Innocent Conspiracy

by David Archer

  There was no answer, of course. She stood there for a moment as if waiting, and just listened. There was soft music coming from 3G, behind her, and she could hear a voice speaking but couldn’t make out anything that was being said.

  Each of the doors had a peephole, so she stood there for another moment and tried to look agitated. She took out her phone and glanced at the time, shoved it back in to her pocket and knocked again. She waited another thirty seconds, then turned around and knocked on the door to apartment 3G.

  A woman’s voice came through the door. “Yes? Can I help you?”

  “Hey, I’m really sorry to bother you,” she said. “Do you know Harvey, the guy who lives across the hall?”

  The door opened a couple of inches, and the woman behind it peeked out at her. Summer looked closely, keeping her smile in place while she tried to decide if the partial face she was seeing was the same as the woman in the photo.

  “I don’t really know him,” the woman said. “I’ve only seen him a couple times, is all.”

  Summer looked back at Harvey’s door and put a knuckle into her mouth. “Have you seen him today? I’ve been trying to reach him, and he hasn’t answered his phone for a couple days, and I just found out he hasn’t been at work.”

  The door opened slightly more. “No, I don’t think I did. Have you knocked on the door?”

  “Yeah, loud and hard. I’m really getting worried, you know?” She choked a bit, as if she were about to start crying right there in the hallway.

  The woman hesitated a second, then said, “Just a minute, let me get my husband.” The door closed, and Summer moved a bit further away from it. If this was the couple they were looking for, the last thing they might want would be a woman having an emotional meltdown in front of their apartment door.

  The door opened again, and this time it swung wide. A man stepped out, and Summer felt a rush of adrenaline as she recognized the face. It was him, all right, unless he had an identical twin.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked, and Summer pointed toward the door across the hall.

  “Harvey Reilly,” she said, “the guy who lives there? He isn’t answering his phone and he hasn’t been showing up for work, and I’m afraid something bad happened to him. Have you seen him lately?”

  The guy scowled. “I saw him leave this morning,” he said, and Summer realized he had a slight accent, something European but not specific. “He seemed fine, then.”

  That was what she needed. There was no way she was going to try to take down a professional killer alone, so she needed a way to get away and call for backup in a hurry. “Oh, are you sure?” she said, her eyes flicking from the man to Harvey’s door and back. “Maybe he’s just having one of his episodes, I mean, he’s been known to just avoid everyone for a few days. I just sort of thought he was over that, at least with me.” She looked him in the eye. “If you’re sure you saw him, then I guess I’ll wait a couple more days before I panic. Listen, I can’t thank you enough, this was really awesome of you.”

  The bald man smiled. “It’s no problem,” he said as he went back into his apartment and closed the door. Summer saw the woman for a brief second, looking at her warily, just before the door closed completely.

  She walked quickly toward the elevator, carefully leaving her phone in her pocket until she was inside and the doors were closed, and then she snatched it out and dialed Sam’s cell phone.

  *

  “Prichard,” Sam said as he answered. “Summer? What’s up?”

  “I found them,” Summer said breathlessly. “The man and woman in the photo you sent, I found them. Apartment 3G, 715 Washington Street. I just talked with them, they’re there right now.”

  Sam’s eyes went wide. “Can you keep a watch to make sure they don’t leave? I’ll get police and be there right away.”

  “I’m on it,” Summer said. “They won’t get away.”

  Sam cut off the call, then dialed Karen Parks. It took him only seconds to relay the information, and Karen cut him off to call for backup. She would meet Sam at the building.

  Sam looked at Indie. “Summer found our shooters,” he said. “With any luck, we can get them tonight.”

  “Go,” she said, “but be careful, Sam. Remember what Beauregard said—watch everyone, okay?”

  “I will.” He kissed her quickly and was out the door, the Mustang’s big engine roaring to life.

