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

by David Archer

  “We’ve asked, but she doesn’t seem to remember anything significant.”

  Kathleen leaned forward and reached across the table toward Heather, extending a hand. “Heather, I need you to understand something. Michael was—he was something of a monster, and he was an absolute genius at getting people to do whatever he wanted. I hold no animosity toward you, none at all. I’ve known for several months that you were sleeping with him, but trust me when I tell you you weren’t the first. Every time he’s been in business, he’s always made sure he had a pretty young secretary. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what a man like him wants from an office girl.”

  Heather kept her eyes down for a moment, but then slowly raised them to look directly into Kathleen’s. “I figured you’d hate me,” she whispered. “He said the two of you were unhappy, that you were going to get a divorce, and that all he was waiting for was for you to sign the papers. I’m sorry, I…”

  “It’s okay, Heather, really. No, we weren’t happy together, but what you don’t know is that Michael did some terrible things a long time ago that made me believe my husband—my real husband, this man sitting beside me—was dead, and that the only way I could keep my children safe was to flee out of the country with him. He managed to make it all so convincing that I fell for it, and I spent more than thirty years thinking that my husband Harry was dead, but a couple of years ago I found out the truth. Believe me, we were not happy at all after that. So, yes, I know exactly how he could manipulate a girl into doing what he wants.”

  Heather looked into her eyes for another moment, and then she began to cry softly. “Oh, I’ve been such a fool,” she said. “He was just so nice to me, and it made me feel good. He never even tried to pressure me into—you know, sex. It all just sort of seemed to happen naturally.”

  Beth was staring at the girl, and suddenly she started shaking her head. “My God,” she said, “we never knew him at all, did we? I never would have believed he would do something like this.”

  “Like I told Heather,” Kathleen said, “she wasn’t the first. Wealthy men seem to have a need to prove their virility by seducing younger women. It’s just part of their nature, I guess, at least for some of them. Michael always had pretty secretaries, and he always found reasons to take them on trips with them. Like I said, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist.”

  “So the man we thought was our father,” Harold said, “is not only a philanderer, he’s also a murderer and probably a traitor to our country.” He shook his head. “I find myself wishing that he was actually dead.”

  “Well, he’s not,” Ken said. “I can tell you that makes him a direct and extreme danger to each and every person at this table. Harry, you have a vested interest in proving that he’s alive, and the rest of you now know enough that his memory is ruined for all of you. Heather and her mother are in danger because he obviously thinks she knows something that can prove our case. Harry, are you armed?”

  “Me? Why, I’m out on bail, I’m not allowed to carry a gun. Of course I’m armed, what kind of fool do you think I am?”

  “Okay, so that makes three of us…”

  “Four,” Harold said. “I’ve had my CCL for years, I never go anywhere without a weapon on me. And before you ask, yes, I know how to use it.”

  Ken grinned at him. “Okay, four of us who can at least shoot back. Now all we have to do is figure a way to draw him out.”

  Everyone was silent for a few seconds, each of them thinking, but then Heather whispered, “Manicure.”

  Sam leaned toward her. “What did you say?”

  “You were talking about his fingernails. That was another part of my job, because I used to be a manicurist. I had to do his nails every week, I just did them the day before yesterday.”

  Sam and the others all stared at her. “Heather,” Sam said, “are you absolutely certain it was day before yesterday?”

  The girl nodded. “Yes. It was the last thing he had me do before I left for the day, and we did it a couple days early because he was supposed to be flying to Japan the next morning and I would have a few days off.”

  Sam, Harry and Ken all looked each other. “That’s it,” Sam said, “that’s the proof we need.” He reached into his pocket for his phone, but the one he pulled out was the burner. “Crap, I need my other phone. Be right back.” He stood and started toward the door, heading toward the Challenger to get his phone out of the glove box.

  The customer who had come in looked up at him and smiled, and Sam smiled back. The man was holding the menu, and something about the way he was holding it struck Sam as odd. His fingers were curled against the back of the menu, so that it looked like his thumbs were simply clamping it into his fists. The incongruity of it made Sam glance closer, and he got a good look at the man’s left thumb.

  The nail on that thumb was perfectly manicured, and Sam suddenly froze midstep. His eyes shot from the thumb to the face, and suddenly he could see the features of Michael Reed under the rubber prostheses covering the nose, chin and forehead.

  Michael saw the recognition and reacted instantly, flinging the menu into Sam’s face as he swung his legs out of the booth. He was on his feet while Sam was still staggering back, his hip causing him to stumble, and Sam saw him reach behind his back and under his shirt.

  He’s going for a gun, Sam thought, and threw himself forward as hard as he could. He wrapped his arms around Michael and the two of them fell onto the table, breaking it and causing it to fall. They slid down it to the floor, but Sam lost his grip and suddenly Michael’s gun was pointed at his face once again.

  The door flew open again, and four men burst into the restaurant. Each of them was holding a submachine gun, but they seemed confused when they saw Michael pointing a gun at Sam’s head.

  Michael looked up at them and indicated the people at the table with his head. “Them! Get them,” he shouted.

