Innocent Conspiracy

by David Archer

  “Go easy on him? Sam, I will interrogate that boy up one side and down the other, and all he’s going to do is thank me for giving him a wonderful evening. He’s not going to get what he’s hoping to get, but he’ll definitely be happier than he is now.”

  Karen was staring at her, her eyes still wide and her mouth half open. Sam grinned and took pity on her.

  “Karen, Summer believes that her looks are a tool to be used in the course of her work. In the short time I’ve been here, they’ve proven to be quite effective. Men just naturally seem to want to talk to her, and she can steer the conversation onto whatever she wants to know about. A highly effective interrogation technique.”

  “Yeah,” Summer said. “Especially when I start taking off clothes. I never go as far as they want, but it’s like strip poker; the more clothes you take off, the more the guys try to bluff. In this case, the farther they think I’ll go, the more they want to tell me to keep me going.”

  “Oh, really?” Karen asked. “Too bad they didn’t have her at Guantánamo Bay. No telling how much sooner we’d have gotten bin Laden.”

  Summer giggled, then waved at Sam and Karen as she walked out the door. “I’m going home to change for my date,” she called over her shoulder.

  Karen shook her head. “Dolby is right,” she said. “Sam, I think you are having way too much fun in this job.”

  “Yeah, sometimes,” Sam said, “but it has nothing to do with looking at Summer. She’s a gorgeous woman, but she can’t hold a candle to Indie. You want to know the most fun I have running this team?”

  “Heck, yes,” Karen said. “Tell me, already.”

  “It’s when they come in from a field assignment and tell me about how it went. I don’t care how simple the case is, at least one of them is going to find some way to set some part of the world on its ear. A few weeks ago, I had to bail Summer out of jail because she chose the wrong fictitious name to use. It just happened to be the name of a woman who was wanted for being a meth kingpin, but the funny part is that the woman they were really after looks enough like Summer that the cops who arrested her couldn’t tell the difference. I had to post her bail, then convince the local magistrate that they had the wrong woman. It seems they didn’t know much about fingerprints, like the fact that they could have compared them by eye and seen that they had the wrong person.”

  “Okay,” Karen said, “you might find that funny, but I doubt that she did.”

  “No, you’re right,” Sam said. “Summer was pretty pissed off about the whole thing at the time, but she can laugh about it now. Even better than that was when Denny Cortlandt actually got caught breaking in to the jail in Tucson, Arizona. He actually managed to convince the sheriff there that he was with the FBI and had been assigned to test their security system. Shook hands with the sheriff, patted him on the back and told him what a great job they were doing, and they actually let him walk out the door.”

  “They didn’t even try to stop him?” Karen asked, incredulously. “I would’ve at least insisted on calling the local FBI office to verify his story.”

  “And that’s exactly what they did,” Sam said. “Denny handed them his card, which had a local number for the FBI office printed right on it. The sheriff dialed the number and it came straight to my office phone. Jenna answered, and when the sheriff asked if he had reached the office of the FBI in Tucson, she smiled and said that he certainly had, and could she transfer him to Special Agent in Charge Frank Perron. He said he would be willing to hold for a moment, and she buzzed me. She told me Denny was in Tucson trying to retrieve some top secret information from a DEA agent who was undercover inside the jail, and had apparently been busted trying to get in. She told me I was SAC Frank Perron and to get on the phone and confirm whatever Denny had told them, so I did.”

  Karen was laughing by this point. “Sam! You realize you’re sitting here confessing to crimes, right?”

  “Nope,” Sam said with a grin. “I’m sitting here telling you jokes. Ain’t my fault if you believe they’re true.”

  “Whatever,” Karen said. “Look, it’s almost 4:30. I think I’m going to call it a day, unless you need me for something else.”

  “No, that’s fine,” Sam said. “I’m about to quit myself for the day. By the way, Indie wanted me to invite you to dinner one evening soon. I don’t think she meant tonight, because she’d want a day or so to prepare, but it’s been a while since we had you and the kids over.”

