Proof Positive: A Joe Gunther Novel (Joe Gunther Series) (29 page)

Joe adulterated his coffee as always. “You hear from Willy?”

Sam reached for the phone. “Yeah. He said to call him when you were ready. He’s having a father–daughter day at home—decided that he’d been away too long and needed an Emma fix.”

Joe kept quiet, but was struck by how times had changed. Back in the day, before Willy and Sam became involved romantically, Kunkle had been the hard-drinking, dysfunctional survivor of a short and violent marriage that ended with his wife’s escaping to New York, where she’d eventually died under violent circumstances. That was a long stretch from what he’d just heard, and gave him heart when he recalled not only Sam’s cell phone décor, but also his own charming, if slightly disorienting conversation with Rachel the night before. Maybe there could be light at the end of the tunnel of love.

He motioned to the phone, smiling. “Put him on. I’m ready.” He crossed to his desk and sat down as Sam dialed home.

“He there?” Willy’s voice came over the speaker shortly thereafter.

“We both are,” Sam answered.

“How’s Emma?” Joe asked.

“You gonna give me shit about that?”

“Right,” Joe answered him. “Six demerits for spending time with your daughter.”

“Whatever,” Willy said. “What d’ya want to know first?”

“You had five dead to check out from the original squad,” Joe said, “and six survivors, including a U.S. senator. Give it to me any way you want, not that you wouldn’t have anyhow.”

“Getting to know me?” Willy snorted over the phone. “Okay, let’s go with the dead, since that’s where I started. Ben Kendall and the writer you already know about.”

“His name was Nathan Sievers,” Joe interjected.

“Good.” Willy paused, as if writing it down. “That’s a match. I was told Nate, by one of my sources, which didn’t give me much. Anyhow, that leaves three. I checked those out and got one suicide, one accidental car crash fatality, and one natural causes—specifically, an undetermined.”

“That sounds tame enough,” Sam commented.

“‘Sounds’ is the operative word,” Willy said. “These happened all over the U.S.—I’m writing a report when Emma goes down for a nap, and I’ve got documents and pictures coming in electronically or via snail mail, so I’ll spare you the boring stuff right now—but I got hold of people in each place and grilled them pretty hard. Bottom line is, there’s major wiggle room for doubt in every case.”

“You smelling covered-up homicides?” Joe asked, his spirit sagging in the face of so much carnage.

“Yep. The car crash was under-investigated forty years ago by a rural department in Missouri with minimal training and equipment, leaving a bunch unexplained—like how some different-colored paint ended up on a part of the car that fit perfectly where it could’ve been smacked and sent flying off the road. That’s just one squirrelly detail. Another is that the dead driver had an empty bottle of booze with him, his clothes reeked of the stuff, but his blood was clean when they tested it and there was never an autopsy.”

“So, hit and run, with maybe a victim who was unconscious or dead just prior,” Joe stated.

He expected a sarcastic comeback, but Willy missed his opportunity for once, responding instead, “Yup, and they’re not saying I’m wrong, either. I’m not beating ’em up on it. This was back in the ’70s, everybody associated with it is dead or gone, and the guy I talked to was relying on an old file and some Polaroids. He didn’t like it any better than I did, but there’s not much anyone can do about it now.”

“Okay,” Sam said. “That’s one.”

“Right,” Willy resumed. “The suicide would’ve been an even more obvious set-up today, but again—way back when—they didn’t catch a thing. It was a hanging—man found in his garage, complete with a ‘farewell cruel world’ note—but the note was typed. And—you’ll love this—there was no typewriter in the house. It was right in the report. The chair he supposedly used was still upright, and placed wrong, to my eye. And the rope marks on his neck didn’t match how the rope was positioned when they found him, indicating to me that he was strangled first and then strung up. Oh yeah, and he had bruises on his knuckles, as if he’d put up a fight.”

“Same kind of conversation with the local cops?” Joe asked.

“Pretty much,” Willy admitted. “Not so friendly, but this one happened about the same time, in L.A., which was corrupt as hell back then, so it doesn’t matter what their attitude is now.