  Back at the table, everyone was on their feet and Sam saw Michael glance up at them. The four men looked up, also, and out of his peripheral vision Sam saw each of them suddenly go wide-eyed. He turned his head to look and saw Ken, Harry and Harold all standing there with pistols leveled in their direction.

  One of the men who had entered suddenly yelled, “Screw this,” and then he ran out the door. The other three raised their guns and pointed them toward the table, but all three pistols fired at once. Michael’s reinforcements dropped to the floor, and Sam knew that at least two of them were already dead from the size of the holes in their faces. The third one had taken a bullet in his chest, and was lying on the floor, moaning.

  All three guns suddenly turned toward Michael.

  “Ah-ah!” he shouted. “One wrong move, and Sammy here gets a third eye.” He grabbed Sam by his shirt and hauled him to his feet, then reached under his light jacket and grabbed his Glock. He shoved it down his pants as the waitress and cook came rushing out from the kitchen, then hurried back inside when they saw the guns and the fallen men.

  Michael pulled Sam in front of him and moved his gun to the side of his head. He looked around him at the others. “You all think you got it figured out, don’t you? You all think this is going to be the end of it, right?” He laughed. “Hey, Ken, how have you been? I’ve got to admit I was surprised when I heard you were coming in on this.”

  “Michael,” Ken said, “let him go and put the gun down. You know damned well that if you shoot him I’m going to kill you before you can get out that door. The only chance you’ve got to stay alive right now is to drop that gun and let Sam go.”

  “Oh, good Lord, you’re still just as arrogant as you ever were. I got fifteen rounds and there are only seven of you. Only three of you have weapons, and with Sam here in the way, none of you can draw a bead on me. I could probably drop all three of you, then finish off the rest at my leisure, but this has gotten messy enough already.” He pressed his gun harder against Sam’s ear. “Now, all of you just need to stand right there. Me and Sam are going out the do
or, and if nobody gives me any trouble I’ll let him go in just a minute. Understood?”

  No one spoke, and Michael started dragging Sam backward. There was a quick bump as Michael’s back hit the door, and then they were stepping backward onto the sidewalk. Sam could still see Ken and the others standing around the table with their guns drawn, but then Michael suddenly let go of him and stepped back. Sam turned around to face him and saw the gun pointed directly at his head.

  “So much for letting me go, right?”

  “That’s how it goes, Sam,” Michael said. “Don’t worry, the rest of them will be joining you in a few minutes. Once I shoot you, they’ll come running out. It’ll be like shooting ducks at an arcade.” He grinned and reached out with his free hand to thump the cigarettes in Sam’s pocket. “Wanna light one up before you go? Those things will kill you, you know.”

  Sam glanced down at the cigarettes, forgotten until that moment. He looked up at Michael again. “Yeah, if I can,” he said. Without waiting for an answer, he reached into the pocket and took out the pack, shook a cigarette out into his hand and stuck it between his lips. He patted the pocket for a moment, then started patting all the others. Finally he grinned and slipped his hand into his jacket pocket.

  “Hey, now,” Michael said, “pull that hand out slowly.”

  Sam did, and then held up the lighter Harry had given him the day before. He cupped his hands around it and put it up to the end of the cigarette, and flicked the cover a couple of times as if he was trying to get it to light. He looked up at Michael. “Just give me a second, it’ll work,” he said, then went back to clicking the cover.

  I have to know when to take the shot, Sam thought, that’s what Beauregard said. He was carefully watching Michael in his peripheral vision, praying for one moment of opportunity, and then it came. For a split second, Michael took his eyes off Sam and leaned slightly to the right as he looked toward the café door.

  Sam flipped the cover open backward, then thrust his hand out with the lighter pointed directly at Michael’s head and pulled the diamond back with his thumb. The explosion that resulted shocked him, and the recoil made him drop the lighter, but then he looked at Michael.

  The man was still standing on his feet, still pointing his gun at Sam, but there was a streak of blood running down his nose from the neat round hole in the center of his forehead. His eyes rolled up, and the gun clattered to the sidewalk as all of his muscles relaxed at once.

  Behind him, Sam heard the commotion as Harry and Ken fought to be the first out the door. Ken won, but just barely, and Harry and the others were right on his heels. Ken, Harry and Harold all had their guns in their hands still, but they lowered them when they got to Sam and saw Michael lying dead on the concrete in front of him.

  “Damn, Sam,” Ken said. “I saw him take your gun, what the hell happened?”

  Sam still had the unlit cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and he reached up to take it out as they all gathered around him. Beth and Heather were whimpering, but the rest were simply staring down at the body of the man who was supposed to have already been dead.

  Sam looked at Ken and held up the cigarette, then pointed down at the still smoking lighter-gun. “I bluffed,” he said.

  Ken’s eyes were wide. “Yeah, you did,” he said, “and it looks like you won the pot.”

  33

  The police arrived fifteen minutes later, and at Sam’s insistence Detective Embry was called out. When he arrived, Sam finally explained what the strange doodle on Lawton’s notes had truly meant, that Michael Reed was still alive and had faked his own murder. The whole group was taken to the station for interviews, and it was Heather’s statement about giving Michael the manicure Sam had noticed that finally got Embry to believe the story.

