Proof Positive: A Joe Gunther Novel (Joe Gunther Series) Page 3

  “I take it that didn’t turn out well.”

  “No. You remember those days—nightly reports of body counts and defoliation and hearts-and-minds rhetoric and soldiers putting Zippos to thatch-roofed shacks.”

  “They called them hooches,” Joe said quietly, his own memory reaching back all too easily.

  “Yes,” she recalled. “Well, it was also a PR battle against the protesters the world over, and Ben was caught up in the middle of it. He was photographing appalling things and then being ordered to cull through them so that they looked like the U.S. was winning the war. The letters he wrote home that his wife shared with us became darker and darker. He wrote that he began carrying two cameras—the army’s and his own—so that he could document what mattered to him. The irony is that those pictures mostly showed scenes and people that look unaffected by the war, as if he was using the second camera to distance himself from the horror.” She sighed and fiddled with the salad that, so far, she’d barely touched.

  “Did he suffer from PTSD?” Joe asked.

  She looked up from her reveries. “Oh, much worse than that. I mean, yes, he did, but the bullet he stopped with his head did the real damage.”

  Joe stared at her, his mouth open.

  She scowled at her own dramatics. “I’m sorry. That was a little much. Guilt is so hard to keep in perspective.”

  “Isn’t that a contradiction right there?”

  She laughed, if only briefly. “Granted.”

  “So he was sent home,” Joe brought her back on track.

  “He was. In a coma. He’d sustained critical damage to the frontal lobe, and stayed in the hospital for almost a year, after which he did all he could do to essentially disappear, including ending his marriage.”

  “That when the hoarding began?”

  “Not immediately, but soon thereafter. Personality changes are not uncommon in traumatic brain injury.”

  Joe took a bite of his burger. Not as distracted as she was, he was hungry. “What happened to his pictures?” he asked.

  She placed her cheek in her hand, making him think that she might start to cry. A seasoned listener, he was struck by how affected he was by her distress, and was thereby reminded—yet again—of much she’d come to mean to him.

  “I should have known that you’d go to the heart of it,” she said. “That’s why I called you about this.”

  “The photographs?”

  “Indirectly.”

  He didn’t show his utter lack of comprehension. “So, tell me,” he urged instead.

  “He kept quite a few,” she began. “At least, the ones he was allowed to—the ones he took for himself.”

  Joe waited, continuing to eat.

  “Of course, he was unconscious when he came back. The army just collected his possessions, including what he was wearing when he was shot—which again sounds peculiar, given these days of blood-borne pathogens—and shoved them into a trunk and shipped them home. And those films sat, probably for years, knowing Ben, until he began getting back into photography.”

  “Where was he living by then?” Joe asked.

  “Here,” she said. “In Vermont. I’d moved up to take the medical examiner’s job—fresh from a fellowship in forensic pathology at the City of Philadelphia ME’s office. I’d been here a little while, and had met and married Daniel, when Ben told me that he also wanted to ‘live in the sticks,’ as he put it. I helped him find the Dummerston property. Technically, I guess you could say I bought it for him, since I was the mortgage holder. But he paid me rent, the first of every month.”

  “Huh,” Joe said. “I had no idea.”

  She smiled sadly. “I know what you’re thinking. It didn’t look like it does now. It was nice—a true picture postcard. By then, Ben’s father had died, he’d inherited a modest amount, the military was paying him disability, and I helped out with the bigger bills, if I thought he’d accept it.”

  “Did he? Beyond the house?”

  “Hardly ever. We’d gotten back in touch after he left the hospital. It wasn’t as it had been when we were kids, but there remained a genuine closeness. In fact, until he met Rachel, I was the only family member he’d speak with. And I think he was grateful for my finding him a corner of the earth in which to hide—not that he ever admitted it.”

  “That makes sense,” Joe said. “How did Rachel get involved?”

