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

  “You’re a funny guy, Frank,” Neil grumbled. “I’m just sayin’, ya know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How much longer till we get there?”

  “Burlington?” Frank asked, checking the dashboard GPS. “Another forty-five minutes.”

  Neil unholstered his gun and checked to see if a round was chambered. A nervous twitch, of course. He never carried it empty or uncharged.

  “I do like that they don’t have gun laws here,” he said. “I guess they’re not total losers.”

  “They’re hunters,” Frank told him. “Or at least that’s their culture.” He added cautiously, “Still, I don’t think it would be a great idea to be seen packing heat.”

  Neil replaced the gun angrily. “No shit, Frank. I got that. How long you think we’ll be stuck here, anyhow?”

  Frank tilted his head philosophically, personally enjoying what was parading by their windows. He liked mountains and sloping meadows and quaint farmhouses leaking plumes of chimney smoke. But unlike Neil, he also enjoyed reading and listening to music and even going to a museum now and then. “You know as much as I do. Kendall gave us diddly before he croaked. The museum Web site said nothing about him or who was behind getting his pictures on the wall, except for that ‘anonymous donor’ bullshit I showed you. Maybe it’ll all be printed on a plaque on the wall when we get there.”

  “And if it isn’t?”

  Frank smiled pleasantly. “Then we do what we do. Find out who’s got what we need and have a chat with them, too.”

  “That’s done us a lot of good so far,” Neil groused.

  Frank shrugged. “We’ll get what the customer wants. That’s what we get paid for.”

  * * *

  Lester Spinney awoke from his nap and sighed at the long line of traffic stretching ahead of their temporary hilltop vantage point. To him, it looked like an oversized boa, its scales comprised of shimmering blotches of colorful automotive paint. They were in New Jersey, on I-287, driving south at fifteen miles an hour.

  “Who are all these people?” he wondered aloud. “And why’re they out here, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week? It doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “I ask myself the same thing every time I come here,” Joe replied. “Rough night?”

  “Total waste. As a favor, I helped out a pal at the Springfield PD last night. A no-brainer, but it took forever.” Resigned to the wonder of so much traffic, Spinney reached into the back seat of the car to retrieve their case file, speaking as he did so. “Sam told me that McLarney had sent up something from Philadelphia, but you sprang this trip on me first thing this morning. I’m not complaining, by the way. But why’re we going there?”

  “Sorry ’bout that,” Joe said, keeping his eyes on the bumper four feet ahead. “I was planning to tap Sammie for this, figuring she’d like to stretch her legs a little, but I think she saw it as a chance for her and Willy to get a little private time in, away from us. Was Sue okay with the short notice?”

  “Oh sure,” Lester told him. “The way the hospital throws extra shifts at her, she’ll probably barely notice. It’s more Dave who’s on my mind right now.”

  “Oh?” Joe knew that Lester’s eighteen-year-old son had recently joined his local sheriff’s department, so the concern was meaningful. Lester was in some ways his most dependable teammate. Also the unit’s only traditional family man, he was steady, reliable, good-natured, and smart. Hard qualities to beat.

  “Yeah,” Spinney said. “He got into the academy.”

  Joe looked at him. “But that’s great.” He hesitated before asking, “Isn’t it?”

  Lester burst out laughing, setting his boss at ease. “Oh, yeah. He’s totally psyched. But nervous, too. He’s never been away from home, and he’s all worked up about being a wimp. Everyone at the sheriff’s department is telling him what ball busters the instructors are. You know the routine.”

  Joe waved a hand at the manila folder now in Lester’s lap. “Compare the pictures of Ben Kendall with the ones of Jennifer Sisto, from the Philly PD. Tell me what you see.”

  Les leafed through the pictures and pulled out the appropriate ones, as instructed. “Damn,” he said, half to himself, pausing over Sisto’s. “They sure worked her over. Thank God it doesn’t look as bad as I thought it might.”

  “Difference between inflicting pain that shows and that which doesn’t,” Joe suggested. “Look at her forearms and especially that mark on her side, near her abdomen.”