  “Getting me there isn’t the problem,” Karen said. “It’s those overgrown two-year-olds I call my teenagers. They find some reason to go somewhere before I ever get home each day, and they never come back before I go to bed. I don’t know how either of them is ever going to find a job, because all they do is sleep through the day.”

  “Well, it’s worth a try. Maybe I can get David on the phone and twist his arm a bit. He can round up Katie and drag her along, I’m sure.”

  Karen rolled her eyes. “That sounds like a plan,” she said. “Now, if you manage to pull that off, then I really will believe you’re a miracle worker.”

  She waved as she took off out the door, and Sam started thinking about his own quitting time. He was just about to call home to see if he needed to pick anything up on the way when Jenna beeped in.

  “Sir, your wife is on line two,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Sam said, and then he punched the button for line two. “Hey, babe,” he said. “I was just about to call you…”

  “Sam, Herman found what you’re looking for, I think,” she said. “I’m sending you a link by email, check it out now.”

  “Okay,” Sam said. “You sound awfully agitated. Is there something about this that’s going to be a surprise?”

  “Well, it surprised me,” she said. “I think you might find it just a little bit surprising, yourself. Click the link and watch the video.”

  “I’m opening my email, now. Give me a moment, and I’ll… Okay, got it. Just clicked the link and it’s opening, and okay, I just hit play.”

  On his computer screen, he saw the view from one of the security cameras that was up near the ceiling in the theater. Almost directly opposite from where the camera was mounted, he could see someone approaching the center of the catwalk. As he watched, the big camera swung down on its trolley lines and hung just over the catwalk, exactly where Walter had checked it out earlier that day.

  The camera focused on the man and zoomed in tight, but from the side. It showed part of a youthful face on a skinny frame, and Sam thought for a moment that it looked like many people he had seen that day. The man stopped beside the camera and removed a backpack he’d been wearing, slung it over one shoulder, then climbed up and straddled the railing just as Walter had done. At that point, the camera itself made it impossible to see what he was doing.

  Whatever it was, it was taking some time. Sam hit the fast forward button, scanning ahead a few seconds at a time until he saw motion again. After about ten minutes, the fellow climbed down, slung the backpack on properly again, and walked back the way he had come, and just before he would’ve disappeared through the doorway that led to the rear maintenance stairs, he stopped and looked back at the big camera. His face was obscured by a hanging cable at that point, but Sam could see his body clearly, and it suddenly struck him that something was off.

  A few months earlier, Sam had dealt with a cold murder case in which the only witness insisted that the “man” he had seen running away from the scene of the crime was a woman. He based that determination on a personal study of the differences between the way men and women walk, something he had undertaken on the advice of his high school drama teacher. Sam had listened to the young man’s explanation of those differences, and that suddenly came back to him now.

  That wasn’t a skinny young man; that was a thin young woman, doing her best to look like a man. The physics of the female anatomy, however, meant that certain motions were going to be different from the way a man would make them, and this on
e’s sudden stop and turn were undoubtedly feminine.

  “Indie,” Sam said, “that’s not a man, it’s a woman.”

  “Yep,” Indie said. “Your shooter is a woman, and she looks to me like a teenager.”

  “She definitely looks young,” Sam said. “You really think she’s a teenager?”

  “Well, very young,” Indie said. “Very petite, and blonde. I can’t get a good look at the face or hands, so I don’t really have anything to go by other than the way she moves, but she’s as agile as any athlete I’ve seen. She could be older, but I just get the feeling she’s not more than very early twenties.”

  “Okay. Let me get this out to everybody now, and I’ll be on the way home in just a few minutes…”

  “Hold on, Sam,” Indie said, cutting him off. “You missed the most important part. You wouldn’t want one of your team to catch it before you do, would you?”

  Sam froze, looking at the screen again. “Okay, let me play it again. Hang on.” He refreshed the screen and hit the play button again. It opened as it had before, with someone coming across the catwalk from the opposite side of the theater. The big camera, hanging back toward the rear, suddenly started moving forward until it paused over the catwalk.