  “She was struggling to find a suitable subject for a video documentary, and I told her that Ben might be both appropriate and approachable. I knew he was a hoarder, and that the topic is popular right now. I was hoping he might help her along. Of course, I had an ulterior motive: I’d always wanted to draw him out a bit more—he was outwardly gregarious, but remained inwardly guarded—and I also wanted him to meet at least one of my daughters and perhaps form a friendship.”

  “I take it that worked,” Joe suggested.

  “More than I’d dared to hope. They hit it off. It took a while. Hoarders are not generally open to scrutiny, and certainly not fond of people invading their inner sanctum. They are at once embarrassed and possessive of their supposed riches. But Rachel was clever enough to show up first without her camera, and to keep private what she thought about his lifestyle. She’s a canny young woman.”

  “Not unlike her mother.”

  Beverly accepted the compliment. “Thank you. In any case, she eventually made it a habit to drop by Ben’s every few weeks, and he became a virtual tour guide of his world for her. You can see the footage—in fact, you’ll probably want to. He reminded me of that appropriately named idiot toady, Robin Leach—who hosted Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous years ago. Ben would hold up random scraps of junk and go into their histories and provenance as if they were objets d’art. Of course,” she added, backpedaling a little, “they were valuable to him, I guess, so I shouldn’t be judgmental.”

  “Did Rachel finish her project?” Joe wanted to know.

  “No. Actually, the story becomes a little more tangled. The project expanded as a result of finding Ben’s photographs. She stumbled across hundreds of portraits that he’d taken of his piles of possessions, almost as if they were family photos. She was astonished, of course. I’d told her that he’d been a photographer, but even I hadn’t realized that he’d kept it up. He’d exchanged the photojournalism of his youth for these abstract images of all sorts of—” she hesitated again. “—things.”

  “Anything good?”

  Her face brightened with pleasure. “They are amazing, Joe. Truly beautiful. When Rachel brought them home, it felt like she’d uncovered the lost masterpieces of some extraordinary artist. It was such a gift. They immediately made me think of past masters like Weston and Steichen, but with a style all their own. Some are so detailed, and almost voluptuous, that they look three-dimensional—reminiscent of those famous nudes and bell peppers that always appear in art books. But Ben’s extend even further, lending the same sort of sensuality to objects most of us regard as trash.”

  “You have them?” Joe asked, surprised.

  “Yes. That also took some doing. Hoarders are not prone to letting go. But given that it was Rachel, and that she promised to return them safe and sound, he finally came around. It didn’t hurt that she got the college museum interested in displaying them in a one-man show.”

  Joe’s brow furrowed slightly. “How did they find out about him?”

  “She showed her advisor some raw footage from her video project, including a couple of Ken Burns–style slow pans of Ben’s photographs. The advisor showed it to the curator, and then urged Rachel to convince Ben to share his work with the rest of the world.

  “The irony was,” Beverly added, “that in the end, the abstracts weren’t the exhibition’s sole focus. Once again, the war came back to haunt, as Ben put it. Scrounging through the collection, Rachel discovered some old Vietnam prints. They were completely at odds with most photographs of that time and place—which always zeroed in on the violence. Like the abstracts—whic
h are really still lifes—these were so compelling and unusual that the museum wanted them, too.”

  “How did Ben feel about that?” Joe asked. “Sounds like he wasn’t too happy.”

  “In many ways, my cousin was a fatalist.” Beverly continued, “He knew in his heart that he could never be free of Vietnam. But, to answer your question, this is where Rachel got really creative. At first, she was merely surprised to have found the Vietnam pictures. She never knew Ben had been over there. But when she returned to Dummerston to tell him of the museum’s excitement, she was completely unprepared for his reaction. He had a meltdown, and refused to be any further part of her plan.

  “But don’t forget that by now, she had physical possession of the entire archive. It was at my house, where most of it still is. That gave her the leverage to slowly work him around to agreeing to have all of it displayed, albeit anonymously, and with only a token showing of the war images.”

