Proof Positive: A Joe Gunther Novel (Joe Gunther Series) Page 18

  They both tucked their knees up—he as best as he could, given the steering wheel—and made themselves invisible to a pair of slowly approaching headlights. “Considering the speed,” he proposed, “I’d bet that’s the same car, widening his surveillance circle.”

  The car drew abreast. Just as it slipped by, Joe risked a quick glance. “Yup. Same car. Red Focus. Interesting.”

  “How?” she asked, still tucked down, uncertain about whether to straighten as he was doing.

  “You’re okay,” he said. “It just displays more caution than I’d expect. Makes it almost guaranteed they’re smelling a rat.” He was looking into the rearview mirror as he spoke, and now said, “Watch it. He’s heading back.”

  She quickly slid back down as Joe flopped almost into her lap, his face inches from the pizza. “Good God,” she burst out. “Is this routine?”

  “Sometimes,” he laughed, speed-dialing the phone’s preset conference call setup so that the entire team could hear and join in. “He’s coming back at you fast,” he warned them.

  Beverly and he saw the car’s brake lights flash quickly, making the falling snow around them ignite like tiny bulbs, just before the Focus took the corner into Sam’s street with its tires squealing. They were close enough—and the car traveling fast enough—that they heard it crash, even through the closed windows.

  “He T-boned a parked car about half a block away,” Sam reported.

  Over the distant wailing of a disturbed car alarm, Joe replied, “Everyone sit tight. Watch and wait.”

  “No movement from the Focus,” Sam continued her running commentary. “Lights are coming on up and down the street; people starting to come out.”

  “You upstairs, Sam?”

  “Yup.”

  “Keep your eyes on the monitors,” Joe warned her. “But get to the window with a backlight and pretend to look out, so they can see you’re home and acting normally. But not well enough to see your face,” he added as an afterthought.

  “Already doing it, Boss.”

  “Everyone else,” he went on. “Look for the person not watching the crash, or not acting like the rest of them, or anyone studying Sammie’s place.”

  Being distant from the street itself, Joe could hear approaching emergency sirens in the far distance. “Somebody called 911,” he reported. “EMS and fire are on the way.”

  He turned to Beverly, who leaned into him before he could speak and said quietly, so as not to be overheard, “Don’t tell me. Date’s over. You do know how to entertain a girl.”

  She was already opening the door as he said, “Thanks, sweetheart. I’ll call you later.”

  She looked back at him, her door almost closed. The pizza rested in her seat. “You do that, Joe. No matter what time of night. Okay?”

  “Right.”

  She smiled. “And enjoy the rest of that.” She slammed the door and was gone—back to her own car, and home.

  The snow was falling harder. He looked longingly at the pizza, knowing that part of the evening had come and gone, and truly missing the woman who’d suggested they share it.

  The first of the emergency trucks swept by, followed by a cruiser, just as an explosion shook the neighborhood and threw a bright orange flash up against the low clouds.

  “Joe,” Sam shouted. “The parked car just blew up. The driver got out and is just standing there.”

  He started his engine, all pretenses evaporated. “Eyes on the monitors, Sam, and listen for any breach downstairs. Remember the drill. Everybody, look around. If you see something out of whack, photograph it, follow it, whatever. These guys are testing us. We need to turn the tables on ’em. Sam, they may come for you. Don’t rule it out.”

  He pulled away from the curb and raced to the corner, coming upon a block dancing with flames, flashing strobes, and even a few bright cell camera winks as bystanders took photos.

  “Goddamned Facebook,” he muttered, thinking that they’d have to round up all the phones later to get what they were capturing.

  * * *

  On the second floor of the Colchester house, Sam crouched beside the broad table they’d set up as a command post, which was cluttered with a bank of small closed-circuit TV screens, and trained her shotgun on the room’s door. Megaphoned shouts, diesel engines, people yelling all drowned out any sounds within the house that she might have been able to hear otherwise, lending credence to Joe’s caution that the noise and commotion were to disguise an assault on her position.

