Proof Positive: A Joe Gunther Novel (Joe Gunther Series) (17 page)

Also, although Joe had personally set this course of action in motion—and for good reason, as he saw it—he couldn’t avoid feeling somewhat odd by how mundane everything appeared all around him. Young adults by the cluster, still enjoying the cold for its novelty, and not yet oppressed by months of freezing wind and snow, spilled out of the dorm ahead. They were laughing and without concern on their way to morning classes, despite many having seen the cops spreading out.

It didn’t last. The shared radio channel they were using, which had been muttering nonstop with the various units announcing their status and progress, suddenly stopped them in their tracks.

“All units. We have activity on the third floor—” As the four of them began running upstairs, the interrupted transmission returned with, “Officers down, officers down. Need assistance.”

It was too early. And, Joe realized, he’d been too lax. His presumption had been that backup might come in handy, but he’d tempered the thought because of the lack of any real threat against Rachel personally. He was kicking himself now.

“Suspects’re coming down the back stairs,” the radio announced frantically.

By now on the second-floor landing, but to the building’s front, Joe ordered half his number to race down the length of the hallway in support of the pursuit team, while Joe and Tom Wilson turned tail and headed back downstairs in hopes of an interception.

It almost worked. They burst out onto the concrete walk just in time to see two figures mirror them from the building’s far end, sprinting toward the adjacent parking lot. Tom took off like a jackrabbit, with Joe hot on his heels, yelling at him to be careful and giving a breathless update on his portable radio.

Joe also took note of the suspect in the lead. He seemed to be watching Joe directly, almost calmly, his running gait loose and steady, with a menacing, self-confident air—despite wearing a beard, hat, and dark glasses. The body language suggested that he was calculating his next move.

Joe picked up speed, alarmed by what he was interpreting, trying to catch up to Tom Wilson. “Tom,” he called out. “Watch him. He’s up to something.”

As soon as the words left his mouth—not that Tom had paid them heed—the man in the beard reached under his coat and smoothly extracted a long-barreled weapon that he pointed and fired without a sound at the two of them.

Joe saw the muzzle flash just as he threw himself onto Tom’s back, sending them both sprawling as a bullet whined overhead.

“Under the car. Under the car!” Joe yelled, rolling for cover.

But there were no more bullets. The shooter had gotten what he wanted, which was to break their momentum. By the time the two VBI men, guns drawn, returned to their feet and looked out over their barricade, all they saw was the last glimpse of their quarry ducking into a sedan and squealing away toward the Spear Street exit and Route 2 beyond. The other cops exiting the dorm, their weapons ready, slowed their running or stopped altogether, realizing that direct pursuit was out of the question, as was returning fire. The radio in Joe’s hand filled with orders to other units to close in on the area, along with a full description of the fleeing car.

“Think they’ll get ’em?” Wilson asked, staring intently at where the two men had once been.

“Maybe,” Joe replied without confidence, catching his breath. “My guess is that we’ll find the car empty, wiped down, and rented out to a John Doe.”

Wilson nodded and slowly holstered his weapon. His voice was quieter as he said, eyes averted, “Thanks for saving my butt.”

Joe gave his shoulder a soft punch. “Too much paperwork otherwise.”

“I didn’t see it coming,” Tom continued.

Joe waved it away. He looked around at all the cops milling about the parking lot, feeling the cumulative embarrassment rising off them like heat from fresh tar.

“You’re in good company,” he added quietly.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Bill Allard didn’t get up or offer to shake hands as Joe entered his office in Waterbury. As the head of the VBI and, technically, Joe’s only real boss, he generally treated his field force commander as an equal. Indeed, Joe was senior in terms of years served. But Bill remained the director, appointed by the governor, and as such, on rare occasions felt it necessary to play the role.

Like now.

“What the hell is going on, Joe?” he demanded.

Today, however, he wasn’t the only one feeling irritable. Joe sat down uninvited and said shortly, “You’ve been getting reports.”

“This you imitating Willy Kunkle?” Allard asked. “Not a good move. No report I’ve seen explains why homes are being invaded, families are getting kidnapped, cops are getting shot at, and people are getting killed from here to Philadelphia, all because of a museum show.”