  “Nobody knows who shot it?” Joe asked.

  “That was the deal. If the Vietnam pictures were included, they were to play a minor role, and there was to be no credit given.”

  “Is the exhibition still on?”

  “Not only on, but it’s one of the most popular the museum has ever mounted. The New York Times ran an article about it in their Sunday edition. It turns out that a reporter from the magazine section was in Burlington, visiting relatives, when they decided to see the show. Now everyone’s flocking to see it.”

  Joe smiled slightly. “I take it Rachel got a passing grade.”

  “Not yet, but this certainly won’t hurt. Remember, the video assignment is still unfinished,” Beverly replied. “And sadly, everything’s been tainted by Ben’s passing. There are so many odd aspects to the timing of his death. That was one of the reasons that I reached out to you, Joe. There is possibly so much more to it than what’s appearing on the surface.”

  “Where’s Rachel now?” Joe asked.

  “Burlington. She lives in one of the dorms, and I’ve already asked her if she’d be willing to speak with you. I hope you don’t mind. She’d very much like to, if you’re interested.”

  “I am. I’d also like to see the photographs.”

  His two statements cheered her considerably. “As I mentioned,” she said, “the exhibition is still up, but I have copies at home—along with hundreds more—if you’d like to see them.”

  He waved at the waitress, commenting, “I thought you’d never ask.”

  * * *

  Hillstrom lived south of Burlington, on the edge of Lake Champlain, in what, to Joe’s eyes, was a tastefully understated mansion. Her ex-husband, Daniel Reiling, was one of the city’s more successful lawyers, and Beverly’s income as chief medical examiner for over twenty years was substantial. Even before Joe had heard about her moneyed background, he’d felt that she was well off.

  They arrived in two cars, since neither one of them ever knew when a pager call might summon them to their separate duties, and began the second half of their evening in the kitchen, standing by the fridge and eating ice cream out of its container with a shared spoon.

  Joe took advantage of their proximity to lean over and put his cool mouth on hers.

  She chuckled as they kissed, lightly licking the vanilla from his lips. “This is where it began in earnest,” she said softly, reminiscing about an earlier late-night snack in this same kitchen.

  He laughed. “That’s right. The famous midnight bowl of soup.”

  “I couldn’t have you driving all night without dinner,” she protested.

  “I remember getting more than dinner that night,” he said, kissing her again.

  She dropped the spoon into the container and placed it onto the nearby counter before draping her arms around his neck and kissing him deeply. “I am so glad you accepted my invitation to drop by.”

  He stroked her back, his fingers gliding across her figure, gathering up the fabric of her blouse until he’d pulled it free of her slacks. “I’m glad I happened to be working a case so nearby.”

  She stiffened with a moan as he slid his hands up along her spine and unhooked her bra. Her fingers buried themselves in his hair. “There’s a sofa I’d like to show you, just through that door,” she murmured.

  He reached around to cup one of her breasts. “I’d like to see it.”

  In a slow shuffle, punctuated by dropped clothes, they worked their way out into the living room.

  The ice cream was left to melt.

  * * *

  Ben Kendall’s boxes of photographs looked out of place, piled in the corner of one of Beverly’s immaculate guest rooms. They were old, discolored, dented, and scarred by a lifetime of being shoved about from one spot to another, and then—finally—abandoned in the heart of a hoard.

  “Was he taking pictures up to the end?” Joe asked as they stood side by side, wearing long, belted bathrobes—after visiting the downstairs sofa and then using one of the largest shower stalls Joe had ever seen.

  “No,” she said. “From what Rachel and I could determine, he gave it up about ten years ago—maybe longer. When she first found the still lifes, she told me that Ben seemed genuinely surprised, as if he’d completely forgotten they existed.”

  “That seem likely?”

