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

by David Archer

  “That’s just cruel,” she said, after she caught her breath. “You kiss me like that just before you’re leaving, all it does is leave me frustrated. If this guy Marty gives you any static when you get there, you tell him I’m going to beat his brains in for making you stay gone all night.”

  Sam grinned and kissed her again. “I’ll be sure to tell him that,” he said. He stole one more quick kiss, then picked up his bag and went out to tell their daughter goodbye.

  This time, Kenzie paid more attention. She ran to him and let him catch her up in a big hug, then kissed his cheek and made him promise to come home as soon as he could. “And, Daddy?”

  “What, sweetheart?”

  “Don’t get shot again, okay?” The look in her eyes told her that she was genuinely worried for him, and almost brought tears to his own.

  “I promise to do my best,” he said. “Is that okay?”

  Kenzie sighed. “I guess it’ll have to do,” she said, bringing grins to all three of the adult faces. Sam hugged her once more and put her down, then kissed Indie one more time before stepping out the door and climbing back into the Corvette.

  The fastest route from Denver to Montrose was to take I-70 to Grand Junction, then head south on US 50. The trip would normally take almost five hours, but he ran into construction on the interstate just after passing Glenwood Springs, and it added another forty minutes.

  Sam enjoyed driving, especially in the Corvette. He had plugged in a series of his favorite CDs; the music kept him alert and focused on the road. Occasionally, in between CDs, he would call home and talk to his wife and daughter for a few moments, but Sam preferred keeping his mind on the road.

  By the time he pulled into Montrose, it was almost six thirty in the evening. He took out his phone and called Indie one more time as he passed the city limits sign.

  “Any movement on the phone?”

  “Just a moment,” Indie said, “let me double check. No, right at the moment it’s still showing up in Buckley Park, on Nevada Avenue.”

  “Okay,” Sam said. “Does seem kind of strange that it hasn’t moved at all, though. If Marty is hiding out here, you’d think he’d be going to one of these restaurants to eat now and then, right?”

  “Yeah, but maybe he leaves the phone in his van. If Montrose is like a lot of the small towns around Colorado, you can camp in the parks. Maybe he keeps the phone plugged in to keep the battery up.”

  Sam grinned into the phone. “That’s one of the things I love about you,” he said. “You always tend to look on the brighter side of things. Me, I wonder if the fact the phone isn’t moving around might indicate that Marty isn’t capable of it. Hang on a second, I see a sign for the park. Let me take a look real quick while I’ve got you on the phone.”

  Sam turned onto North Fourth Street and followed it two blocks up to the park. There were several vehicles scattered around the area, and it took him only a moment to spot the green and silver Ford van.

  “Indie, I think I see his van. I’m gonna park a little ways off and try to stroll up there quietly without being seen. I’ll call you back when I know something.”

  “You’d better,” Indie said. “Good luck, Babe.” She hung up without another word and Sam slipped his phone into his pocket as he parked the Corvette alongside the park on the street.

  He stepped out of the car and felt his hip twinge, so he reached back inside to grab his cane. He usually didn’t need it much anymore, but sitting for so long in the bucket seat was enough to cause the hip to hurt when he started to put his weight on it. He leaned lightly on the cane, just enough to take a little pressure off the once badly damaged joint.

  He had parked about fifty yards from the van, leaving the Corvette out of sight from anyone who might be inside it. He strolled along leisurely, as if he was merely enjoying the afternoon, meandering along the way so that it would not be obvious that he was trying to get a look through the windshield. He passed about 10 feet in front of the van and quickly turned his head toward it as he did so.

  The interior was dark and Sam couldn’t tell if anyone was inside the van or not, so he continued walking for another moment. He stopped and leaned against a tree, then slowly turned himself around so that he could see the van again.

  It rocked just a bit as he was watching it, but its darkened windows made it impossible to see any motion inside. Still, someone was moving around inside there, probably trying to keep an eye on him. He pushed off from the tree and started walking directly toward the vehicle.

  It rocked again as the occupant moved to watch him through another window, so Sam stepped up his pace. 15 seconds later he was standing just beside the driver’s door, and he knocked softly on the window.

