Proof Positive: A Joe Gunther Novel (Joe Gunther Series) Read online

  “The magic’ll be if we end up with any salad at all,” the older woman said skeptically.

  Nancy seized the head of iceberg lettuce firmly and smacked it forcefully down onto the carving board’s surface, separating the core from the surrounding leaves and presenting a perfectly symmetrical globe.

  Her mother marveled, “Well, I’ll be darned.”

  “What’re you two doing in here?” a male voice asked from the kitchen door. “Sounds like you’re swatting each other.”

  Nancy turned to her father. “You think you’re kidding, Pops, but that’s something else I just learned: You know that sound you hear in the older movies when someone punches somebody else? Well, they used to make that noise by smashing a head of this stuff.” She held up the lettuce.

  “Oh, honey,” Mums said, taking it from her daughter in order to prepare it for dinner. “That’s too much.”

  “Like they used coconut shells for horse hooves,” her father added, rhythmically slapping his open hands against his thighs in parody.

  “Right,” Nancy agreed. “You heard about that one, didn’t you, Mums?”

  Her mother was chopping the lettuce as she spoke. “I suppose I did. And something about a nail being dragged across a sheet of glass to make screechy sounds. I remember seeing those scary movies as a young woman.” She glanced at her husband. “Hank, you used to take me to those so I would hold your hand.”

  He laughed. “You held more than that. I thought you’d leave bruises a couple of times.”

  “Oh,” she protested. “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “Where’s Jackson?” Nancy suddenly asked, holding a slice of sausage she’d cut up for the spaghetti sauce they were fixing.

  “I let him out,” her father said. “A half hour ago. He should come back in. It’s getting late.”

  “I’ll get him,” Nancy volunteered, handing Pops the knife she’d been using. “You finish up.”

  Wiping her hands on the apron around her waist, Nancy went to the kitchen door and stepped out onto the back deck, closing the door behind her to keep the heat in. St. Johnsbury was located in Vermont’s northeast quadrant, just over an hour below the Canadian border. What might have been deemed “a little nippy” elsewhere in the state at this time of year was downright cold here.

  Nancy wrapped her arms around her chest as she whistled into the dark, also calling out Jackson’s name. He was an old retriever—steady, loyal, and no longer very adventurous. Normally when he was let out, he wandered no more than twenty feet from the house and lay down.

  Tonight, he was nowhere to be seen.

  Having anticipated a twenty-second excursion, Nancy was by now getting quite cold. Adding to her discomfort was something beyond concern for the welfare of the family dog. In the silent darkness opposing her, on an overcast and moonless night, she couldn’t shake the chilling notion of some menace lurking.

  As she turned to reenter the house, she thought again of the reason she’d come to spend a few days with her parents, and considered the man that Sandy Corcoran had warned her about.

  She paused with her hand on the doorknob, and instinctively glanced over her shoulder, as if the mere thought of the threat would project a light into the night and cancel all cause for worry.

  But once more, she saw nothing, and continued into the house.

  A hundred yards from the deck, hidden by that very darkness—a dead dog at his feet and Neil by his side—Frank Niles stood by a tree with a pair of binoculars in his hands, through which he’d been studying Nancy’s range of emotions.

  “You got it, girl,” he barely whispered. “Trouble’s about to come knockin’.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The room Willy and Sam entered was filled with police officers in tactical gear, their bodies bulked out with armored vests and equipment, their faces watchful, their uniforms reflecting not just the St. Johnsbury PD, but the state police and county sheriff’s department, as well.

  “People,” their host, the chief, announced, “These are VBI Agents Martens and Kunkle. This may be their show, and it may be the St. J PD’s turf, but all of us are responsible for the final outcome. You will all act as if you are the lead here. More importantly, there will be no mention of it to anybody afterwards. This is considered a covert op. We will all rise or fall with the honor and integrity of every one of you on these points. Do I have your attention on that?”

