Mystery: The Sam Prichard Series - Books 1-4

by David Archer

  “One moment,” she said, and Sam heard some old classical music begin to play. A moment later, a woman's voice came on the line.

  “You're calling about Jane Doe?” she asked.

  “Yes, Ma'am,” Sam said. “I'm Sam Prichard, a private investigator from Denver, and I believe she may be a missing woman I'm looking for. Can you tell me if she's been identified?”

  “Well, if she had, I wouldn't call her Jane Doe, now, would I? Can you tell me who she is?”

  “Well, I believe her name is Annie Corning,” he said. “The photo on the news story looks like her, and she disappeared about a week before yours turned up. She'd been acting strangely for about a month before that, and no one had any idea where she'd gone, or why. Her husband is actually under investigation for possible murder in this case, so he hired me to try to locate her.”

  The woman was quiet a moment, and Sam figured that she was writing down what he was saying. “Well, I can give you the number of her doctor at the hospital in North Bend,” she said. “That's where she is right now. I won't say anything to them, so you can handle this however you want, but I appreciate you giving me this information, Mr. Shepard.”

  “Prichard,” Sam said automatically, but she was still talking. She gave him the number and told him to ask for Dr. Martinez, and hung up without saying goodbye.

  He dialed the number she'd given him, but the person who answered said Dr. Martinez wouldn't be in for another hour. Sam looked at his computer to see the time, and realized that it wasn't even eight o'clock in Oregon, yet, so he thanked her and said he'd call back. He turned to Indie, who was staring at her screen.

  “Well, if it's her, we've got two cases done already,” he said, but she held up a hand and motioned for him to come closer. He rolled his chair over beside her again, and she pointed at the screen.

  “You know how it seemed odd that Carl's case and the Corning case were related?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “What about it?”

  “Well, when I tell Herman to dig up everything he can on someone, he does,” she said. “Albert and Annie Corning both had some dental work done about four months ago, and you wanna guess where they went?”

  Sam's eyebrows went up. “Alex Connors?”

  “Yep, but that's not all. Since we were searching things on Alex Connors, Herman went a little deeper and pulled up Connors Dental's entire patient list. Wanna guess who else is on it?”

  Sam stared at her. “Don't tell me—Carl Morris?”

  “Bingo!” Indie said. “He was in for a cleaning the morning of the killings, last week.”

  Sam sat there for a moment. “That's odd. I had him tell me about his last few days before the killings, and he never mentioned that at all.”

  “It's more than odd, Sam,” Indie said. “There's something sort of creepy about this, y'know? I mean, come on, what are the odds of you getting three cases in one day and all of them being related, somehow?

  Sam looked at her for a minute, then said, “I wonder if the Cornings are connected to Jimmy Smith. We know that both Carl and Mrs. Connors are, and that was enough of a stretch in itself, but now we've got Alex connected to both Carl and Mrs. Corning, both of whom may have displayed bizarre behaviors afterward. What I'm wondering is if there is some sort of connection between their visits to the dentist and the strange things they did, or seem to have done, after.”

  Indie called up Connors Dental's website, and began looking through it. “Sam,” she said, “Connors uses hypnosis instead of chemical anesthesia.”

  Sam looked where she was pointing, but shook his head. “Honey, it's been pretty well established that hypnosis can't make someone do something they wouldn't normally do. I don't think that's the connection we're looking for.”

  “No, but what about the drugs and alcohol in Carl's system? That drug they found, Adivol, is really zolpidem, and if we look it up, it's listed as a hypnotic. It's been known to cause people to do things they don't remember doing, and wouldn't do under normal circumstances. Look at this warning, right on their label: 'After taking Adivol, you may get up out of bed while not being fully awake and do an activity that you do not know you are doing. The next morning, you may not remember that you did anything during the night…Reported activities include: driving a car (“sleep-driving”), making and eating food, talking on the phone, having sex, sleep-walking.' And there are cases of people even killing people and not knowing it.”

