by David Archer
Chris spotted him first. “Sam, good deal!” he called out. “We're all set, are you?”
“Yep,” he said. “Let's do it now, we don't have a lot of time.” He pulled printed sheets out of a pocket and passed them around, then took the acoustic guitar Chris handed him, strummed it a couple of times, and then began to sing. The rest of them listened, making notes on paper that would be meaningless to anyone else, but to them was a chart that would become music as soon as they got on stage.
“Okay,” Sam said. “What do you guys think?”
Candy threw her arms around his neck and hugged him, tears in her eyes. “Sam, that's one of your best yet! Indie's gonna be blown away. Are you sure she doesn't know anything about it?”
Sam grinned. “Nothing at all! I wrote it while I was in jail, memorized it and gave the original to Carl to hold for me. He's got it, and he'll give it to her when we do the song on stage.”
They had Sam go through it once more, so they were all sure they had their parts figured out, and then it was time to get on the stage and get ready. The lights were off, and no one could actually see them as they got into place and prepared for the moment of truth.
The lights came on, and the announcer's voice said, “Everyone, put your hands together and give a big Casino welcome to our newest act—Step—Back—Once!”
Chris lit up his guitar with the opening riffs of I Got Married In The Elvis Room Last Night, and the crowd got into it almost instantly. When Sam started singing, they began dancing in their seats, and by the time he hit the third line, the dance floor was filling up.
They went through No Happy Endings, and Sam was surprised to see quite a few people dancing to that one, as well, some of them getting so creative that he was amazed even as he sang. He let the final notes roll off, and then Sam signaled the light man, and a spotlight hit Indie.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I'm Sam Prichard, lead singer and chief songwriter for Step Back Once, and that beautiful young lady right there is my wife, Indiana. She is the inspiration for all of the love songs I write, and now and then I like to surprise her with a new one. Tonight, you all get to help me do that, because the song you’re about to hear has never been performed in public before.” He looked down at Indie and blew her a kiss. “This is for you, babe,” he said, and then Chris began to play. (Click to listen)
If only I could hold you in these lonely arms of mine,
And shelter you from all the world, and more,
Then I'd be king of all there is, a Monarch in the land,
And you'd be all that I'd be living for,
But as it is, my arms are here, and you're so far from me,
So I bow down each night, and then I pray,
For God to keep you safe for me,
Send comfort in His love,
Until He brings me home to you to stay…
And somewhere up in Heaven,
There's an angel just for me,
God put him there to do what I can't do,
His name means, “Love, Forever,”
His robe will dry your eyes,
His wings will always fly my love to you…
Whenever you remember, all those times I held you near,
That's when he dries the lonely tears you've cried,
And when you're softly sleeping, in some sweet dream of me,
He's whisp'ring all the love I feel inside,
And when you sit there cryin', and pray for my return,
And ask the Lord to let me soon be there,
The angel flies to Hea-ea-ven and kneels before the Throne,
To lay before the Lord your loving prayer,
And somewhere up in Heaven,
An angel sheds a tear,
As God looks down with love on you and me,
And shakes his head in wonder,
That we made an angel cry,
For an angel's tears were never meant to be
And somewhere up in Heaven,
An angel sheds a tear,
As God looks down with love on you and me,
And shakes his head in wonder,
That we made an angel cry,
For an angel's tears were never meant to be
No, an angel's tears were never meant to be
Indie sat there in tears as the final strains died away, and the crowd went wild. A dozen people ran over to shake Indie's hand, and twice as many ran up to tell Sam how much they loved the song. It took a few moments for everything to settle down, and the show went on.
When the show was over, Sam flopped into a chair beside Indie and ordered a cold soft drink. When the barmaid brought it back, she handed him an envelope and said, “There's a guy out back who gave this to one of the bouncers and asked to see that it got to you.”
Sam took it and looked at it, then opened it up. Inside were three photographs and a sheet of paper. When he took them out, he saw that the photos were of three different people, two women and one man, whose faces had been obscured. He unfolded the sheet of paper and saw that it was typed, probably from a cheap, throwaway printer. He read through it once, then passed it to Indie.
“Mr. Prichard,” it said, “the people you see in the photos will be killed within the next forty-eight hours, unless you stop me. I have been following your exploits closely, and I think that you are the one I need to make sure I stop doing this. I've been trying for more than fifteen years to kick this habit, but I can't.
Normally, I don't strike so many times so close together, but in order to get you interested, I'm going to up the odds. I need you to do only two things: discover who each of my victims are, and then do all you can to stop me before I can kill each one. The first one will die exactly twenty-four hours after you receive this note; the second will die twelve hours after that, and the third twelve hours later. If you cannot stop me before I can kill the third one, then no one can. Then there will be a fourth victim, but you get no clues for that one.”
Indie read it two times, and then passed it to Harry. “Sam?” she said. “Any idea who sent it to you?”
Sam shook his head. “Not even a clue.”
Harry read it quickly, and passed it back to Sam. “What do you plan to do, son?” he asked.
