Close To Home_A Sam Prichard Mystery Read online

  It also put him in a position to keep eyes and ears open. Thanks to an early break Karen had given him, Snake was often ready to slip a little information her way.

  She hung up the phone and headed out the door. Karen didn’t have a partner anymore, so she didn’t have to check in with anyone before leaving. If she could bring Samara in, she was quite certain she could bully somebody into letting the prosecution go forward.

  It actually took her slightly less than thirty minutes to get to the building, and there was a crowd milling around in front of it when she got out of the car. It seemed like there was always a crowd out front at this place, and most of them were Devils. None of them were privy to the private arrangement she and Snake had, and they both wanted it that way. The last thing she needed was for Snake to end up dead because one of the rival gangs was afraid of what he might tell her.She pushed her way to the middle of the crowd. “Come on, come on,” she said, “get out of my way. You all know who I am, I’m here on police business.”

  “Yeah?” The man who had spoken was tall and thin, with tattoos all over him. “You think we care?”

  “I think you’ll care if I drag your ass downtown,” Karen said. “Look, I’m not looking for any trouble out of any of you. I’m here for one person, Digger Samara. Where is he at?”

  “What we look like, bitch? You think we look like snitches?” This was from another man, just as tattooed but short and chunky.

  “No, not at all,” Karen said. “You look like prime candidates for an obstructing justice charge. Want me to show you how that works?”

  Somebody bumped her from behind, and Karen suddenly found herself up against Snake. She looked up at him, towering over her by almost a foot, and glared. “Oh, geez, are you going to start with me? Get the hell out of my way.”

  Snake stepped back, spreading his hands to show that he was in no way trying to prevent her from proceeding further. The grin on his face was sarcastic, and he kept his eyes directly on her own.

  The crowd suddenly pressed in, and Karen found herself bumping into him once more. This was a game she had played more than once, and was one of the reasons she wore shoes with short, narrow heels. She lifted her right foot just a few inches and then brought it down quickly.

  “Shit,” she heard from behind her, and the press seemed to back off just a bit.

  “Who’s next?” Karen called out. Nobody wanted to volunteer, it seemed, because they stepped back further. “Now, like I said, I’m looking for Digger. I need to talk to him, so where would I find him?”

  “Look up on the fourth floor,” said a feminine voice. There were a few women in the group, but Karen didn’t know any of them. The men close to her were suddenly trying to shush the speaker, but it left a gap in the crowd in front of her. She pushed through it and climbed the steps up to the front door of the building, then headed for the stairwell.

  The building didn’t have a working elevator, though there was a shaft that hadn’t been used in many years. There were six floors in the place, and a number of apartments on each floor. She climbed the four flights at a steady pace, not bothering to hurry. These were the only stairs, so if Samara were to try to make a run for it, he would run right into her.

  She made it up to the fourth floor, where six apartments awaited her. She knocked on the first door she came to, 4A, and it was opened by an elderly woman.

  Karen flashed her badge. “I’m looking for Daniel Samara,” she said. “Would you know which apartment is his?”

  The old woman looked at her with a vacant smile. “Are you Yvonne? Yvonne is my granddaughter. She’s supposed to come visit me today.”

  Karen managed to smile, even though she wanted to scowl. She knew that a few of the tenants here were elderly, and barely able to function on their own. This poor lady seemed to be one of those.

  “No, ma’am,” she said. “Sorry I bothered you.”

  She stepped away and tried the door directly across the hall. When she knocked up this time, it was opened by a blond-haired young man who looked like he spent most of his time working out at the gym.

  She held up her badge. “I’m looking for Digger Samara,” she said. “Is he here?”

  The young man’s eyes narrowed. “Digger? Naw, he ain’t here. He’s down on the second floor, 2C, but are you sure you want to mess with him? I mean, I know you a cop and all, but he’s one mean piece of work.”

  Karen gave him her best shark-tooth grin. “I know who he is,” she said. “And I’m meaner.”