  Both Sam and Harry suddenly got phone calls, and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect since they came just as Embry finished with them. Sam answered his phone to find his wife on the line, and the first words out of her mouth almost gave him a heart attack.

  “Sam,” she said, “first I need you to know that we are all okay.”

  “Oh, God,” he said, “what happened?”

  It took almost 15 minutes for her to explain it all, how a crazed gunman had apparently followed them all the way from Denver to Colorado Springs, then launched a one-man attack that took out all of their security. The police had told her that they had recovered a hand grenade at the scene, and it hadn’t taken her long to figure out what the killer had planned to do with it. Sam listened with his mouth hanging open through the whole thing, but finally he managed to close it when she told him how George had saved the day.

  When he finally got off the phone, he saw Harry grinning at him. “Let me guess,” he said. “That was George on the line?”

  “Indeed it was,” Harry said. “I gather Indiana has already told you what happened?”

  Sam nodded his head slowly, and then walked over to Harry and pulled him into an embrace. “Thank you, Harry,” he said. “Thank you for keeping my family safe. I’m so sorry about the men you lost, that was terrible, but thank you for my family.”

  “Now that we’ve proven our case, this whole thing falls under National Security. Those men died in the line of duty, and they will be honored for their sacrifice. Had Michael’s killer managed to reach your family, you probably would not have been in any condition to handle him when the time came. Since you were the only one who could, those sacrifices were an unfortunate necessity.”

  Sam could only look at him, unable to speak any further.

  Over the next few days, during which Sam was required to remain in the area and assist with closing the investigation, they learned that the fingerprints on the real Michael didn’t turn up in any database, but even though the back of his head was blown away by the secret derringer, his face was still easily recognizable. Enough people could make a positive identification to settle the issue.

  A search of missing person reports had turned up the fact that a Ronald Denham, who had recently been diagnosed with cancer, had disappeared a couple of months earlier.

  Sam and Ken went to Fort Lauderdale to interview Denham’s wife and children, his only surviving relatives, and learned that he had recently come into a substantial amount of money. He had given his wife a healthy sum, almost 100,000 dollars, and told her more would be coming soon. He and his wife were separated, but he had visited the family every few days and told them about some mysterious investment he had made that had made him the money he had already given them, and was going to provide for them after he was gone.

  Gradually, Sam was able to put together a timeline. Michael had met Denham at the doctor’s office on the day he had learned that the cancer was terminal. At that point, Michael appeared to have put his plan into action. They were able to find the tattoo parlor that had put the tattoo on Denham, and located a cosmetic surgeon who, after intense questioning, finally admitted to creating a couple of realistic-looking scars by scraping off the upper layers of skin and flooding the tissues with steroids.

  It finally became completely clear that Michael had offered Mr. Denham a large sum of money to take his place in death. Kidney cancer is insidious, and people often don’t even know they have it until it’s far too late. Denham would have looked fairly healthy to those who knew him, but the autopsy had revealed that he probably had less than a month to live. With the money he got from Michael, he had established a trust fund that would support his family for many years after he was gone. The money was eventually found, but due to the vagaries of trust law, that money could not be touched and would still benefit his family.

  Getting Harry down to Florida had been the trigger. By planting the envelope in his apartment, Michael was certain Harry would turn to Sam and that Sam would find him within a few days. He hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly, but thanks to the fact he had someone recording all of Sam’s phone calls and reporting to him, he was alerted in plenty of time to make the arrangements he needed. T
he police were able to find a couple of witnesses who had seen Michael picking up Mr. Denham in a boat on the day of the killing.

  They also found Michael’s abandoned scuba gear in the boathouse of the vacant place down the street. From that, they figured out that Michael had left his home by swimming down to the vacant house, and some barely visible tire tracks in the garage proved that his car had been parked there at some time.

  They never did find the car, or any trace of it.

  The only thing that had given Michael away was his failure to notice Denham’s fingernails. If he had, he probably would’ve gotten away with it all and Harry would be looking at life in prison, or worse.

  After a couple of days, the police department held a press conference to reveal what they had learned, and Sam was required to attend since he was the one who had actually figured out what was going on and taken Michael down. He stood beside Detective Embry as Embry read off the prepared statement, and then the reporters began shouting questions at Sam.

  “Mr. Prichard, you’ve done a lot of work for the government over the past couple of years. Do they often call you when they have a rogue agent?”

  “I wouldn’t say often,” Sam said. “I’m not at liberty to divulge any details, but this is not the first time I’ve had to deal with an intelligence operative who’s gone bad. This particular case, though, started out as a simple matter of trying to help an old friend reconnect with his family.”

  “Mr. Prichard, is it true that Michael Reed deceived Mrs. Winslow? Was she ever aware that her original husband was still alive before all this happened?”

  “Well, that’s probably a question you should be asking her, but she actually found out he was alive about a year and a half ago, when Mr. Winslow and I were the subjects of a news program. I guess she saw his picture and recognized him, but Mr. Reed actually threatened her to keep her from making any contact with him. Mr. Winslow only found out that his wife and children were still alive about a week ago, and he came to me to help them track them down.”