by David Archer
"Don't worry, Mr. Murdoch," Sam said. "I never heard of you, and I've never spoken to you."
Sam ended the call, and turned to look at his wife. "Well, it seems Harry was right," said. "Mr. Long is a very dangerous individual, and apparently was one of the assassin types that Harry was referring to. And if Mr. Murdoch is telling me the truth, he may also be a cold-blooded murderer."
"Sam," Indie said, "I'm beginning to wish we had never taken this case. You want to see what Herman's dug up?"
Sam leaned forward and scooted his chair closer to hers. "Sure, baby," he said. "What's he been up to?"
"Well, you remember that we just sort of turned Herman loose on this guy, right? I had told him to look in some government databases, but when he tried, it actually set off some alarms. Kenneth Long is classified top secret, and just trying to dig into him is enough to set off alarms on several different levels."
"Oh, oh," Sam said. "Are we going to need Harry to get us out of trouble?"
She grinned at him and winked. "Oh, come on, baby, you know me better than that! I designed Herman to spot such traps and get out fast, sweeping up after himself as he did so. There isn't much chance anybody has a clue who was behind the momentary breach, so don't get Harry's feathers riled up just yet. The point is, Ken Long is not just a former POW who decided to drop in on mommy. There's something seriously bad about this guy, and frankly, I'm not sure what we've gotten into. But I can tell you I don't like it, not one little bit."
"Yeah, I'm not sure I do either, but at least I'm only working for his daughter. I can't see that being something that's going to upset him too much, and to be honest, I think I'd rather approach him head on than let him find out by accident that we were trying to learn anything about him." He leaned forward and kissed her. "I'm going to go keep an eye on his mother's house for a bit," he said, "and just see if maybe he might pop up. Don't dig too deep; you never know, he might have people telling him if someone tries to track him down."
Indie nodded. "Okay, babe," she said. "You just be careful out there, you got that? You better come home safe to me, or I'll sick Beauregard on you!"
Sam grinned, and made a cross with his fingers. "Let's leave Beauregard out of this," he said. "This strikes me as one of those cases where he's gonna stick his nose in sooner or later, anyway, and I'd just as soon not have to deal with him before it's absolutely necessary." He got up and started toward the door that led into his garage, but a twinge in his bad hip made him stop and lean against the wall. “Ow,” he said, and stood there for a moment, then turned and went back to where he had left his cane leaning against the wall by his desk. “Must be gonna rain today,” he growled as he turned toward the door again.
Indie tried to suppress the chuckle, but it slipped out anyway, and Sam grinned as he walked into the garage. He got into his Corvette, and pushed the button on the remote to open the garage door so he could back out.
They had gotten the address for Joellyn's grandmother's house from her during the initial interview. Sam knew the neighborhood, so he drove that direction without bothering with GPS. It wasn't a very long drive, and he pulled up in front of a house down the street about twenty minutes later.
One of the most boring aspects of being a private investigator was surveillance, but it was also one of the easiest. Sam had been adept at surveillance even when he was a police officer, so it wasn't a problem for him. All it meant was sitting in the car and watching a suspect’s location, or someplace you expected the suspect to appear. It just wasn't a problem, or at least that's what Sam kept telling himself.
Two hours later, he wasn't so sure. There had been no activity, with no one visiting the house and no one leaving it. He hadn't seen any cars on the street, and in fact, there had been no traffic of any kind. That in itself seemed a little odd. Of course, there was no way that Long could have blocked the street from regular traffic, and if he could, then Sam probably wouldn't be sitting here, either. The lack of traffic was almost certainly just coincidental, but still bothered Sam.
Ironically, it was just at that moment that a vehicle approached the house he was watching. A late-model, nondescript Chevrolet sedan pulled up in front of the house and parked. Sam's attention perked up as he watched to see who might get out of the car.
A moment later, the driver’s door opened and a chubby, balding man stepped out of it. He didn't seem to be paying any attention to what was going on around him, but there was an air of awareness about him, as if he could sense the fact that Sam was watching even though he never looked in that direction.
Joellyn had given Sam and Indie a photo of Long when he was a younger man. Sam held it up and took a closer look, and concluded that with the extra weight and lack of hair taken into account, it was Kenneth Long who had gotten out of the car. He made his way to the front door of the house, apparently unconcerned about who might be watching, but again, Sam got the feeling that this man was completely aware of his surroundings.
He knocked on the door, and it was opened only a moment later. Sam saw a man's face, and figured it was Kenneth's brother, James, who smiled and let him in. There was no sense of awkwardness or unease in either of the men, though Sam recalled Joellyn saying that Jim was shocked at his brother's reappearance. He must have gotten over it, Sam thought, because he sure doesn't look upset now.
Sam fired up the Corvette and took the next right turn, then the next, and followed that street for a couple of blocks before turning again to come back to the street the house was on. He parked a block away, facing the same direction as Long's car, so that he could follow from a distance when the man finally left.