  He started to say something else, but at that moment they both heard three shots ring out. Karen reached for her gun under her jacket, but then she cursed loudly as she ran toward the stairs. The young man watched for a moment, but then an elderly voice from inside drew his attention. He walked back into the apartment, closing the door behind him. The sound of gunshots wasn’t all that uncommon in LoDo.

  Karen raced down two flights and emerged onto the second floor. Some sixth sense had already told her where to look for the source of the gunshots, and the door to apartment 2C was standing open. A man, or rather the body of a man, was laying on the floor some distance inside, and she ran in without stopping to wonder if the killer was still there.

  Damn! she thought. It’s Samara! Indeed, the body on the floor was the right size and the hair was the right color, but it took a bit of reasoning to conclude that it was the man she’d come looking for. He had fallen forward, but his head was turned to his right. That made it possible to see that his face had been blown away.

  There was a lot of blood in two spots on his back. One was a fairly small hole, but the other was much bigger, indicating that it had passed through his body. The mushrooming of the bullet makes a bigger hole on exit than on entry, so the smaller hole was apparently an entry wound. This man had been shot from both directions, but there had been a third shot. There was a small hole just about where his head met his neck, but the mushrooming and pressure of the shot had obliterated his eyes, nose and a good part of his upper palate.

  “Oh, my God,” shouted a female voice, “oh my God, you killed him! Somebody, help, she killed him, she killed him!”

  Karen turned and looked through the doorway. A young woman, obviously close to giving birth, was standing in the hallway just outside the door.

  “No, I just found him like this,” she said, but the girl was still screaming. She was staring at Karen the whole time, and then others were suddenly rushing into the hallway, as well. Men and women came out of other apartments, and a great number of men came rushing in from the stairs.

  Karen saw Snake in the crowd, his eyes wide and staring. She started to get to her feet, but then the sound of sirens tore the air. She stood over the body, and only then thought to look around the apartment.

  There was no one else visible, so she held up her badge and faced the open doorway. “I’m a police detective,” she said. “Police officers are on the way. Everyone please clear the hallway and let them through, but don’t anyone leave. They’ll want to speak to all of you.”

  About half a dozen of them stayed put, but the rest suddenly seemed to want to be somewhere else. There was a mad scramble for the stairs and the majority of the crowd disappeared down them. Snake was one of them, but Karen expected as much. Their friendship, and his occasional assistance, were only valuable as long as no one knew about them.

  It took almost another minute for the first police officers to come up the stairwell. They saw Karen and entered the apartment, listening to her statement about how she had discovered the corpse. As they talked with her, two more officers arrived and began speaking to the people in the hallway.

  Karen managed, with some difficulty, to listen to what was being said out there. The pregnant woman made it clear that she believed Karen had killed Samara, and several of the others began talking like they agreed with her. A couple of them pushed their way into the room, just to try to speak to the officers that were there, but then one of them—a very tall man that Karen
knew as Stretch—called out to one of the uniformed patrolmen.

  “Hey, copper,” he said. “Think you might want to see this.” He pointed into a partly open closet, and the officer walked over to see what he was pointing at. At first, he looked confused, but then Stretch told him to look on the shelf above where the hangers bore only a couple of shirts.

  The officer had to stretch up onto tiptoes, but then he took a pair of rubber gloves out of pocket and struggled his hands into them. Karen felt a sinking feeling in her guts as he reached up onto the shelf, and she became actually nauseous when his hand came out with her Smith & Wesson automatic hanging by its trigger guard on his finger.

  “Detective,” the officer said, “is this your weapon?”

  Karen walked over to him and looked closely, then nodded. “Yeah, that’s it,” she said. “As I already told you, I noticed it missing when I heard the shots. It was probably lifted while I was being hassled out front, after I got here.”

  He looked at her, not unkindly, but she spotted the slight hint of doubt. “I’m going to have to take it into evidence,” he said. He held it up close to his face and sniffed, then looked at her again. “It smells like it’s just been fired.”