  “I got it,” Sam said. “Our shooter mounted the gun on the camera, but she had an accomplice in the control room. That’s the only way the camera could have been at just the right place at that moment for her to work with it.”

  “Oh, you got it,” Indie said. “Now, one last thing. Did you notice the time stamp on the video?”

  Sam looked quickly, then groaned. “Three o’clock in the morning? The place should have been locked up tight.”

  “Yep. Three o’clock in the morning, five weeks ago today. When you get home, you get your prize. Just remember that your children will be here, so you have to settle for a kiss until later.”

  Sam chuckled. “A kiss from you is definitely a prize worth winning,” he said. “I’ll be home soon, babe.”

  “Okay, love you.” The line went dead.

  Sam sent the video link out to all of the team, including Karen Parks, along with a note explaining that he and Indie had come to the conclusion that the person they saw in the video was female, and that there had to have been an accomplice in the arena’s control room. There was a time stamp on the video, so the first thing he wanted to find out was whether any of the arena employees were clocked in and present in the control room at the time.

  He left his office and walked up the hall. Ron and Jeff were still in their own offices, which were side by side and had an adjoining door between them. He stepped into Jeff’s office and crooked a finger, and Jeff got up to follow him into Ron’s.

  “I just sent you a video,” Sam said. “It’s the one Indie found, showing someone apparently mounting the gun on the camera. We can’t get a good look at the face, but she and I are both convinced that what we’re seeing is a woman trying to disguise herself as a man. Indie thinks she’s pretty young, possibly even a teenager. This makes me wonder about rivals for the award; it’s definitely conceivable that a teenage girl who could put together a popular online TV series might be able to make or get her hands on a remotely controlled rifle.”

  “That’s certainly possible,” Ron said. “Most of these kids end up doing their own special effects, so they undoubtedly learn some things about electronics and engineering in the process. Jade will be able to get into their computers tomorrow, you should have her start looking at that angle.”

  “Already sent her the email. She’ll know what to do, trust me.”

  “It would certainly look good if we can bring this to a rapid conclusion, Sam,” Jeff said. “We’re actually starting to get quite a reputation for our investigative services, and a good part of that is because of you coming on board.”

  “Yeah, well, I appreciate it,” Sam said, “but I don’t know that I’m really making that much difference. To be honest, either Darren Beecher or Steve Beck could probably do my job as well as I do.”

  “Oh, no way,” Jeff said. “Sam, you always sell yourself short. Steve and Darren are good investigators, don’t get me wrong, but you have some innate ability to spot things that no one else does. You’ll chase down all the leads, but in all your cases I’ve read about, it seems like you always have this sudden burst of epiphany at the last minute that gives you the actual solution. I don’t know of anyone else who can do that the way you do, and besides, you got certain assets that no one else has. And speaking of your special assets, I don’t suppose Beauregard has had anything to say about this case yet, has he?”

  Sam rolled his eyes. “No, and I’m hoping he keeps it that way. And on that note, I’m going home. You know how to reach me if you need me. Otherwise, I’ll see you guys tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh, wait,” Ron said. “You won’t see us tomorrow. Jeff and I have to fly to New York in the morning, early.”

  “New York? Working on a new contract up there?”

  “You could say that,” Jeff said. “Actually, we’re going to evaluate the security arrangements for some kind of major internet conference that will be held there next week. NYPD is handling the outside security, but they’re bringing us in for the conference itself.”

  Sam whistled. “Pretty sweet,” he said. “You guys are doing fantastic for such a small, new company.”

  “Yeah,” Ron said with a grin. “This is what happens when you’re the best at what you do.”

  That got Sam to laugh. “And look,” he said, “you’ve even managed to stay modest and humble.”

  6

  “Honey, I’m home,” Sam called as he entered his house. Kenzie came running from the kitchen, with Indie right behind her. Sam collected hugs and kisses from both, picking Kenzie up and carrying her back to the kitchen.

  “Daddy,” she said, “the grandmas are coming.”

  Sam looked at his wife and raised an eyebrow. “The grandmas are coming?”

