Jamie Garrett - Riley Reid 02 - Fire and Lies

by Jamie Garrett

  “Yes.”

  “And you were born May 23, 1964?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are, or were, the pastor at Sister Mary’s Church?”

  “Yes.”

  Sam looked up from his folder. “How do you know Robert and Destiny Branch?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t? I find it interesting that you used the past tense. Why not say that you don’t?”

  Pastor Pritchard shrugged. I could tell nerves were starting to get to him. His attempt to look unworried instead came off awkward and forced. “I don’t know Sam. It’s what came to mind.”

  “You are a suspected criminal, Pastor. While in this police station you will refer to me as Detective Greyson. Is that understood?” Sam wanted to make it clear that he was in charge. There would be no casual familiarity between them.

  “Yes, sorry, of course.” Pastor Pritchard looked down at the table.

  “How do you know Robert and Destiny Branch?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then what were you doing in their backyard?”

  “I was lost.”

  Sam smiled. “You were lost? You were in their backyard because you were lost? That’s… that’s rich. So you were lost. Where did you think you were?”

  Pastor Pritchard didn’t answer.

  “Look, Pastor, we’re going to go over that whole house looking for fingerprints, hair or anything else we can use to identify who was inside. And we both know I’m going to find some traces of you in there. So you might as well just tell me why you were there.” Sam was clever. Most people wouldn’t have noticed what he did. Up to that point he was only referring to Pastor Pritchard formally. Then he changed to calling him “pastor”. It was meant to loosen him up. He wanted take a chunk out of Pritchard’s guard.

  “I knew Robert. He used to be one of my parishioners.” Even from a room away with a half-an-inch of glass between us, I could see that Pastor Pritchard was holding something back.

  “And… ?”

  “He was having a crisis.”

  “What kind of crisis.”

  “He called me up and told he was using again. Robert was a meth addict.”

  “So you went over to … what?”

  “Help him!”

  “Right. So, Robert Branch calls you up and tells you he was back to smoking meth? You go over to help him, but decide to hide in his bushes instead?”

  At that, the pastor sat bolt upright, his hands on the table shaking a little, suddenly flustered. “I wanted to help him!”

  Sam acted like he was writing something down in the folder, but he was just scribbling on the back of some photos. It was another mental feint. When he was done pretending, he looked up at the pastor.

  “You didn’t answer my question. Why were you hiding in the backyard? Why did Riley have to chase you? What were you running from, if all you were there to do was help?”

  “I was scared.”

  “Of what? Riley? I know she can be a little rough around the edges, but she’s certainly not scary enough to have to run from.”

  “I knew that if I was seen there, I’d be blamed.”

  He’d be blamed? Blamed for what? Pastor Pritchard was indirectly admitting to seeing the Branches dead. And, of course, Sam picked upon that.

  “Blamed for what?” Sam took a couple of photos out of the folder. He slid them over to the pastor. They stopped right in front of him. “For that?”

  The photos were a test. Seeing his reaction would be important.

  Pritchard was shocked. In fact, he was too shocked. His reaction was obviously fake. And that was what Sam would be hoping for.

  “What if I were to tell you that after I arrested you, we sent your gun to the crime lab in Richmond along with the bullets we found in the Branches? And what if I told you that I got a call this morning from a very nice young lady at the lab who told me that the markings on those bullets matched the barrel of said gun? Would you still try to tell me that you were there just to help out a parishioner who had fallen off the wagon? Well … would you?”

  Sam was bluffing. It took much longer than twelve hours to send out evidence to the Richmond crime lab. Getting back the results took even longer. This was a gamble, but chances were the pastor was in no way aware of how long it really took.

  “Maybe I need to speak to a lawyer,” said Pastor Pritchard. The gamble worked. He was nervous.

  “Why? In my experience, only the guilty need lawyers. If you ask for one, I can’t talk to you anymore, and there goes a plea bargain.”

  “Look, maybe I should just take a minute …”

  “Look, Pastor, you’re not leaving this police station. It’s time for you to start talking or find yourself charged with two counts of murder and arson. Is that what you want?”

  Pastor Pritchard didn’t say anything. He looked as if he was going over his options in his head. Sam seemed to have him right where he wanted him. Then a knock at the door to the interrogation room had both men’s heads turning to the door.

  Sam got up and opened the door. One of the Stone Harbor police officers was at the door. It was a man named Hardy. “I got that information you requested, Detective.”

  “Not now, Officer Hardy.” Sam looked back at Pastor Pritchard. “I’m a little busy.”

  “With all due respect, Detective, this is important.”

  Sam sighed. “Don’t go anywhere, Pastor. I’ll be right back.” He went out into the hallway with Officer Hardy.

