Fact or Fiction_A Sam Prichard Mystery

by David Archer

  She unlocked the door with one hand while holding the gun on Kim with the other. “Inside,” she ordered, and Kim stepped over the threshold.

  I am still with you, she heard Beauregard say in her mind. I am here to help, but I shall need you with me.

  Kim nodded slightly, knowing that Beauregard would understand. She was willing to do whatever was necessary, but it was going to be up to him to decide what that might be.

  They went through the kitchen into the living room, and Kim saw the gaping hole where the front window had been. She turned and looked at Marcy, and her own eyes were wide. “This is where you tried to kill Sam,” she said, “isn’t it?”

  “Damn near did, too,” Marcy said. “I had a perfect bead on him, but he moved at the last second. If he had just stood up, I could’ve finished the job.”

  Ask her why she tried to shoot him, rather than bludgeon him, Beauregard said.

  “I thought you liked to beat people to death,” Kim said. “Why cheat and use a gun on Sam?”

  Marcy sneered. “Yeah, well, he looked like he might be big enough to give me a problem with that. You want to know something cute? The gun I used was our daddy’s gun. I took it away from him a couple years ago, when he was threatening to kill himself, and I’ve had it in the trunk of my car all this time. Never even thought about it until I needed to try to get rid of your son-in-law.”

  Kim shook her head. “I feel so sorry for you,” she said. “You must be so terribly miserable.”

  Tell her about me, Beauregard said.

  Kim looked surprised, but she was smart enough to do as Beauregard told her. “I’m not alone, you know,” she said.

  “Not alone?” Marcy asked. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s true,” Kim said. “His name is Beauregard, and he is a ghost. He has been my constant companion for well over twenty years, now. He was a Confederate soldier during the Civil War, and after he died his spirit seemed to be unable to move on. He waited for many, many years before he found me, the only person he knows who can hear him, and he has been with me ever since. He’s with me right now.”

  Something about the conviction in Kim’s words made Marcy nervous, and she found herself looking around. She cursed herself for a fool and turned her eyes back to Kim. “Yeah, right,” she said. “You don’t have any ghost with you.”

  “Oh, but I do,” Kim said, allowing a small smile onto her face. “He just told me to tell you that he knows about the little boy. He knows about the little boy that you killed, because you wanted to see if killing a child would give you a bigger thrill.” She cocked her head slightly to the right and looked into Marcy’s eyes. “Did it?”

  Marcy’s eyes were suddenly wide. Nobody knew about that, nobody. It had been about five years ago, when the bloodlust was building up in her. She had learned with Millie that killing someone gave you a fantastic sense of power, that it was actually even erotic in some ways, and every victim after that had given her another burst of that incredible, powerful energy. She craved it, had to have it, and then one day she had been driving through the back roads down around Creal Springs.

  The ten-year-old boy who was walking along the road in the middle of nowhere had suddenly struck her as potentially giving her more of that power than anyone else ever had. She stopped the car just ahead of him and got out, and stood there smiling, the metal rod hidden behind her back, as she waited for him to catch up. When he walked up to her, smiling and friendly, she had grabbed him and dragged him into the brush nearby. She held her hand over his mouth, just in case anyone might be within earshot, but he never made a sound before the first blow silenced him forever.

  “I never killed any little boy,” Marcy said, but the tremor in her voice made it sound like the lie that it was.

  “Yes, you did,” Kim said. “Beauregard told me about it. You see, he has this ability to see things. Sometimes they don’t make a lot of sense until we really look closely, but in all the years I’ve known him, he’s never been wrong. Not even once.”

  “Shut up,” Marcy said suddenly. “You’re just crazy, that’s all. I told you I never did that, so just shut up about it.”

  Sam is coming, Beauregard said in her mind. He’s getting close.

  Marcy reached out and grabbed Kim by her arm and pushed her toward the chair where Millie had died. “Sit down,” she commanded, but Kim only looked at the chair for a moment and then turned back to face Marcy.

  The woman was holding a steel rod with a round ball on its end. Kim glanced at it, then raised her eyes back to meet Marcy’s own.

