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

by David Archer

  The next item in the folder was a packet of photos, and Sam pulled them out to look them over. The first couple of photos were taken from a short distance, merely showing the body lying on the floor and the spreading pool of blood. The next photograph was taken up close, however, and Sam’s eyes went wide when he saw that the face of the victim had been completely obliterated, just as Kathleen had said. It was nothing but a bloodied mass, and Sam estimated that it must’ve taken at least three or four bullets to do so much damage. It was no wonder she had to identify him by a tattoo.

  He glanced at the other photos, and then put them back in the envelope. He read through Detective Lawton’s initial report, and then read the CSI report. It told him there were apparently several shots fired, because a number of 9MM bullets were recovered from walls and cabinets. The medical examiner on scene had estimated that five shots had actually penetrated the victim’s face, entering almost dead center through the left eye, just below the right eye, directly to the left of the nose, immediately under the center of the nose, and through the point of the lower jaw. All five bullets had exited through the back of the skull, though the lowest one had also shattered the top cervical vertebra and ripped through the spinal cord.

  Well, Sam thought, that explains the damage to the face. Whoever shot Michael apparently felt he needed to be wiped completely out of existence.

  The next couple of pages detailed Lawton’s meeting with Harry, Kathleen and Sam, and the subsequent interview of the three of them at the police station. Sam skimmed through them and found that Lawton had been meticulous in his notes.

  The next page listed the neighbors who had been questioned, including Mrs. Garrett. She only reported hearing the gunshots, but another neighbor, Caitlin Stoddard, reported seeing what looked like an elderly man with white hair entering the house just a few minutes before the shots were heard. She did not see a vehicle approach the house, nor did she notice one parked anywhere near it at the time. She said that she had seen a white-haired man with a beard walking across the lawn of the house and up to the door. She further stated that she had looked at the house after hearing the gunshots, but saw no one depart.

  Another neighbor, Robert Seacrest, said he had heard what sounded like an argument coming from inside the house just seconds before the shots went off. He claimed he had been out in his yard, which was directly across the street from the Reed house, spraying for weeds at the time, and heard what he believed to be two men shouting at each other. He couldn’t make out most of what was said, but was quite certain he heard the words “wife” and “mine,” and thought he heard the name “Harry.”

  The next page was the report of Lawton’s visit to Mrs. Stoddard. After his interview with the three of them, Lawton had gotten the report from the canvassing officers and immediately driven out to see Mrs. Stoddard. When he showed her a photograph of Harry Winslow, he said that she responded immediately that he was the man she had seen entering the house shortly before hearing the gunshots.

  “That’s sloppy, Lawton,” Sam said. “You showed a witness a single photograph and asked if that was who she saw. Don’t you know how unreliable eyewitness testimony is? A good defense attorney will tear her apart on the stand, and you along with her.”

  “We might not even use her,” Lawton said. “Did you see the lab report yet? Remember the GSR test? Turns out your boy had gunshot residue on both hands.”

  “So does almost everyone else in this country,” Sam said. “If you’ve ever fired a gun or shaken hands with someone who did, you’ve got gunshot residue on your hands. The damn stuff lasts almost forever and never washes off, which is why the FBI doesn’t even bother to test for it anymore. If that’s all you’ve got, I’d have to say your case is pretty weak.”

  “Weak?” Lawton squealed, leaning forward. “I’ve got a clear motive, I’ve got a witness who puts him at the scene at the time, and I’ve got gunshot residue on his hands. I’ve also got the fact that, by his own statement, he was at that tobacco shop right about the time the clerk was killed, so we’re seriously considering charging him with that murder, as well. If I can find one witness who saw him there, that’ll be enough to clinch it. You add all that together, I think I’ve got a pretty good case!”

  Sam looked back at the folder. There was another sheet that said the fingerprints on the body matched those on file for Michael Reed. Sam made a mental note to check with Harry about that, since it seemed to him that the fingerprints should come back to Michael Watkins, but then he remembered Harry’s comment about there always being people who would alter records. Since they knew Michael was still doing work for the government, it was probably likely that his fingerprint records had been updated at some point to fit his new identity.

  Sam suddenly felt a tingle in his gut, so he started going through the folder again from the front. Nothing had changed, of course, but he had a nagging feeling that he might have missed something. He looked over all of the pages again, carefully, but didn’t see anything that jumped out at him. He closed the folder and started to hand it back, but then stopped.

  He opened it again and took out the packet of photos. One by one, he looked them over carefully, and suddenly he realized what his subconscious was trying to tell him. He looked up at Lawton, his own eyes wide.

  “This body isn’t Michael Reed,” he said.

  23

  Michael Reed stood at the picture window in his living room and watched as the Buick backed out of the driveway. Prichard had come through, just as he had expected the man to do. It had been touch and go for a few minutes, though, and Michael almost thought he was going to have to suggest the plan himself.

