More Than It Seems

by David Archer

  Sam cut off the call and put the phone in his pocket, then stepped into the cafeteria. Edith and Kenny were sitting at a table, and Edith was wearing about half of a smile. She looked up as Sam approached and the smile disappeared.

  “Is there news?” she asked.

  “Yes, I spoke to the doctor. Steve made it through surgery, but he’s in critical condition at the moment. The doctor says to give it about four hours and see how he’s doing then, and maybe we can see him after that.”

  She let out a long breath of relief. “At least he’s alive,” she said. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been through this, you know. Steve was shot twice before, back when he was on the force. He nearly died both times, but he’s pretty stubborn when it comes to living through something like this.” She gave Sam a sad grin. “I’m thankful for that stubbornness. I don’t know what I would do without him, Sam. He always complains that I take him for granted, but deep down I think he knows how much he means to me.”

  “I can assure you he does,” Sam said. “He talks to me when nobody else is around.”

  “So he’s going to be okay?” Kenny asked.

  “The doctor thinks he will be, but it’s going to be a few hours before he will say for sure. Apparently the bullet hit his main artery, and the doctor said if it’d been just a little bit further left, Steve wouldn’t have made it at all. He was lucky.”

  “He’s got to come through this,” Kenny said. “Mrs. Beck and I have been talking, and I think I’m starting to remember a few things. I remember I had a green stuffed Scooby Doo, and she says they still have it. I remember things about an older man, and I think it was him. When I have those memories, I can feel—I feel loved, I guess. I really want to know him, I really want to have the chance to know him.”

  “He’s a good man,” Sam said. “He and I have been friends for years, ever since I heard him speak when I was a rookie cop. He taught me a lot of what I know about being an investigator, and I might not be here if it wasn’t for him.”

  Edith looked up again. “Sam, is there any information on who did this?”

  Sam grimaced. “Right now, we suspect it was one of the officers on the Boulder Police Department. They would be the only ones who could have possibly known about this connection to Kenny, and that’s the only conceivable motive we can come up with. We think it’s possible that somebody was afraid Steve might trigger memories in Kenny that they don’t want discovered. Nothing else really seems to make any sense.”

  Edith looked at Kenny. “Can you think of anything it might be?”

  Kenny shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t know if I just blocked out everything that happened back then or what, but I really don’t remember much about when I was kidnapped. I mean, I remember being in the dark and I remember chains, I remember that stupid bunny mask the guy wore, but if you asked me to remember anything I did during that time, I’m just at a loss.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” Sam said. “After we talked this morning, you remembered seeing the trap door under the kitchen stove. Remember that?”

  Kenny looked at him for a moment. “Mr. Prichard, do you still have that notebook full of my stories?”

  Sam nodded. “It’s back in our conference room at the police department.”

  Kenny turned to Edith. “Ma’am, I need to go back and read those stories again. Mr. Prichard is right, I did remember something that I put in one of those stories when I was a kid. I need to read through them, see if maybe it will trigger more memories.”

  Edith nodded and patted his arm. “You go right ahead,” she said. “I’ll wait here until Steve can have visitors, then I’ll go sit with him until you come back. You will come back, won’t you?”

  Kenny looked at her for a couple of seconds, then leaned over and put a kiss on her cheek. “I’ll be back, Mother,” he said softly. “If he wakes up, you tell him we have a lot of catching up to do.”

  He got up quickly and followed Sam as Edith wiped away the tears that were flowing down her cheeks.

  Sam and Kenny arrived back at the conference room a few minutes later and Sam picked up the notebook and handed it to the younger man. Kenny sat down in a chair and began reading, turning the pages slowly as he puzzled out his childish handwriting.

  “Where are we?” Sam asked.

