Fact or Fiction_A Sam Prichard Mystery

by David Archer

  The Ridgeline was doing close to a hundred miles an hour, but Sam knew that Marcy had at least a thirty-minute head start on him. He was racking his brain, trying to figure out just where she would take Kim to finish what she had started, but the only thing he could think of was the spot where Daisy had been found. He remembered how to get there and was pushing the truck for all it was worth.

  A sign loomed on the side of the road, announcing that Thompsonville was only two miles farther ahead. He backed off the accelerator and let the truck begin to slow, but he was still doing nearly seventy as he rolled into town. His eyes were scanning for the turn that would take him north, back toward the wooded pond where Daisy had died.

  “Sam!” Indie screamed suddenly. “Sam, watch out!”

  Someone had stepped into the road ahead of him, and Sam stood on the brakes as he prayed that he could avoid hitting the person. The antilock brakes did their job, and he brought it to a stop mere inches from the old man who had been trying to cross the highway. They were just in front of the trailer park where Daisy had lived.

  The old fellow didn’t even seem to notice and continued plodding along. Sam was just about to cut around behind him when a voice called out, “Mr. Prichard?”

  Sam looked to the right and saw Jason Garrity standing beside the passenger door. He hit the button to power down the window and looked at the young man. “Jason,” he said quickly, “Marcy Elimon is the killer. Bill Parkinson is her father, but he changed his name years ago, and now he’s a drunk. Marcy killed Millie because she blames Lynette for her father’s condition, but we just found out that my mother-in-law is Bill and Lynette’s daughter. Marcy has her and is taking her somewhere to kill her.”

  The boy gripped the window, looking past Indie into Sam’s frantic face. “Marcy? Good Lord, I never even thought about her. Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” Sam said, “but I don’t have time to explain. Think fast—where do you think she’d take Lynette’s daughter to kill her?”

  Jason was staring at him, but Sam could see the wheels spinning inside the boy’s head. “I don’t—wait a minute, she’s Lynette’s daughter? Then that means Marcy would be her sister, right? And if she hates Lynette so much she’s trying to kill off that whole side of the family, then there’s only one place I can think of.”

  Sam’s eyes shot wide. “Of course,” he said. “Millie’s place!” He started to take his foot off the brake, but Jason reached into the truck, holding up a hand to tell him to wait.

  “Hold on,” the young man said. “I can help…”

  18

  Marcy kept her foot on the accelerator until they got within a mile of Thompsonville, then pumped the brakes to slow down. She had to come to a stop when they got to the main highway, but then it was just a matter of driving slowly through the backstreets of the little town, cutting from one to another until she came to its southwest edge. South Street met Highway 149 there, but she was lucky. There was no traffic around, so a quick right and an almost immediate left took her through the empty back parking lot of the Church of God. From there, it was a simple matter to hide the car in the trees.

  No one had seen them, she knew. She lifted the pistol that had been lying in her lap and pointed it at Kim.

  “Get out of the car,” she said, “but don’t be stupid enough to try to run. Believe me, I won’t hesitate to just blow your head off.”

  She got out of the driver’s side and kept the pistol pointed at Kim as she also stepped out. Marcy raised the gun and held it over the top of the car as she walked around, then grabbed Kim by the back of the neck. “Start walking,” she said and guided her by the tight grip.

  “You know, I hadn’t actually planned to kill your grandmother that day, but things don’t always go the way you plan. All I really wanted to do was track you down, and I’d actually spent months trying to figure out how to get the old biz to help me find you. I asked her a few times, when me and Debbie were hanging out together, but the old battleax never answered. She’d just sniff and look away, like I wasn’t good enough to know the answers.”

  “Maybe she didn’t know,” Kim said. “My mother wouldn’t ever have anything to do with her family. She may not have even known I existed.”

