Innocent Conspiracy

by David Archer

  “All he knows is that there are three people coming after you,” Kim said, “and they’re killers. He thinks they’re not supposed to hurt you, but to take you somewhere.”

  “Over my dead body,” Indie said. “I gotta go, Mom, I’m calling Karen Parks.” She cut off the call without another word, then hit the button for Karen’s cell phone.

  “Detective Parks,” Karen said. She had just stopped for a quick lunch after leaving the Web Wide Awards building, where she had failed to find Tom Linden.

  “Karen, it’s Indie. Mom just called and told me Beauregard says three killers are coming after me and my kids.”

  Karen dropped the paper plate she was holding into the trashcan beside her. “I’m on the way,” she said. “I’m calling in backup, lock up and stay in the house.”

  Indie had gone back to the living room, picked up Bo out of his playpen and told Kenzie to follow her, and they’d gone into the kitchen. “Okay,” she said. “I’ve got my gun, and the kids and I are in the kitchen so I can see in every direction.”

  “Good, stay there,” Karen said. She had already made it to her car and fired it up. “I’ll call you back.”

  She hit another button on her phone as she roared out of the driveway.

  “Detective Dolby.”

  “Dolby, this is Parks. I just got an anonymous tip, and I need backup at 13551 Triton Avenue, possible abduction attempt in progress. How fast can you get there?”

  “Triton Avenue? I’m probably fifteen minutes away.”

  “Get there! Dolby, that’s Sam Prichard’s house. His wife and children are the intended victims, if my tip is correct.”

  “I’m on the way.” Karen heard a siren start through the phone, as she kicked on her own.

  Indie had Bo in his high chair, tucked behind the refrigerator, and Kenzie was in a chair right beside him. The little girl was nervous, because she could tell her mom was upset, but she knew to obey instantly whenever things seemed frantic. She sat in the chair and talked to her baby brother, trying to keep him from sensing just how frightened their mother was.

  Indie was carefully looking out windows and doors, trying to see anyone approaching the house. The only thing she had noticed so far was a brown sedan she’d not seen before, but it was parked several doors down and might be nothing. She went back toward the kitchen to check on the kids and look out the back windows.

  “Come on, Karen,” she muttered. “Don’t make me do this all by myself.”

  A minute later, there was a knock on the front door.

  *

  Twenty-five minutes earlier, Nolan had nudged Laura. “Wake up,” he said. “We’ve got orders.”

  He and Laura had decided on a nap after getting back to the apartment. “I’m awake,” she said. “What’s going on?”

  “I just got an email a few minutes ago. We’re supposed to grab Prichard’s family. Not hurt them, just grab and hold them until further orders.”

  Laura groaned. “Whatever,” she said. “At least it’s doing something, rather than just sitting around and watching.”

  “Yeah, but where do we take them? I’m thinking we get a room in one of the scuzzy motels. Shouldn’t be too hard to keep them quiet, and those places don’t pay a lot of attention.”

  “Fine. Let Angela go get a room, and you and I can do the job.” Angela was their new trainee; there hadn’t been a male to pair her with, so she had been sent out with them as a spare.

  “That’s what I had in mind,” Nolan said. “Hurry up and get dressed, so we can get moving.”

  He left the bedroom and Laura got to her feet.

  When she came out a couple of minutes later, Angela was already gone. “I’m ready,” she said.

  “So am I. Angela’s going to get a room in Aurora, some dump called the Pickwick Motel. It’s got individual cabins instead of rooms, so that ought to be easier to handle.”

  He led the way out the door and they walked down the stairs of the old building. They were only ten minutes from Prichard’s house, but Nolan decided to push the car a little bit anyway.

  “Slow down, idiot,” Laura said. “Last thing you need is to get pulled over right now.”

  “We won’t,” Nolan replied. “Cops don’t bother with brown sedans unless they’re going way over the speed limit. Statistical fact, look it up sometime.”

  “Statistics only say what usually happens,” Laura shot back. “Our luck hasn’t exactly been the best lately. Slow it down.”

