by David Archer
Sam read several of the articles that were available online, and found the same things in all of them. Police got a tip, went to the house and found Morris out cold on the floor beside the bodies. The house was locked from the inside, and there was no sign of any other person having been present at the time of the killings. Despite the odd things about the case, such as the anonymous tip—who else could have known about the crime was still a mystery—police said the preponderance of the evidence led to Carl as the perpetrator, regardless of how nice a guy his neighbors thought he was.
The only person who seemed to believe that Carl was innocent was a teenaged girl who had been a friend of his children. Her name was Miranda Nielsen, and she insisted that she knew the family well and could never believe that Morris would harm his wife and kids.
The whole thing was so screwy that Sam couldn't imagine how it could have happened. Without knowing more about Morris, he was at a standstill. He picked up his phone to call his old partner on the force, Dan Jacobs, to ask him to run Morris' background.
He put down the phone. Danny was dead, and for just a moment, he'd forgotten. Danny was dead, and Sam would never quite be able to forgive himself for the lapse in judgment that had led to his death.
He got up and went into the house to get himself a cup of coffee; thinking about Danny wouldn't help, and he knew it wasn't really his fault, but he also knew he'd go through this from time to time. He'd cope with it; if Sam was anything, he was a survivor, and guilt was something you had to learn to live with.
He went back to his office and sat there making notes until Corning arrived.
2
“Mr. Corning,” Sam said as he opened the office door for him. “Come on in and have a seat.” He extended a hand, and Corning shook it firmly.
“Thanks for seeing me,” Corning said as he sat down in the chair in front of Sam's desk. “I'm about at my wits' end, and when you didn't call back right away, I tried other investigators, but none of them wanted to talk to me about this.”
“Missing persons are always tough cases,” Sam said. “I was out on my honeymoon when you called, and just got your message this morning, I'm afraid.”
“Well, in that case, congratulations, and thanks for getting back to me so quickly! How do we start this?”
Sam turned on his recorder, but also picked up a pen to make notes. “First thing we do is, you tell me everything you know about the situation. Let's start with some background on you and your wife.”
Corning nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Well, I'm Albert James Corning, I was born August fourth, nineteen seventy-nine, right here in Denver. Joined the Army at eighteen, spent four years in as a medic, got out in oh-three and went to work as an EMT with the fire department, been there ever since. I've made some good investments, and my net worth is about eight hundred thousand. Never been in any kind of trouble, other than a few traffic tickets over the years. I think the last one was back in oh-nine.”
He paused and leaned his head back for a moment, then went on. “My wife is Annie Leanne Mitchell Corning, born January sixth, nineteen eighty-two, in Aurora. I met Annie right after I started at the department; she was working in dispatch, and we started dating. Got married after dating a year, and we've never had any real problems. She got restless back in oh-six, after we found out she couldn't have kids, and went to stay with her sister for a month, but came back home after that and we've been great ever since. We looked at adoption, but after a while she decided she just wanted to spend time in charity work, so she's been a volunteer with a bunch of them over the years. Her favorite was always working with the troubled kids at the Mary Williams Foundation in Aurora.”
Sam held up a hand to stop him. “Do you know who she worked with at these places, especially the ones she's been working at lately?”
Corning nodded. “The last two years, she's only worked at Mary Williams and twice a month at the homeless shelter over on Tenth Street, on their food line. That was every other Sunday, and the guy who runs it is Pastor Evans from the Tenth Street Baptist Church. I know him, he's a pretty nice guy. Mary Williams is run by a woman named Charlotte Peters, but there's a lot of people working there, some on payroll and some volunteers like Annie. The only one she ever spent any of her free time with was a woman named Cindy Benton; they got to be friends when they had to deal with this one girl who was always getting into trouble.”
Sam nodded. “Okay. What about Annie's background? Any troubles in her past?”