  “Of course she did,” Marcy said. “She shipped her own daughter off for getting knocked up. She had to have known you were born, right? But then that Garrity kid gave me an idea. See, I went to the high school play with Debbie and her husband that year, and it was all the rage how Jason Garrity managed to transform himself completely into an old woman with some padding, a little makeup, and a wig. Up until the third act of the play, nobody even realized he was playing both parts—the guy called James and this old woman named Miss Lydia—but then he actually sat right there on the stage and put on the makeup and wig and dress, and that’s when I figured it out.”

  Kim turned her head slightly to look over her shoulder. “Figured what out?”

  “Well, hell, if a teenage boy could do it, then so could I. I went out and bought a gray wig, a pair of those costume eyeglasses with just plain old glass in them, some oversized clothes that I added padding to, and an oversized bra I could stuff with toilet paper, and then I watched some videos about how to use theatrical makeup online.” She chuckled. “It took me a few weeks to get it down right, but one day I looked into the mirror and knew that nobody would recognize me. Especially not that old bag—she could barely even see.”

  Kim almost stumbled as some vines tried to catch at her ankles. “But what was the point? Why even bother?”

  “Why bother? Do you have any idea how long I dreamed of tracking you down, of making you feel just as miserable as I did? I used to daydream about it, back in school. Sometimes I’d get so into those daydreams that it was like they came to life. I’d tell you just how much misery you caused me, and in my fantasies you would break down and cry and beg me to forgive you, but I never would.”

  “I guess I can understand that,” Kim said. “But it’s a long way from daydreaming about yelling at someone and then committing murder.”

  “I told you, I didn’t mean to kill her at first. If you want to know the truth, the only one I really ever thought about killing before that was you. All those fantasies? Just making you miserable wasn’t enough, not after a while. I started fantasizing about beating you, using a horse whip on you or something, and then one day the fantasy just sort of took on a life of its own. It was so real—I couldn’t believe how real it was—but it was like I suddenly got my hands on you and I just wouldn’t stop hitting you.” She laughed, an evil laugh that echoed slightly off the trees around them. “I could even see all the blood, because I fantasized about picking up a stick and just beating you in the head with it.”

  Millie’s old house was the last one on the left, just before the little curve to the left that brought the road to an end. It was a good four hundred yards through the woods, and they had to duck around clearings to stay in the deep cover, but Marcy’s luck held. The few people who lived on Fifth Street were paying no attention to the woods behind their homes, so it was only about twenty minutes of stumbling through the tangled brush before they came to the backyard of the house where Marcy had finally, truly become a killer.

  “And then one day I got all dressed up in my costume and went to see her. I remember I was wearing a yellow blouse with red piping and a pair of brown slacks that went well with it, and I stood in front of the mirror and put on the wig, but it just didn’t seem right. I don’t know why, it just didn’t look right, and then I spotted that hat I used to wear when I was selling makeup a few years before. I picked it up and put it on, and it just looked perfect. I looked for all the world like just another little old lady.”

  They were standing just inside the trees at the back of the yard where Millie had died. Looking at the house, Marcy suddenly found herself transported back eight years, to the moment when she had first stood in that exact spot. She had cut through the trees because she didn�
�t want neighbors seeing her, just in case one of them might have better eyesight than Millie and realized who she was. She didn’t want them ever telling the old woman that it was her, so cutting through the woods had avoided that problem. Then all she had to do was slip across the backyard and walk around to the front door to knock.

  Millie had answered it herself. “Yes? What do you want?”

  “Mrs. Cameron?” Marcy had asked in the high, elderly sounding voice she had practiced. “I’m Ethel Summers, from Social Services. Could I speak with you for a few minutes?”

  “Social Services?” Millie had echoed as she opened the door wider to allow her visitor inside. “What do you want with me? I don’t get no state check or anything.”

  Marcy stepped inside and closed the door behind herself, while Millie sat down in her usual chair. She took the one beside it and set her bulky purse on her knees. There was actually nothing in it, but it was part of the costume. “I know that, ma’am,” Marcy said. “I actually have some questions about your granddaughter, Kimberly. It turns out that because of your husband’s death, she may be entitled to certain benefits. I simply need to know how to find her.”

