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

by Archer Mayor

  “Ohmygod,” she murmured, and retreated soundlessly.

  She looked around fearfully, for the first time fully captured by the threat they’d been discussing around her for so many days. The room was a hopeless dead end. The bed took up most of the floor. The small window was too tight to fit through, and led to a ten-foot drop in any case. Otherwise, there was a closet, a dresser, and a small table.

  She opted for the bed, dropping to her stomach and rolling under it to press up against the far wall.

  * * *

  “What do you want?” Joe asked, his face hard against the rug.

  “Put your other hand behind your back,” the woman ordered, maintaining her conversational manner.

  He did so, feeling the gun’s barrel like a pipe being drilled into his temple. She slipped a thick nylon zip-tie around both his wrists and pulled it tight.

  “You know I’m a cop.”

  “I’m getting up now,” she said, ignoring him. “I’ll help you to your knees. Then you stand and move to the ladder-back chair in the corner, near the stove. Any sudden move and you get a bullet in the head.”

  He felt her weight ease from his back, followed by her free hand grabbing the thick fabric of his shirt and yanking him to an upright position. He coughed at the cutting pressure against his larynx.

  “Stand,” she ordered as he struggled awkwardly to his feet.

  She marched him to the chair, which she moved away from the wall, and sat him down so that his arms were draped behind the chair’s back. She then attached the zip-tie binding his wrists to the bottom chair rung, and strapped each of his ankles to a front leg. Still feeling dizzy and faint from the blow he’d received, Joe now knew he was more thoroughly trussed up than the proverbial turkey.

  But his primary concern was Rachel. Was she aware of what was going on?

  * * *

  Rachel was feeling like an idiot. Under the bed? Really? Why not standing on a stool, with her hands clasped to her open mouth?

  She began inching her way back out into the room, straining to hear over her rapid breathing, and rethinking how she could better position herself. If she had to go, she wanted it to be with a little more dignity than cowering on the floor in a ball.

  She heard muted voices downstairs as she emerged and straightened, but chose not to return to the staircase to check it out. Joe would come find her if he gained the upper hand. Otherwise? Rachel checked around once more, this time in search of a suitable weapon.

  Frustrated, she stealthily opened the closet door and began pawing through the clothes there, finally locating—much to her surprise—an old wooden baseball bat, leaning in the corner. She picked it up and weighed it in her hand, liking the feel of it.

  Her spirits slightly buoyed, she calculated a position with some advantage built into it, settling finally for the same corner of the closet in which she’d found her weapon. She wedged herself in—off to the side of the door—awkwardly practiced lifting the bat over her head a couple of times, and settled in to wait.

  * * *

  “Where’s the girl?”

  Joe gave his attacker a quizzical look. “After all this, you don’t know? You picked the wrong corner of the state. She’s in Burlington.”

  The woman snarled at him. “I know she’s here, stupid. I meant where, here?” She glanced over her shoulder. “Upstairs? That’s where I’d put her.”

  Joe smiled. “You’re guessing, or you would’ve killed me at the door. You’re right that she’s under wraps. We knew we’d stir up your boss when we flushed out Morgan, so we first made sure the girl was way beyond your reach.”

  The woman was surprisingly frank. “I don’t know who Morgan is, and I don’t care. As for killing you, that’s your choice. My contract’s to grab the girl. Where is she?”

  Joe merely shook his head sadly.

  She straightened, gave him one last look—as if considering shooting him now to get it over with—and moved to the foot of the stairs.

  * * *

  Rachel felt more than heard the woman’s presence outside the closet door. The house was completely silent. She thought she might have heard a single stair tread complain slightly, moments earlier, but could no longer distinguish reality from her mounting fears. As much to concentrate as to prepare herself, she slowly raised the bat until she was holding it as high above her head as the ceiling allowed. Ever since she positioned herself here, she’d been second-guessing her plan, and finding it wanting.