Joe opened his mouth to reply. Bill cut him off by waving a sheet of paper in the air. “This says that an unidentified man, fleeing the scene of a break-in, fired a gun in the middle of the UVM campus, in broad daylight, at a cop. That is correct, is it not?”

“I was one of the cops,” Joe answered simply.

“Good for you,” Bill countered without sympathy. “And do we know where that bullet ended up? In some student across campus, maybe? Or better still, in the windshield of a
Free Press
reporter driving by?”

“There’s been nothing reported,” Joe said calmly. “It didn’t hurt that the guy used a silencer.”

“Are they making students that stupid nowadays?”

Joe allowed for the hint of a smile. “Blame it on texting. Kids no longer look up. So far, it’s worked.”

“What about the two cops that were bushwhacked in the dorm? How’re they doing?”

“They were treated and released, one with a stiff neck, the other some bruised ribs. At least they weren’t shot at.”

Allard remained unamused. “What about everything else? Where’s the entire Filson family?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Concerned relatives haven’t started asking?” His tone was incredulous.

“That
is
the relatives. Nancy’s a single child. They all originated from California a long time ago.”

“I am seriously pissed off,” Bill warned him. “You know who I’m talking about: friends, neighbors, colleagues, whatever. People do not live in isolation anymore—especially normal-sounding people like these. What about Sandy Corcoran? She warned Nancy in the first place. What does she think of her friend suddenly disappearing?”

“Lucky for us,” Joe told him, “Sandy told her to disappear. As far as she knows, Nancy took her advice.”

“And Hillstrom’s daughter,” Allard continued. “Where’re you going to hide her? And for how long? Her generation no longer breathes without being told to by the Internet; you gonna tell me she hasn’t already tweeted her friends about this?”

“Rachel’s not that kind of kid. She’s on board.”

Bill rose from his desk and crossed to the window, where he looked out sightlessly, regaining his poise. Joe stayed quiet, waiting patiently.

Calmer after a few moments, Allard turned and faced him. “All right, break it down for me, and stick mostly to the political and PR ramifications.”

Fighting his own exhaustion, Joe thought a moment before responding, and began with: “From the top, Ben Kendall is looking like a natural death stimulated by the stress of an interrogation.”

“Sounds like a murder to me.”

“True. But the death certificate will read, ‘Undetermined.’ So, as a topic of media attention, he should slide under the radar.”

“What about the other guy you found there?”

“Tommy Bajek is being listed as a Philadelphia bad boy who got caught up in one of Ben’s booby traps. Accidental death.”

“And he came all the way up to the house of a near recluse in Vermont to do this, why?”

Joe shrugged. “They both hailed from Philly. Who knows? Criminals work in mysterious ways. Right now, we can stare any reporter right in the eye and honestly tell them we don’t know. Since Ben’s body was called in by the thief, why couldn’t that apply to Bajek? That tells the media nothing about what we might be suspecting.”

Bill held up a hand to stop him. “Let’s stay on that for a moment. Why were you and Spinney down in Philadelphia? I’m talking cover story.”

“Same as above,” Joe told him. “We were curious about Bajek. We were trying to be thorough, but we hit a brick wall. Chances are that Jennifer Sisto won’t even come up in any press conference.”

Allard moved on without comment, despite a sour look. “Sandy Corcoran?” He was looking for ready responses here, Joe understood. Fortunately, they could both take comfort from Vermont’s media resembling the kinder, gentler journalism of the 1950s more than the current feeding grounds of New York or L.A. Nevertheless, this entire mess was becoming a potential news bonanza by anyone’s standard.

“Corcoran’s agreed to keep quiet for Nancy’s sake,” Joe explained. “And as for Nancy and her folks, we’ve put the confidential word out and enlisted everyone from Fish and Wildlife to the state police to traffic enforcement to keep their eyes open for anything unusual. That’s probably the lid that’ll blow off first. You’re right there. Somebody’s gonna wonder where they went.”

Allard returned to his desk and sat down heavily. “Who the hell are these guys, Joe? And what’re they after?”

