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

  “Kunkle’s with him, undercover, but Watson has a partner in the neighborhood. We think they’ve holed up within walking distance, but we don’t know where. Could be a hotel, a condo. Could be they even pulled off a home invasion and have some family in their own back bedroom, bound and gagged, while they play house in the front. They’re capable of any of that.”

  “I hear this all started because one of our people spotted him on the street,” McReady commented.

  “Correct, and for the record, my apologies for landing on your turf like a bunch of uninvited Navy Seals. You have a preference for how to bring this guy down? Without killing him, I hope?” Joe asked.

  McReady tapped his finger on the map. If he was in any way aggravated that the VBI had brought a potential gunfight into his backyard—especially following the embarrassment on the college campus earlier—he showed no sign of it. “That’ll be up to Watson. On this short notice, we’ll work on the assumption that he’ll retrace his steps with whatever he buys in the store. That puts him on this street here, heading south, with at least one hand occupied. I put together something quick and dirty, which is a mobile unit here and there; men with sniper rifles here, and here, and here; and backup teams at this location, and over here.” At each step, he used a special stylus to circle points on the interactive map, like a football coach outlining a play.

  “Finally,” he concluded, “we blocked the streets out of sight of the market. To compensate, we’ll have a couple of unmarked vehicles pass back and forth to simulate normal traffic. The idea is to close in on him mid-block—right here—where his flight options are limited, and to display enough firepower that he’ll get the hint and give up.”

  He straightened as much as possible in the low-ceilinged space and tilted his head at Joe. “It’s the best I can do, with such minimal heads-up.”

  “It’s great, Mike,” Joe reassured him. “And point taken. We appreciate what you can give us.”

  “No problem,” McReady said. “Can I propose an alternate scenario?”

  “Sure.”

  “No potential shootout, no bullets flying across town. Just follow this guy home to his buddy, organize a calm and carefully thought-out plan of attack—including a neighborhood evacuation—and grab both dudes while they’re chowing down and enjoying TV, or whatever.”

  Joe nodded sympathetically. “Normally, I’d totally agree. Considering the threat, the way they keep vanishing, and the fact that we don’t know the nature of their hideaway, I want to nail what I can, when I can.”

  McReady pursed his lips before saying, “You know how VBI is big on letting local agencies take all the headlines?”

  Joe could see where he was headed. “I know. I know. This one’s on us, especially if it goes sour. I will personally state that we kept you in the dark.”

  McReady wasn’t entirely placated. “Easy for you to say. It’s our citizens that’re gonna get caught in the crossfire.” He returned to the map. “I know about your cowboy Kunkle,” he said. “One of the reasons we’re setting up this ambush the way we are is because right here—” He tapped where he hoped to stop Watson on the sidewalk. “—there’s a stretch of concrete wall, giving us a good backstop, and opposite it an overlook onto the lake. It cuts down on the chance of a round going haywire. Please, for everyone’s sake, could you tell Kunkle to leave this to us?”

  * * *

  Willy Kunkle watched Neil approach the short line at the checkout counter, his arms full of grocery items, and faded back until he was tucked behind a bank of refrigerators. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and reported, “Looks like he’s about to head out.”

  “Willy,” he heard Joe say, “stay put and let him go. The block’s been sealed off and the PD plans to take him about halfway down the street, toward where he came from.”

  Without responding, Willy shut off the phone and joined the same checkout line with his own few items, emphasizing his disability by moving awkwardly and acting as if he were slightly mentally challenged, as well. As he fell into line, Neil glanced back at him without interest.

  Willy was pissed. While the Neil Watsons of this world were precisely the types he felt most charged to combat, he never sold them short as predators. And Watson and his unknown pal were clearly a cut above the competition. Why Joe and his idiot local colleagues thought that Neil wouldn’t notice the difference between normal traffic and a sealed-off city street was beyond him.

  Willy knew as sure as he was breathing that whatever plan had been constructed to catch the man ahead of him was doomed, leaving Willy as the only chance of reversing the inevitable. He had no actual evidence of this—it was just the way it always worked out.