  Periodically, she’d glance at the screens, but of the cameras aimed at the property perimeter, most revealed either a milling crowd or debilitating lens flaring as a result of the flashing strobe lights, exacerbated by falling snow. By contrast, the interior cameras showed nothing moving at all.

  “Anything, people?” Joe asked over the open phone line.

  “Like we wouldn’t tell you?” Sam recognized Willy’s blunt rejoinder.

  She saw a firefighter, his features blocked by his helmet and its visor, walking away from the blaze and carrying an ax and a canvas bag. She almost dismissed him, until she considered his context: He had no hose in hand, wasn’t headed toward a lighting unit, a hydrant, or the fire, and didn’t seem attached to any squad or truck.

  “Check out the firefighter at my northeast corner,” she recommended. “I can’t figure out what he’s doing.”

  She did seconds later, when on another screen, she saw his outline at a back window, followed by the ax coming through the glass and a grenade-like, cylindrical object bouncing across the rug.

  “He’s thrown something into the house,” she called out.

  The subsequent explosion whited out the camera and shook the building. Sam ran to the door and threw it open to see a thick cloud boiling up the stairwell from the first floor.

  She worked to keep her voice calm as she reported, “Stairs are blocked. Can’t tell if it’s a smoke grenade or an incendiary. Anyone see that firefighter?”

  The exchange of replies almost jamming the line revealed only confusion. She did note with comfort, however, no reaction from Willy, who as usual had gone silent and was presumably hard at work. Backups and pre-plans were fine and necessary in these situations, but for Sam, there was no substitute for a Willy on the loose, her best interests foremost on his mind.

  She stepped back inside the room and closed the door as the smoke began lapping up and over the landing’s top edge.

  * * *

  Joe stopped partway down the street, listening to the chatter on the phone. He could see the crash site ahead, the staged fire trucks and ambulances, and—as it happened—the bright flash of the explosion inside Sam’s supposed safe house, followed by smoke oozing out of its lower windows.

  And, of course, the people. They were running, gawking, talking on radios, taking pictures, hauling fire equipment—firefighters, police officers, EMTs, and civilians. He even saw the driver of the red Focus being questioned by Colchester cops.

  The possible goals of this chaos were simple enough: either to assault a legitimate safe house in order to grab Rachel Reiling, or throw a staged police trap into turmoil for the pure hell of it. With the latest addition of the bomb, Joe was seriously doubting the first. Whoever his opponents were, they had not fallen for the trap. This mess was their way of stating that.

  There was pride at play here, and flagrant braggadocio.

  And there was intention: to reverse the police plan, flush the cops out of hiding, and force them to save one of their own.

  It was this aspect of the situation that drew most of Joe’s focus. He began watching for people dressed for the weather, acting with purpose, but perhaps not to any constructive end. Sammie’s identification of an ax-wielding firefighter wandering on his own was an example. Joe therefore forced himself not to think of her—she was being helped by others, after all—and to determine instead the exit strategy of his enemies.

  If any of this reversal was to be of benefit to them, now was the time for at lea
st somebody to step back and take note overall.

  Which is why he noticed a car with its lights out—beyond the scattering of trucks and their tangle of fire hose—leaving the curb at the far end of the block and slowly retreating toward the scene’s rear exit.

  Joe threw his own car into reverse, to head the other way.

  * * *

  Upstairs, Sammie was running the shower in the adjacent bathroom, soaking towels and herself in preparation for a worst-case scenario. She also ran to the room’s door and laid a long, drenched towel at its base, where smoke was beginning to trickle in. The air was as hot as a sauna’s.

  “Sam,” she heard Tom Wilson update her. “The bomb was an incendiary. The fire department is working to get it out and extract you, but it’s stubborn and the fire’s right under you. They can’t get ladders in place till they knock that part down. How’re you doing?”

  She was standing at the door of the bathroom when its window smashed open, accompanied by a blast of cold air and the face of Willy Kunkle.

  “Hey, babe. How’re ya doin’?”

  She burst out laughing. “What the hell?”