  I’ve always been a naturally curious person. When it came to one of my cases, that urge to know only got stronger. So, I left the dark cramped room and went into the hallway.

  I found Sam and Officer Hardy talking. Hardy handed Sam a file, then left.

  “What is it?” I asked as I walked up to Sam.

  “It’s Pritchard’s records.”

  “And?”

  Sam handed me the file. “Read it.”

  Much to my surprise, the file on Thomas Pritchard was pretty long. The pastor was from nearby Saluda. At the age of seventeen he had been arrested for the first time in his life. According to what I was reading, it was for breaking and entering. Four arrests and nine years later he did a stint at Statesville Prison in Northern Virginia. That charge was assault and battery.

  I met Pastor Pritchard when I was eighteen. Richard had managed to convince me to go to church with him after years of trying. The man I had met was gentle and so very kind. Not once did I ever suspect he had such a dark past. Never would I ever have even considered that he was an ex-criminal. And not in my wildest dreams would I have ever thought he’d shoot at me.

  The file didn’t lie. The man in the room feet away from me was a stranger. I was okay with that. Getting shot at has a way of souring you on people.

  “I had no idea,” I said as I handed the file back to Sam.

  “I don’t think anyone did. This changes things. The kid gloves are coming off.” Sam headed back into the interrogation room. I went back into the other room with Office Rodriguez.

  Sam didn’t sit back down. Instead he walked around the room. He wanted to reinforce the feeling in the room that he was in charge. At times, he loomed over Pritchard.

  “Mr. Pritchard, you are guilty of murder. We both know that. You’re going back to prison.” When Sam mentioned prison, the pastor put his hands over his face. Handcuffed to the table, he had to lean into them.

  “It was me,” said Pritchard through his hands.

  “What was that?”

  “I did it!” Pritchard put his hands down.

  Sam was flabbergasted. I don’t think he expected it to be so easy. Usually, interrogations go on for at least an hour, oftentimes more. “Did what, exactly? I need to hear you say it, Pastor.”

  Pastor Pritchard stood up straight. He wiped tears from his eyes. Without looking at Sam, he started to explain. “I guess I’ll start from the beginning.”

  “That’s always a good place to start,” said Sam as h
e sat down across from the pastor.

  “I think there’s something wrong with this thing,” said Officer Rodriguez. He was a little panicked. But I didn’t really care, I had to know what the pastor was saying. In the background, I heard him fiddling with the monitor.

  “When I was in Statesville, I started studying theology. I got ordained while still behind bars. While serving the inmates, I met Janice Wen.”

  “Wait, Doctor Janice Wen?” asked Sam.

  “Yeah, she was visiting from Fresh Horizons, the rehab center. We started talking and then she told me how the center worked. She told me about the drugs, and how they were running them out of Fresh Horizons.

  “At first I shrugged it off. I only had a couple of months left and I was determined to stay on the straight and narrow, you know? But shortly after being released, I was hit by a mountain of debt. What they don’t tell you when you get locked up is that no one cancels your cable, phone or even your rent.

  “Since being a pastor doesn’t pay very well, I contacted Dr. Wen. She said all I had to do was steer any of my wayward parishioners to Fresh Horizons. In return, I’d get a percentage of the rehab fees for each person I sent.

  “When you raided Fresh Horizons, everything fell apart. The evidence had to be destroyed. The people who I worked for … they would do anything to cover up. They burnt my church and the marina.”

  “None of this explains why you killed the Branches.”

  Pastor Pritchard looked up at Sam. “Either I killed them or I would’ve been killed. And I was too much of a coward. So I snuck in and I …” Pritchard started crying. “I shot them.”

  “And the thermite?”

  Pritchard appeared very confused. “Thermite?”

  “The stuff you made the bombs out of. The way you started the fires.”

  “I don’t…”

  Sam shot up and banged the table. “Don’t bullshit me, Pastor. We found it all in the basement. There’s enough chemicals down there for more than the fires so far. Where are the remaining bombs?”

  “I don’t know anything about any bombs. I just admitted to murdering two people, why would I lie about the … what did you call it? Thermite?”

  “Who did you work for, then? Who made you kill them?”

  Pritchard didn’t answer.

  “Who did you work for?” Sam was persistent.

  Still, the pastor did not answer.

  “Fine, you can wait here and think about it. Maybe some time alone will jog your memory.”

  Sam left the interrogation room. He met m in the hallway. Almost at the same time we both exclaimed, “We got him!”

  “Yeah, but not on tape,” added Officer Rodriguez, who followed me out.

  “What do you mean ‘not on tape’?” All the enthusiasm was drained out of Sam’s face.

  “It didn’t record. Something went wrong.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me!? Now I’m going to have to do that all over again!” Sam was incensed.

