Mystery: The Sam Prichard Series - Books 1-4 Read online

  Books 1-4

  The Grave Man

  Death Sung Softly

  Love and War

  Framed

  David Archer

  www.david archerbooks.com

  Sam Prichard Boxed Set Copyright © 2015 by David Archer.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author. Reviewers may quote brief passages in reviews.

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  BOOK I

  1

  Going to the office wasn't as pleasant lately, Sam thought, as he made his way through the back entry to the detectives' division. There weren't so many people there that day, and it seemed like a lot of them were avoiding the place, just staying away as much as they could. He could understand that.

  After almost ten years as a Denver cop, Sam was sick of seeing what humanity was really capable of. He had grown up reading cop stories, always seeing how the cops would save the day, watching them rescue the innocent and punish the guilty every week on TV, until he finally knew that he had to be one himself. After a short stint in the Army that never even got him out of the country, he'd come home and applied for the academy. He'd been accepted, and that was the start of an illustrious career.

  Now, it was all he could do to drag himself out of bed in the mornings, make himself come in and see what new horrors he'd have to deal with. The past four months he'd been on loan to the DEA, and they'd made some big drug busts, shut down some of the most evil purveyors of sin and death that ever lived, but they were like the mythical hydra—as soon as you cut off one of its heads, three more grew back to take its place.

  Sam wanted to stop cutting off heads and find the creature's heart, but there was almost no evidence as to where that heart might be. They knew there was something big behind the drug operations in the city, but it was so well organized and so carefully designed that no one seemed to have any idea where or how to find it.

  His cell rang as he sat down at his desk, and he saw his partner's number. Dan Jacobs was already out on his station, watching one of the dealers they'd identified the day before.

  “Yo,” Sam answered.

  “Sam, it's Dan. I been thinkin', and it seems to me that we might be lookin' in the wrong direction, y'know?”

  Sam blinked a couple of times. “Danny, I've been awake for about fifteen minutes, and haven't even opened my Starbuck's yet. What the heck are you talkin' about?”

  “I'm sayin', maybe we're goin' about this all the wrong way, tryin' to find dealers and trail 'em, follow the tracks up the ladder. There's something about this whole setup that smacks of serious organization, something big enough to hide in plain sight, know what I mean? If it's that well laid out, we can follow minions all day long, we're never gonna find the top guy, because they don’t ever see the top guys.”

  Sam nodded. “Yeah, you're probably right,” he said, “but unless you got a crystal ball lead on where else to go, I don’t know what good it's doin' us. Where else we gonna find any leads at all? Got a clue, there?”

  “Maybe,” Dan said. “We've been tailing a lot of these clowns the past few weeks, right? Have you noticed one thing they all do the same?”

  Sam thought about it, but nothing jumped out at him. He looked at it from a couple of different angles, then shook his head. Into the phone, he said, “Nope. So, what is it?”

  “Facebook. No matter what else they're doin', these bastards never miss checking in on Facebook every day, several times a day. They go on, look at what people are sayin' on their pages, sometimes they answer and sometimes they don't, and then they go back to their drug dealin' ways.”

  Sam rubbed his temple. “Dan, everyone does that. Everyone on freakin' earth is on Facebook, and always checkin' it out. That's just part of modern livin', old buddy!”

  “I know, I know, but hear me out. The only time they ever go make a drop or get money is right after they're on Facebook. I think maybe the stuff that's being said on there is some sort of code or somethin', a way to let 'em know when and where, y'know?”

  Sam's phone beeped. It was their boss, Agent Carlson. “Dan, I got Carlson beepin' in, lemme call you back.” He hit the button to switch calls before his partner could answer. “Prichard,” he said.

  “Sam, we got a hit on the north side crew; they got a big load in, overnight, and they're cuttin' it out today. I'm pulling everyone in, we're gonna take 'em down. Where's Dan at?”

  “He's on a stakeout, watchin' Pink Dog and his crew. Want me to bring him along?”

  “Yeah, get him. Meet us at the back of the AT&T building downtown, by their freight entrance. We're staging there. Can you make it in twenty?”

  Sam checked his phone, thinking about how no one bothered to use watches, anymore. “Yeah, we'll be there. Later.”

  He hung up and dialed Dan back, told him where to go, and hung up again, grabbing his coffee and rushing back out to his car. The AT&T Building was downtown, which meant the raid was going to be in a high-traffic area. That was never good, and Sam got that nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach that he often got when things were likely to go wrong. He'd never come to the point of thinking of it as a predictor, but he'd felt it before, when things went way out of control, so it made him nervous and cautious. If something bad was going to happen, he wanted to do everything in his power to make sure it didn't happen to him or his partner!

