by David Archer
Sam slid the key into the ignition and started the truck, backing out into the alley and following it for a couple of blocks before turning onto a side street. He made his way along between rows of houses with manicured lawns for about twenty minutes, putting distance between himself and Karen’s house, then punched in the code to block caller ID and dialed the number for the Denver Police Department.
“I need to speak to Detective Lemmons,” Sam said with a growl. “Tell him it’s Sam Prichard.”
The desk sergeant almost seemed to choke for a second, but then Sam heard the hold music. It took a couple of moments, but finally the call was transferred to Lemmons’s cell phone.
“What do you want, Sam?”
“Same thing I wanted before,” Sam said. “I’ve still got what you want, safely stashed away. I’ll make the same trade we talked about earlier.”
Lemmons was quiet for a moment. “We can negotiate. Since I’m sure you don’t want this conversation recorded, give me your direct number and I’ll call you.”
“Very funny,” Sam said. “You give me yours. I’m not going to let you have time to track my GPS signal.”
Grudgingly, Lemmons told Sam his number and ended the call. Sam waited a few seconds and then punched it into his throwaway phone.
“So how do you want to do this?” Lemmons asked. “Face-to-face? There’s an old empty apartment building at Wadsworth and Florida. That’s where you’ll find me in fifteen minutes.”
Sam thought for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “Come alone. Otherwise, I vanish and the video goes to the DA.”
“Fifteen minutes,” Lemmons said. “I’ll be there, and I’ll be alone. No guns, right, Sam?”
“That part’s entirely up to you.” Sam ended the call and took the next left. The intersection Lemmons had mentioned was to the south, and Sam was less than fifteen minutes from it. He pushed the old truck and made it there in ten.
The old four-story building was surrounded by a chain link fence, and signs announced that traffic would be rerouted two blocks around it the following day because it was scheduled to be demolished in order to make way for a new medical clinic. Lemmons wasn’t there yet, so Sam parked the truck behind a large excavator on a trailer and shoved the tablet up under the seat of the truck, then got out and stood where he could look around the trailer and watch for Lemmons.
He took out his cell phone and dialed Indie, to let her know where he was and that he was meeting to talk with Lemmons, but nothing happened. He held the phone up and waved it around, but it was getting no service for some reason. He put it back into his pocket, frustrated, and continued to watch for Lemmons.
The detective arrived a few minutes later, and Sam peeked around the excavator long enough to be sure the man was alone and that no other cars were following. He waited a full minute, then stepped put and walked directly toward Lemmons’s car.
Lemmons opened his door and got out, then closed the door and leaned on it as he faced Sam. “Well,” he said, “here we are again.”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “Where we could’ve been several hours ago, if you weren’t such an idiot. I told you, Jerry, all I want is Tracy. She’s not going to talk, simply because I can convince her it’s the only way to keep her daughter safe. This whole thing can end without any more bloodshed.”
Lemmons stared at him for a moment, then slowly shook his head. “I wish I could believe you, Sam,” he said, “but there’s just too much at stake. I can’t risk everything on the notion that none of you will ever talk about this.”
“Then give me another option,” Sam said. “Give me something that’ll let me bring Tracy home to her kid. Any idea what that might be?”
The detective stood there in silence for another few seconds, then nodded. “First off, you need to understand that this isn’t quite what you think it is. Nobody wanted those kids to get killed, that wasn’t the idea. It was supposed to go down different, with nobody really getting hurt at all. Driscoll just got carried away, and then it was too late.”
Sam was surprised, but then he suddenly remembered the look on Driscoll’s face when Lemmons had appeared, and how he’d thought it odd the officer already had his arm wrapped around the girl’s throat at that time. From what Lemmons was saying, it almost sounded like the kids had been set up, somehow.
“It was planned,” Sam said. “How? What was the whole point of it? Some way or another, you knew those kids were going to be there. What was supposed to happen, Jerry?”