  “I’m sure it has,” Karen said. “Whoever took it must have had some sort of grudge against Samara. While I was trying to find them, they came straight to his room and killed him.” She glanced out the doorway into the small group that was still looking at her as if she were the killer. “This is starting to feel like a set up.”

  “That’s for somebody above my pay grade to figure out,” the officer said.

  “Rivers is on the way,” said his partner. “He just called, ought to be here in about five minutes.”

  The first officer nodded, then fumbled in another pocket to pull out a large Ziploc bag. He dropped the gun into it, sealed it shut and used a marker to label it. Gun recovered apartment 2C, Lodestone Apartment Building. He added the date and his own badge number.

  Detective Carl Rivers arrived a few moments later, and walked into the apartment as if he owned the building.

  “What have we got, boys?” Rivers asked.

  “Pretty clear it’s murder,” said the officer who was holding the bagged gun. “Detective Parks was here looking for a suspect in another case, and said she heard gunshots. She says she reached for her weapon at that moment and realized it was missing, then came into the apartment and found this man, Daniel Samara, dead. She stayed here with the body until we arrived to take statements, and then one of the bystanders happened to notice something in that closet. I took a look, and found this weapon. It’s been fired very recently, and Detective Parks identified it as her weapon. She says it was apparently stolen from her a little earlier, when she was having some issues with some of the gang bangers out front.”

  Rivers looked up at her. “Parks? Who were you looking for here?”

  Karen pointed down at the body. “Him. Daniel Samara. I’ve got evidence linking him to a pair of murders from ten years ago, but cold case doesn’t have time to go hunting for him. I got a tip he was here, so I came to try to bring him in.”

  Rivers nodded. “Yeah, I heard about that case. Word is, you got pretty pissed off when cold case said they couldn’t devote any time to it. What was it you said? This guy deserved the kind of treatment he gave his victims?”

  “I was blowing off,” she said. “Geez, Rivers, I’ve been a detective longer than you’ve been on the force. I’m as human as everybody else, you know? This bastard murdered his own wife and cut her up, then killed his little daughter and threw her in a dumpster. You’re damn right I was pissed.”

  Rivers looked down at the body, then at the bag holding her gun, before he turned his eyes back to Karen. “Sure does look like it,” he said. “You want to step out of the room for a minute, would you do that?”

  “I didn’t kill him,” Karen said. “Like I told these officers, I was up on the fourth floor looking for Samara when I heard the gunshots. That’s when I realized my gun was missing, and then I came down here and found Samara laying dead in the floor.”

  Rivers just looked at her. “Okay. Step out of here for a minute, please.”

  She shook her head in disgust and left the room, stepping out into the hallway. The pregnant girl was no longer in sight, and the remaining Devils and other tenants were giving her a wide berth. She crossed her arms and paced around, trying to keep her ears open enough to hear what was being said inside the apartment.

  “… Really think she could’ve done it?” That was one of the patrolmen.

  “I heard she was pretty hot to hang this guy,” Rivers said. “I don’t guess she’d be the first cop to go south. We had a few just a few months ago that got arrested for murder, remember?”

  “Yeah, Carl, but this is Karen Parks we’re talking about. You remember her husband, David? One of the best cops ever.”

  Rivers turned slightly, and Karen could tell he was trying to look her way without her realizing it. A shiver went down her spine as she realized that he was about to arrest her for murder.

  “Close that door for a minute, would you?” Rivers asked, and one of the other officers pushed it shut. Karen stared at the closed door for a moment, then turned and walked down the stairs.

  No one spoke, no one tried to stop her. She came out on the ground floor and walked straight out the front of the building. There were two squad cars outside, and she saw Rivers’ car, but there were no other cops waiting there. She walked directly to her car and got into it, started it and drove away.

  This is going to look pretty damned bad, she thought. Oh, well. I’ve only got one hope right now, and I just hope I can get there in time.

  4

  Sam and Indie were in the little office behind their garage, deeply embroiled in doing the absolutely ridiculous paperwork that was required by the state of all private investigators. Taxes, license renewals, required education statements, handgun certifications—it was something they had to go through every year, and they tackled it the same way they tackled everything: with absolute determination to get it done and over with as soon as possible.