  He made his way across town quickly, but without turning on his Christmas lights. Whoever they were about to hit would certainly be listening to scanners and checking traffic reports, so any mention of a police car moving toward them with lights on would spook them. The idea in these cases was to avoid notice, catch them completely off guard, so that no one had any chance to destroy or tamper with evidence.

  That was the big problem with drug raids, he thought. You never knew who on the inside of any gang might have connections on the force, and it wasn't uncommon for a cop to accidentally let slip something that gave them a tip-off. Even worse were the times when the perp was a cop's kin, and got a quick warning by cell phone minutes before a bust. That happened far more often than anyone wanted to admit; it's not that the cop involved was actually dirty, it was just a last-ditch attempt to get a nephew or cousin to walk away from the criminal life before it was too late.

  Problem was, those phone calls and tips sometimes got officers killed. How could any cop live with that? Geez, how cou
ld any person live with it? Knowing you got a cop killed just to save someone from what would probably be nothing more than a slap on the wrist would be an awfully heavy load of guilt to bear.

  Sam didn't have any nephews or cousins, and wouldn't tip one off anyway. His attitude was that if you made your bed, you had to lie in it, so if someone close to him got jammed up, that was their problem. Sure, if it was someone who might have a chance of coming out and going straight, he might stand up for them at sentencing, or something like that, but he'd never risk letting a perp know what was going down. He'd let his own mother get busted before he'd do that.

  Good thing Mom wasn't into drugs, wasn't it?

  Sam didn't have anyone he was that close to. His dad had died when he was a teenager, leaving a lot of weight on some young shoulders, but Sam had done his best to hold the rest of the family together. His mom was managing, working as a real estate agent for one of the better companies, but the market was slow, so she was lucky she was even earning a living. Now and then she'd get a little behind on some bills, and Sam would help out.

  His sister Carrie was out in California somewhere, trying to become an actress. He didn't hear from her except maybe at Christmastime, and once in a blue moon when she also needed to borrow a few bucks. He always sent it, because that's what big brothers do, and what else did he have to spend any money on?

  He'd been married, once, back when he was young and new on the force and thought a cop could have a family life. Jeanie was beautiful and sexy, and thought that the young cop who had pulled her over for a broken taillight was the hottest thing she'd ever seen, so she'd scribbled her phone number on the back of the warning ticket he gave her and handed it back to him. He'd called her the next day and they'd dated for four months, then married in a surprise elopement and bought a house through his mom two weeks later.

  The house was awesome, with a big yard, a two-car garage and a decent-sized pool in the back. There were four bedrooms, for all the kids they planned to have, with one downstairs and three upstairs, and three bathrooms so no one would ever have to dance outside a bathroom door for too long. It was a wonderful house, and he looked forward to the day it would have kids running through it.

  He was doing a lot of double shifts back then, saving up money so they could pay for the house they'd bought, and Jeanie said she understood and was proud of him. She lasted less than ten months before the long hours finally got to her, and he came home to find her packed and gone to her mother's house in Tampa, with a note explaining that she'd “sort of met someone.” She filed for divorce, and since they hadn’t had any kids yet and she didn't want anything from him, he didn't fight it. He kept the house, even though it was way too big for him all by himself, so he just lived on the first floor.

  His only hobby was in his garage; during one case, a drug dealer was busted hauling a quarter-million bucks worth of meth and coke in a 1969 Corvette Stingray, and his vehicle was seized. The car was damaged during the bust, so Sam watched, and when it came up for auction, he bid on it and won, and was gradually rebuilding it. It was actually close to being finished, but Sam was always looking for one more thing to fix, afraid of not having even the car to occupy his lonely days when there was nothing left to do to it.

  Okay, he told himself, enough Memory Lane crap. Let's get back to reality!

  The AT&T Building was looming ahead, and he wheeled the big Dodge Charger squad car into the service and delivery driveway. He saw the staging ahead, with six DEA blackouts—the big black SUVs the agency used—and a SWAT van from the Denver PD. Parking out of the way, he got out and grabbed his vest and gear from the trunk before walking over to where Carlson stood.

  “So what have we got?” he asked, and Carlson frowned up at him. His DEA boss stood about five foot eight, and was a classic case of “little man syndrome” if Sam had ever seen one.

  “We've got about forty perps in a small warehouse, with somewhere between fifteen and twenty mil in pot and cocaine they're divvying up. Word is this is a new deal between some of the street gangs, that they're splitting up the city into territories and working together to run all the dope.”

  Sam shrugged. “Okay, so we take 'em down today, they'll be back with another load somewhere else tomorrow. Hell, half the assholes we arrest today will be back out before then, and workin' with the next new batch by morning.”

  Carlson leaned back and looked at him, as Dan Jacobs walked up from his own car. “So you think we should just leave 'em alone and let 'em keep pushing this crap on the streets? The more we take away from them, the more they gotta spend to get it back. If we can hurt them economically, then we got a chance of slowing this stuff down, getting it off the streets and away from our kids.”