“The last one,” he continued, “was even more open-ended. Guy was found dead at home, in bed. Next to him were some heart pills, but just lying in a jar, with no prescription, like M&M’s. Conclusion? Died of a heart attack. Any mention of a bad ticker in his military medical records? Nope. But his drunk wife liked the benefits, and everybody else was happy to let it lie. So, there you have it.”

Joe trusted that he’d have the literature supporting all this soon enough, so he took it at face value and moved on. “You get anywhere on the living squad members?”

“Superficially. I got the Fusion Center to spit out generic intel reports on each of ’em, and did some once-over-lightly digging on the side. I didn’t want to tip our hand, in case somethin’s going on like a conspiracy, so I avoided any interviews by phone, or anything else too obvious. I’m just tellin’ ya.”

“Okay,” Joe reassured him.

“Jack Joyce was the easiest,” Willy went on. “Super rich from birth, lots of good press for going into the service in the first place, since he’s both prep school and Ivy League, and of course a shoo-in as a politician for the same reason, even with all the anti-war crap back then. No one’s been able to boot him out since, so he’s one of the Grand Old Men of the Senate now, but not famous like the rest of the fogies, ’cause he doesn’t do squat. From what I could get from articles, blogs, book digests, and the rest, the man’s a manipulative prick who brings home the pork and otherwise lines his pockets.

“The other four,” Willy began wrapping up, “came across like your pal Bob Morgan—underemployed underachievers with more money than their lifestyles can explain. Again, the details’ll be in my report.”

Joe and Sam could hear the sounds of Emma crying softly in the background.

“Uh-oh. Got an attack of the munchies,” Willy said. “Gotta feed the inheritor.”

“Quick gut reaction to it all before you go?” Joe spoke fast.

Willy chose his words carefully, given his usual breeziness. “There may be others, but one scenario that fits everything is that something happened out there that got five people killed—including one at the scene—and made the surviving six happy campers for life.”

“Like a major haul of some kind?” Sammie asked. “A financial windfall?”

Willy hedged. “Anyone’s guess.”

Joe frowned. “Treasure Island? A trunk of drugs or doubloons? In the middle of the Delta? That sounds like a stretch.”

Willy let out a short laugh. “What hasn’t been a stretch so far? The dead hoarder with a corpse in one of his own booby traps? No … Hold it, maybe his ancient history, ex-wife found tortured to death five states away, with no apparent connection. Nah—that clearly makes sense. I got it. The daughter of Vermont’s chief medical examiner gets stalked by two hit men, straight out of a bad movie. There you go.”

Joe held up both hands at the phone in surrender. “Okay, okay. You made your point. So you’re suggesting that eleven men in Vietnam maybe stumbled across something of value which made some of them dead and the rest of them rich.”

“I said that
seems
how it wound up,” Willy corrected him. “I have no idea what started it. On the flip side, I do know why my kid’s crying.”

“Ben Kendall knew,” Sam suggested.

“And so do the surviving six,” Joe added.

After a moment—during which they could hear him cooing to Emma—Willy asked, “Who d’you wanna start with?”

Joe smiled slightly. “Why not the proverbial bird in hand?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Paula Sagerman was a detective with the New Hampshire State Police whom Joe had met at a tri-state terrorism training several years ago. Such events served as much as meet-and-greet opportunities—or “networking,” as Joe refused to describe them—as chances to learn things that common sense didn’t already supply. Cops like him had regularly benefited from discovering worthwhile counterparts and keeping in touch. Sagerman’s immediate agreement to meet in Peterborough and accompany him to Bob Morgan’s house was proof of it.

She was smart, ambitious, and diplomatically canny—at once reminiscent of Sammie, while demonstrating how lucky Joe felt that Sam was not cut from the hard stuff that might eventually make of Paula a commissioner of public safety or a politician. Joe wasn’t sure what in Sam seemed missing from Paula, but he suspected that it might be the self-doubt that he valued in the former.

That having been said, he genuinely liked Paula. She had a no-nonsense, pragmatic view of things, and enjoyed telling people exactly what kind of jackass she occasionally found them to be.

So … perhaps not a future politician.

“Wuzzup, Joe?” she asked as she settled into his passenger seat at the spot where they’d agreed to meet.

“I want your statutory muscle along for when I ask this guy what he’s holding back,” he explained.

“I thought you loved me for my mind.”

