Proof Positive: A Joe Gunther Novel (Joe Gunther Series) (16 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Beverly Hillstrom was waiting for Joe at the VBI’s Burlington office on Cherry Street. He had driven there directly from Philadelphia after receiving Willy’s news about the disappearance of the Filson family and catching only a few short hours of sleep.

She gave him a hug as she asked firmly but without anger, “What the hell is going on? Your people grabbed Rachel out of class late yesterday afternoon, supposedly for her own safety, but won’t give us an explanation. According to them,
you
have to do that. They told me where you’ve been, so I didn’t call, and they’ve been very accommodating, but was that entirely necessary?”

He asked the nearest agent, “Where’d you put Rachel Reiling?”

“Down the hall, third door on the right,” he was told.

“I could have told you that,” Beverly said. “We’ve been keeping each other company for hours.”

Joe wrapped his arm around her waist and escorted her down the hallway, explaining, “I want to tell you both what’s happened.”

She took advantage of the interlude to assess him quickly. “You look like hell. How was Philadelphia?”

He laughed. “Interesting, and you look terrific, as always.”

He turned the doorknob and entered the indicated room to find Rachel sitting by the window, staring out at the overcast morning sky.

Rachel stood as they both entered. “Oh,” she said. “Hi.”

He waved her back into her seat, positioned another one for Beverly, and sat on the edge of a desk that had been shoved up against the wall. The room was someone’s office, complete with family photos and knickknacks scattered about. He guessed that its occupant was temporarily bunking with a colleague—probably as a courtesy to Joe. The cot in one corner testified that the place had been turned into a bedroom.

“First off,” he began, “are you both okay? Have they been feeding you well?”

Beverly resumed her severe tone. “Joe, none of that is of any interest to us. Please explain what’s going on.”

He did not mince words. “My squad and I, working here and in Philadelphia, have been chasing the men we believe killed Ben. But not just because of that. We also think they’re now hunting for someone who can tell them about Ben’s photos, which means you, Rachel, whether they know it yet or not.”

“What?” she murmured.

“So far,” Joe continued, “several people have been killed and/or terrorized, and we think three more have been kidnapped.” He stared straight at the young woman. “That’s why we’re protecting you. As for why we didn’t tell you what was going on, or for any other oversights we may have committed, I can only apologize and take full responsibility. Cops are not always great at either sharing information or making people comfortable in times of turmoil. Please accept my apologies for any distress. Their actions were all well intentioned and on my orders, but I took off for Philly pretty abruptly and left a few things hanging. I am sorry.”

Rachel was staring at him wide-eyed, but her mother responded, “That’s the least of anyone’s worries. What can you say for sure about this threat to Rachel? Why do they care about a college student’s project?”

“We don’t know why and we don’t know who,” Joe admitted. “It does seem to have something to do with the photographs, like I said, but we’re not sure what. We interviewed Sandy Corcoran, who was questioned by one of these men—there may or may not be two of them—and she said that he wanted to know specifically about the source of the pictures. Not who took them, but the person or persons who brought them to the museum’s attention.”

“Why?” Beverly repeated.

“We don’t know,” Joe said. “We can dream up scenarios till the cows come home, but we got nothing to back them up. One of the more obvious possibilities is that the pictures show something these two men think you know about.” He pointed at Rachel.

“Was the man who was discovered during the excavation of Ben’s house one of these men?” Hillstrom followed up. “Mr. Bajek?”

“Maybe. A hired hand. We traced him back to Philadelphia. We went to his apartment, talked with his girlfriend, and tried to contact the man we believe introduced him to these killers, but there again, all we ended up with are suppositions. We only
think
he may have been hired to help chase Ben down in Vermont, which, after he and Ben both died,
seems
to have led to the murder of Ben’s ex-wife—”

“Jenn’s dead?” Beverly interrupted.

Joe rubbed his eyes. “That was tactless. Not enough sleep. I shouldn’t have told you that way. Yes, she’s dead, and it looks like she was questioned beforehand. That’s what prompted us to drive down to see if we could get a lead on some of this, since Bajek also came from Philly. But we don’t know why she was killed, except that it may have been for the same reason: to discover who had access to the photos.”

