Proof Positive: A Joe Gunther Novel (Joe Gunther Series) (14 page)

“All set?” she asked after he was done.

“I know people think I’m nuts,” he said as they walked toward Nancy Filson’s apartment house. “And most of the time, I’m happy to agree with ’em.” He glanced up at the building’s ugly façade and shook his head slightly, adding, “But this time, I just got that feeling somebody was watching. Gave me the creeps.”

“You got good instincts,” she told him. “I wasn’t criticizing.”

They entered the hallway and stood to either side of Filson’s door before Willy pressed the bell while he looked up the staircase and down the hallway toward the back of the building.

There was no answer.

“Too bad we don’t have a warrant,” she said.

“Too bad we never had a chance in hell of getting one,” he replied sourly. “At least in this Goddamn state.”

She didn’t respond. Every cop bitched about the liberal laws of Vermont. To her, the restrictions didn’t mean much. It was what it was.

“What’s our next move?” she asked him.

He shifted to the foot of the stairs. “We’re not done with the first one yet,” he answered, and headed up.

The second floor was like the first—a single apartment door and, instead of a rear entrance, a custodian’s closet. For the size and appearance of the overall structure, this was a little surprising. It meant that the triple-storied building had only three residents. Each apartment had to be enormous.

Willy’s pounding on the door here resulted in a bright-eyed elderly woman opening up. “Yes?” she asked.

Both cops showed their credentials as Willy said, “Police, ma’am. We’re trying to locate Nancy Filson.”

The woman looked surprised. “She’s not home?”

Willy was about to answer in his usual style when Sammie quickly intervened. “No, ma’am. We just tried her bell.”

“Well,” she said, “she must have stepped out, then. I know she was there. I heard her just a while ago. I thought she might be cleaning. She does that quite a bit. Very neat girl.”

“How long ago?” Willy asked.

“That she stepped out? I wouldn’t know.”

“No,” Sammie spoke again. “How long since whatever it was you heard?”

“Oh. Not ten minutes. That’s why I was surprised that you missed her.”

Willy was already heading back downstairs.

“Thanks,” Sammie spoke over her shoulder, following him. “We may check it out, just to be sure.”

“Is she all right?” the woman asked. But neither cop answered her.

Willy headed directly to the back door and out into the alleyway. There, he turned and looked straight at a window with a square hole punched out of it.

“I knew it,” he growled. He pointed at the hole. “That exigent circumstances enough for you?”

“Yup,” Sammie replied.

Inside the apartment, they took in the disarray of the large living room and—visible through the nearest doorway—the pictures and files scattered about, the drawers hanging open, the closets emptied. Willy made to advance when Sammie grabbed his right arm. “They may’ve left prints, other trace.”

He kept going. “Not these guys, and we’re gonna find out just how good and fast they are if we fuck around waiting for a bunch of lab rats to tell us what we already know: They don’t screw up. We need to find out what they know and head ’em off at the pass.” He stopped abruptly to face her, indicating the surrounding mess. “Because,” he continued, “I guarantee that they got something out of this, and they’ve gone for it like dogs after a rabbit.”

“If that’s true, you think what they discovered is still here for us to find?” she asked him.

“I doubt it,” he replied. “But I got an idea.” He walked past her back out into the corridor and took the stairs up two at a time.

The woman was still home. “Did you find her?” she asked through her half-opened door.

“No, ma’am,” he said as Sammie joined them. “What’s your name?”

“It certainly isn’t ‘ma’am,’” she said with a slight smile. “But you didn’t give me much time to tell you that earlier. It’s Millicent Jarvis.”

“Yeah,” he apologized, “sorry ’bout that. But we’re in a real hurry.”

“So, Nancy is in trouble.”

“Not trouble, Ms. Jarvis,” Sam corrected her. “We’re trying to help her out.”

“Of course.”

