Close To Home_A Sam Prichard Mystery Read online

  “No one could,” Sam said, and Indie nodded her agreement.

  “Well, I wrote it all up and got all the information, then took it to Barnhart, but he said I had to turn it over to Cold Case. Head guy down there these days is a jackass named Borden who says he can’t touch the case right now because it’s not old enough. I guess the chief said he wants oldest cases cleared first, so it may be a long time before they ever get around to this one.”

  “So you started working on it alone, right?”

  “Jerk. You know me too well, of course I did. I put out the word that I wanted Samara, and I finally got a lead on him this morning. He’s been living in one of the flops down in LoDo, so I headed down there to try to bring him in.” She looked down at the floor for a moment, before raising her eyes back up to meet Sam’s. “I found him, all right,” she said, “but I was too late. He was already dead.”

  “Don’t stop there,” Sam said. “Tell me why you think you’re going to be arrested for it.”

  “Oh, geez, Sam, everybody knew how angry I was about this case being put on the back burner, and I don’t know how many people heard me say he deserved to die.” She rubbed her hand over her face. “It gets worse than that, though. When I got to the apartment building, some of the local punks who live there recognized me, knew I was a cop. One of them was a guy they call Snake, great big guy with tattoos all over him. He runs one of the lesser gangs around town, mostly just minor stuff like pot, nothing major, though they can be a little rough at times. When I asked where Digger was, they started trying to harass me, pushing me around, so I flashed my badge and got official. That got someone to tell me he was on the fourth floor, and I headed up to look for him, but there’s six apartments on the fourth floor and none of them was his. A blond-haired man up there told me to look on the second floor, apartment 2C, but right at that moment I heard three shots go off somewhere below me. I reached for my gun, but—remember when they were hassling me when I first got there? My gun was gone. I went back down the stairs anyway and saw that the door for 2C was open, but Samara was laying in the middle of the floor with blood everywhere all around him. I went in anyway, and was standing there looking down at Digger’s body when a woman started screaming. It was some pregnant woman, probably lives on that floor, and she started screaming that I had killed him.”

  “Oh, great,” Sam said. “And then?”

  Karen threw her hands in the air and looked exasperated. “What do you think? I tried to calm the lady down, but somebody called 911. When the first officers arrived, everybody was pointing at me and saying I did it. I think the officers were believing me until somebody yelled that they found the gun, and I bet you can guess what happened next.”

  “Somebody pointed to where your gun was hidden,” Sam said. “Do you think there’s any possibility it’s actually the murder weapon?”

  She shrugged. “I would bet on it, to be honest. I heard the shots, and they sounded an awful lot like my Smith & Wesson. They found it in a closet in the same room where Samara was killed, conveniently, of course. When one of the officers picked it up with a pair of gloves and sniffed at it, he said it smelled like it’d just been fired. Another detective had arrived by then, Carl Rivers, and he got with the uniforms to talk about what to do. I took advantage of the distraction to slip out and come to you. I need help, Sam. I figure it won’t take them long to guess where I would go, so they’ll probably be here about any minute.”

  Sam rubbed his temples for a moment, then looked at Karen. “Okay, this is not good. If your gun was used to kill him, that’s some pretty hard evidence to refute. It’ll have your fingerprints on it, naturally, and by the time your pregnant woman gets around to giving an official statement, she’ll probably be convinced she actually saw you pull the trigger. That gives them motive—your attitude about trying to close the case—as well as means and opportunity, with an eyewitness kicker.”

  “You think I don’t know how bad it looks?” Karen asked. “Hell, it’s almost enough to make me believe I’m guilty. Don’t just sit there and tell me how bad it is, Sam, work that Sam Prichard magic and get me out of this mess.”

  Sam looked at her for another moment, then picked up his phone and dialed a number. “Hang on a minute,” he said to Karen. “First thing you need is a lawyer, and I’m calling one.” He suddenly focused attention on the phone, and smiled into it. “Hi, this is Sam Prichard,” he said. “I need to speak to Carol Spencer, please, urgently.” He listened for a couple of seconds, then said, “Thank you.”

  A moment later, Sam smiled into the phone again. “Carol, thanks for taking my call so quickly. I got a situation that needs your incredible legal skills. How quickly can you get free for an hour? Okay, fantastic. We’ll be at your office in fifteen minutes. Your client? Did I forget to mention that? No, I didn’t, but I’ll tell you when we get there.” He disconnected and dropped the phone into his pocket, then got to his feet and turned to Indie.

  “I’m taking Karen to see Carol right now,” he said. “She’s probably right and detectives are going to show up here any time. Just tell them that Karen came by and asked to speak to me alone, and then we left to go to Carol Spencer’s office. If they ask, you have no idea what she wanted to talk to me about, got that?”

  “Got it,” Indie said. “Want me to try to stall them at all?”

  “No, not even a little bit. They would probably jump at the chance to arrest you for obstruction, so you don’t know anything.” He grabbed her and kissed her quickly, then hurried Karen through the door that led into his garage. A moment later, the garage door opened and his Corvette backed into the street, turned and took off.