  Sam shoved his foot into the carburetor, and the big 428 uttered its famous growl as the car ate up the road. Sam was cranking almost a hundred miles per hour when he got to 6th Avenue, but his four wheel disc brakes brought the speed down drastically by the time he got to 7th. He fishtailed around the corner and slid to a stop at the curb two buildings down from his target.

  Karen spotted him as she came up the street and pulled in behind him, jumping out of her car as he climbed out of the Mustang. They spotted Summer rushing toward them, and then a pair of squad cars came up the street with lights and sirens off.

  “Okay, I saw them both,” Summer said. “The apartment they’re in is on the back of the building, so I really don’t think they could’ve seen us. You guys ready?”

  “Hold your horses, cutie pie,” Karen said. “Are you wearing a bulletproof bra? Then you’re staying outside. Take a position where you can see the back exit, just in case they decide to make a run for it at the last second. Sam, you go with her.”

  Sam’s eyes went wide. “But I…”

  “No argument, Sam,” Karen said. “This is a police matter, and we’re going to handle it. You and Summer can keep watch on the back.”

  As much as he wanted to argue, Sam knew she was making sense. She and the uniformed officers were wearing bulletproof vests, while Sam and Summer were not. He grabbed Summer by the arm and pointed toward the back of the building.

  They had to cut between the target building and the one next door, but they got behind it quickly. Karen and the uniformed officers went in the front, with two of the uniforms going up the stairs while Karen and the other two rode up in the elevator. They waited until the officers in the stairwell caught up, just to be sure the perpetrators hadn’t tried to get out that way, and then they converged on the door.

  Karen knocked. “Police,” she called out loudly, “open up!”

  There was a loud boom, and a section of the wall next to the door vanished. The officer who was standing there fell to the floor, his right hip a bloody mass from where the shotgun blast had taken him. Karen and the others stepped back, aimed their guns at the doorway, and opened fire.

  One of the bullets struck the door latch, and the door flew open. The woman was laying in the floor a few feet past it, and blood was pooling around her as she tried to reach for the shotgun she had dropped. Karen rushed in and stamped a foot down on top of it, pointed a gun at the woman’s face, and ordered her to freeze.

  The woman looked up at her, but the eye contact lasted only a few seconds. Her eyelids drooped as blood loss caught up with her, and then Karen saw the gouge on the side of her neck, where a bullet had taken out a section of her jugular.

  The other officers were rushing through the apartment, shouting “Clear,” as they found no one in each room. Karen cursed as she realized the man had gotten away through an open back window that led out to a fire escape. She leaned out the window, hoping to see her quarry down at ground level with Sam and Summer keeping him covered, but there was no sign of any of them.

  Some instinct made her turn her head to the right, and she found herself looking down the barrel of a gun. She tried to jump back, bringing her own gun around toward the man who was grinning and squeezing his trigger, but she knew it was too late. The only thought in her mind was that she had made Sam promise to watch after her kids, and then the sound of a gunshot filled her ears.

  Holy crap, she thought instantly, I’m not dead! Her eyes were wide as she stared at the bald man who was tumbling over the rail around the fire escape landing toward the ground far below. The b
loody stump where his gun hand had been caught her completely by surprise, until she looked around again and saw Sam standing in the alley, his gun still raised and aimed up to where the man had been about to kill her.

  When the killer hit the ground, Sam hurried over to make sure he wasn’t moving, but it was clearly not going to happen. His head was bent at an impossible angle, his neck broken, and there was no sign of life.

  Residents of the building were screaming and fleeing, rushing out as fast as they could. A dozen more police officers and a few ambulances had arrived, and some of the paramedics were busy with panic attacks among the residents. One elderly woman seemed to have suffered a mild heart attack, and was rushed to the hospital along with the officer who was wounded.

  Sam called Indie. “Tell me something,” he said. “Has anyone ever changed the outcome of one of Beauregard’s predictions?”

  “Not that I know of,” Indie said slowly. “Why, Sam?”

  “Because,” Sam said, “our shooter had Karen dead in his sights, and she said he was grinning like a maniac and squeezing the trigger when I shot him. A split second later, and she would’ve been dead.”