  “Is that what you have in mind?” Kim asked her. “You want to kill me in the same place where you killed my grandmother?”

  “That’s kind of fitting, isn’t it? I think so. Maybe your ghost friend can go on ahead and tell her you’re coming. Maybe she will be waiting for you.”

  Refuse, Beauregard said. Do not cooperate. She has killed many people, but almost all of them have done what she said because they feared her. Do not be afraid, Kimberly.

  “I’m not afraid,” Kim said aloud. The instant look of surprise that crossed Marcy’s face only reinforced her courage. “I’m not afraid of you, Marcy. And I’m not going to sit down in that chair.”

  The expression of surprise turned to one of disbelief. How dare this evil half sister of hers show courage at this moment? How dare she? Marcy stood there, staring at her, and for the very first time since she had murdered Millie, she couldn’t quite figure out what to do.

  The sound of screeching tires invaded the moment, as Sam’s truck came flying around the corner from Division Street, a few hundred feet south. Seconds later, it slid to a stop in front of the house.

  Marcy reached out and grabbed Kim’s arm once again, yanking hard to drag her between herself and the open window. Sam was getting out of the truck, and he had a pistol in his hand. Marcy wrapped her left arm, with the rod in its hand, around Kim’s throat and pressed her own pistol against the side of her head.

  “Marcy!” Sam yelled. “I know you’re in there, and I know you have Kim. The police are on the way, and you can’t escape. Let her go, and this can end without anyone else getting hurt.”

  Marcy dragged Kim slightly to the left so that she could see clearly through the shattered window, then pointed the pistol at Sam and pulled the trigger. The explosion was so loud that Kim reeled for a second, but Marcy held her upright.

  Snub-nosed pistols, especially those with very short barrels, can still hit the bull’s-eye at two hundred yards if the shooter holding it truly knows what he or she is doing. The problem is that the lighter a gun is relative to the ammunition it uses, the more it will amplify any error in stance or aim. Like many women from the country, Marcy was incredibly accurate with a rifle, but she had never done a lot of shooting with a pistol. This one had actually come from one of her victims, an old man in New Harmony, Indiana. It had been in his pocket when Marcy decided, on the spur of the moment, that she wanted to kill him, and he actually tried to pull it out when he realized that she was raising a weapon. He was a bit too slow, but Marcy had decided to take it with her when she was finished.

  Unfortunately, she had never fired it before. The bullet passed wide to Sam’s right and punched a hole in his left front fender, but it still had the desired effect. Sam ran around the truck as quickly as he could and crouched down behind it, his Glock leveled across the hood.

  “Marcy, there is no hope,” he shouted. “You can’t get away. I see you in there, so I know you can hear me. Let Kim come out, and let’s end this peacefully.”

  Inside the house, Marcy was trembling with rage. It was all going to hell; it was all falling apart. With Prichard sitting outside, and there was no doubt he was telling the truth when he said the police were coming, all of her plans and dreams of revenge against Lynette’s daughter were being wrenched away from her.

  “I’m going to end it,” Marcy screamed out at him. “This bitch has caused me all the pain and suf
fering she’s ever going to. I can’t let her get away now!”

  Sam saw motion, but the lowering sun was casting its light onto the back of the house, now, rather than the front. He couldn’t quite make out what Marcy was doing, but there was a sense of dread inside him. He had listened to what Jason had to say, then told Indie and his mother to take Kenzie and get out of the truck. They were waiting out by the highway, waiting to see if Sam could bring Kim out alive and unhurt.

  The thought of failing to do so was simply unbearable to him.

  “Marcy, wait,” he called out. He took the chance that she was watching him and laid his pistol on the hood of the truck, then raised his hands into the air and stepped out from behind it. “Let me come in and talk to you. Maybe we can work this out; maybe there’s a way you can actually come out of this.”

  Another shot rang out from inside the house, and the windshield of the truck disintegrated. Sam fought the instinct to duck, standing his ground. He knew that Kim probably had only seconds to live, but he was praying for a miracle.

