Proof Positive: A Joe Gunther Novel (Joe Gunther Series) (27 page)

“Not looking to,” he said. “Like I said, I just need some help. Is Bob around?”

“What do you want to ask him?”

“With respect, I’d like him to tell you that.”

She gave him a level stare, considering her response. Fortunately for Joe, she was interrupted by a man appearing behind her, also from around the corner. He had a splitting maul in his hand and was similarly dressed for the outdoors.

“I’m who you want.”

His companion gave him a scornful glance, deprived of her role as gatekeeper, and brushed by Gunther on her way to the garage, where he could discern a growing stack of cordwood piled against the far inner wall.

Morgan watched her leave and gave a small, appreciative nod. “My wife,” he clarified unnecessarily. “Kind of a watchdog.”

“Can’t knock that,” Joe commented.

“She came to it the hard way,” Morgan said, tapping the side of his head. “Trying to keep my PTSD under control. Hasn’t been easy.”

Joe acknowledged the wooden sign over the garage. “So I guessed. One of my colleagues is in the same boat.”

Morgan grunted softly. “Yeah … Well, what’re you after?”

“Got a place we could talk?” Joe asked. After the heat from inside his car, he was beginning to feel the cold. Also, he was hoping for a long conversation.

“Sure.”

Morgan led the way back to the rear of the house, down a steep slope, toward a large pile of newly split wood. “We got our load in late this year,” he explained. “You know how it is—life always getting in the way. Our daughter had to have some surgery done, so that kind of got us distracted.”

“She okay?”

“Oh, yeah. Just one of those things.”

They came to the building’s lowermost side, and Morgan escorted Joe into a basement workshop that opened onto the yard piled with logs. They both stamped their feet free of snow on the threshold, and opened their coats to the warmth of an ancient but effective cast-iron stove in the corner.

“Take a load off.” Morgan gestured to a threadbare armchair, one of whose legs consisted of a chunk of two-by-four. He settled onto a much-abused wooden sawhorse, picking up a nearby screwdriver to fiddle with.

“So, what can I do you for?” he asked, his tone relaxed but his eyes watchful.

“I’m afraid I need to take you back to the source of your PTSD,” Joe told him frankly. “Specifically, to the Delta, where Ben Kendall was hurt.”

“Ouch,” Morgan said, before lapsing into thoughtful silence for a few seconds.

Joe waited for him to find his bearings.

“Okay,” he said eventually. “Go ahead.”

“Kendall’s name rings a bell, then?” Joe asked.

“Oh, yeah.”

“What can you tell me about that day?”

Morgan let out a heavy sigh. “You know … It was like a ton of others, mostly. Ben getting hurt was really the only unusual thing about it.”

“How?”

“On patrol,” he said vaguely. “Shots from a village. Everybody opening up. Happened all the time.”

“Except that Ben
did
get hurt,” Joe prompted.

“Yeah…” Morgan drew out the word slowly.

“I read in the action report,” Joe continued, “that you were the one who helped evacuate him.”

“There were others, too. That’s what you did.”

“How were you made aware that he needed help? You see him fall?”

“No,” he said quickly. “Nobody did. There were shouts. ‘Man down.’ Something like that. He was near a hooch with that head wound.”

“Nobody nearby?” Joe asked.

“No. I mean, there were other guys who came running like I did. But not before.”

“So what did you think when you came up to him? Did you wonder what had happened? Did you take cover?”

“I could see what happened.”

Joe didn’t say anything, choosing to stare at the man for a few long moments. Morgan dropped his eyes to study the screwdriver in his hands. The absurdity of a so-called combat situation where no one returned fire or took evasive action hung in the air.

“All right,” Joe finally resumed. “Was Ben conscious when you got to him?”

“He was alive, but he didn’t say anything.”

“Tell me what you saw—every detail you can recall.”

Morgan looked up and made a face. “It was years ago—”

“And it’s glued in your head like it was yesterday,” Joe cut in. “I’ve been there. I was in combat. What did you see? Not who. What?”

“He was lying there.”

“What was around him?”

“His stuff. A bag, his cameras. His helmet.”

“A hole in it?”

“Yeah. In the front—same place he had the wound.”

“The cameras broken?”