Corning looked down and to the left, which Sam knew meant that he was thinking of how to answer, and whether to answer truthfully. After a second, he looked up and said, “This isn't something I'd want getting out, of course, but a couple years before we met, Annie was involved in some things that she isn't very proud of. A boyfriend of hers had gotten her to do some porn movies, said it was just private stuff, but a few years ago, they turned up on the Internet. Someone tracked her down and it was pretty embarrassing. They tried to shake us down for money, but we talked it over and refused to pay. Annie even went forward at our church and admitted to it, and the people were great about it, let her know that the mistakes we made in the past don't matter, once we accept Christ.” He ran his hands over his face. “Other than that, there's been nothing, not until she started acting strange.”
“Okay,” Sam said, “now let's talk about that. What was the first thing you noticed?”
Corning thought for a moment, and said, “She stopped answering her cell phone. I'd always call or text her during the day, and she used to always answer or respond, but suddenly she just stopped. That was about four months ago, and I asked her why, and she'd say the phone never rang, or she just was too busy to answer, or she got distracted and forgot to answer a text. Seemed like most of the time when I'd call her, she didn't answer. Sometimes she would, but even then, it was like she wanted to get off the phone in a hurry.”
Sam made a note. “And then?”
“Well, about two weeks after she started acting weird, I woke up and she was gone, about 1 a.m.. I tried calling but her phone was on the nightstand, and she came back about four. I was pretty upset, and I guess I yelled a little, but she swore she just couldn't sleep and went for a drive. That happened about four or five times before she left. Then I came home one day, it was a Tuesday, I remember, and she wasn't home. I tried calling, but she didn't answer, like usual, so I just made dinner and waited, but she never came home. I tried filing a missing person report, but the cops wouldn't take one till she'd been gone forty-eight hours, and then they found her car in the parking lot at a Wal-Mart in Aurora, but there's been no other trace of her since then.” He ran his hands over his face again.
Sam said, “Mr. Corning...”
“Al, please,” Corning said. “Everyone calls me Al.”
“Okay, Al—on the message you left, you said Annie's sister is saying that your wife said she was afraid of you?”
Corning nodded. “Yeah, she came forward about two weeks after Annie vanished and said Annie told her she was afraid I was going to kill her, but never said why. Her name is Connie, Connie Dozier. She's married to Ron Dozier, the lawyer, and they've managed to get the police to open an investigation into whether I did something to my wife, but I swear I didn't. I hired a lawyer myself, Carol Spencer; she says the cops could try to charge me with murder, even though they don't have a body.”
Sam nodded. “If they have enough circumstantial evidence, it's possible, but I doubt it's likely unless they get something that they can consider physical evidence. Have they searched your home?”
Corning rolled his eyes. “Five times, so far,” he said. “They took my car and Annie's and went through them, and they say they haven't found anything to support the idea that I've done anything to her, but they won't stop pushing. They've called me in for questioning a dozen times, and the only thing they say is that my story seems to be the same every time. It's like they want to make me say something else, so they can charge me with somethin
g!”
“Yeah, cops can be pretty brutal, but that's their job. If you did do something, they're supposed to find out and bring you to justice, but it does seem like they're going after you harder than usual. Is there anything else you can tell me that might explain that?”
Corning shrugged. “Not that I can think of,” he said. “Everyone down at Mary Williams is still supportive; they say she never led them to think there was any problem, or that she was afraid of me. Pastor Evans just says they miss her, but he won't really talk to me. I'm just praying she's okay somewhere, and that she'll come home, but I don't know what to think. That's why I need help, Mr. Prichard.”
Sam smiled. “That's what I'm here for,” he said, “and you can call me Sam. Al, I get a thousand dollar retainer, and I charge two fifty a day plus expenses. If that's okay with you, I'll get started right away.”
Corning nodded, and took out his wallet. “I anticipated as much, and brought cash.” He counted out ten one hundred dollar bills onto Sam's desk, and then handed over a photo of him and his wife. “I hope you can find her, Sam.” He shook Sam's hand again, then stood and left without another word.