  “Oh, Sam,” Indie said. “I don’t know what to say. To be honest, I’ve never known him to be wrong, but maybe you were in the right place at the right moment.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “I don’t know when I’ll be home, it’s gonna take a while to get all this wrapped up. I love you, babe.”

  “I love you, Sam,” Indie said. “Come home when you can.”

  Sam ended the call and walked over to where Karen and the officers were waiting. Summer was with them, watching as the body of the shooter was photographed and observed by the medical examiner. He was dead, his neck broken from landing on his head when he fell, as was the woman in the apartment.

  “Other than the ME taking out the woman’s body,” Karen said, “I’m sealing the apartment. Your tech people are a lot better equipped than our CSI, and the mayor gave you lead on this case. Just make sure I get copies, okay?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said.

  Karen looked at him for a moment, because his eyes seemed to be seeing something miles away. “What’s going on in that head of yours, Sam?”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” Sam said. “He goes out the window, but she makes a suicide stand? It just doesn’t add up.”

  “What doesn’t add up,” Karen said, “is why he would have thought he could get out that way. This guy was some kind of pro, he should have expected there to be someone watching the back. He couldn’t possibly have really thought he was going to escape, could he?”

  “It’s possible,” Sam said. “He would’ve expected the biggest force to come to the apartment door, so he might have thought there was a chance he could fight his way past us outside. But still, to leave the woman behind to die, just to cover his escape? He must’ve had some powerful kind of control over her.”

  “Well, at least we have a chance now of finding out who they were. Odds on, their fingerprints or DNA will turn up in some database, somewhere.”

  “Hey,” Summer said suddenly. “He had an accent, something European but I couldn’t pin it down. I don’t think she had any kind of foreign accent, she sounded more like maybe from the Midwest. Illinois, Indiana, somewhere like that.”

  “All right,” Karen said. “Be sure to put that in your statement. And, hey, Summer? Excellent work. I don’t know how you found them, but I’m awfully glad you did.”

  Karen turned to Sam and just looked at him for a moment, then threw both arms around his neck. “I’d be dead if it weren’t for you,” she said. “That was one hell of a shot, Sam.”

  “It wasn’t all that great,” Sam said. “I was aiming for center mass, a body shot.”

  “Summer! Hey, Summer!” Summer turned around and looked, and sure enough, there came Harvey, with Wendy Dawson running right beside him. “Summer, this is Wendy. She heard about this on the scanner and called me, so we rushed on down. You don’t mind giving her a statement, do you?”

  “Back off, Wendy,” Karen growled. “Give me a couple of minutes, and I’ll give you a statement, but you leave Ms. Raines alone.”

  “Come on, Detective,” the reporter said. “I already know she’s a Windlass investigator, and she’s standing right next to Sam Prichard; do you really think I’m going to leave that alone?”

  Karen went nose to nose with her. “You will if you ever expect anything more than a ‘no comment’ out of me in the future,” she said. “I know you, and you’re trying to build your career on this case. You piss me off, and you won’t get anything. Do you understand me?”

  Wendy scowled. “Fine, as long as I get something good. Is it true you got the people who shot that kid at the award show?”

  Karen glared at her. “Fine,” she said. “Let’s do this.” She composed herself quickly and then managed a smile.

  Harvey aimed the camera at Wendy and Karen, then pointed at the reporter. “Go,” he said.

  “This is Wendy Dawson with Channel 6 news, and I’m standing here with Detective Karen Parks of the Denver Police Department at the scene of a police shooting.” She turned to Karen and Harvey widened the shot. “Detective Parks, can you tell me exactly what’s happened here this evening?”

  “Earlier this evening, an investigator for Windlass Security determined that the suspects in the recent shooting at the Canterbury Arena were occupying an apartment in the building behind me. She notified police, and we responded to attempt an arrest. The suspects resisted, seriously wounding one officer in the process, and one of them was killed at that point by police. The other suspect attempted to escape out the window, and was just about to shoot another officer when he himself was shot by Private Detective Sam Prichard, who is the chief investigator for Windlass. We can confirm that these are the suspects we have been looking for, and that they are both deceased.”