“Nope. But both of them were open.”

“What do you mean?”

Morgan shrugged. “Open. I don’t know. Like when you take the rolls of film out. They were in two pieces, but not busted. Nikons. I’d seen Ben and the other photographers do it a bunch of times. They sort of separated the bottom from the rest to remove the film. Both cameras were that way.”

“Were there any rolls?”

“No.”

Something about his tone, or his expression, made Joe press harder. It felt as if Morgan had caught himself revealing too much, and was wishing that real life came with a rewind button. “But there was something else. Was there film anywhere at all?”

Morgan put the screwdriver down impatiently, then immediately retrieved it. “No.”

“Why’re you saying that, Bob? You’re leaving something out.”

They stared at each other for a couple of seconds before Joe asked, “What really happened?” For the first time in this convoluted case, he was feeling like a dog at last on the right scent.

Morgan pressed his lips together without comment.

“I think you liked Ben,” Joe suggested, lowering the tension.

Morgan conceded, “He was a good guy.”

“Did you two hang out? Earlier?”

“We weren’t buddies, if that’s what you mean.”

“But…”

Morgan returned to studying the screwdriver. “He cared. Most of them didn’t. It mattered to him what we were doing over there.”

“And it did to you, too,” Joe stated.

His response was almost inaudible. “Yeah.”

“Bob,” Joe began. “I’m hearing what you’re not telling me, filling in the gaps. Ben wasn’t hit by any Viet Cong bullet. You weren’t even on the lookout for enemy fire.”

“I don’t know.”

Joe tried again, purposefully keeping his voice low and even. “What happened that day may have been routine, but it didn’t begin with shots from the village, did it?”

Silence. The screwdriver kept turning.

“There was shooting, nevertheless,” Joe said.

Morgan nodded.

“Wasn’t this a case of an American unit taking out a village that posed no threat?” Joe asked, adding, “It was the Delta. There was a lot of that going on down there. Passions were hot. The brass wanted body counts. Ambitious colonels were moving up the ranks at your expense.”

Morgan didn’t react.

“Am I right?” Joe pushed him.

Another near whisper. “Yeah.”

“That’s good,” Joe encouraged him. “We’re on the same page. But Ben stepped out of line, somehow. He was squashed.”

Morgan let out another sigh, but remained quiet.

“Tell me,” Joe urged him. “People are still suffering from this. I’m working on two homicides, maybe three, including Ben’s. Others have been tortured, kidnapped, almost killed—all because of what you know. We need to stop this, Bob—together.”

The other man looked up. “Ben’s been murdered?”

“Just a few days ago. Help me now like you wanted to help him. If I’m right, something started back then that’s going on to this day. You know what it is, Bob.”

Morgan moved his lips soundlessly at first, his eyes filled with tears. He managed to say, “I can’t.”

Joe got to his feet and gave him a stern look, changing tactics. “Think about that long and hard.” He handed him a business card. “You get tired of what you’ve got on your conscience, call me. I’ll meet you anytime, anywhere. In the meantime, consider yourself under a microscope. Whatever problems you think you have now have only just started.”

He walked to the door, but paused to face his host once more. “What was your unit?” he asked sharply.

Instinctively, Morgan rattled it out as he’d once regularly recited his serial number.

“And the name of your commanding officer?”

Morgan hesitated.

“I can look it up,” Joe said, maintaining the stern tone.

“Lieutenant Joyce.”

Joe stood motionless, waiting.

“Jack Joyce,” came the murmured follow-up.

Joe left without further comment. In the car, returning to Vermont, he called Sammie Martens. “Do me a favor,” he asked her. “Get me everything you can on a Robert Morgan, DOB 6/20/1946. Go as deep as you can; pull out the stops on favors and contacts. We’re not going for prosecution here. It’s purely investigative, so use everything you can think of. I need leverage. The faster, the better.”

“Got it,” she said.

“Also, take this down,” he said, and repeated the information Morgan had given him concerning his unit and its commander. “Maybe you can sic Willy onto that. I’m after what they did in Vietnam, before, during, and after the date that Benjamin Kendall was injured there. I need combat involvements, roster of names, anything he can find.”

“Damn,” she commented. “We are going back in time.”