  “Summer is out talking to the officers we’ve been dealing with,” Denny said, “trying to get a feel for whether one of them might be the shooter. Jade is going through the computer system here to try to find out who might have been out of the building at the time. Walter is in the bathroom and refuses to come out. Eric is working on the security camera footage, trying to get an idea whether it caught anybody slipping out shortly before the shooting, and Darren is tracking down Detective Franklin and his helpers.” He grinned. “I went directly to Chief Kelly, and he ordered full cooperation with the investigation.”

  Sam nodded. “I would imagine he would,” he said. “I doubt he wants to think there’s a killer in his department, but I’m sure he would want to get to the bottom of it quickly if there is.”

  EIGHTEEN

  “I’ve always had kind of a thing for older men,” Summer said breathlessly, speaking softly to the veteran officer standing in front of her. “And uniforms. They get to me, too.”

  Officer Turner smiled, or rather continued to smile. He hadn’t stopped since she had walked into the break room, where he was sitting with a cup of coffee. “Now, if only I was single,” he said with a chuckle. “You are sure a pretty little thing, but my wife would take off important parts of my anatomy if I let you sway my head.”

  “Oh, forgive me,” Summer said. “I wasn’t trying to come on to you, I really wasn’t. I just—I guess I just wanted you to know that I admire you. You’re a handsome man, officer, and you obviously know your job very well. How long have you been on the force here?”

  Turner screwed up his face for a second in concentration, then nodded his head. “Wow, I’m up to thirty-two years, now. I actually started out directing traffic, back before we put in all the stop lights. There were a couple of intersections that were getting really busy before then, so the city hired a few of us to handle the traffic in those places. I didn’t get to be a patrolman until my second year.”

  “Oh, then you were a full-fledged policeman when Pastor Jensen was murdered, right?”

  “Oh, yes, I remember that. That was an ugly, ugly time. Seems like everybody who ever knew him suddenly had something nasty to say about the man, even though everybody acted like he was some sort of second coming of Jesus while he was alive.” He shook his head. “I knew Martin for years, back then, and if anybody had ever told me then that he was doing the kind of things we know about now, I woulda said they were crazy. What kind of man can preach the gospel on Sunday mornings and then do the things he must’ve done with those children?”

  “That would take a sick individual,” Summer said, “I have to agree with you there.” She leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “Listen, did you ever hear of anybody having suspicions about him while he was alive? Anybody ever talk about this dark secret he was supposed to have?”

  Turner shook his head. “Not even once,” he said. “Afterward, there were a lot of people in his church who said he was into something strange, but nobody seemed to know what it was. It was all just rumor and speculation, the same kind of thing you get whenever somebody dies violently. I mean, the man’s head was bashed in with a baseball bat. That took somebody pretty angry to do that, I would say. Had to be somebody he pissed off, right?”

  “That’s for sure,” she said. “You know, they say there were rumors about him and some of the ladies at church. Do you think maybe it was just a jealous husband?”

  “Not with all that rage,” Turner said. “I never wanted to be a detective, but I’ve been around a few murders. You don’t get that kind of rage over jealousy. I mean, sure, a jealous husband might beat a guy to death, but usually the jealousy dies off as soon a
s the victim stops fighting back. Marty Jensen’s head was smashed to bits, which means the killer kept swinging that bat even after he was dead. That doesn’t strike me as jealousy, that sounds more like some kind of revenge.” He shrugged. “Maybe one of those kids’ daddies figured out he was behind it. That would make most sense to me, and now that we know.”

  Summer nodded. “You know, that’s the really sad thing,” she said. “Our friend who was shot earlier? He just found out this morning that the boy who was the only one to survive was really his son. Did you hear about that?”

  Turner’s eyes went wide. “Seriously? How in the world did that happen?”

  “His little boy was kidnapped twenty-five years ago,” she said, “and it turns out that he looked a lot like the Givens boy. We don’t know why, but apparently Jensen actually cultivated him to replace the real Kenny Givens, who probably died. Mr. Givens knew that he wasn’t really his son, but we aren’t sure about his wife. They just took him in and raised him as if he was, because Mrs. Givens was so depressed when her son disappeared. If she knew, she never let on.”