He smiled and started the car. “Not this time, but feel free to chime in if you get the urge.”

“What’re we grilling him about?”

“Vietnam. He witnessed something he won’t admit about a squad of men, deep in the bush. The Cliffs Notes version is that close to half of them are now dead under suspicious circumstances, while the rest are just as inexplicably well off. So what happened? Was it a My Lai without the headlines? Did it involve finding a cache of money or drugs and keeping it quiet? One of them—who just died—was a photographer. But we’ve seen his photos, and they tell us nothing. On the other hand, both his cameras were empty when he was found with a head wound. And why were the only people shot at the scene—one fatally and one almost—a writer and a photographer, respectively?”

Paula absorbed it all before asking, “You said this guy’s named Robert Morgan. Is it just his proximity to Vermont that makes you want to milk him?”

Joe smiled as he left the parking lot and headed out of town. “You are good, Sagerman. Yes and no. Morgan’s living nearby is handy, but it’s not the only factor. The last time I talked with him—also the first time we met—I suspected he was starting to crumble around the edges, which is why I want you to look threatening in the background. I need to impress upon him that we can buckle him up if he forces us to.”

Paula nodded. “Cool. I guess I’ll figure out the rest as the conversation gets going.” She paused before saying, “You know I wasn’t even alive when the Vietnam War ended.”

He sighed wearily. “Yes.”

“Okay, then,” she said, settled on the point. “Sounds like fun.”

Which attitude reflected, in part, why Joe had called her in the first place.

There was no sign of Mrs. Morgan when they reached the house on General Miller Road, and the Jeep was missing, Joe noted gratefully. Bob answered the doorbell himself, ushering them into an empty living room after Joe had introduced Paula, and offered to fix them coffee.

Both cops turned down the invitation, and angled their chairs toward the sofa in such a way that Morgan, when seated, had to swivel his head back and forth to address them, psychologically undermining any sense of his being in control.

“You know why I asked Detective Sagerman to join me?” Joe asked after they’d settled down.

“Not really,” Morgan hedged his reply.

“Last time I was here,” Joe explained, “your wife pointed out that I couldn’t act as a cop in this state. Detective Sagerman can.” He added, almost as an afterthought, “Should it become necessary.” He extracted a recorder from his pocket and turned it on. “Furthermore, I’ll be recording what’s said, just to ensure that nothing can be misconstrued or misunderstood. Is that all right with you?”

Morgan looked at them without comment.

“I need your permission, Bob. Out loud. I want it on the record that you’re being frank and open with us, and that we haven’t promised or threatened you with anything. Is that the case?”

“Sure.”

“Because,” Joe resumed, “it’s my belief that you were less than candid last time.”

“I answered your questions,” Bob countered without much conviction.

“How do you make a living, Mr. Morgan?” Paula asked, almost cutting him off, taking Joe’s earlier cue about the squad survivors all being well off.

Morgan opened his mouth in surprise before answering with a stutter, “I’m a … a … a custodian.”

She looked around. “No kidding? Your wife loaded? You have a trust fund?”

His face flushed.

The point made, Joe took his turn, laying a file folder on the coffee table and saying before Morgan could respond, “We been brushing up on our homework, Bob, since you chose not to cooperate.” Joe stared at him. “Even though you felt guilty about it.”

“What?” Morgan said.

Joe didn’t address the question. “I told you I was investigating several felonies in connection to what happened in Vietnam, including Ben’s death. Which makes me wonder: You keep in touch with any buddies from back then?”

“What?” he repeated.

“Simple question,” Paula pressed him.

“Ian Faulkner, for example,” Joe said, extracting a photograph and laying it face up on the table, oriented toward Morgan. “That’s a picture of the car crash that killed him, soon after you all got home. No explanation of why he was covered in booze but had none in his bloodstream, and no explanation for the paint smear where the other car hit him and forced him off the road.”

Morgan didn’t touch the picture.

“Andy Weiss,” Joe intoned, placing another picture between them, this one a close-up of an obviously dead man. “Found at home, around the same time. Ruled to be a natural—a heart attack. Did you know Andy had a bum ticker? Funny the army missed it during his physical.”

Bob whispered mournfully, as if to himself, “Oh, Andy.”

“You hear the question?” Paula asked.