  Nolan let off the gas and dropped back to the speed limit. A few minutes later, he pulled up in front of a house that was five doors from Prichard’s. The two of them sat and watched for a moment, then got out of the car and started walking down the sidewalk as if they belonged there.

  “How do you want to do this?” Laura asked. “Just knock on the door?”

  “Probably the best way. Prichard is gone, and she’s not going to be expecting any problem. We just knock on the door and grab her when she opens.” He looked around the neighborhood. “Nobody around watching, shouldn’t be any problem at all. After we have them contained, you can bring the car up.”

  “Whatever.”

  They stepped onto the porch and Nolan knocked on the door. He waited about twenty seconds, then knocked again.

  “Who’s there?” Indie asked from inside.

  “Ma’am,” Nolan said, “we’re from the Department of Human Services. We had a complaint that your children are being abused, and we need to speak with you.”

  “Yeah? Well, at the moment I’m waiting for the police to arrive. I’ve just been warned that someone is on the way here to snatch me and my kids, so you’re gonna have to wait till they get here. If you’re still here then, we can talk about it.”

  Laura looked up at Nolan, glaring. “Screw this,” she said. She reached under her shirt and pulled out a forty caliber Glock with a sound suppressor that barely did any good, then stood back and blasted the deadbolt and the doorknob. The door flew open, and she stepped inside.

  And then she fell. Nolan’s eyes followed her body to the floor, and when he looked up he found himself staring down the barrel of a silenced pistol.

  “Get down on the floor,” Indie said, as she kicked Laura’s pistol across the room. “Do it now, or I pull this trigger.”

  “Look,” Nolan said, “she was just worried about the kids and…”

  Indie lowered her aim to his crotch. “I said get down on the floor.”

  Nolan’s eyes had followed the gun barrel, but his mind was racing. He had a Glock of his own tucked in the back of his pants, just under the polo shirt he was wearing, but he knew he could never get it out before she could pull that trigger.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m doing it, just chill.”

  Very carefully, he dropped to his knees with his hands stretched out in front of him, then fell onto all fours and lay down.

  “Hands behind your head, lock the fingers.” Indie waited until he had done what he was told, then reached down and pulled the Glock from his waistband. His shirt had ridden up as he got down, and she had seen it. With both guns pointed straight at him, she said, “Where is number three?”

  “It’s just the two of us,” Nolan said. “That’s all, just the two of us.”

  “Keep your hands where they are and roll over onto your back,” Indie said. “Now!”

  Nolan rolled over and looked up at her. “I’m serious, it’s just the two of…”

  Indie pointed his own Glock at his crotch. “If I pull this trigger, you’re going to be extremely popular in prison. If you don’t tell me where the third person is, I’m going to pull it.”

  Nolan swallowed. “She went to get a hotel room,” he said. “I don’t know where, she was supposed to call me later.”

  “Wrong answer,” Indie said. She steadied her aim with the Glock and shifted her eyes to his crotch.

  “Pickwick! Pickwick Motel in Aurora, that’s where she went. I swear, that’s where she went.”

>   “I ought to shoot you anyway,” Indie said. “Who sent you after us?”

  “We don’t know who it is,” Nolan said. “We just get paid to follow orders.”

  A siren could be heard in the distance, but another car suddenly stopped in front of the house at that moment. Indie kept her eyes on Nolan, but moved further back into the living room so that she could watch the door, as well.

  “Kim, wait!” Grace shouted, and Indie relaxed slightly. Her mother came through the door and stared down at the two lying there, and she gasped when she saw the blood pooling around the woman on the floor.

  “Indiana? Are you all right? Where are the kids?”

  “Stay outside, Mom,” Indie said. “The police will be here any moment, you need to stay outside until they get here.”

  The sirens had gotten louder, and it was Detective Dolby who arrived first. He slid to a stop just behind Grace’s car, jumped out, and leveled his weapon at the two women standing on the front porch. “Freeze, hands in the air,” he shouted.

  “We’re the grandmothers,” Grace shouted, raising her hands high. “You have to go inside, she needs help.”