  While Neil busied himself paying for his purchases, Willy surreptitiously abandoned his basket on a nearby shelf and presented only a pack of gum to the clerk when his turn came, along with a dollar bill, in order to cut down the processing time. As a result, he reached the store’s front door just as Neil stepped onto the sidewalk and looked around.

  As Willy had expected, Neil came up short, studying the block in both directions. On cue, a bland four-door sedan rounded the corner with a single man at the wheel—the only vehicle within sight—and drove by the market at a leisurely pace, its driver staring straight ahead, as if he were concentrating on negotiating a slalom course.

  For Christ’s sake, Willy thought. That’s the best they could do?

  Immediately, Neil placed his bag of groceries on the ground near the wall and began quickly walking away from whence he’d come.

  “Hey, buddy,” Willy called out in a slurred tone, displaying his left shoulder crookedly for emphasis. “You dropped your stuff.”

  Neil ignored him. Willy fast-hobbled after him, hoping to head him off before he reached the corner and could see up the next block, to where there was probably a row of police barricades barring the road.

  “Hey. Somebody’s gonna steal your stuff, you don’t watch out.”

  Neil waved at him without looking back, too busy checking every door and window within sight. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t care.”

  “You can’t do that, man,” Willy persisted, closing the gap. “That’s littering.”

  Still walking, Neil relented and glanced over his shoulder. “Let it go, asshole. I changed my mind. You can have it.”

  In the corner of his eye, as they walked, Willy saw exactly what he’d been fearing. As the adjacent street came into view, a roadblock could be seen at its far end.

  “I don’t want it, man. And who’re you calling asshole? You don’t know me. I’m trying to be a good neighbor.”

  By now, Willy had drawn up to Neil’s left side, away from the open street opposite. Neil moved slightly toward the curb in an attempt to keep his distance.

  “I’m sick of people dumpin’ on me ’cause I’m different,” Willy continued.

  Neil stopped in his tracks, facing Willy, his self-preservation briefly distracted, and shouted, “Fuck off, man! Leave me the fuck alone!”

  He reached out to push Willy in the chest. Willy took advantage of the gesture to grab Neil’s wrist and draw him forward while at the same time stepping back and bowing slightly to create a tripping fulcrum with his extended right leg. Continuing the motion to its conclusion, he pulled Neil completely off balance, upended him over the leg, and finished by throwing him flat onto the concrete. Willy then swiveled like a dancer and placed all his weight behind his other knee as he brought it down between Neil’s shoulder blades.

  “Don’t move, you fucker,” he ordered. “I’m a cop.”

  But Neil did move, twisting violently to one side while bringing up an arm in a scything motion, his fist closed.

  He didn’t catch Willy directly in the face, but close enough to make him pull back, which allowed Neil to roll free.

  Willy, however, had taken advantage of Neil’s efforts to go for his gun in the meantime, and now leveled it at him before the other man could do the same. “I said, don’t move,”
Willy repeated.

  Of course, he did, as Willy expected. Neil, still on his knees, swept open his coat, grabbed his weapon, and was bringing it to bear when Willy began a chopping motion intended to snap Neil’s wrist and make him release the gun.

  It didn’t happen. A large chunk of Neil’s head vaporized into a burst of blood and bone shards, showering Willy. It was immediately followed by the crack of a distant rifle shot. Neil’s body collapsed like a dropped sack of laundry.

  Willy stared at the body in stunned disbelief, his perfectly planned maneuver frozen in midmotion, before facing the empty street—along with the invisible sniper who’d acted to save his life—and screaming, “You fucking, stupid, son of a bitch. I had him. I had him cold.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Joe burst out of the van’s rear entrance and began running down the street toward the market, Lester in close pursuit. He’d watched in slow motion horror as McReady’s best-laid plans fell apart—leaving Willy, as he was bound to argue later, in place to improvise.