  “Yep,” Indie said. “And before you ask, yes, Mom says Beauregard has a message for you. I don’t know what it is, yet, but she says it’s important.”

  “That’s ironic,” Sam said. “Jeff just asked me a bit ago if Beauregard had anything to say about this case. I was hoping to get through one without having to deal with him.”

  “It’s just Mom’s way of trying to help,” Indie said. “I’ll confess I wish she didn’t have to rely on Mr. Figment so much, but it’s the only way she can cope with being able to see the future. You know that, Sam.”

  “I know, and Beauregard has been helpful too many times for me to disregard what he has to say.”

  “Daddy,” Kenzie said scoldingly, “Beauregard just wants you to be safe, that’s all.”

  Sam squeezed her tight and kissed her on the cheek. “I know,” he said, “and we appreciate it, don’t we?”

  The little girl giggled as Sam’s five o’clock shadow rubbed her cheek. “Daddy, that tickles!”

  “It does? Well, let’s do it some more,” Sam said, and then he rubbed his chin against her face and neck while she squealed in delight.

  A sound from down the hall caught their attention, and Indie turned to Sam. “You woke up your son,” she said. “That means you get to take care of him for a while. I’m trying to make dinner.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. He set Kenzie down and followed her as she ran down the hall. Bo was still in the nursery they had set up just off the master bedroom, but Indie was in the process of setting up his own new bedroom upstairs. Sam privately looked forward to when the bedroom became occupied.

  Bo was standing in his crib and broke into a smile when he saw his daddy entered the room. “Da da,” he said, and Sam’s smile matched his son’s.

  “Hey, buddy Bo,” he said as he picked the little boy up. “You ready to come out and play?”

  The gurgles seemed to translate to the affirmative, so Sam carried him to the changing table and took care of necessities. The diaper went into the container tha
t was set up for it, but the pants Bo was wearing were fine, so Sam put them back on him and they headed for the kitchen.

  “Here’s Bo, Mommy,” said Mackenzie.

  Indie turned and gave the baby a quick kiss, then went back to cutting up vegetables.

  “We’re having roast?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah,” Indie said. “I had a taste for it, so I figured it would be good for dinner tonight.”

  “Fine by me,” Sam said. “One of my all time favorites.”

  “I caught the news a little while ago,” Indie said. “They say Max is out of intensive care, now. I guess they expect him to make a full recovery.”

  “That’s good,” Sam said. “Of course, he’s probably looking at a long road of physical therapy and probably psychological. PTSD is nothing to take lightly, and getting shot is one of the worst ways to get it.”

  “Really? Seems to me you always shrug it off like it’s no big deal. How do you know Max isn’t just as tough as you are?”

  “I don’t exactly shrug it off,” Sam said with a grin. “Every time, it takes something out of me. I’m just lucky enough to have the best possible therapy waiting for me at home.”

  “Yeah,” Kenzie said. “You got me and Mommy, and now you got Bo, too.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Sam said. “Nothing can get a man through something traumatic like the love of his family.”

  “But it would be a lot better if you’d stop getting shot,” Kenzie finished. She shook her head and sighed. “That’s pretty rough on us, too, you know.”

  “I’m doing my best,” Sam said. “It’s been a couple months, and last time I only got shot in the thigh. That wasn’t too bad.”

  Sam put Bo into his highchair and Kenzie got him a bottle of milk. Bo smiled at his big sister as he took it, then plugged it into his mouth and began working at trying to drain it.

  Sam opened the refrigerator and found a bottle of root beer, then sat down at the table beside his son. A sudden stabbing pain in his ankle made him yelp and look down to find Samson, their cat, trying to use Sam as a means of righting himself. Samson had survived a bout of distemper when he was a kitten, but it had left him seriously handicapped in his motor control. He had a tendency to flip over now and then, and he never seemed to understand why his back legs would somehow pass his front legs whenever he was trying to run. Occasionally, he would find himself on his back and unable to turn over, so he would dig his claws into whatever was closest and use it to pull himself back upright.