  Sam glanced at Willy, wondering about a sarcastic one-liner, but her partner’s expression remained inscrutable despite the theatrical overtones of the speech.

  The chief turned to Sammie. “Agent Martens, they’re all yours.”

  Sam walked to a wall map of the town and its immediate environs, paused for a moment to get her bearings, and pointed to a spot not far from the center of St. Johnsbury before facing her audience. “This is the location of the residence of Henry and Abigail Filson, parents of Nancy Filson. We have intel that Nancy is staying here to avoid a couple of men who are threatening to do her bodily injury. Without going into details of an ongoing case, what you need to know is that these two men—who have occasionally employed others to help them—are armed, dangerous, and from out of state. The last three jobs they’ve pulled involved the torture/murder of a woman in Philadelphia, the likely killing of a man in southern Vermont, and the terrorizing of another woman outside Burlington. That’s why the chief just told you that there’s an informational lid on this operation. If any of this leaked out, we’d have every news outfit in the state down our necks.”

  She stepped away from the map to look at them more directly. “These men are lethal. They don’t make mistakes; they don’t get excited; and if one of their team gets in trouble, they just walk away. Make no assumptions that they’ll be like anybody we bump into regularly in Vermont. These boys are pros.”

  One of the men in the group spoke up. “Can you brief us on what we’re doing?”

  “Time is of the essence,” Sam said. “They want information, and they’re torturing people to get it—basically going up rung by rung until they find what they’re after. Our job is to break that ladder at the Filsons’. We will brief you on our planned approach and move out ASAP to make it happen. There is a good chance that things are in motion as we speak, so we have no time to waste.”

  She returned to the map and gestured to their host. “The chief and I will tell you how and who we’re deploying, so listen up. This is gonna move fast.”

  * * *

  A similar, if less adrenalized, conversation was occurring in Philadelphia, with Elizabeth McLarney instructing Joe, Phil, and Lester on what she’d learned about Jarek Sroka. “We’ve obviously moved up from the likes of Tommy Bajek.”

  Again, they were in the nondescript SUV, pulled over by the curb. “Sroka,” she continued, “is a lieutenant, if you want to call him that—richer, more dangerous, better connected, and with people at his disposal. He’s responsible to his own bosses, but he’s got turf and autonomy. As long as he keeps his nose clean and meets the expectations of the higher-ups, he can pretty much do as he likes.”

  “Easy to talk to?” Lester wanted to know.

  “Yes and no,” Phil contributed. “The rules of engagement get trickier as you move up the ranks. It sort of depends on the question and who’s asking it.”

  “True ’nuff,” Elizabeth agreed. “Which is why, as with Pete Kindler, we’re meeting another of our people who hangs out with this crowd, and who might be able to get us a one-on-one. Unlike before, this’ll be more like a business meet. No barroom loose lips this time.”

  “It’ll either happen or not,” Phil threw in unnecessarily, “depending on Sroka’s mood.”

  Elizabeth pointed through the windshield to a man in a long woolen coat and a cashmere scarf, who was strolling toward them like a suburbanite taking in the sights—except that the sights were no better than they’d been throughout this trip, Port Richmond being a far cry from Center City’s historic district. “Here he comes.” />
  The man openly stopped by Elizabeth’s window and rested an elbow on the door. “Hey. How’re tricks? I heard you were after me.”

  Elizabeth made the introductions, which her contact—whom she only named Ralph—barely acknowledged. “The Vermonters’re lookin’ to have a short chat with a mid-level Posse member,” she told him.

  “With no strings attached,” Joe added. “We’re trying to identify a couple of people who might not even be connected to the local scene, but who’ve just done some recruiting.”

  Ralph looked doubtful. “I guess it can’t hurt to ask,” he said. “But unless you got something to trade, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Who’s supposed to know these guys? Maybe he’s one of the chatty ones.”

  “Jarek Sroka,” Elizabeth answered.

  Ralph straightened and smiled down at her. “That makes it easy. You can talk to him all you want. He’s in a coma. And they’re saying he’ll stay that way.”