Then it was time to wait, again, and Sam sat there for more than an hour. The thought of calling Joellyn and telling her that her father was at her grandmother's house crossed his mind, but he wasn't ready to end this case just yet, and frankly, he wasn't sure how Long would react to being cornered by his daughter. If this man was a dangerous as he seemed to be, and as callous, then it was possible that he might even harm his own child. Sam wasn't ready to make a judgment call on that, just yet.
The front door opened, and Long stepped out. He glanced up and down the street before his feet touched the ground outside, and Sam knew without a doubt that he'd been spotted. Still, Long went to his Chevrolet and got into it as if there was nothing amiss, started it up, and drove off down the street at a leisurely pace.
Sam started the Corvette and followed, turning at the corner just as Long had done. The Chevy was almost to the next intersection, still moving at a normal speed, and Sam allowed himself to hang back as they made their way across the city. A mile from where they turned, the Chevy suddenly whipped around a corner to the left, and Sam followed when he got to it.
The Chevy was nowhere in sight. Sam looked for the closest places where it might have turned off again, but there was nothing between that intersection and the next except an alley that had a chain link fence stretched tightly across it, with only inches between its poles and the sides of the buildings that flanked it.
Still, Sam looked up the alley through the wire, but there was nothing there. It was as if Long's car had vanished into thin air. He cruised slowly along the street for a moment, thinking.
The car had been a block ahead of him when it turned onto that street, so it was possible that Long had just floored it and raced ahead to the next intersection. Sam pressed his accelerator and hurried up there, but there were no vehicles in sight, no matter which way he looked. He stared ahead, but he didn't believe the car could've made it to the next intersection in such a short time.
Instinctively, Sam glanced into his rearview mirror and spotted Long's Chevrolet sitting right behind him. The short hairs on the back of his neck stood up, as he wondered how the man had gotten behind him without being seen. Even if he'd raced around the block, he could not have gotten there so quickly. Somehow, Sam had actually passed him right there on the street. It seemed impossible, but the facts are the facts. Long was behind him, an
d there was no other explanation.
Sam looked at Long's face in the mirror, and saw an ice in his eyes that was unnerving. The man knew Sam was playing stare down with him, and not only did he not blink, but he held eye contact better than anyone had ever done when Sam wanted to pour on the glare. Sam wasn't accustomed to people who could meet him eye to eye, but he wouldn't let that show. He smiled into the mirror and waved at Long, then pulled over and parked on the side of the street.
Long parked his Chevrolet just behind the Corvette. For a long moment, the two men simply sat in their cars and looked at each other in the mirror, but then Sam opened his door and stepped out of the car. He reached back into the open window to grab his cane, then began walking slowly towards Long.
Long pushed the button and lowered the driver’s window on his car, looking at Sam without a smile. "Mr. Prichard," Long said. "You're a private investigator, are you not, sir?"
Sam was surprised that Long had identified him so quickly, but then, he may have spotted Sam's license plate before he even went into the house. "I am," he said, "and I've been retained by your daughter to try to get you to sit down and talk with her."
"I'm sure you're aware that that is unlikely to happen," Long said. "I've already sent word to her to that effect. There are reasons, which I cannot and will not go into now, why I don't want to have any contact with my family."
"But that isn't quite true, is it?" Sam asked. "After all, you're visiting with your mother and brother, and they're your family, also. Your daughter simply wants to know why you've never been in touch with her all these years. She thought you were dead all this time, and finding out that you’re alive has been a shock."
"I'm sure it must've been," Long said. "I can't say I'm not sorry about that, or that I'm not sorry that I haven't known my daughter. On the other hand, it's been over 45 years, so I can't really see that there is much hope of making up for all that time now. If she wants closure, then she should have me declared dead. I don't think there will be any opposition from the Department of the Army."
Sam let out a sigh and leaned down closer to Long's face, resting his arm on the roof of the car. "Come on, man," Sam said, "can you really imagine that there could be any closure when she knows for a fact that you're actually alive? All she wants is to sit with you for a couple of hours and have you explain the reasons why you never came home. From what your brother has said to her, there must be something you can say along that line. Can't you give her the courtesy of looking her in the eye while you say it?"
"Mr. Prichard," Long said, "it took me one phone call to find out who you are, and learn that you have been highly instrumental in handling some, shall we say, sensitive matters for certain government employees. I know who those employees are, and generally the types of things you've done for them. That tells me that you probably know more about me than you're letting on right now, so I want you to consider the possibility that giving her that courtesy is literally beyond anything I can do. I'm certain there are things you have done in the past few months that you've been cautioned not to ever speak about; my very existence is classified deeper than any clearance you could possibly have. So let's quit dancing around this issue, and get it through your thick head, and then hers, that I'm dead. Regardless of the fact that I've been seen alive, I assure you that Uncle Sam would much rather have it that way."
Sam stood up again. "I can relay that message," he said, "but we both know it won't satisfy her. How about this? What if I could get her to settle for a phone call? Would you go along with that?"
Long let the ghost of a smile cross his face for a second, and shook his head as if in disbelief at Sam's tenacity. "You can tell her that all I would agree to is 15 minutes on a phone call." He took a pen and piece of paper from the seat beside him, scribbled a number on the paper and handed it to Sam. "Tell her to call this number at exactly 6 PM this evening. Tell her 15 minutes, and that's all. She needs to have her questions ready before I answer the phone."