  “Sam,” Karen said, “I was keeping a file on this case, one of my own. It’s in the drawer of my coffee table, back at my house. You know where I keep the key, in that old birdhouse on my front porch, so you’ve got to get to it before anybody else does. If there’s an answer anywhere, it’ll probably be in there.”

  “We’ll worry about that later,” Sam said. “For now, we just need to get Carol on this case.”

  They made it to the lawyer’s office without a problem, and the receptionist ushered them right in. Carol Spencer, who had once represented Sam when he was framed for a murder he didn’t commit, looked up in surprise at the sight of Karen. “Sam?”

  “Carol, I think you know Karen Parks,” Sam said. “She’s got a story to tell you, and might not have a lot of time to tell it.”

  Carol picked up a digital recorder and turned it on, then set it on the desk in front of her. “Start talking.”

  Karen went through the whole story again, telling the lawyer everything. Carol waited until she had finished before she started asking questions.

  “Do you have any idea who might have gotten your gun?”

  “I was being tossed around like a dodgeball at that moment. Could have been any one of half a dozen guys, I’ve no idea which one. There were a bunch of people around, and I didn’t know most of them.”

  “Any idea who else might have wanted the victim dead?”

  Karen snorted. “From what I can gather, that would be just about anybody who ever met him. He was a drug dealer, a thief, a murderer—people like him always have a list of enemies longer than their legs. Obviously it was someone who was in the building, but I’ve got nothing to indicate which one.”

  Carol looked her in the eye. “What about you? Have you ever been reprimanded for excessive force?”

  Karen scowled. “Yeah, a couple of times. When we caught a guy who killed three kids, once, there was some debate over whether I actually needed to shoot him or not. A couple of witnesses claimed he was trying to surrender, but all I saw was something shiny in his hand. Looked like a gun to me, so I shot the bastard. Inquest said it was inconclusive on whether deadly force was necessary, so all I got was a reprimand. The time before that, I just got chewed out for letting a prisoner trip while he was going down some stairs.” The look in her eye suggested that she wasn’t wil
ling to debate the merits of either case.

  “Karen, I’m going to ask you a question that you’re not going to like. Is it possible you actually confronted the victim and shot him because you thought he was going for a weapon? That would give us a basis for…”

  “No!” Karen shouted. “I never saw the son of a bitch until he was already dead. Now, if you asked me if I would have been willing to shoot him in a circumstance like that, the answer is a definitive yes. But the fact of the matter is that I heard shots while I was on another floor, I ran down to see what was going on and I found someone laying there dead. That’s what happened and that’s what I told the officers on the scene.”

  Carol peered at her for another moment, then turned to Sam. “At this moment, I doubt there’s any possible way to keep this woman from being convicted of at least manslaughter two. I would imagine prosecutors will go for second degree murder, based on motive—the statements she made about what someone observed—and opportunity, meaning she was in the building when he was killed. Add in the fact that it was her weapon that was used, and you’ve got the big three of a murder case: motive, opportunity and means. I think it’s likely the best we can hope for is a plea deal for manslaughter.”

  “But somebody took her gun,” Sam said. “There should be fingerprints on it that aren’t hers.”

  “It’s possible that the killer left fingerprints on the gun, Sam, but that wouldn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger. Besides, even street criminals are usually smart enough to try to avoid leaving fingerprints if they can. Whoever took her gun would probably either have wrapped something around it to avoid leaving prints or wiped it clean once they were done with it. Either way, there’s nothing that helps her.” She sighed and shook her head. “I appreciate your confidence in me, Sam, but the truth is that this is going to fall on your shoulders. I’ll stall off any actual prosecution as long as I can, but if you can’t find the real killer, Ms. Parks is looking at quite a few years in prison. I don’t think I need to tell you what happens to cops in prison.”

  A commotion in the front lobby caused Sam and Karen to turn and look at the door, and that’s when four police officers came bursting through it. They had their guns in their hands, and two of them grabbed Karen and shoved her to the floor while another grabbed Sam. He was yanked to his feet and his arms pulled behind him as a gun was placed against his head.

  “What the hell?” Sam asked. The officer who was holding him shoved him forward until he hit a wall.

  “Shut up,” the cop said. “You’re under arrest for obstruction of…”

  “Let go of him!” shouted Carol, who had gotten to her feet. “Mr. Prichard is my investigator, and Ms. Parks is my client. By escorting her to me so that I could arrange for her surrender, he was covered under attorney-client privilege, so I will thank you to get your hands off of him right now.”

  “He was helping her hide…”

  “Was he now? Well, let’s see. How far did you have to look to find out where he had taken her? As I understand it, Mrs. Prichard told you exactly where to find them, didn’t she?”

  “Let him go,” said another voice, as Detective Rivers entered the room. “If he’s working for the lawyer, then he was perfectly justified in bringing her here.” He turned to Carol. “I’m assuming you were planning to have your client surrender, am I right?”