  Turner shook his head again. “If that don’t beat all,” he said. “They got any idea why he got shot?”

  Summer shook her head. “Not a clue,” she said. “Care to speculate?”

  The old officer bit the inside of his cheek for a moment. “Seems to me,” he said, “somebody might be afraid the boy would recognize his real daddy. Maybe even start to remember things that somebody wants to keep quiet.”

  “You know, that’s exactly what I was thinking,” Summer said. “I just can’t figure out, after all these years, why would it matter?”

  Turner glanced around at the break room door to make sure no one was close by, then leaned close to her. “Listen, you didn’t get this from me,” he said in a whisper, “but my gut says if Jensen was doing these things, he wasn’t working alone. I think he had a partner.”

  Summer narrowed her eyes at him. “What makes you think that?” she asked.

  “Like I told you, I knew Marty Jensen,” he said. “Some of those kids were taken out of upstairs bedrooms and ladders were used. Marty Jensen was scared of heights, couldn’t even stand on a chair to change a lightbulb.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Summer asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Turner said. “See, somebody busted a window in his church one day, and I got called down there to take the report. He was standing there with one of their janitors by a stepladder, and the janitor offered to hold it while he went up to look at the broken window, and the man just about had a panic attack. He come right out and said it, said he couldn’t stand to get on a ladder or climb on top of anything, too afraid of falling.”

  Summer stared at him. “That’s an interesting tidbit of information,” she said. “I wonder why it wasn’t in any of the files on the case?”

  “Well, because he was dead,” Turner said, “and he wasn’t a suspect in any of the kidnappings back then. Why would anybody mention his fear of heights?”

  “Officer Turner,” Summer said, “that’s going to get you in trouble.”

  “In trouble? How?”

  Without answering, Summer leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Just be sure to wipe off that lipstick mark before you go home,” she said. “We wouldn’t want you to lose any important body parts.”

  She got up and left the room, walking quickly back toward the conference room. If Jensen had an accomplice, and somebody in the police department wanted to keep Steve and Kenny apart, then that accomplice was probably wearing a badge.

  It only took her a few minutes to get back to the conference room, where she found Sam, Denny and Kenny.

  “I have a new theory,” she said quickly. “Courtesy of Officer Turner, the senior patrolman. He’s been with the department for more than thirty years, and he knew Pastor Jensen pretty well. He says if Jensen was abducting these boys, he couldn’t have been doing it alone. He had to have had an accomplice.”

  Sam narrowed his eyes and looked at her. “All right, I’ll bite,” he said. “What makes him think that?”

  “Because some of the boys were taken from second-story rooms, using ladders to go through the windows. Martin Jensen was afraid of heights, couldn’t even stand on a chair. That didn’t get mentioned in any of the files because he was not a suspect back then.”

  Slowly, both Sam and Denny nodded. “And if somebody here is trying to cover things up,” Sam said, “then it’s a safe bet the accomplice is a policeman. Did you get any sense of who it might be?”

  She shook her head. “Unfortunately, no,” she said. “I talked to most of the men we’ve been working with, and I didn’t get the feeling any of them knew what happened to Steve. The only one I didn’t see was Detective Franklin.” She looked at him meaningfully.

  “Darren found him,” Denny said. “He and Darren are working together to check out the rest of the detectives and officers. There has to be something that connects at least one of them to Jensen. I think we need to let Darren know what you’ve discovered.”

  He took out his phone and punched the button to speed dial Darren, then quickly related what Summer had told him. Darren relayed the information to Franklin, and then told Denny that they had not been able to come up with anyone from inside the department who could have been the shooter. It seemed that everyone they had worked with could be accounted for at the time of the shooting.

  “Well, don’t give up,” Denny said. “That bloody bastard is here somewhere, and I want his ass.”

  “No more than me,” Darren said.