  Dolby moved cautiously toward the house, keeping both women covered as he did so. Kim had also raised her hands, but she was nodding frantically toward the front door.

  Dolby looked through the open door and saw Indie holding two pistols pointed at the man on the floor, and instinctively turned his gun toward her. “Ma’am, this is the police. Drop your weapons, now.”

  “Watch me, Detective,” Indie said. “I’m going to move very slowly and set them on my coffee table. You keep that bastard covered, please. They came here to try to kidnap me and my kids.” She set the guns on the coffee table, then raised her own hands and stepped away from it. “I’m Indiana Prichard, Sam Prichard’s wife.”

  Dolby looked down at Nolan, who was laying on his back with his hands linked behind his head. “Roll over, onto your belly,” he ordered. Nolan, his face showing resignation, rolled over one more time.

  Dolby took a second to look at Laura, saw the emptiness in her eyes, and put his weapon back into its holster. He put a knee in the middle of Nolan’s back, then yanked his prisoner’s right hand down and back and clicked a cuff onto it. He repeated that with the Nolan’s left hand and then patted him down, looking for weapons. He found a hunting knife down one leg and a five-shot thirty-eight revolver strapped to Nolan’s ankle. He removed both weapons and then checked Laura again.

  “This one is dead,” Dolby said, just as another car screeched to a halt in front of the house. Karen Parks jumped out and came running up the walk. Dolby turned as she approached the door, gun in hand.

  “What’s the situation?” Karen asked.

  “Mrs. Prichard already had them down when I got here,” Dolby said. “The woman is dead, but this guy is unhurt.”

  He grabbed Nolan by the arm and pulled him to his feet, then pushed him into Sam’s recliner. Karen turned to Indie.

  “What happened, Indie?”

  “They knocked on the door and said they were from Human Services,” Indie said, “and they had a complaint about my kids. I told them that the police were on the way and they would have to wait, and that bitch shot up my door. She came through with a gun in her hand, so I shot her, then I made him get down on the floor. He had a gun in the back of his pants and I took that, and I asked him where the third person was. He said she’s at the Pickwick Motel in Aurora, getting a room where they were going to keep us, I guess. Bastard!”

  Other police cars were arriving, and an ambulance followed. Dolby had called in for the Medical Examiner, but it was standard procedure for the paramedics to check the body first.

  Karen escorted Grace and Kim into the house, and hustled them and Indie into the kitchen. Kenzie was standing on her chair, her arms wrapped protectively around Bo. Her face was pale, but she was doing her best to remain calm.

  Indie picked up both of the children and held them in her lap as the police went about their business. The paramedics rolled Laura over and attempted to revive her, but gave it up after only a few minutes.

  29

  Karen had sent two other detectives to the Pickwick to look for the third person. All they had gotten out of Nolan was that it was a woman, but the desk clerk said only one woman had rented a room that morning. She was in cabin nineteen, the one furthest to the back of the property.

  Angela had been waiting for Nolan and Laura to arrive with their captives, and she had been looking out the window when the unmarked car pulled in up by the office. When the two men came walking toward the cabin she was in, she knew they were police. She thought about trying to bolt and run, but the stupid cabin didn’t have a back door. The only way out was the front, where they would see her.

  She resigned herself to making a stand. If she survived, she decided she would get into her car and take off, forget about Reynard and Nolan and Laura, and just try to disappear.

  Nolan had told her to bring all the extra gear with her, so she had plenty of weapons and ammunition. She picked up the rifle and carefully aimed at one of the two detectives walking toward her, squeezed the trigger and watched him fall, instantly transferring her aim to the second one. The man’s reflexes were good, but not good enough. She fired again, all of the training she had received paying off when he fell beside his partner.

  This was her chance, and she had to take it now. She dropped the rifle and ran out the door, got into the car and started it, then spun it around in the gravel lot. Her only hope was to vanish as quickly as possible, ditch this car and find another…

  Bulletproof vests, she thought to herself as the two detectives rose onto their knees. Each of them had a pistol in his hand, and it was the last thought she ever had. The very first bullet went through her left eye and ended any possibility of thought, while the rest of them simply turned her face and head into a bloody mass.