  Officer Rodriguez became sullen. “Sorry, Detective. I’ll see if I can fix it.”

  Being the nice guy that he was, Sam went over to him and put his hand on his shoulder. “Let me take a look at.”

  Both Officer Rodriguez and Sam went to go see what was wrong with the monitor. I remained in the hallway. There needed to be some digestion of what I had just heard.

  The man I knew as Pastor Pritchard was an ex-con who was in cahoots with Dr. Wen and Fresh Horizons. He was ordered to kill Robert and Destiny Branch. And he did just that. And he left us all with a simple question. Who was he taking those orders from?

  Hash Browns and Coffee

  I sat in the Side Car Diner in my favorite booth. My favorite person sat across from me. Lisa was chomping on some rye toast.

  Lisa and I talked about what happened at the police station with Pastor Pritchard. I told her about his past and Fresh Horizons. She was just as shocked as I was when I told her about him being a murderer.

  “I was baptized by him,” Lisa said through her last bite of her toast, and continued talking with her mouth full. “My parents used to have him over for dinner. He was in our house. This is kind of creepy.”

  “Creepy is putting it a little mildly.”

  Carol, the waitress, came over with a plate of hash browns, eggs and sausage. The smell made my mouth water. She set it down in front of me. It was like a gift from the greasy diner food gods.

  “You keep eating that crap, you’re gonna end up a little more than chunky.”

  “I got a metabolism like a furnace.”

  “You’ll be the shape of a furnace maybe, girl.”

  We both laughed. Then my phone rang. I took it out and looked to see who it was. It was Richard.

  “I should take this,” I told Lisa. I got up. “I’ll be right back.”

  With that, I got up and went outside. Then I answered the call.

  “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Hey, Riley. You know how you told me about looking for birth parents? You mentioned your dad’s car.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I called my friend at the DMV. He tracked down his Trans Am from its VIN number on your dad’s registration. It was registered again about thirteen years ago in a town in Kentucky. I’ll send you the address.”

  The news came as a shock. I hadn’t dared to hope that following the trail of my dad’s car would work. It was even more surprising that Richard would’ve gone so far to help me. That wasn’t because he didn’t care, but I always suspected that he never wanted me to find my parents. Part of him wanted to be the only dad in my life.

  “That’s … that’s great. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “You don’t have to. We’re family.” Richard meant every word. And I agreed. He was my family, maybe not by blood, but family all the same. And I loved him.

  I headed back inside the Side Car. Lisa was sitting there, finishing her breakfast. My mind was full of ideas and possibilities. Finally, there was a lead that could result in me finding my dad. It was a long-held desire that could come true.

  As I sat back down in the booth Lisa and I were sharing, my phone beeped. I took a look. It was a text from Richard. He had sent me the address that he promised.

  “Who’s that?” asked Lisa after downing the rest of her apple juice.

  “The old man.”

  “Yeah, what did he want?” Lisa was being a bit nosey, but I didn’t mind. She didn’t mean to. Plus, it would be pretty hypocritical of me to fault someone for their curiosity.

  I left Lisa hanging for a few minutes. After my last bite of my breakfast, I told her. “He might’ve found my dad.”

  Lisa’s mouth didn’t hang open in shock, but it might as well have. Her eyes were wide and shocked turned into a smile. “That’s great!”

  “Yes, it is,” I gave my best friend a grin. “Yes, it is.”

  Epilogue: One Last Look

  Troy Reid was nervous. He’d driven around the streets surrounding Jefferson High School for an hour just to make sure he wasn’t tailed. After what had happened at the Crescent Moon, a state away, he was a wanted man. Not only were the cops surely after him, but also Harlan Greene’s men. The latter would surely chase him to the ends of the earth.

  His pursuers weren’t what was most important to Troy at the time. He wanted to see his daughter one last time. Then Harlan Greene could have him. Without Riley and without his wife there was nothing left to live for. There was a voice deep in his soul that told him he should’ve died next to Dana a week earlier.

  It had been three years since Troy had last seen his daughter. At the time, she had been a freshman at Jefferson High School. By his calculations, that made her a senior now. And her last year started that day.

  Troy waited in his car. He had sold his Trans Am a couple months ago and was driving a sedan. It wasn’t nearly as enjoyable as his treasured Pontiac, but he couldn’t risk anyone seeing his easily-identifiable vehicle.

  As Troy waited, he sipped on a
pint of whiskey. It helped numb the pain from the still relatively new hole in his hand that he had acquired during the shootout. It also helped numb the pain from being so close to his daughter, the only thing left of his beloved Dana.

  Troy was parked across the street from the school. He was close, but not close enough to be seen by Riley. It was important that she didn’t know he was still alive. Her safety depended on it.