  He was glad he had not needed to do so. That would have made it less believable when the news of his murder came out, at least to Prichard. The idea was to give everyone, especially his handlers at NSA and CIA, a firm and undeniable reason to believe that Michael was dead, and there was nothing that could convince them of that as well as a legitimate motive in the hands of a man who would be capable of such a thing.

  Yes, Michael Reed was about to die, and Harry Winslow was going to spend the rest of his life in prison because of it. Michael felt no sympathy for his old friend, however; there was no room for empathy in his line of work, and especially not at this point.

  He took out his phone and dialed the number from memory. “Ron? It’s time,” he said. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes, I’m ready,” Ron said. “To be honest, I’ve been ready for a while. The pain is getting pretty severe, lately.”

  “Well, it’ll be over soon. See you at the Gator House?”

  “You bet. Give me an hour or so, sometimes it’s hard to get a taxi.”

  “No problem,” Michael said. “When you get here, I’ll go ahead and do the final money transfer. Once you’ve seen that, we can conclude our business.”

  “I’m looking forward to it,” Ron said.

  The two men said goodbye and Michael slipped the phone back into his pocket. He had at least forty minutes before he needed to get into the boat again, so he went to the bar and poured himself a drink. The whiskey went down smoothly, and as its warmth spread to his body he felt a sense of relief that it was all finally coming together.

  Almost a year earlier, back before Kathleen had begun sneaking off to spy on Harry, Michael had been called up for a mission into Moscow. The job was a simple one: all he had to do was pick up a defector and escort him through the city and onto a diplomatic flight back to the States. It should have gone without a hitch, because the defector had been fully vetted. Langley and DC were both completely convinced that he was legitimate, and would be bringing information they desperately needed about Russian activities throughout the former Soviet Union. Satellites had captured enough troop movements to make it appear that war was imminent, and the type of war being rumored might well put the USSR back together again. The defector was supposed to have information that could help prevent that from happening.

  Michael had gone
in posing as a Russian businessman named Yuri Castronova, and had no difficulty with the insertion. He was dropped just outside the city shortly before sunrise with a collapsible hang glider. Once out of the low-speed, low-flying plane, he simply squeezed the trigger that caused its wings to slowly spread out. By the time they caught the wind, he was already moving horizontally and shortly was able to flare into a running landing. Luckily, the moon was just bright enough to let him see the ground before he became a permanent part of it.

  The drop site had been prearranged, and a car was waiting for him not far away. He had memorized the route and drove quickly toward his target, arriving just as the sun came up. The defector lived in a small house, and it was he who answered the door when Michael knocked.

  “Dmitri?” Michael had asked, using the codename he had been given. The defector smiled and nodded, welcoming him into the house. Michael stepped inside without hesitation, and wasn’t expecting the feel of a gun barrel against the back of his head.

  It all happened so quickly that he was taken completely by surprise. The man holding the gun had been behind the door and stepped out as it closed. Michael froze and held his hands out and to the side.

  “What is going on?” he asked in Russian. “Have I come to the wrong house?”

  “No,” said the man with the gun, speaking English. “You are exactly where we want you to be. You are in no danger whatsoever, as long as you don’t try anything. All we want is to speak with you, and to make you an offer we believe you might find quite lucrative.”

  Keeping his hands high and out, Michael turned slowly. The man with the gun stepped back a bit to allow it, and then motioned for Michael to sit down in a chair to his left.

  Michael sat as instructed, and then laid his hands on the arms of the chair. “What kind of offer?”

  “First, let us explain that we know who you are. You are Michael Reed, and you have for several years been involved with several different American espionage agencies. You may deny it, of course, but we are quite certain of our information.”

  With a gun pointed loosely in his direction, Michael didn’t feel inclined to argue. His own pistol was still tucked in the back of his pants, but there was no chance of reaching it before he would be shot dead. For a moment, it seemed wise to simply go along with his captors.

  “I won’t deny it,” he said. “Now, what kind of offer did you have in mind?”

  “As I said, one that will prove quite lucrative to you if you accept. We know that you have been involved in a number of highly classified operations over the last decade or so, and so you certainly possess information we would like to have, and which your government would hope to keep from us. Most of the information we are looking for concerns things that have already happened, rather than anything to come in the future. We would be willing to pay quite well for answers to certain questions concerning that information.”

  “Do I look like a traitor to my country?” Michael asked. “If the alternative to cooperation is a bullet through the head, you might as well take better aim and pull the trigger. I’m not talking.”

  The man stared at him for a moment, then cocked his head slightly to the left. “Ten years ago, you were part of a rescue operation in the Sudan. In that operation, a high-ranking Sudanese official was killed by someone using only his bare hands. Our intelligence services believe that you were the one who performed that assassination, and that it was probably quite difficult to do. If you will confirm that information, I will give you access to a British bank account that contains almost one million American dollars. This is information that cannot do any harm to your country, but will help us to close a file that has been open for far too long.”