  She pursed her lips before responding, “It’s possible. Hoarders covet their belongings while forgetting what they’ve got. It can sometimes be difficult to tell if they’re absentminded or coy.” She hesitated and then added, “Of course, we’re talking about the later work. Not the Vietnam material. That would have been a more emotionally charged topic, but Rachel didn’t discover that until after she’d brought all this here.” She waved her hand across the pile of boxes.

  Joe got to his knees and pulled one off the top, opening it carefully. Beverly joined him, holding back the flaps as he reached in and extracted a thick wad of eleven-by-fourteen-inch black-and-white prints.

  “See what I mean?” she asked as he began leafing through the collection—all of it documenting a mesmerizing world of angles and objects, light and shadow, at once detailed and open, seductive and disturbingly harsh. He thought back to her comments about the unlikeliness of scrap metal being able to compete with artistically posed nudes as subject matter. Now he could understand what she’d been saying. In his eyes, Ben Kendall had become the undiscovered genius that fiction so often heralds, but which so rarely exists in fact.

  Beverly crawled to one side of the pile to drag over another box. “Here is some of the war stuff.”

  Her description had prepared him for something unusual, but the close-up portraits, urban scenes, and vistas of Vietnam’s eerily familiar countryside were arresting in their peacefulness. Cumulatively, they were testament to how a culture at war can at least in part maintain the appearance of normalcy.

  But there were others—a few images of soldiers on patrol, their eyes wide and fearful, of a land mauled by past explosions and fire—which struck a deep-seated chord of pathos and sorrow for a combat veteran like Joe. They weren’t numerous, or graphic. There were no likenesses of a napalmed child running naked down a road, arms outstretched, or of a South Vietnamese officer shooting a man in the head. But such icons echoed as distant memories nevertheless, and because of them, Ben’s pictures of a nation and a people struggling to maintain a peaceful routine became all the more powerful.

  Sensing as much, Beverly laid her hand supportively on his shoulder as he studied the sampling before them.

  “Such a waste,” she said.

  He didn’t argue the point. He’d once followed the orders of superior officers to fight for God and country, never questioning—at first—how either God or the country’s fate were remotely being threatened by the enemy opposing him.

  He thought of the costs, both immediate and long range, blatant and subtly corrosive. “And not one that’s run its course yet, more’s the pity.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Philadelphia homicide detective Philip DesAutels logged
in with the uniformed officer at the apartment’s front door and stepped inside. His partner, Elizabeth McLarney—the so-called “up-person” for this call, or nominal lead—was already there, having responded directly from the unit’s headquarters.

  “You get to have dinner?” she asked. She was wearing a Tyvek suit, a disposable hospital cap, and surgical booties over her shoes.

  He frowned as he struggled to match her appearance, variously pulling, grunting, and hopping on one foot as he spoke. “Girl had just taken my hoagie order, and—bam—the pager went off. It’s like clockwork, every damn time.”

  Elizabeth reached out with her latex-gloved hand and patted his proud belly. “I think you’ll live, Phil. Draw on your reserves.”

  DesAutels extracted gloves from his pocket and yanked them on as final preparation. “Very cute. What’ve we got?”

  They were in a section of town just west of University City called Cedar Park—an early-1900s mixed neighborhood of two- and three-story row houses, apartments, small stores, a few restaurants, and a couple of churches. It was slowly undergoing a financial uplifting, stimulated in part by the muscle flexing of the nearby University of Pennsylvania, but its roots as a post–Civil War “trolley car” suburb of Center City were clear to see, as were the rail tracks still in use along Baltimore Avenue, the neighborhood’s main drag.

  Not the high-rent district, but not the kind of area where McLarney and DesAutels spent most of their professional time, either.

  Elizabeth had him follow her past a small living room with bow windows overlooking the front porch, and down a narrow hallway. They were on the first floor of a three-story Queen Anne row house, once a family home, but since then chopped up into three separate apartments, cramped and made awkward by the need to accommodate a landing, a bathroom, and a kitchen on each floor.