Lemmons hesitated for another moment, but then went on. “The girl. She’s been running with them boys lately, getting herself into trouble. They were smoking dope, stealing stuff, the usual kinds of trouble kids get themselves into, you know? Well, a couple days before that went down, I get a phone call. Her grandpa is a very powerful man in the city, and he wanted her to get scared straight, right? He went to somebody who calls me and tells me if I can pull that off, it’ll be made well worth my while, and we’re talking not just money, but some pretty good career incentives, you might say. I said I’d see what I could do, then I talked to a couple guys and we started keeping an eye on them. When we found a way to get them off by themselves, we were planning to rough the boys up and scare the girl real good, make sure she wouldn’t risk letting any of us catch her out on the streets again. That was all it was supposed to be, I swear.”
“But Driscoll got a little overzealous,” Sam said. “Let me guess, he was supposed to put her in a sleeper hold, put her to sleep, right? By the time she woke up, those boys would be pretty bloodied, and you figured she’d run home to Mommy and Daddy and stay off the streets?”
Lemmons let out a sigh. “That was the idea,” he said. “Then it just all fell apart. There was nothing I could do but try to clean up the mess.”
“Oh, bull, Jerry,” Sam said. “You could’ve called nine one one and told the truth. Paramedics might’ve been able to revive the girl, maybe it wasn’t too late.”
“You try to think at a moment like that!” Lemmons shouted suddenly. “I made the call that came to me at that moment, and if you want to know whether I regret it or not, hell, yes, I do. Every minute since then, I’ve tried to think of what else I could have done. If I’d just looked up at Driscoll a minute sooner, it all might have been different. You know how many times I wished I’d never agreed to get involved in this at all?”
“Okay, but now it’s too late to undo it. Now we’ve got a total of four dead bodies. There’s no point in anyone else having to die over this, Jerry. Tell me where Tracy is, let me at least bring her home to her daughter. I’ll keep her quiet, I promise you.”
“Stop saying that!” Lemmons yelled. “There’s no way in the world you can guarantee she won’t talk sooner or later, so if I give her up to you, I’m out of leverage. You want her, fine, let’s talk about that. If I give her up, what will you give me in exchange? What do I get, a head start, maybe? A chance to run?”
“Would that be enough? Would that get me Tracy, alive?” Sam asked.
There was a moment of silence, and then Lemmons spoke again, waving a hand for emphasis. “What if—what if there was another way? What if we could clean this whole thing up without that video ever seeing the light of day?”
Sam’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the detective. “I’m listening,” he said.
“You want Tracy Jensen back alive? Well, here’s my offer. Without that video, there is no way to actually prove who did or said what that night. The tragedy of it all is that those kids are dead, right? Somebody needs to pay for that, right? How about this? I’ll give you Driscoll and his partner. The rest of us will swear the kids were dead when we got there, and that Driscoll said they’d claim we were all in on it if we didn’t help them cover it up. We panicked and screwed up, but that’s all it was, just a big mistake. Driscoll and Slocum go down for the murders, the rest of us lose our jobs, maybe get some probation or something, and you get another big feather in your cap for cracking the case. How about it, Sam? I
screwed up, I know it, but I don’t want to throw my whole life away over it. I’ve got a wife, I’ve got two kids. I don’t want to lose everything!”
Sam’s gut was rumbling as he listened to Lemmons trying to twist the story into something that would keep him from facing the penalty he deserved. Still, it was a chance to get Tracy out alive. Sam tried to make it look like he was seriously considering the offer.
“All three of you would have to be able to tell the same story,” Sam said. “How long would it take you to arrange that?”
Lemmons’s voice suddenly had hope in it. “I can fix that up in a matter of minutes,” he said. “Let me make a couple of calls, explain to them that this is the only way we get through this, and the three of us will meet you somewhere. I’ll tell you where to find the woman, and you can take us in. It’ll be your bust, and I can even set up Driscoll and Slocum so you can arrest them, too. All you gotta do is keep that video from ever turning up, and then if the Jensen woman ever decides to talk, it’ll be her word against ours. Without any serious evidence to back it up, it won’t even matter that Driscoll and Slocum would say she was telling the truth. What do you say, Sam?”