  Michael had been ignoring the gun and keeping his eyes on the man’s face. The small telltale signs of deception did not seem to be present, and Michael was surprised to realize that the man was almost certainly telling him the truth. Since that was the case, there was still a strong possibility he would survive this encounter. Since it was also true that confirming his participation in the mission could not do any harm to American interests that he could see, he saw no point in passing up the opportunity to collect such a reward.

  “It was me,” he said. “Was it difficult? Yes, simply because the man you’re referring to was large and powerful and an excellent fighter. I’ll even admit that, for a moment there, I thought I was going to be the one left dead on the floor. If I hadn’t gotten the chance to crush his larynx, he probably would’ve killed me first.”

  The man with the gun nodded. “That is exactly as we suspected. Thank you for confirming it.” He looked at the man who had opened the door and nodded his head once. The fellow took a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and passed it to Michael.

  Michael glanced at it. It contained the name of a bank in London, along with the account numbers and password that would be needed to access the account through the Internet. With that information, he could transfer any money in it to any other account he chose. The last line on the note showed a balance of just over 950,000 dollars.

  He looked up at the man with the gun. “Hell,” he said, “got any more easy questions like that?”

  “Actually, yes, and each one will get you another such bank account.” There proceeded from that point a question-and-answer session that lasted almost two hours, and left Michael with eleven separate bank accounts holding just short of nine million dollars in total.

  “Now,” said the man with the gun, “there is one more thing we should discuss. We should like very much to continue this type of relationship with you. You are a man with many talents, and some of those talents would serve our interests quite well. There are, of course, many situations in which it is ill advised to use our own operatives; since you are currently acting as a freelancer with the different agencies of your own government, we are hoping to entice you to take some work for us on the side. Will this interest you?”

  “As I told you,” Michael said, “I’m no traitor. I’m not interested in becoming your double agent, or acting against my own country.”

  “That is not something we would ever ask you to do. On this, you have my word. However, we have learned that you are a man who can produce information that others cannot, and can orchestrate situations so that they result in an outcome you desire. There will be occasional instances when we might need a source of such information, or a particular outcome to a troubling situation, and you have the requisite skills that we would need in order to achieve those goals. We would be willing to pay you quite well, as you can see.”

  Michael carefully dissected the things he had said, then looked into his eyes. “You referred to me as a freelancer,” he said. “That’s not actually correct. I’m still on government payroll.”

  “That does not concern us,” the man said. “As you can see, the bank accounts we provide you will be untraceable. You can do with them whatever you wish, and we’re certain that a man of your talents will find ways to access the money when you want to. Your government need never know about it.”

  The conversation lasted another couple of hours, and then Michael was allowed to leave with the “defector.” This was a man who would provide the United States with certain information that they would consider valuable, despite the fact that it was of no genuine importance to the Russian government. He would use that information to insert himself into the American intelligence community, at which time he would be capable of sending genuinely valuable information back to Mother Russia. This, Michael was assured, was the only thing he would ever be asked to do that might in any way be detrimental to American interests. The addition of one more bank account containing another 10 million dollars convinced him to agree.

  Of course, double agents, even part-time ones, are eventually discovered. Over the next few months Michael took care of three separate situations for his new friends in Russia, and he began to worry about the day he would be found out.

  It was around this time that he began to admi
t to himself that he liked what he was doing. Working for his country had always been exciting, but he had felt like something was missing. He had tried to fill that void with business, amassing a fortune as a yacht broker, but the fear of discovery was ruining his enjoyment of his wealth. Add that to the issues he had with Kathleen sneaking off to peek at Harry, and he began to wish for a way to simply drop out of his life.

  The problem with that was that the American intelligence services wouldn’t accept his death unless they had what they considered concrete proof. Simply having a body wouldn’t be enough; there would have to be a completely logical explanation for the how and why and when of his demise, and it suddenly dawned on Michael one day that Harry Winslow could do him one last favor.

  If Michael were reported murdered, and at the hands of someone with an obviously clear and viable motive, even the CIA would be unlikely to doubt it. Michael knew that he was smart enough to create a situation in which Harry would be arrested and ultimately convicted, and then he would be free to assume yet another new identity, one that would bear no connection to any government agency, anywhere. That would leave him free to continue taking these freelance jobs, and he could even expand his clientele until he was available for hire to many different countries.

  Of course, there still had to be a body. Michael had immediately started searching for someone who, in death, could play him convincingly, and he stumbled across the right man purely by accident. It was during a visit to his own doctor’s office that he met Ronald Denham, and the look on Ron’s face as he was walking out of the office caught Michael’s attention. Ron was the right build, the right size and approximately the right age; without even thinking about what he was doing, Michael jumped to his feet and followed Ron out of the building.

  He caught up to Ron in the parking lot and took him to a nearby coffee shop. There, he learned that Ron had just been informed that the cancer he had been fighting for years had come back after the last remission, settling in his kidneys but also spreading to other parts of his body. There was no hope, and he had a maximum of three to four months of life left. While they talked, Ron began to cry, talking about how his wife and children would have nothing when he died.