  He ran across the road to where Willy was kneeling by Neil’s folded body, from which a thick flow of blood had already spread across the sidewalk and was dripping into the slush-clotted gutter.

  “Willy,” Joe called out as he drew near. “Are you all right?”

  Kunkle was going through the body’s pockets, and merely growled without looking up, “How the fuck you think? Right when I’m about to shut him down, some asshole blows him up.”

  “Are you hit?” Joe asked, now standing over them.

  Willy looked up at him. His face was speckled with Neil’s blood and there was a lump of pink brain matter caught in his hair. “He wasn’t that good,” he replied.

  “Jesus.” Joe shook his head. “And they say you don’t have a way with people. What the hell’re you looking for?”

  “Anything,” Willy answered as the thudding of approaching runners began filling the air around them. “Why do you think I was trying to take him alive? Where’s his home base? Where’s his buddy holed up? Now we got nothin’, thanks to Annie Oakley, and your girlfriend’s daughter still has a target on her butt.”

  “Hillstrom?” Joe said stupidly.

  Willy scowled. “Oh, pleeeeze. If you two think you’re being discreet, we kids are in the know. Get over it. Better still, help me with this asshole. I can’t get into some of his pockets.”

  Joe blinked at having been simultaneously outed and caught leaving Willy to struggle in his efforts. He dropped to his knees and began using both hands to help.

  McReady and Lester were now hovering as Joe had been. “What’re you doing?” the Burlington cop asked.

  This time, it was Joe who sounded testy. “Looking for a hotel key, a receipt—anything that’ll tell us where he’s living.” He fixed McReady with a stare. “Mike, we need every cop we can round up—your PD, all surrounding departments, everybody you can think of. We need to seal the whole area within two blocks of where Watson was spotted a half hour ago. If we’re lucky, his confederate didn’t see this out his window. Even so, he’ll be wondering where his groceries are in about ten minutes, and if I’m any judge of character, he’ll be gone ten minutes after that.”

  McReady pulled out his cell phone without further questions. “I’ll get on it.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, Joe received a call.

  “Gunther.”

  “It’s Mike. We got something—fifth building we checked.” He gave Joe the address and hung up.

  It was a two-minute drive. Since the shootout involving Neil Watson, the entire neighborhood had been blanketed by cops in all forms. McReady had risen to the challenge and gotten responses from eight different agencies and departments. Traffic had been all but frozen, checkpoints established on all avenues, including back alleyways and hiking paths, and the media had been in a frenzy to find out why. Bill Allard and his counterparts at half a dozen agencies were going to have their hands full, coordinating and issuing press statements for the foreseeable future.

  They had found a single key in Watson’s pocket, but to a conventional door lock. That had both refined and deepened the complexity of the search, ruling out a nearby hotel, but implying everything else, including private residences.

  The fundamental problem had remained the same since Watson and his cohort first became a presence: No one knew anything about the other player, aside from the fact that he was most likely a male, and—from what Joe had seen of the two fleeing Rachel’s dorm—probably the team leader.

  Joe parked near the railroad tracks that had once played a key role in Burlington’s economic welfare—and now mostly stood in the way of its lakeside development—and took the stairs of the condominium building that McReady had identified, two at a time.

  The Burlington cop was waiting for him in the third-floor hallway.

  “What’ve you got?” Joe whispered.

  McReady held up Neil Watson’s key. “The lock this fits,” he said.

  “And?”

  The other man smiled slightly. “Given everything you and your team’s gone through, I thought I’d give you the honors. We started on the ground floor, quietly shoving this into every lock we could. Number thirty-nine proved the charm, but we left it at that. Didn’t knock or anything else.”

  “Any ideas who’s inside?”

  “We contacted management. They leased the place to a Matthew Richardson a few days ago, for a cash deposit.”

  “They say anything about him or them?” Joe asked.

  “It was all done by phone. I also talked to maintenance, to see if any of them had set eyes on either guy, and the answer—as usual—was Watson.”