  The moment, when it came, was almost a relief. As the closet door trembled slightly, Rachel found herself solely focused on her grip of the bat, and on how to use it to her best advantage.

  It never came. In contrast to Rachel’s soundless, slow-motion preparations, the woman with the gun finished her approach explosively, yanking open the door, crossing the threshold, and—the gun steady in one hand—reaching up like a cobra striking and pinning Rachel’s bat against the wall behind her. The effect was as if she’d been looking through the wall with X-ray vision from the start.

  For a frozen fraction of a second, they stood face-to-face, the gun’s silencer looking disproportionally huge between them. Then, a deafening bang and a flash of light burst the darkness from the side. Rachel blinked, uncomprehending, at the abruptly empty space before her, as instantly stripped of the woman as it had been filled a moment earlier.

  She felt a motion at her feet and looked down in disbelief at the woman’s body, collapsed and lifeless among the scattered shoes, a pool of blood slowly spreading around her head.

  Tentatively, the bat still in one hand, Rachel bent at the waist and peered around the doorway. Standing four feet away, near the top of the stairs, was a man with a limp left arm and a gun in his hand.

  “Hey,” he said quietly, smiling slightly. “Remember me? I’m Willy.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “Her name was Chris Hadsel,” Ron Klecszewski said.

  Joe looked up from his conversation with Beverly, who had driven down from Burlington to be with Rachel. It was five thirty in the morning. They’d collected in a conference room adjacent to the Brattleboro PD’s detective squad, of which Klecszewski was the head. The state police had just wrapped up its post-shoot investigation, as required by protocol. Through the ground-floor windows, they could all see the glare from the TV lights of a half-dozen camera crews. Thankfully, Bill Allard had dispatched a media-relations person from up north to deal with them.

  “You ever hear of her?” the state police detective next to Ron asked.

  Joe shook his head. “She local?”

  “Not even vaguely,” Ron answered, having monitored the VSP’s activities, since the shooting occurred on his patch. “She seems to have mostly worked in the mid-Atlantic states and in Florida, as far as we can tell.”

  “All we can do is trace her through prints and mugs,” the detective said. “Which means we only know when and where she was caught for anything, which wasn’t much. There are years where her activities are completely off the radar.”

  Joe nodded. “Right. Well, thanks for all the hard work.”

  The man nodded as he turned toward the door. “You bet. Good luck with your case. Looks like you’ll need it.” He paused and looked at Willy, slouched in a chair in the far corner of the room. “Good shoot,” he added, as a collegial one-liner.

  Willy, of course, was having none of that. “Yeah,” he answered. “Sorry you couldn’t bust me for murder. Maybe next time.”

  The detective gave a last, pitying glance to Joe and left, no doubt to spread the news that Kunkle’s attitude had survived the evening’s activities.

  Beverly, however, took the other tack, addressing him. “For my part and my daughter’s, Agent Kunkle, I’d like to thank you—good shoot or no,” she threw in with a smile. “You may be one of the most unconventional police officers I’ve ever met, but in this instance, I will not fault your methods.”

  Willy laughed. “Least I could do, given what happened to her bab
ysitter.”

  “Sad but true,” Joe acknowledged, raising a half-empty plastic bottle of water in salutation.

  “How’d you figure that out, anyhow?” Lester asked. He’d joined them hours ago for moral support and was now reclined in a chair with his legs resting on the conference table, as if ready to nod off at a moment’s notice.

  Willy tapped the side of his nose. “I smelled a rat. Figured the Old Man could stand some backup. It never made sense to me that Joyce would just lay off the kid.” He raised his eyebrows at Rachel. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” she told him.

  “So,” he resumed. “I watched the house. Soon as I saw the crazy bitch approach, I figured what was up, but I couldn’t move fast enough before you opened up and she ran you over.”

  Joe appreciated his usual delicacy.