  19

  Marcy pulled Kim back toward the kitchen door, desperately trying to think of something, trying to find some way to get out of this without losing everything. She backed through the doorway and shook her head, tears starting to run down her face as she realized that no matter what happened, her own life was basically over. Once she was arrested, she knew it would be only a matter of time before they came up with enough evidence to convict her, and then someone would realize that at least a few of those other victims had to have been hers, as well.

  She’d never see her father again, never be back in the diner, never feel that fantastic, wonderful thrill that came from bashing someone’s brain into jelly again. A sob escaped her, but at least she could finish getting her revenge. She pulled the pistol back and cocked it, then stepped back away from Kim and pointed it at her.

  “Turn around,” she commanded, and Kim turned slowly. She looked past the gaping maw of the gun and focused on Marcy’s eyes.

  “I forgive you,” Kim said.

  Marcy’s eyes went wide as she stared at her half sister, but then she shook her head. “Well, I don’t forgive you,” she spat. She adjusted her aim slightly and started to squeeze the trigger, but at that moment a sound in the hallway to her left made her glance in that direction. Her finger instinctively relaxed, and then her eyes went even whiter and her mouth opened as far as it could as she screamed in absolute terror.

  She turned her arm and aimed the gun down the hallway, squeezing the trigger over and over. Four shots in rapid succession, all aimed at the apparition that was coming toward her, its arms stretched out and reaching, its face wearing that maniacal grin…

  And then the figure rushed forward. It collided with her, slamming her back into the kitchen cabinets behind her as she continued to scream. This horrible, spectral image had come from nowhere, and now it had hold of her and…

  “I’ve got her,” yelled a voice that was almost in her ear, and she managed to focus her eyes on another figure, the one behind the one that attacked her. There was a young man there, and he had hold of her as well. The other figure, that horrible grinning one, was trapped between them.

  Kim stood in the doorway, her own eyes wide as she stared at the tableau in front of her, but then the front door burst open and Sam rushed in. He had his gun in his hand again, and he pushed past Kim to get into the kitchen, but Jason already had things under control.

  Sam held on to her for a moment so Jason could get the manikin out of the way. The terrifying visage that Marcy had seen was Ross’s old manikin coming down the hall toward her. Jason had bent its arms so they were reaching forward, and for that brief few seconds she honestly thought that the ghost of Donald Cameron—Millie’s husband and Kimberly’s grandfather—was coming for her.

  Sirens sounded in the distance, but they were coming closer in a hurry. Two minutes later, the first of the deputies’ cars arrived, and Detective Johnny Moore showed up before the second one. Sam called out to let them know that everything was under control, and then the house was suddenly full of men and women in uniform. Marcy was taken into custody and stuffed into the back of a squad car, while Moore looked at Sam and Jason Garrity.

  “Somebody want to tell me just what the hell happened here?” Moore asked.

  “Well, I had thought Marcy might be taking Kim out to where she left Daisy,” Sam said, “but just as I got into town, here, some old man was in the road and I had to stop. Jason happened to be right there, and I naturally asked him if he had any idea where Marcy might go, and it hit both of us at the same time. Since Kim is Lynette’s daughter, she’d almost certainly want to kill her in Millie’s house. I was just going to come racing over here, but Jason came up with an idea.”

  Moore turned and looked at the young man he’d arrested at least half a dozen times. “What?”

  Jason grinned at him. “Back when I was still in high school,” he said, “me and a bunch of other boys used to dare each other to sneak into this house. You know how everyone said it was haunted? Well, we used to challenge each other about who could sneak in here at night and manage to stay the longest. We rigged the window in Ross’s old bedroom so that we could unlatch it from outside—that’s how we got in and out. I told Mr. Prichard that I could cut through the woods and get here in a hurry, and get inside the house if he could keep Marcy busy for a minute.”

  “So I,” Sam said, taking up the story, “left my family out on the highway and out of the line of fire while I raced on over here, and then started yelling at Marcy to get her attention. She took a couple wild shots at me, but I’m happy to say she wasn’t a very good shot.”