  Joe leaned forward to make eye contact. “Are you kidding me? What happened? Did somebody get to him?”

  Ralph considered him without comment for a slow few seconds. “Interesting you should ask,” he said finally. “He wasn’t the worst-off specimen in the gene pool, so a coma was a surprise. You know something I should?”

  “They never even heard about him till an hour ago,” Elizabeth said supportively. “We’re just following a line of inquiry to help ’em out.”

  “Well,” Ralph said, “you hit a brick wall. Sroka ain’t talkin’ and his crew’s twitchier’n hell, tryin’ to figure out if it was Mother Nature or somebody with the right cocktail that conked him out.”

  “Is there a police investigation, as well?” Lester asked from the back seat.

  Ralph raised his eyebrows. “On Sroka? Nope. No sign of foul play, and enough on our plates anyhow. Why make work?”

  There was an awkward silence at the finality of the comment, which prompted Ralph to lean in again and ask them all, “That suit you? Anything else I can help you with?”

  Elizabeth glanced at Joe, but he shook his head and said, “Guess not, other than to let us know if he comes out of the coma. Thanks for the help. Keep safe.”

  Ralph pushed away from the car. “Back at ya,” he said, and resumed his stroll down the sidewalk.

  Elizabeth was still studying Joe’s expression. “What’re you thinking?” she asked.

  “How I’m thinking,” he told her, “is suspiciously. We’ve followed this thread all the way to where Sroka might’ve given us the name or names of whoever hired Tommy and killed Ben Kendall. So far, that ‘whoever’ has been a careful, unemotional planner—he’s left people alone when they posed no real threat, as with Sandy Corcoran, and he’s killed only to get information, or to seal a leak.”

  “As with Jarek Sroka,” she finished.

  “It may be that some bad habit of Sroka’s caught up to him and put him in a coma. But I prefer that our guys came back, once they knew we were tracking them, and put an end to our inquiries. But not—” Joe held up a finger, “by knocking him off outright and stirring up a bee’s nest. Instead, by silencing him ambiguously, they’ve left us with no proof of a crime, and the Posse has nowhere to go for revenge.”

  “Which to me implies a local connection,” Lester suggested.

  “Why’s that?” Phil asked.

  “Why would they care otherwise about disturbing the local Mafia?” Les asked.

  The rest of them considered the notion. “I still think they’re outsiders,” Elizabeth concluded. “Maybe local, but not from the Posse. I don’t argue against their knowing to recruit from Posse ranks. I do see your point there.”

  “It still doesn’t get us to who they are,” Joe said mournfully. “Maybe Willy and Sam’ll have better luck finding that out from the hunted, than we’ve had chasing the hunters.”

  * * *

  “White leader to base.”

  Willy keyed the mic from the control van they’d parked a half mile from the Filson home. “Base.”

  “We’re in position.”

  He glanced at the map mounted to the interior wall of what was in fact a converted ambulance. There were three teams, predictably Red, White, and Blue. White was the last to check in, being located at the tree line, west of the large field behind the house. They’d have the most open ground to cover when the time came to close in on the target.

  If there was any reason to close in, of course. Their opening gambit was to send in a decoy to knock on the front door under some plausibly innocent pretext, to see if any of this military-style orchestration was needed. For all they knew, the Filsons might be simply watching television, having not seen their daughter in weeks.

  Sam and Willy had made a point of not revealing much of their investigation, but in fact, they were here solely on the basis of Nancy Filson’s having called her folks often and lately, which suggested that she might have come here to avoid staying in Burlington.

  That was it. A far cry from hard evidence.

  Willy readied the mic to notify the decoy that it was time to approach the house.

  “White leader to base. We may have a problem.”

  “Go ahead,” he replied.

  “We found a dead dog at the edge of the woods. He’s been shot. The dog collar identifies his owners as the target residence.”

  “Damn,” Willy said under his breath before keying the mic again and saying, “Plan B is now activated. All units go to Plan B. Acknowledge.”