  “Hey, I'm not arguin', boss, you're preachin' to the choir! I just wish the courts would work with us, instead of against us! If we could keep some of these creeps locked up, that would slow the operations down, too.”

  Dan laughed. “Save it for the next election and run for office, why don't you? That's the only way you'll ever get that song and dance out there.”

  Sam glared at him. “Excuse me, sir, I ain't no politician! I prefer to be honest and work for my livin'!”

  Carlson growled, “Okay, knock off the funnies. Let's group up. You guys will be with Matheny's group, going in the front door. The others will be crashing the back and side doors, and SWAT's here to back us up if needed.” He led the way to where the rest of the agents and officers were standing around, already geared up. “All right, we're about to go. Remember, we don't want any grandstanding. This is a sweep, plain and simple; we're going in to round 'em up and take their goodies, and that's it. No heroics, and hopefully they won't be trying any, either! Everyone ready?”

  There was an answering chorus of “Hoo-Rah!” and Sam fought back the urge to laugh; not one of these guys had ever been a Marine, he was sure, but they did love to play tough. He nudged Dan, beside him.

  “I'm so glad I've got you on my flank,” he said softly. “I wouldn't trust one of those yahoos with my dog's life, and I ain't even got a dog.”

  “Yeah, well, you just remember that while I've got your back, you're the yahoo who's got mine! Let's get both of us in there and out alive, deal?”

  “Deal!” Sam said, and they bumped elbows as they got into the back of one of the blackouts.

  The trucks bounced them around as they pulled out of the lot, and Sam thought of the way they showed scenes like this in movies, with special vehicles where cops who looked more like soldiers were lined along the wall of something like a Hummer, with special armor and helmets protecting them, and weapons that looked like something from the future bristling everywhere. He stifled a laugh, fighting it down from that nervousness in his gut. Last thing he needed at that moment was someone thinking he was losing it.

  When the action began, it was all at once. The trucks slid to a stop, each at it's pre-designated spot, and the men and women inside poured out. They ran to position at the door, four on each side, as the ram slammed into the doorknob and bashed it open, and then all of them were inside, weapons ready, screaming, “Federal Agents, get on the ground!”

  The building was an open warehouse design, with only a few pillars holding up the ceiling, and they could all see the activity going on out on the floor. There were several tables set up, and multiple piles of bricks of marijuana and bags of white powder. Each table held a mix of the two, and the mixes were being plastic wrapped together into big bundles. The people working looked up as the cops and agents entered, but not one of them made a move to duck until more cops came pouring in through other doors, all screaming the same things.

  Suddenly, all hell broke loose, as half a dozen of the workers reached for handguns and began firing wildly around at any of the cops they could see. There was the staccato rattle of automatic weapons fire, and instantly, everything seemed to go into slow motion for Sam. He saw one of the officer's he'd worked with go down with a bullet to his head, and the sho
oter who got him took a dozen rounds that turned him into hamburger. Another shooter fired off several shots, and another cop went down, a woman, the left side of her face apparently gone, and Sam thought about the three kids she was so proud of, but there wasn't any time for that, so he turned to the shooter and blew him away.

  Dan let out a strangled scream and Sam spun to see why; his partner was down, holding his side. The shooter had come from behind them, and Sam fired without even thinking as the guy aimed at Dan again and readied another squeeze on the trigger. The shooter went down in a spray of blood and brains, and Sam started toward Dan, but then a semi-truck slammed into him and he was thrown down onto the concrete floor, his head hitting it hard. He was stunned, and the noises around him seemed muffled, suddenly, like he had ducked underwater.

  He knew it hadn't been a truck that got him; he knew it was bullets, and probably several of them. He was hit, and while all he could feel was a dull ache at the moment, he knew it was probably bad, and so he decided to take as many of these assholes with him as he could, just to even out the score. He rolled over to find a target, but everything was already over, and all the remaining perps were down with their hands on their heads. There were four of them over to the side, obviously dead, and he saw people working on his comrades who'd gone down.

  Johnson, that was the name of the woman, and he saw enough to know that she wasn't dead. She was holding something against her own face, so maybe the wound was only bloody, and not as deadly as it had looked. One of the male officers who went down had been covered by a jacket, his face no longer visible at all, so Sam knew he was gone. He wasn't sure who it was, and that made him wonder if anyone knew he and Dan had been hit.

  Dan—he rolled back to find his partner, and saw him lying there not five feet away. He was alive, and even threw a smile at Sam, but it took a second to register what he was saying.

  “...we got 'em, Sam, we got 'em, we got the bastards who got us! I shot yours, and you got mine, ain't that cool?”