  “Okay.”

  “You could argue that those could’ve gotten there any number of ways, but look at the same spots on Ben Kendall.”

  Les pulled up a roughly similar shot of their case subject. “That’s not so easy. He’s pretty far gone.”

  “Give it a hard look. See the similarity?” Joe asked.

  Lester took his time. “That’s weird.”

  Joe nodded. The traffic was beginning to pick up slightly. “There are others. Some are subtle—or hard to see, like you said—but I think they’re telling.”

  Lester studied one anatomical region at a time, shifting back and forth between pictures. “It’s like they were handled the same way,” he concluded.

  “Exactly,” Joe agreed. “But she’s spread out and tied down, consistent with a torture/murder, while he was found under a supposed avalanche of his own making, looking like an accident.”

  “And he has a lot fewer marks on him overall,” Les added.

  “True, which I think ties into the other guy we found at his place,” Joe said. “Check out the rap sheet McLarney sent us for Tomasz Bajek.”

  “How’s he play into it?” Lester asked, scanning the referenced document.

  “My guess is, Bajek getting killed screwed things up, at least in part,” Joe answered. “It would help explain why Ben’s place wasn’t more disturbed, and why Ben doesn’t show all the torture marks that his ex-wife does.”

  “Because Ben’s interrogation was interrupted by Bajek getting entombed?”

  “In part,” Joe ventured. “I also think Ben died prematurely. Hillstrom couldn’t pin his death to trauma, maybe because his heart caved under the strain first. He wasn’t getting any younger and his eating habits must’ve made mine look like a health nut’s.”

  Spinney looked up from his paperwork and gazed at the urban landscape around them. “What a crazy deal.”

  “And there’s something else,” Joe continued. He reached out and tapped on some documents toward the back of the file. “Pull that out—it’s a printout from Rachel’s video, of the pictures of that young woman he had on his bedroom wall. Compare them to Jennifer Sisto.”

  Lester did as urged, holding the glossies side by side. He shook his head sadly. “Lotta years in between, but definitely the same woman. That’s bad.”

  “It’s also another reason I think Ben was left to rot,” Joe explained. “Once he died in their hands and Bajek got crushed in the tunnel, they still weren’t necessarily staring at a blank wall.” He indicated the printout. “They had Jenn in reserve. We may never get to see the originals that were on that wall, but I’m betting that if we did, we’d see her name on the back—or something, in any case, that made the connection between Ben and the ex-wife he still clearly loved. That’s why we’re heading to Philly—’cause I think it’s what they did.”

  They were silent for a while, the traffic flow now back to normal.

  “What I’m hoping,” Joe kept going, unasked, “is that since we’re assuming Bajek wasn’t alone, we can maybe help Detective McLarney identify his local playmates, and from that find out who was with him in Vermont. That’ll help us with our case and, with any luck, help her figure out who did in Jennifer Sisto.”

  He glanced at his colleague. “Assuming crossed fingers still work.”

  * * *

  Frank, after considerable effort, found a parking place slightly west of the hospital, off Colchester Avenue, in Burlington’s northeast quadrant, where the combinati
on of the University of Vermont and the Fletcher Allen Health Care campuses overwhelmed the neighborhood—and the available parking. It was colder than it had been in New Jersey, where they began this trip after meeting with the senator in New York. Both men adjusted their coats as they stepped away from the car and made their way across the broad street, toward the museum housing Ben Kendall’s exhibition.

  The setting struck Frank as being at odds with itself, given his usual stomping grounds and the conversation he’d just had with Neil in the car. Considering Burlington’s size and urban presence, Frank still couldn’t shake the feeling that, in this far northern, thinly populated state, reputed for its independence, mountainous isolation, and hardy, terse inhabitants, nature was the ruling force—patient, benignly dominant, and passively lethal to the unprepared.

  He removed the scarf from his pocket and looped it around his neck.

  They passed a group of laughing students upon entering a pedestrian path, prompting Neil to comment, “Good-lookin’ girls. Might be worth a return trip in the summer, when they’re not wearing so much.”