  “I stole one of their ladders,” he half explained. “Wanna get outta here?”

  * * *

  One street over, Joe killed his lights and drifted to the curb. Far ahead, a man in a fire coat, minus his helmet and ax, stepped out from between two homes, a block away from the action, to be met by the dark car Joe had seen quietly slipping away.

  As the car then gathered speed and turned on its headlights, heading in Joe’s direction, he once more flopped onto the passenger seat, resting his cheek against the warm pizza box, and let it pass by.

  Then he pulled into the road, executed a quiet U-turn, and followed from a distance.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It was long past midnight, and the storm had finally arrived. Vermont’s largest city was looking like an empty Christmas pageant soundstage, where someone had forgotten to switch off the artificial snow machine. Joe topped the hill with his headlights out, hoping to preserve his relative invisibility, and headed into downtown and toward the mesmerizing black hole of Lake Champlain beyond. It was a neat trick, however, driving in the dark, barely keeping the car ahead in view, and relying solely on passing streetlamps to guide him. The heavy snow made every overhead bulb appear like an isolated, smudgy beacon, shrouded as if by fog and barely extending to the roadway.

  In the end, Joe’s ambitions proved unrealistic. Despite his best efforts, circumstances overwhelmed him. Just shy of the water’s edge, the tenuous visual link between pursuer and pursued finally snapped, and he lost sight of the taillights that had transfixed him since Colchester. Idling in the middle of the intersection of Main and Battery, without another vehicle in sight, he searched in vain for any movement whatsoever.

  His cell, which he’d hung up after leaving the fire scene, vibrated again.

  “Gunther,” he answered distractedly, still turning his head to and fro.

  “Nice leadership,” came Willy’s flat voice. “Leave one of your own behind in a burning building.”

  He ignored the taunt. “She okay?”

  “No thanks to you.”

  “I got that part.”

  “Where the fuck are you?”

  “Downtown. I picked up on the two who torched the place and followed them as far as I could.”

  “You lost ’em?”

  “Finally. Yeah. But I don’t think they made me.”

  True to Willy’s character, he dropped the bitterness of his opening comments without further thought, as Joe trusted he would. When he spoke next, his voice was solely that of a co-investigator. “You think they were heading home after a hard night’s work?”

  “I hope so. It might give us at least a notion of where to concentrate a search.”

  “Cool. We need a break with this stupid case.”

  Joe returned to what would be tomorrow’s headlines. “You get anything like a lead from the fire scene?”

  “The Focus driver was a predictable dead end. Fire marshals haven’t started yet, but you know they won’t find shit from that bomb. You get the car’s registration?”

  “Yup. Might help. Where’s everyone right now?”

  “Heading back to the office.”

  “Sam doesn’t need someone medical to look at her? Bill Allard will have us for lunch if we don’t cross that T.”

  Willy laughed. “Right. Sam in the hospital for anything short of a bullet? Good luck. We got her looked at by EMS at the scene. You’ll have to live with that.”

  Joe had expected as much. “Okay. See you at the office.”

  He brought the rest of the cold pizza to share when he entered the front room, his hair and shoulders covered with snow. The office elsewhere was mostly dark, lending an oddly intimate air to their small group consisting of Tom Wilson, Sam, Willy, and Lester.

  Joe crossed straight over to Sammie and kissed her on the cheek. “God, you’re a sight for sore eyes. How’d you get out?”

  She smiled at Willy, who was rummaging through the pizza box, not listening. “My hero. He stole a ladder when they weren’t looking and climbed to my window to rescue me.”

  Joe laughed. “Really?”

  Willy turned with a slice in his hand. “That’s bullshit. She was fine upstairs and they were just following protocol, making sure the fire wouldn’t come back around and cut them off. I just got impatient.”

  “You?” Joe exclaimed. “Impatient?”

  “Kidding aside,” Tom said, “the fire chief will be reaching out to you tomorrow—well, I guess later today,” checking the wall clock. “He’s pretty pissed.”