  Angela’s foot fell off the gas pedal and the car coasted across the lot, causing both detectives to dive out of the way. It came to a stop when it struck cabin fifteen, and the detectives rushed toward it. A single glimpse of what was left of the woman inside was all it took to tell them that she was dead, but they checked the cabin she had come from carefully. There was no one else inside, but they were amazed at the number of weapons they found.

  Karen got the call a few moments later, and turned toward Indie. “She’s dead,” Karen said. “They got her.”

  Indie only nodded. The impact of what she had done, taking a life, had finally struck home. Tears were slowly tracing their way down her cheeks as she held her children tightly to her.

  Nolan had been searched thoroughly, and one of the things Detective Dolby had found had been a smartphone. It was laying on the coffee table beside his Glock, the thirty-eight, and the knife, and Dolby picked it up and hit a button.

  “Parks? You might want to take a look at this,” he said.

  He brought the phone to her in the kitchen, and waited while she put on rubber gloves of her own before she took it. She looked at the screen for a moment, then touched the email icon.

  “Well, would you look at that?” she said. She got up from the chair beside Indie and walked into the living room, where Nolan was still sitting in the recliner. “Who gives you your orders?”

  “I don’t know,” Nolan said. “We were independents, just got hired to do this job.”

  “Bullshit,” Karen said. “Shaved head, small blonde woman, we’ve seen this before. You work for Reynard, right?”

  “Who?” Nolan asked innocently. “Sorry, don’t recognize the name.”

  Karen was scrolling through the emails as she spoke to him, and noticed that all of them were short and concise. She called Dolby over to her.

  “I need to keep a lid on this,” she said. “No press, no statements. Anybody outside the department wants to know what happened, Mrs. Prichard had an accident. She was moving one of Sam’s guns when it went off, nobody injured. No news story here, go
t that?”

  Dolby nodded and took out his phone. It took him only a couple of minutes to make sure the police chief understood, and then the dispatcher began talking over the radio.

  “All units, stand down. The incident is under control, it was an accident with no injuries. Lady was moving a gun, and it went off. No injuries, no need to respond.”

  A couple of news vehicles had already arrived but had been held back by police. Karen walked out to them a moment later, told them that it was all a mixup over a rifle that accidentally fired while it was being moved, and the reporters groaned as they climbed into their cars and vans and drove away.

  Karen looked down at the smartphone in her hand and hit the reply button.

  Done, she typed. Awaiting orders.

  As she walked back to the house, she took out her own phone and called Sam.

  “Sam? Are you sitting down?”

  “Yes,” Sam said cautiously. “Why?”

  “Listen and don’t interrupt. Indie called me just a little bit ago. I guess her mom called, and Beauregard said some people were coming after her and the kids. She called me, but two of them showed up at your house before I got there, and Indie was forced to shoot one of them. It was another team of Reynard’s, Sam. Man with a shaved head and a small blonde woman. They had another woman working with them and she had been sent to a motel to secure a room where they were going to hold them. I sent detectives out, and she is also dead. The man is alive, Indie captured him, and we have him in custody. Now, the man had a cell phone on him, and there was an email in it telling him to pick up your family and hold them, but not to harm them without further orders. My guess is that Reynard planned to use them as leverage against you, to make you back off, so I’ve put a press blackout on this thing, and then I sent a reply email from that phone saying that the job was done and they are waiting for further orders.”

  That was as far as she got before Sam exploded. “That son of a bitch! He dared try to touch my family?”

  “He dared, but he failed. Sam, listen to what I’m telling you. He thinks he has them. He thinks that his people have them under control, but you and I know that isn’t true. They are safe, and I’m going to take them to my place for a while, to keep them that way. What you have to do is keep your cool, because this gives you something to use against Reynard. If he sends another message, I’ll get it on this phone, and I’ll handle whatever comes up. Are you with me, Sam?”