  Frank didn’t respond. Neil’s verbal patter was like background noise to him by now—not much different from distant freeway traffic, or the ticking of a small clock. He certainly never bothered the man with the kinds of ruminations he’d just been entertaining. It would have been akin to discussing philosophy with a hammer.

  He led the way around the corner of the museum and walked into its narrow atrium-style lobby. There, without uttering a word, he approached the ticket counter, purchased admissions for himself and Neil by holding up two fingers, and proceeded toward one of the museum’s ground-floor galleries, following a sign reading OUTSIDE THE FRAME—ONE PHOTOGRAPHER’S VIEW OF REALITY, and ignoring the exhibitions through which they walked.

  Given the day of the week and its now being midafternoon, there was virtually no one in the gallery.

  Neil, inattentive to the building’s vast and imposing Marble Court at his back, peered across the threshold, pausing by the large plaque by the door.

  “Frank,” he said in a low voice, “I thought you said there’d be a name we could chase down.”

  Frank glanced at the signage. “I said there might be.”

  He scanned the text and found only a jumble of verbiage addressing the era of the war, and the fact that this “remarkable, hitherto unknown” collection of anonymous photographs had come to the museum’s attention through the generosity of a “thoughtful and generous member of the academic community.”

  “Could’ve been the night watchman,” he murmured before walking farther into the quiet gallery and looking around.

  “You think?” Neil asked, following.

  Frank ignored him, moving from image to image. “Nice stuff,” he commented.

  Neil was still looking around vaguely. “Whatever. Looks like a bunch of dumb snapshots to me.”

  But Frank was clearly in his element, as Neil saw it. “Look at them. They’re great. Each one of them pretends to show one thing, while revealing another.”

  “Of course,” Neil faked, slapping his forehead. “Now I totally get it.”

  Frank nodded as if Neil had said something encouraging. He began pointing out examples of an evolving theme, ignoring Neil’s eye rolling. “Look at the framing, how the camera’s angled. The richness of the detail. Especially in the Nam pictures. It’s the absence of action that makes it all stand out. If he’s not showing the war, what is he showing? Right? There’s real beauty there, regardless of the setting. And the guy was all about how to use light. It’s almost like it didn’t matter what was in the foreground. Like those soldiers there—they’re basically irrelevant.” He traveled to one of the newer, abstract portraits. “And here it is in stark isolation—all action gone, all distracting human eye candy. All that remains is the essence of light and shape. Wonderful. The curator really got it.”

  Frank paused, shook his head, and sighed slightly, his fun over. “Okay,” he said, pausing before one of the few images featuring American servicemen. “Look at that.”

  Neil stared at the photograph, of members of a squad on the edge of a clearing and a cluster of huts. “Okay.”

  “See anyone familiar?”

  Neil glanced at him quickly. “Frank, I wasn’t alive back then. You weren’t, neither.”

  “Go on. Look carefully.”

  Now mildly intrigued, Neil stood with arms akimbo and scrutinized the shot. “The big guy, maybe?” he said finally.

  Frank laughed. “Beats me.”

  Neil scowled. “You are such an asshole. What the fuck’re we doin’ here?”

  Frank shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe it’s got something to do with one of these guys.”

  “They’re not doin’ nuthin’,” Neil complained.

  “Nope,” Frank replied thoughtfully, moving down the line and studying the rest. “I noticed that, too. Could be it’s one of the junk piles that’s got the senator all worked up. Maybe he’s after a thing, not a person.”

  Neil scratched his head. “So, what’re you sayin’?”

  “Nothing in particular. ‘Theirs but to do and die.’”

  “What?”

  Frank pointed toward the exit. “We need to find out who’s behind this. Let’s have a chat with the young lady at the admission counter.”

  * * *

  The Philadelphia Police Department headquarters is a 1960s-era stained, concrete, curvilinear monster. Designed to be hip and progressive in its time—despite resembling either a pair of handcuffs from the air, or a woman’s reproductive organs—now it is neither legitimately antique nor useful for its original purpose, stimulating a vigorous public debate concerning its fate. In the meantime, the city leaders had pragmatically if ironically chosen an almost ninety-year-old building to be the PD’s new home, and were currently readying it for occupancy.