“But, as far as I know, Jennifer Sisto hadn’t been in contact with Ben or the rest of the family in decades,” Beverly protested.

“We know that,” Joe reminded her. “But these guys may not have. And Bajek’s death in that booby trap, combined with Ben suddenly dying of natural causes, probably cranked up everyone’s adrenaline and made things uglier—’specially for Jenn.”

In the pause that followed that image, Joe tried to bring them back to the issue at hand. “Anyhow, that’s why we yanked Rachel from class. If we’re right about any of this, we need to keep her safe.”

Beverly rose and moved to the door. “I totally agree. Can you show me where the ladies’ room is, Joe? We’ve been cooped up here drinking coffee for quite a while.”

“Of course.” Joe rose and opened the door, telling Rachel, “We’ll be right back.”

In the hallway, however, Beverly placed her hand on his arm. “I don’t need a bathroom. I need to know what you haven’t told us.”

He glanced back up the corridor, having spotted a small conference room earlier. “Come with me,” he said, steering her by the elbow. “I should’ve known you’d see a few holes in all that.”

As they entered the room, she said, “If these people went as far back as Jenn Sisto, and from that, you concluded that Rachel was in danger, I’d have to be an idiot not to notice a gap or two. Rachel’s never even
heard
of Jenn. And I’m also assuming that your euphemism about Jenn’s being questioned beforehand means that Jenn was tortured.”

He closed the door behind them and conceded, “You’re right. They also grabbed Sandy Corcoran and got her to give them Rachel’s advisor.”

“Nancy Filson?”

“Right.”

“They tortured Sandy, too?”

“They only scared her half to death.”

“How’s Nancy?”

“We don’t know. Sandy called and warned her that she might be in trouble, so we think she went to hide out at her parents’ home, outside St. Johnsbury. But we aren’t sure. The team we sent there found only an empty house, a dead pet dog, and signs that everyone at the house had been forcibly removed.”

Beverly’s eyes grew round. “Kidnapped?”

“We think so. But again, we don’t have much to work with.”

“My God,” she said. “What could be so important?”

Joe reopened the door. “Let’s get Rachel back into the conversation, ’cause I clearly don’t know.”

They returned to the borrowed office, where they resumed their seats before Joe asked the young woman, “You want to use the facilities, too? Or are you all set?”

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Good,” he continued. “As you can imagine, your mom and I were chatting outside about what these guys might be after. Have you been able to think of anything, either from your research into the pictures or your conversations with Ben? Anything—no matter how small—might be important.”

“I
have
been thinking,” Rachel said, almost complaining. “I can’t come up with anything. Ben was so…” She paused before saying, “Eccentric, you know? So touchy about almost everything, that I couldn’t really tell what was important and what was just sort of crazy.”

“Early on, you told me that while he finally got comfortable with the documentary, it was a harder sell to get him to support the photo exhibition. What was it about the stills that he objected to? They fall into two distinct categories.”

“I couldn’t tell,” she replied. “I know you’d think it was the Vietnam stuff, what with all the trauma he suffered, but he was much twitchier about the junk he photographed than he was about old war pictures. I told you that he was almost vague about those at first, as if they’d slipped his mind. I know it sounds funny, but when he finally agreed to the show—and to my including the war shots with the others—it was like he could only see them in an artistic way. He never referred to their contents. I asked him a couple of times—things like, ‘Wow, that must’ve been scary,’ or ‘What’s happening here?’ but he never answered, beyond maybe an ‘I don’t remember.’ It got to be enough of a thing that I stopped asking.”

Joe pressed her for more. “A couple of them look like they were taken at the same time—American soldiers near or at a Vietnamese village. You can see an officer giving orders, maybe men fanning out. Was there any discussion about that? They’re the only pictures showing Americans.”

The girl was still looking dumbfounded. “No. I never felt those particular ones meant anything special—just that the war in total had been a bad thing.”