“I think they’re hired help, but hired to do what, I don’t know. The easy assumption is that it has something to do with what’s in those photographs, but we’ve looked at all of them—the old ones and the modern stuff—till we’re blue in the face, including the ones we got from Rachel’s dorm room. I have made an appointment with a contact who works at Norwich University and who served in Vietnam at the same time as Ben Kendall. But the wrinkle is that the war pictures at the museum number under half a dozen and don’t show anything particularly relevant. There are a couple or so shots showing U.S. troops, but they’re not really doing anything. Most of the exhibition consists of the close-ups of the hoard in Dummerston. That may be the key to what’s not making sense to us: The Vietnam angle is a pure distraction.”

Bill stared at him incredulously. “People getting killed over snapshots of a scrap pile? I don’t think so.”

Joe tilted his head. “We don’t know, Bill. And we have to leave that door open till we do. The war was a long time ago, and the people in those pictures are now easily in their sixties. Isn’t it likely that something in that supposed junk pile is worth killing for? Plus, the answer we’re after can’t be in what’s already hanging on the wall. That’s out in plain view. It must be among the shots that didn’t make it in, or in something that Rachel is forgetting she saw or knows.”

Allard looked disgusted. “Whatever. What’s your plan?”

“There are several. The first is to take each of Kendall’s pictures and analyze it down to the smallest detail—including the ones in the show and in Hillstrom’s archive, which we’ve moved to our office. The second is to squirrel away Rachel, and then set up a decoy to see if we can’t get these guys to stick their necks out to where we can grab ’em. The third involves the Filson family, of course. We’ll keep quietly beating the bushes for any sign of them. That’s where the biggest effort will go, and most of the manpower, but I want to keep my team focused on the first two.”

Bill had been listening quietly, and now nodded thoughtfully, his earlier irritation replaced by some inner meditation.

“What?” Joe inquired.

“It’s like standing in a minefield during an earthquake, wondering which one’s going to go off first,” he said. “When it does—which you know it will—and we end up on the front page, it won’t take long for the rest to blow up like fireworks in a bonfire.”

“We’ve been there before,” Joe commented.

“And I hate it every time.”

Joe stood up and looked down at his boss sympathetically. “It doesn’t have to happen that way. We might get lucky. We just need to tilt the table in our favor.”

Bill leaned back and waved toward the door. “Then tilt away, Joe, and best of luck. Needless to say, you get anywhere, be sure to let me know. In the meantime, I’ll give you guys all the cover I can.”

*   *   *

“You know?” Frank began philosophically. “A guy could get to like a town like this.”

He stood before the floor-to-ceiling window of the condo he’d leased overlooking Lake Champlain, enjoying the sight of a cutter slightly north of him, leaving its berth on its way to Port Kent, New York—barely visible on the distant shore. Leasing condos, even for brief periods, whenever they were staying in far-flung towns, had become a more private alternative to a motel room. And much more comfortable.

“You sayin’ that ’cause the cops didn’t shoot back?” Neil replied. “Call me crazy, but I don’t think they like us here.” He was sitting in an armchair, facing the large-screen TV and a muted recording of a NASCAR race. “I don’t like them, either,” he finished, talking to himself.

Frank looked back at him and smiled. “Hey, we’re making progress. Don’t get negative on me.”

Neil’s mouth opened as he stared at him. “Making progress? Are you kidding me? They almost got us, Frank. I know you have all this weird shit goin’ on about fate and Zen and whatever the hell else, but I’m not nuts about cops breathin’ down my neck. This is not cool, and it sure as hell ain’t progress.”

“I disagree,” Frank said conversationally, turning away from the view and taking the armchair beside Neil’s. “We know what they’re doing, and they think they know what we’re doing, which puts the advantage with us.”

“Right,” Neil agreed facetiously. “I totally get it.
Not.
”

Frank was used to this. Neil’s role as a foil was one reason he enjoyed his company. It forced Frank to occasionally think out loud. “Let me lay it out this way,” he began. “You get two people sneaking around in a house with no lights, there’s a dumb-luck chance that one’ll find the other first. On the flip side, if one of them catches sight of the other and sneaks up behind him, then he can not only figure out what’s goin’ on, but he can either get the drop on the guy, or slip out a side door anytime he wants. That make it clearer?”