  As Joe and Lester negotiated traffic to enter the building’s parking lot, Joe could only sympathize with the structure’s occupants. As large as it appeared from the outside, he’d read that the building bulged with twice its designated population, and had proved hopelessly ill equipped to handle new technology.

  He and Lester located the homicide unit on the second floor, in jammed-together quarters whose wear and tear made the exterior seem sparkling by contrast. The desks and chairs looked fresh from a massive curbside “free” pile, the odd computer screen was as out of context as a Star Wars light saber, and the linoleum had been worn down to the subflooring under each mismatched desk.

  That being said, the expressions greeting the two out-of-towners were universally pleasant and welcoming, including from the woman who approached them first, her hand extended. “You the Vermonters? Elizabeth McLarney. We spoke on the phone.”

  The obligatory formalities were invoked, with introductions and more handshakes all around, Lester issuing the standard joke that there’d better not be a quiz at the end. It was one of the happy conventions of law enforcement that, much to the consternation of movie screenwriters fond of turf tension, most cops tended to recognize a hardworking counterpart when they met one.

  “So,” McLarney addressed them, after she, Phil DesAutels, and their guests had settled around a small, cramped table with one wobbly leg. “This is pretty old-school, you two driving all the way down to deliver what could’ve been e-mailed and/or Skyped in seconds flat.”

  “I suppose,” Joe admitted. “I’m not big on the modern stuff.”

  “He still refuses to text,” Lester threw in.

  “Of course,” DesAutels suggested in a neutral voice, toning down his partner’s cheery welcome. “Or maybe you didn’t trust us to do your legwork.”

  “Not true,” Joe countered. “Our legwork’s the same as yours, as I see it.” He laid out the photos as he’d had Lester do earlier. “Compare the injuries on the two bodies. Tell me there’re not enough similarities to make you wonder.”

  Phil and Elizabeth leaned in together and exchanged a couple of murmu
red comments before she looked up and asked, “Was Ben Kendall stretched out with duct tape restraints?”

  “Not when we found him,” Joe replied. “But the marks on his body are consistent with a manhandling. We just didn’t go there initially, because the circumstances didn’t suggest it—a hoarder’s landslide could’ve caused the same injuries. The new working theory, though, is that whoever did this was warming up on him when he died of natural causes, after which they covered him up with a pile of stuff to make it look like an accident.”

  Les slid over the photograph of their second dead body, saying, “The same working theory has it that Bajek got crushed while he was trying to ferret out whatever it is they were after.”

  Joe spoke to Phil’s suspicion directly. “I hear you about stepping on toes, but unless I read your report wrong, you’re about where we are with our case, which is close to nowhere.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Elizabeth said. “But Bajek is a detail we didn’t have before you brought him to us.”

  “Did you get anything out of the people in Sisto’s life?” Joe asked.

  Elizabeth shook her head. “She was pretty retiring. Worked at home for a couple of docs, doing their bookkeeping, and basically only had the one friend, Chelsea Kline. We checked them all out. They were useless.”

  “We also tore apart what was left of her apartment,” Phil added. “Which is how we found out about Kendall and you guys. But otherwise, it gave us nothin’.”

  “Unless you see something in it that we missed,” his partner mentioned. “We have a complete inventory, including the address book listing Kendall. Maybe some of the other names there’ll ring a bell—not that there’s much, period.”

  “We could give it a look,” Joe said agreeably.

  “You want to see her place?” Elizabeth asked. “It’s still sealed.”

  Joe glanced at Lester before replying, “I don’t think we need to. You clearly went over it with a microscope. From our perspective, the best lead is Bajek.”

  Phil made a face. “What else we got?”

  Elizabeth rose from her chair. “Up for a field trip?” she asked. “First stop is lovely, scenic Port Richmond—Tommy Bajek’s last known address.”