  “That means,” Willy said to him, “you’ll have to fix a window in your wood shop. Hope nothing freezes in there tonight ’cause of it.”

  Joe smiled ruefully. “Believe me, small price to pay for seeing you sneak in through the shop door and follow her upstairs.”

  “I locked the place up after EMS took you away,” Willy added. “Didn’t know what to do with the cat, so I set him up with some tuna and water and put sawdust from the shop in a pan on the kitchen floor. He looked like a good fit. I hear older people do better with pets.”

  Joe merely gave him a stare.

  “What happens to me now?” Rachel asked in general.

  Beverly glanced at Joe expectantly.

  “I’m afraid we button you up, like before,” he said. “The fact that we think we know who’s behind this still puts us a long way from locking him up. While tonight’s little surprise party was being dissected, I phoned the State’s Attorney, and everybody’s on board for bumping this upstairs to the U.S. Attorney’s office, given Joyce’s highfalutin’ job. That means briefings, federal investigators, and God knows what else, before anyone threatens him with handcuffs—which also gives him more time to misbehave.”

  “Elegant choice of words,” Beverly commented.

  He nodded. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  Rachel was not looking happy. “Does that mean I don’t get to finish my documentary? After everything that’s happened?”

  Joe glanced around the room before interpreting the unspoken consensus he saw there. “I would say that if you can wrap it up today, despite last night’s excitement and lack of sleep, that would work for me. Joyce wouldn’t have a Plan B up and running this fast after Willy’s handiwork.” He looked at Kunkle in particular. “Agreed?”

  “Sure,” Willy said. “Sam tells me they’ve almost emptied the house, anyhow. That right?”

  “Yes,” Rachel agreed, her expression clearing despite her exhaustion. “And one more day is all I’ll need.”

  Joe caught Beverly’s eye. “Okay with you?”

  Hillstrom stroked her daughter’s back. “You don’t actually think I’d oppose this, do you, much as I’d like to?”

  Joe stood up and checked his watch. “All right, then. We’ve got a few hours to catch some sleep. My house is off-limits right now, but we can put the two of you into a motel for a while—with a guard on the door—before reconvening at, let’s say, ten o’clock.”

  They all rose and began heading out. Joe touched Beverly’s arm as her daughter crossed over to say something to Willy. “How’s she doing?” he asked quietly. “Having someone killed at your feet has got to rank above a fender-bender.”

  Beverly took the question seriously. “Long-term? I have no idea. For the moment, I think her own recipe for keeping busy and on task is correct. I’m going to stay with her. I’ve already spoken with my office.”

  Joe affectionately squeezed her hand. “Good. Glad to hear it.”

  * * *

  They didn’t get to sleep for as long as they’d hoped. At eight thirty, Sammie Martens, who’d missed out on the night’s highlights, called Joe at the office, where he’d been sleeping in his chair, to report, “Boss, you better beat feet to the excavation. We just found a booby trap.”

  Joe blinked to clear his mind. “Everybody okay?”

  “Oh yeah. It didn’t go off, but it is explosive. I called JP ’cause of his expertise. He’s already on his way. It’s not fancy—I know that much—and it’s small, but I still don’t want to lose an arm finding out.”

  Joe rubbed his eyes. “All right. You sure JP’ll be enough? You don’t need the state bomb guys?”

  “I don’t think so, but JP’s no cowboy. He won’t do it unless he thinks he can. And I’m freezing the scene till you get here anyhow, so you can call in the big boys if you want to then.”

  “Right,” he said, straightening in his chair and getting ready to dial the phone. “I’ll make some calls and head straight out.”

  * * *

  JP Tyler was an old colleague of Joe’s—the Brattleboro PD’s evidence and forensics man, who’d since been moved up to being Ron Klecszewski’s second-in-command. As befitted his almost scholarly nature, he’d long ago become immersed in the study of bomb disposals, to where he’d become one of the highest-rated experts in the state.

