Close To Home - A Sam Prichard Mystery (Sam Prichard, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Private Investigator Book 14)

by David Archer

  Indie’s eyes were big and round. “Oh, my God, Sam,” she said. “You’re right, you have to be. She’d do anything in the world to protect that baby from him, including killing herself.”

  “Yeah, I think so too. The question is, how much time do you think I have to find her? How soon is she going to get desperate enough to go that far?”

  Indie stared at the floor as she thought, slowly shaking her head from side to side. “Okay, she’s a pregnant woman. Letting anything happen to that baby is the last thing in the world she could think of, but at some point she’s going to remember how bad it was for her and her sisters. If she reaches the point that she feels there is no hope of being rescued, that there’s no way she could ever escape him, that’s when she’ll start looking for a way to end it all.”

  Sam rubbed his hands over his face. “You see, the thing is, she might already be at that point. She told me that she can’t resist him, that she’s like a deer in the headlights. If he shows up, she says she just freezes and can’t refuse to do anything he wants.”

  Indie looked at him. “Then, as bad as it sounds, right now you need to hope he’s keeping her close to him. Because the first time she feels like she’s out from under his thumb, that’s when she’s going to try it. That’s when she’s going to say that even dying, even letting her baby die with her, would be worth it to keep that child from suffering the things she did.”

  She suddenly got up from the recliner and headed for the kitchen, and Sam followed. She sat down at the table and opened her computer, then started typing. “We’ve got pictures of Samara,” she said, “and I can find pictures of Melinda online, I’m sure. I’m going to start Herman scanning all the traffic control cameras. If they’re moving around on the streets, then maybe he can spot them.”

  Sam reached over and tousled her hair. “That’s my beautiful little hacker,” he said. “Do you think there’s really a chance?”

  “If either of them is sitting in the front seat of the vehicle,” she said, “then the traffic cameras are seeing them. Herman has some very good facial recognition code, so what I’ve got to do is feed him the pictures we’ve got and let him look for matches. There, he’s all set—and now he’s off and running. I told him to scan live feeds and archives, too, because that way we might find out what vehicle they’re in.”

  “Okay. Is there anything else you can think of we might try?”

  She looked at him and started to shake her head, then suddenly stopped. Her mouth hung open as she turned back to the computer and started typing again. “She’s pregnant,” she said. “If he wants to keep her until the baby is born, then he probably wants to keep her healthy. How far out did you say she is?”

  “Um, I think she said about six weeks. Mid-January, that’s right.”

  “Okay, good, because that’s a little too early for a bedroom C-section. Without special equipment and care, a baby born six weeks early probably wouldn’t survive. He’ll want to keep her for at least another month, even if he plans to kill her while the baby is being born.”

  “What are you talking about?” Sam asked. “What’s a bedroom C-section?”

  “It’s like in those terrible stories you hear, where somebody actually cut a baby out of its mother in order to kidnap it. There have been several cases over the last few years where some woman who couldn’t have a baby for whatever reason decided to steal somebody else’s, and actually cut it out of its mother. That’s almost always fatal for the mother, and it would be fatal for the baby if it was done too early. Hopefully this bastard is smart enough to realize that. If he is, then she’s probably got about four weeks before he reaches the point of trying it.”

  “So what are you looking for, then?”

  “I’m setting Herman to scan the security cameras at all the stores that sell prenatal vitamins and such. He’s going to be asking her what she needs, so that he can get it for her. Maybe he went out and bought some today.”

  Sam’s face lit up. “I know he went to buy some food for her,” he said. “Babe, you’re a genius!”

  “Are you just now figuring that out?” Indie asked, without taking her eyes off the screen.

  A few minutes later, she had entered every possible item she could think of that a pregnant woman might ask for in Melinda’s situation, everything from prenatal vitamins to brewer's yeast. Herman, with the computing power of the incredible special laptop that Harry had acquired for her, could scan an entire day’s worth of video in a matter of seconds.

