Close To Home_A Sam Prichard Mystery

by David Archer

  Fifteen minutes later, he was walking into Pemberton’s office. He took the chair in front of the desk when it was offered, then looked at the deputy DA. “Okay, what’s going on?”

  “You showed me a video this morning,” Pemberton said. “I’m going to show you one, now. The thing I need you to understand is that this video was taken illegally, so it has to stay between you and me. You can tell Karen Parks about it, but nobody else gets to see it. Deal?”

  Sam’s eyebrows came down, but he nodded his agreement. Pemberton did something on a laptop on his desk, then spun it around so Sam could see the monitor.

  The view that opened up showed the inside of a jail interview room. It was one of those rooms with the one-way mirror, and the dim lighting told Sam they were looking through the glass.

  “What you’re about to see is a video that was taken with a cell phone through the one-way glass,” Pemberton said. “A police officer who happened to be at the jail when Samara was brought in took this video illegally, because the detective in charge, Carl Rivers, specifically ordered all recording turned off on this room while he interviewed Daniel Samara. He put the phone up against the glass, so it was even able to catch the audio, and then he went about his business because no one was supposed to be in the observation booth. After everything went crazy, he went and got his phone and found this. Just watch.”

  A door on the other side of the room from the mirror opened, and both Samara and Rivers walked in. Samara was in handcuffs, but Rivers took them off as soon as the door was closed behind him. They sat down across the table from each other and were silent for several seconds. Finally, Rivers spoke.

  “What the hell are you doing, Digger? You were supposed to get out of town, not hang around here messing with Prichard.”

  “Screw you, Rivers. I just found out my daughter was in town, and she’s gonna have my grandbaby. I went and picked her up, and that bastard Prichard tracked me down and stole her away. I just wanted my little girl back, that’s all.”

  “You dumb son of a bitch,” Rivers said. “Do you have any freaking idea how much trouble you’re in? Your little girl is the state’s star witness against you. She’s planning to testify that she saw you kill her mother and her little sister, that you even made her hold the trashbags open while you cut her mother up in little pieces to get rid of her. You know what that’ll do to a jury? They’ll be demanding the return of the death penalty.”

  “It’d be her word against mine,” Samara said, his tone mocking. “My daughter had a really hard life, she’s a little bit crazy. It wouldn’t be a bit hard to prove that. I’m not worried about anything like that.”

  “Yeah? Well, what about the murder of a federal agent? That guy that was killed in your apartment was fed, you jackass. FBI, undercover. He was working you, trying to find out about the Greeks. God only knows how much information he turned in, but it’s bad enough they managed to find the warehouse. Homeland Security and FBI went in there today and cleaned house, while you were conveniently gone. Did you know something about that? Did you know it was coming?”

  “Hey, screw you! I don’t give nobody up like that, you know that. And don’t worry, it won’t take me a month to get a new operation set up. I’ll keep the money coming, don’t you worry.”

  “I’m not worried about money,” Rivers said. “I’m worried about you acting so damn stupid that you’re going to get us all caught. You have any idea what they would do to me if they ever found out how much I cover your ass?”

  Samara gave him an evil grin. “Yeah? Wonder what they’d do if they knew the things you used to do with my little girls? Think that might be worse?”

  “That never gets brought up, you agreed. I cover your ass, you don’t ever talk about that. Remember?”

  Samara jumped to his feet and leaned across the table, planting his hands on it. “Do I look covered? I’m sitting in jail, you stupid prick. All I want to know is how you’re going to get me back out of here.”

  Rivers looked incredulous. “Get you out of here? Digger, I don’t think there’s any possible way. Not any legal way, that’s for damn sure. You let me work on it for a bit, and I’ll see what I can do. Maybe I can arrange for you to accidentally be let out the wrong door for recreation or something. Just don’t get in a hurry, because it’s gonna take a while to set something up. There’s a couple jailers who can be bribed, but I have to be careful about it or it will blow up in my face.”

  “I don’t give a shit about your face,” Samara said. “I want out of here, and not in a little while, I want out of here today. If you can’t arrange it, by God, I can. What you need to do is get off your ass and figure out how to make it happen.”

  “Why? So you can go back out there and raise more kinds of hell than most people have ever seen? I don’t know if you’re just going senile or what, but you’ve been acting crazy for the last few weeks. I don’t know how I can keep this whole thing from turning into a big disaster, but you can bet the Greeks are looking at me to do that.”

  “Hey, you agreed to take their money,” Samara said, “so they naturally expect to be able to call on you. You do your job, everything goes well. You know that.”

  “I’m doing my job!” Rivers shouted. “I’m doing my job. My job is to try to keep the heat off of you while you bring God only knows who or what into the country, and I’ve been doing it just fine. Now, we’re hearing that what you’re bringing in is terrorists and bombs and God only knows what else. Is that true?”

  “You know better than to ask questions about that,” Samara said. “It’s all on need to know, and you don’t need to know.”

  “I need to know that you’re not going to blow everything just because you want to get cozy with your daughter again. Now, I’m going to put you in a cell, and you’re going to wait until I can figure out what to do about this. You understand?”

  When he thought about it later, Sam figured that Rivers never saw it coming. Samara, as big as he was, could move like a striking snake. Faster than Sam could imagine it happening, he was up on the table and had his arms wrapped around Rivers’ neck. He gave one hard twist, and Rivers’ face went completely slack. When Samara let go, the detective fell to the floor instantly.

  Sam was quite sure he was dead, just that quickly. Samara went to the door and started pounding on it, yelling that Rivers had collapsed, and the door suddenly opened. Samara stood aside while two deputies ran in, then grabbed one of them by the neck and snatched out his gun. He dragged his hostage out and kicked the door shut, locking the other deputy inside. The video showed that deputy banging on the door and yelling for help, but none seemed to be coming.

  The video ended, and Sam looked up at Pemberton.

  “So, we finally have evidence that Rivers was dirty. I was telling Will that there were officers talking about it, already.”

  “Yes, I know. All this video does is prove it, but we could never have used it for evidence in any case. The law says that at least one of the parties being recorded has to know about the recording if it isn’t covered by a warrant, and neither of them knew. From a legal standpoint, this is completely inadmissible as evidence.”

  “I know that. What I don’t understand is why you’re showing it to me. This has no real bearing on Karen’s case, which is what I was working on.”

  “I understand that. The thing is—the thing is, we seem to be having an awful lot of corruption in the police department lately. When this video showed up this morning, sent through an anonymous email server, the DA and I sat down and talked about it. She wants me to come up with a way to determine which of our city and county cops are corrupt. I told her the only thing I could think of was to try to hire you.”

  “Me?”

  “Hell, yes, you. Sam, you’ve found more corruption in local law enforcement in the last year and a half than internal affairs has found in fifteen years. I think that if you started digging, you’d find any dirt there is to find. I’m proposing that you come to work for the
DA, right out of this office. You’d have your own division, and we’d even provide enough of a budget for you to hire some extra investigators of your own. Let them do all the legwork, and you write the reports.” He pointed at the computer. “You could help us put a stop to this sort of thing, shut down corrupt cops and get rid of them. What do you say, Sam? Interested?”

  Sam stared at him for a minute, then shrugged his shoulders. “I have to think about it,” he said. “How soon do I have to give you an answer?”

  “Sometime soon,” Pemberton said. “And preferably before your wife gets around to writing a blog about it. This is something we want to keep secret, Sam. We might even give your department a name that would camouflage it, so nobody really knew what it did.”

  Sam stared at him for another moment, then slowly got to his feet. “Give me a couple of days to think this over. I’ll let you know shortly.”

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