  “Granddaughter? I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Millie had said. “I ain’t got no granddaughter named Kimberly. All I got is Mindy and Kaylee and a couple grandsons. Don’t know where you got your information, but it’s wrong.”

  Marcy cocked her head and looked at the old woman. Was it possible she actually didn’t know?

  “But, Mrs. Cameron, you had a daughter named Lynette, right? Well, she gave birth to a girl back in the seventies, and her name was Kimberly. Are you sure you don’t have any idea where she might be?”

  Millie’s eyes were wide. “Was that her name?” she asked softly. “I never knew. Bill used to come over here all the time and ask if we heard anything, but we never did. I finally told him where we sent her, and he was supposed to let me know about the baby, but he never did.”

  Cheated! Marcy had thought to herself at that moment. I’ve been cheated out of getting my hands on that brat. This old bat didn’t even know Kimberly existed.

  The thought of never being able to take her revenge on Lynette’s daughter caused the sudden rage that seemed to burst through Marcy’s mind. For years, ever since she had been old enough to understand that the Kimberly her father spoke of was another daughter from years before, she had been jealous and daydreamed of somehow making the girl pay for her father’s pain and suffering, but that jealousy had evolved over time to an all-consuming desire to make her suffer.

  But on that day, when the anger suddenly built up inside her, a daydream simply wasn’t going to be enough. Millie wasn’t going to tell her where to find her malevolent half sister, and so it was Millie who became the object of the rage that suddenly was flaring inside her. Marcy sat there and simply stared at the old woman for a moment, and then the rage boiled over.

  There was a small table between the two chairs, and Marcy’s gaze was suddenly drawn to an object sitting on it. It was a metal rod with a rounded knob on one end, about ten inches long, and Marcy realized that it was some sort of car part, but she didn’t know what kind. All she knew was that it would be heavy, but that was enough. Without even thinking about what she was doing, she reached out and grabbed it, and then rose to her feet.

  Millie looked up at her, her eyes wide in surprise. Ethel had looked like an old woman, but she jumped up out of that chair so fast that Millie was shocked. The look on Ethel’s face was also shocking, as Millie realized that, for whatever reason, this woman was enraged.

  And then Millie looked at the object in Ethel’s hand. It was something Ross had brought home from work, some car part that he had taken a fancy to that was going to be tossed into the scrap pile. He had cleaned it up and brought it home, and would occasionally hold it and feel the smoothness of the ball-like knob on its end. The finely machined piece of metal fascinated him, and Millie had smiled many times as she watched him hold it close to his face and stare at it.

  But now Ethel had it, and she was raising it up high, and in that moment Millie knew without any doubt that she was about to die. Her final thought was that she was glad Ross was not home, so that he would not also be injured, and then the big metal ball struck her in the temple.

  Marcy had raised and dropped that bar with its ball on the end more times than she could count, and finally it was the exhaustion in her arm that made her stop. That was when she suddenly realized what she had done, and the thing that surprised her the most was that she felt not the slightest bit of remorse. Millie was dead, and Marcy was actually glad.

  Of course, Millie was also Debbie’s mother, and Debbie was her friend. Without giving it any thought, Marcy shoved the bloody metal bar into the pocket of the pants she was wearing and started toward the front door. She was reaching for the doorknob, but when she saw the blood on her hand and sleeve, she took a good look at the rest of her body. Blood had splattered everywhere, and she could suddenly feel it on her face, as well. She thought for a split second about trying to clean herself up in the bathroom, but a part of her mind told her to just get out, get away.

  She turned away from the front door and went to the kitchen. That was where the back door was, she knew, and she found a piece of paper that she used to grab the doorknob. It wasn’t locked and swung open easily, and then she was out the door and moving as quickly as she dared across the backyard. She needed to get away, to get as far away as possible at that moment. She entered the woods behind the house and began moving even more quickly, and then she felt the wig begin to slip. She reached up to hold it in place and accidentally knocked the hat off her head.