  Unfortunately, there were almost two hundred traffic cameras and more than a thousand security cameras in the city of Denver alone. Scanning through all of them, particularly the archives, would take the better part of three hours.

  15

  Sam and Indie had gone back to the living room and were sitting on the couch while they waited for Herman to do his thing. They talked a bit about the baby, and tentatively agreed on a few potential names, but then Sam’s phone rang. He took it out of his pocket and looked at it, then quickly answered.

  “Sam Prichard,” he said.

  “Mr. Prichard,” said a man’s voice. “This is Tim Garrett, the paramedic? I just wanted let you know that man you found at the park is going to be okay. The doctors think he was drugged with trazodone, pretty big dose of it. If you hadn’t found him when you did, he probably would have died within an hour.”

  “I appreciate you telling me,” Sam said. “I know he wasn’t looking very good there at the park.”

  “Yeah, I’ll say. When we got him to the hospital, he was just starting to come around, but it was still kind of touch and go. I was just back there with an accident victim and asked about him, and I just thought you’d like to know he’s going to make it.”

  Sam thanked him again, and then ended the call. He turned to Indie and told her the news, and that’s when the computer chimed.

  Indie looked toward the kitchen. “That was quick,” she said. “It hasn’t even been an hour yet.” She got up off the couch and waddled toward the kitchen with Sam following.

  “We’ve got a hit,” she said as she clicked the first link. “That’s Samara about twenty minutes ago. He was at the drugstore at Jewell Square.” She clicked back and then tried the next one. “Bingo! Traffic control camera at Jewell and Wadsworth! He’s driving a delivery van, like one FedEx would use. It’s brown and white, with red stripes across the hood.”

  Sam took out his phone and called Snake. “Samara is driving around in an old delivery van, like a bread truck. Looks like it’s brown on the bottom and the top half is white, but there are red stripes across the hood.”

  “That’s an old Westmark bakery van,” Snake said. “They went out of business a few years ago, but I remember stealing boxes of donuts off them when I was a kid. It was sort of a rite of passage for us kids from the right side of the tracks.”

  “Okay, good,” Sam said. “That might make it easier to spot. I’ll contact a cop I know who wants to help, see if he can quietly get some of the other patrol cars to watch out for it. Can you put the word out, as well?”

  “Yep. The Devils are all out hunting him now, and just so you know, we decided if we get the reward, it’s being split among all of us. Everyone would get a few hundred dollars, and they all need it.”

  Sam grinned. “What, dope dealers need money?”

  “Screw you, Dick,” Snake said. “Most of my guys don’t sell any drugs at all, I keep a tight rein on that stuff. We make most of our money hustling booze.”

  “Seriously? There’s a liquor store on almost every corner, how is there any money in that?”

  Snake laughed. “That’s easy,” he said. “Most of those liquor stores don’t like to let stuff sit on the shelves too long, so when they’ve only got a few bottles of something left, they’ll sell it cheap out the back door. We sell it to the alkies down here in LoDo and double our money. It’s not illegal enough to make the cops want to bust us, and keeps the drunks at home instead of driving around looking f
or a bargain. Public service, man.”

  Sam shook his head. “Whatever works. If you guys find Samara for me, I might add a bonus onto that reward.”

  “You ain’t gotta tell me twice,” Snake said, and the line went dead.

  Sam called Wilson and told him about the truck.

  “A Westmark truck?” Wilson said. “Dammit, I just saw one a few minutes ago. I’ll spread the word, but I’m gonna turn around and see if I can spot it again.”

  “Okay,” Sam said, “but be careful. Samara is dangerous, very dangerous. If you spot it, try to stay back and follow from a distance, then call me, alright? I’ll make sure you get credit for the actual arrest, but I need to be careful with this guy. It’s possible he has a hostage, and the sight of cops might be enough to make him get stupid.”

  “No problem, Sam, I won’t spook him. I’d just love to be there when he gets caught, because I think he’ll give Rivers up in a heartbeat to try to save his own ass.”