  Sam looked at her. “Babe, are you serious?”

  “Here's a man named Robert Stewart who walked into a nursing home in North Carolina and shot eight people to death, and a woman who took the pill and then got up in the middle of the night and got in her car and ran over and killed a woman. Both of them got reduced sentences because they weren't in control of themselves, and there are others who have been acquitted of manslaughter and murder! The effect is even worse if alcohol is involved, it says. People have been known to do things like eating buttered cigarettes, and it's one of the most commonly used date rape drugs of all, now! When you're on it, you lose inhibitions against doing things you know you shouldn't, and since you don't remember what you've done, there's no guilt. Most of the date rape victims never know what happened to them, or they just think they decided to have sex on a whim.”

  Sam shook his head. “Okay, I can see how it could be barely possible that Carl might have really killed his family on this stuff,” he said, “but where does Annie Corning fit in? She seems to have lost her memory...”

  “Yeah, and check this out,” Indie said quickly. “Eminem, the rapper, says that Adivol wiped out five years of his memory while he was on it. He says, 'a lot of my memory is gone. I don't know if you've ever taken Adivol, but it's kind of a memory-eraser.' He claims that he sees video of himself during that period, and has no memory of his performances or anything else. Yes, it can wipe out memory, and I'd bet that there's a way to make it do that, even if no one has ever said so.”

  Sam was staring at her, listening to all the information she was throwing at him. His mind was racing, and the more he heard, the more he wondered if the connection between the cases might be far more sinister than he'd ever dreamed possible. Could it be that someone, possibly Connors, was actually using zolpidem and alcohol to entice people to commit such heinous acts, or to literally erase their memories?

  Sam looked at the time. “I'm going to call Mrs. Connors and let her know that we've got her report ready, then I'm gonna call that Dr. Martinez again in a little while. Once we know for sure whether the Jane Doe is Annie, we can figure out how to handle that, but right now I'm thinking that I want to talk to Carl first. I want to know what the connection between him and Annie was, and then I might even talk to Alex Connors, himself.”

  Indie looked at him. “Don't let him near your teeth, and if he asks you to look into his eyes, shoot him!”

  Sam called Mrs. Connors' number, and she answered immediately. “Mr. Prichard?” she asked.

  “Yes, Ma'am,” he said. “I've got your report on your husband's offshore assets ready. If you'd like to come and pick it up, my wife Indie will be here most of the day, or I can fax it to you, if you prefer.”

  “Wow, already? Can you tell me what you found?”

  “Yes, he's got a number of offshore companies with a total of about thirty-two million in various bank accounts. I think that fits with what you expected to find?”

  She let out a shout of excitement. “Boy, does it ever! Thank you, thank you so very much! Yes, if you would, you can just fax it to my attorney, Carol Spencer. Just a moment, let me get the number!” She was off the line for a moment, then came back and gave him a fax number. “I can't thank you enough,” she said, “or I guess I can, when we get this into court! Alex will be paying both of us, then! Woo-hoo!”

  Sam laughed and hung up, then put the stack of reports into his fax machine and dialed the number. Moments later the sheets began feeding in and through it, and that job was done.

  S
am looked at the time again and saw that it had been almost an hour since he'd called Oregon, so he dialed the number again. This time he was put through, and a slightly accented woman's voice said, “This is Dr. Martinez.”

  “Dr. Martinez, my name is Sam Prichard, and I'm a private investigator from Colorado. I'm looking for a woman who went missing a few months ago, and I have reason to believe she may be your Jane Doe.”

  “Oh, really?” the doctor said. “Can you tell me who she is? She's been quite a mystery to us, here.”

  “I believe her name is Annie Corning, and she disappeared three months ago, after some strange behavior that lasted about a month prior to her disappearance. Can you tell me how she's doing?”

  The doctor sighed. “I wish I could tell you,” she said, “but all she does is sit and stare out the windows. Our staff says it's all they can do sometimes to get her to eat, and she rarely even speaks. Is she married?”