Sam sat there and went through his notes, deciding to talk to the Pastor first. He Googled his phone number and dialed.
“Pastor Evans? My name is Sam Prichard, and I'm a private investigator. I've been hired by Albert Corning to look into the disappearance of his wife, and wondered if you might have any information that could help.”
The minister was quiet for a moment. “Mr. Prichard, Mrs. Corning is a very troubled woman. I don't know much about their home life, but she was always talking about how there were things she couldn't say to her husband, and sometimes she would confide in me, but I can't say there was ever anything that could explain her disappearing like this. I'll confess that I've wondered if something has happened to her, but I can't say there's any particular thing that makes me think so. I've told all this to the police, of course.”
“When she confided in you, Pastor, was it ever about any kind of extramarital affair? She seems to have been acting strangely before she left.”
“Oh, no,” the pastor said hastily. “I don't think that was ever an issue with them. In fact, she told me often that they were extremely happy together, but that there were certain things she couldn't talk to him about.”
“Do you know what sort of things she might have meant? Pastor, I know there's some confidentiality in her conversations with you, but anything you can tell me might help.”
The minister sighed. “She was concerned that her husband was working too hard, that was one thing, but said he wouldn't listen when she brought it up. He's an EMT, you know, and I guess he takes his work very seriously. The only other thing she said was that he didn't ever want to talk about the past, and sometimes she wanted to get closure on things. I'm afraid she never told me what they were.”
Sam wrote what he had heard and thanked him for his time. He was thinking of calling Charlotte Peters at the Mary Williams home when he heard a car pull up in the driveway. Juliette Connors was arriving twenty minutes early, and Sam got up to let her in.
“Hi, Mr. Prichard?” she said as he opened the door. “I hope you don't mind I'm a little early, I wasn't sure where you were, so I wanted to make sure I wasn't late.”
“No problem,” Sam said, shaking her hand. “Please come in and have a seat.” He led her to the same chair Corning had vacated only a few minutes before. She sat down, and it suddenly hit Sam that she was wearing an awfully short skirt, and her top was cut almost low enough to be illegal in some states. This was a woman who thought her looks would get her anything she wanted, he knew, but all Sam was interested in was the money he could make from helping her find whatever assets her husband was trying to hide. That sort of case got a percentage, and if the assets were truly valuable, the reward could be pretty good.
“Now,” he said, keeping his eyes firmly glued to hers, “I got the gist of your problem. If you can give me some of the specifics, we'll see how I can help.”
She rolled her eyes. “Where to start?” she said. “Well, my husband Alex and I are getting divorced, and we're each supposed to divulge our assets, so the court can divide them equitably. Alex is a dentist, and he's done quite well while we were married, investing a lot of money into stocks that have really soared in value. Now, though, his money seems to be all hidden somewhere, and he's come up with business records claiming he's had a lot of losses in the past couple of years. I know he's got at least thirty million hidden away, and legally, half of that is mine, since he had nothing when we got married. Besides, it was me that worked and paid his way through dental school, and that's where he got the money he invested. What I want to know is how he hid the money, and where, so the court can divide it fairly and I get my share.”
Sam nodded, smiling at how quickly she'd spoken. “Do you have any idea how he's hiding it? I mean, hasn't he paid taxes on the money? There has to be some kind of records.”
She leaned forward, showing a lot of cleavage. “See, that's the thing,” she said. “Alex is a tax protester, so he's always reinvesting his earnings, deferring the taxes and then making sure his top investments are offshore, through foreign investment companies. He's got it in his head that, by doing it this way, the IRS can't find his money and make him pay, but I think he's just courting disaster. If there's one thing about the IRS, it's that they never give up! If you've got it, they'll find it, and I want to find it before they do and get mine!”