“If she was to go anywhere,” Willy proposed, “like somewhere off the beaten track, where do you think she’d go? A particular friend, maybe? Or a family member?”

Jarvis didn’t hesitate. “Her parents. They’re very close. I’m afraid I don’t know their names. She just called them Mums and Pops. Not very useful.”

“Do you know where they live?”

She frowned. “No, I’m sorry. It’s supposed to be beautiful. Nancy’s spoken of it that way, which made me think it was out in the countryside somewhere. And I believe they moved there recently.”

“You think it was in Vermont?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure why I say that.”

Once again, Willy was backing toward the stairs. “Okay. Got it. Thanks.”

Millicent Jarvis reached out and touched Sam on the forearm. “He’s a little high-strung, isn’t he?”

Sam laughed and followed Willy’s lead.

Back in Filson’s apartment, Willy was dialing his cell phone.

“Going for her phone records?” Sam asked.

He nodded. “Not just. I’m puttin’ out that we better muckle onto Rachel Reiling, too. The way things’re going, we may not be able to stop these two before they figure out she’s the one they’re after.” Someone came on the line and he began talking. Sam left him to it and began exploring Nancy’s home, hoping Willy was wrong and that their predecessors here had left something relevant behind.

But she wasn’t confident. He had a good instinct for these things, especially about bad people.

*   *   *

Tausha Greenblott was not pleased to see them. “What the fuck do you want?”

Elizabeth McLarney opened her coat wide enough to show the badge clipped to her belt. “Don’t be nasty. We just wanna talk.”

“What about? I know my rights.”

Phil pushed by her and entered her apartment uninvited, saying in a low voice, “Like we care.”

“Hey!”
Tausha yelled at him. “You can’t do that.”

“We can if we’re not here to arrest you,” Elizabeth said, looking around the dark, shabby space like a disappointed Realtor. “Take it as a good sign. Wow. I thought
I
lived in a dump.”

Joe and Les exchanged glances over their colleagues’ aggressiveness and walked in as well, as Tausha complained, “Fuck you. This is my home. You’re not allowed in here.”

“You got anything to drink?” Phil asked, going to each door off the living room–kitchenette and glancing inside the bedroom, the bathroom, and the sole closet to make sure they were alone.

“Up yours,” their hostess said resignedly, and flopped down in an armchair covered with an old, patched blanket.

Elizabeth chose a hard-back chair from near the kitchenette’s card table, twisting it around so that she could rest her arms on its back as she addressed Greenblott conversationally. “So, Tausha. Tell us about Tommy.”

“Who?”

Elizabeth laughed. “There is nobody in the whole city who doesn’t know somebody named Tommy—it’s right up there with Bob. But you say, ‘Who?’ like I’d asked you about Rumpelstiltskin.”

She moved the chair closer, so that Greenblott had to shift her knees to avoid being rapped by it. “Where’s Tommy Bajek, Tausha?” she asked, her face suddenly hard.

“I don’t know,” Tausha conceded with a pout.

“He dump you?” Phil asked, still wandering around, looking at her possessions.

“Screw you,” she spat at him. “More like the opposite.”

“You broke up?” Elizabeth asked.

Tausha’s anger shifted briefly to a look of hurt. “That’s bull.”

“We heard he went up north on a job,” Elizabeth suggested.

“For good pay,” Joe added quietly.

“Yeah,” Elizabeth picked up. “Money that might’ve helped you get out of this hole.”

“Or at least kept you in dope for a month,” Phil contributed from his less hopeful view of reality.

Surprisingly, Greenblott didn’t have a comeback. She merely sat sprawled in the chair, looking deflated.

Joe took that as a good sign, at least for them. Since McLarney didn’t seem to mind other people chiming in, he said, “Tausha? We’ve got bad news. Tommy’s not going to come back.”

She looked up at him. “You locked him up?”

“I wish we had,” Elizabeth said, matching Joe’s tone. “It might’ve saved his life.”