  “Annie is, yes. Her husband's name is Albert. No kids.”

  “Let me go and talk to her, and see if any of this might jog a memory. Give me a number and I'll call you back. Do you know of any identifying marks?”

  “No, none were mentioned, but I'll find out and let you know.” He gave her his number and said goodbye, with a promise to ask Albert about any scars or birthmarks.

  He turned back to Indie. “It might well be her. The doctor is going to talk to her, see if she remembers Albert or her own name.” He sighed. “If she's had her mind wiped out somehow...”

  “Yeah,” Indie said. “What will it take to help her get it back?”

  Sam nodded. “I'm going to see Carl. I'll call you when I get done there.” He kissed her, and then went out through the house so he could give Kenzie a hug goodbye, as well. Once that was done, he got onto his motorcycle and rode off toward the detention center.

  When he walked in, the jailer looked up and smiled. “Here to see Mr. Morris? Just a moment, I'll get someone up here right away.” Sam stood and waited only a minute before the same female jailer came to escort him to the interview room. He was there less than thirty seconds when Morris was brought in and chained to the table.

  “Sam,” Morris said. “Is this good news?”

  “I'm not sure, yet, Carl. I wanted to ask you a couple of things. First, the other day you told me about the last few days before what happened, remember?”

  Carl nodded. “Yes, sure,” he said. “Why?”

  Sam watched him closely. “Well, I'm curious why you didn't tell me about going to the dentist to get your teeth cleaned that morning. Do you remember that?”

  Carl Morris cocked his head to one side. “Dentist? I—yes, I remember. Huh. I wonder why that slipped my mind before?” He looked confused. “Does it matter?”

  Sam shrugged. “I'm not sure,” he said. “Can you tell me about it now?”

  Carl smiled. “Sure. I go to Dr. Connors, he's about the best around here, and he isn't into chemicals and drugs. He uses hypnosis, instead, and for me that's important because I don't like using any kind of medicines. He put me under, cleaned my teeth, and then woke me up and I was done. No big deal, I've been through it a few times before.”

  Sam watched him, but couldn't see any sign that Carl was being evasive or untruthful, so he moved on. “Okay, now, what can you tell me about Annie Corning? I understand you had some problems with her a while back?”

  Carl's face went sour. “Oh, Lord,” he said, “did I ever! It was a few months ago, she and I met at the Mary Williams home—I go there and work with some of the boys, teaching them about bodybuilding and weightlifting. She was helping out there, and we got to be friends, but then one day she started telling me all this weird stuff, real wild things like how aliens were trying to get into her mind, and wanting to make her do things. I said she might want to see someone, you know, like a shrink, but she kept saying she needed to talk to me, because they were after me next.” He rubbed his free hand over his chin. “She was pretty wild. It got to where she was following me around, and then she started showing up at my house at night, sometimes really late at night. My wife was so mad she couldn't...” His voice trailed off for a moment, and then he shook his head. “She got so mad that she asked me to stop working with the kids, but I said I couldn't do that. Instead, I talked to Mrs. Peters at the home, and she got Annie assigned to different days than me, and that took care of part of it, but she still came to my house a few times. I finally told her that if she didn't stop, I'd go to the police. She came once more after that and I pretended to call the cops, and she left. I never saw her again, and I heard she ran out on her husband, but then there were rumors he'd killed her. I don't know him, so I just stayed out of it.”

  “Okay, I heard you went to some competition in California, and were there when she disappeared, is that right?”

  Carl shrugged. “I'm not sure if that's when she left, but I never saw her again after that.”

  Sam sat there and looked at him for a moment. “Carl, have you ever had any other strange episodes, where you did something but don't remember it? Maybe in the middle of the night?”

  Carl stared at him. “Well, not that I—well, there was one time, almost a year ago. I went to bed that night, and when I woke up, I was in my neighbor's pool, swimming around as naked as a newborn. It was about three in the morning, and I was lucky no one saw me.” He looked down at the table, and then back up to Sam. “Sam, is there something wrong with me? Am I like, a split personality or something? I mean, that's the only time I can remember anything like that, but what if there were other times, and I just don't know about them? Maybe I've been doing strange things my whole life, and when I...”