  “Of course I was,” Carol said. “If you hadn’t kicked in my door, she would have walked in voluntarily within the hour. As it stands now, I’m considering brutality charges against the officer who jumped on Mr. Prichard, and possibly the others, as well. Ms. Parks was unarmed and offered no resistance, there was absolutely no reason to drag her to the floor that way.”

  “I’d fight you on that one,” Rivers said. “She fled the scene of a murder, so use of force was justifiable. Wanna try me on that? I’m betting I’d win.”

  The other officer had released Sam, so Carol shook her head. “We’ll let it go for now,” she said. “Just make absolutely certain that no harm comes to my client in your jail, or I promise I will ruin your life. Karen, I’ll be there shortly. You don’t so much as admit to your own name until I’m there, got that?”

  “I got it,” Karen said as two officers lifted her to her feet.

  Rivers ignored Carol and looked at Karen, who was now handcuffed and on her feet again. “Karen Parks, you are under arrest for the murder of Daniel Samara. You have the right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and absolutely will be used against you in court. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning, and if you cannot afford an attorney, then one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights I have just explained to you?”

  “Better than you do,” Karen said. She turned her head and looked at Sam. “All up to you, Sam. Find out who did this, and please do it soon.”

  Rivers looked at her, then turned to Sam. “You probably want to do yourself a favor,” he said, “and walk away from this case. We’ve got her dead to rights, Prichard. We were warned a few days ago that she might try something like this, so you might as well not waste your time. And if you decide to, then do yourself an even bigger favor. Stay the hell out of my way.” He turned and followed Karen out the door.

  5

  “Sam, do you honestly think she’s innocent?” Carol asked.

  “That woman has saved my life a couple of times, and I’ve worked with her on a lot of cases over the years. Can she get pretty volatile? Hell, yes, we all can. Would she murder someone like Samara? No way. Carol, she finally had the evidence she needed to put him away. For a cop like Karen Parks, sending him to prison would be a lot more satisfying than letting him die and get out of his own misery.”

  “Then get busy. I’m going down to sit with her during questioning, make sure they don’t push her into saying something we’ll all regret. Call me as soon as you know something.”

  Sam left the office and got into his car, then headed immediately for Karen’s home. He had no doubt Rivers would be getting a search warrant for the place as soon as he could, so he wanted to get the file out of her place before that happened. It was only a ten minute drive, and he pulled up in front of her house.

  The key was right where he expected to find it, hidden under an old bird’s nest in a wooden birdhouse Karen had bolted to the wall beside her front door. He used it to unlock the front door and went directly to the coffee table in front of her sofa, then opened its only drawer and retrieved a file folder that was rolled up inside. He locked the door again on the way out, replaced the key under the nest and hurried back to the Corvette, then drove down the street until he got to the next intersection.

  He made a right, then took a left a couple of blocks later. There was a park not far away, and he wanted to sit somewhere out of sight while he checked out the file. He found a spot in the midst of a grove of trees, then opened the file and began looking through it.

  It contained a complete copy of the original files on both Julie Wesley and little Janie Doe, plus everything Karen had gathered from Melinda and other sources in the past week. Altogether, it painted a picture of a man who was evil at his very core. No matter who had killed him, and despite the fact that it was still murder, the world was definitely a better place with Samara gone.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t give him any ideas on who might have killed the man. As Karen had said, just about anyone who knew him probably wanted to kill him at some point.

  Sam screwed up his face and thought about that. Was it possible that Melinda, Samara’s daughter, might have manipulated Karen to find him, then followed her in order to kill her father? Stranger things had happened, but it just didn’t really seem to fit.

  Still, from Sam’s point of view, there wasn’t much else to do but go and speak to Melinda. If nothing else, she might be able to give him some ideas on how to track down her father’s enemies. He checked the address which was in the file, started up t
he Corvette and headed for Highland.

  Highland is a fairly affluent area of Denver, where new homes can be purchased reasonably, and new subdivisions go up almost monthly. He found the address and parked on the street, then got out and used his cane to help him hobble up to the front door. He rang the doorbell and waited, but there was no response.

  A late model Buick sat in the driveway, so he rang the doorbell again. When he still got no response, Sam knocked on the door and called out, “Melinda? Melinda, I’m a private investigator. I need to speak with you about your father.”

  A curtain on a side window twitched, and Sam leaned over to look through it. At first he didn’t see anyone, but then he realized he was looking at a young woman holding a sawed-off shotgun, and it was pointed directly at him. His eyes went wide and he stepped back, as the woman yelled out, “I don’t want to hurt you, just go away.”

  Sam raised his hands to show that he was unarmed, and then leaned slightly forward so that he could see her face again. “Are you Melinda? Melinda, my name is Sam Prichard, and I work with Karen Parks. I need to talk to you, and it’s pretty important.”

  Melinda stared at him for a moment, but then she lowered the shotgun. Very carefully, she unlocked the deadbolt and let the door swing open as far as the safety chain would allow, then looked out at him. “What’s this about?”