't solve them. Going over the evidence with a fresh set of eyes might mean some of those will finally be closed.”

  Karen glared at him. “Oh, yeah, I forgot, you're an optimist. Just remember, buddy, you're not the one who's going to have to crawl all over those cold cases. At least some of them are going to fall in my lap.”

  Sam started to answer, but his phone rang. He glanced at it and saw that it was a call from Chris. “Gotta take this,” he said to Karen, and then he walked away a few feet. “Hello?”

  “Sam! Sam, you did it!” It wasn't Chris's voice that was screaming through the phone, but Candy's. “I'm out of jail, and guess what?”

  Sam held the phone away from his ear. “What?”

  “My lawyer, when he found out everything was being dismissed, he called CPS and started reading them the riot act. They're going to let me have Charlie, temporarily for right now, but we'll go to a permanent custody hearing in a few weeks. Isn't that awesome?”

  Sam chuckled. “Yes, it sure is,” he said. “Tell Charlie I said hello. That's a great kid you got there, Candy. I'm sorry things had to go this far south for you to get custody of him back, but I think it will be good for both of you to be together. When do you pick him up?”

  “We're on the way to get him right now; he's at a group foster home in Littleton. Hey, Chris wants to talk to you.” There was a moment of unidentifiable noise, then Chris came on the line.

  “Sam, buddy, you're awesome! I knew if anybody could prove Candy innocent, you could. Let me know how much I owe you, I'm more than happy to pay.”

  “I'm not gonna send you a bill,” Sam said. “We have to take care of our own, right? Let's just chalk this one up to doing what needed to be done.”

  “Well, like I said, you are definitely awesome. Anytime you need a favor in return, all you have to do is say the word. And I think that goes for all of us,” Chris said, and Sam could hear Candy's heartfelt agreement in the background.

  It took a minute or two for Sam to get off the phone, and by then, Karen was nowhere in sight. Sam wandered over to the information desk and found out that Mr. and Mrs. Howden had been admitted, got their room number and went to peek in on them. He found them on the third floor, sharing a room, and knocked lightly on the doorjamb.

  Mrs. Howden was awake and sitting up in her bed, and she broke out into a big smile when she saw him. “Oh, come in, young man, come in,” she said. “My husband tells me we have you to thank for our rescue.”

  Sam grinned at her. “I think we're even,” he said. “I came to thank both of you for helping me solve the murder. You guys doing okay?”

  “Oh, goodness, yes,” the old woman said. “I'm a lot tougher than that silly girl imagined. I think she had some idea of trying to make it look like an accident, like a flowerpot was on an upper shelf and just fell on me. I don't know what she was planning to do to Kenneth, but it seems to me it would have looked pretty funny if we both died accidentally on the same day, don't you think?”

  Sam had to stifle a chuckle. “Yes, that might have seemed a little bit odd. Luckily, I happened to stop by and interrupted her. When I found your husband, the only thing he could think about was trying to tell me where you were.”

  Mrs. Howden's eyebrows went up. “Really? That scamp,” she said. “He should have been worried about himself, he was hurt a lot worse than I was. That crazy woman broke two of his ribs.”

  “Genevieve, I told you,” Mr. Howden said, “my ribs are not broke. They're just bruised. All she did was push me down onto the bed, but I twisted my knee and couldn't get back up. If it hadn't been for that, I would have been right behind her with my Louisville slugger! Lucky for us this young feller showed up when he did.” He turned to Sam. “Did you catch her?”

  Sam gave him a half smile. “We got her, but I think she actually caught herself. I had found her on the street, and she decided to make a run for it. I was chasing her and she lost control of her car, rolled over several times. She's in surgery right now, but it looks like she might survive. Maybe then we can get to the bottom of this whole mess.”

  “What I don't understand is why she would have killed Carlos?” Mrs. Howden asked. “He was just the sweetest man you could ever have known.”

  “I'm afraid not everyone would agree with you on that, Mrs. Howden. It turns out that Carlos worked for a man who paid him to threaten and sometimes hurt people, just to make sure they did what he wanted them to do. Jackie—that's the lady who attacked you—she works for the police as a crime scene technician. I guess the two of them had a romantic relationship, her and Carlos, and he got her involved in his illegal activities. It seems she was trying to get out of it, a
nd thought the only way she could do that was if Carlos was dead. She knew that if he was murdered, she’d be the one they called in to investigate the crime scene, and she could make the evidence look however she wanted. She just hadn't counted on me being hired to prove the number one suspect was innocent.”

  The old woman nodded wisely. “So she came after us because of the things we told you, right?”

  “That's how I see it,” Sam said. “I'm curious, though, why you never mentioned her as one of Carlos's girlfriends. I mean, you had to have seen her when she was going over the crime scene right across the street from you.”

  “I noticed that she was pretty tall, but I didn't realize it was the same tall girl I had seen going in there before. That one always wore a hood whenever she came over, and she drove a fancy blue car. I wish I would've known it was her, I could have probably saved us all a lot of trouble.”

  “Or you might have got us hurt a lot quicker,” her husband said. “I told you all along, your nosiness was going to get us into trouble sooner or later, and it did.”

  Sam chuckled, and decided that was a good time for him to make his exit. He walked out of the room and took the elevator down to the main floor, then went out through the ER to get to where he had parked his car.

  When he got to it, Sam paused for a moment to think about all that had happened over the past few days. Candy was free, and would soon be reunited with her son permanently. Jackie, who would probably go down for multiple murders and dozens of other crimes, was in surgery but expected to survive. The elderly couple who had helped Sam solve the case were going to be all right.

  And Beauregard's track record was intact. Once again, he had been right.

  Sam sat on the fender of his Corvette as he thought about all of these things, and then he took out his cell phone and called Indie.