  “Carry the figure from line 7,” Indie said, “to line 14, then multiply line 14 by the figure in line 13. That will give you the maximum fees you could owe, and then you can subtract from that the figure on line 9. That’s your official professional services income, and then from that, you deduct line 10. What you got left after that goes on line 20…” She suddenly looked up at him and rolled her eyes. “Do they hire somebody from China to write these instructions or something? None of this makes any sense at all, Sam.”

  “It’s not Chinese,” Sam said, “it’s worse. It’s tax code, which makes Chinese look like pig Latin. Just keep reading, I’m trying to keep up.”

  Indie blew out a breath, blowing a loose strand of hair out of her face. She was just about to start reading aloud again when the office door opened suddenly and Detective Karen Parks hurried inside and shut it behind her.

  Sam looked up and smiled. “Hey, Karen,” he said. “What…”

  “Sam, I need your help,” Karen said. “I’m about to be arrested for murder.”

  Sam and Indie both stared at her with their eyes as wide as they could go.

  “Murder? How?” Sam demanded.

  “It’s a long story, and I don’t know how much time I’ve got.” She sat down quickly in the chair facing Sam’s desk, right beside Indie. “Sam, do you remember the dismembered body case I got, right after they transferred us to homicide?”

  Sam crinkled his brow. “Vaguely,” he said. “Unsolved, right?”

  Karen nodded. “Yeah,” she said bitterly. “Julie Wesley was her name, and I know damn well her common-law husband, a guy they called Digger Samara, was the one who killed her and chopped her up, but I could never prove it.”

  “Yeah, I remember, now,” Sam said. “You were all over that guy for a while, but never got anywhere.”

  “Yeah. He and Julie al
so had three daughters who disappeared around the same time, but you might not have heard much about them. The only thing that ever came of that was a five-year-old Jane Doe we found a couple weeks later, but she was never identified. I always suspected she might have been one of their daughters, but I never knew for sure.”

  “Okay, but what’s this got to do with you being arrested for murder?”

  “Everything,” Karen said. “About a week ago, a woman came into my office and said she needed to talk to me. Her name was Melinda Davis, but she was the oldest daughter of Digger Samara and Julie Wesley. Sam, the story this poor girl told me just tore me up. She saw her father kill her mother, all three of the girls did, and then the son of a bitch actually made her hold the trashbags while he put the body parts in them. After he dumped the body, he took those poor little girls out to Golden and traded them, or the use of them, to some of his friends for a place to stay hidden.”

  “Oh, my God,” Indie said. “Do you mean...”

  “Yeah, exactly. They were there for a little while, but one day he got mad at the youngest girl—her name was Ashley—and he hit her. Melinda said it looked like she wasn’t breathing, and then he picked her up and carried her out and they never saw her again. Well, I remembered little Janie Doe and I printed out a picture of her, and Melinda confirmed, with tears in her eyes, that it was her baby sister Ashley. Digger Samara not only killed his common-law wife, he also killed his own daughter and just threw both of them into the trash. Ashley was found in a trash dumpster on the west side of Denver.”

  Sam shook his head. “Karen, this is awful. Go ahead, tell the rest of it.”

  “Melinda said the reason she came forward is because she got married a while back, and she’s pregnant with her first child. She’s due around the middle of January, but she’s scared. She and her husband live here in Denver, and he’s got some connections to the criminal element, even though he doesn’t seem to be part of it. His name is Tom Davis, he’s got a clean record and works at one of the TV stations as a video editor, so he seems pretty legit. Anyway, when they got married and he heard Melinda’s story, he put out the word that if Digger ever showed up he wanted to know about it. Well, a few weeks back, Digger turned up here in Denver, back around his old haunts. Somebody sent Tom a picture, and it’s definitely him. Melinda is scared to death of him finding out that she’s around, and even more scared of him ever finding out she’s pregnant. She can’t stand the thought of him being near her or her child, and I can’t blame her.”