  Tyler walked up to Joe’s car as the latter pulled into Ben Kendall’s dooryard. “Hey,” he greeted him as Joe swung out into the cold morning air. “Long time. You’d never know we worked in the same building, huh?”

  Joe shook hands and laughed. The point had an extra poignancy—before the creation of the VBI, Joe had been JP’s boss at the PD. “I guess that’s typical.” He gestured toward the sad-looking house. “You been in yet?”

  “Nope. Figured I’d wait for you.”

  Three more cars appeared from the woods behind them—Willy leading Beverly and her daughter in their own vehicle, and Lester bringing up the rear.

  Tyler focused on the two women. “That the medical examiner? Little premature, ain’t she?”

  Joe patted his back. “Breathe, JP. She’s here with her daughter, who’s documenting this for the record. In fact, if we can make it work, I’d like her to video the booby trap, and maybe even your dismantling of it, if it’s as small as Sammie thinks. I’ll get the appropriate releases signed, for liability, if that’ll help.”

  Tyler shrugged. “Okay by me, at least in principle. We can probably rig a remote unit on a tripod. I’ve done that before. Let’s find out what we got, first.”

  The excavation team had arrived at seven that morning, as usual, so they’d completed a solid ninety minutes of work before uncovering the trap. During that process, they’d carved a narrow trench into what had once been the living room, right up to the fireplace. It was there that they’d found an aberration in the floorboards, directly before the brick hearth.

  The cops, tightly packed, squeezed into the tight space to see what had caught everyone’s attention.

  Sam served as their guide. “They called me as soon as they found it, given that we were looking for anything and everything unusual.” She pointed at the floor. “See how the staining suddenly stops? It’s as if something leaked a long time ago, probably spreading unnoticed under all the junk, but instead of leaving a circular spot, like you’d expect, it got absorbed into that crack. The guys thought it looked like a hiding place, and I agreed. So we pried it open, just like it is now, which is when we saw the wiring underneath.”

  She took them all in. “And when I called you.”

  “Glad you did,” Joe murmured, dropping to his knees to better study the half-open board. He glanced up at JP. “You still interested?”

  The small man smiled. “You bet.”

  He got down beside Joe and played a small flashlight into the opening. “This shouldn’t be a problem. And Sam was right—it’s designed to blow someone’s hand off. No more. Chances are the charge is no longer volatile. It’s really old.” He hesitated before adding light-heartedly, “Of course, that introduces the chance of decay presenting a last-second surprise.”

  His laughter was met with polite smiles
. Willy was the only one to say, “You can have that bullshit, JP, I’m outta it.”

  They set things up to suit them, including proper lighting brought to the scene, and with Rachel, Beverly, Sam, and Joe positioned behind a solid barrier, far down the trench. The camera was placed as JP had suggested, controlled remotely. That way, whatever was filmed would be captured directly onto Rachel’s laptop computer, in case something went wrong.

  That being done, JP remained confident, and set to work with a comfort built of long practice.

  Anti-climactically, it took no time at all. JP fully peeled back the piece of floorboard, and the spectators around the corner saw him on screen probe the device a few different ways, cut a few wires, and then lift the explosive into a heavy box that he’d brought along for the disposal. The entire operation was over in ten minutes.

  At which point, he looked up into the camera’s lens and said, “You want to see what he was protecting? Looks interesting.”

  The restrictions of the passageway forced them to create a pecking order as they filed back down toward the hiding place. Joe got there first, followed by Sam, Rachel, and Beverly. Willy, as announced, chose to wait for the discovery to come to him later.

  JP, still on his knees, leaned back to allow them a better view. Nestled under where the booby trap had been located was a faded manila envelope, wrapped in plastic.

  “Do the honors,” Joe told him.

  JP reached in after donning latex gloves, extracted the envelope, stripped off the plastic, and peered inside. “Interesting,” he said, and slid the contents out into his other hand.