  “Martin Fletcher?” he asked. “I’m Sam Prichard, we talked on the phone a while ago.”

  There was silence from inside the van for half a minute, and then it moved again as a man inside climbed up into the driver’s seat. It took Sam a moment to realize that it was Marty, because his normally black hair had been dyed blonde and he was sporting a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. He looked at Sam for a couple of seconds, then the window rolled down about three inches.

  “You’re the private detective?” Marty asked.

  “I am,” he said as he flashed his ID. “And I’m in no mood to play games. Let me in so we can talk privately.”

  Marty looked at him for another moment, then pointed toward the passenger side. “Okay,” he said. “Climb in. I don’t want anyone to overhear us.”

  Sam nodded, then walked around the front of the van and reached for the passenger door. There was a click, and then the lock button popped up. Sam opened the door and climbed up inside, shutting it behind him.

  “How did you find me?” Marty asked. “I didn’t think anyone knew I was here.”

  “It was actually pretty easy,” Sam replied. “We got into Tracy’s cell phone records and realized that when she stopped calling your phone every day, she started calling another one. Once we had that number, it was just a matter of time before we were able to get your GPS location. Now tell me, do you have any idea where Tracy might be? Her daughter is pretty worried about her.”

  Marty frowned and shook his head. “Ain’t got a clue,” he said. “She told me to come out here while she tried to work some kind of magic, but I haven’t heard from her in a couple of days now. The last time she called me was two, no, three days ago. She said she was thinking about trying to get hold of you, and seeing if you could get it all fixed so I could come home, but not to leave where I was at until I heard from her. When you called earlier, I was hoping she was having you call to tell me everything’s okay.”

  “I’m afraid not,” Sam said. “She didn’t come home from work the day you last talked to her, but the police seem to think you and she ran off together.”

  Marty snorted, a derisive laugh. “Like heck they do,” he said. “Tracy brought this cop out to see me last week, a detective named Lemmons. I guarantee you, he knows exactly what’s going on. If Tracy is missing, I’d bet money he knows where she is.”

  “I know Detective Lemmons,” Sam said. “He’s actually the one in charge of the non-existent investigation into Tracy’s whereabouts, and he’s the one who insists that you two were having an affair and ran off together. Care to enlighten me about why he would say that?”

  “Because he’s scared,” Marty said. “He knows what this is all about, and it scares the crap out of him.”

  Sam raised an eyebrow. “And just exactly what is it all about? What’s going on that would scare a police detective?”

  Marty looked at him for a moment, then turned his attention to the steering wheel, where his fingers were picking at the horn button. He was silent for a few seconds, then turned back to Sam.

  “Look, I know Tracy said we could trust you, but we’re talking about my life, here. I’m not sure how much I really want to tell you at this point, can you dig it? You may be the stand-up guy she thinks you are, but mone
y and threats can make people do some pretty weird stuff.”

  Sam shook his head in confusion. “Money and threats? Where does that come in?”

  Marty gave him a sarcastic grin. “Let’s just say certain people are probably willing to pay a lot, or do just about anything, to get their hands on something I’ve got. That would include killing me and anyone else who knows too much about it.”

  Sam leaned against the passenger door. “Marty, I’m here to try to help you, because right now you’re the only lead I’ve got on finding Tracy. The trouble is, I can’t help either of you if you keep stalling me. Just what is it you’ve got hidden away, and why is it so important?”

  Marty stared at him for several seconds before he answered. “Okay, fine,” he said, “but just remember I warned you, this isn’t something you even want to get involved in. And if you’re thinking about trying to collect some reward, you can forget it right now. They might promise to pay a lot, but all you’d end up getting is a bullet in the head. They can’t take a chance you might talk about it afterward.”

  “I’m not interested in any reward,” Sam said. “If Tracy told you anything at all about me, then you probably know she was once very important to me. I’m here for her, not for any money. Whatever you tell me will stay between us for as long as it needs to. I’m just hoping it’ll give me some kind of lead on how to find Tracy and keep her safe.”