  Sam ended the call and put the phone away, then looked at Indie. “See anything else there?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” she answered. “I’ve got Herman looking for the truck, now, too. That should be easier to spot than a driver’s face, and Herman can tell the difference between different vehicles. It’s just a slight modification to the parameters he uses for facial recognition.”

  Sam stared at her for a moment. “Something you just came up with?”

  “Oh, no,” Indie said, looking up at him. “I thought of this months ago, when you were chasing that woman who killed Carlos McAlester. We were using facial recog to track her, but if I’d been able to look for the car she was driving, it would’ve been faster, so I wrote code to give Herman the ability. It has limitations, but this truck is easy to spot, so it’ll work fine on this.”

  “Don’t tell Harry about it. He’ll have NSA guys down here trying to copy it.”

  Indie laughed. “He might,” she said.

  Herman chimed, and Indie grew serious again as she looked at the monitor. “New hit,” she said. “He just passed the camera at Sheridan and Florida, heading north. I’m sending Herman to check the cameras ahead of him.”

  Sam snatched his phone up again and dialed Snake. “Snake, it’s Sam Prichard. Listen, Samara just went north on Sheridan, passing Florida. My wife is hacked into the city’s traffic cameras, and she’s trying to track him. You got anybody up that way right now?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m sending out a text blast while I’m talking to you. I can get a bunch of them to head that way so maybe they’ll see him.”

  “Good,” Sam said. “I’m heading that direction myself, and I’m going to conference my wife in on this call. That way we can both hear her when she sees him.” He put Snake on hold and called Indie’s phone, then tied them together when she picked up. “Snake, say hello to Indie.”

  “Hi, Snake,” Indie said.

  “Well, hello,” Snake said. “I read your blog.”

  “Chit-chat later,” Sam said. He leaned down and kissed Indie, then hurried out the door. A moment later, he was in the Corvette and heading northeast.

  “He just passed Louisiana,” Indie said. “Wait a minute, hold on, hold on, he’s coming up to Mississippi with a turn signal on, turning left. He sitting at the light at the moment, waiting for it to turn.”

  “I’m sending that out,” Snake said. “That’s really cool, how you can just follow him through the whole city that way. Is that those red light cameras?”

  “No, those just take a photograph if you run the red light,” Indie said. “Traffic control cameras watch the flow of traffic, and a computer counts the vehicles coming up to an intersection in order to decide when to make a light turn green. They are video cameras, though, and always tied into their main computer through the Internet, so it’s not hard for me to get in and take a look at what they see. The problem is that they are only placed on bigger intersections; when he turns on to Mississippi, I won’t be able to see him again unless he goes all the way to Harlan Street.”

  “It’s still cool,” Snake said.

  “Okay, he turned,” Indie said. “I’m watching from the westbound camera but he’ll be out of sight within a couple of blocks.”

  “Okay, watch for him at Harlan,” Sam said. “If he turns off somewhere in between, it’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  “Hey, Dick,” Snake said. “You know how to hunt for a needle in a haystack?”

  “No, how?”

  “You get a bunch of kids to dive into it. I guarantee you, one of them is going to find it.”

  Indie snickered. “I don’t know why I’m laughing, that wasn’t a bit funny,” she said.

  “It might not have been funny,” Sam said, “but I get the point. If he doesn’t come out of that area, then we can send the Devils in. That truck is not going to be easy to hide, it wouldn’t fit in most garages.”

  Five minutes later, Indie concluded that Samara had indeed turned off. She had checked all of the cameras around the area, but the delivery truck had not appeared. “Sorry, guys, I can’t see him anywhere.”

  “That’s okay,” Sam said. “It gives us a grid. He’s somewhere between Sheridan and Harlan on the east and west borders, and probably between Arizona and Kentucky on the south and the north. There’s a lot of residential in that area, but there’s quite a bit of industrial, as well.”

  “Okay, Dick,” Snake said. “I’ll send the Devils in to start looking around. Keep your phone handy.” He dropped off the call.