“That’s the crux of this, Sam. It’s all about what Ben Kendall knew.”

“And what he photographed?”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“Any luck?” Joe asked Sammie as he entered their Brattleboro office, having silently run a gauntlet of reporters in the parking lot.

She didn’t look up from the computer screen. “Not if you’re looking for a smoking gun. You didn’t tell me what you were after specifically, but so far, Mr. Robert Morgan is about as bland as his name. I found a minor speeding ticket dating back years. There seems to have been an alcohol problem a long, long time ago, after he got out of the service, that landed him in a little hot water—disturbing the peace, trespassing, evictions from a bar or two—but it’s all ancient history. I had to make phone calls to get that stuff, since it predates computers. Lucky for us, he’s lived in Peterborough his whole life, as has my primary source.”

Joe removed his coat and hung it from the rack near the door. “How ’bout financials?”

She finished typing and pushed her chair back from the desk enough to cross her legs and fix him with a gaze. “Nice house, nice cars for him and the wife, no bankruptcies or lawsuits or lottery winnings, no sudden unexplained spikes in income, no official inquiries or audits from the IRS, no over-the-top insurance settlements.”

“What’s he do for work?”

“Custodian at the local elementary school.”

Joe sat at his desk near the small room’s only window. “That’s it?”

“Far as I can tell. He may be up to something under the table, but I spoke with the chief over there, who’s been with the PD for just under a thousand years, and said that he knows Morgan from the VFW and having gone to high school with him. He also said the guy keeps a really low profile. The chief thought it went back to Vietnam—that the war messed with his head. But he stressed that Morgan’s just quiet and retiring. Not violent.”

Joe stared thoughtfully at his desk top.

“What?” Sam asked.

Joe raised his eyes. “It’s a disconnect. I just left him. Something’s eating at him, big-time, but he’s scared to let it out. Did you get anything on the wife? I should’ve asked you to look into her, too.”

Sam smiled slightly. “I did, anyhow. Not much to find. She doesn’t work, volunteers for their church, is a member of both the garden club and the historical society. They married about ten years after he got out of the army, have one daughter who lives in Florida, and seem like candidates for the world’s dullest soap opera—
As the World Grinds On.
She’s a homie, too—born and bred in Peterborough—with a background as humble as his. What did you mean by a disconnect?”

“They present like upper middle class,” Joe told her. “Not like people making ends meet off a custodian’s salary.”

She raised an inquiring eyebrow. “Trust fund?”

“You find evidence of that?”

She conceded the point, partially. “No, just the opposite. Like I said, humble roots. The chief described the backgrounds of both of them, and it was pure poverty hollow. But unusual financial information is harder to find than the public record stuff. I’m just saying one of ’em might’ve gotten lucky somehow—legitimately or otherwise.”

“Were you able to get Willy started on Morgan’s military background?” Joe asked.

“Yep. I’m not exactly sure where he is, but he texted me that he was on it. What’s going on, anyhow?”

“You read about my meeting with Marcus Perry? I posted it to the case file yesterday—the part where he mentions the official action report concerning Ben Kendall’s injury.”

Sammie scowled. “I thought it was missing—that there were only a couple of letters referring to the firefight.”

“Right. One of which states that Bob Morgan was at the scene and helped load Ben onto the medevac chopper. That’s why I wanted to talk to him, especially when I heard that he lived nearby. That conversation should’ve been simplicity itself, even with the passage of time. Instead, he was hinky as hell, doing everything he could to avoid laying out a straight story. I left with the distinct sensation that there
was
no firefight, and that Ben Kendall was shot by one of his own. It’s got to have something to do with his photographs—Morgan admitted that both Ben’s cameras were open and empty when he reached him. Morgan knows more than he’s telling, and the additional wrinkle that he lives beyond his means and won’t come clean strikes me as interesting.”

Sam opened her mouth to speak, but Joe added, “Plus, I don’t think it has anything to do with any trust fund, legit or otherwise.”

“So he was bought off for what he saw there?” she asked.

He heard her incredulity, and didn’t argue against it. “I know. When you say it out loud, it sounds like a stretch. But that’s why I asked Willy to dig into the squad’s background—to see if there’s a context.”