Sam made a note. “Well, to be honest, I'm fairly sure I can find anything he's got hidden. I'll need a lot of information, like his social security number, date of birth, and all of his email and social media accounts.”
She smiled and took an envelope from her purse. “I had my attorney draft this up,” she said. “It's all of that information and a whole lot more.”
Sam grinned as he took it and skimmed the documents inside. “This looks pretty complete,” he said. “I get a retainer of one thousand dollars, and in a case like this, I take ten percent of any recovered assets.”
She smiled. “That sounds fair enough, since my lawyers will make him pay the fees, anyway, once we prove he's been hiding assets.” She took out a checkbook and wrote him a check for a thousand dollars without batting an eye. “I'll look forward to hearing from you,” she said as she handed it over, and he showed her out a moment later, just as Indie pulled into the driveway in their truck. He stepped out and introduced Indie to Mrs. Connors, and gave her a short account of the case he'd just taken. Indie smiled, knowing that this one would likely be hers.
Since he was already outside, he helped Indie carry in the groceries she'd bought, and told her about Albert Corning and Carl Morris, as well.
“Wow,” she said. “You've had an exciting morning, especially with Mrs. Come-and-get-it, there. If that skirt was any shorter, she'd be arrested for indecent exposure!”
Sam laughed. “Some women think they get what they want by being flirtatious. That doesn't work on me.”
Indie glared at him for a moment, then relaxed. “I know it doesn't,” she said. “I tried flirting with you that first week I was here, and you didn't even notice!”
“Oh, I noticed,” he said with a grin, “but I had promised not to make a pass, so I pretended you weren't getting to me. If I'd known how well things were gonna work out, I might have noticed better and let you seduce me!”
Indie threw a bag of beans at him, and he caught it, laughing, then dropped it onto the counter and spun to throw both arms around his wife. He kissed her, and she let out a low moan, then pushed him away. “Stop it,” she said. “If you've got to be at the jail at noon, I need to make an early lunch. How about grilled cheese and tomato soup?”
“Sounds like a winner to me,” Sam said.
“Cool, and easy. I got Kenzie all registered, by the way. She starts in two weeks!”
Kenzie came running into the kitchen just then, with Samson in hot pursuit. The ca
t was running, which was always comical, since he'd suffered nerve damage from a bout of distemper as a kitten, and his back legs suddenly came around in front and he went tumbling across the floor. He rolled to a stop, then shook his head and got up, walking sedately to where Kenzie had also come to a stop. He contented himself with licking her legs as she looked up at Sam.
“Daddy,” Kenzie said, “Mommy said we get to go hear you sing today.”
Sam reached down and picked her up, causing the cat to stumble when the leg he was leaning on suddenly rose into the air. “That's right, Sweetie. You like that, don't you?”
“Yeah,” she said, “cause Stan keeps M&M's for me!” Stan was the band's drummer, and they rehearsed in his big garage.
“Hmm,” Indie said. “I'm gonna have to have a talk with Stan!”
Kenzie looked at her, panic stricken. “But, Mommy, M&M's are good!”
“Yes, they are, and they're full of sugar! Stan doesn't pay your dental bills, we do!”
Sam decided it was time to derail a potential argument. “Hey, Kenzie, we're gonna have grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch! Think Samson will like that?”
Indie grabbed his face with both hands. “Samson,” she said through clenched teeth, “eats kitty food for lunch!” She kissed him then, and let go, turning to the refrigerator to get out the cheese and start making their lunch, while Sam and Kenzie sat down and took turns holding Samson in their laps.
When lunch was over, Sam took Indie aside and asked her to start looking into everything she could find on Carl Morris, and to call him if she found anything that stood out and might shed any light on his case. A moment later, he got into his Corvette and drove down to the detention center. The jailer saw him come in and said, “Prichard, right? I got a note you'd be coming down to see Carl Morris. Have a seat and we'll get it set up for you.”