Long started his car, put it in reverse, backed up and then whipped it out and around where Sam was still standing. Before Sam could get back to the Corvette, he was gone. Sam hobbled back to his car, got in and drove off towards home.
3
Sam pulled into his driveway a half hour later, and didn't bother to put the Corvette into the garage. He had a feeling he'd be needing it again before the day was over, so he just left it parked in the drive next to the Honda Ridgeline that was their family vehicle, then got out and headed toward the front door.
Sam had bought the house more than ten years earlier, when he was married to his first wife, Jeanie. She had loved it at first, and talked about how the three bedrooms upstairs would eventually be filled with the children they would have, but the more Sam got into working extra shifts, the more she got into finding ways to occupy her excess of free time. The end result had been a new boyfriend, a surprisingly peaceful divorce, and Sam with the house to himself. Except for a very short period when his mother had needed a place to stay, he'd lived alone in it until Indie and Kenzie had come along.
Sam had been a cop, and a very good one. He made his way through every division until he ended up in vice, and that's where he felt he’d found his true calling. He'd seen the damage drugs could do to people in their lives, destroying families, literally ruining the lives of both children and adults. Bringing drug dealers and drug manufacturers to justice had given him a great deal of satisfaction.
But then, one day, on what should've been a routine takedown of a drug distribution operation, Sam had been shot three times. All three bullets had been deflected by his Kevlar vest, but unfortunately, they were deflected downward into the joint of his right hip. When he'd awakened in the hospital, he'd been informed that his days as a policeman were over, and he had slowly resigned himself to simply being Sam, the ex-cop.
As frustrating as it was to give up a career, Sam had learned to deal with it. He had adapted, allowing himself to get to know his neighbors and become part of their local neighborhood swap. Besides being a police officer, Sam had the skills of a master mechanic; since a bad hip didn't hinder him from doing tune-ups or brake jobs, he often found himself working on neighbors’ vehicles in exchange for help with other things, like plumbing and wiring in his house. The arrangement was a great one, and it led him to some terrific friendships.
However, helping neighbors can sometimes turn into something bigger than you ever expected. When a lady who lived nearby had a granddaughter who turned up missing, Sam's former policeman status led her to ask for his help. Before he realized what he was getting into, Sam had blundered into the field of private investigation.
One of the peculiarities of the case was that the little girl’s father was a drug dealer who worked his deals through the Internet. Sam, being only moderately computer literate, had decided that he could use the help of a hacker. He had placed an ad in search of one, using a code phrase he'd learned from some of his former arrests. When a beautiful young woman had answered his ad by literally tracking him down as he ate dinner at a fast food restaurant, he learned that she was homeless, along with her four-year-old daughter. He had proposed a simple trade, giving her and her daughter rooms in his house while she worked with him on the missing child case.
That young woman was Indie, and once she was sure there were no unwelcome strings attached to the offer, she had accepted. Sam had given her money to buy groceries, and to show her appreciation she had made a nice dinner for the three of them and cleaned his house better than it had been cleaned in a long time. Sam had told her he had a lady who came by once a week to clean up, but hadn't mentioned that that lady was his mother, and Indie had suggested that he hire a new housekeeper. Sam took her advice, and offered her the job, on top of what he had promised to pay for helping him crack the drug dealers’ website.
Indie was overwhelmed at the prospect of the job that not only paid well, but provided her and her daughter a place to live. She had desperately been seeking a
way to get back on her feet, and this seemed like a godsend. She accepted the offer, which made all of them happy. Indie was delighted to have a home for herself and her daughter, Kenzie; Kenzie was delighted because she thought Sam was a great guy; and Sam was delighted because he enjoyed both of their company and because he loved looking at Indie. Looking at her made her feel a bit self-conscious, so he usually only did it when she wasn't paying attention.
Within days, Kenzie was making hints about Sam becoming her new daddy. Her father had died in a military training accident before she was born, so she'd never had a father figure. Indie thought Sam would definitely be an acceptable candidate, but she didn't think that the prospect would interest him, so she began to think about ways to make the idea appealing.
Sam was way ahead of her. By the time she'd been with him a week, he knew he was falling in love, but just didn't know how to say so. The prospect of another long-term relationship was frightening, and yet the thought of her getting away, especially taking Kenzie with her, was more terrifying than anything else he had ever been through in his life. He decided that he simply couldn't let that happen, and so he bought a ring, waited for the perfect opportunity, and proposed. Indie had accepted, Kenzie had approved, and life had gotten better.
Somewhere along the line, Sam had found out that he was a pretty good private investigator. He had found the missing little girl, which had involved blundering into matters of national security and led to a working relationship with an old secret agent named Harry Winslow. He had also stumbled into the position of lead singer for a local rock band turned country band, and their performances were quite popular in the surrounding area.
Sam enjoyed performing, especially since he was a very good songwriter, and actually wrote most of the songs the band performed. He'd been a singer in high school and college, but never really thought of tackling any of it professionally; lately, however, the idea had begun to appeal to him.