13
The window behind Lemmons suddenly exploded, and the detective’s face took on a look of surprise. A bright red spot appeared on the front of his shirt and began spreading, running downward from the center of his chest. Sam stared in shock as Lemmons looked down at himself, then slowly sank to the ground.
The shot had come from a side street, and Sam spun and bolted around the building. A quick glance around the corner at Lemmons told him the man was dead, so Sam pulled his own pistol and leaned back against the old brick wall. His mind was racing, trying to figure out just what had happened.
Either Lemmons hadn’t really come alone, or someone had followed him. Sam figured it was the latter, that at least one of the other cops—probably either Driscoll or Slocum—had somehow tailed him to the meeting and heard him trying to give them up.
Of course, that meant they also heard that Sam had the video. His own life was now on the line, he knew, and it wouldn’t be long before the shooter came looking for him. He glanced around the corner again but saw no one, then hurried along the side of the building to the back and ducked low as he peeked out once more. There was still no one in sight, so Sam stood again and pressed his back to the bricks.
Straight in front of him was more of the chain link fence. It was at least six feet high, but there was a barrel standing beside it. Ignoring the pain in his hip, Sam hurried over and leapt up onto the barrel, then threw himself over the top of the fence. He landed hard in somebody’s backyard and went down, but scrambled to his feet and began a limping run across it.
There was a wooden fence on the other side of the yard, but it was broken and Sam managed to climb through a hole. The yard he entered then was unfenced, but a large Rottweiler began barking at him and straining at the heavy chain that secured it to a doghouse. It couldn’t reach him, so he kept moving from one backyard to the next until he came to the street at the end of the block.
He grabbed at his phone and looked at it, but it was still showing no bars. He tried calling Karen Parks anyway, but when it only beeped in failure, he shoved it back into his pocket once again.
From back toward the apartment building, he heard an engine and squealing tires, so he turned to the left and found an alley leading back the way he’d come. He made it back to the chain link around the building, found an open gate and rushed inside, then hurried to where he’d left the pickup.
It had worked; the shooter hadn’t expected him to double back. He made it to the truck and jumped inside, started it up and whispered a prayer of thanks for the big 460 that roared to life under the hood. He yanked the shifter into drive and floored it, racing out the exit from the apartment parking lot and onto South Wadsworth. He turned right at the first intersection, praying that he was moving away from the direction the shooter had been driving.
Five minutes later he saw no sign of pursuit, so he made a couple of turns and slowed to normal driving speeds. He took the phone out of his pocket, saw that it had service again and called Karen Parks.
“How’s it going?” Karen asked nonchalantly as she answered.
“Lemmons is dead,” Sam said. “We met at an old apartment building in Lakewood, and somebody shot him while we were talking. He told me that someone had contacted him a few weeks back and wanted him to scare that girl so she’d stop running the streets, and that he’d be rewarded if he succeeded. The others were supposed to help him with that but it all went wrong. He was trying to make a deal with me to hang Driscoll and Slocum for the murders and let the rest of them off as accessories after, and I suspect the shooter was one of them.”
“Accessories? How did he figure to get away with that?”
“He wanted to tell a story that Driscoll and Slocum killed the kids, then threatened to involve the rest of them if they didn’t help cover it up and they panicked and went along with it. Without the video, it would be their word against him and the other two, who would back him up.”
“Oh, Geez! Where are you now?”
“Just driving around,” he said. “The shooter was looking for me but I’ve shaken him, I think. I’m trying to think of what to do now, some other way to find Tracy.”