Tausha drew her knees up to her chest. She wrapped her arms around her shins and buried her face until she was curled into a tight ball. Her muffled wailing was the only sound in the room.

Phil looked bored and moved to the room’s one window to look out. He made Joe think of how some outsiders inaccurately viewed Willy Kunkle, writing him off as callous and uncaring. Only here, Joe sensed that the caricature was more accurate.

As if setting a contrast to her partner, Elizabeth turned her chair around and sat so that her hands rested on Tausha’s feet as she spoke. “I’m really sorry. I know you had a thing going—dreams you shared.”

Joe was suddenly struck by something in the girl’s reaction, combined with aspects of her appearance that he’d overlooked until then—in particular, her loose clothing. He crouched by her chair and joined Elizabeth by asking, “When’s the baby due?”

It could have gone either way—not that they had much to lose. But she looked up at him tearfully and admitted, “Four months.”

“I’m so sorry,” he sympathized.

“What happened?” she asked meekly.

“You know the people he was with,” Elizabeth said. “You can guess what happened.”

Tausha’s eyes widened. “I never met them. Tommy just came home and told me about them.”

“What did he say?” Joe asked.

“That he’d hit it big. That if this went good, he’d be part of a team and pull in regular work.”

“Did he mention names?”

“No,” she said, drawing the word out in a moan.

“What did he make them sound like?” Elizabeth asked.

“Just this guy and his partner. He didn’t say who he was. He even joked and told me to call him Mr. X. It was stupid, but he said the guy was real private. That’s what made him so good. And that the two of them only used special people, once in a while, and that Mr. X treated them super good.”

“It was a test, then?” Joe asked. “Like an entrance exam?”

“Yeah, yeah. Like that.”

“And what was the test?”

“They had to go up north somewhere. Talk to a guy—that’s what Tommy said: ‘Talk to a guy.’ I mean, I know he meant other stuff, but he didn’t say.”

“When did you last hear from Tommy?” Elizabeth wanted to know.

She looked confused. “I don’t remember. A while ago. He said they’d be unreachable. I asked him what the fuck that meant, and he said he couldn’t call from the road. I been waiting ever since.”

She scowled suddenly and demanded, “What’s gonna happen to me? I’m totally up a creek now. Goddamned Tommy. I thought he’d dumped me, the bastard.”

Joe took her hand. “He didn’t, Tausha. He was working for you. Help us set this thing right. How did Tommy hear about Mr. X? He didn’t know him before he was hired, did he? Meaning somebody introduced them?”

“Yeah,” she said, but her voice revealed her growing lack of interest. The truth of her situation was beginning to take hold, and their concern with Tommy’s fate at the hands of Mr. X was fading in comparison with her own predicament.

“Who was it who put Tommy together with Mr. X, Tausha?” Elizabeth asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think maybe Jarek.”

“Jarek who?”

Tausha blinked and looked at them as if she’d been awakened from a dream. “I want you to leave. You’re trespassing.”

“Jarek who, Tausha?”

She jerked her feet away and struggled to sit up, putting her hands on the arms of the chair. Elizabeth pulled back and Joe quickly took Tausha’s elbow to help her up, muttering, “Steady. Wait for the feeling to come back to your legs.”

He shifted his position to cut her view off from the others, putting his face close to hers and smiling sympathetically. “You gonna be okay? Do you have any family or friends to help you out?”

She blinked at him a moment before asking, “Who are you?”

“Joe,” he said. “I’m from Vermont. I found Tommy.”

Her face slackened at the reminder. “Oh.”

He took one last shot: “What’s Jarek’s last name, Tausha, and we’ll be out of your hair.”

“Sroka. Get out.”

Joe glanced at Elizabeth, who nodded. They left.

*   *   *

Nancy laughed at her mother’s doubtful expression. “Trust me, Mums. I’ve done it before. It works like a magic trick.”

“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.”