  “Babe, I’m going to go on in and cruise around there, myself. I know it’s a long shot, but that truck will stand out if it’s not inside a building somewhere.”

  “Okay, Sam,” his wife said. “Got my fingers crossed for you.”

  Sam ended the call and dropped the phone into the passenger seat, then concentrated on his driving. He got to the corner of Arizona and Harlan and turned right, cruising along as slowly as he could without interfering with traffic. Every cross street, he looked both ways, but didn’t see the truck he was looking for. He made it all the way to Sheridan, then turned left and went up to Kentucky Street, where he turned left again.

  Most of the residential streets between Kentucky and Mississippi were unbroken, so Sam took a left on the first one, Ames Street, and followed it all the way back to Mississippi. There, he turned right and went to Chase Street, then turned right again. He was cruising through residential neighborhoods, and didn’t see any place where the big truck might have been hidden.

  At Kentucky, he turned left again and found Eaton Street going south, so he turned onto it and cruised slowly down its length. There was still no sign of the truck, or of a garage big enough to hide it in, but the next street west was Harlan, and they had already decided that the truck hadn’t made it that far. Sam decided to check the streets between Mississippi and Arizona, so he started to turn left but then saw another street going south of Mississippi to his right.

  He turned to the right and went to the intersection, turning left to go south on Gray Street. He saw nothing, so he turned left onto Arizona and went to the next street, which turned out to be Fenton. A left turn took him north, and he scanned all of the homes and yards along the way, but to no avail. When he got back to Mississippi, he turned right and then took another right onto Eaton Court.

  It struck him as odd that the street was named Eaton, because it wasn’t directly across from where Eaton had come out on Mississippi from the other direction. He didn’t waste a lot of time thinking about it, but took another left on Arizona…

  The next street going north was Eaton Street. Sam knew that he had just come off of Eaton Court, before which he had been on Fenton and Gray even before that, and it suddenly dawned on him that the streets were named in alphabetical order. He cruised up Eaton Street until he got back to Mississippi, took a right and realize he was passing Chase Street on his left, but the next road on his right was Depew. He turned south again and followed Depew to Ariz
ona, then took a left.

  There were no more sidestreets between Arizona and Mississippi. He ended up back at Sheridan, turned left and went back up to Mississippi, then turned left again. He had already been up and down the streets on his right, so he looked to the ones on his left and spotted Ames Street again. He turned left onto it, but a block later it took a right, and Sam suddenly found himself staring directly at the Westmark Bakery truck he was looking for.

  The truck was parked in front of a rough-looking house, and Sam noticed that there were a couple of junk cars around the yard. He stopped and backed up, then quickly drove back up to Mississippi Street. There was a convenience store on the left at the intersection, and Sam quickly put the Corvette on its west side. This intersection was the only way out of that area, so he wanted the car to be outside if the truck pulled out.

  He managed to park where he could see behind the store and keep a section of the street in sight, then took out his phone and called Wilson. “I think I found him,” Sam said. “Can you get some people down here?” He told the officer where he was parked.

  “On the way,” Wilson said. “I’ve got to call it in, but I’ll say I got a tip about a robbery suspect we’ve been looking for. I don’t want Rivers to catch on.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Sam said. “I just want to make sure we get the hostage out.” Sam bit his bottom lip for a moment, then made up his mind. “He’s got his pregnant daughter, and this guy seems to be planning to keep her until the baby is born. It’s the kid he wants, so her life probably isn’t worth much to him.”

  “Considering who we’re talking about,” Wilson said, “I can’t say anything would surprise me. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, and I’ll have at least three more with me.”

  They ended the call and Sam kept his eyes on the little stretch of the street that he could see. If the truck moved, he wanted to be ready to follow it.

  It was just a bit more than ten minutes later when Officer Wilson pulled in behind him, and two other squad cars followed. With two in each car, that gave Sam a backup of six policemen, and he got out of his car to speak with them.