  “And I came through the woods,” Jason continued, “at a dead run and crawled in through the window. I could hear Marcy and the other lady talking, and I suddenly got the idea of using that old manikin to try to distract her so Mr. Prichard could get in here. I grabbed it and was planning to just throw it into the kitchen, but then Marcy backed right up in there and turned and saw it, so I just ducked down low and kept pushing it that way. I guess Marcy thought it was a ghost or something, because she screamed and started shooting at it.” The manikin was leaning against the wall, and Jason pointed at the holes Marcy’s bullets had punched all the way through it. “Good thing I ducked, huh? I knew that little gun only held six shots, and she already shot at Mr. Prichard a couple times, so when I counted four more shots I just slammed it right into her.”

  Moore’s eyes bounced from one to the other a couple of times, and then he just shook his head.

  “Jason,” he said, “as much as I hate to admit this, that was pretty good thinking.” He turned to Sam. “And you—I want to know how in the world you figured out that it was her.”

  Sam grinned at him. “Remember that ad I put in the paper today? Your buddy Girardi managed to get it in today’s issue, and it paid off. I think the only woman in the county who is a bigger gossip than Marcy herself was the one who called me. She was the one who knew that Marcy’s father, who went by the name of Perkins, was really Bill Parkinson. Bill and Lynette Perkins were Kim’s parents. It didn’t take too long to figure out that we were in the middle of the biggest freaking coincidence in history.”

  Kim had been standing off to the side, quietly listening as the men talked, but now she stepped forward.

  “Sam, it wasn’t a coincidence,” she said. “You did exactly what Beauregard wanted you to do. You found his descendants.”

  Moore looked at Kim, then turned back to Sam. “Beauregard? Who is Beauregard?”

  Sam started to say something, but Kim cut him off. “He’s not anybody,” she said. “He’s a figment of my imagination, but he’s saved our lives on many occasions.”

  Moore stared her for a moment, then looked at Sam. The expression on his face seemed to indicate that he was attempting to offer some sort of sympathy.

  Sam sighed. “She’s telling you the truth,” he said. “Kim has this uncanny abilit
y to see little bits and pieces of the future, sometimes, but I guess the ability frightened her. Somewhere along the line, she came up with the notion that this old Civil War ghost named Beauregard was the one who was telling her these things. It was Beauregard who wanted me to track these folks down, because he—actually, because Kim subconsciously knew that they were related and that someone in the family needed help.”

  Detective Moore’s mouth was hanging slightly open. He stood there like that for a few seconds, then rolled his eyes. “I can’t say I haven’t heard stranger things,” he said.

  *

  It had been a busy week, Sam thought. He and his family had stayed in Benton after Marcy’s capture, and Sam had retained the services of an attorney to file the motion overturning Ross’s conviction. With the sheriff, the chief of police and even the prosecutor all in agreement, Judge Middleton had been delighted to do so. The paperwork was done up in a hurry, and it took less than twenty-four hours for Ross to be released.

  Debbie, Ross, and the children had all loaded into Debbie’s Chrysler minivan and driven down. They all wanted to thank Sam personally, but he told them over and over that he was simply doing his job.

  But then they all got to hear the rest of the story, and Debbie realized that Kim was actually her niece. She threw her arms around Kim and pulled her close, grateful to finally get to know the daughter of the sister she had never even met.

  Ross didn’t seem all that surprised. He looked at Kim closely for about two full minutes, then said, “You look like Lynette.”

  Royce Garrity was shocked to find out her father was back in the area, but once she knew the whole story about Kim and Marcy, she decided it was time to be forgiving. She had spent several hours at her father’s place in Ewing the day after Marcy’s arrest, and Kim had gone with her. Both women admitted later that they burst into tears when they saw their father again, each of them for the first time in many years. Bill was in his late eighties, but his mind was still in fairly decent shape despite all the alcohol. He was able to recall many moments from both of their childhoods, and both Royce and Kim came away from the experience happy. They promised to keep in touch with each other, and to try to be the sisters they had never gotten to be.