  “Sam Prichard has become quite a hero around Denver over the last few years,” Wendy said. “Will we be able to speak with him about his involvement in this shooting?”

  Karen glared at her for a second, then looked around and motioned for Sam to come closer. He stepped up beside her and Wendy turned her attention to him.

  “Mr. Prichard, thank you,” she said. “We learned yesterday that Windlass Security is actually running this entire investigation into the shooting that took place at the Web Wide Awards presentation. I’m assuming that means you are in charge?”

  “Yes,” Sam said, “I’m the lead investigator on this case, but as we told you yesterday, we’re working directly with Detective Parks and the Denver PD.”

  “Mr. Prichard, do you believe the suspects presented a danger to the public while they were here?”

  “I’d have to say yes,” Sam replied. “They were being sought for attempted murder, and we know now that they were armed and quite dangerous. We’re probably lucky that they didn’t find a need to harm anybody else, at least as far as we know.”

  “Were the suspects local? Are they from around here?”

  “I don’t believe we’ve identified them just yet,” Sam said, “but I’m not really at liberty to discuss any other details of the case at this point. I’m sure the Denver PD will issue a statement when the time is right, and you’ll have to wait for that information.”

  Wendy knew she was being dismissed, and turned to face the camera. “That’s all we have at the moment,” she said. “Stay tuned to Channel 6 news, and we’ll bring you more information as it becomes available. This is Wendy Dawson, for Channel 6 news.”

  13

  Steve Beck and Darren Beecher showed up at the police station after they heard on the news what happened. Because they weren’t involved in the shooting at all, they were forced to wait in the lobby until Sam and Summer finished making their statements. Karen had gotten back by then, and completed her own report. The shooting would automatically be reviewed, and Karen would be relegated to desk duty until the review was complete.

&
nbsp; Detective Jim Storch, newly promoted from uniform, was assigned to take over the management of the investigation for the police department, even though it was almost considered to be over. The DA’s office had sent Margaret Lee, one of their newest assistant prosecutors, to oversee the reports and collect information about the shooting. She assured both Karen and Sam that the review would show it to be a good shooting, and the homicides justifiable.

  It was well past midnight when Sam and Summer finally came out of the back rooms, and they went with Steve and Darren to an all night coffee shop.

  “So, how did you find them?” Darren asked Summer. “We didn’t have any kind of leads at all, the last I knew.”

  “Freaky good luck,” Summer said. “I was down at Proof, talking to a friend of mine, and I happened to show him the picture Sam sent me. He took one look, then told me he’d seen the guy in the apartment across the hall from his. He thought he’d seen the woman as well, but he wasn’t sure, so I went down and pretended I was worried about him to get a look at them. As soon as the guy stepped out and I saw his face, I knew it was them.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Steve said. “We all go out there and bust our asses to try to get a lead on these people, and you stumble into a case breaker at a bar. You wearing some kind of magic panties or something?”

  Summer grinned at him. “Why, Steve, I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. And wouldn’t you like to know.”

  “So, where does this leave us, boss?” Darren asked. “Is the case closed, now?”

  Sam shook his head. “Not even close,” he said. “Denny is on his way to London right now, to follow up the lead on Starbright. He’s got reason to believe that Benjamin Hickam, the owner of Starbright Awards, might have been the one who paid for this. While he’s working on that, our job is to trace these two people backward, find out everything we can about them. I want to know everything they’ve been doing, because I can’t believe this was a one shot operation. No pun intended, by the way.”

  “I think you’re right,” Steve said. “Something about this smells. That poor kid gets shot, and our clients are supposed to get the blame, right? Thing is, you don’t ruin a company with just one bad day. It takes more than that, just look at how many times one of the big car makers got caught covering up a flaw in their designs. They get a little bad press, but sales don’t seem to slow down that much.”