Sam shrugged. “I guess I'm gonna find a killer. Indie and I will get started as soon as we get home.”
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Prologue
Friday night had finally come; Sam was on stage, and loving it! It was the band's first performance as a country act, and he'd been nervous about how they'd be accepted. They'd done incredibly well as a rock band with Barry Wallace, before his untimely death, and he'd worried that their rock reputation would turn country audiences against them before they even heard the new sound. Sam had invited his mom and Indie's, and then added Harry Winslow and Carl Morris, the man Sam had only days before proven innocent of murdering his own family, because he had been programmed to do it and could not possibly have prevented it.
He shouldn't have let it bother him. If the reaction at the Casino Lounge had been any indication, SBO was going to be even more popular on the country circuit than they ever were on the rock. Sam debuted seven new songs in the show, and they did a few of the most popular current country hits as well, just to keep everyone happy.
It was a fantastic show, and when it was over, Chris slapped him on the arm and said, “Tomorrow night will be even better, you'll see! These people will be telling everyone about us, and the house'll be packed fuller than it was tonight!”
The band spent an hour talking to the crowd, shaking hands and hearing how well they'd done, and they all had to sign autographs as if they were already big stars. Sam admitted to himself that he was enjoying it, even if he didn't think he'd want to do it full time.
Everything finally died down as the bar sounded the Last Call at a little after one. Sam flopped into a chair beside Indie and ordered a cold soft drink. When the barmaid br
ought it back, she handed him an envelope and said, “There's a guy out back who gave this to one of the bouncers and asked to see that it got to you.”
Sam took it and looked at it, then opened it up. Inside were three photographs and a sheet of paper. When he took them out, he saw that the photos were of three different people, two women and one man, whose faces had been obscured. He unfolded the sheet of paper and saw that it was typed, seemingly from a cheap, throwaway printer. He read through it once, then passed it to Indie.
Mr. Prichard, it read, the people you see in the photos will be killed within the next forty-eight hours, unless you stop me. I have been following your exploits closely, and I think that you are the one I need to make sure I stop doing this. I've been trying for more than fifteen years to kick this habit, but I can't.
Normally, I don't strike so many times so close together, but in order to get you interested, I'm going to up the odds. I need you to do only two things: discover who each of my victims is, and then do all you can to stop me before I can kill each one. The first one will die exactly twenty-four hours after you receive this note; the second will die twelve hours after that, and the third twelve hours later. If you cannot stop me before I can kill the third one, then no one can. Then there will be a fourth victim, but you’ll get no clues for that one.
Indie read it two times and then passed it to Harry. “Sam?” she said. “Any idea who sent it to you?”
Sam shook his head. “Not even a clue.”
Harry read it quickly before passing it back to Sam. “What do you plan to do, Son?” he asked.
Sam shrugged. “I guess I'm gonna find a killer. Indie and I will get started as soon as we get home.”
1
Sam and Indie were in his office, going over the note and the photographs. They'd talked to the bouncer who'd received it, but he hadn't gotten a good look at whoever gave it to him in the darkness—all he knew was that the guy was very tall—and then they'd spent half the night with the police, letting them scan the items for fingerprints and DNA. None were found. Karen Parks, the homicide detective, had taken hi-resolution color copies and then returned the originals to Sam.
“I'm giving these back because it may be important to the killer for you to have them,” she said, “but don't think for a second that you're gonna play lone wolf on this one. I'm in your pocket, Buddy; everything you get, you give me too, right?”
Sam nodded. “No problem. We got any idea on who this guy's past victims might have been? He said he's been at it for fifteen years, so there must be something in the unsolved cases that would be his.”
Karen snorted. “Our unsolved homicides number over fourteen hundred, and probably half of those are from the past fifteen years. God knows how many of them might be his.”
Sam nodded. “It was worth a shot. Believe me, Karen, I want all the help on this one I can get. I don't know why I got singled out for this honor, but I wish like mad I could dump it onto you and walk away.”
She shrugged. “I'll take it if you want, but that'd piss our guy off. We know he's threatening three, maybe four people; if he thinks you're not playing, he may up the game.”
“Yeah, that's why I said, 'I wish,' and didn't try to leave you stuck with it. Just wish I hadn't gotten so much good press lately.” Especially since only about half of it was true, he thought. The rest was still classified and hadn't been released to the press.
Sam Prichard had blundered into private detective work after recovering from the gunshot wound that ended his career as a police detective. A neighbor had come to him asking for help to find her missing granddaughter, and Sam had agreed to try. When he stumbled into a National Security situation, he'd been enlisted to help stop a deadly chemical warfare agent from falling into the wrong hands, and he'd accomplished it.
Being a PI beat being bored; Sam went and got his license, and set up shop with his new helper, gray-hat computer hacker Indiana Perkins. Between her mad computer skills and his own instincts, he'd busted a murderer and freed a man who was framed for the crime in his first case, and the press had been all over him. That case had led to his spot as lead singer for a rock band, but after hearing some of the songs Sam had written, the band voted unanimously to go country, and the show the night before had been their country debut, and a rousing success.