  “I think she’s safe enough at the moment. They won’t risk hurting her as long as they don’t have it, and she doesn’t know where it is.” He stared another moment and then sighed. “Okay, I’ll tell you. It’s a video recording,” he said. “And what makes it so valuable is that it shows five cops, including your pal Lemmons, murdering three kids.”

  6

  Sam’s eyes were about to fly out of his head. “Murdering kids?” he asked incredulously.

  Marty shrugged. “Two boys and a girl, not one of them over sixteen. And now you’re gonna tell me there’s no way you believe it, right?”

  Sam got his eyes back under control and stared at the other man. “No,” he said slowly. “No, I’m not going to say that outright, because I know how bad people can be. What I am going to say is that I’d certainly like to get a look at that video, but more important than that, I want to know how and why it happened. Can you tell me that?”

  “I can tell you the how pretty easily, since I saw it all on the video,” Marty replied. “They beat the boys to death with their bare hands, but the girl was strangled. She was screaming, so one of them just wrapped his arm around her throat and started squeezing until she went limp, but then he just stood there and held on for another couple of minutes, staring at the others and what they were doing to those boys. A cop held one of the boys while Lemmons pounded on his face 'til there was almost nothing left, and the other boy got the same treatment, with one holding him while the other one beat on him.” He swallowed, and Sam could see the disgust in his face. “As for the why, I think it was just for the thrill of it. One of the boys got mouthy with a couple of the cops, and Lemmons punched him. He said they were gonna learn a lesson, but when they realized the girl was dead, they started to freak. Lemmons said they couldn’t let anyone find out what happened, so the cops choked the boys until they were dead, too.”

  Sam shook his head in shock. “Good Lord,” he said. “What on earth started it all?”

  “The kids were caught somewhere they shouldn’t have been, by two uniform cops. At first it just looked like they were gonna get chewed out and sent on their way, but then one boy started running his mouth, saying the cops didn’t have any right to tell him what to do, and how all cops ought to be shot, and one of them hit him in the face. The other boy tried to fight, jumping on the cop that punched his friend, so the other cop called for backup and grabbed that one and the girl, then they just stayed there until another squad car and that asshole Lemmons showed up. They asked the kids what was going on and one of them said the cops just attacked them for no reason, but then Lemmons started slapping that boy around. One of the first pair of cops was holding onto that kid, and the new ones started on the second boy while the other one was holding the girl. That was when the girl started to scream and it all went crazy. Lemmons said to shut her up, and next thing they knew, she was dead. After that, it looked like they all just decided the boys had to die to cover their own asses.”

  Sam was staring at him. “How long ago did this happen? I haven’t heard anything about dead teenagers lately...”

  “What about missing teenagers? On the video, you can see them loading the kids’ bodies into the trunk of one of the cars, and then they all drove away together. My guess is they took ’em somewhere they won’t be found any time soon, wouldn’t you think?””

  Sam thought about it for a moment, and then nodded slowly. “Couple of weeks ago, right? There was a story on the news about a teenage girl going missing, and her family thought she might have run off with a couple of boys she’d been hanging out with. News reports said the boys were missing, too, but they’d been known to disappear from time to time so no one was really worried about them. If the girl hadn’t been known as a pretty good kid from a money family, it probably would have gone unnoticed for a while.”

  “I’d say that was probably them,” Marty said softly. “Timing’s about right.”

  Sam looked at him. “And how is it that you have a video of all this?”

  “I didn’t know I did until the next day,” Marty sighed. “I keep a camera in my van for these videos I do, a video blog thing. That evening, I made a new one down on Vine Street, in a parking lot, and then a buddy of mine called me and wanted me to go have a few beers with him, so I locked up the van right there and he came and picked me up.” He shrugged. “Thing is, I forgot to shut off the camera. It was pointed out the windshield from when I’d made my last vid, and I just didn’t notice the little light was still flashing, so I just forgot about it, right? When I got back to it about three that morning, I went home and took it in so I could download the video into my computer and edit it. That went fine and I uploaded it to YouTube, then went to bed. The next day, I noticed I still had several hours of video left in the download, and I don’t even know why, but I scanned through it at high speed, and that’s when I saw cops. I slowed it down and watched, and then I pretty much crapped myself. That’s a top-quality camera with a terabyte of storage and a super-sensitive microphone, and it caught the whole thing, audio and all. I trimmed out all the dead time, uploaded it to a private server nobody even knows I’ve got, then started wondering what the heck to do about it.”