  Joe had been walking down the hallway, toward number thirty-nine, as they’d been talking. A group of black-clad and heavily armed assault officers was grouped around the door.

  “You hear anything from inside?”

  “Classical music—sounds like public radio,” McReady said. He nodded toward the other men, who were crouched and ready to take the door by force. “We also have people watching the windows. How do you want to do it?”

  Joe was still holding the key in the palm of his hand. “Well, not to be a buzz killer, but let’s at least start out conventional.”

  He reached around from the side of the doorframe, making sure everyone was clear of any potential shots coming through the door, and knocked loudly.

  The answer was quick and laconic, if slightly muffled. “Come in. I’m assuming you have the key.”

  Joe readied the key as one of the TAC members held a small mirror up to the door’s peephole, to check for any shadows that would betray a presence on the other side—possibly armed.

  The officer gave Joe the thumbs-up. Joe fit the key into the lock, gave it a twist, and pushed the door open. It swung back on its hinges until gently bumping against the wall.

  “Come in. Come in,” said the same affable voice. “All’s safe and sound.”

  Again, the mirror was used. This time, its operator spoke softly to Joe. “He’s sitting by the window, at the far end. No weapon in sight. Hands visible.”

  An option all along had been for a strong tactical entry, involving weapons at the ready and possibly flash-bang grenades. But now, Joe was inclined to follow his instinct. He led the way inside—slowly and cautiously—but with his own gun holstered. The rest of the team followed, quickly spreading throughout the apartment to make sure that they were alone.

  They were, apart from the man in the chair, who sat with his legs crossed and his hands in his lap.

  “Welcome,” he said, greeting them with a smile.

  That sparked the limit of McReady’s team’s tolerance. They swept around Joe, grabbed the man like a rag doll, and slammed him face down onto the rug, his hands behind his back. They then checked him for weapons, as roughly as possible.

  Their leader then announced to McReady, as their nominal superior, “He’s clear.”

  Joe crouched by the man’s head, whose lef
t nostril was oozing a drop of blood. “What’s your name?”

  “You can call me Frank Niles.”

  “That your name?”

  “It’ll do.”

  “Your colleague was Neil Watson,” Joe said as a statement.

  “I gather ‘was’ is the operative word,” Niles replied.

  “You got that right, asshole,” one of the TAC members said in a low voice.

  The sentiment caused Joe to straighten up and tell McReady, “Mike, let everybody know how we appreciated their help. If you wouldn’t mind escorting Mr. Niles to the VBI offices, I’d like to continue this conversation over there.”

  McReady gave a quick nod. “Happy to be rid of him.”

  * * *

  Joe entered the small, windowless room with a cup of coffee and crossed to a steel table secured to the wall. Opposite him sat Frank Niles, handcuffed to a metal ring welded to the tabletop before him. He appeared as unflappable as ever, despite also having been grilled for hours by Sammie and Lester, in turn. Their report to Joe had been that (a) he seemed fully aware of the scant evidence against him, (b) he wasn’t about to self-incriminate by saying too much, and (c) he might be interested—for an unspecified consideration—in beginning a conversation addressing everyone’s mutual advantage.

  Joe placed a recorder on the table and asked, “You are Frank Niles?”

  “You know I am.”

  “You’ve been read your rights and have signed them?”

  “You know I have.”

  “For the record, this is Special Agent Joe Gunther of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation,” he continued, sitting down and arranging his coffee cup and papers. It was not his intention to repeat what his colleagues had just done. He was more curious about Niles’s supposed offer.

  He therefore began in a less-than-orthodox manner, given most acceptable interrogation techniques. “Do you, Frank Niles, admit being directly involved in the deaths of Benjamin Kendall, of Dummerston, Vermont; and Jennifer Sisto, of Philadelphia; and in the kidnapping of Nancy, Henry, and Abigail Filson, of St. Johnsbury, Vermont; and in the assault on Sandy Corcoran, of Milton, Vermont, after breaking into her home? Also, in the firebombing of a residence in Colchester, Vermont, and the attempted murder of those within?”