A few more small cases had worked to build a reputation, and he was enjoying life again—especially since he and Indie had fallen in love and were married. Trouble was, Sam was a magnet for trouble, and even on his honeymoon, it found him. He'd seen something suspicious as they were preparing for their flight to Hawaii, and then again when they arrived. Both things stuck in his mind, and when the Feds announced the next morning that terrorists had planted suitcase nukes in twelve American cities, including Honolulu, where Sam and Indie were trying to enjoy their first days of married life, he'd been drawn back into National Security work. That time, he'd stopped a lone, rogue terrorist from destroying a quarter of the country, though the press was only told that he'd thwarted a plan to do some damage to Hoover Dam.
He'd been badly wounded again in that one, and it had taken time to recover, followed by another honeymoon. When he and Indie had gotten home, there were clients lined up, and he'd taken on three seemingly unrelated cases simultaneously, but somehow, they all led back to one person—a dentist who was using hypnotic anesthesia, and who had developed a method of actually programming people to do things they'd never do on their own, and then forget they'd even done them. He'd started out using it to seduce women he wanted from among his patients, but then he'd graduated to arranging “accidents” for people who gave him or his friends trouble, and then to a form of “murder for hire.”
All three of Sam's cases were connected to the dentist. First, his wife was divorcing him and wanted Sam to find out where he'd hidden his assets; second, a man whose wife disappeared had asked Sam to find her, which led to the discovery that she'd been one of his patients; and third, another man had hired Sam to find out why and how he had gotten up in the middle of the night and murdered his own family. That man had seen the dentist only that morning, and when all the threads were unraveled, Sam was able to prove that he was not the killer—he'd only been the weapon that the dentist had aimed and set off half-cocked. He'd not been told to kill his family, but to kill the dentist's wife. Unfortunately, a command not to let anyone know he was leaving the house had blown up, and when the man's son had seen him trying to go out the door, his programmed brain had interpreted the command to mean that a witness could not be allowed to live. The son's screams had brought his mother and sister to try to help him, but they also died in the attempt.
The press had gone insane over the case, and Sam was hailed as a hero. That was undoubtedly why he'd been chosen for this madman's game of cat and mouse, but Sam wasn't one who could turn down a challenge, especially when lives were at stake.
“The cops scanned for prints on all of the items,” Indie was saying, and Sam snapped out of his reverie to listen to her, “and tested it for any sign of DNA, but didn't find either. What they didn't do is scan it for any type of microscopic residue on the paper or photos, so I'm gonna try that, now.”
“Microscopic residue?” Sam asked. “You've got a microscope hidden away somewhere?”
Indie grinned. “Yeah, an electronic one. My scanner is capable of resolutions at almost twenty thousand dots per inch, which makes it a pretty good electron microscope. If we can find any environmental residues, it might give us a clue about where the note and photos were put into the envelope.”
Sam nodded. “Like, if there's a piece of a pine needle on it somewhere, then the guy might live in the woods, right?”
“Yeah,” Indie said. “I'm hoping to spot something that might be more exclusive to an area than that, but you get the idea.” She carefully placed the first of the photos on the scanner and closed the cover on it. “Let's see what we find.”
The scanner began to hum, and a moment later, the scree
n on Indie's computer began to form an image. Sam realized it was one of the photos, of one of the two women. The image was so large that all he could see was the upper left corner, which showed only a bit of her hair. This one was a blonde; the other woman had dark hair.
The faces on all of the photos had been blurred out, so all they had to go on was hair and general build. The photos had stock blue backgrounds, as well, nothing to give any idea of where they had been taken. Indie moved the photo around on the screen, looking at every spot and imperfection on it, trying to identify each one and get a sense of where it might have come from.
“Most of these are just specks of dust, most likely,” she said. “Here's one that might be a moisture stain, probably a drop of water that got on it somehow. Could have happened last night at the Casino, when you opened it, or anywhere else. This one is bright red, when we get it big enough to see, might be a tiny shard of something plastic. It's embedded into the photo, so it's something hard.” She kept moving the picture around, looking at it intently. “Bingo!” she said suddenly. “Here's your first clue, Sherlock!” She pointed to a spot at the very edge of the woman's left arm, where a tiny line of green was visible.
Sam looked and nodded. “Aha!” he said. “The clue! Now the only question is, what is this clue?”
Indie grinned. “That, my dear Watson, is a residual group of pixels from before the background was inserted by whatever program the killer used to edit these pictures. That's not a green screen; the color is too dark. That is part of whatever was in the original background.”
“And so, this tells us exactly what?”
“Well, it tells us that this woman posed for this picture in front of something that had that shade of green on it. That could be a car, a building, maybe even a sign, but it's definitely an object that was actually in the picture.”
Sam thought for a moment. “Is there any way to peel away the blue stuff?”