  He fell silent, so Sam asked, “And what did you decide?”

  Marty shrugged again. “I didn’t know what to do. Couldn’t go to the cops, right? Everyone knows they cover for each other, so that would only get me killed. Couldn’t just broadcast it on YouTube, it would get shut down within minutes and no one would ever believe anyone who said they saw it. I thought about emailing a link to the news people on TV, but I don’t trust them anymore than I trust cops, so that was out. I’ve been trying to figure out how to use it to make those suckers pay for what they did, but I just don’t have any ideas that won’t get me killed.”

  “I can help with that,” Sam said. “I can get it to the people who’ll prosecute the officers involved, trust me. The question for this moment, though, is where is Tracy? How did she get involved in all this?”

  Marty grinned sadly. “Tracy’s a great gal,” he said. “We work together, y’know, and she cornered me in the racks a day or so after all that and said she could tell something was eating at me. I tried to brush it off, but she wouldn’t let me, so that evening after work, we went out for a bite to eat and I ended up spilling it all.” He sighed and the grin faded away. “She was shocked at first, of course, couldn’t believe I was telling the truth, so I used my phone to show her the part where they realized the girl was dead and she freaked. When she calmed down, she started talking about how the girl didn’t look any
older than her daughter, and said she wanted to help me out. She even mentioned trying to get you to help us, but I was so scared I didn’t want to trust anyone, so she tried to talk me into letting her take it to the news or some such, but that scared me, too. We decided to just think about it for a couple days, and then I got a message on YouTube that said someone saw my van in that parking lot that night, and wanted to talk to me about anything I might’ve seen.”

  “Did you reply?”

  Marty nodded, his eyes closed. “Yeah,” he said. “I thought maybe it was someone else who’d seen it, and wanted me to back up their story, y’know? And sure as hell, he wanted to know if I had seen some cops doing something really bad that night. I told him I didn’t see it myself, but I’d got it on video, and that’s when he said it was worth a lot of money. He said he knew how to sell it to the news people, like CNN or somebody, and wanted me to give it to him. That’s when I started to get nervous about it, though, cause when I said I’d give him a copy, he got all pissed off. He said he could only sell it if he had the only existing copy, which is BS, and I stopped talking to him.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Couple of cops showed up at my work the next morning. I was late coming in and saw the squad car sitting there, so I went on by and called Tracy on her cell. She said they were asking about me, and I panicked. I went and hid in a buddy’s garage all that day, and that night Tracy got me a motel room to stay in while she tried to get hold of someone to help me. I was willing to do anything by that point, so when she told me she knew a cop who said he was willing to help, I told her it was okay to bring him over. I just about died when I saw who it was.”

  “Jerry Lemmons,” Sam said flatly. “Any idea how she got involved with him on this?”

  Nodding, Marty said, “Yeah. She knew him, but she didn’t recognize him on the video, cause the screen on my phone was so small, and I think she was freaked out about the girl, anyway. I guess she’d dated him once, back before she married her husband, but she remembered him while all this was going on and called him up. When she told him what it was about, I guess he made all the right noises. She brought him to the motel, and when I panicked and said he was one of the cops on the video, he pulled out a gun and said he’d shoot her if I didn’t hand it over. I told him I didn’t have it with me, and that it was in a place where it would be found by someone who’d do something about it if anything happened to me or Tracy.” He sighed deeply. “But then he stopped that gun against her head, so I promised to have it delivered to him if he’d promise not to hurt us. He said he’d give me twenty-four hours, and later that night Tracy called and told me to run. I said I couldn’t leave her stuck in it all by herself, and that’s when she said she had a plan, but if Lemmons got his hands on me it would all fall apart. I jumped in my van and came out here, and the last time I talked to her was when she said she was going to try to talk to you and would call me back. Never heard anything from her again, but the next night I saw she’d called while I was out scrounging some food. I tried calling her back, but it went straight to voicemail.”