“Okay,” Joe conceded, straightening. “One last question. Then we’ll figure out how best to keep you safe and still allow you to have a life. Your mom has shown me the extra pictures you stored at her house. Are there more? For example, how did the college go about reproducing them? I’ve never seen anything bigger than Ben’s original eleven-by-fourteens, but the ones on display are four times that size.”

“Normally,” Rachel told him, “they’d just print from the negatives, and there was a negative stuck in an envelope on the back of each print. But they decided instead to digitize the process and scan the negs, so it’s all on the art department’s computer—or at least the ones that caught their eye. I’ve got the originals of what’s in the show, including a few that didn’t make the cut.”

Joe blinked once, absorbing this detail. “Where?” he asked calmly while feeling a surge of hopefulness.

“In my dorm room,” she answered guilelessly.

Joe exchanged glances with Beverly. Without hesitation, she gave him the dorm’s name and Rachel’s room number, adding in an aside, “Sweetie? You have your key on you? I think Joe would like to retrieve those.”

“If it’s okay,” Joe threw in to downplay his growing sense of urgency.

“Of course,” the girl replied, digging out the key and handing it over.

Joe stood and moved to the door. “I’ll be right back. We’re almost at the point of tucking you away somewhere more comfortable than this. I just have to do a couple of things first, okay?”

Rachel smiled wearily. “Of course—as long as it’s okay with my profs.”

“We’ll get that covered,” he answered without knowing anything of the kind. He walked quickly to the squad room near the front, where he found a haggard Lester Spinney, as ever sporting a lopsided grin.

“Hey, boss. Figured you’d want company.”

“Sue must be loving me right now. I thought you were heading home.”

“She’s cool,” Les said simply. “In fact, she’s the one who told me to stay with you.”

Joe shook his head, appreciating how the dedication of his entire team extended beyond what even he had imagined, and motioned to the agent he’d addressed earlier to join them—a recent state trooper transplant to the VBI named Tom Wilson.

“We need to go to the UVM campus immediately,” he said, and repeated the dorm address and room number he’d just received. “If this thing is rolling the way we think it is, Tommy Bajek’s friends have either been there or are about to be.” He spoke directly to Wilson: “Which means we better round up some backup, too. Tell ’em to meet us there. I’d sooner be safe than sorry, having company where these crazy bastards might suddenly show up.”

Wilson set to work as Les and Joe headed out at a trot toward their car, Spinney asking along the way, “Why the dorm? What’s there? They after Rachel or something else?”

“Rachel’s got some of Ben’s photos there—including a few that didn’t make her show. It may not be anything, but given that we think these guys are killing people to get those pictures, I figured we’d better get there ASAP.”

They’d reached the car. Lester slid into the passenger seat, saying, “Sure. What the hey.”

Fifteen minutes later, six of them were gathered around the same car, now parked on campus, near the dorm’s out-of-sight loading dock and Dumpster area. Joe, Les, and Tom Wilson had been joined by representatives of the UVM and Burlington police departments.

“We have no reason to think this threat is necessarily alive and well,” Joe was explaining. “But no point being foolish. The hope is that we get in there, secure the items we’re after, and get out without a hiccup.”

Joe looked inquiringly at them all. “That seem reasonable?”

The two uniformed cops keyed their radios to start issuing orders.

“How’re we selling this to the public?” Wilson suddenly asked. “If it comes up? We’re gonna be pretty visible.”

Joe waited for the UVM rep to finish his radio transmission. “You hear that question?” he asked.

The man nodded, replying, “The kids are used to us running around, practicing training exercises or drills.”

“Okay,” Joe told them all. “When asked, give my name as the contact for any questions.” He glanced at Wilson. “Sound good?”

“It’ll do.”

After another five minutes of coordinating details, they went to their separate assignments—Joe, Les, and Tom Wilson joining a UVM patrolman and heading directly for Rachel’s room on the building’s third floor.

Much of UVM’s student housing is located in a cluster on the south side of Route 2. It doesn’t get the attention received by the central campus, with its eye-catching, high-end architecture. Most motorists pay little heed to the brick-clad, multi-storied, barracks-like buildings across the road. Joe was hoping that Wilson’s concerns about attracting attention might be helped by their being on the campus’s fringe.