“Okay, but try to stay out of sight. Lemmons was the one accusing you of murder, so if anyone saw the two of you together, you’re going to be the number one suspect in his killing. Wait a minute, hang on…”
Her voice stopped and Sam could hear radio chatter in the background, but then she came back on the line. “Sam,” she said, “I think maybe you’re right about the shooters. Officers Driscoll and Slocum are currently securing the scene where Lemmons was shot. They claim he told them to follow him and watch from a distance while he tried to take you into custody, and that they saw you shoot him in cold blood. They say they fired shots at you, but you got away.”
Sam shook his head, the impact of her words hitting him like a punch in the gut. “Karen, I swear I’m telling you the truth,” he said. “I never…”
“Knock it off, Sam,” she said. “I saw that video, remember? I know damn well you didn’t kill Lemmons. Apparently they followed him on their own and overheard him talking to you. Of course they wanted him dead; if he was trying to set them up for the fall, that would be all the motive they could possibly need. Listen, I’m gonna call Monica and try to get this to her now, we can’t wait any longer. I show her this video, she’s going to get arrest warrants for all of these bastards within minutes, and we can question them then. One of them will undoubtedly know where your old girlfriend is being held. You just stay out of sight until I call you, got that?”
“I’ll do my best,” Sam said. “Or would it be better if I came with you, let her see that video on the tablet?”
“Nope. I want you to keep that one safe, just in case this blows up in my face. That video is the best chance you’ve got to clear your name if I can’t get this done.”
“Karen? What are you talking about? If you show that video to Monica Purvis, it’s going to be pretty obvious who the killers are, I think.”
“I think so, too,” Karen said, “but we’re talking about some weird kind of corruption, here. While he may not have intended for anyone to die, Lemmons took instructions from someone to commit a crime—physically assaulting those kids—and agreed to do it, even involved other officers. We don’t know who that might have been, or how deep the corruption goes, but that means there’s a risk even in going to the DA with this. I’m going to call Monica now and tell her what I’ve got, and find out how soon I can meet with her. All I need you to do is stay completely out of sight somewhere until I call.”
Sam opened his mouth twice with no sound coming out, but finally managed to speak. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got your back. You just be as careful as you can, okay?”
“Count on it. I’ll be in touch as soon as I know somethin
g good.”
The phone went dead in his ear and Sam put it back into his pocket. He made a couple more turns to randomize his route, but his mind wouldn’t stop wrestling with the situation. Now that Karen had mentioned the possibility that high-level corruption might be involved, the whole case was taking on even more ominous overtones.
Karen had been correct. The first crime involved in this whole mess had been Lemmons’s agreement to rough up those kids and frighten the girl. In fact, just knowing that someone wanted it done quietly made it worse; there were numerous legitimate ways to deal with rebellious teenagers, but somebody hadn’t wanted whatever issues she had to be made public. Maybe that was just a family afraid of public scorn, but what if there was something going on with the girl that needed to be covered up? What if the kid was suffering some kind of abuse and was acting out because she didn’t feel safe at home?
All of these thoughts built up into a frustration that finally boiled over. There was one person he could think of who had the power to recruit someone like Lemmons, and he decided it was time to take the bull by the horns.
He took out his phone again and dialed his wife’s number. Indie answered on the first ring. “Sam?”
“It’s me,” he said. “Baby, things are getting a little hairy. I need you to look up a number for me, okay?”
“What do you mean, hairy? What’s going on, Sam?”
“Jerry Lemmons is dead. He was shot and killed by another cop, and I’m pretty sure they had planned on killing me at the same time but I got away. Lemmons admitted he’s got Tracy stashed somewhere, and I was trying to negotiate her release with him when he was killed. The problem is that there’s somebody else involved, and I don’t know who it is yet. The killings were an accident, Lemmons and his crew were supposed to just rough the kids up and scare the girl into straightening up her act, but she ended up dead. They killed the two boys with her just to cover everything up, but the whole thing is unraveling. I need to find out who recruited them for this, because it may well have been somebody powerful in local government. Karen Parks has a copy of the video and is taking it to the DA right now, but that means she’s sticking her neck out. If the wrong people want this covered up, she could be in just as much danger as I am.”