  Sam reached out and touched his hand on the table. “Whoa, hold on. I need you to focus for a minute, here. Is there any chance you can recall what all you did the day before that happened, the swimming incident?”

  Carl shook his head. “No, I don't think so, but I can tell you the exact date,” he said. “I know the date because it was the night before my wife's birthday, and I was scared to death that someone had seen me and would call her and tell her! It was August twenty-second, last year.”

  Sam wrote the date down on his note pad. “Okay, Carl,” he said, “I think that covers it at the moment—oh, wait. Just out of curiosity, you know Jimmy Smith, the talent agent?”

  Carl smiled sadly. “Yes,” he said. “We go way back, he's my agent. He's gotten me a few small movie roles, and helped me get into some of the bigger competitions. He's the one who told me to call you; he said when he was accused of murder, you were the only one who was willing to dig down and find the truth, so if there was anyone who could figure out why I did this, it'd be you.”

  Sam thanked him and signaled for the jailer to come and let him out. Like always, they took Carl out first, and then the lady jailer walked Sam out.

  “Do you think he did it?” she asked when they were alone in the hallway.

  Sam shrugged. “At this point, all I can say is it's possible he did, but was under the influence of a drug, and it may have been given to him without his knowledge. I'm still digging, but I'm convinced that it was not a premeditated murder. That doesn't mean he isn't guilty, just that it might not be something he would have done, had he been in his own right mind.”

  She nodded. “That's kind of what I'm thinking,” she said, “like maybe he was—I dunno, possessed, or something.”

  Sam stared at her as if struck by how much sense her comment had made. “That may be the best analogy I've heard for it, yet,” he said as he left her.

  He got outside and called Indie. “Babe,” he said when she answered, “I want you to check something for me. See if Carl went to see Dr. Connors anytime close to August twenty-second of last year, and let me know.”

  “Okay, hang on,” she said. “I'm at the computer now, so gimme a sec—August twenty-second, Connors' calendar is coming up—August twenty-second, yes! He was there to get a cap replaced. Why?”

  “Because, late th
at night, he went for a moonlight skinny-dip in his neighbor's pool, and woke up while he was swimming around in it. He got away without being seen, but it's the only other time he could recall ever doing anything strange. He'd gone to bed, and then woke up swimming around in his birthday suit, so it shook him up.”

  “And he went to see Connors that day, too. Sam, this is getting more and more weird.”

  “I'm pretty sure there's a connection,” Sam said, “but we still have to find out what it is and prove it. I'm going to go and see Connors, and ask a few questions.”

  “Okay, but be careful. If this guy's some kind of Svengali, don't you come home trying to kill me, or I'll beat your brains in with a skillet!”

  “Trust me, babe,” Sam said, “I have no intention of letting him give me any kind of treatments!”

  5

  Sam hung up from talking to Indie, and his phone rang instantly. He looked at the number and recognized it as being from the hospital in Oregon.

  “Sam Prichard,” he said.

  “Mr. Prichard, this is Dr. Martinez in North Bend,” came the doctor's voice. “I wanted to tell you that our Jane Doe is your Annie Corning. I went to her a bit ago and said, 'Annie, are you ready to eat?' and she turned around and looked at me and said, 'Yes, I'm starving!' She says she knows that's her name, but she doesn't remember her husband yet, and nothing else is coming back, but she's been quite animated and talkative since then.”

  “Well, that's a start, anyway. I'll contact her husband right now and let him know. Can he come up to see her?”

  “Oh, I think that would be a wonderful idea, but you might have him call me, first. I'm not sure she'll be ready or able to leave, just yet. First, I'm sure she's going to want to try to remember her life with him.” She paused for a moment. “Mr. Prichard, is there any reason to believe that there were problems between them? Any kind of abuse, perhaps?”