  “And for once not about me,” Willy added. “You know firemen and cops. Somebody blabbed from our side, so now he knows we had an undercover op going, and he’s all worked up about how we put one of his neighborhoods in danger.”

  “What is left of the house?” Joe asked.

  Willy looked slightly rueful. “Not much, which means the people we borrowed all the video stuff from’ll want to tear you a new one, too.”

  Joe ran his fingers through his hair. “I can’t blame them. Not that we saw any of this coming. I’ll dump the whole mess onto Allard.”

  Unusually, Willy then offered a bit of moral support. “It wasn’t a total bust. You followed the bad guys pretty far. Main and Battery? That must be close to where they’re holed up. There aren’t too many options down there.”

  That was true, but it nevertheless involved at least three major hotels and hundreds of apartments facing the water. Still, they were drawing closer, as Joe revealed by removing an envelope from his pocket and holding it up. “And let’s not forget the receipt that Hank Filson picked up from the floor of the kidnap car. It traces back to a hardware store in the same neighborhood.”

  “You talk to them yet?” Willy asked.

  “Nope, but I will. When Hank gave it to me, I wasn’t sure of its value, since Mutt and Jeff move around so much. But now I’m thinking maybe they’ve found a home base, at least for while they’re in this neck of the woods.”

  “Why did they do it?” Sammie asked, her face and blouse still damp and smeared with soot. “If they were coming for Rachel, they’ve got one hell of a weird way of running a kidnapping.”

  “They were flipping us the bird,” Joe told her. “Telling us they were onto our game. What did we get from the driver of the red Focus?”

  “What you’d expect,” Lester reported. “I coordinated with the locals when they interviewed him at the scene. He’s just a dirtbag homeboy who was paid to do what he did. He don’t know nuttin’, didn’t see nobody, and has no idea.”

  “So he never met his contractor?” Joe asked.

  “Nope. It was all by phone, the money was cash, and the delivery by dead drop. Like Tomasz Bajek, once removed—disposable labor.”

  “Except that he’s still alive,” Joe mused. “Might as well put him under the hot lights later at the PD, just
to see if he remembers anything else.”

  “And what do we do in the meantime?” Tom asked. “Canvass the neighborhood around Main and Battery to see if we get lucky?”

  “Kind of,” Joe replied. “But let’s start with the hardware store. We’ve been hoping they’d make a mistake.” He held up the envelope again. “Maybe this is it.”

  * * *

  Hardware stores had been a favorite haunt of Joe’s for as far back as he could recall. His father, a quiet, introspective, gentle farmer from the Thetford area, had taken Joe and his younger brother, Leo, to hardware stores when they were kids, as if passing along his appreciation for mechanical things through a form of educational miming. The three of them would wander the aisles, weighing a succession of tools in their hands, the boys watching their father’s expression and learning the values of durability, precision, and craftsmanship by how their teacher winnowed through the offerings to his final choice. An odd, near-silent ritual, cherished by the boys and guaranteed to make them nostalgic every time they entered such a place forever after.

  Of course, it couldn’t be a huge building center so common across suburbia. The setting was as key as whatever crowded its shelves. In Burlington, the store that had issued Joe’s receipt fit the bill to perfection. It was older, had creaking wooden floorboards, and smelled of sawdust, varnish, and what Joe could only think of as old iron. It also looked as if the merchandise jammed into every nook and cranny was merely what they’d been able to fit in, implying a gold mine of much more, somewhere just out of sight.

  “Can I help you?” a white-haired woman asked as Joe and Sam passed under the small bell that jangled softly above the front door’s upper frame.

  Joe glanced about, taking in the tight aisles and loaded bins, shelves and cubbies, noticing with pleasure that some items were even hanging from the pressed tin ceiling and looked about as old as the clerk.

  “Yeah, if you’ve got a minute.”

  “All the time in the world. People aren’t knocking down my door anymore,” she said, with no tone of complaint.

  “Too bad,” Joe said. “I’m from the other side of the state, otherwise I’d be here weekly.”