  All three teams quickly responded, prompting Willy to stare at the map again, imagining them closing in from all three sides, ready to return fire if necessary. He shouted to the driver of the van, “Get rolling. I wanna be there when they hit the door.”

  As the command vehicle lurched forward, the speakers resonated with radio cross talk between Red, White, and Blue, each of them reporting no movements, sightings, or sounds from the house. For an instant, Willy’s mind wandered to Sam, in the Red team, hoping she’d be all right. From childhood, he’d been overly trained by disappointment and deceit. Love had always been, “I knew it,” when it came to betrayal or loss. It put him on tenterhooks to be so dependent on Sam and Emma, especially at times like these.

  “It’s just around the next curve,” his driver told him.

  “Keep going,” he said irritably.

  Over the speaker, he heard Red leader report that they’d reached the front door.

  “Ring the bell first,” he recommended. “They may know nothing about the dog.”

  The van came to a stop just as Red leader announced, “No response.”

  Willy threw open the back door and stepped into the cold night air. “Force the door,” he called out.

  He followed the group of five across the threshold, the fingertips of his extended right hand barely touching the back of Sam’s ballistic vest as he tailed her down the central hallway to the modern log cabin’s cathedral-ceilinged living room, where they met the other two teams, arriving through other entrances.

  “All clear?” he asked in general.

  There was a moment’s pause as they all looked at each other, some of them quietly securing their weapons. One of the team leaders said, “We found nothing. Nobody.”

  Sammie had entered the kitchen almost immediately, and now appeared at the doorway, saying, “They were here, and they left in a hurry, obviously against their will.”

  Willy and several others went to her. She pointed into the kitchen. “There’s food on the ground, the fridge was half open, and the spaghetti was still boiling on the stove, although it’s mush by now and the water’s mostly gone. I turned it off.” She indicated a smear on the floor. “I don’t think that’s tomato sauce by the back door.”

  Willy gave it an appraising glance. “It doesn’t look arterial. More like somebody got mouthy and got handed a split lip.”

  “A kidnapping?” one of the men asked.

  “They weren’t running late for a potluck,” Willy grumbled, pulling out his cell phone. �
�I’ll update the boss. And we better put out a BOL and order up roadblocks.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Beverly Hillstrom was waiting for Joe at the VBI’s Burlington office on Cherry Street. He had driven there directly from Philadelphia after receiving Willy’s news about the disappearance of the Filson family and catching only a few short hours of sleep.

  She gave him a hug as she asked firmly but without anger, “What the hell is going on? Your people grabbed Rachel out of class late yesterday afternoon, supposedly for her own safety, but won’t give us an explanation. According to them, you have to do that. They told me where you’ve been, so I didn’t call, and they’ve been very accommodating, but was that entirely necessary?”

  He asked the nearest agent, “Where’d you put Rachel Reiling?”

  “Down the hall, third door on the right,” he was told.

  “I could have told you that,” Beverly said. “We’ve been keeping each other company for hours.”

  Joe wrapped his arm around her waist and escorted her down the hallway, explaining, “I want to tell you both what’s happened.”

  She took advantage of the interlude to assess him quickly. “You look like hell. How was Philadelphia?”

  He laughed. “Interesting, and you look terrific, as always.”

  He turned the doorknob and entered the indicated room to find Rachel sitting by the window, staring out at the overcast morning sky.

  Rachel stood as they both entered. “Oh,” she said. “Hi.”

  He waved her back into her seat, positioned another one for Beverly, and sat on the edge of a desk that had been shoved up against the wall. The room was someone’s office, complete with family photos and knickknacks scattered about. He guessed that its occupant was temporarily bunking with a colleague—probably as a courtesy to Joe. The cot in one corner testified that the place had been turned into a bedroom.

  “First off,” he began, “are you both okay? Have they been feeding you well?”

  Beverly resumed her severe tone. “Joe, none of that is of any interest to us. Please explain what’s going on.”