  The line went dead and Denny dropped the phone onto the table before turning back to Sam. “They’re on the way back here, now. Darren said they haven’t had any luck, either.”

  Sam shook his head. “My gut says we’re on the right track,” he said. “I just wish I knew where it was leading.”

  Denny looked at him. “You’ll figure it out, mate,” he said. “You always do.”

  Sam started to respond, but Kenny looked up at that moment. “Mr. Prichard?” he said.

  “Yeah, Kenny? You find something?”

  “I’m not really sure, sir,” Kenny said. “I’m going through all the stories I wrote back when I was a kid, and I found something that I don’t really remember. In one of these stories, I talk about how the boy in the basement—apparently me, but I wrote in the third person—was scared a couple of times when the bunny man came down with another man tagging along. The second man was bigger and looked mean, and he was wearing a mask that looked like a gorilla. Apparently he came more than once, because it seems I got used to seeing him.”

  Sam pursed his lips. “Then there was an accomplice,” he said. “If only you could remember details.”

  Kenny shrugged. “I wish I could, sir. As far as I’m concerned, anybody who was working with my kidnapper is just as guilty as he was.”

  Sam nodded solemnly. “I couldn’t agree more,” he said. “Kenny, would you consider going under hypnosis to see if you can remember specific details?”

  “I suppose we could try,” Kenny said. “I’ve never been hypnotized, but if it might help…”

  “Let me see what I can do,” Sam said. “I worked with a psychiatrist once to use hypnosis to get to the bottom of a few things that people couldn’t remember. It’s certainly worth a try, anyway.”

  Sam’s phone chose that moment to ring, and he pulled it out and looked at the caller ID. It was Edith calling, and he put the phone to his ear instantly as he walked out of the room.

  “Edith? What’s going on?”

  “Sam, he’s doing well enough they’ve upgraded him to serious condition, rather than critical. And even worse than that, he’s awake. He’s demanding to see you.”

  Sam couldn’t hold the grin. “Cantankerous, is he? Tell him I’ll be right there. Would you like me to bring Kenny along?”

  He could hear the smile in Edith’s voice. “Would you? I’m sure Steve would like to meet him, even after all th
is.”

  “We’ll be there in a few minutes.” He ended the call and went back into the conference room, crooked a finger at Kenny and said, “Come on, Steve is awake.”

  “What about us?” Summer asked pointedly.

  “He’s still in serious condition,” Sam said. “I think the rest of you should wait until he’s in a little better shape. I probably wouldn’t go now, but he’s insisting on it.”

  “Hold up a minute, mate,” Denny said quietly, catching his attention. “Something you better consider. If somebody was worried enough about Steve and Kenny talking that they tried to take out a seasoned investigator, don’t you think that means Kenny is in just as much danger?”

  Sam looked him in the eye, then nodded sharply. “You’re right,” he said. “We need protection on him, twenty-four seven until we catch this killer. I’d go to Franklin, but we don’t know who we can trust in the police department.”

  “No troubles,” Denny said. “I’ll stay on him until you can get the security team up here.”

  Sam chewed his bottom lip for a second, then nodded again. “That’ll work.” He turned to Kenny. “Kenny, considering someone tried to kill Detective Beck to keep you guys from talking, I think we’re going to keep security on you for a while. Summer is going to make arrangements for some security people, but in the meantime, Denny, here, is going to be your bodyguard.”

  Kenny stared at the two of them. “You really think that’s necessary?”

  “I think it’s absolutely necessary,” Sam said. “You may turn out to be the biggest break in this case, and we can’t afford to have anything happen to you.”

  Kenny shrugged, then he and Denny got up and followed Sam out the door and back to his car. They were back at the hospital only moments later and Sam got directions to the ICU. He was required to put on a mask before he could enter the room, but it was worth it to see Steve once again.

  “About damn time,” Steve grumbled when he walked in. “You find out who did this yet?” His voice was strong, but he was speaking slowly.