  She didn’t realize it at first, and when she did it was too late to go back for it. She had to keep moving, had to get away. She needed to get somewhere to clean up and make sure she had an alibi.

  And yet…

  And yet there was a part of her that was feeling such an intense thrill that it was almost terrifying. She had killed that old woman, she had taken a life, and there was something about it that filled her with a sense of power and energy, with a sense of being alive so intense that she couldn’t imagine anything else ever feeling so good. Even her limited repertoire of orgasms paled in comparison.

  She made it to where she had left her car, down by the church parking lot, and started to get in. She froze, as her eyes rested on an incinerator behind the church. It was where they burned their trash, and it was burning at the time. Someone must have come by while she was at Millie’s and taken out the trash, then lit the fire.

  There were no cars in the parking lot, so whoever had done it was gone. Marcy hurried over to the incinerator, opened the door on the side, and snatched the wig off her head, tossing it into the flames. She pulled the blouse off and wiped her face as clean as she could, then did the same with it. The overstuffed bra followed, and then she took off the slacks. The metal rod caught her attention, and something about it made her want to keep it, maybe like a souvenir. She wiped it off on the slacks before tossing them into the fire with everything else.

  Underneath the costume clothing, she had been wearing a simple tank top and a pair of shorts, so she was still decent as she hurried back to her car. She got in and drove away, and it wasn’t until two days later that she realized she had left that handbag on the living room floor in Millie’s house.

  She didn’t worry much about that, though. There was nothing in it but paper, crumpled up paper that made it appear to be full and heavy. And those bungling deputies had already arrested Ross for the killing, so there was probably no chance in the world that anyone would ever connect that purse to her.

  “Let’s go.” Marcy shook off the reverie and pushed Kim into the backyard of the house. Kim was walking as slowly as she could, dragging her feet and trying to delay the inevitable, but she knew it was coming. Marcy dug into a pocket and produced a set of keys, duplicates to the ones Crazy Daisy had given to Sam only a few da
ys earlier. Debbie had given them to her after old Marie had passed away.

  No one had known that Marie had given Daisy the spare set. If only the old witch had kept her nose out of things, it might not have been necessary for her to die.

  When Debbie had called and told Marcy that Sam was coming back, she knew she needed to keep an eye on the situation. After she had googled Sam Prichard and learned who he was, she began to worry that he just might be capable of figuring out the truth. She had spread the word about his return on Friday morning, but Friday afternoon she had complained of stomach cramps and taken the rest of the day off. She called in sick on Saturday, as well, because she couldn’t watch Millie’s house from the woods if she was slaving away in the kitchen.

  That’s how she had seen Daisy talking to Sam, and the stress began to build. That afternoon, wearing Ms. Ethel, she had smeared mud on her license plates to prevent anyone getting the number and gone after Daisy. The crazy old woman had told her everything that had happened, including about how she had found that stupid hat a few weeks after the murder and hidden it inside the house. She somehow knew, she had said, that the hat was important, that it had belonged to the killer, and she even cackled a bit as she bragged about how she had rigged up the cabinet. Sooner or later, she knew, somebody would go into that house. She had watched it like a hawk, waiting for an opportunity to expose the hat without exposing herself.

  Marcy questioned her until she got it all, and then she reached into her pocket and pulled out that same metal rod. Her anger at Daisy for helping the private eye was extreme, and she used all of it in beating Crazy Daisy to death.

  That rod was her favorite method of killing, and it always gave her that thrill. As dangerous as it might have been to keep it, she had never been able to bring herself to get rid of it. Despite the small number of cases Indie had discovered, Marcy had used that rod over the years to claim more than two dozen victims. Many of them had just never been found, or weren’t important enough to make the news.